Happy Things

Posted on March 21, 2011 by Frog

Last night we made a shrimp dish and a rice dish from the Rick Bayless book Mexican Everyday (I could do that). We ramped up the chipotle peppers because we were living dangerously and I think next time we’ll settle for 1 or 2 small ones because 3 good sized ones were a little over the top.
spicy shrimp

The other day when I got home I noticed our phlox in the flower bed from hell were blooming. I can’t tell you how happy this has made me:
Phlox

That bed has the unfortunate problems of pine trees, poor soil, extreme sun and, well, there’s a reason it’s called the flower bed from hell. Nothing does particularly well there. I planted the phlox last spring and am really quite glad that most of the plants survived and some are blooming.

Really, this is thrilling:
Happy phlox

Posted in Eating, Gardening | 3 Comments

Friday Night Burgers

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Frog

Friday night we made burgers using the recipe from this podcast. The podcast isn’t long so you may want to give it a listen. But, I warn you about needing a burger immediately following.

First we ground chuck and the meat from short ribs:

Then we pan-fried them:

Normally we grill burgers, but the recipe said to pan-fry. They were good but the grease and smoke mean tomorrow night when we make another batch we’ll be grilling.

What? Burgers only a few days apart? We had leftover chuck and we have another cut of beef that I can’t remember that is thawing in the refrigerator. You wouldn’t want us to have leftover beef laying around would you?

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Words. Actual Words.

Posted on March 10, 2011 by Frog

I’ve been off from work this week. I was hoping for warm, sunny days, but that hasn’t really worked out. The early part of March is acting like the early part of March, but I’ve still be able to get plenty of check marks on my list.

On Monday I met a friend of mine for lunch. We haven’t seen each other in awhile. She’s one of those friends that you can pick right back up with as if you stepped into another room for a minute or two and not that you’ve been lamely not getting together for a year.

Yesterday the better-half rented an aerator and I dragged that around the yard for awhile until I wrapped the thing around the axle and had to off-load it in the middle of the back yard with just one or two more passes left. There’s nothing quite like taking all the weight off the aerator, then picking up the machine enough to make it easier to take the hitch off the mower and then pushing the mower up a hill to disentangle the whole thing. I’m old and fat. I should not be moving hundreds of pounds around like when I was young and bony. The cloud of blue that came out of my mouth was better than adrenaline and so everything got cleared up, but the last stretch didn’t get plugged because I was done with that crap.

I moved onto lime and fertilizer depositing for the rest of the day. Let me tell you 40 lb bags get really heavy after awhile. The bright spot was that I had to stop periodically to check on the smoker. In all of the things we’ve ever smoked, we’ve never smoked a Boston butt. I picked one up on Tuesday and we had tasty, tasty BBQ last night. We’ll be having more tonight. I believe I’ve told you about my love of BBQ. So even though I could hardly move last night, I was able to shove porky goodness into my maw.

In other good news, the MIL’s house is going on the market on Monday. We have some final things to clear out of the house and someone is going to clean it on Saturday. Two things about this. I can’t believe we still have stuff to haul out of there and thank goodness someone else is cleaning. This has been a lesson in “throw that shit away instead of piling it up for 30+ years”. I have been paying attention and will not leave a metric ton of crap behind–unless a piece of the space station crashes into me and I can’t help the dying. But since I’m planning on going out whilst sipping a vodka tonic at the kitchen table there should be no problem with cleaning out a closet or two. Or maybe it will be a pint of hoppy goodness. Either way, there won’t be truckloads of crap for someone else to go through.

Posted in General Spleen Venting, Thinking | Comments Off

Hey Andy are you goofing on Elvis?

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Frog

My Friday selection of favorites from days of yore:

Billy, my favorite blonde of the 80s:

She was my favorite German, until I actually met my favorite German (hi Sigrid):

My favorite space related song:

Don’t laugh, just love it (you know all the words, might as well sing along):

Kenny and Eric were confused in my head around 1977. I got over it:

Last but not least:

Posted in Listening | Comments Off

Stuck?

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Frog

Yeah, I’m throwing this post up because it’s been so long. There’s just not much going on and at the same time so much is going on.

Work is still a pain in the neck. Latest developments are that the person now in charge has said, “hold up, let’s really look at what the budget says”–really, this is the first time someone thought to do this? No idea on how long that will take, but it had better be quick. I went to a retirement dinner on Monday. Someone in my unit is so close to announcing her new job–she’ll be elsewhere by April–and who knows who else has a foot out the door already. We’re pretty small already so anytime someone leaves it’s a big deal. When the person in my unit leaves, we’ll have a huge hole in one program area and a decent sized hole in another.

In other news, I thought of a project I can work on that will be my dissertation look-alike. I’m meeting with my advisor after spring break to discuss. I hope she’ll be able to help me set it up. I think its a viable idea, but I need some help in fleshing it out and actually finding someone with whom I can work. I can’t keep relying on the workplace for my school projects. I have two projects going on now and, really, the organization tanking isn’t helping. Tanking=no more projects at workplace and it was time to move on from that anyway.

