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The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline. -Proverbs 1:7

Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost you all you have, get understanding.-Proverbs 4:7


Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Squash Fest


Here is how it goes at my house: If you are over the age of 18 and try to do something you would like to be distraction-free, that's probably not going to happen.  And when you get up to to take care of whatever the distraction (in today's case, distractions) is (kids, door, phone, could be anything or all of those within an hour's period...just sayin'), it's likely an animal of some sort will have taken over your spot when you get back.  Presumptuous cat.


Vegan zucchini bread.  To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of zucchini bread.  Probably because everyone had it at their houses when I was a kid (as a result of people not understanding zucchini will take over if you let them?)and...blah.  Evidently, I've never made it.  Who knew?  Alicia didn't know what it was.  Poor kid has been deprived.  I find it semi-disturbing bits of zucchini are identifiable in the finished product.  Is it supposed to be like that? 

Nonetheless, one loaf is already gone.  It was flavorful and had a good crumb.  I won't let them eat the other one until I see what it's like when cooled.  I'm not all that confident at vegan baking yet and never know what it's going to be like when done.

  I used one large-ish zucchini...so 10 points for me.


Dinner= Sesame noodle bowls with tofu and roasted summer squash in a peanut sauce.  I get 10 points for figuring out how to use yet another squash and a bonus 50 because the kids ate it.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Iron Chef?




It occurred to me the vegetables are going to take over if I don't do something soon.

But, what to do with all of that?  What would the Iron Chef do?

New goal=figure it out.  We are beach bound in a week and pretty sure the housesitter would not like to be crushed by a mountain of vegetables.

Hmm...if in doubt, mix up some olive oil with crushed garlic, basil and sea salt.  It goes good with everything.  Tomato salad for lunch, on bread with dinner...Ryan got all fancy and put both the oil and tomatoes on his bread.  (Can you believe he didn't pose it for a picture before he ate it?)

Dinner was cabbage and white bean soup.

So, uh...yeah...at the end of the day we are down 3 tomatoes and a half head of cabbage.  Tomorrow I'll do better.

New favorite song (that is played on mainstream Christian radio...just to be clear which category of favorites it belongs in).

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Mid-Summer Analysis

And so after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised. Hebrews 6:15

I love summer.  Because I get to stay home and lounge about all day and do whatever I feel like doing whenever I feel like doing it.  I usually have some agenda for the summer and I've usually got it all planned out with stuff that's going to happen.  This year's plans were mostly stuff for the kids. Stuff that was going to take them out of here.  Because I had this Master's I had put off finishing and I needed to finish it before it expired (this year).

Basically, I didn't plan anything exciting for me.  I was just hoping I would end the summer with a finished Master's and figured I'd be ecstatic about that.  (I figured that's how people generally feel when they finish something.  I don't have enough experience with that to actually know.)

(I've  written out and deleted this post three times this week.  Some things, words are not good enough for.)

Suffice it to say, my summer has not turned out at all like I thought it would turn out.

The way it has turned out, no way could I have planned.

Words are not enough.

If I was going to try and tell you what happened, it could only be descriptions of what I was doing or what was going on...  "Revisiting unbearable...a place I knew, but thought I'd never visit again." "Not being able to get up from that hard bench while I heard the most beautiful music in the world being played at 3 a.m."  "Sleeping at the foot of the altar in the calm of the literal storm after experiencing the most wild contending I have ever seen."  "Not being afraid of a snake, because my irrational fear of snakes was not greater than something I wanted/needed."  "A ton of laying around on concrete."  "Being trippy.  For days." "Fighting someone to the death (or at least to rug burns), for the duct tape on their belly (which was evidently a surprise to at least one on-looker?)."  "Turning my entire world upside down without any real direction other than I was supposed to do that and then subsequently freaking out and then later questioning what it was I was doing and why."  "Finding out why."  "Staying out all night."  "Long talks in the dark."  "Long silences in the dark."  "Being able to see a figurative picture that came with an explanation I would have to quote both the writer of Hebrews and Eminem to explain."  "Likening 18 months to the 25 year span (because those 18 months feel like 25 years) Abraham had to wait for Isaac."  "Pure honesty."  "Letting someone go while continuing to hold onto them so tightly...because that is the plan."

Wondering why God is so good to me.

