See the resemblance?
SOUP-er Friday 1 month Anniverary!
I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for a month! I expected to make 1 or 2 soups and get too busy so I’m really excited! For this SOUP-er Friday I wanted to expand my horizons and go outside my comfort zone a bit. I decided on Coq Au Vin (chicken braised in red wine).
Traditionally, its made with an old rooster but since I didn’t have access to an old rooster we choose to make it with all dark meat. I’m not a big fan of chicken, and when I do eat chicken I generally don’t eat dark meat so I was a little concerned that I wouldn’t like this soup.
But I shouldn’t have worried. If there is one thing I am learning for making stuff at home is that low slow cooking is like deep frying something. No matter what you put in, it comes out tender, juicy, and delicious!!
SOUP-er Fridays #3 Omnibus
Last week me and The Other came down with the flu. We still did SOUP-er Fridays, but switched to an easier soup than what was originally planned. We ended up making Cheddar Broccoli soup, which I normally don’t like, but this was good. Better than the Tomatoe Cream soup, but still not as good as the Beef Barley Soup.
Over the weekend I had a cat show. In between selling my own wares I was able to shop for some items for me. The best part of the show was when I found a show that stole silly kitty hats! Everyone who knows me will know how much I love 1. – wearing hats, and 2. – dressing up my cats. It’s the best of both worlds!! I also found another booth that sold human hats so I got one for myself as well (see point #1)
There was another shop that sold embroidered shirts…and embroidered toilet paper. Now there is something you have to buy when you see it. This is something rappers would have in their house – Ridiculous!!
I also found another use for my metal Starbucks card – is there anything that card can’t do!
I ate dinner Saturday night with my cousin and her husband at a Vietnamese restaurant. I had never tried Vietnamese food before but I really liked it. I had the Beef Rice Noodle Soup. The serving was HUGE and I had enough for 3 leftovers.
SOUP-er Fridays #2
So I’m a little late in posting this but it was Valentine’s Day! And I may have had a glass or two of wine…….
Regardless – here it is now! The second installment of SOUP-er Fridays! This week we made Creamy Tomato Soup. It was good, I ate it with grilled cheese (duh!) The soup was a little thicker than I like of my tomato soups – almost like eating pasta sauce! For the leftovers, The Other recommended I add more cream and that helped out a bit to make it more soupy and palatable.
And special thanks to Jackie for my Christmas gift of a PlatyPreserve!!! It can hold a full bottle of wine (although this time it only had to hold half). No messing with corks and its doing an awesome job of keeping the slight carbonation in my delicious Moscato.
Celebration Day!
“The Other” and I love an excuse to celebrate. We celebrate good days, bad days, and days where nothing happened. We are always buying each other little gifts and treats so although we don’t celebrate “Valentine’s Day” in the traditional sense, we do use it as an excuse for a celebration! This year I think we did pretty good for each other:
Backpack Tote from Love41. This is absolutly amazing and will last for a million years. I will probably do a separate post on this awesome company.
A chocolate box with chocolate pretzels inside! The Other wants all future storage containers in our house to be made of chocolate.
Dinosaur planters – they are real plants!
Deep fried peanuts – surprisingly delicious! (but what deep fried thing isn’t delicious…)
Some gifts for the kitties!
Brutus asks “Won’t you be my Valentine?”
Meeting Notes
I get pulled into a lot of meetings – some are necessary, some are productive, but most are just people passing the blame or telling each other how awesome you are. I found these while cleaning up over the weekend – I’ll let you guess which type of meeting these are from. Names have been changed to protect the “innocent”.
SOUP-er Friday!
I found this magazine last time I went to Mariano’s. I really love soup so I picked it up and went home to mark which ones I would like to try. Upon handing the magazine to “The Other” so he could begin preparing me my food he asked if it wouldn’t have been easier just to mark the soups I DIDN’T want to try. Perhaps – but that isn’t my style!
