Based on the foods that I have been visually feasting on and digitally drooling over on various recipe sites of late, I have come to the conclusion that I am feeding my family high priced dog food.
Before you draw the wrong conclusions here, I have to tell you that I really DO know how to cook the fancy-shmancy dishes that adorn these websites in glorious detail. What I lack is the budget.
When you are desperately trying to keep the bills paid somewhere near on time and make sure you are doing your best to live adjacent to your means if not within them, then you don't have the money to splurge on food from the four quarters of the earth when Hamburger Helper is on sale for 89 cents a box.
So many of the recipes on the Internet are simply too much for the average person to complete without taking out a second mortgage or selling a kidney.
Which is why the Pioneer Woman has inspired me. Her cooking site is a delicious wonder that brings good, old fashioned, stick to your ribs cooking back into the kitchen. (She does have some chick food there too, ladies, so don't panic!)
Being married to a western man who believe meat and potatoes are the essentials of good eating, it took me years of cooking to get him to eat food that wasn't brown, white or yellow (corn on the cob).
Most gals have a hankering now and again for a nice steak, but the rest of the time, we prefer food that doesn't slow us down in our ability to chase whomever the offender is for the latest graffiti that has adorned the hall wall that was painted just last summer.
Within the cooking site is an array of food cooked splendidly from ingredients that the average Jane can actually afford and from which a dinner that the average Joe will actually eat can be prepared.
Here's the link just in case you are craving something more manly than microwave.
http://thepioneerwomancooks.com/
I am fully aware the link exists on the side. However, if you are as confirmed a lazy bum as I am, you require a nudge to click on something unfamliar.
Enjoy!
September 21, 2007
September 20, 2007
Life's Little Time Wasters
My father in law just sent me a 'see how observant you are' test.
http://www.oldjoeblack.0nyx.com/thinktst.htm
I sent it along to a friend after taking it and reporting my score to my father in law.
Purists will make a perfect score on the first take. I made my perfect score on the second take. Which is sort of a bit like cheating, I suppose.
But it got me to thinking, just how much of what we do as we sit drawing near the glowing light from our monitors can be classified as 'time wasters'.
I love those I.Q. tests they have online. I likewise love the ones that promise to reveal your life purpose by the selection of colors in a proscribed sequence of choices.
And my favorite time waster has to be online word games.
I love Chicktionary, and Scrabble. To be truthful, I like board games that require you to spell.
As the confirmed winner of many a spelling bee championship during my earlier years, I take a somewhat perverse satisfaction in creaming my opponents in word games. I fully realize that the people I trounce in word games can turn me into putty with mathmatical precision (pun intended) when it comes to anything requiring numbers, other than balancing a checkbook.
I also love the little games and time wasters that come on the computers. Mah Johng and Solitaire and all of the other useless drivel that will make the day go by when I am bored.
Hope you do well on your score at the above link. Even if it takes more than one try.
http://www.oldjoeblack.0nyx.com/thinktst.htm
I sent it along to a friend after taking it and reporting my score to my father in law.
Purists will make a perfect score on the first take. I made my perfect score on the second take. Which is sort of a bit like cheating, I suppose.
But it got me to thinking, just how much of what we do as we sit drawing near the glowing light from our monitors can be classified as 'time wasters'.
I love those I.Q. tests they have online. I likewise love the ones that promise to reveal your life purpose by the selection of colors in a proscribed sequence of choices.
And my favorite time waster has to be online word games.
I love Chicktionary, and Scrabble. To be truthful, I like board games that require you to spell.
As the confirmed winner of many a spelling bee championship during my earlier years, I take a somewhat perverse satisfaction in creaming my opponents in word games. I fully realize that the people I trounce in word games can turn me into putty with mathmatical precision (pun intended) when it comes to anything requiring numbers, other than balancing a checkbook.
I also love the little games and time wasters that come on the computers. Mah Johng and Solitaire and all of the other useless drivel that will make the day go by when I am bored.
Hope you do well on your score at the above link. Even if it takes more than one try.
My mind wanders . . .
I am not a fashion plate.
I doubt I am even a fashion saucer.
But when I returned from the morning sweat fest at the gym, I was starting the laundry only to discover the t-shirt I had worn to the gym has a hole in it. . . in an embarrassing location.
Okay.