Next week is spring break and I’m taking the entire week off from work. I’m so looking forward to it. I think it will help with my mood to be away from the drama for a little while. I know it will help our yard as I’ll be working on getting that back into some semblance of green. Last year’s drought kicked our pathetic little yard right straight into the gutter. I don’t really care if we have a perfect lawn, but at the same time I want something greenish…so weeds are fine just as long as it isn’t mud.

Posted in Gardening, Generic Thoughts | Comments Off

Tired

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Frog

I haven’t been sleeping very well lately. It’s not that I’m waking up at 2am and then spending time staring at the ceiling. It’s more like I wake up between 4 and 5 and can’t get back to sleep. I refuse to get up so I doze mostly. Last night I slept like the dead until 5:30, checked the clock and fell right back to sleep for another hour. That was awesome.

Work has turned into a spirit suck. We’re definitely closing up shop and now we’re just waiting to hear if there’s a six-month extension (from July-December) and if there is an extension what that means for each of us. I am planning on being out of work at 4:01pm, June 30th.

As if that’s not pretty nerve-wracking on its own, we’re now being inundated by stupid questions. Yes, there is such a thing as a stupid question. Especially those questions that come in related to our client’s policies and procedures (or state law). Yes, we’re asked about how to interpret the client’s policies, procedures and rules even though we DO NOT set those. It’s their crap and they are calling us to figure out what they meant. Really. I can’t make that shit up.

When I pack up my personal stuff, I will be leaving my clue stick on the table in my office.

Posted in General Spleen Venting, Thinking | 2 Comments

Nutty Weekend

Posted on February 20, 2011 by Frog

The Nieces spent the weekend with us. It was a blur of activity and yesterday we went to Maymont.

On the way there we stopped and bought disposable cameras. One each. Both girls took a picture of the horses. Both of them got great shots. I didn’t do anything to these images except shrink them to fit the site.

Nut1:

and Nut2:

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Bagels, Bagels, Bagels!

Posted on February 13, 2011 by Frog

The food adventure for this week was to make bagels. The better-half bought a Peter Reinhart book awhile back and we have several recipes we want to try in the future, but we started with bagels.

We started the dough last night. Correction, the better-half started the dough last night. I hardly had anything to do with anything until we formed the dough into bagel shapes.

A baker’s dozen went into the refrigerator overnight and this morning they took a float in boiling water:

Then I sprinkled on the toppings and we baked them.

We ended up with bagels topped with salt, garlic, onions, and my blend of everything. The better-half ate 2 3/4 bagels for breakfast. I had one of my everythings and the 1/4 of the bagel we let go a bit longer in the hot water to see what a “chewier” bagel would be like. It was, in fact, chewier.

Posted in Eating | 3 Comments

The Weekend

Posted on February 6, 2011 by Frog

This weekend the better-half and I spent time in the college town. I didn’t have class this past week, but went to college town anyway, because there was a conference on campus. I ended up having dinner with folks from the university that employs me. We drove to Catawba to have dinner here. We had a good time and I think I may have frightened one person with my driving and delighted the other. Good conversation, switchback roads and fried chicken. How could the evening get any better?

The better-half arrived on Friday just in time for lunch. We walked into town and ate some pretty decent Thai. I’d definitely go back there. For dinner we drove out to Ironto for Italian and it was OK. The better-half was less impressed than I was, but if someone twisted my arm, I’d go back.

Saturday was bleak with drizzle and fog so we hit some thrift stores and aside from three really eclectic books purchased by the better-half our search for a cheap headboard and a chair was a bust. I found a headboard I like online and the better-half thinks he can build something like it. It doesn’t need to be pretty, just functional.

The cats managed not to thrash the place while we were gone. It’s not like the old days when we’d come home to a poop and vomit extravaganza. The current cats are much better behaved than the previous bunch. Both Simon and Jim couldn’t wait to get outside today and I can’t say I blame them. It was in the 50s and sunny. We haven’t had much of that this winter.

Posted in Generic Thoughts | 1 Comment

Making and Cutting the Cheese

Posted on January 30, 2011 by Frog

When does a fart joke ever get old? Never. I’ll still crack up over a fart joke when I’m a 110 and stinking up the nursing home.

We made mozzarella cheese this morning using creamline milk:

The better-half called the creamery the other day and said we want to make cheese which of your bottles should we buy. They said creamline. We hadn’t a clue what that meant until we opened the bottle and had to break through the cream line:

By the way, we ate that cream. It was strangely delicious…strangely because who gets to eat chunky cream out of a milk bottle? I think dairy farmers have it going on.

So, you stir citric acid into milk, heat it (carefully monitoring the temp.), wait, add rennet and cut it. Then it looks like this:

It’s surprising how much whey will come off the cheese, but you just have to get as much off of it as you can. Then you heat the curd and get more whey off of it. And, finally, you stretch it!

After stretching it, you put it in an ice bath. We pinched some warm cheese off to it to taste and then cleaned up the kitchen while the cheese cooled off.

Then we cut the cheese (see, still funny):

We have another gallon of milk in the refrigerator and I think we’re going to try putting some herbs in the next batch of cheese. Because now that we’ve done it once, it’s time to get creative.

Posted in Eating | 1 Comment