Saturday, April 25

Someone read my mind!

I am in love with Magic Erasers. I have been for a long, long time. I think they might be the best thing ever. Really. I've oft thought they should put one on a stick so I don't have to get down on my hands and knees to use them on the floor. Well they did it! It works just as fabulously as I had imagined.


If Magic Erasers are horrible for the environment, going to give me cancer or never going to biodegrade, please don't tell me. I don't want to know. I love them.

Friday, April 24

Bacon?

Ya know, I don't really like the thought of bacon. I mean really, that fat and the fact that it's pork (swine are the most ill treated of all our food sources and they're the ones that are smart). It just doesn't seem like it should be so.good.

It turns out that it's some sort of great chemical reaction.

The first link has a silly photo, but nothing bad. It's a girl's rear end in a bikini bottom - in case you don't want your chillrens to see.


Why we love bacon.



Bacon Sandwich Cures Hangover

Wednesday, April 22

Triggers

I sure have a lot lately. I read a news article late last night that brought back a lot of stuff. I tried talking about it this morning with my lady, but I couldn't. I just didn't want to.


Mother Arrested After Kicking Young Daughters Out of Car, Driving Away.


That's the article that threw me into a tail spin.

When I was 14, we were driving home to Eastern Pennsylvania from a friend's home in Scotch Plains, NJ late on a Sunday night. I'm not sure what time it was, but it was after midnight. It was cold, wet and in the middle of nowhere.

I reached over to turn the heat up in the car. That was apparently the wrong thing to do. My father pulled over and told me to get out. He'd been drinking, so I didn't want to push. I knew he'd hurt me if I didn't get out. So, I got out, and he drove away into the night. We were on some freeway. I don't know which one. I looked around me and saw a light a ways off. So, I headed for that. I figured that way, I could at least be in the light. Lucky for me, that light was on a farm and I pounded on the door. The family inside was kind and let me in. They called the police and I was whisked away to the local sheriff's station.

I fell asleep on the waiting room bench. After the sun had risen, my Dad showed up to pick me up. They had called him and called him and called him. He didn't answer the phone. They assumed he was out looking for me. I actually thought he was too. Finally after many hours of not being able to reach him, they asked the local police to go to our house. He was there, asleep. He'd driven off, gotten home and went to bed. They got him up, he picked me up and we went home.

So, yeah, that memory is painful. You know what really hurts though? They arrested that lady. The one who actually tried to retrieve her children. I'm not sure my father was even chastised. That's what gets me. It's like some sort of fucked up envy toward those girls.

My brain is a clusterfuck.

Monday, April 20

Vegetables

I'm on a quest to try them all. So, here's my list. I am going to italicize the ones I've not heretofore tried. If you have a recipe, send it on! This list isn't that great. There are a few things missing, but the things I know are missing are things I've tried.



Bulb Vegetables

Chives
Garlic
Leeks
Onions
Scallions
Shallots
Water chestnuts
Fruit Vegetables
Avocados
Chayote
Cucumbers
Eggplant
Okra
Olives
Peppers
Squash
Tomatoes
Tomatillos
Inflorescent Vegetables
Artichokes
Broccoli
Broccoli rabe
Cauliflower
Leaf Vegetables
Arugula
Brussels sprouts
Cabbage
Chicory
Chinese cabbage
Collards
Cress
Dandelion nettles
Endive
Lamb's lettuce
Lettuce
Nasturtium
Purslane
Radicchio
Savoy
Sea kale
Sorrel
Spinach
Root Vegetables
Beets
Burdock
Carrots
Celeriac
Malanga

Parsnips
Radishes
Rutabaga
Salsify
Turnips
Stalk Vegetable
Asparagus
Bamboo
Cardoon

Celery
Chard
Fiddlehead
Fennel
Kohlrabi
Tuber Vegetable
Cassava
Crosne
Jerusalem artichoke (I've had pastas made from Jerusalem Artichoke flour, but not used the straight veggie)
Jicama
Potato
Sweet potato
Taro
Yam

Friday, April 17

Very freaking cool...

Two of my favorite performers. Lifted this off a forum I belong to. Very, very cool.


Monday, April 13

Sounds like a plan

Whew! I think we've finally figured out what we're doing.

We've decided to buy a home in Hawaii, which is nauseating in this market, but oh well! So, we're furiously hunting for houses all over Oahu. It's an interesting thing when you don't know the lay of the land, etc. I've never spent any time on Oahu and Tom hasn't been there in like a decade. Also, the reason we CAN buy on Oahu is the slumping market. How much farther is it going to slump?? Eeek... makes me nervous.

