30 Day Picture Shenanigans - Day 18

30 Day Picture Shenanigans - Day 18: Something I'm Missing

This past weekend the ladies from the shop and I were lucky enough to be able to attend the Summer TNNA show in Columbus, Ohio.  (In case you don't know, TNNA is a huge trade show put on by The National Needlearts Association.)  I had a blast taking classes on tunisian crochet from Sheryl Thies and how to knit a doll version of yourself from Norwegian duo Arne and Carlos.  We shopped the booths, picked out some amazing new products for the store, knit, laughed (a lot), drank only a small amount of beer (I swear), and had a fantastic time.  However, there is one thing in downtown Columbus that seems to attract TNNA attendees like moths to a flame: Jeni's Ice Cream.  This leads us to Picture 18:

I'm drooling on my keyboard

This is a picture of the third of four delicious ice cream treats that I bought from Jeni's over a 3-day period.  (Side note: Apparently it is possible to eat full-fat, triple-scoops of gourmet ice cream all weekend and not gain any weight.  Granted, I'm not a waif to begin with, but usually I merely look at sugar and my gut grows.)  Every single flavor they have is amazing.  I usually try to have different ones every time.  This cone contains their Brown Butter Almond Brittle (fricking amazing), Wildberry Lavender (refreshing, yet creamy), and the Cherry Lambic Sorbet (tastes like lambic, which I love)!  Jeni's is sold at a few places around here, but not any closer than a 45-minute drive.  I have refused to buy it anywhere because I would blow my paycheck and lay on my couch eating pint after pint for an entire weekend.  I know that it seems ridiculous that this was my favorite part of the weekend, but I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one who feel this way.

Moral of the story: If you ever, ever have the opportunity to eat anything that this place makes (seriously, even the sticky drips off of the floor), you should do it.  And then you can thank me by sending me a pint of their Milkiest Chocolate in the World.

30 Day Picture Shenanigans - Day 17

30 Day Picture Shenanigans - Day 17: Things My Daughter Does Better Than I

Most parents experience moments where they are caught in awe of their children.  This has been happening to me a lot recently.  Day (or post) 17 of the 30 Day Picture Shenanigans is about things that my daughter does better than I.

My daughter is better at savoring the summer.  I think all kids are.  Remember when summer used to seem like it was a year long?  Today was really fricking hot and this evening it was still in the high 80s and pretty windy.  She sat outside blowing bubbles despite the heat, basking in the sun

My daughter is better at enjoying the small things.

My daughter is also better at blowing bubbles.

My daughter is better at getting along with other people's children than I am.  While we're at it, my daughter is better at getting along with other adults than I am.  Also, she is better at getting out of awkward and/or boring conversations.  Apparently when you are 7, not answering direct questions while staring blankly at a person before walking away is still relatively acceptable.  My daughter is also better with animals.  I have always thought of myself as an animal lover.  It turns out that I don't actually love being around or near animals, I just don't want them to be abused or neglected.  For example, I like Gomer (the butter-loving cat).  I like his cat-weirdness and I found his morbid obesity to be adorable.  Now that he is expensive, underweight, shaggy, half-blind, and really fucking smelly (seriously, his breath is probably what is killing my house plants) I find that I don't actually want to spend any time around him.  My daughter will sleep with that stinky animal every night.  If he is on our bed, as soon as he starts making that annoying noise with his tongue while he's cleaning himself I use my feet to launch him into the hallway.  (What?  I like my sleep.)  Don't even get me started on my mom's Boston.

A couple of weeks ago the child asked if we had any seeds.  She has a flower box that Mr. Sty built her a few years ago that is filled with dirt and random weeds.  I dug around in a cabinet in the garage and found a packet of lettuce seeds and a packet of cucumber seeds that were at least two years old.  She asked for some brief planting instructions, then happily skipped off with the seeds and her little shovel.  Yesterday she ran in the house excitedly insisting that I go with her into the back yard to look at something.

My daughter is better at gardening.

She planted seeds that were years old and every one has not only sprouted, but has gone untouched by the backyard vermin.  Apparently wicked awesome gardening skills skip a generation.

Bastard cucumber seedling.  Had I planted this, it would be dead already.

I can only assume that my daughter is better at frosting a cake than I am.  (I think a quadriplegic would be a better cake decorator than me.)  She is also a better businesswoman than I am.  (She just asked if I would give her real money for some of her art.  I said sure, thinking a couple of quarters would suffice.  She said, "Okay, my art isn't that much.  Like, 2 or 3, maybe 5 dollars.")