I have been embarrassed before by much worse than a hole. However, this was strategically located as to show the dingy ripped area of my bra. And possibly the dingy skin underneath.
Now, before this becomes a moment for the fashionistas of the world to descend upon me like locusts, let it just be said that I had nice clothing - once. Sometimes, in the rush to be everything for everybody, the clothes closet begins to resemble not so much an array of what you would like to represent as your personal tastes and styles, but instead becomes a horrible refugee camp for those items deemed 'too bad' to send to the charity store.
It isn't that they are worth keeping, but you are simply too embarrassed to let other people see them. There is always the off chance that someone will pick it up and immediately identify it as having belonged to YOU! It must be some form of grungy radar.
Perhaps this is where the old country custom of braiding rag rugs came into being. Those items deemed no longer public, private or any kind of attire would be unceremoniously ripped into long strips to be skillfully braided into the nicely shaped oval rugs or sturdy square rugs that graced many a Southern home before Wal-Mart sold rubber backed Berber from occupied China.
No one would give a second thought to walking on something that was prestained since their feet would simply add to the color of the multihued canvas that now graced the floor instead of a wall.
Of course, a small problem rears its ugly head. I lack sufficient knowledge to turn rags into anything but dirty rags. While that is fine when cars need to be cleaned, I am quite sure no one wants a rug the color of road grime and paste wax to adorn their floor.
I also cannot make baskets, use a spear to bring home a nice fish dinner or even carve useful items out of bones. Somehow my education has been lacking.
While I am seldom asked to do any of the above, there is a primitive part of me that fervently believes that should I be suddenly called upon to hunt in the wilds with only a sharpened stick and my intellect in order to feed my waifish and starving family, that I would return with a mastodon or some other suitable beast for dinner and be able to somehow dry the leftovers for a nice treat the next day. Sort of that Darwinian survival of the fittest thingy.
The fact that genetic predisposition doesn't include an instruction manual on just how you should stalk a mastodon is not important. What is important is that the skill, the knowledge and the ability will just suddenly descend.
Yeah, right.
In the meantime, lacking all other skills of a hunter gatherer, I can dial a phone and I do know the number for the pizza place and they deliver.
Maybe that will be enough for today. I have to stop and go hunt for my mind. It has taken off without me.
Just what does one do with freeze dried mastodon?
I doubt I am even a fashion saucer.
But when I returned from the morning sweat fest at the gym, I was starting the laundry only to discover the t-shirt I had worn to the gym has a hole in it. . . in an embarrassing location.
Okay.
I have been embarrassed before by much worse than a hole. However, this was strategically located as to show the dingy ripped area of my bra. And possibly the dingy skin underneath.
Now, before this becomes a moment for the fashionistas of the world to descend upon me like locusts, let it just be said that I had nice clothing - once. Sometimes, in the rush to be everything for everybody, the clothes closet begins to resemble not so much an array of what you would like to represent as your personal tastes and styles, but instead becomes a horrible refugee camp for those items deemed 'too bad' to send to the charity store.
It isn't that they are worth keeping, but you are simply too embarrassed to let other people see them. There is always the off chance that someone will pick it up and immediately identify it as having belonged to YOU! It must be some form of grungy radar.
Perhaps this is where the old country custom of braiding rag rugs came into being. Those items deemed no longer public, private or any kind of attire would be unceremoniously ripped into long strips to be skillfully braided into the nicely shaped oval rugs or sturdy square rugs that graced many a Southern home before Wal-Mart sold rubber backed Berber from occupied China.
No one would give a second thought to walking on something that was prestained since their feet would simply add to the color of the multihued canvas that now graced the floor instead of a wall.
Of course, a small problem rears its ugly head. I lack sufficient knowledge to turn rags into anything but dirty rags. While that is fine when cars need to be cleaned, I am quite sure no one wants a rug the color of road grime and paste wax to adorn their floor.
I also cannot make baskets, use a spear to bring home a nice fish dinner or even carve useful items out of bones. Somehow my education has been lacking.
While I am seldom asked to do any of the above, there is a primitive part of me that fervently believes that should I be suddenly called upon to hunt in the wilds with only a sharpened stick and my intellect in order to feed my waifish and starving family, that I would return with a mastodon or some other suitable beast for dinner and be able to somehow dry the leftovers for a nice treat the next day. Sort of that Darwinian survival of the fittest thingy.
