Women Were Not Meant to Work This Hard:

This week has been hellacious, to say the least. I don't know what's going on in the world, but people were having emergency GI procedures all week, gumming up an already crazy schedule. I was schitzo woman at work, of course, being fully unprepared to work so hard after being off an entire week. But then I was the walking dead the moment I got home and had a few moments to unwind from the chaos of the day, fully able to sit and pee and eat something (but not all at once, well, maybe)...
The kids were off all week for spring break, and were bored to tears since I took the internet away whilst I was gone at work (do you remember being a kid and being bored? I would get lost in the woods and build a fort, catch frogs, or pull out the cookbooks and whip up something tasty and messy-- we lived in booneyland as kids and had no cable, no VCR, no neighbors, and I was rarely BORED). But of course the moment I got home, everyone was expecting to be fed, entertained, transported... laundry had to be done, meals prepared, library books returned...
It really bites that women these days are expected to be the breadwinners *and* still perform each and every womanly function about the household, as if she had been there all day and *not* cleaning up vomit and poop, dragging beds and patients around and starting IV's for eight hours before coming home. My husband make dinner one night that I refused to (I was deaddog tired, and ready to kill someone after finding all the items of MINE that the dog destroyed while the kids were mired in boredom, so I took a little nap), so instead of making a proper meal, he makes PIZZA. I made homemade enchiladas, stuffed peppers, etc this week, and dude slips by with PIZZA (hey, at least it's not WENDY'S, another guy favorite) and the kids revel in his manly awesomeness while Mom just looks like a slacker. Anyhoo.
Women really got the shaft in this day and age, and I've bought into it hook like and sinker... bummer.

Triumph over Geekdom:

Having lived and travelled with the Renaissance Faire, I have a special fondness for snarkiness towards people who have voluntarily chosen to live in an alternate reality (not to be confused with those whose delusions are only controllable with medication).

This clip makes me laugh soooo hard, with much snorting, cackling, and shouts from my kids to be quiet. My head even hurts a little...

=
Triumph The Insult Comic Dog - Star Wars
by ZaraV

Lazy Day:

I was off all week again, running around like a crazy person (running in circles, primarily)... but today I dragged my butt out of bed at 6am to head off to work at 7.
In the meantime, the sky opened up for no good reason and has been steadily dumping scads of snow upon our beloved spring, such that it is no longer recognizable-- boo.
Yesterday I was hanging out in a t-shirt, contemplating a motorcycle ride, today my feet are blocks of ice after stepping into an impressive snowbank with my work clogs on. Brrrrrrrr!
As such, I'm hanging out in bed with the heater turned WAAAAAAY up in hopes of thawing out the tootsies. I'm wide awake (loves me those new vitamins, good good stuff!), not a nap in sight, but it's refreshing to be chilling out doing not so much vs the frantic rush of "finding something to do", over and over again. In fact, as a testament to my laziness, I have discovered a new training activity for the dog, one I'll bet you'd never find it the training manuals: Maggie has forgotten how to play fetch over the winter, so I'm lounging in bed tossing bits of cheezy pops (the organic kind, as if it matters...) out into the hallway, using the "back" command. How very industrious, to use my slacker time to train the dog. See, if there was ever a way to be lazy *and* productive, I knew I'd find it;-)

Things That are a Gigantic Waste of $$:

1) Joining gyms/health clubs. It's fun for a while, but then the GUILT is a killer, esp when you only go once a week.
2) Getting $30 hair rinses.
3) Expensive hobbies, such as $80++ maple syrup equipment that leads to a $12 quart of syrup.
4) Private school for your resident non -scholar (this one is debatable)
5) Conferences like BOW, etc. I am so not the joiner/participator.
6) Blockbuster movies. Hellllooooo, movies from the li-ba-rar-y are FREE.
7) Endless blogging on the JT site (not exactly a waste of $, but energy; time better spent living life instead of reflecting on it to a faceless audience)

I'm sure there's more... I'll have to add to it as life hands me more examples:-)

Books:

I've decided to chronicle the books I'm reading, if only to amuse myself at a later date as to the direction of my folly; I'm guessing it'll follow the same paths it has for many a moon: health, food, humor, death.
Par example:
Fast Track One day Detox Diet, Ann Louise Gittleman
Ageless, Suzanne Somers
Passionate Vegetarian, Crescent Dragonwagon
Prescription for Dietary Wellness, Phyllis A. Balch
101 Ways to Help Your Daughter Love Her Body, Brenda Lane Richardson and Elane Rehr
The Sweet Potato Queens Guide to Raising Children for Fun and Profit, Jill Conner Browne
The Bone Woman, Clea Koff

Movies I'm watching:
Mr and Mrs Smith
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (a repeat, I loved this movie)
August Rush
Gone Baby Gone

March 15, cont.

