just for fun

Friday, March 28, 2008

deceptively delicious

andrew gave me this cookbook for christmas: jessica seinfield's deceptively delicious. its all about how to trick your kids into eating more veggies. i like veggies. i don't require trickery. but sometimes i find it hard to get all my daily veggies or to do new and interesting things with them. we're bored with our same ol veggies.

so i adore the cookbook. its got a ton of great recipes and tips. we've enjoyed everything except for the mac n cheese recipe. it wasn't a problem with the recipe; it was a problem with me. turns out, i only like mac n cheese that comes from a blue box. also, and this is key, there are pictures of nearly everything. i don't understand cookbooks with no pictures. how am i supposed to know that i want to eat something if i can't look at it and say, "that looks yummy"?

i keep thinking about posting one of the muffin recipes. but the basic plan for the book is to make veggie purees and add them to recipes. for example, the blueberry muffins have a half cup of butternut squash puree, which is all well and good in theory but a big hassle for just one round of muffins. if you are going to follow her plan, then you get into the habit of making purees and freezing them and using them. if you aren't going to follow her plan, then you don't really want to try just the one blueberry muffin recipe. so just pretend that i posted another recipe and you glanced through it and thought, "wow that sounds yummy, someday i'll make that" knowing full well that you probably won't, which is ok, because i too glance at a great many recipes and do that same thing.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

i thought it would be great to take a class on saturdays. i would only have class once a week. i would have a whole week to prepare. it would not interfere with work. its all great except for the part of actually getting up and spending my whole saturday in a classroom. which oddly enough, i never want to do on saturday mornings when i'm all snuggly in bed.

and i had thought that my classmates were exactly the brightest bulbs in the pack. that is, until i visited another section of the class. for whatever reason, i needed to go to the tuesday/thursday night version. it was during those two (i needed to go to two to make up for one saturday class) that lasted from 7:30pm to 9:30pm, that i learned just how good i have it on saturdays. if for nothing else, the T-R people make the S people look like rocket scientists. though i would never have guessed, apparently a higher caliber of students take the saturday class, so i guess that's where i'm stuck for however long i decide to take spanish classes.

my midterm is this saturday. wish me luck!

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

so the story starts on last friday.

one of my coworkers brought in duncan donuts and they were just terribly fun. she brought in donut holes but instead of being standard bite sized donuts, they were jelly filled donut holes. we all got to talking about how great an idea that was, and someone suggested bagel holes filled with cream cheese. and that seemed like heaven.

then i went home and in casual conversation mentioned to andrew about the idea of bagel holes filled with cream cheese. he agreed it was a fantastic idea. what i'd forgotten was how making bagels was on his rather long to-do list. suddenly what was his project became an our project and we spent most of sunday making bagel holes and filling them with cream cheese. it was a lot of fun, and we were both delighted with how well they turned out.

i knew i was going to be visiting one of our sites today, so i planned to take our little treats to them as a surprise.

i've never seen people sneer at free food like those people did today. you'd have thought i suggested they eat bagels stuffed with worms. i spent the morning all nervously waiting for andrew to call and ask me about how much they loved our treats and i felt so bad telling him how our efforts were rejected. i had thought about bringing them muffins on friday but you can definately cancel that.

at noon i stomped off to go get lunch and retreat to my office. i decided to dine at steiner's subtitled "a nevada style pub." i've seen several in town and thought fish-n-chips sounded like just the thing. only, once i got there, they don't serve fish-n-chips. how?!? how can you have a pub and not serve fish-n-chips??? isn't that a prerequisite to using the name "pub"? later on andrew reminded me that it does have nevada in the name of the establishment, which we've decided "nevada style" might be code for terrible. the waitress talked me into one of their burgers and it was fairly tasty. at some point in the meal, however, i dropped a big splatter of ketchup on my white shirt, left boob. how many times did she come to the table and not mention this?? the bus boy came by and took everything away, including all the napkins and even my drink, and he didn't mention the big blob of ketchup! i was on my way out the door when i noticed it. and its not like something stuck in your teeth, where you might not notice. it was a white shirt for crying out loud.


by that point, i'd already talked to my office mates and committed myself into stopping at the store to buy them ice cream. but of course, now i have ketchup on my boob and didn't exactly want to go into any public places. i bit the bullet and went anyway. everyone i saw had a silly smirk, which was annoying, but nearly as much as when the cashier haphazardly chucked all my change at me, i dropped half of it, and she said, "gosh, i guess you're just having a clumsy day..."

when i finally returned with the ice cream, we all feasted while i regaled them with my tales of woe. we all had a good hearty laugh over it. i tried to be cranky all afternoon, i really did. gave it my best effort, but every time, i would accidentally glance at the ketchup stain on my boob and start laughing again.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

lipstick snafu

i've really fallen for this 12 hour long lasting lipstick. well, i guess its lip gloss or something; its not a solid stick/tube of stuff. there is a wand and you apply the color. then throughout the day, you can apply generic shiny stuff, but the color stays all day. it doesn't smear off onto cups or forks or cheeks.

today i accidentally got it on my front teeth during the color application process. naturally i didn't notice at all. andrew noticed halfway during the first song at church. oddly enough, lip stick that stays on your lips for 12 hours doesn't really budge off your teeth either.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

"small army of old ladies is determined to do its part to fight the global war on terror"

this is worth reading:

Eldery enlist as coupon clippers to aid military

i liked this article for several reasons. in part because andrew is quite the avid coupon clipper; he's even so careful to cut perfectly on the lines. in part because i think so many more people would support the troops but don't really know what to do, don't have any concrete suggestions on how to actually support the troops. and mainly i liked it just because it was so very positive. we could also use a bigger helping of positive news, more stories about people who help others and fewer stories about prostitution rings and clinics using dirty syringes.