Thursday, September 30, 2010

Leaving On a Jet Plane

Almost packed and ready to fly.  Just a year ago I was having a hard time letting the youngest princess go.  Not finding it any easier tonight.  Seems like a significant point in our parenting journey.  The end of an era (Do 28 years constitute an era?) of parenting daughters.  Bittersweet.  But I will focus on the sweet and plan to enjoy every minute.  Gonna give out lots of kisses, and smiles.  (Gonna hold you like I'll never let you go.)  Gonna wear my green sweater for the trip.  Cody to Salt Lake to Philly to Uncle M's.  Gonna get up at 3:00am.  Gonna get to bed now. 

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

The Unpampered Chef

As a matter of policy, I do not attend 'parties' that sell things.  I make only the occasional exception, and I made one the other night for a Pampered Chef party.
I had no idea.
I do not watch the home shopping network nor the food network, except for an occasional episode of Cake Boss.  So with all those gadgets I do not have, (not to mention my limited range of taste buds) it is no wonder I can not cook.
And yet yesterday, inspired by the butternut squash in my refrigerator and the Prairie Mama, I made Butternut Squash Soup.  I used Emeril's recipe.  Because it sounds fanciful and it called for a minced jalepeno.  And I grew two square feet of jalepenos.  I also used one half cup of thinly sliced carrots fresh from the SFG.  And an onion from my co-op basket.  And amazingly I made a pot of soup without the aid of any prep bowls, pinch pots, mandolines, julienne peelers, or immersible mixers.  I guess I am just extra talented with a paring knife. 
Emeril's recipe said to serve it with 'the shrimp salsa'.  I suppose this is where it would have been helpful to have seen the episode.  I didn't have any shrimp salsa, let alone 'the' shrimp salsa.  I served it with a spoon.
I thought the soup was delicious.
The STP thought it could use some bacon.
The Goob thought it inedible.    He said it looked like mashed carrots and tasted like mashed potatoes.  He made gagging noises and said he would rather starve than eat it. 
I suggested he could do just that. 
I don't think a mandoline would have made any difference.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

A Taste of Fall

Fall officially arrived this week and along with it the end to my summer list.  Things that never got crossed off:
1.  Hit golf balls
2.  Gather patio rocks
3.  See petroglyphs
4.  Visit Jackson
5.  Shoot rodents
A good start to next summer's list. 
Also with the arrival of fall is my return to cooking.  The STP came into the kitchen last evening to find me frying okra.  I had cut the okra, and had three bowls of stuff prepared to dip said okra in, and a pot of boiling oil on the stove.
STP:  Does frying okra involve more than two steps?
Me:  (wiping sweat from brow)  Yes.
STP:  I guess that counts as really cooking.
I'm not sure if the tone of voice meant he was glad to see the return of cooking, or just resigned to it.

Reminded me of the country song:
 We  fry everything, way out here.

Also, I am home today from all of my jobs and am seeing the need to do some fall housecleaning.  (Not that I have any plans to really do it, just that I see the need.)  Moving in that direction, this morning I threw away a bowl of candy that was in the china cabinet since I can't remember when.  There was a handful of mystery flavored dumdums, one butterscotch button, and an extreme sour warhead.  I opened the war head and licked it to see if I could taste sour, and I can.  And then I threw it away.  But it made me remember when the Goob was little and he would ask people to lick the sour off his warheads.  And you really have to be a good friend (or not quite right) to lick the sour off someone else's warhead and then hand over the sweet inside.  And I am thankful that in my life there have been and continue to be such people.  People who have cared enough about me to at least share the sour things with me.  And to revel with me in the sweet times.  A lot of them will be at Amidala's nuptials this weekend.  I'm looking forward to a sweet time.
And I just want to express thanks to my friend Jesus, Who is the ultimate Warhead sucker.

Monday, September 27, 2010

The Plan

Today:  B--Work at bank    D--Go to dentist    A--Request school assignments
Tomorrow:  B--Pack    D--???   A--Get school assignments
Weds:  B--Panic    D--Rescue B.     A--Day off (do school assignments)
Thurs:  B,D,A--Fly Cody to Philly

Ever have a plan? 