I had a luv-er-lee day, spending 5 *freaking* hours at the Vicci salon with ms. gracy pants getting her $80 'do. Sheesh! I got a $30 color rinse that I could have paid a whole $8 from the Walgreens for, but I guess it was nice to have a hand and scalp massage, probably made it worth the cost:-) I loves me some pampering! I also had the great fun of picking up a super cool piece of Redwing pottery, a very odd looking vase from the 50's. It's slightly broken, but still the coolest $1.99 vase I've seen in a long time. Besides, it saves me and mine the trouble of breaking it, a highly likely inevitability.
I'm in the midst of wathing a really nice movie, "August Rush"; it's a sweet tale about hope in the midst of brokenness. Life should always have happy endings.
The snow is almost gone (no love lost there), so I *finally* spread the 5 gallon bucket of prairie seeds I harvested in the fall back into the prairie in hopes that it will snow at least once more to press them down into the soil. It's funny, tho-- since the snow is gone, I can see the seed heads I broadcast *before* the snow fell (and we had a LOT), and they look as if they were never buried at all for months under the tremedous weight of the winter. I just hope that the seeds don't get croaked in the cold, frosty weather that's sure to come at least a few more times, but I just can't imagine that it would happen... the other seeds live under the snow and do great. Maybe I should mow them in to break up the seedheads and get them closer to the soil? Who knows...I'm surely no botanist...
Hey!
I broke down and bought some maple tapping supplies the other day-- as if I can't get myself more deeply in debt:-( Jacob expressed an interest in tapping the 20 some trees on our property, and who am I to squelch a fleeting childhood curiosity? Lord knows I'm still full of them myself, as much as I try to pretend I'm old and cynical... Jake was none too thrilled, as I'm sure he saw this as one more strange thing I'll wrangle him into against his will (poor guy;-) But it'll be fun. And even tho we only have silver maples, I know our syrup will be tasty.
And ours.
Which is the coolest thing of all...
I also finally got around to mucking out the chicken coop, poor stinky girls. I don't have any idea *why* the coop would be soooooo caked with wet bedding, but it is. And it was HARD to scrape out of there... I love cleaning the coop, I love being outside, especially in weather like today's: Jacob rode his bike, jumped on the trampoline, went for a walk with ms. maggie-- me, I picked up slimy mountains of dog poop that were once buried by the snow and shoveled chicken nasties, but I couldn't have been more thrilled to be doing it.
I LOVE SPRING!
(I'd love living in Austin better, but I'll take whatever bonuses of living in the north that I can in an effort to keep from losing my mind in the interim until I become a resident of the south again as God intended...)
I'm off all of next week, unless I get called in. Here's to hoping I can get the Austin account down in my time off, here's to more fantastic vegetarian cooking. I made some (natural) chicken stir fry with a coconut-peanut sauce tonight with asian veggies and bean thread noodles. I thought I had soba noodles left in the cupboard, but they magically disappeared, boo. The bean noodles were interesting, almost looked like something that would crawl out somebody's butt (sorry! I really am...), but once you blocked that unpleasant thought from your mind, they weren't too bad. Probably have NO nutritional value, but didn't make you gag otherwise;-O
ttfn, Lillith Lunch tomorrow with the blogging gals-- here's to hoping none are axe murderers (which would suck).

March 15

The weather's been quite nice these past few days, upper 40's, low 50's... the massive piles of snow have been melting quickly, turning the yard into these odd, floating, glacier type structures (the water is flowing underneath the ice, never seen that before).
The gardens were finally exposed, and a bit of ground heave must have happened-- some of the bulbs are completely out of the ground, and quite a few are already sending up shoots. It looks like the daffodills were already blooming at the end of this month, but no obvious signs of the daffs coming up just yet.
We lost a chicken a couple weeks ago during our Austin trip; too bad she couldn't hang on for the warmer weather. She was one of the older girls, I'm surprised we haven't lost more of them this year.
Steak and BJ day was a huge success! We went to the meat market out in Elkhorn yesterday at the LAST minute to pick up some localy raised steaks. They were *by far* the best steaks we have ever eaten, bar none! Jake barely grilled them, so they were quite rare, and they cut like butter and tasted divine. I also bought a large bag of meat, burger and etc, I'm looking forward to some juicy burgers, my long time arch nemesis of vegetarianism. I'll have to stop back up in a few weeks and pick up some more; hopefully I can convince Jake to make the leap and get 1/4 cow for the freezer. Otherwise, nooooo more meat for this girl, I'm moving towards a more vegetarian diet anyway... I just can't support such a toxic industry for a product I barely like, anyway.