I finished my Master's (except for the defense).  It was a lot of work.  Turns out, I don't feel ecstatic about it.  I don't feel anything about it.  It's not even a blip on my summer radar in its freshness of completion.  In 10 years, I bet I don't even remember it.  It will be completely grown over with a month's worth of memories I'll never be able to fully tell you about.


Sunday, July 22, 2012

And He's Off...



This having one child in the house at a time is making for a quiet house.  Alicia arrived home at 1 in the morning, there was a quick unpacking/repacking of the large suitcase and Jac was at the drop-off point by 7 a.m.  (Which meant those of us who are currently at home too a nap today.)

Not like I finished her room (but I will), but I want to also get into his while he's gone.  He's a little too old for the solar system theme going on in there.

Hmm...maybe another busy (but quiet) week for me?

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Sneak Peek

One of my plans for this week was to redecorate Alicia's room while she's gone.  I bought some stuff and that's about as far as it went.

Umm...she comes home in 2 days.  She does not know I'm in there, which means I need to do it before she gets back.

The biggest part of the project is building an armoire.  I built one for Jac a couple of years back and never got around to hers.  Hmm...she didn't forget.  I haven't even bought the wood for it yet.  Maybe tomorrow.

She did clean in there before she left.  I've already taken the curtains down, but this is pretty much how she left it:




It's not all that exciting in there.  She has gotten rid of a lot of her "kid" stuff and now it looks kind of bare.

This is the stuff I bought.  She wants a Paris themed room, but I can't bring myself to go whole hog on that.  Because everyone is doing that right now and blah. 

I was going to paint, but changed my mind on that for now.  Too many other things happening in there.  Tomorrow is building, sewing, painting furniture, cleaning, etc...


I'm obviously not a decorator and pretty much just rely on what I like.  Just mess around with colors and whatnot until I find it visually appealing.

I find this grouping visually appealing.  Not sure how she'll feel about having pictures of herself in her own room, but I like it.  I guess if she doesn't, we can just pick some others and have them made into black/white prints.  It doesn't cost hardly anything to have that done...which is a good thing, because I ordered a bunch more for another grouping.  All of her. :-) 





Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Fake Meat

Soo...I'm not really into fake meat.  Because it's weird.  The whole concept, actually. 

But, I was thinking I should branch out of the box a little bit and try some stuff I wouldn't ordinarily buy.

The first was tempeh.  To be honest, I don't like the way it looks and that one factor has kept me from it all the way up until now.  As it turns out, it's o.k.-ish.  Ryan liked it.  Jac and his friend liked it (on white bread buns with fake mayo...blech).  I wasn't crazy about the final result, but will also admit I didn't put any real effort into trying to make it fabulous.  What I was really trying to do was hurry and cook something so I could get on with my life.  I can sort of see it being better with pita, red onions and tzatziki sauce...maybe something like this

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The second choice turned out really well and I suspect will become a regular feature around here.  It was sauteed cabbage and apples with a vegan apple and sage sausage.  Everyone loved it.

The recipe was given to me by a friend and I looked everywhere online to find a link to it.  That was a no-go.  If you are interested, you will have to e-mail me and I can send you the PDF.

Deep Thoughts in the Middle of the Night....

I have a rule that I am not allowed to send e-mails after dark.  Because, for some reason, once the sun is down, I'm kind of crazy.  But, I don't know it until I wake up again in the daylight and then am forced to consider such e-mails and it never turns out good.

This isn't even about e-mail, I just thought I'd put that out there.  :-)

Mostly, I just had a thought concerning my random life.  It has occurred to me if one lives long enough, it all comes together somehow and starts making sense.  Which means, clearly, I've been living long enough that I saw a picture of something that made sense and I was all "huh." about it.

That's all there is to say about that.  Huh.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Colombia Bound

 Will I spend the whole day thinking about the fact I let my child leave the country without me? I hope not. She's in good hands.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

There's really no good title for today.


Today...just...well...not inspired.  Hate it when reality steps in with it's boring presence.


Dinner.  :-)  Proof I'm not for you people out there who accuse me of being completely committed to good food.  Also, note there are only two boxes.  Because I let my kids have free reign in the freezer department and they did not pick anything remotely related to actual food.  Occasionally, I like to make their day.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

We still gotta eat.

I feel like I've been glued to homework for days.  In reality, it's only been about 48 hours on and off (mostly on).  Just a few more days and I'll be free of learning.  Hopefully.