The fact that genetic predisposition doesn't include an instruction manual on just how you should stalk a mastodon is not important. What is important is that the skill, the knowledge and the ability will just suddenly descend.
Yeah, right.
In the meantime, lacking all other skills of a hunter gatherer, I can dial a phone and I do know the number for the pizza place and they deliver.
Maybe that will be enough for today. I have to stop and go hunt for my mind. It has taken off without me.
Just what does one do with freeze dried mastodon?
September 19, 2007
When it's enough
I'll admit to a certain amount of confusion regarding product labeling in regards for the ever shifting standards of what is good for me. Reading the labels leaves me somewhat dizzy and increasingly confused as the information seems to indicate how much, caloric content and the daily nutritional needs the recommended serving size will fulfill.
I only have one question.
How do you eat HALF a bagel?
What lunatic mind thought that half a bagel was a serving size?
Now, these are not the tractor tire sized extra jumbo can you feel the flab piling up on your hips and thighs bagels. They are, allegedly, the bagels that regularly sell on the grocery store shelfs carefully masquerading as 'small'.
The same thing goes with the cereal labels. I have discovered that far from believing a soup bowl of cereal is a serving, they believe something quite a bit less. It reads like this:
CALORIES - Cereal 190. And folks, let it just be said that this is for a one cup serving of DRY cereal.
Let us be daring and add milk.
If we choose the 1/2 cup Vitamins A&D Fat Free Milk (which is, admit it, a lot like drinking white water), then we add a gracious 40 calories to the bowl which brings our grand total to 230 calories per serving with 25 of those calories being comprised of the dreaded fat that is certain to render humans as extinct as dinosaurs in short order. By the way, a half-cup serving of milk has ZERO grams of fat. But those delightful FAT calories are IN THE CEREAL which is supposed to help you lose the weight.
Should you happen to be possessed with a daredevil spirit and unconquerable desire for WHOLE MILK then you have just jacked up your calorie content and fat intake by a whopping 70 added milk calories, instead of the previously mentioned 40, and filled our jiggling bellies and hips up with an increase of 8 grams of fat to your bowl and makes our grand total climb to 260 calories for that same fatted cereal to which we have added the 8 grams of fatted milk to create a fatted calf - or thigh - or . . . oh well, you get the idea.
The confusion here is that we aren't comparing apples to apples but rather calories to grams to ounces to cups.
I think I need a nap.
Why can't they just say simply:
Cereal all by itself: 190 calories out of which 25 are plain old fat just like what jiggles when you walk.
Add no fat milk and it's just the same calories for the cereal except now it is wet and soggy in your bowl.
Add whole milk and in short order you, too, can be a model for E'Lanes Full Figured Stately Woman Dress Barn in Iuka. Which should really say E'Lanes clothes warehouse for folks who can't buy off the rack at Wal-Mart anymore.
If the governmental people who are so dang concerned about our welfare and health issues really wanted to do something to help us out, why are fresh fruit and vegetable prices the equivalent of taking out yet another mortgage on your house at every shopping trip?
If this is what we are SUPPOSED to be eating, then why can't we afford it? Now I am just a dumb, blonde, Southern Woman, but the math works out like this for me: If you want people to eat more vegetables, then make the prices on them lower!
Simplistic as that sounds, I'd buy more vegetables if they price were less...and frankly, I'd buy more if they tasted like a T-bone grilled to perfection over slow coals. Now that's a job geneticists SHOULD be working on instead of trying to find new ways to make the wrinkles of celebrities dissapear without airbrushing.
Can you imagine biting into a banana that tasted more like a big old banana split with chopped walnuts, chocolate fudge sauce and hot caramel over rich chocolate ice cream and strawberries?
Or the brocolli that kids feed to the dog under the table could be made to taste just like Twinkies and Ho Ho's without sacrificing the nutrition that the food pyramid keeps screaming at us?
And by the way, why exactly is it a pyramid?
None of the mummies I have ever seen looked like they were particularly healthy. But I digress.
When we get to the point that it has become more about the numbers than the taste, we have gone too far in the polar opposite of decent food at a decent price.
Feel free to let me know when we swing back in that direction. Or if scientist make that breakthrough we are all hoping for where you can eat one spinach leaf and regain your youth and vitality and the figure you so richly deserve.
