Random

First, thank you, Foodie, for making my day. Second, this may help with the following image complete with Pop-Up Video!, which totally needs to make a comeback. I'm just saying. For those few of you who didn't like Pop-Up Video, there's another version of better quality that features the Rick Roll, which is a little to close to my little dance I do when I'm sitting and want to get my groove on.

I promise a real post soon.

Organization (cha cha cha)

This is going to sound crazy for those who read this and work with me, but I love the organization at work. Not the part where the people before me organized and labeled wrong, but what I do like is that everything (seemingly) has its own place. Or at least ample space for things to have their own places. At home, I don't have that luxury. The selling point for my current apartment was the fact that the units came with either a fireplace (fun at Christmas, not fun for a hot-blooded person like me) or built-in bookshelves. I immediately requested a unit with bookshelves and would not settle for one with a fireplace. It was that important to me. Anyway, one day I would love to have a room (or multiple rooms) with wall to wall bookshelves so I can keep my movies, books, cookbooks, etc. I always loved the grand library in those manors in older movies.


So because I crave organization (I bet my Giraffe is laughing at this statement), I am in love with websites that help me out. Thanks to Posie, I discovered a wonderful little community that helps you organize your knitting and crocheting projects. At the moment, you have to sign up to get on the waiting list because it's in beta mode, but soon that will not be the case. It's called Ravelry (cute name!) and here's a peek at what it looks like from the inside!


It reminds me of another one of my favorite websites, Goodreads. Goodreads allows you to set up an electronic library of the books you have read, are reading, and want to read. Gone are the days when I would wander around the bookstore or library aimlessly asking myself, "Now, what was it I wanted to read?" If I remember to check my list, this is no longer a problem. It's also a nice way to see when you read a certain book to bring back childhood memories. I have everything on my list from the Boxcar Children books that I read in elementary school to things I read in my college lit class like Gilgamesh and Dante's Inferno. If you can see in this little picture, the last book I finished was "Big Boned" by Meg Cabot. Fun little read to fall asleep to.


I'm currently reading 4 books, which is a first for me to have more than one book at a time, because I feel the need to satisfy those different parts of my brain. I have a health book, a biography, a bestseller, and now a book on CD that everyone read in middle school to listen to
while driving to work and everyone is either road-raging, applying make-up, or fighting to stay awake. Not me. I will be reliving those awkward moments of my youth where no one felt pretty and everyone was singing Bush and Nirvana. Yeah, I'm a young'un.

Hillbilly Housewife

I discovered the Hillbilly Housewife blog before I started my own, which would have been about 3 months ago. I was (and still am) in need of trying to figure out how to live on a tighter budget as well as bite the bullet and cook for myself more than I was eating out. This site was perfect! It gave me a plethora of ideas as well as delightful insight to keeping your family fed.

You can learn such handy bits of information such as:

• Feeding your family for $45
• Items that are always a bargain
• Ways to cut corners
  
• Recipes
  
• and more!

It's a lot of fun to just to browse, but you might find yourself picking up a tip here or there.

P.S. - I'm still sick, but better. And according to my scale this morning, I've dropped around 10 pounds in a couple of weeks. Either 1.) Those were some heavy germs! or 2.) The scale battery is dying. I'm hoping for #1.

I Need My Momma

It's that time of year when the weather starts changing, flowers start poking their heads out of the dirt to reveal beautiful colors, and people get sick. I am one of those people today. Giraffe got the flu a while back when it was going around, and I had something not as bad before that. I think that "not as bad something" is back with a vengeance.

Normally people have that one home remedy that claims to cure all ills, such as whiskey and lemon, honey, or a good batch of chicken soup. My family doesn't have anything like this. We're not even a big, affectionate type family. When I was younger, I was heavily into sports, which left me wide open for an injury. Before one of the games, the third basegirl and I were tossing the ball around to warm up. The coach came up to talk to me, but Third Basegirl didn't notice. So all of a sudden I hear my name called in a frantic manner, I turn, and wham! Softball to the forehead. It swelled up so big it looked like I had a golf ball under my skin for a couple of weeks. Normally when something like this happened, the mom of the injured player would come running onto the field all in a panic that their baby had been hurt. (See Bill Engvall's "T-Ball and Indian Guides" on his album, Dorkfish.) My mom, on the other hand, would glance up to make sure I was alright and when she assessed that I was, remained seated on the bleachers. My tangent is to demonstrate how when people get sick in my family, you don't get doted on, which is mostly the way I like it.