Tom will be home July 18th ish and we will start packing up the following week. We intend to fly out of here July 30th or 31st. Hopefully we can find and close on (or rent from the seller) fairly quickly so that we don't have to live in a tiny place with two children and four animals!

The animals are all set to go. Each of them is healthy and has the required anti-bodies needed to enter Hawaii (they don't have rabies there and want to keep it that way). They are all going to have to fly, which gives me fits. I am sure the boys can handle it but it has to be hard on the cats. I think we might try to sedate them and put them in carry ons. They're so little.

Anyway, just thought I would check in.

Saturday, April 4

The Dirty Thirty

Sounds bad, huh?

It's not. It's what I am reading.


The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Go Ask Alice (author unknown)
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Forever by Judy Blume
Our Bodies, Ourselves by the Boston Women's Health Collective
My Darling, My Hamburger by Paul Zindel
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown
Slaughterhouse-five or, The Children's Crusade by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Ann Frank
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Deliverance by James Dickey
The Good Earth by Pearl Buck
A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich by Alice Childress
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
It's OK if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein

Friday, April 3

The Great Dinner Experiment

So, I mentioned that the kiddos were making dinner last night. No, it is not because I am a slave driver. I am trying to give them life skills. So, here's the story:

We sit down to dinner. I am so proud of myself. This is a gourmet healthy meal. Rock on, Binky! The kids were slightly underwhelmed with the fresh sea scallops sauteed in ghee served with fresh, local asparagus topped with homemade hollandaise sauce accompanied by basmati brown rice. Sounds really good, huh? It was stellar, in my eyes.

So, out of frustration of the children turning their little noses up on my dinner that I thought was oh-so-good, I devised a plan. I told the kids to put together two dinner menus. They needed to provide me with recipes, and ingredients for shopping. The catch was that each meal must include a lean protein, a fresh vegetable and if they were to include a starch, it would have to be a root vegetable or whole grain.

So, they went to work. Google was burning up that day, I am sure. My cook book collection got a thorough working over and I was presented with four pretty decent menus. I did the shopping and the cooking and it all went really well. So then I decided that not only did they need to see the planning that goes into a meal but the preparation side, too. So, this week, they both put together two dinner menus again. The catch this week was that they had to cook one on their own. Of course, I would be on hand for consultation and assistance as needed.

Austen made white chicken chili that was out of this world and super easy. It will definitely be made again. Tori picked chicken Caesar salad with home-made croutons. I helped her add a little zing to the dressing and showed her how to toss together croutons, but that was it. Once again, another awesome meal.

Since I've been doing this, they eat better, get more excited about flax seed tortillas than any teenager rightfully should and don't mind trying new vegetables! It has been a win-win-win situation. Next week I am going to start a rudimentary cooking school with them. We will start with stocks and soups and then move to sauces and gravies and onto basic preparation methods for meats and vegetables. It should be fun! I bet I will have two of the only teens who know what a mirepoix is!! or a bouquet garni!!! or the holy trinity of creole cooking! hahahaha it will be fun.


Oooooooooh and get this... this was a freaking jaw-dropping moment. I was feeling bad yesterday. I have been having some really rough days. Anyway, I told the kids that on the nights they made dinner I would do dishes (only fair right - they do them when I cook). So, I sat down for a bit after dinner in an attempt to actually keep the food inside me and while I was ruminating, Austen popped out of his room and told me he was going to do the dishes because I shouldn't have to do them when I feel icky. I think the apocalypse is on the horizon.

Thursday, April 2

Great Days

I have a lot of great days. There are ones where report cards come home or we celebrate momentous occasions. Those are wonderful, of course. The ones I cherish the most though, are the ones where nothing spectacular happens. Where I wake up to a lovey text from my missing husband. Then I hit the farmer's market and score lilies up the wazoo for $10. After that, I run my errands and they all go flawlessly and without incident. When I get home, the kids are ready to go to the gym with me, and they go. Then when they're there, they don't wander around aimlessly trying to make it look like they're working out. Instead, they actually work their butts pretty good. They set goals and meet them. Then when we get home, the dogs are being spastic freaks and playing wrestle mania with each other while I hop in the shower and the oldest makes dinner, with help from the youngest, all with very little direction from Mom.

What a stellar day. It could have been better; Tom could be here, but he is not. So, I am appreciating as it is. As frustrated as I get with the kids, they are good humans. They are becoming better humans, too. With lots of bumps, some bigger than others (that was a bad joke for those in the know). They are handling their lives with honesty and integrity though. They have given up trying to lie and that makes a huge difference in all communication. I still get frustrated. I do. Often. It's ok though, because if they continue on the paths they are currently on, they will get *there*. They will get to that place where I can let go and be proud of what we did.

So anyway... it's a good day.