After further discussion in which I told him that every Friday we would cook a soup from the magazine and he rolled his eyes I picked the first soup – Beef Barley Soup. Probably my all time favorite soup.
I had a lot of fun shopping for the ingredients for this soup and couldn’t wait to try it. It was going to be a long soup – especially since we opted to make the stock from scratch rather than buy it in a box/can
The first step was to soften the onions and brown the bones and beef for the stock. It was a long process – especially the bones.
After that you added some more ingredients (red wine, bay leaf, etc) and let the stock simmer for 2 hours!
Once the stock was done, you strained out the onions, beef and bones, keeping the beef aside to add to the soup later. Ideally we would have let the stock cool (at least overnight if not longer) so we could de-fat it. However this was dinner and I was way to excite to care about a little extra fat or a slightly foggy broth.
The other ingredients for the soup were barley (obviously), mushrooms, carrots, onions, diced tomatoes, thyme, and the beef!
The beef was delicious after being slow cooked for 2 hours. Even with little to no seasoning it was fantastic! I can tell you I ate more than a little while prepping the other ingredients. Brutus like it as well.
Once the ingredients went it, it was another hour of simmering until the soup was ready. Luckily I filled up on all that beef during prep 🙂
The final product was delicious. My only complaint was that the beef to vegetable ratio was off (we had added all the beef since we didn’t have another use for it, but you were only supposed to add 2 cups). I know its a silly complaint – too much beef? how can that be? But here we are. I think in the future I am going to serve it over some egg noodles or mashed potatoes. Carbs will help – carbs always help!
Brutus on the other hand had no complaints except that he didn’t get enough beef. Here is him in a sleepy stupor
Watch Haul
I love watches almost as much as I love kittens and hats and shoes. I got a couple of new additions recently that I am excited to show off
The first couple I got for Christmas. The green Freelook is from my parents and the acetate Nixon is from Bri. They are both pretty awesome. The Freelook has a rubbery band so it stretches and never gets too tight. The Nixon I enjoy more than I thought I would – especially after years of teasing my brother for buying only Nixon watches. It’s very light, classic but not boring, and due to the color pallet goes with a wide variety of clothes.
The next watches I picked up from Macy’s one Friday evening. I was actually in there for two different watches (the Lacoste and Kors shown later) but those weren’t available in store. So we got to shopping and ended up with a Diesel and a Guess. Neither of these are brand I would normally buy but I love the steampunky look of both and the Diesel is ridiculously large and a lot of fun to wear. You can’t tell from this image but the Guess is actually a rose gold which is a color category I have been looking to fill for sometime.
These last two watches were what I went into the store for but ended up having to order online.
The Lacoste was mainly to replace my other Freelook watch which is all white and sparkly. I wear it so much though it is getting worn out and who doesn’t love a rainbow alligator!! The second watch is a Michael Kors and is a kitty face with sparkly eyes which is absolutely amazing! You can’t really see well in this image but there are actually little kitty ears as well. Its adorable! kitties!
Does this discount card make me look old?
My AARP cards arrived in the mail today – time to start raking in the discount!!!!!
So what this tells me is my online browsing and buying habits have pegged me as over 50 – super. I did check the AARP discounts site and my first thought was “these are all deals for old people” but I guess discounts at Denny’s and the Geek Squad are what I have to look forward to in my future.
Freehand Nail Art
I have been using nail stickers which are cool and I am getting better at applying them straight. They go on dry and with the addition of a top coat (Thanks for the tip Bri!) they do last a lot longer. However most of the designs are so intricate that you can tell they aren’t painted.
Yesterday I wanted to try some nail art on my own. I tried some ideas but they didn’t work as I thought (basically sponging one color over another). I then searched YouTube and found this helpful video: http://youtu.be/eFtkkiV8HrI
This is my first attempt at freehand nail art. My right hand isn’t as good as my left due to my right-handedness, but overall for a first attempt I think its pretty good. I am excited to try more things in the future and I will post when I do.