I do, however, like when my mom would peek into my room to ask if I "needed anything" and sometimes I would, such as another glass of Tang, bowl of soup, or popsicle. She didn't come in, pat my face, check my temperature every five seconds, and tuck me in so tight I couldn't breathe. This is apparently what growing up was like in my Giraffe's house. Yikes.

I wish I had a great soup recipe to share. Not to mention, something that would make me feel better than I am right now. I guess my version of chicken soup at home is something I think about when I get sick. Mom always had alphabet noodles on hand so I'd pour in a handful of those in some chicken bouillon and add some Paul Prudhomme poultry seasoning when it was done. There was also soda in the house at all times so I'd drink it to settle my stomach with my soup.

I guess overall my family has a hodge podge of things that help when I get sick but most of all, it's just the presence of loved ones nearby that does the trick. Luckily, I get Good Friday off and will be trekking home to settle some more of my grandfather's estate as well as gather up my mom's things from the house. Many pictures to follow because that place is a housewife's dream. Or anybody's dream, really. You'll see.

Loveless Cafe

Last night, Giraffe and I met Victoria and Bo to eat a local favorite, the Loveless Cafe. It's the "meat-and-three" to end all meat-and-threes. With its rustic charm and Southern appeal, it's one of the city's hot spots and causes a 2+ hour wait on Sunday afternoons. Here's a snippet of their history from their website:

Originally known as the Harpeth Valley Tea Room, The Loveless Motel and Cafe first started serving its famous fried chicken and biscuits in 1951 when the property was purchased by Lon and Annie Loveless. They set up picnic tables in the front yard and sold chicken from the front door to travelers driving up and down US Highway 100. Soon the Loveless family converted the rooms of the early 1900's home into the dining room and kitchen of the Loveless Cafe and enlarged the menu to include country hams that were cured, smoked and carved on the premises. Lon Loveless ran the motel and handled the hams while hungering crowds were drawn to Annie's homemade preserves and from-scratch biscuits - one of few secret recipes that has remained unchanged to this day.

Vicki and Bo had never been so it was a lot of excitement to try to contain. As you can see, Vicki couldn't hide it any longer once we visited the Hams and Jams gift shop.


Around the restaurant are other shops including a bicycle shop, art store, and a clothing boutique. Not to mention, other items of interest including:

Photo opportunities,

swings (looks like she's got a secret, eh?),

and a tractor.

Before we had left from work, another friend, Foodie, was giving us the rundown on what to eat. He suggested fried chicken, meatloaf, hashbrown casserole, lima beans, and sweet potatoes. Not all at the same time. I don't think. He also took a picture of the neon sign at night that inspired me to do the same. Although his was taken in the rain and reminds me of the Bates Motel, which makes me very happy in my warped mind. Let's compare! Mine is first, his is second.



I also recommend that you go listen to The Red Stick Ramblers' song "That's What I Like About the South." It's as if they came to the Loveless for dinner and wrote this song at the table.

Bread Bricks

This past weekend, I got the urge to make some bread for the office since I usually try to make something new to bring in every couple weeks or so. The recipes I had in my newly assembled cookbook (pictures to come) weren't speaking to me. Instead, I decided to make yeast rolls to go along with the already planned recreation of one of my favorite meals at Texas Roadhouse, Roadkill. Roadkill is chopped steak with onions and mushrooms smothered in either gravy or Monterey Jack cheese. I opt for cheese and no mushrooms. Usually, Giraffe gets a sweet potato, so I did sweet potato fries since I do not like sweet potatoes any other way. Now, the arguably best part of Texas Roadhouse is the butter that goes with the rolls. Cinnamon butter. *faint*

So I get to searching on my favorite recipe spots and find this one on All Recipes:

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups hot water
• 1/2 cup margarine
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 cup cold water
• 2 (.25 ounce) packages active dry yeast
• 5 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 eggs

DIRECTIONS

1. Melt margarine in hot water. Add sugar and salt and stir. Add cold water and yeast. Stir to dissolve yeast.
2. Add 3 cups flour and mix. Add eggs and 2 1/2 - 3 cups more flour. Mix, cover and let rise until dough doubles in size.
3. Punch down and let rise 30 more minutes or until doubles.
4. Make walnut size balls of dough. Place about 2 inches apart in well-buttered 9 x 13 inch pan. Bake in a preheated 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) oven for 30-45 minutes. Brush top of rolls with margarine while hot.
   