Friday, September 24, 2010

Season to Taste

This week at one of my jobs I got 'fit tested' for a mask.  (Not my bank job, where it is quite inappropriate to wear a mask at the teller window.)  Fit testing involves putting on a mask, and then pulling a hood over your head so you look like the guys who come to get ET, and then walking and talking while the fit tester sprays a bitter aerosol into your hood to see if you can taste it.  If you can taste it, then your mask does not fit.  Or you have no bitter taste receptors.  As appears to be my case.  The fit tester sprays the  bitter spray into your hood without the mask to see how sensitive you are to the bitterness.  After two sprays everyone else in the room was gagging.  After 15 sprays I was going , "No, nothing."  So I can not taste bitter.  Who knew?
Since I have no desire to be bitter, or to taste bitter things, this is not a problem for me.  But I recognized immediately that it could be a problem for you.
This then shall serve as my public apology for the food I have served to my children over the past 28 years.  You tried to tell me it was yucky.  You tried to hide it your mashed potatoes.  You begged for a dog to feed it to.  (While I am at it I might as well apologize to the SLD, too.)  And I am going to apologize to everyone who I have had over to eat.  And to every church member and adherent who has unsuspectedly eaten from my crock pot at a church dinner.  Sorry.  I didn't know.
The good news is that there is also a sweet spray for fit testing.  And I have no problem tasting sweet.  So my mask fits, and from now on I will be more diligent in following the recipes.  Or maybe I will only make sweet things. 

Sunday, September 19, 2010

In The Zone

The NFL Red Zone is like watching football with a crazy man holding the remote control.  Only the crazy man is not sitting on the couch with you and you can't threaten him and take away the remote if you have enough of schizophrenic football watching.  On the other hand, I see why anyone with a Y chromosome would love it.  Because they can flip back and forth between games and channels without even lifting the remote.  Leaving two hands for eating and drinking.  Enjoy your free preview STP.  Next week its back to one game at a time.

Friday, September 17, 2010

New Scoop on Poop

Last weekend the STP and I went on the NPS ranger led-off trail-best last hike of the summer.  

The ranger was full of interesting tidbits about the area we were hiking through.  He stopped to talk.  A lot.  At one point he was talking about the wild horses and mentioned some stud piles we had hiked past.  Any questions?  So one brave soul voiced the thought that had fleetingly passed through my brain, but had not lingered long enough to fully form into a question. 
How do you know it is a stud pile, um, you know, as opposed to a 'mare pile'? 




During my time in the microbiology lab, I have examined more poop than the average person, and I can't tell by looking, or smelling, or any other manner for that matter, the difference between male and female stool samples.  So how could the ranger tell?  His explanation was that the male horses use stud piles to 'mark their territory' and that the females' poop would be more spread around instead of in a pile in one place.   I'm not sure about wild horses, but I think that the reason has less to do with marking territory and more to do with just male/female issues.  Boy horses focus on one task at a time.  Girl horses are multitasking and don't have time to stand in one place long enough to make a pile. 
Just my theory. 
Just putting it out there. 

Fantasy Zumba

Made it to zumba three times this week.  A record.  I moved myself from the back of the room to the center and positioned myself directly in front of the instructor.  That way I am not distracted and discouraged by comparing myself with the other class members.  And my mind is free to concentrate on my zumbaing.  (Because my battle of the bulge is being fought in the trenches of my mind.)  At first I pretend to be a salsa dancer, moving in rhythm with the Latin beat.  But that requires way too much imagination energy at 5:45am.  So then I pretend that I am looking in a mirror.  And the instructor is my mirror image, and, yes, my thighs look that good.  This little fantasy makes it easier for me to follow the movements that I am supposed to be doing, although my mirror image is oddly ahead of me most of the time and way more coordinated than I am. By the end of the class the fantasy has shifted to where I am in a women's prison, the instructor is some sort of sadistic prison guard, and if I don't finish my morning workout I won't get my cigarettes today. 
If my body was as active as my mind, I would be a thin woman.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Camping Is Intense IV -- Campfire Cooking

On Saturday morning I made eggs-in-a-bag for the STP and me on the woodstove in our yurt. 