I only have one question.
How do you eat HALF a bagel?
What lunatic mind thought that half a bagel was a serving size?
Now, these are not the tractor tire sized extra jumbo can you feel the flab piling up on your hips and thighs bagels. They are, allegedly, the bagels that regularly sell on the grocery store shelfs carefully masquerading as 'small'.
The same thing goes with the cereal labels. I have discovered that far from believing a soup bowl of cereal is a serving, they believe something quite a bit less. It reads like this:
CALORIES - Cereal 190. And folks, let it just be said that this is for a one cup serving of DRY cereal.
Let us be daring and add milk.
If we choose the 1/2 cup Vitamins A&D Fat Free Milk (which is, admit it, a lot like drinking white water), then we add a gracious 40 calories to the bowl which brings our grand total to 230 calories per serving with 25 of those calories being comprised of the dreaded fat that is certain to render humans as extinct as dinosaurs in short order. By the way, a half-cup serving of milk has ZERO grams of fat. But those delightful FAT calories are IN THE CEREAL which is supposed to help you lose the weight.
Should you happen to be possessed with a daredevil spirit and unconquerable desire for WHOLE MILK then you have just jacked up your calorie content and fat intake by a whopping 70 added milk calories, instead of the previously mentioned 40, and filled our jiggling bellies and hips up with an increase of 8 grams of fat to your bowl and makes our grand total climb to 260 calories for that same fatted cereal to which we have added the 8 grams of fatted milk to create a fatted calf - or thigh - or . . . oh well, you get the idea.
The confusion here is that we aren't comparing apples to apples but rather calories to grams to ounces to cups.
I think I need a nap.
Why can't they just say simply:
Cereal all by itself: 190 calories out of which 25 are plain old fat just like what jiggles when you walk.
Add no fat milk and it's just the same calories for the cereal except now it is wet and soggy in your bowl.
Add whole milk and in short order you, too, can be a model for E'Lanes Full Figured Stately Woman Dress Barn in Iuka. Which should really say E'Lanes clothes warehouse for folks who can't buy off the rack at Wal-Mart anymore.
If the governmental people who are so dang concerned about our welfare and health issues really wanted to do something to help us out, why are fresh fruit and vegetable prices the equivalent of taking out yet another mortgage on your house at every shopping trip?
If this is what we are SUPPOSED to be eating, then why can't we afford it? Now I am just a dumb, blonde, Southern Woman, but the math works out like this for me: If you want people to eat more vegetables, then make the prices on them lower!
Simplistic as that sounds, I'd buy more vegetables if they price were less...and frankly, I'd buy more if they tasted like a T-bone grilled to perfection over slow coals. Now that's a job geneticists SHOULD be working on instead of trying to find new ways to make the wrinkles of celebrities dissapear without airbrushing.
Can you imagine biting into a banana that tasted more like a big old banana split with chopped walnuts, chocolate fudge sauce and hot caramel over rich chocolate ice cream and strawberries?
Or the brocolli that kids feed to the dog under the table could be made to taste just like Twinkies and Ho Ho's without sacrificing the nutrition that the food pyramid keeps screaming at us?
And by the way, why exactly is it a pyramid?
None of the mummies I have ever seen looked like they were particularly healthy. But I digress.
When we get to the point that it has become more about the numbers than the taste, we have gone too far in the polar opposite of decent food at a decent price.
Feel free to let me know when we swing back in that direction. Or if scientist make that breakthrough we are all hoping for where you can eat one spinach leaf and regain your youth and vitality and the figure you so richly deserve.
September 18, 2007
The Big Day
4 a.m. came awfully early this morning.
But, with the alarm came the crashing reality of just what time it has become. To be sure seeing the reality of my son walking down that long hallway beyond the security boundary at the airport and out of reach brought more than a few tears.
And, knowing that he will be gone for the duration of his two year mission is both overwhelming and somewhat humbling. He is ready and I will get used to it.
He has passed from a little boy into a man and I must have missed it somewhere along the way. It isn't like I didn't see him growing past the six foot mark or emptying out my refrigerator with wild abandon a mere 30 minutes before dinner only to sit down and eat a full meal to satiate the 'hollow leg' that miraculously needed filling.