One of the cool things about this site is its ability to modify the recipes by changing the quantity and it adjust accordingly. I halfed it and was in for a surprise as I was adding the flour. Notice the second step where it says "add 3 cups of flour...and 2 1/2-3 cups more flour." This did not change when I modified the recipe to half. So right before I blindly did as the recipe asked, I did the oh-so-difficult math in my head.

"It asks for a total of 2 and 3/4 cups of flour...but it says to add 3 then 2 1/2-3 cups more...but...I only needed 2 and 3/4 cups flour...this can't be right."

So I changed the recipe back to its original form and found that it didn't change the directions to what I wanted. Not to bad-mouth All Recipes, because I really do like them, but just make sure you read your recipes thoroughly (preferably before you start cooking anything. I'm still learning that one.) so you don't ruin something that could have been avoided. And no, to answer your question, the gumbo couldn't have been avoided. I don't care what you say. Stop judging me!

After this hurdle, I managed to get the dough to seemingly the right texture before I set it out for the yeast to do its thing. Since I was confined to a time frame, I don't think I let the bread rise as much as it needed to. It rose some, but not quite enough in the end. I thought I was going to be real cute and roll up balls of dough and place them in my new muffin tins to make cloverleaf rolls. They turned out to be little misshapen bricks of destruction. They tasted okay to me. Just a very dense bread flavor. However, I made cinnamon butter! I smeared enough on each roll I ate, which made the rolls not so bad.

Cinnamon Butter

Ingredients:

butter, whipped (won't work well if not whipped...kinda like a man. I crack me up.)
honey
cinnamon

Mix ingredients together until it tastes good. Seriously.

I made two pans worth of rolls, so if nothing else, I can feed them to the geese. Provided I want them to sink all the way down to the bottom of the pond. Or I could use them in place of a softball. Softball season is coming up, after all.

To anyone who visits this site regularly (yeah, all of two of you), I'm trying out a new feature on the main page. Every week I do a Top 5 List a la High Fidelity. In case you don't know where it is, let me show you:


As you can see, it's right above the Flickr thingy on the left side of the page. I just throw something up there depending on what kind of mood I'm in. I'm always welcome to suggestion!

Boyfriend Chronicles, Part II

I guess it's about time to share another sordid tale of love from years past. Ha. This is still high school we're talking about, so at least there's some drama.

After my first relationship gone sour, I was enjoying the single life. However, after a while, I began longing for someone since my one and only relationship thus far had fizzled, so I was still trying to figure out how relationships worked. I had a lot of friends in the band, and because it's all one big family anyway, people tend to hear and see more than they bargained for. Let's just say everybody knows everyone's business. There are absolutely no secrets in a high school marching band.

The fall, aka marching season, of my sophomore year, we were en route to an out of town football game on the bus. I started out sitting towards the front of the bus with a friend, but wanted to talk to some more friends in the back. The only open seat was next to the big, countrified, guy who played the baritone. I had never spoken to him because he was a junior (I was still getting to know people and somewhat afraid of the upper classmen) and could be downright scary in marching formation. He would walk around and try to catch people moving at attention, when you're not supposed to move at all, as well as bark commands with his loud, booming voice. Needless to say, this big tough guy made me nervous. However, I wanted to talk to my friends and the friend I was sitting with, a senior, told me to go sit next to him. 

Me: "Are you nuts?"

Her: "What? It's only ____."

Me: "Exactly!"

Her: "Oh he's harmless."

So I suck it up and trudge back there before plopping down next to him to chat. He seemed slightly surprised by this, but was super nice. Totally unlike had seemed to me thus far. Of course, no one paid me any attention in band, but as soon as I sit next to a guy, everyone decides to turn around to take a peek. Not to mention, talk about it like it's the only topic in the world when you stop to eat and during the whole game. I was grilled more than a patty melt.

On the way back home, I sat next to him again because he was turning out to be such a sweetheart and was a lot of fun. One of his good friends was sitting nearby and wanted to put his feet up, but the guy I was sitting with had his arm behind the seat. So friend asks if he could put his arm down around me so he could put his feet up. I will never forget what he said: "Well, uh, sure, but you'd have to ask her because I don't want to crush her or something." I obliged and found myself falling for this guy. Turns out he had liked me since the summer and had been caught stealing glances at me from other band members whenever I walked by. Weeks later at the homecoming dance, one of the girls in the color guard asked him, in front of me, "Have you asked her out  yet?" He replied, "No." She chirped, "Oh. Okay!" and bounced off. I laughed at the awkwardness and he hugged me before whispering, "So, do you want to go out with me?" How could I say no to that?