On Sunday morning the STP was not on the mountain and I ate poptarts with the Goob and bummed hot water for my hot chocolate.





I saved my mountain man jumbo eggs and two pounds of bacon for Monday morning.  Because the best thing about the campout is breakfast cooked over the open fire by the wonderful camp cook.  But the wonderful camp cook was not feeling well at breakfast time on Monday so everyone had to cook their own breakfast.  As I am not much of a cook in my own kitchen and I can't remember the last time I fried an egg, I was not going to try dippy eggs while bending over a campfire griddle in front of curious onlookers.  So the STP stepped up to cook my breakfast.  The bacon was blackened and the super eggs looked like this:
Note: Do not click on this picture to make it bigger.  Trust me, it is not pretty.

One of the 9 year old onlookers said,  "That's why I always let my mom cook."  My mom taught me that if I didn't have anything nice to say, I shouldn't say anything at all.  And I couldn't come up with anything nicer than that, so I quietly ate my eggs (and fed my bacon to the SLD). 

Monday, September 13, 2010

Back to Zumba

This morning I went back to zumba. Do you think it is possible to get healthy and thin in three weeks?  Drat your countdown, Amidala.  Although I can't wait to see you.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

The Lord Is My Shepherd. I Shall Not Fret.

Ms Brenda Explains the (somewhat archaic) Hymns
This morning the worship leader led me to wonder what kind of words would be fraught with heavenly comfort.  So I came home and inquired of my old friend dictionary.com

And I discovered that 'fraught" is not the past tense of 'fret' as I had imagined.  In fact it is not a verb at all, but rather an adjective.

fraught   /frɔt/

–adjective
1. Archaic . filled or laden (with): ships fraught with precious wares.
 
Synonyms include: abounding, attended, bristling, charged, filled, heavy, laden, replete, stuffed, as well as haggard, harassed, harrowed, peaked, pinched, sapped, starved, strained, stressed, taut, tired, worn
 
So the same word can mean either stuffed or starved.  Go figure.
Let's check out the World English Dictionary to see if we can further muddle clarify this.


fraught (frɔːt)
— adjective (and foll by with )
1. filled or charged; attended: a venture fraught with peril
2. informal showing or producing tension or anxiety: she looks rather fraught ; a fraught situation

So my previous understanding of fraught was more in line with the informal, and the hymn writer's more in line with the archaic. Of course it was probably much less archaic in 1862.  When I'm sure the hymn was fraught with meaning.
 

He leads me beside quiet waters, 
He restores my soul.
There is still comfort in those words.  Which reminds me of something else the worship leader said today:  God is good. 
All the time. 
When David wrote the 23rd Psalm. 
In 1862 when Joseph Gilmore wrote He Leadeth Me. 
In 2010 when Ms Brenda doodled the word 'fraught' on her church bulletin.

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Camping Is Intense III -- Mountain Streams

The STP and I did a little fishing.  The STP caught a little fish.  Me, not so much.












I used my new fly rod.  See my fly here in the clear mountain stream?  Yeah, me neither.

See my fly here in the pine tree?  I spent a fair amount of time rescuing my fly from trees and bushes.

The rest of the time I spent walking the dog, who is not a big fan of fly fishing.












I found a new mountain stream activity.  Stacking rocks.  See how good I was at it?
That and taking pictures of streams at sunrise. 
On the Mountain.