My daughter is better at doing my job.

I'm sure that she will grow up to do all kinds of things better than I did.  She'll probably be a better parent.  (Although, when she was 3 she went into great detail about why she hates babies, so maybe not.)  She'll probably be a better cook, have her dream job, travel the world, drink better beer...  But I guess the goal of all parents is that your children be better people than you.  (So, really, if she does grow up to be an awesome person, that means that I kick ass too.  Ha!) 

30 Day Picture Shenanigans - Day 16

30 Day Picture Shenanigans - Day 16: Birthday Cake

Tomorrow is the girl child's 7th birthday.  (I am old.)  We celebrated yesterday by mini-golfing with my parents and then going to a local restaurant for lunch and a slab of ice cream cake as large as a house.  Today she and I (and the neighbor girls) planned to bake the most fantastic birthday cake.  I am generally a believer in doing everything from scratch, but I've recently begun biking for exercise again and that makes me lazy in every other area of my life, so we made (hold onto yourselves) boxed cakes.  I have been seeing cool pictures on Pinterest of ombre-colored cakes in which the layers are varying shades of green or whatever.  Child is all about anything being rainbow colored, so I split two prepared box mixes into 4 cereal bowls and added enough food coloring to each bowl to make the chemist and mother in me shudder.  Each bowl went into it's own separate 8-inch round pan so we ended up with teal, purple, dark pink, and orange cake layers.

Everything was great up to this point.  I forgot to grease the pans, but the cakes came out alright.  I let them cool.  I made buttercream frosting from scratch (using 2 pounds of powdered sugar, holy crap) and dyed it a lovely hot pink color (involuntary twitch).  What's that you say?  "Wow, this seems to be going pretty well so far, despite the fact that your child should be taken away from you for your use of box cake mixes and synthetic food dyes."  Oh, don't you worry.  Things began to go horribly awry starting...now.

First, while the cakes were cooling on large sheet pans on the kitchen table, the stupid butter-loving cat kept trying to eat them.  (Please see previous entries on what other stupid things my large cat likes to eat.)  To prevent this, I covered the cakes with clean flour-sack towels.  Usually he's an "out-of-sight, out-of-mind" kind of cat.  Apparently today he was an "out-of-sight-so-that-must-mean-I-can-walk-on-it" kind of cat.  I came upstairs from doing one load of laundry to cries and screams from the three girls about how the cat had "ruined the birthday cake" and to find girl child with the cat in some kind of upside down half-nelson.  Really, thanks to the towels, the cakes were not ruined.  They just had tiny cat-foot sized holes in each one.  (Seriously, every single one.  They were set up in a square formation.  I think the cat was trying to play Dance Dance Revolution on the birthday cakes.)  No biggie, I calmed the girls down, moved the cakes, and carried on with the day.

The second problem, in hindsight, probably started when I got all "I know I'm supposed to cut the round tops off so the cakes are flat and I should probably cut the edges off too, but fuck it!  I'm so awesome that nothing could possibly go wrong here!  They're all the same shape and size...I'll just spread extra frosting in between the layers so that they stick together.  It will be fine!"  (The laziness.  I have it bad.)

The third problem is that I fricking suck at frosting cakes.  Actually, I suck at decorating anything, unless the goal is to make it as ugly as possible.  Leading us to today's picture shenanigan:

Behold!  The ugliest fucking birthday cake ever created!

The back half of the cake is pretty much gone...it gradually avalanched onto the kitchen table while I was trying to frost it.  I finally just gave up and tried to make the front as nice as possible.  Yes, this is my best cake-frosting job.  Thankfully, little girls don't care what a cake looks like, as long as it tastes good and you let them put an obscene amount of sprinkles on it.

The caved-in back side of the frankencake, in case you thought I was exaggerating.

 The layers are kind of cool at least.

Next year I'm buying a goddamn ice cream cake.

30 Day Picture Shenanigans - Day 15

30 Day Picture Shenanigans - Day 15: Flower Shop

Some days my child is a complete turd.  She just acts like an asshole.  I know that all kids do this, but I have very little tolerance for it.  Child's room is so messy that you literally cannot walk beyond the doorway without stepping on library books and Barbie shoes.  We have been trying to get her to pick things up after she's done with them, but the cleaning thing does not seem to be sticking.  When I told her that she and the neighbor girls couldn't play in her room today, she went into fricking meltdown mode.  Crying, pouting, hiding under the coffee table...pretty much everything short of giving me the finger.  (I'm sure she would have if she knew what it meant.)  After 30 minutes of me ignoring her she decided that her "mood meter went up" and that she was fine now. 