Squeezing the Winzig
Winzig was diagnosed with pancreatitis a few months back and due to his vomiting and general not feeling well he wasn’t eating as much as he should. Winzig has always been a picky eater, only eating a few pieces of kibble at a time and eating no treats but the original Party Mix. To make up the deficit in his calories, we started tube feeding him.
At first he struggled a bit but being the good kitty he is, eventually he gave up and let us tube him 1 can of A/D a day. This was made much easier thanks to a “how-to” video sent by my Aunt (thanks again Aunt Pam!)
Now he comes and finds us when he is hungry and meows until we tube him. I was a bit concerned about this so I called the vet and told her that I didn’t think he was eating on his own anymore. She said as long as he is alerting us he is hungry and we are tubing him its ok. So 3 times a day, we push 60 cc of food down his throat.
On top of that Pothole is not eating as much as she should – we think still some side effects from her vestibular disease – so the vet has approved tubing her as well. She is much more fighty and is definitely eating on her own so the most we do her is 2 times a day. And its messy.
With all the cats being tube fed, Brutus – who loves to eat – thought that maybe if he sat nice on the feeding towel he could get a tube or two as well.
Konomi code FTW
I got a new TV this week and in the process of setting up the smart apps I logged in with the wrong Netflix account. I tried to logout but there was no option to do so from the app. I tried various troubleshooting – turning the TV on and off, trying to uninstall the app (which I couldn’t do either), pressing various menu buttons, etc.
I also did some google searches and found nothing on Samsung’s site and the any other info was from a site called “Ask me fast” or links to that site from others. The advice was terrible – on your remote press up up down down left right left right – which as most of you should know is the Konomi code for old Nintendo games so I thought it was bullshit advice.
This went on for sometime and eventually I got frustrated enough to try resetting my TV to clear out the Netflix app. However Samsung locked me out of a full TV reset – which almost resulted in a ranting phone call to Samsung telling them that I should be able to reset my TV whenever I wish! At this point though I smartly decided to take a break and snuggle Brutus.
After this I did some more searching and found this unlikely video: http://youtu.be/Zl6lL2NijmA
This is actually my old TV (the one the new one replaced) but unless this was another expertly orchestrated misinformation the Konomi code might work. I was defeated enough at this point to try anything so I started up the Netflix app on my tv, held up the remote, and proceeded to press on the arrow pad up up down down left right left right up up up up and OMFG it worked!! The TV asked if I wanted to deactivate the app, I said yes, then went back in and typed in the correct credentials!
Yet another example of why video games are good for kids
de-stinkified
This is Brutus.
He may look like a gentleman, but he smells like poop. He is a kitten so he gets dirty, and on top of it he is not good at cleaning himself (how do you teach a kitten to clean himself?!) Furthermore, he has a sensitive tummy so he frequently has diarrhea which he likes to dance in.
So today I decided to give him a bath. He had mixed feelings about the event. And by mixed feelings I mean fear, anger, and unhappiness.
Over all he was pretty good, He did struggle a bit but no where near as much as the other kitties. He didn’t even hold a grudge afterwards, instead choosing to snuggle in my lap.
He still had an air of “pooiness” about him afterwards. Some of this was probably due to the immense about of poo-stink he had on him. Some might have been “startle-farts” which happens when Brutus gets scared or nervous.
I dried him off a bit with a towel but he was shivering so I used the hair dryer on him for a bit but he really didn’t like that. After about an hour of licking himself dry he was not only his soft fluffy self again, but all the poo-stink was gone.
I’m not sure how long this new poop-free Brutus will last, but I will enjoy it while it does.
Fancy Fantasy Nails
Found these at the Mariano’s and thought I would try them. They went on easy, but didn’t stick for more than a day. I also didn’t like the length – the package said “short length” but they were actually really long. I cut them down (you can see them below) and they work a lot better.
I have another pair and I think I will use nail glue and cut them down – hopefully they will last longer. However if I didn’t have that other pair, I wouldn’t use these again and instead go back to the stickers. Those seem to last longer and are still easy to use.