Camping Is In Tents II -- The Yurt Stands Alone


Some things about tent camping.
1.  More people are eaten out of tents by bears than are eaten out of campers.
2.  Tents are not good at keeping out the cold.
3.  The number of men that can stay comfortably in a 'three man tent' is less than three.
For these reasons we did not stay in our own tent this year.  We borrowed a tent.  A bigger tent.  A more substantial tent.  A six sided, former military, former hunting camp tent.  In fact, let's just go ahead and call it a yurt.
And in the yurt we had a dog (E-I-E-I-O), and a lantern, and a queen size air mattress, and a table and two chairs, and a cot, and a woodstove.  Oh, yes, we did.
And even though it was freezing cold outside the yurt...
it was toasty warm inside.  As long as someone kept wood in the stove.  The STP did this job admirably two of the three nights we stayed on the mountain.  But Saturday night it was my job.  And I did it admirably as well, if the standard is that the fire was still burning in the morning.  In the process, though, I managed to get lost in the tent and to use up all the kindling wood, to step on my glasses and break them in two pieces, and to crawl outside and get more kindling (without being eaten by a bear).  I had to go outside, because I had not only burned up all the kindling in an effort to keep warm, I had cannibalized the cardboard box it was in.  I know how the Donner Party must have felt.  I would have started burning the tent poles if I had to.

The good news is that this year's Christmas picture has already been taken. 
Season's Greetings from the Happy Yurt Dwellers (On the Mountain).

Camping Is Intense I -- Bear Bait

This past weekend was the Annual Church Camp Out On The Mountain.  It was our third time to attend.  You may recall we spent the first year in a tent.  Then last year Princess Amidala and I finnagled our way into a camper.  This year we were back in a tent.  In light of the recent and relatively local eating of people in tents by bears, I inquired about the safety of keeping food in my tent. 
Tell me the truth, I said, Do I need to worry about keeping food in my tent? 
I asked only one person whom I trusted (who might be named MIKE).  I even pointed my finger at him, because everyone knows that when someone is pointing their finger at you they really want the truth and you are required to tell it. 
Nothing to fear,  he assured me. 
So I slept three nights in a tent with a cooler of ground beef, bacon, and keilbasi at my feet.  Fast forward to Monday morning.  I was clearing off a table and was going to dump a leftover bowl of jello in the woods.  The bowl was left in the rain storm on Sunday afternoon after the fellowship dinner on the mountain.  (Everything even sounds better if you add the phrase 'on the mountain'.)  It was not my jello, I was just going to dump it and clean out the bowl. 
OH,No! The group gathered around the fire exclaimed.  Don't do that.  It will attract bears. 
Are you kidding me?  (I thought briefly about pointing my finger at them.)
Sure, anything with sugar in it will attract bears.  Dump it in the fire instead.
Okay, so what about the ground beef and Hershey bars in my tent?  And why did we let the jello sit outside overnight in the middle of our campsite if we are so worried about bear attacks?  And who can you trust to tell you the truth?  So next time I sleep in a tent I will err on the side of caution.  (Luck favors the prepared, darling.)   So I will keep my food locked up in the truck.  Or better yet I will store it by MIKE'S camper.  And instead of moving stealthily, I will bang pan lids together when I go to the restroom at 3 o'clock in the morning. 
And that's the truth. 

Thursday, September 02, 2010

Picture Day

Of the few blogmoms I follow, three of them have kindergarteners this year.  I makes me sad that I did not have a blog when my children started school.  I remember the highlights, but there are all those little moments that are forgotten.  And I don't think there is a single picture of the princess with the funeral bow on her head.  Sad.
This year my last child started high school.  In less than 4 years our school years will be over.  I have an urge to document each day.  But the truth is, it is neither as poignant nor as cute as kindergarten.  For instance, today is picture day.  The only thing I have to report is that he has braces and his face is broken out with an especially bad zit which is more like a second nose.  This does not make anyone go aaaahhhh.   It is almost to much eeeewwwww to record.  But it is picture day, so what can you do?  One of the options,besides background colors, that you can pick is retouching.  For eight dollars they will airbrush away your child's blemishes.  I did not choose this option.  We want to remember this as the year of braces and blemishes.  Look for your wallet size to arrive around Halloween.

Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Not Me Quote of the Day

An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger.
Dan Rather