I was not.  I was calmly pissed.  I am tired of cleaning her room for her only to have it destroyed 24 hours later.  I know that every kid does this and that it would help a lot if there wasn't so much junk in her bedroom.  While she was outside playing I went into her room and put everything into not one, not two, but six huge black garbage bags.  I left her bed and a large beanbag.  There are a few books on shelves and some stuffed animals.  She came in halfway through and seemed thrilled that I was cleaning her room for her until I informed her that these bags were going into the garage until I can sort through them and decide what she gets back.  (In hindsight, I should have thought a little harder about what I was chucking into garbage bags.  Her TV remote and Nintendo DS charger are in there somewhere.  I'm not opposed to a stretch of time without TV or video games, but the noise from the TV at night helps her sleep, so this should be interesting.)  Mr. Sty came home shortly after and, while he admitted that everything needed to be sorted and some stuff needed to go, told me that I had gone crazy.  (This feeling of his was only affirmed when I went and did the same thing to the kitchen cabinets after the bedroom was empty.)

After being thoroughly annoyed with my child for most of the afternoon, I went outside to discover that she and the neighbor girl had spent their hours setting up a "flower shop" on our back deck.

(My favorites are the "purple magnificents". And the "tree stick".)  

Sometimes kids do things that are so innocent, imaginative, and reminiscent of your own childhood that they really could be standing there flipping you the bird and you just wouldn't care.  After discovering this, I felt like the asshole for thinking that my daughter could possibly ever be a jerk.  I'm sticking to my guns about the toys for now, but not letting it be the major thing in our day.



Cooking Tip of the Day: Soft Pretzels
Yesterday, my oh-so-wise child told me that we really should just make our own bread, jelly, and cheese.  Today, when she said that she had a taste for soft pretzels, I decided we could make our own.  I turned to my cooking bibles and found this pretzel recipe.  This was actually surprisingly easy.  The dough recipe is pretty standard.  After letting it rise for an hour, you split it into 8 pieces.  The pieces are rolled into thin tubes and then shaped.  We did some standard pretzel shapes and then Child got creative and made some figure-8's, some clover shapes, some that looked like eyeglasses...  Anyway, apparently the key to a soft pretzel is boiling it in baking-soda water for 30 seconds before it is egg-washed, salted, and baked.

The whole process was going splendidly.  I was all "Oh, man, I am so awesome.  I'm making pretzels!  I should take a bazillion pictures like those fancy food people and put them on my blog and everyone's mouths will water and I will be some kind of super mom!"  (Side note: In case you don't know or haven't figured it out yet, I use my phone to take any pictures on this blog.  Why?  Because I'm cheap and lazy.)

This leads us to our cooking tip of the day: when you are boiling the pretzels in the baking-soda water, it is very very important to NOT drop your phone into the water.

Yes, that's right, while I was up on my high horse I kerplunked my phone directly into a pot of boiling soda water.  I don't quite remember how I got it out.  I'm assuming that I used a spatula since my hands aren't covered in burns.  Child ran away as if the events were going to result in some series of fiery explosions.  I cursed and gutted the phone, drying what I could.  I threw it in a bag of rice (which I found rather quickly thanks to my earlier cupboard cleaning).

I don't know how, but it still works.  Maybe I got it out of the water fast enough?  I have dropped other phones (yes, plural) into toilets and they do not work.  The bad thing, though, is that my camera lens is now covered in a fog of water vapor.  Also, apparently baking soda water leaves a white crusty film over everything once the water is evaporated, so I'm sure that will be all up in my phone too.    So, no pictures of pretzels for you.  But trust me, they were amazing.  We dipped them into a chocolate sauce that I made a couple of months ago.  (The sauce was so good that I couldn't bear to throw it away, so it's been waiting in a jar in the back of my fridge for the perfect moment to come.  I think this was also an Alton Brown recipe.  I love him.)

Anyway, summing things up: Everyone is an asshole sometimes, even small children.  Everyone is inspiring and amazing sometimes, especially small children.  If you started a blog to essentially poke fun at most other blogs, but then try to do something like those other blogs, the universe (hear me mom?) will reach down and slap your expensive electronics into boiling kettles and then laugh at you.  (Screw you, universe.  Screw you.)

