holiday cheer

A Sinister Marketing Ploy or WORSE? Dun dun duunnnnn….

Jen6 Comments

I was goofing around the other day with the holiday specs that have been hanging around since our first Christmas as Mr. & Mrs. Interrupted (maybe even before that). I was snapping pictures of our nifty new Phillips LED lights that I picked up at Target at the end of the season last year,

when I noticed something odd.

How about a closer look?

And here’s one up by the ceiling:

I don’t know about you, but to me it appears that the letter “P” is being projected onto the wall by the green LED bulbs of my Christmas lights! None of the other lights seem to project a letter P (or any other shape for that matter), so what the hell? Is it some sort of subversive marketing campaign? If so, WHY? I ALREADY PURCHASED YOUR LIGHTS, PHILLIPS. Or maybe it’s that you are attempting to subtly infiltrate my Christmas pictures as a sort of subliminal advertising message for my relatives? Well FUCK YOU if that’s the case Phillips. I’m cropping your crappy-ass “P” out!

Or perhaps am I just crazy?

food

Saturday Stoup

Jen2 Comments

The other day I was chatting a friend of mine and, on a whim, I asked her what she was making for dinner. She said she had “salsa chicken” going in the crock pot and explained briefly how to make it. Unfortunately it was too late in the afternoon for me to make a crock pot meal, and my kitchen was entirely too messy for cooking right then anyway. But yesterday was one of those extremely rare days when I actually had my shit together before 10 am, so I decided to try my hand at “salsa chicken”. It turns out that I didn’t have any of the same ingredients she used on hand, so I improvised.

Everything was from Trader Joe’s (as usual) except the red salsa which was Full Circle brand from Big Y. You can use whatever YOU have on hand.

1 (16 oz?) jar green salsa
1 (16 oz?)  jar mild red salsa
1 15 oz. can tomato sauce
1 15 oz. can black beans
2 frozen chicken breasts
2 frozen chicken thighs
1/2 bag baby carrots

Dump everything into your crockpot (I used my smallish one) and cook for 8 hours on low (or until the chicken is done). Shred the chicken, serve over rice or in tortillas. As you can see, I chose the rice option. Yum! (I also tossed a couple of steamed broccoli florets into with mine for good measure). You could add a bag of corn, which is what my friend does, but my children detest corn. That’s right. My kids hate America. Whatever. Go over to my friend’s blog and bug her for her recipe if you want to try it her way. Hers might involve cheese.

holiday cheer · Knitting · random

Friday Update or, Life Without NaNoWriMo

Jen1 Comment

1. We put up our tree on November 28th.

Now to just get my Christmas shopping started finished. And the rest of my Christmas knitting done. And the pictures for the Christmas cards printed. And to put together a _____ for the grandmamas and — and —

2. I downloaded the new Sting album. Some thoughts: It is okay. Generally I do not care for Christmas albums that feature the “vocal stylings” of the artist; I much prefer an album with which I can sing along. Also, Sting should not make attempts to sing at the very very very bottom of his range. If I could get my money back, I totally would.

3. I started a Jayne hat for Mr. Interrupted.

It is stalled out because the red color I chose wasn’t cunning enough, evidently.

nanowrimo

やった

Jen6 Comments

That’s right, y’all, I did it!! And two days early, too!

stats:
Title: It Sucks To Be You
number of sex scenes: 1
number of main characters offed: 1
number of extremely evil agent Smiths: 1
number of mid-size cities nuked: 1
number of zombies blasted in the face with a shotgun: a shitton

We now resume our regularly scheduled knitting programming.

food · holiday cheer

Our First Gluten Free Thanksgiving

Jen3 Comments

This is the first Thanksgiving since going gluten-free/dairy free/soy free, so planning the menu required a bit of research and creativity. Here are some post-Thanksgiving thoughts and notes for posterity. Sadly there are no pictures. The entire meal was devoured before the thought of taking out my camera even occurred to me.

  • The Turkey: This year, as last year, featured turkey from Trader Joe’s and gluten-free (at least according to their customer service) and delicious.
  • The Stuffing: Not technically “stuffing” since I didn’t cook it in the bird. I followed this recipe from Crockpot365. I will definitely do this recipe next year, but I think I’ll do all corn bread instead of a mix of corn bread and rice bread. I might also add some pecans and a couple of boiled eggs and possibly an apple.
  • The Potato Mash: Yukon Gold Potatoes + Hemp milk + Earth Balance (soy free) = delectable.
  • The Gravy: I followed these directions on Gluten Free Girl only instead of using the Earth Balance (soy free) like I should have, I used palm shortening. FYI: Do not, ever, use shortening (of any sort) for gravy. The flavor was okay, but the mouth feel was … odd.
  • The Cranberry Sauce: Since we are trying to avoid cane sugar, maple sugar, and molasses (on top of everything else), I tried this recipe, sweetening the berries with honey. Next year I will use more honey. Probably a lot more honey. My sauce was extremely sour.
  • The Pie: This one from eHow, only I used agave nectar in place of the sugar. It was just like a “regular” pumpkin pie, seriously. There was no difference in taste or mouth feel. It was absolutely wonderful. No whipped cream for us though. Luckily we didn’t need it.

All in all, it was a mostly successful dinner. Maybe next year I will remember that, even though the package says “never frozen”, there will still be a huge chunk of ice in the center of the bird which prevents the breast and everything below (and including) the wings from getting up to temperature at the same time. *sigh*

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, everyone! Now, I’m off to finish my NaNo. Only 4200 more words to go!