How to draw a cat in 2 steps
Now you know why cats act the way they do…
Showing off the waves from my new wand
Slightly inappropriate but actually does pretty great waves.
Archangel by Sharon Shinn – 1 star
Bitches be crazy and Rachel is the craziest of them all.
This quote:
{“Gabriel thinks I am that lawless. I am that vengeful. I am that cruel.””You have given him reason to think so,” Josiah said very gently. She nodded. She was so weary she wanted to sink to the floor, sift into the earth, dissolve into particles of dirt. “Every reason,” she said tiredly. “But he still should not think it.”}
made me about want to throw the book across the room. Rachel is mad at Gabriel because he thinks she is cruel, which she is, and has been, but instead Rachel thinks Gabriel should think she is nice. This borders on emotional abuse!! Later he wants to stop her from going but knows she wouldn’t like it, but then she gets angry that he doesn’t stop her. WTF!! These types of interactions are repeated over and over throughout the book. This is not a lover, this is someone who is seriously bad for your health.
At the end of the book: Gabriel knows he loves Rachel, and Rachel realizes that Gabriel loves her but she STILL drugs him to complete her total dominance over him. This isn’t a case of simply humbling an arrogant person – this is destroying everything about who they are and making them a slave. Rachel’s ultimate revenge.
Other issues I had with the book:
- I realized Raphael was the bad guy the first time Rachel meets him face to face (27% in) so it made the rest of the book boring and predictable.
- I didn’t like the disbelief in God. I myself am an Atheist but if Angels appeared who could sing and change the weather on command I would consider that sufficient proof that a god did exist. The reasons for not believing were weak – “Oh sure god can change the weather but he has never killed me so I think he is fake”. WEAK!
- I was not impressed by the angels overall – this is a simple Cinderella story. Replace archangel Gabriel with Prince Gabriel or Rich Gabriel or whatever. Same old story with no new information. I am all for a new spin on an old fairy tale, but this wasn’t it.
I’m have heard the other books get better, and I’m sorry to hear that because I won’t be reading them. I wish this one was good. I did not like this book at all, and spent most of my time yelling at the characters and their actions. This book was an exercise in frustration.
Amazing technology helps sufferers of Parkinson’s
The effects of DBS on the motor symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease
As awesome as this video is – and it is truly amazing! – it makes me both proud of and sad for the human race. There are so many people out there who shun “western medicine” in favor of folk lore, unproven and dangerous procedures, myths and downright bullshit. Science is fantastic – we would not be where we are today without it. Depending on energy, magic, prayer or whatever isn’t going to save lives. Science is.
wub wub wub
I love this new Pandora lyric feature – I always wondered what the second line of the 3rd verse was!!!
Remember the Patriot Act
With the recent Sandy Hook shooting, there has been an increased call for gun control laws. Items such as the assault weapon ban, closing the gun show loophole, and magazine capacity limits are all back on the table. I will not try to argue that what happened at Sandy Hook wasn’t horrible – it was. It is made worse for many people by the fact that so many children were killed.
However we should not allow our outrage, shock and anger to have us make rash decisions.
In the wake of the 9/11 attack, many people – myself included – wanted a solution in terms of legislation. Something that would prevent such an attack from ever happening again regardless of how it affected my life. I admit that I was willing to give up some of my freedoms so that we could catch and punish the terrorists. After all – I wasn’t a terrorist so what did I have to fear?
Sadly, the effects of the Patriot Act do affect me and now there is no going back. I must provide proof of innocence when applying for a mortgage, I must go through x-rays machines at the airport, I must have my email/phone communications monitored. The government uses the Patriot Act as an excuse to harass good Americans but how much has it actually helped to stop terrorism?
Violence is a problem – but before we pass sweeping gun control legislation that turns honest Americans into suspects and criminals we need to step back, take a breath and think rationally. Any decision we make in anger will be the wrong one.
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