30 Day Picture Shenanigans - Days 13 & 14

30 Day Picture Shenanigans - Days 13 & 14: My Hair and My Butter-Loving Cat

Ok, since I took the past couple of days off from Picture Shenanigans, I am going to combine two short posts.  The first is a picture of what I did to my hair last week.

I was blonde before this, but my roots were dark for about an inch and I wasn't confident in my ability to get an even blonde color again, so I went black.  I prefer my hair really dark.  I must admit that I figured it would be super easy to color since I just cut it short.  I just kind of slapped a bottle of dye on my head and rubbed it around.  There are definitely still some lighter pieces here and there.  (Which, by the way, the men that work downstairs from me seem to feel the need to point out.  Since when are 20-year-old boys looking at a girl's dye job?  I feel old...)  Eh, whatever, I'll just dye it again later this week.  (Side note: you can't really tell in the picture, but I'm wearing Covergirl's NatureLuxe Gloss Balm in Peony and I love it!  I usually buy natural cosmetics, but I think I may have been a victim of a pretty package and some good advertising with this one.)

The past few days have been delightfully warm here.  Almost too hot, but I'd rather be sweating than freezing.  (On that note, this weekend we had to explain to the child that "hot as balls" is a grown-up phrase.  She repeated it after I said it, so it was totally my fault.  She said it in front of my parents.  I found it hilarious.)  Anyway, this morning she and I took a scooter/bike ride around the neighborhood and came home to the second picture shenanigan of the day.

I know the photo is a little blurry, but that would be Gomer finishing off a stick of butter.  Can I not just have a normal animal?  What kind of creepy-thin diabetic cat pulls sticks of butter off of the counter and eats them?  Seriously!  Also, what kind of animal can maintain a weight of 12 pounds on a diet of nasty canned meat-chunks and butter?  Stupid butter-loving cat.  (I think that "butter-loving" might be my new child-appropriate swear word.  Like next time someone cuts me off while I'm driving: "You butter-loving asshole!"  Although I suppose combining "butter-loving" with another swear word negates the child-appropriateness that I was trying to achieve.)

"What? I, um, didn't do it.  It was the pig, I just found it this way and was trying to clean it up for you."

30 Day Picture Shenanigans - Day 12

Picture Shenanigans - Day 12: Magazine I'm Reading

This is a picture of a magazine that I've been reading lately.  I picked up the latest issue this morning on the way to work.

I think it's appropriate for me.  (Only because I like fame and fortune, have been meaning to watch Mad Men, and am a trophy wife, or might be some day.)

But really, it's full of articles that actually make my poor little brain work.  Some of them are a bit too much for me, but overall I really like the magazine.  However, if I bring it to work, I obviously can't leave it laying around on the counter.  (Although, now that I think about it, we carry the Stitch n' Bitch books.)  If I turn it face down, however, another work-inappropriate problem presents itself.

The back cover features an ad for She Bop (link probably NSFW), a "female friendly sex toy boutique" in Portland.  (Good name, I think.)  Anyway...I don't want any pearl-clutching going on at the shop, so I usually save this mag for my at-home reading.  I know that we are in the age of technology, but there's just something I love about magazines.  I have a hard time getting rid of them, too.  Someday, after the apocalypse, I will have hours of entertainment thanks to my magazine stash when everyone else has nothing to read because they can't charge their Kindles.  Nothing I say, nothing.

30 Day Picture Shenanigans - Day 11

30 Day Picture Shenanigans - Day 11: What Keeps the Girl-Child Busy

Mr. Sty and I homeschool our daughter.  During this past semester we had someone who could babysit her during the days, but our sitter recently decided to start working in a dental office again.  Thankfully, I can take the kiddo to work with me.  Yesterday I taught a knitting class for kids, which she joined in on, so that led to some entertainment for the day.

Why do kids love to sit in stupid places?  I feel like I can't keep her off of the counter.

Here she is with Crayola's Dry Erase Crayons.  They are actually pretty cool.  She colored flowers and yarn balls all over the big front window.  The crayon wipes off really easily.  Coloring on a window somehow is just waaay more fun than coloring on paper.

She is very well behaved, but trying to think of things to keep her busy all day while I'm also working makes me exhausted by the end of the day.  Remember that story that I was going to tell you the other day in my post about voting?  I'll share now.