TAS

Saturday Sky — a thousand words.

Jen3 Comments

This post today over at The Painted Sheep, reminded me of this extremely thoughtful and thought provoking post that my TAS (Totally Awesome Sister) wrote a couple of years ago about how she senses the change in seasons by noticing the color of the sky.

The sky begins to pale. At the height of summer, early in July, the heavens are a bright, clear, glorious cobalt blue, thick and saturated, soft like a velvet blanket. But come August, weeks after the Solstice, the velvet lifts, the blue grows thin, perhaps transparent. It pales to a weaker, whiter blue, like cerulean. The soft velvety thickness of the color is gone, replaced by a thin gauze: wispy and fluttering in the breeze–the blushing veil of Winter’s Bride.

My sister truly is a wonderful writer and I often think how her blog is so much better than mine. Do check out her whole post and savor the rich language as we head into the end of Autumn and winter’s silvery skies.

life

Wednesday Morning Link Roundup

Jen4 Comments

Having a sick kid the last few days has given me an excuse to stay home, get the house back in order, sneak in some knitting, and get caught up on my NaNo. Yes, I could have done all those things yesterday, but did I? No. I surfed the internet instead.

This cat is stubborn. Very very stubborn.

Out and about and can’t decide where to pull in and grab a bite to eat? This handy dandy flowchart will help you out.

Bored with cleaning up the kids’ toys? (Lord knows I am!) Try this instead.

Will somebody please pull these people over and take away their Photoshop license? Seriously.

This is cool, but also depressing in a way.

off topic · politics · rant

Adventures in Health Care

Jen7 Comments

I just got back from the ER with E4 who is having a bout of croup. While I was sitting there, I had a lot of time to think, mostly about how our health care system works, or doesn’t depending on your point of view.

I knew going into the ER what we were dealing with because croup has a very distinctive sound, but since E4 was having a hard time moving air into his lungs, and since his lips were turning blue, I figured he couldn’t wait until tomorrow to see the pediatrician. Luckily, the hospital is close and we were able to be seen right away. The PA came in and had a listen to his chest and throat. He said, “yes, it sounds like croup to me. We’ll give him some humidified oxygen, and some oral steroids, and I’ll do a throat culture to make sure there isn’t an infection. He’ll be fine.” So, imagine my surprise when, about 10 minutes later, 2 x-ray techs came in to take E4 for a chest x-ray. “Really?” I asked. “Yeah,” one of them replied. “The PA just wants to make sure his lungs are clear.”

Now, I have no problem getting tests done if they are warranted, but the PA just got finished telling me that E4’s lungs sounded clear and he was pretty confident that it was croup and not pneumonia. What bothered me the most is that he just ordered the test and didn’t even mention it to me, so when the x-ray techs came in to wheel E4 away, I didn’t really have much say in the matter. I would much rather have had the PA discuss it with me before hand. I probably would have opted out, saving a chest x-ray for if his cough got worse.

I know a large part of it is that the PA was covering his butt because we live in a litigious society, but the other thing, the thing most people don’t think about, possibly the real reason that so many tests are run, is that money for health care is largely seen as someone else’s. People say, “well, my insurance will cover testing, so go ahead and run every test imaginable”. But in my case, insurance will only cover 80%. Which means I’ll end up paying 20% of the bill on a chest x-ray I’m not convinced was needed. If the PA had just talked to me about it, made me a partner in our health care decisions, we could have saved me, and my insurance company, a little money. Not to mention, we could have spared E4 (and me!) a hefty dose of unnecessary radiation.

I admit to being a huge socialist when it comes to health care. I honestly believe that we need to have a national system similar to that of Canada or the UK. That said, I also think it would help a whole lot, even within our current system, if, rather than being mindless consumers of health care, we became educated, active participants. And yes, I mean health professionals, too. If they were to stop treating patients like uneducated brainless idiots and actually had a conversation with them about their options and the reasons for doing things (or not doing things) I imagine we could make the health care system just a little less of a money pit.

The good news: E4 will be fine. I can hear him in the living room right now, fighting with his brother.

Knitting · nanowrimo

Onward

Jen2 Comments

UPDATE: The widgets are fixed, hurrah!

NaNoWriMo continues. The word count widgets are broken (as you can see in my sidebar there) but we all soldier on. Actually this year so far has been really fun for me. Not like last year which was pretty much like having teeth extracted every single day for about three weeks. Blech. No, this year has been a fun and wild ride! I’ve had one character get tazed and kidnapped by government agents, while another character got fired from his job at Starbucks, and last night, two of my characters boosted a car! My word count, as of this morning, stands at 16,833. It was the easiest and funnest 16,833 words I have ever written. Hopefully I haven’t jinxed myself by saying that out loud in public.

And, I’ve been knitting too! The other night, I wrote well past my daily quota by the time the kids were in bed, so rather than spending the rest of the evening writing, I watched TV with the hubs and knitted. Using my own handspun, my first handspun, I cast on Ganomy at 9 pm and by 1 am I was finished:

[ravelry]

How is your November going?

links · nanowrimo

Classic Avoidance Behavior

Jen4 Comments

I need to do at least 3000 words on my NaNo before bed, but I’m procrastinating. I did the dishes. And the laundry. I watched The Daily Show on Hulu while knitting. I goofed around on the internet. I’m updating my blog. Why? I do not know. Hey look, a humorous adult novelty towel.