Hmmmm…no one has commented in a while. Don’t worry. I will keep writing until someone comments!
I am planning on posting a crawfish etouffee recipe, because it’s more interesting than the chicken pot pies we ate last night (however, the chicken pot pies were delicious - I know what you’re thinking, chicken pot pies, right? But I am serious.)
However, I’ve found what may be the best recipe for cupcakes, ever.
OK so. SUPPOSEDLY it was supposed to rain in Nashville from last Friday until Thursday. Which, in theory, would alleviate the SMOTHERING HEAT AND HUMIDITY happening in Nashville right now.
Would you like to know how much it has rained since Friday? ONCE. For about THIRTY MINUTES in the morning (i.e. just long enough to mess my hair up for a work function). Which means it is presently 77% humidity and is a billion degrees outside before we even wake up.
Also not helping the situation is that my office building is constructed in such a way that it pulls in all the heat and humidity from outside and ups it about 10 degrees. So by 10:00 a.m. I have 2 fans running at my desk.
Anyway, I still have more recipes to post from the last Cookstravaganza, so be on the lookout!
Well hello there, everyone. First of all, I really have started writing this blog EIGHT TIMES, yet somehow manage to not succeed in actually finishing. This is mostly because I don’t know how to articulate the awesomeness of our visit (to my old) home, which, as always, started as a nice relaxing vacation and disentegrated into a whirlwind of trying to visit/do/see/eat as much as possible before leaving. As you may or may not know, I am from an extremely small town (Live Oak, Florida). As I’ve lived a few places since then, I’ve come to realize exactly how small it was - to give the short version, there are no chain restaurants (except for fast-food), we did not have a Wal-Mart or franchised video rental places until I was 16 years old, and, oh, yeah, we had a hamburger-eating horse as a celebrity. Also, we have stores called things like “Good Stuff” and “The Opportunity Store” and “McHale’s Specialty Store” (which apparently specializes in mystical figurines and 75% normal size suits of armor). And, also, this:
However. Up until this point I kind of thought, oh, these are all things about the town I am from, how quirky and funny, la-de-dah. And then I realized I AM EXACTLY LIKE THIS. Read More »
As you are probably aware, Shannon and I share an affinity for Florida, and venture there on a fairly regular basis to visit her family, hang out with friends, and satisfy our need to occasionally locate ourselves next to a gulf and/or ocean of some sort.
We attempted (and succeeded) at all of the above. I just unloaded our car (yes, it always takes us a few days to unpack; my suitcase is still open on the floor of the living room), and the following items were in our trunk:
Pretty run-of-the-mill for a Florida trip, really. We also ate like kings, finished a fair amount of our vacation books, went to the beach, visited with some Indians, and successfully completed Ed & Barb’s Donut Challenge. Read on!
I am officially Old.
Today I found out that one of the children I used to babysit is getting MARRIED. As in HOLY MATRIMONY. As in, is going to be SOMEONE’S WIFE.
I am going to go cry and then pass out now.
Thanks.
Oh, yeah. And I have some vacation stuff to blog about. But for now I will be freaking out.
I can’t have you thinking that I don’t read — Shannon’s bibliophilic streak contrasts rather strongly with my new XBox-enhanced evenings. And yes, I do play it all the time (currently: Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic, a burned copy of which I once started in college and then threw away, 4 discs in 4 separate trash cans, to preserve my GPA), but I’ll have you know, I read too. I also design websites and talk big about scanning the rest of my negatives and go for walks and write you this blog. I do things! I am a fully functional person! I am multifaceted — even my facets have facets.
Just so we’re clear about that.
We’ll be spending the majority of our vacation nights at Shannon’s mom’s place in Wellborn, FL, without Internet or said XBox, and here are the books I’m bringing:
The other night I dreamed that I was at a bar. Everyone was drinking a pink cocktail mixture from pitchers, and Sheriff Truman from Twin Peaks was on stage with an acoustic guitar, singing us a selection of Bob Dylan songs with “cheese” in the lyrics.