Ridiculous Parenting Moment: 

The other day was just one of those days when everything the girl-child did was not necessarily naughty, but it was annoying enough to have to tell her to stop.  Over and over and over.  For example, everything that she fricking ate that day was shoved into her mouth whole.  Seriously.  Every time I turned around, she had her cheeks stuffed like a binging chipmunk and could barely breathe, let alone talk.  Driving. Me. Nuts. (Yaaaaarggghhh!  Hahaha...)  Anyways, later in the day we were sitting at home.  She was eating a soft pretzel for a snack while sitting on the loveseat in our living room.  The front door was open to let in some breeze and the loveseat faces the door.  I was standing at the kitchen table about 10 feet away, but not in view of the door.  I was talking to a friend who was over (the one with the pig-gum) when child began making muffled sounds with her voicebox.  She was trying to communicate, but had so much fucking soft-pretzel crammed in her face that she couldn't even move her lips.  I freaked.  The following conversation ensued.

Me: (yelling, naturally, because I was at the end of my fricking rope) For Christ's sake!  You seriously have soooo much food stuffed into your mouth that you can't even talk!!!  What the hell!  Don't try to talk when your mouth is that full!  Don't put that much food into your mouth!  You're seven years old, not two!  I've been telling you ALL DAY that you are GOING TO CHOKE!  You know what?  You're going to choke, and I'm really not in the mood to do the Heimlich maneuver right now, so I'm not going to.  (At this point she is laughing, as she usually is when I start getting hysterical and/or threatening her with death.  She thinks it's completely amusing.) (Also, probably not the best idea to do anything to make your child-with-a-mouth-full-of-pretzel laugh, especially while you are lecturing her about choking.  Hindsight.) Do you even know what the Heimlich is? (She nods, muffled laughter coming from her doughy maw, while making a Heimlich motion on her own midsection.)  Good, I'm glad you know, because you'll be doing it to YOURSELF!!!!!

Voice Outside: Uh...hello?

(I freeze for a second like a deer in headlight, then walk to the door to find a middle-aged man standing on my porch with a clipboard.)

Man: Um, hi, I'm with the democratic (words I couldn't understand...perhaps his mouth was full of pretzel) and I wanted to remind you to...

Me: Yep, voting tomorrow.  Yay democrats!  I'm on board. (Seriously, that was the third person I'd had at my door that day.)

Man: Uh...okay, good.  So, I was listening to you talking to your daughter just now.  She was trying to tell you that there was someone at the door...

Me: (nervously) Oh, haha...maybe if her mouth wasn't so full, I could have understood that.  She's been doing that all day.  Kids, you know?  (More nervous laughter...)

Man: Okay, well, have a good night. (Walks away.)

My Friend: (laughing hysterically) Huh, well, I guess you can expect a visit from child services.

Me: (also laughing hysterically) Seriously!  Who does that happen to?  He would stand there for a full 2 minutes while I tell my 7-year-old that I'm going to let her choke to death.  Don't people knock anymore?  Or ring doorbells?  I should be writing a book!  You can't make that crap up.

So, ladies and gentlemen, the lesson of the day is that if you threaten your child with death, you should do it behind closed doors. 

30 Day Picture Shenanigans - Day 10

30 Day Picture Shenanigans - Day 10: Love Boats

Today's picture shenanigans has very little to do with me, other than the fact that I am left wondering what I have ever done to deserve my amazing family.

This afternoon I received a call from Mr. Sty while I was at work.  He asked what my plans for dinner were tonight and said that he had a "surprise appetizer" that he wanted to make.  A few hours later I received the following texts:

 (This would be our new arrival in the house...a half barrel of Bell's Oberon.  Possibly the best summer beer ever.  You may now start feeling twinges of jealousy.)

Mr. Sty: BE AFRAID!!!

Me: Yum to the beer and uhhhh...omg

Mr. Sty: Hahahahahaha...muahahahahahaha!!??!?!?!!

I walked in the door to this:

Those would be halved jalapeno peppers stuffed with slices of beef tenderloin and wrapped in bacon.  Remember a few posts ago when I said we have been hardly eating meat?  And then I wanted fried chicken?  Apparently this is Mr. Sty's fried chicken.  (He one-upped my food craving!  Jerk.)  He explained that a friend he was working with today mentioned having something similar to these somewhere last night and Mr. Sty said that once he started thinking about them, he couldn't stop. 

  (Holy crap, delicious.  But spicy.  They needed something, so I blobbed (that's a technical chef-term) some whipped cream cheese on top.  It was a delicious complement.)

