You'll Be a Song I'll Sing

It's been a weekend full of movies.  I'm going to make pickles now!

Went to Comfest yesterday for lunch with coworkers.  There were some healthy choices but I went with fried.  Corn dog, french fries and a funnel cake.  Last year I went with the half slab of ribs and I brought most of it home.  (Sammy at the rest using his Ninja Corgi skills to grab them from the middle of the dining room table.)

I did some weeding this morning but mostly I cut off new branches forming on one of our trees.  Headed to Marysville in a few minutes to have lunch with my parents at Doc Henderson's.

At the end of April I went to see the eye doctor.  My eyesight doesn't change much so I now have about 4 pairs of eyeglasses (including a pair of sunglasses) I can use interchangably.  My doctor asked if I wanted to go back to contacts and I said, "While they're nice for special occasions, I'd really rather sleep in each morning than fight with putting them in."  She wasn't sure what I meant at first and then she told me I have high elasticity around my eyes and that's why I didn't have any wrinkles yet.  Yay Mary Kay!  :)

Yesterday I watched three movies (Catch and Release, Then She Found Me and Stardust).  Stardust was probably my favorite of the three.

I've been trying to go to bed around the same time but yesterday I went to bed around midnight.  We woke up at 10:15am.  Mostly Sammy has been sleeping under the bed but last night he started on his bed.  Since eating the hamburger buns he's being doing the reverse sneeze thing at odd times.  I woke up during the night to him doing it and told him it was okay - he walked over to me, let me pet him for a little bit and he stopped doing it. 

I thought I would go to Details for lunch but I really don't want to get dressed nicely, put on makeup, etc today.  I may stop by the post office to mail out a return to Land's End that's been on my to do list for the last month.  :)

Got to sleep in a little bit.  For some reason I've been waking up the first time anytime between 5:00am and 6:30am.  Both are before the alarm goes off.  Today it was almost 9am.

Hubby mowed the lawn.  I did some sweeping, raking, weeding, edge trimming and the like.  Our barley floating thing for the pond showed up today.  Lunch was leftover ham.  Told hubby that it feels like I'm on vacation. At work the tv is on all day while on this day I got to hear birds, squirrels, barking dogs, laughing kids and people walking by our house,

I got most of an interview typed up for a visting poet next week.  About 3pm I got sleepy when I noticed the time.  (3pm is nap time on weekends.)  Took a nap for an hour or so with hubby.  We got a beard trimmer for hubby at Target and then picked up lunch at Pita Hut. 

We watched some shows on the DVR and played Little Big Planet.

They passed all the taste tests. Took extras to work on Monday.

I have about 2 dozen of the white/vanilla ones in the freezer (no frosting) that we can have next week.

Less than 2 hours ago I cut up some potatoes thinking that I'd get them started boiling and we'd have them with pork chops.  Just mash them down with our forks and cover with butter, salt and pepper.  Yummy.

Apparently I had the water on too high because I became aware of a bad potato smell while here in the office (on the second floor).  I checked and not only did the water all boil away, the potato was starting to burn brown in the pot.  My husband does have a bad sense of smell... he's practically in the next room and apparently didn't notice.

It may be a while before I leave this chair...

We had brunch today at Sage American Bistro.  I have been looking forward to their Creme Brulee French Toast for months.  We had plans to meet my WI friend and her husband there for brunch a few months ago but ended up at Mimi's Cafe instead.

Since it was still early we saw Duplicity.  It was lunch time and even though I wasn't too hungry we went to Banana Bean Cafe for the first time.  I thought I would try two appetizers... the calamari and the shrimp and grits.  I was expecting the shrimp and grits to be a half or third of the size that was served to me.  It could be someone's meal.  I ate most of the calmari and I think had maybe 10 spoonfuls of the grits.  Hubby had the Little Havana Cubano sandwich which had (nasal clearing) mustard he liked. 

We got home about 3:15pm.  I put some sulfur on the hydrangea bushes (nothing is sprouting yet), cut out some coupons and have been in this chair ever since.  3pm is usually nap time around here on the weekends.  Sammy is sleeping good under my chair.  :)

This has been a few weeks of food adventures for me and not all have been successful.

One weekend I decided to make some of the things I saw in Eat This! Not That! which included strips of chicken breast as a substitute for chicken wings. The idea was good and may have executed better on a real grill instead of the smallish George Foreman we have. I thought I would try some sweet potato fries too. I used a little bit of one recipe and little bit of another. Some ended up burnt but I could taste the difference between them and the regular fries I made. Sweet potatos are a vegetable that did not make it into my parents' house. Nope. Not even at Thanksgiving.

One night I made a super easy chicken stir-fry in our wok. It had not been used since we moved here and still had Zilla hair on it. (It had been sitting on top of Zilla's crate in the basement until we brought Sammy home.) When hubby brought the leftovers for lunch in the ladies at work said his lunch looked better than theirs.

This weekend I used the wok again to make Kung Pao Chicken. It was really good. I even ate some peanuts with it but the look my husband was giving me looked so sad and worried that I put the rest of the peanuts on his plate.