Ryan went off his juice fast, which means I'm back to thinking I should prepare meals again.  When I was pondering the whole dinner event earlier (and the amount of time I didn't want to devote to it), my girl E reminded me of something quick and simple...grilled tofu with vegetables. 


It's easy.  Make a marinade with a little olive oil, fresh pressed garlic, lemon juice and whatever herbs you have growing.  I used rosemary, tarragon, basil and thyme.  Cube up a block of tofu.  You can press it if you want.  I didn't.  Coat the tofu with the marinade.  Chop up a bunch of vegetables...whatever you have...and throw them in the bowl.  GENTLY stir it all up so marinade is on all.  You can cook it right away, I suppose, but I kind of walked off and left it for a few hours.


I use my cheater grill.  It's one of those contraptions you just plug into the wall in the kitchen.  In my defense, I was going to buy Ryan a new grill for outside on Father's Day, because something is wrong with the one we have.  But he said "WHAT?  WHY?  We don't eat meat."  He had a point. 

Oh, I grill on foil.  Because I'm not washing that thing.

Remember quick and simple?  It's more like "simple".  You can't just grill all of that at once.  I think I had to split it up in 4 batches on the grill which meant I was just standing around doing nothing while all that was happening.

Oh.  I did try to cut up a mango.  Was going to cut up 3 of them and call them "dessert".  But...if there's one thing I suck at it's cutting up mangos (mangoes?).  After the first one, which turned out horribly by the way, I gave up and resumed standing around doing nothing.

And then I remembered hummus.  We didn't have any.  Well, we do now...because I made some while I was standing around doing nothing.  If you are going to be making hummus, you might just as well double it up so you can make a little "hummus delivery" to someone you know who likes it.



And now I should get back to homework.  I wonder if they even read all that stuff.  Perhaps I'll turn in a paper written in the style I write here...all grammatically incorrect with sentence fragments and whatnot...just to see.  Or, maybe not.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Peach Jam

Let's just say I found a good deal on organic, local-ish (Virginia...probably 150 miles away) peaches.  And then brought them home and was like "Ummm...I got a little out of control with the buying."  Three batches of jam (which is way sweeter than I like my jam to be, but the kids love it) later...16 half-pints for us and 1 pint for Alicia to take as a gift to the family she is staying with in Colombia.

While I'm just saying...let's just say I've been living an extremely unbalanced life for the past two weeks and I've allowed a mountain of work to grow which is totally stressing me out.  If you know me, you know that means I have a habit of just finding more projects unrelated to whatever it is I am supposed to be doing.  I'm down to the wire (with an impossible amount of work to be done) and I'm still messing around doing stuff that is compounding the problem.

God help me.

Friday, July 6, 2012

Le Potager

I have been very neglectful of the garden.  First, my back was hurt and everything went in late.  And then I was busy and pretended it didn't exist.  Tomorrow...next week...I'll get to it at some point.  I went out there last night and waded through the weeds to see if anything was still alive.  There was food out there. 

Which motivated me to get up this morning with the purpose of clearing out the weeds so I could see what was there.







It appears I am going to be overrun by squash and cucumbers.  I planted several kinds of heirloom tomatoes and then forgot what was what.  Now that they are forming, I can see what they are.  Pole beans are coming up nicely.  The rhubarb is huge.  The herb garden overfloweth.  The eggplants have blossoms.  I've never grown eggplant (and probably don't even like it), so not quite sure what to expect with that.  It seems I forgot to plant peppers.  I think there's a jalapeno or two in there somewhere, but I forgot the bells.  Maybe I can find some plants tomorrow.  I've got space for them.

It's got a ways to go to look like I want it to look, but this is the best looking garden I've had in a few years. (Because I'm pretty good at losing interest in it every year.)



I have this strange peach tree that has only made peaches once.  Every year, it makes a million little green ones and then they all fall off.  This year...I don't know what is going on other than there are peaches.  Some of them are diseased, because I suspect my tree is diseased, but we have peaches.  So weird. 

The kids like to play stick ball with the bad ones.

One random picture of Luna Bleu...because she's so crazy and compliant with me messing with her.



Thursday, July 5, 2012

MIA

My friend sent me these pictures last night.  I love them.  A lot.

I've sort of been occupied for about 10 days and haven't been taking pictures of anything or even doing anything I haven't already told you about.  Totally occupied...consumed...

I don't have words to say anything more.