Mr. Sty tasted his creation and then proceeded to state how awesome he was every few minutes for the next hour.  I actually agree.  I don't know what I ever did to deserve coming home to this.  Also, I don't know why he's been cooking so much lately (not that I'm complaining)...this blog (in it's mere 12 days of existence) has managed to capture 2 of 3 of Mr. Sty's solo cooking endeavors.  (Unless you count random hunks of meat thrown on a fire, but I don't.  Or chili...he's pretty good at that.  But that only happens once every two years.)  Anyway, we were trying to come up with a name for these tidbits of goodness.  The peppers look like boats, so we were thinking of goofy stuff like the S.S. Awesomes.  We settled on "Love Boats".  

When asked to describe them, Mr. Sty said, "It's the best damn appetizer known to man.  Period."  

Me: "Okay, describe what's in it."  

Mr. Sty: "It doesn't matter, that's all you need to know.  But if you'd like to know, it's a big huge ball of awesomeness that includes jalapeno, bacon, and "fillett miggnon".  And, to think, like, that appetizer alone will make me never fully stop eating red meat.  Because it is that awesome.  Cutting back is good.  Everything in moderation.  If there is red meat that I eat, it is because of these.  AND THAT'S WHAT'S UP!"  

Mr. Sty may have been slightly under the influence at the time of this statement.

My contribution to dinner ("dinner" was not needed since 20 beefy-bacony-spicy skewers is like an appetizer only to the Jolly Green Giant) was grilled vegetable skewers (because I needed to counteract the meat intake with something).  There are vidalia onion chunks, red cabbage, mushrooms, zucchini, and bell peppers.  I threw on some olive oil, salt, and pepper and grilled until tasty.

So now we are very full.  Also, Oberon goes down waaaaay too easy, especially when you are eating spicy things.  So now we are also a bit (a lot) tipsy (drunkish)...on bacon (on beer). 

30 Day Picture Shenanigans: Day 9

30 Day Picture Shenanigans: Day 9 - Vote

As a Wisconsinite, tomorrow is a big day.  If you live in Wisconsin, I want you to think about what you want from your government and what kind of state you want Wisconsin to be.  I don't care who you vote for (well...that's a lie, I totally care, but I'm not going to tell you which candidate I care about, although you can probably use some deductive reasoning to guess).  JUST VOTE!  Seriously.  I know people say this all the time.  I've had 3 people come to my door today reminding me to vote (I have a funny story about one...maybe I'll share tomorrow when I'm not so tired).

Think of it this way: if you don't vote, you are sacrificing your right to bitch and complain about your government.  And really, isn't that one of the best things about being an American?

Also, I know so many people that vote one way or the other based on a single issue.  Please, try to look at the whole picture.

Okay, that post was kind of serious.  And it involved no pictures.

 People who don't vote make the girl-child very, very angry.

 And when she gets angry, her face melts "Raiders of the Lost Ark" style.  Don't melt children's faces.

Also, I would like to share with you a moment from my day.

Moment of the Day:

Today, I had a friend over for dinner.  I didn't notice that she had set her purse on the floor near a chair in the living room.  A few hours later while we were eating, I heard the familiar wet smacking sound of a pig frantically chewing something.  I should mention that if there is gum in the house and it is lower than 3 feet off of the ground, Sparkle Pig will find it.  He will pull backpacks off of chairs.  He will empty coat pockets.  He will fricking unzip your purse to get to the gum.  Once he finds your gum, he will chomp and chomp on the entire pack (cardboard and all) for anywhere from 5 to 45 minutes.  Today he gingerly dug through my friend's Coach purse and removed only her pack of Trident.  There's really nothing you can do about it.  Try taking gum out of a pig's mouth without losing a finger.  We figured he would get bored and swallow it eventually.   

I'm not lying, three hours later he was still chewing that damn gum.  The pig walked around the house for three damn hours smacking his face like a combination of a dumb teenage girl and an old man with loose dentures.  At one point he laid down on the living room floor like he was going to sleep, but he just kept chewing the stupid gum!  (We thought maybe this was a sort of cry for help.  Maybe as long as the gum was still in his mouth, he had to chew it, but really he was becoming exhausted and strung out and getting pig-TMJ and really wanted us to confiscate the gum and save him from himself.  We organized an intervention, which resulted in a lot of pig squealing, and were unsuccessful at retrieving the gum.)  Finally, at 9-ish tonight (after 4 hours of gum chewing...it's amazing how quickly you become immune to a sound that once drove you to kill...) we realized that the house was strangely quiet.  The gum was gone.  

Don't worry, we found it a few minutes later stuck to the carpet and the pig's foot.

