Eating This Week 10

Quilting class is over (pics soon!) and my week is void of afterwork plans.  Time for a proper weekly dinner menu:


Monday- Baked Buffalo Chicken Tenders


Tuesday- Coconut Rice


Wednesday- Tuna Noodle Casserole


Thursday- Vegetable Stir Fry


Friday- Tuna Noodle Casserole leftovers


Saturday- Off to my parent's house for Easter!  yay!  Bring on the candy!


Sunday- at my parent's house.  


Let's talk more about Saturday and Sunday.  Easter.  At.  My.  Parents.  Woo hoo!  I'm most looking forward to a little game called Egg Shoot.  The rules are easy: place eggs on the backyard fence, then shoot at eggs with BB gun.  Welcome to the country.  

small apartments cause bad posture

The quilting class I'm taking is nearing it's end, which mean time to finally, actually quilt something.  We practiced in class on $2,000 machines.  I thought, wow this is so easy I can't wait to get home and quilt this bad boy into a blanket.  Um.  yea.  Due to my desk performing double duty, the quilting did not turn out at planned.  You see, my imac fits perfectly snug on my desk.  When I need to sew, the computer is pushed back a few inches and the sewing machine sits in front of it.  This works fine for small items like pillows, hemming pants, and piecing together quilt squares.  This DOES NOT work fine when trying to quilt a 56" x 56" thick blanket.  

My fix:  sew on the floor.  I spent 3 hours last night hunched over my sewing machine sitting on the floor trying to sew perfectly curvy curved lines.  

You know the pedal that works the machine?  The FOOT pedal?  In my snazzy new sewing position, it become a calf pedal.  Crafty, I know.

It's almost done.  Just needs binding.  

Tomorrow night is the last class, therefore the last day I get 15% off in the store.  Unnecessary purchases WILL be made.  Class is at the most awesome store in all of NYC, The City Quilter. 

Eating This Week 9

Thanks to the consumption of a duo of frozen margaritas followed by a trifecta of beers last night, my Sunday afternoon grocery store trip was faced without a list.  Therefore, this week doesn't have a plan.  I bought a slew of veggies, some meat options, a spattering of snacks, but nothing that really goes together.  Surely, each night I will come up with a delicious meal idea to only be faced with the fact that the one key ingredient is missing.  Yay, I can't wait.  

image found via FFFFOUND! 

oh dear god, make it stop

Let's meet my husband's new girlfriend.


She is a master with a crazy looking weapon:

She fights sharp-toothed futuristic creatures while sporting the latest fashion trend: the red cape.

Wow.  Is this girl strong and fashionable or what?  Her hot, thigh purse and military-inspired shoulder pads look fantastic complimented by a dragon/dog/tiger looking monster.

She has pink hair and dyes her eyebrows to match.  What a daredevil!

She, let's call her Pinky, lives inside of a small, plastic black box, known to commoners as a PS3.  For some reason, she has been invited to my apartment EVERY SINGLE NIGHT from the hours of 10:00-12:00 for the past two weeks.   

SOMEONE SAVE ME FROM THIS HELL.  

Someone* advised me that instead of complaining about it I should buy another controller and join him on the couch for an ungodly amount of hours playing along.  I can't.  I just can't.  Besides the fact that I have a hard time understanding the point of the game and mastering the controller, when you're playing a video game, you CAN'T DO ANYTHING ELSE.  I like doing things.  A lot of things.  I like being able to craft and watch TV and talk on the phone and eat pizza and complain about his video game playing simultaneously.  I do work-out videos using the picture-in-picture option on my TV.  Even right now, I'm writing this post, listening to a podcast, playing tennis, and getting my nails done, all while soaking in the tub.  

I know, genius.  

My secrets will not be revealed.  

*the knower of all things, my mother.

photos from the Final Fantasy X111 (aka The Game That Annoys Me) website

Eating This Week 8

When will lemons be made without seeds?  

Last week was full of late meetings, work on the weekend, and more late meetings.  All in all, pretty craptastic.  Not getting a chance to cook a regular meal, and substituting those real meals with boxed mac 'n' cheese, frozen veggie burgers, and pasta with canned sauce, proved to be a not-so-good idea.  My body felt sluggish and large, kind of like a beached whale.  Not good.  


This week, will be very, very different.  


Sunday - Dinner: turkey chili with egg noodles.
Monday - Lunch: leftover chili, Dinner: Shrimp with arugula 
Tuesday - Lunch: leftover shrimps, Dinner: roasted chicken thighs with potatoes, radish, and asparagus
Wednesday - Lunch: veggie burger with salad, Dinner: pork stir-fry
Thursday - Lunch: leftover stir-fry, Dinner: Veggie burgers with split pea soup
Friday - Lunch: buy out, Dinner: margaritas* with friends

*add some nachos and call me dinner.

Officially a graduate

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Meg from A Practical Wedding for including me in her wedding graduate series!  


I used her blog as a cheap free form of therapy all through my planning process.  Now that I've come out the other side full of knowledge (pictures look better in the rain) and enlightenment (it's OK to have an emotional moment in the middle of David's Bridal over a dress you picked up off of the mother-of-the bride rack) I'm honored to be able to share my experience with all of you.


Because I will never tire of showing off our wedding pictures...


We sat at a sweetheart table decked out with baby's breath, a vintage tablecloth, and a bottle champagne. My sister surprised us with a slideshow full of funny pictures.

There were actual CHILDREN actually INVITED.  

In twenty years, we might be attending the wedding of these two.  Love connection anyone?

My first attempt at bouquet making turned out pretty damn good.  I might have found my new profession.  I'm not joking. 