What did miss my notice was the fact that this tall, handsome and respectful young man with impeccable manners was more than ready to leap out into the broader world. (and yes, he DOES reserve his belching competition for mostly family and friends events - but he will be willing to trot it out if needed overseas!) I have tried hard to give him the room to make his share of successful attempts and mistakes while being supportive enough to cushion the fall from time to time.
He has become self confident and capable and willing to work. I am filled with an immeasurable sense of pride in who he has become, more in spite of me than because of me, and I am both pleased and humbled to say "Yes, that's my son" when people ask about my young man.
We were all a little damp around the eyes this morning as we said some goodbyes.
However, seeing his confident and purposeful stride as he took steps two at a time to board the plane left me a feeling of peace that let me know that he will be just fine - even if I am not personally there to see it.
But, with the alarm came the crashing reality of just what time it has become. To be sure seeing the reality of my son walking down that long hallway beyond the security boundary at the airport and out of reach brought more than a few tears.
And, knowing that he will be gone for the duration of his two year mission is both overwhelming and somewhat humbling. He is ready and I will get used to it.
He has passed from a little boy into a man and I must have missed it somewhere along the way. It isn't like I didn't see him growing past the six foot mark or emptying out my refrigerator with wild abandon a mere 30 minutes before dinner only to sit down and eat a full meal to satiate the 'hollow leg' that miraculously needed filling.
What did miss my notice was the fact that this tall, handsome and respectful young man with impeccable manners was more than ready to leap out into the broader world. (and yes, he DOES reserve his belching competition for mostly family and friends events - but he will be willing to trot it out if needed overseas!) I have tried hard to give him the room to make his share of successful attempts and mistakes while being supportive enough to cushion the fall from time to time.
He has become self confident and capable and willing to work. I am filled with an immeasurable sense of pride in who he has become, more in spite of me than because of me, and I am both pleased and humbled to say "Yes, that's my son" when people ask about my young man.
We were all a little damp around the eyes this morning as we said some goodbyes.
However, seeing his confident and purposeful stride as he took steps two at a time to board the plane left me a feeling of peace that let me know that he will be just fine - even if I am not personally there to see it.
September 17, 2007
Partings
While I was a church Sunday, just a few short moments after listening to my son give his farewell address before embarking on his mission, a man came up to me and said "Well, it looks like you have lost your son!"
I looked him dead in the eyes and said, "Nope. I haven't lost him. I know right where he'll be and who he will be serving. He isn't lost, he's just away."
I think it took him by surprise.
Actually, I can talk bravely because the plane carrying my child hasn't opened up to receive him yet. Nor has it left the ground headed to the western skies, for the time being.
But reality is beginning to set in that he won't be coming in for lunch to catch up on the thrilling exploits of doing laundry and running the vacuum cleaner. Instead, he will be letting me in on HIS thrilling adventures as he learns to be a great missionary for Our Father and His Son, Jesus Christ.
We have shed some tears and some laughter and some advice and counsel that will only be fully understood when he experiences life 'out there' without me. . .
Or maybe it is really the other way around.
I will be learning to experience life without my little boy and instead, I will have to prepare myself for the capable, seasoned man who will return with honor.
And I will have the rare joy of hearing HIS counsel and advice that have come from a world traveler and missionary to the world.
I only hope these next two years will pass as quickly as the first 19 have. . .
I looked him dead in the eyes and said, "Nope. I haven't lost him. I know right where he'll be and who he will be serving. He isn't lost, he's just away."
I think it took him by surprise.
Actually, I can talk bravely because the plane carrying my child hasn't opened up to receive him yet. Nor has it left the ground headed to the western skies, for the time being.
But reality is beginning to set in that he won't be coming in for lunch to catch up on the thrilling exploits of doing laundry and running the vacuum cleaner. Instead, he will be letting me in on HIS thrilling adventures as he learns to be a great missionary for Our Father and His Son, Jesus Christ.
We have shed some tears and some laughter and some advice and counsel that will only be fully understood when he experiences life 'out there' without me. . .
Or maybe it is really the other way around.
I will be learning to experience life without my little boy and instead, I will have to prepare myself for the capable, seasoned man who will return with honor.
And I will have the rare joy of hearing HIS counsel and advice that have come from a world traveler and missionary to the world.
I only hope these next two years will pass as quickly as the first 19 have. . .
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