You Bought a What??

Okay guys, I think I've got Dearest in on making some raised beds and starting a garden this coming spring.  I want to try and start making compost now though.  I've got a line on some food grade plastic barrels and I want to buy one to use to make compost and another for a rain barrel.

I realized though that if I'm going to start growing vegetables I need to decide which ones I want to grow... and I need to learn how to cook them ;)

I've never been what I would consider a great cook.  I just recently started to gain some self-confidence in the kitchen.. thanks to bacon grease.  Horrible horrible I know!

Anywhos... I've always been intrigued with butternut squash, spaghetti squash and acorn squash.  I've never eaten them, that I'm aware of at least.  They always have them in the grocery store though, and I've heard people mentioning that they like them.  Well I bought an acorn squash.  It was the smallest, and I figured I should start on a small scale to hopefully reduce waste if it didn't work out for me.

Of course when I got home Dearest saw it and proclaimed "What is that"?  I'm honestly amazed that I got out of the grocery store with it.  I was asked by the checkout lady the other day what a pomegranate was.

So far what I've seen has suggested baking it with brown sugar, which made me think of a sweet potato.  I need to do some more research on this one.

Tonight for dinner - chicken vegetable soup.

How do you work in your vegetables, and what would *you* grow?

Who Let In the Fat Kid?

Whoa nelly!

Okay, the fat kid came out to play last night.  She's been knocking on my door all week and I finally gave in.  This week has been a tough one.  Dearest left to go out of town for two weeks (with no available contact) and I averaged maybe three hours of sleep a night.  Due to unforeseen circumstances I wound up working a double shift (my normal shift is ten hours) and going from second shift to third shift back to second shift.  Needless to say I'm still not sure what day it is.

All week I survived solely on caffeine and sugar. oh and fast food.  *YIKES*

I haven't gone within three feet of the bathroom scale.

I know I'm horribly dehydrated because all I drank was soda and various energy drinks.  I also reunited with Little Debbie.  Oh the horror.  I've also been spending lots of quality time with "John".  You know, the porcelain one.

I've felt horrible the past few days, I even called in sick tonight.  I've worked there for over a year and have never missed a day, never even taken a vacation day.  The combination of lack of sleep, both from over working, crazy shifts and from over caffeination along with the sudden influx of sugar equals the feeling of being poo spread on melba toast.

So today I alternated trips to visit John with quality bed time.  However, I woke up once to realize the dog had pushed me over and had taken over my pillow.  Greedy animal.

I haven't told you the really fat part though.

Feeling so cruddy starts a cycle for me.  So when I got off work I decided to go to the grocery store.  I've been having some issues with a very dry nose and was going to pick up some vaseline - you know what else jumped into my cart? ....

A twelve pack of mini one bite cupcakes.

Oh and a box of macaroni which I put back once to look for a bigger size, then picked back up.

...and some bananas - okay that wasn't so painful.

The Bryers ice cream I struggled with.  Should I get coffee fudge brownie or Heath?  That one took a good five minutes and I'm still not sure what I wound up with.

I came home, decimated all but three of the cupcakes (which I polished off for breakfast along with a bowl of golden grahams by the way) and a small frozen party pizza while watching t.v. episodes on Hulu.

Holy crap how did the fat kid get in the door?!?

So today, while getting dressed I noticed I look like a duck.  All the bloating, the lethargy, the crankiness, I think it's time for a detox.  It's time to kick the fat kid out and let the door hit her on her very padded ass on the way out.

Anyone have any detox suggestions?

Grocery Shopping.. Like a Real Person

Okay - so I didn't get my run in today.  I won't lie.  With it being my first day off in the rotation I slept.  Well.  Dearest and I had a "date morning"  which involved "going out to eat" at one of the few establishments open - Sheetz.  Yes.  The gas station.  Then watching a movie on the couch before we decided to go to bed.  We keep odd hours around these parts.

Anyway I slept until 5:30 this evening and decided that since there was absolutely *no* edible food in the refrigerator with the exception of some eggs and mustard that perhaps I should go to the grocery store.

I sat down, looked at the recipes I could make, along with what I had in the cabinets (not much) and made my list, got in the car and was struck with a horrific realization.  "Oh no!  It's 6:30 in the evening!  I don't want to go grocery shopping at 6:30!!"  Well I went anyway.

You see, I normally do my grocery shopping at strange hours too.  Typically I'm in the grocery store around 2:30 a.m.  I'm blessed with having one right down the street that is 24 hours.  I can't get anything from the Deli, and it's a little dark since they cut out the lights in all of the cases, but it works for me.  You see... I don't like people.

Rather, I don't like being around people.  That still sounds bad...  I like my personal space, I like not having to make small talk with strangers, I like not having to fight to get to the eggs.  I like not having to wait in line.  So today, was quite an experience for me.  Thankfully it wasn't as full as I feared, and having gotten enough sleep for once I was able to find the humor in it instead of being aggravated to no end.

I found the children to be the most amusing.  As a side note here, I don't have children.  I have nothing against children, I'm just not ready to have any of my own yet.  I'm also the youngest child of two youngest children.  I've never really been exposed to children younger than me.  So I really don't know what to with them now as an adult.  Anyway - as I walked down an aisle I could hear a young boy one aisle over ... "CHOCOLATE PUDDING!!!  Chocolate pudding!!  CHOCOLATE PUDDING!!!"  The whole time in the store, these two words are all that this child said, and every two seconds.  The next child I walked by was apparently trying to do the same thing only saying "sausage"  or trying to.  It sounded a little more like "shaushages"  Very cute.  Somewhat annoying, but very cute.

I also couldn't help but feel good about my decisions when I got to the check out line.  I noticed the purchases the man in front of me with his two grandchildren (one of which at about 9 years old was already very overweight) was making.   He had two large frozen pizzas, one for each child as they had picked different flavors, a box of push up pops, a box of fudgecicles, a jumbo box of assorted cookies, and two candy bars.  Nothing with any real nutritional value at all.

The couple behind me was the couple that had been in my way the whole time I had been there.  This guy was completely obsessed with counting carbs.  He kept asking his girlfriend "guess how many carbs are in this bag of candy?"  "No - MORE, can you believe it??".  His poor girlfriend just wanted some chocolate.  Their cart had nothing but Atkins type foods.

Here I was, stuck in the middle with my green onions, bean sprouts, fresh veggies, eggs, two mini frozen pizzas and two high test sodas (for dearest).  I felt like I finally had a handle on this balance thing.  Healthy whole foods, with a few small amounts of treat junk food thrown in.

Then you know what I did?  I came home, I chopped up all my veggies, cooked my chicken and made chicken lettuce wraps, one of our favorite meals.... and cinnamon rolls.  :)

No fear, I don't plan on keeping all the cinnamon rolls in the house.  Dearest won't eat sweets so I plan to   make a few surprise visits to friends tomorrow with some cinnamon roll love.

Evil Yaki

Yaki Steak that is.

Went to eat dinner with my dad last night.  Mom is out of town at the beach for a few days and with dearest still at work we decided to dine together, instead of having cereal for dinner over the sink at our respective houses.  We wound up going for Japanese, choices in town are a bit limited on Sunday evenings here - but we found an open restaurant on the second try.  The food tasted great, it had been forever since I had eaten Japanese food.  Dearest refuses to eat it unless we go for sushi, he for some reason is totally opposed to hibachi.   Long story short, I wound up with a nasty case of food poisoning.  Yuck.