It is really hot in Nashville today. Unfortunately, when Nashville gets really hot, it starts to smell like trash. Rotten trash. Another fun thing about Nashville is that, much like Disney World, we hide speakers in the bushes and trash cans so music can be piped out along the sidewalks. This music is - what else? - country music. So today I’m stuck in a city that smells like rotten trash and plays country music. I don’t mean to be a pessimist, but…seriously?
Anyway, this post is really about books. I need some reading suggestions. You see, ever since Cameron got an xbox, I no longer watch television. It’s not that he plays xbox that much; it’s just that in the beginning he played it enough to get me out of a TV watching habit. So now I am going at the rate of 2-3 books per week. So I need some suggestions. Let me explain to you my reading method (yes, I have an organized method for reading as well. Surprised?)
Now I’m going to teach you how to install and set up Quicksilver. Once we’re done here, you will be ready to use it every day, and almost immediately, you will wonder how you ever got by in OSX without it.
This goes for all of you — but this article is specifically for those of you that have never heard of it (heretofore arbitrarily referred to, for the sake of clarity, as “normal people”). The rest of you can do what I did and slog through one of the dozen or so instructionals online.
I am forewarning you: This article will be long, but that’s because I’m making it easy. Fear not! I’ll walk you through every step — this is a guide for laypeople such as yourself, and it’s based precisely upon my personal experiences with slogging through the aforementioned tutorials.
Alright, enough hype-talk. Let’s answer the first question:
Well, it’s mysterious, for some reason, and it just shouldn’t be. Blacktree (the people responsible) describe it as “A unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data.” Zzzzz. You probably checked out around the word “extensible”, and I don’t blame you.
However, maybe that’s as clear as it gets: it’s true, Quicksilver is an interface. It’s kind of like a Spotlight (you know, command-space on your keyboard) that can also perform actions — like “email this item” or “open this item in X program.” So it doesn’t just search; Quicksilver searches, and then it can act.
However, Quicksilver’s greatest weakness (at least to non-power users) is that it’s too powerful — it really can do all sorts of stuff. You can do things using Quicksilver that aren’t necessarily any quicker or better than doing them the regular way. That’s a very subjective call, though — so for this article I’m limiting the Quicksilver techniques to the ones I personally use day-to-day.
That said, you and I aren’t looking for a tool that can do anything — our goal is to have a tool that can make your computer easier to use, period. Fortunately, we can easily mold Quicksilver into just that.
When we finish, you’ll be equipped with the following:
Even if that doesn’t sound like much, trust me, it’ll change the way you interact with your computer from now on.
As a list making type of gal, I like to categorize all things about life into lists. Just as I firmly believe there is a list of basic wardrobe items every girl (and guy) should have, I believe there is a list of basic food items every girl (and guy) should be able to make. It doesn’t matter if you’re the cooking type or not, you should have a few items in your recipe arsenal that are always easy to make, always turn out right, and are fairly impressive taste-wise, you know, in case you should have to cook a decent dinner for someone.
That said, I like to think of pot roast as the “little black dress” of main dish food items. It’s never too fancy. Never too casual. Lots of room for creativity. Sure, everyone’s had pot roast before, but pot roast done right can be really impressive.
Interestingly, pot roast is one of the few dishes my mother and I both make where I’ve deviated from her recipe (I know, I know, mom’s food is supposed to be the best…) She prefers to make it in the oven; I prefer to make it in the crockpot. While a roast can turn out quite nicely in the oven, I prefer the crockpot (on LOW! for EIGHT! HOURS!), because it’s never too well done for anyone, never too rare for anyone, and it always, always gets to that delicious fall-aparty stage.
For about a year, I’d been using a recipe that involved a roast, a packet of onion soup mix, a can of beef broth, and a can of cream of mushroom soup, which worked out fine and all that. But I wanted something…a little more.
Lately we’d been not so great about eating in (or actually making it to the grocery) so this past weekend was a marathon of cooking and freezing food that began Friday night and didn’t fully finish until Sunday afternoon. Eleven different dishes. I cooked from 10 a.m. Saturday until 1 a.m. Sunday. Oh, yeah and did I mention in the middle of Saturday, I had to walk a mile in the EXCESSIVE HEAT to let Cameron into our car, which he had locked himself out of? Not that I am complaining. I just feel kind of like a rock star about it.