I went to two cooking classes this month. I know I mentioned the first one already but I don't think I've given any details on the second one. It was a knife skills class teaching us how to care and use our knives. (It included sharpening them as well.) Then we got to really use them. Dicing and chopping, we came up with the ingredients for French Onion Soup, a potato and leek (yet another veggie never seen in my parents house) soup and garlic bread. The thought of onion soup always turned me off. It made me think of the hot onion concoction my mother made us drink when we were sick. (*insert super sour face here*) This soup was great. And the garlic bread was the best ever. I watched the sou chef make it and I thought, "How could I ever buy frozen garlic bread again after seeing how easy that was?"

On Sunday we were supposed to go to Marysville to have lunch with my parents at Old Bag of Nails. My dad's birthday was yesterday and we were going to celebrate it early. Because of the weather they asked if they could come over instead on Sunday. I said sure and came up with a winter salad (based on what I had at my first cooking class), pork tenderloin, green beans with red taters, and sugar free vanilla pudding. Let me tell you... it sounds like it was a lot of work but was probably one of the easiest meals I made in a while.

Yesterday a Corgi cookie cutter arrived in the mail. It's a cute little Pembroke. Now I want to make some sugar cookies!

Today I found out about Eric Ripert's site and bookmarked it. He does a dinner social thing every few months where people make the recipes and send in the pictures. But Eric also outlines when you should buy stuff and the order you should start making everything. Very cool.

I've got some LJ entries to finish about my food and art adventures.  They are in my Drafts folder and will hopefully be completed soon.  If I don't get my LJ updated I sometimes feel like life is just passing me by.

It's been too cold for painting so our graffiti greets me each time I approach our garage from the left side.  I keep checking on it throughout the day to make sure nothing new appears.  It's supposed to be warmer tomorrow but then it's supposed to rain in the evening. 

Attended an online Character Workshop and it gave me the courage to face my last NaNo.  I was planning on starting to look at it again at the beginning of this month.  That sucker is getting printed off this week for rereading/review.

In food related news, I signed up for a knife skills/cooking and cooking class next month.

The mouse is now somewhere else.  I came downstairs on Saturday to find the humane trap closed.  It felt like it was heavier than before.  I took Sammy to his grooming appointment and spent way too long grocery shopping.  My coupon system sucks (they are arranged by expiration date) so I wasted at least 30 minutes looking for coupons that I knew I had but couldn't locate.  Save 28% at the store, though.

While I was gone, hubby looked inside the trap and was certain something with a tail was in it so he took it for a drive.  Upon arriving at the undisclosed location, he emptied the trap and the mouse scurried off. 

We think there was only one but only time will tell, I guess.

Today for breakfast we had sausage biscuits.  Homemade sausage biscuits.  They were yummy.  I used a biscuit recipe from Paula Deen which required baking the biscuits on the stove in a pan of butter.  It developed a lovely crust on the bottom but the biscuits weren't cooked all the way through so I finished them in the oven.  Next time I'll just give them a crust on the stovetop and bake them in the oven.  It's almost 7pm and I'm just now starting to get hungry again.

Last week I made some whole wheat pizza dough and we made two pizzas for dinner (with some leftovers for lunch the next day). I think we're going to have it again tonight!

Friday night hubby went out with friends so I began tackling the mess I've been letting pile up on the dining room table. Sammy went to the groomers for a nail trim. One of the ladies who work there was leaving work and recognized him. For dinner I had a bag of microwave popcorn. On bed. How decadent!

Actually the big surprise of the night was Sammy. He (like Zilla) goes crazy for popcorn. I had emptied the bag into a bowl and was on the bed watching tv, eating out of the bowl. Sammy was so well behaved. Granted, his nose was practically touching the bowl, but he did not grab any popcorn until I dropped a piece into the bowl. And then he zeroed in on the piece he thought dropped and only took that one. He listened to me and obeyed when I told him to back up.

Saturday I took the Christmas scarf off Sammy that had been there for almost two weeks. Now he has a little green ring around his neck. He was the butt of a lot of our jokes. Of course since Sammy only understands a few words he took it all in stride.

Sunday was a day of culinary disasters. I was going to make ricotta pancakes but the ricotta had gone bad early and I didn't have the ingredients to make it from scratch. Of course I found out about the ricotta after I'd separated the eggs. Jamie Oliver to the rescue! His pancakes were quick to make compared to the coffee cakes that I could have made. They were only slightly better than the last time I made them - they still tasted a bit eggy to me. Then I made my mother's friend taters which are quartered, fried in oil and topped with paprika. They are so unhealthy I have them once a year or every other year. And of course I burned the skins and cut parts while the insides were perfect.

My mind has been all over the place the last day or so. I think it means it is time to start writing again!

Yesterday was a Very Good Day. I finally found the paddle for my breadmachine. Over the weekend I contacted Black and Decker to find out they no longer made the paddle but they were willing to offer me another breadmachine at a discount. Didn't want to spend the money on a new one since I knew the paddle was around here somewhere.