Weddings are awesome.

all photos by the rad Jorge Garcia.

project: picture picks

I recently made these picture picks for my mom's 50th birthday party.  I highly recommend crafting some up for the next shindig you are attending/planning/crashing.  People love looking at old pictures.  People also love food.  Put the two together and have your guests eating and reminiscing for as long as it takes them to plate up a few crab cakes and crudites.  I chose the least embarrassing photos of my mom throughout the years.  If you are mean to your loved ones, I recommend using a smattering of the most hideous, fugly, completely and utterly mortifying pictures you can get your hands on.  

The best part is that the project takes less than a hour and uses products you most likely already have.  Free and quick?!  This is my kind of project. 


Tools:

• some old photos
• scissors
• cardstock
• glue, I used hot glue, could also use any glue suitable for paper
• toothpicks

1. scan the photos

2. using a photo editing software, crop to any size you want.  Mine were about 1.5" x 3".

3. print out on cardstock

4. cut out with scissors

5. place the cardstock photo face down, add a small drop of glue, place the toothpick in glue

6. when the glue is dry, stick into anything!  like cupcakes!  or carrot sticks!  or chicken wings!

If you don't have accessibility to a scanner or photo editing software, another method is to use a color copier on regular paper.  

Etsy has food?! What?!

Stop what you are doing.  Buy these caramels.  

From Have It Sweet's Etsy shop, I almost died during my first bite.  Side note:  why did it take me this long to discover that I can order SNACKS off of Etsy?  Not just any snacks, but, vegan, colorful, bacon flavored, penis shaped, snacks delivered straight to your front door.  If someone out there could combine those four descriptives into one edible delight, I would be your best friend forever.  Oh wait...bacon and vegan don't go together.  Whatever, I can dream.  

Back to the caramels.  They are sweet and salty and chewy and buttery and chocolaty and spicy.  The heat from the cayenne pepper is perfectly balanced with the sweet of the chocolate with a kick from the fleur de sel.  The 1/4 lb log of caramel currently lives in my desk drawer at work.  Right next to the steak knife that I cut it with.   That's right, don't mess with me, I have a weapon.

picture from Have It Sweet's Etsy shop.  

post not sponsored, i just really like caramel.

on keeping his loins tingly

Did you make a collage of your face today?  Yea, didn't think so.  At least my mouth is closed in all these pictures.


This hodgepodge was made to show a few of my hairstyles over the past four years.  Can we look at the one at the top left circa 2003 please?!  OH MY.  My head looks like a bowling ball with hair.  I'm off to the salon tomorrow for a cut and color, which is when I always tempt myself to go back to my original reddish-brown color.  Adam only knows me as a blonde and prefers me stick with that, but sometime I have fantasies about a life where I don't have to dye my roots.  A world where I don't have to sell my first born to afford some good highlights nor spend three hours of my life at the salon.


Ahhhh....to be a brunette again....I would be rolling around in all the free time and extra cash!


But, alas, as Patti Stanger would say, the blonde hair "gets his penis up."


I relayed this to a coworker today who exclaimed, "I'm so sick of all you married people only doing things your husbands want and not things that you want."


Let's discuss this.  Before I was married, I would have said the same thing.  I'm all about the independent woman who does what she wants when she wants to with whatever hair color she's sporting that week.  But, men are mostly* visual creatures.  Their brains are wired to respond to what they see, instead of what they hear or feel, unlike women.  Keeping my hair blonde, although not my personal choice, is a small compromise I'm willing to make for his happiness.  That sounds really dramatic.  


Any physical appearance aspects that you have changed or kept due to your partner's asking?  Annoyed by woman "giving in" to their husbands wishes?  

*besides when it comes to eyelashes 

ladies, put away your weird eyelash cream

Scene:


me at the table on the internet, him on the couch.  TV on.  Latisse commercial comes on. (you know, the magical prescription only eyelash grow gel that could make you blind)


Him: Why would anyone need this strange chemical to grow their lashes?


Me: Because this commercial is telling us women that if we don't have long, thick, luxurious lashes we won't be able to awkwardly dance with a cute boy at our blonde friend's birthday party.  We will be lonely and sad and cry all night long over the fact that no man will every love us and our stubby lashes.


Him:  I married you and have not once looked at or noticed your lashes.  

Eating This Week 7

I discovered the peppery, crunchy goodness of radishes last week.  I put them on veggie burgers and chopped some up with cucumber for a little side salad.  Anyone have any luck at roasting radishes?  


Yesterday, I dug my crockpot out of the closet and cooked up a humongo pork shoulder with root beer sauce.  I used a recipe out of my Taste Of Home cookbook, but wasn't happy with the results.  The sauce wasn't flavorful enough and my pork didn't exactly fall off the bone.  This could be due to the fact that the pork shoulder could have been slightly too big for my crockpot and I had a hard time cutting all the fat off.  Nothing like spending a Sunday afternoon cutting the skin off a pork.  It's edible, just not ohmygosh mouthwatering edible.  


A week full of lots of leftover pork sandwiches:

• Monday - Lunch: leftover pork and salad,  Dinner: coconut rice with chicken
• Tuesday - Lunch: leftover coconut rice, Dinner: leftover pork sandwiches with salad
• Wednesday - Lunch: veggie burger with radish/cucumber salad, Dinner: twice baked potatoes and broccoli
• Thursday - Lunch: buy out, Dinner: buy out (I have quilting class.  Adam is on his own, which translates into either peanut butter and jelly or mac n cheese)
• Friday - Lunch: veggie burger and canned soup, Dinner: pasta with turkey sausage
• Saturday and Sunday - a combo of eggs, tuna sandwiches, BLTs, and pancakes.  Not all at the same time, that would be gross.