Also, I would highly recommend the cook-a-thon approach to meal-making. Usually I love cooking at the end of the day, but when we get to the busy part of the summer it’s super-nice to have a lot of yummy food at our fingertips and I don’t even have to do anything. This plan is already rocking my world as I have no time to cook tonight on top of errands. Lovely.
In other news, I’ve been reading a ton lately. As in, I am currently on my fourth (or fifth? sixth?) book in two weeks. Who needs TV? I just finished Never Let Me Go which was one of the more beautiful pieces of modern/current literature I’ve read.
That’s pretty much been life as of late. I have many yummy recipes to share soon!
Update: As you may have read in the comments, Mr. Scott Koch of AutoZone Inc. did indeed contact me, and after relaying him the whole story, he has apologized on behalf of AutoZone and issued me a gift card as recompense. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised at the efforts AutoZone takes to defend their reputation, and as such, will be visiting AutoZone again in the future (although probably not that particular franchise location), and I encourage you to do the same.
Well. Have I got a story for you.
As you may have noticed, Shannon offhandedly mentioned our car not starting yesterday. It’s true; we climbed in, I turned the key, and she (I guess it’s a she) made sad clicky sounds. Of all mornings, too — the iPhone was being announced at noon, and if you work for a company whose primary export is plastic/metal/rubber crap for your iPhone, that’s kind of a big deal.
So we had to call our friend Joey, who was gracious enough to arise from slumber and come jump us. I mean our car. Jump-start our car. In any case, it took forever, because my jumper cables are really small, and the battery was really, really dead.
Fast forward to after work. I again had to get a jump to leave (using someone else’s cables this time — actually, we tried with my cables, and then this standalone car charger thing that plugged into a wall and may or may not have been broken or fried my car to a crisp, and then some real man’s jumper cables) and picked Shannon up on the way to Autozone. Fairly straightforward, right? Kind of?
On the way down the stairs, I (painfully) bent back the thumbnail of my left hand.
The car did not start this morning.
Got to work late due to said car issue, then had to face the pile o’ filing I’ve been putting off for a week. Or two weeks. OK fine it was two weeks.
Suddenly realized there are LOTS of unchecked boxes on my to-do list. On Friday I thought I was pretty caught up? Wha happen’d?
All my black pens, except the one that is running out of ink, are missing. I am very particular about pens and WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL MY PENS!?!?! Ugh!
Did any of you read The Babysitters Club books growing up? Because, um, I did. And if you did, you should read this blog because it is hilarious. (Language warning).
The really interesting thing is, as I read those posts, I realize I remember a lot more about the BSC books than I realized. Even more interesting, most of my vivid recollections revolve around the extremely lengthy descriptions of the girls’ outfits.
When I read this: “I had picked out my clothes the night before: a brand-new pair of rust-colored corduroy slacks, a blue button-down shirt, and a floral-patterned white cotton sweater. That’s my look—Neat Preppy Casual—and I love it.”
and this: “The next morning I got up, pulled on a pair of blue tights, black canvas walking shorts, a long-sleeved, blue T-shirt, and a pair of black flats. I piled my blonde perm up on top of my head and fastened it with a blue stretchie tie… After looking out the window, I ripped the stretchie from my hair and let the curls fall around my shoulders. I took off my clothes and changed into my new one-piece shorts dress with the gold,red and green Aztec-style print. I slipped into a pair of light tan woven flats and I was set to go.”
I realized, “Hey! I’ve read these!” Seriously, what is up with the lengthy fashion statement descriptors? I’m by no means what you would call a “feminist” but I’m a little thrown off by the realization of the weight and energy they were putting on that kind of stuff for it to be in a book read by 9-13 year old girls.
Hey, speaking of things that are read by 9-13 year old girls… of course once I found that blog, I decided to do a little Wikipedia read-up on the series, which led me to some of the most disturbing information I’ve received in quite some time.
Aaaaaand, the craziness is over. Over the past 3 weeks, I’ve:
Now I just have to finish the anniversary gift/brunch supply shopping and make it to the weekend, when we will be celebrating our 2 year anniversary with a spa trip and fancy dinner and gift giving. I’m so ready for the weekend.