Tonight I made a sweet bread (those are miniloaves) and we'll take some to work. I didn't use the bread machine though since this required a quick mixing of ingredients (no hand mixer to drive Sammy crazy) and no rising time.

Last night after work was so much fun!  I made dinner right away.  We had salads, blackened chicken and mashed taters.  I had not made the blackened chicken before and there were two cooking methods given.  I went with the one that gave off the least amount of smoke and the first floor still smells like blackened chicken. lol

Hubby reminded me that I said we could go to Best Buy and so we did.  I fiddled with my new GPS that kept telling me the closest Best Buy was 92 miles away.  It had no Best Buys listed in Columbus at all.  At Best Buy I got a NaNo Reward (Pink CD) and pooled gift cards/store credits to get Little Big Planet for our Playstation 3. 

At home we played the game in multiplayer.  Hubby was the main sock boy and I was his "fwiend"; so he could pause the game but I couldn't.  We explored on a few levels and just had fun being goofy.  My sock girl has a more expressive face than his.  When she is the happiest she almost looks rabid because of the wide mouth and the tongue that sticks out.  Right now we're wearing Edwardian Clothes and I have a bunny tail.  Learning how to play is its own fun.  We were trying to do a climbing level race when I grabbed  hubby's character and took him off the cliff with me.  Um... grabbing objects is not my strong suit.  :)

Two weekends ago I made Nigella Lawson's pancake recipe which got rave reviews from hubby.  He said they were the best pancakes I'd ever made.  We had them for dinner.  :)

This year I want to try some new things.  Right now I am keeping a food diary so I'll see how long it holds up.  I think it will be one way to make sure there is variety in our meals. 

Saw some movies but nothing that made me think "Wow".

I went to Polaris today for lunch with my friend from Wisconsin and to return some gifts.  Though I was never inside the actual mall I was surprised by the crowds.  One slip at Barnes and Noble and I could have been mowed over by someone on their way to a good deal.  Picked up The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (which I've been wanting since August) for about $15.

The last few days I've seen White Woman, The Good German and The Tracey Fragments.

Last month my mother found a microwave peanut brittle recipe in the newspaper that she cut out and gave to me. I made it and it was horrible! The timing was off and the sugar and corn syrup burned. I happened to find another recipe which I made and it turned out great. So onward with my plans to provide peanut brittle to all of my non-diabetic co-workers. I plan on making my chewy cherry cookies for the diabetic ones (there are three of them). And if I'm feeling ambitious I can make doggy treats too.

My first ever cheesecake. Isn't it pretty? It fed everyone at Thanksgiving and the other half fed people at work.

On Sunday I went to Weilands, Kroger and Giant Eagle looking for sugar pumpkins or pie pumpkins to make pumpkin puree for the cheesecake.  I struck out.  Finally found some at the North Market that I had put on hold yesterday and picked up at lunchtime today.  I did not know it would take me about 30 - 45 minutes to deseed them and scrape all the stringy stuff out.  So writing began a bit late.

But I wrote.  :)  Got down 298 words for a total word count of 34867.  I probably won't get to my write-in tomorrow since I will be baking the cheesecake (takes an hour and a half) but if I use Write or Die to do sprints I should make more progress.  The really odd thing... a character mentioned in passing several chapters ago suddenly sprung up again and I think she knows something about the fairies that are about to visit my main character.  Eeek!  Or Hurray?  :)
 

The ocean waves are going to lull me to sleep for the last time. We leave tomorrow morning.

Today I went to the beach for the last time. My nephews played in the sand but I went down to the water a few times. Lots of seaweed on the shore. We saw a lady throwing a frisbee for her dog. A few houses down is a home owned by one of the lawyers in town. None of us know him personally so we didn't stop by to say hello. Sister-in-law was at the beach too. Hubby stayed inside to read. Brother-in-law, Mom-in-law and Dad-in-law all went fishing this morning. They caught blue, puffer fish and other stuff but gave them away to someone else.

For Halloween we drove to Hampstead for their Halloween festival. It was a bunch of booths at one of the soccer fields at the Kiwanis park. Every booth gave out candy and there was one of those inflatible playgrounds for kids. Oldest nephew only wanted to get candy on one side of the field. There was a John Deere tractor that took people for a hay ride. There was a booth with Dominos pizza, popcorn, hot chocolate, soda, water, sausages, and sausages with peppers and onions. It's a really smart idea to have all the kids go to one place like that since there's no telling how many houses on a street or even a block will be giving out candy. The most memorial costume was the little pink princess with her pumpkin escort. The pumpkin was a Weimaraner puppy that was too cute. Made me miss Sammy. I know... hard to believe, isn't it?

Hubby asked me if I'd want to live here and I said it would be nice to get away now and then for novel writing but I wouldn't want to live here all of the time. Last night we had dinner at II Beauchaines. ~C~ was told he could have ice cream so we went to Lunapops which was closed. Then we went to Ice Cream place that was closed. So we ended up at the New York Delicatessen where we got soft serve and an M&M cookie. They were closing up at 7:30pm - almost unheard of in Columbus on a Thursday night. That would take some getting used to. :)