So, yeah...is there a Guinness record for a pig-gum-chewing marathon?

30 Day Picture Shenanigans: Day 8

30 Day Picture Shenanigans: Day 8 - Lazy Night Dinner (Take Two)

The weather today was perfect.  It was sunny, 70ish degrees, and breezy.  We took the opportunity to clean out the garage.  Last February (no, not this last one, but the last one...over a year ago) I went on a cleaning binge and put a bunch of stuff (like, 2 carloads) in the garage with the intent to take it to Goodwill.  Today, we took it to Goodwill (after we unburied it from a year and a half's worth of crap).  My dinner plan was to make stuffed shells, but frankly, that sounded too heavy after a day of activity.  Plus, I felt lazy.  (Noticing any trends yet?)  For today's Picture Shenanigans I am going to share what we had for dinner after a day of hard work.  Stop rolling your eyes, it's not the leftover fried chicken from last night.  (Mr. Sty ate that for breakfast, remember?)

(Looks delicious, doesn't it?  Didn't know I had it in me, did you?)

Lazy Night Dinner for Reals (or Roasted Corn and Black Bean Salad with Wheatberries)

(serves 4)

Okay, so, wheatberries...the name reminds me of the word "dingleberries", which is gross, but they are delicious and awesome and full of nutritious goodness.  However, they take approximately half an ice-age to cook.  (Okay, they only really take about an hour to cook, but still...)  So, get those going first, go have a beer (or two), then come back 40 minutes later to start preparing the rest of the dish.

Ingredients:

1 cup uncooked wheatberries (I like Bob's Red Mill Red Wheatberries)

1 can of black beans, rinsed

2 ears of sweet corn (or 1 1/2 cups of frozen corn if you're feeling lame and/or lazy)

1/2 small red onion

1/2 red bell pepper

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 cup cherry tomatoes (halved)

1 mango

1 avocado

1 lemon

Cook the wheatberries according to the directions.  (For mine, I combined 1 cup of dry wheatberries (rinsed) with 3 1/2 cups of water and some sea salt in a saucepan.  Bring the water to a boil, then turn down to a low boil and cover.  Let cook for an hour-ish or until you're so starving that you don't mind eating little grain-balls that are slightly crunchy.  Just call it "al dente".)

After two beers, (er...40 minutes), finely chop the 1/2 red onion and the 1/2 red bell pepper.  Cut the kernels from the 2 ears of corn.  Dice the jalapeno (come on, throw the seeds in too).  Heat the olive oil in a nonstick frying pan on high-ish.  Add the onion and saute for 1-2 minutes.  Add the sweet corn and cook until it starts to brown slightly, stirring occasionally.  Season with salt and pepper.  Add the jalapeno, bell pepper, and the juice of 1/2 the lemon and cook until the peppers become slightly tender (another 2-4 minutes).  The vegetables should still be crunchy, just slightly cooked. 

In a serving bowl, combine the rinsed black beans and the cooked corn mixture.  Add the halved cherry tomatoes.  Peel and dice the mango and stir into the bean/corn mixture.  Dice the avocado.  My wheatberries were tender after an hour of cooking, but they hadn't absorbed all of the water, so I just strained the excess water.  Spoon some wheatberries into a bowl and top with a bunch of the corn mixture.  Add 1/4 of the diced avocado.  Squirt some juice from the remaining 1/2 lemon on top.  (The child did not want anything mixed together and she doesn't really dig beans, so I set aside some of the corn mixture for her before I added it to the beans.  I added the mango and tomatoes to hers.  I gave her some wheatberries on the side with a little bit of butter (just call me Paula), because that makes everything awesome.)

So there you have it.  There really isn't too much work involved for this meal and you don't have to turn on the oven, which is a bonus on hot days.  Yum!

(A meal the whole family can enjoy.  Sparkle Pig seriously wanted my dinner.  We discovered that he apparently looooves black beans.)

30 Day Picture Shenanigans: Day 7

30 Day Picture Shenanigans: Day 7 (kind of) - My Dinner

Many people find great satisfaction in preparing a nutritious home-cooked meal for their family.  I am often one of those people.  We have always eaten pretty healthily, but lately we have eliminated most of the meat from our diets and made a few other changes for the better.  I love buying fresh foods at the grocery store (or the farmer's market when I can get there) and playing with new recipes, knowing that I am doing something good for the ones I love. 

Some days, however, I really just don't want to fricking cook.  I don't like going to the store on weekends because, how do I put this...people are stupid.  For today's picture shenanigans, I am going to share my go-to recipe for those nights when you just want to be lazy.