We had a lot of fun together for the 4 months we were together. This relationship was so different than the first one, and gave me back my hope for love. I was able to be myself and still be liked for it. I guess being a tomboy and dating a redneck was the perfect formula. We would ride around his truck and find places to park and talk (yes, talk) as well as go out with our friends. Our song became "Red Strokes" by Garth Brooks because we listened to it one night on repeat snuggled up in the cab watching the night. I still think of him and get nostalgic when I hear that song.

But like I said, it only lasted 4 months, and that was my fault. At the time, I felt that maybe it wasn't as good as it could've been and maybe I was settling. So I called it off. I was still learning how this whole dating game worked. As soon as I said the words and saw his face, I realized what a huge mistake I had made. I tried to patch things up later that week, but it was never the same. He ended up doing something similar and tried going out with a freshman girl whom later he found in bed with another guy. We tried again after we had both healed, but we decided we'd be better as friends. We lost touch and I wish I could talk to him again. B2 was definitely one of my favorites.

By the way, the whole friend wanting to put his feet up thing? It was all a scam! The friend was good friends with B2 and had been trying to hook us up the whole time since he sorta had an in with me too. He was my drum captain. This hit me like a ton of bricks a year or two later after we had broken up. Talk about being slow on the uptake. Mind like a steel trap, I tell ya.

So, lessons learned. 1.) Realize what you have before you lose it, 2.) Even the biggest and toughest guy can be a Teddy bear (he drew pink and red hearts in a love note in Ag class in front of all his buddies to leave as a surprise in my locker one day), and 3.) How to make a cheap and effective bomb. Let's just say his redneck buddies liked to blow up mailboxes. Not that he ever did that. I don't think. He probably knew I'd kill him if I found out. Oh yeah, and 4.) Even the biggest and toughest guy can be scared of a girl.

Vegetarians and Mountain Dew

I was given a recipe from a friend weeks ago and every time I vowed I was going to do it, something happened that prevented me from doing so. Some friends from home have been getting together to cook/learn to cook and the vegetarian of the group brought this nice entree. Not only is it vegetarian, it's pretty healthy, too. It contains a lot of cottage cheese, which I am not a fan of, but you whip it around in a food processor for a while making the texture more like ricotta cheese, which I do like. I did not capture any pictures of the making process, but I did get the end result.

Now, I know it's not that pretty, but I promise you it's really good. Not to mention, they're stuffed shells and are prone to run all over the place in the casserole dish.

The recipe is displayed below and is dictated by my friend Undy since she was at the cooking lesson.

Amy3's Stuffed Shells

Ingredients:

Box of Jumbo Pasta Shells
Large container of Fat-free Cottage Cheese
Jar of Spaghetti Sauce
Can of Diced tomatoes with garlic and basil (or some kinds of italian flavorings)
Assortment of vegetables. We used carrots and yellow squash, but you could also use zucchini or some other kind of veggie like that
Italian seasoning
Garlic powder
Spinach, optional


Preheat the oven to 375.

Put pasta on to boil. You'll want it not completely done because it will still bake in the oven.

I would see if you could drain some of the liquid off of the cottage cheese then put it in a food processor or blender until smooth. It will look kind of like sour cream. Grate vegetables and add italian spices and garlic powder. You'll pretty much just have to keep tasting it until it tastes good.

Put spaghetti sauce and diced tomatoes in a pan and let warm on low. The diced tomatoes are just to give the sauce a chunky consitency and to make the sauce stretch farther, so you don't have to use them, you just may need more than one jar of sauce. If you want the spinach, wait until the sauce is warm and then put the spinach in to let it wilt.

When the shells are done, drain them and let them cool until you can easily handle them. Spoon in the cheese mixture and try to close the shells and place in a casserole dish. Spoon in some sauce to cover the casserole dish and place shells in dish. Cover with rest of sauce. Cover the dish with a lid or tin foil and put in the oven for 45 to an hour. 45 minutes worked just fine for us.

I had plenty of cheese mixture and a few shells leftover and still made about 5 servings.

For dessert, I had seen a recipe for Apple Dumplings on the Pioneer Woman's cooking site. The ingredients grabbed my attention and the picture definitely held it.

Mmm. It's like mini apple pies sitting in a sea of butter and Mountain Dew. I know, crazy, right? I don't like Mountain Dew at all, but you don't taste it. It just adds a hint of bubbly citrus. One of those ingredients that when you're eating the finished product make you go, "Oooh...what is that bit of oomph?"

Also perfect with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Dumplings a la mode. Yum.