2 Variations on a Theme/Enchiladas:

I am *desperate* to get my account of our trip to Austin on the blog; here's to hoping that I get around to it before I FORGET some of the finer details.... (of course, I could always make stuff up, but I'm getting tired of that:-)

Anyhoodle:
I created two different enchilada-type recipes, having been inspired by our culinary journey to parts south into the land of waaaaay better food.
Here's the first, made last week (non-veggie version)
Chorizo and Buffalo stuffed poblanos (and enchiladas)
Mix 1 pound (raw) ground buffalo (or any other ground meat) in a mixing bowl with 1.5 tubes (raw) beef chorizo, 3/4 of a large onion (chopped), 1 tsp oregano, 1/2 tsp pan toasted cumin seed, the chopped tops of the poblanos (about 1/3 to 1/2 cup), 1/2 cup hominy (add after meat/veggies have been fairly well mixed so it doesn't get too squashed)
Stuff mix into 6 good sized poblanos that have had the tops removed and have been slit down the front. Place in a 9x13 inch pan (which has a wee bit o enchilada sauce, your recipe or prepared, in the bottom..), cover the peppers a bit with more enchilada sauce, and put a few random clumps of roasted veggie salsa on top (see recipe below). Cover with foil, and bake for 45 minutes at 375.
Serve, sprinkled with cheese and sauce from pan, with addl. veggie salsa.

There was a good amount of the meat mixture left, so I threw together a batch of enchiladas, using up the leftover enchilada sauce as well. I warmed 6 corn tortillas in the microwave (until soft), put some sauce in the baking pan, rolled each tortilla up with 1/8 cup (pan fried) meat mix and a sprinkle of cheese. I then warmed up the 6 remaining tortillas and filled up another small pan, covered them all up with enchilada sauce, sprinkled on some cheese, and then put them in the freezer. Now I can be a lazy-booty some other day when I have no motivation to cook (which has been far too often lately)!

Tonight's recipe (vegetarian):
cut one package of tempeh into 1 inch cubes and boil in water for 5 minutes, cool and chop. Saute 1/4 cup choppped onion, 1/2 cup chopped red bell pepper, 1/2 finely cubed zucchini, 1/4 cup finely chopped mushrooms and 1 clove chopped garlic in saute pan, about 5 mintes until softened. Add 1 tb (+/- to taste) chili powder, 1/2 tube vegetarian chorizo, 1/2 cup of the tempeh cooking water, 1/2 cup roasted veggie salsa (recip below), and 1/2 cup hominy. Heat until bubbly. Add 1/2 cup plain yogurt, stir to incorporate, and then add chopped tempeh.
Fill 8 whole wheat tortillas each with 1/2 cup filling, and place in a pan (again, put enchilada sauce on bottom). Top enchiladas with sauce and a sprinkling of cheese. Cover with foil and bake at 350-375 for 30 minutes, (if desired, remove foil and bake for an addl 5 minutes).

Tas-tee, and only the pickiest and stinkiest eaters will know that something is amiss with these enchiladas-- even my hubby complimented them (and nooooo, he didn't say they were "interesting"). Serve with a big ole veggie salad, topped with Newman's Own Lime Vinaigrette...

PAMELA JONES' ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE ROASTED VEGETABLE SALSA (ADAPTED) From "The Passionate Vegetarian" by Crescent Dragonwagon
MAKES ABOUT TWO CUPS


2 Roma or plum tomatoes, halved
4 tomatillos, husked and halved
1/2 small onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, with skins on
1-2 serrano chili peppers, whole
1 ancho or poblano chili, whole
2 whole hot Hungarian wax pepper,
2 whole jalapeño chili,
1 tablespoon virgin olive oil
1-3 tablespoons cilantro, stemmed
1/4 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds, toasted (optional)
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine tomatoes, tomatillos, onion, garlic, chilies, and peppers in a container with a fitted cover. Toss with oil and spread on non-stick baking sheets (probably 2).


Bake at 400 until peppers are blistered (about 40 minutes).


When cool enough to handle, peel, stem and seed the peppers (use gloves to protect skin). Place peppers, tomatoes, tomatillos and onions in a food processor.


Squeeze garlic out of their skins and buzz until smooth. Add cilantro, salt, and cumin seed to taste. Keeps in the refrigerator for up to a week.