Lazy Night Dinner:
(Serves 3-6)

Step 1: In preparation for tonight's dinner, earlier in the day (while still at work), call/text your boyfriend/husband and say something like "Oh, hey, I know we've been eating so well lately, but for some reason I'm just having a craving for fried chicken and mashed potatoes!  So silly!"  Let simmer in man's brain for 3-4 hours.

Step 2: Walk in the door and say "Hmm...we really don't have much for dinner, but I'm sure I could throw something together.  What do you have a taste for?"

Step 3: Examine menu of nearby restaurant; place order by telephone; wait 20 minutes while boyfriend/husband drives to the restaurant.

Step 4:

Open the paper bag that boyfriend/husband brought home and remove paper box and styrofoam containers.  Ignore the cat whining at your ankles.  Suppress your urge to bitch about why anybody is still using styrofoam.  Push the cat off the kitchen table.

Step 5:

Open containers.  Push cat off of table again.  Try to block out the increasingly annoying sound of the cat whining.  Sneakily pick off a chunk of crispy, fried, deliciousness.  Try to ignore the guilt arising from breaking your diet.  Push cat off of table.

Step 6:

Plate the food.  Lock the cat in another room.  Enjoy!

(Side note:  Okay, so, clearly I skipped a day in the 30 Day Picture Shenanigans.  I'll just do two today.  I really didn't feel like doing anything yesterday.  I ordered fried chicken, for crying out loud.  (Side side note: The chicken was delicious and totally worth it.)  Also, I have a confession...I didn't actually take any of these pictures last night.  I was too busy shoving my face full of crunchy, salty goodness.  It was only after everyone had eaten that I remembered that I was going to do a blog post about the dinner.  So, this morning, I took everything out of the fridge and snapped pictures.  I even put cold food on a plate and was just going to put it all back into containers.  Then, Mr. Sty walked into the kitchen.

Mr. Sty: Didn't you just eat breakfast, like, 2 minutes ago?
Me: Yes.  I'm taking pictures of this for my blog then putting it all back.
Mr. Sty: (long pause) Uh...I guess I can just eat that...

I found this hysterical because he usually doesn't eat breakfast at all, let alone a chicken dinner at 9am.  10 minutes after eating he declared that he needed to lay down.  You don't feel well after eating fried food at the crack of dawn?  No shit!  He is currently lounging while saying that everyone who reads this will make fun of my "ugly green dishes".  That's another story.  Damn, this was the longest side note EVER.)

(Out of focus picture of chicken dinner.  It looks so good, but it hurts my eyes...)

30 Day Picture Shenanigans: Day 6

30 Day Picture Shenanigans: Day 6 - Pigsty Knits

Today at work I was knitting a striped hat (again from the new Noro Magazine), and I was going to have today's picture be the finished project. Then, I thought, why not turn this into a learning opportunity? Like the clips at the end of old G.I. Joe cartoons that tell you not to talk to strangers or light your kitchen on fire. So today's picture shenanigan is going to be a photo tutorial of how to do a jogless stripe.

Any knitter who has done a striped project in the round has experienced "jogs" that occur in the stripes when the color is changed. While this isn't a technical problem, it isn't the prettiest thing on earth. Lucky for we lazies, this is a very easy problem to fix. I know that some of you more experienced knitters are thinking "Ugh, really? Soooo easy. Next!" Pipe down and look at the pretty stripes.

Alright, so, here I am, knitting happily along.

I am at the point where I need to join the second color. I am not going to cover how to do this right now, because there are a few different ways. (For this hat I am carrying the unused yarn up the inside of the hat so I don't have a bajillion ends to weave in later.)

Work one round with the new color. Slip your marker. Then, slip the first stitch of the next row as if to purl.

Continue knitting the rest of the row.

When you start the third row, knit the first stitch as normal. Enjoy your nice, even stripes!

This technique is still something that I forget how to do from time to time, so I hope that you found this to be a useful reference.

Do a little speed knitting (seriously, I'm training like an Olympian to beat Miriam Tegels, but that lady is crazy! 118 stitches in a minute?!? The best I did today was 80. Now that I think about it, this is probably contributing to the fact that I feel like I have arthritic hands lately...) Now go take your delightfully stripey hat outside and act nonchalant while you are actually freezing and yelling at your boyfriend because he keeps taking pictures that are more focused on the shitty cars parked across the street than the hat on your head.