(Blogging, atypically, before the Adderall and caffeine kick in. Hold on.)
So Scott tells me Starbucks has changed their cups, at least in Pennsylvania, back to a retro design as part of a sweep to return to its simpler roots. This spawned an interesting conversation this morning, me in all my rumbly-voiced emerging-from-coma glory, about how you never can be quite sure what your coffee is gonna taste like at The Green Satan because they have so many different blends and even a lot of variation store to store. I guess they're gonna go back to serving one kind of coffee all the time, in addition to a different blend, rather than just a grab bag of whatever, which is refreshing to me. Part of what I dislike about Starbucks is that every tenth cup or so is really good, but I never know exactly what it is I'm drinking so I can look for it. Which usually leads me to prefer my home brew (and it's damn cheap, too).
So I'm doing my best to annihilate a pot of that this morning, as I look outside and see another icky wintry day on the Front Range - I'm tired of this, I want spring. It's supposed to be 70 by Tuesday here, which is hard to imagine right now but having lived here long enough, I've no doubt that it will.
So...on the docket today... dejunking, streamlining, digging out for spring. And probably playing a bunch. Working out, which I've done too little of lately. I pulled out my bag of yarn the other day and started bumbling around with crochet, all the while cursing my friend Jane who brought her afghan-in-progress to work one night and made me remember how soothing it can be to work on. So I got all hyperactive and had the kids pick out colors for patchwork afghans, bought knitting needles and have sort of been trying to teach myself how to do that... and so forth. It's kinda relaxing.
I made ratatouille for dinner last night, at Kyle's urging - see, I have this thing I do with my kids that they just absolutely dig, we call them theme nights - where we pick out a movie to watch and then whatever I make for dinner goes along with the theme of the movie. Examples: we watched Shrek 3, and ate ogre chops (pork chops), rotten twigs with green slime (carrot sticks with green-food-colored Ranch dressing), maggots and weeds (white rice/wild rice) and mud (chocolate pudding)... watched Surf's Up and ate squid on a stick (chicken), seaweed (steamed broccoli), sea creatures (blue jello with swedish fish & gummi worms in it) and so forth. **Funny ADD side note, I'm thinking 'all together now' - "Fraunch toast, Fraunch fries, Fraunch dressing... And to drink.... Pe-Ru." Okay, not funny if you haven't seen Better Off Dead way back in the day... but I digress. As I am wont to do.**
Anyway. FOCUS!! The ratatouille was okay, edible, sustaining... but nothing to write home about. I think I'll have to find a different recipe.
Going to make a cake today, I wrote down one of my grandma's recipes a few years back for a Miracle Whip chocolate cake, which has me intrigued to the point where I have to see what it's like. With any luck, it may turn out to be as good as mom's 45-minute Chocolate Cake, which I absolutely adore but which I infrequently make because I usually don't keep buttermilk on hand. (Though it would probably work as well with substituted milk-with-lemon-juice like I do sometimes. I'll try it one day.) Anyway what I'm expecting is a dense, heavy, soft cake - so I'll let y'all know how it turns out and post the recipe if it's worthwhile.
Maybe later on today, or tomorrow, I'll finish up with Part 4 of When I Was A Civil War Soldier. Vacation got in the way of me finishing that story, and I really do want to do that.
Ahhhh, unfinished business, things left half-done. I have the shittiest follow-through of anybody you know. Maybe one day I'll fix that. But for now... more coffee.
(Blogging, atypically, before the Adderall and caffeine kick in. Hold on.)
So Scott tells me Starbucks has changed their cups, at least in Pennsylvania, back to a retro design as part of a sweep to return to its simpler roots. This spawned an interesting conversation this morning, me in all my rumbly-voiced emerging-from-coma glory, about how you never can be quite sure what your coffee is gonna taste like at The Green Satan because they have so many different blends and even a lot of variation store to store. I guess they're gonna go back to serving one kind of coffee all the time, in addition to a different blend, rather than just a grab bag of whatever, which is refreshing to me. Part of what I dislike about Starbucks is that every tenth cup or so is really good, but I never know exactly what it is I'm drinking so I can look for it. Which usually leads me to prefer my home brew (and it's damn cheap, too).
So I'm doing my best to annihilate a pot of that this morning, as I look outside and see another icky wintry day on the Front Range - I'm tired of this, I want spring. It's supposed to be 70 by Tuesday here, which is hard to imagine right now but having lived here long enough, I've no doubt that it will.
So...on the docket today... dejunking, streamlining, digging out for spring. And probably playing a bunch. Working out, which I've done too little of lately. I pulled out my bag of yarn the other day and started bumbling around with crochet, all the while cursing my friend Jane who brought her afghan-in-progress to work one night and made me remember how soothing it can be to work on. So I got all hyperactive and had the kids pick out colors for patchwork afghans, bought knitting needles and have sort of been trying to teach myself how to do that... and so forth. It's kinda relaxing.
I made ratatouille for dinner last night, at Kyle's urging - see, I have this thing I do with my kids that they just absolutely dig, we call them theme nights - where we pick out a movie to watch and then whatever I make for dinner goes along with the theme of the movie. Examples: we watched Shrek 3, and ate ogre chops (pork chops), rotten twigs with green slime (carrot sticks with green-food-colored Ranch dressing), maggots and weeds (white rice/wild rice) and mud (chocolate pudding)... watched Surf's Up and ate squid on a stick (chicken), seaweed (steamed broccoli), sea creatures (blue jello with swedish fish & gummi worms in it) and so forth. **Funny ADD side note, I'm thinking 'all together now' - "Fraunch toast, Fraunch fries, Fraunch dressing... And to drink.... Pe-Ru." Okay, not funny if you haven't seen Better Off Dead way back in the day... but I digress. As I am wont to do.**
Anyway. FOCUS!! The ratatouille was okay, edible, sustaining... but nothing to write home about. I think I'll have to find a different recipe.
Going to make a cake today, I wrote down one of my grandma's recipes a few years back for a Miracle Whip chocolate cake, which has me intrigued to the point where I have to see what it's like. With any luck, it may turn out to be as good as mom's 45-minute Chocolate Cake, which I absolutely adore but which I infrequently make because I usually don't keep buttermilk on hand. (Though it would probably work as well with substituted milk-with-lemon-juice like I do sometimes. I'll try it one day.) Anyway what I'm expecting is a dense, heavy, soft cake - so I'll let y'all know how it turns out and post the recipe if it's worthwhile.
Maybe later on today, or tomorrow, I'll finish up with Part 4 of When I Was A Civil War Soldier. Vacation got in the way of me finishing that story, and I really do want to do that.
Ahhhh, unfinished business, things left half-done. I have the shittiest follow-through of anybody you know. Maybe one day I'll fix that. But for now... more coffee.