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Tuesday, January 06, 2009

It's NOT a resolution. (complete with recipe recommendation.)

Corny as it is to do this at the turn of the year -- which was not our motivation -- T and I have both decided that it's time to stop shoving our faces full of as much crispy... savory... spicy... delicious... FAT as we can physically manage, and be more sensible. After all, one of us will turn forty this year (and it's not me).

Also, HE SAID I WAS TOO FAT. Now we'll find out how long it is before I'll take off my clothes in any environment other than absolute pitch darkness. (He's right, though. And he did say it more nicely than that. And he used the term "we". He's not mean, just a little too honest.)

This means that now, with the whole Thanksgiving-to-New-Year dietary trainwreck behind us, we have begun to attempt to settle into healthier eating habits for our entire family. We are, in fact, on day three of this mission. Congratulate us! I warned T on Sunday that I would not withstand accusations of being The Bad Guy and would go back to feeding us deep-fried and/or cheese-covered comfort-yumminess, BMIs and heart health be damned, if this whole thing turned into one long whiny complaint about "is this all you made?" or "where's the meat?" There's a lot of strain on the shoulders of the family's commissariat when she is solely responsible for this sort of lifestyle change. In two weeks, when everyone (including Daddy) has forgotten Daddy's pep talks about being healthier and living longer and being able to run farther and jump higher et cetera et cetera et cetera, and Mommy's still cranking out boring grilled chicken and green salad and vegetable soup instead of cheesy, saucy, greasy enchiladas, and juicy cheeseburgers with curly French fries... and crunchy chicken strips with that sinus-clearing punch of buffalo sauce... and crispy-bottomed pizza with extra mozzarella and a little sprinkling of Parmesan on top of the hot red rings of pepperoni...

...where was I?

Oh yes. It's easy to become the big blue meanie, is what I was saying.

So I was glad when everyone liked the soup I made for dinner last night, courtesy of Cooking Light online and an almost uncanny event wherein I had everything in my refrigerator or pantry that was called for in a randomly-located recipe from the Internet. That never happens.

It's called Roasted-Chicken Noodle Soup, and it's much, much heartier than any chicken-noodle soup you ever had before, as evidenced by the fact that my broth-hating husband asked me to make it again. I kept having to remind myself that there was no bacon in it. It's THAT GOOD. I only used half the potatoes called for, and I didn't peel them, and I used a half-cup more condensed milk because that's how big my can of it was, and my chicken wasn't technically leftover since I cooked it with this soup in mind, but otherwise I made it exactly as presented. Excuse me while I go count the minutes until I can eat the leftovers for lunch.

(I should note that we will still have a place for our beloved junk food. Fridays will be something of a cut-loose day -- I'll cook our favorites, although maybe not in the quantities we've been accustomed to [that is to say, quantities that would feed your average family of, say, twelve].)

Thursday, January 01, 2009

generalized snippets, followed by some miscellaneous... snippets. With a bonus FUNNY DOG PICTURE.

I was knitting on the couch, sitting next to Scout (who's on the left). I walked away and came back a few minutes later to find that Festus the Foster-Dog had taken my spot and was already asleep, rather humorously.

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Speaking of Festus. He's, um, still here. This morning a friend of T's happened by, heard Festus's story, and mentioned that he knew a guy who might want him, and I had to throttle a visceral instinct to shove our friend out the door and slam it shut behind him. So I guess I'm maybe getting a little bit attached to Festus, in spite of the fact that we may have to take out a second mortgage to buy him food.

And then today he ran off. I encountered our family vet in Barnes and Noble on the day after Christmas, and in spite of the fact that I know she must be so tired of people talking shop with her every time she meets someone she knows, I couldn't help asking if she had perchance met Festus at any point in time. She hadn't, and when I told her about how we happened to have him in our care she said, "Hounds run away. That's what hounds do. Consider him temporary and don't spend too much money on him." Festus's history as our neighbors' dog bore this out -- they spent considerable time driving around looking for him -- and so did his behavior today, when he slipped through a gate and didn't come back no matter how much we called until the second or third time I went out looking for him, when I found him in a (different) neighbor's yard and he came home with me willingly enough. Anyway. As if it hadn't been enough having our friend trying to give him away, he had to go and take off and make me really aware of how much I kind of sort of hope that nobody wants him but us.

Wow, that got long.

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We brought in the New Year in style today. We invited family over to burn our brush piles with us.

Really, we did.

(We also roasted hot dogs and hot sausages and let the kids become one giant mass of stickiness as they made smores, a food I personally detest, not least because it's impossible to eat them without getting sticky and I hate sticky.)

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I am working up the energy for a books post. Really, even with two weeks free of school this month, I didn't do as much reading as I thought I might -- only finished four books, and I already reviewed one of those. I blame knitting.

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Speaking of knitting, I made my very first scarf last week. I felt like a baby knitter. Here's a picture:

That's not stockinette; that's k1p1 rib. I'm giving it away. The color doesn't really suit me.

That scarf took two skeins of Patons SWS yarn; I'd bought four just in case, but I didn't want to do another scarf in the same colors, so I went to Michaels while I was in the valley yesterday to get a couple of different colors of the same yarn, which I love (going back to cheap yarn after working with it kind of makes you feel like you're trying to knit with cardboard until you get used to it again) but which is ordinarily kind of pricey for me at $6 for a 2.5-oz skein. It was on sale, two skeins for $3. What could I do but take this as a sign? I ended up buying fifteen skeins. Which I then took home and photographed for my Ravelry stash because I am just that far gone into knitter-nerd insanity.

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So this week has been a cheerful way to end what was, for us, in spite of all the general worldwide crappiness, a really good year.

I feel a list coming on. Here... it... comes.

A Small Samplings Of Good Things About Last Year (A Year That Apparently Actually Sucked In Real Life, But What Do I Know)

• We spent it living in our own new home.
  
• We had a really great time with our garden.
  
• We even ate some food from our garden.
  
• We got a dog.
  
• Or, um, maybe, um, two. But not really. Not yet.
  
• Good grades! even in the classes I disliked.
  
• I knocked out some required classes that I will never have to take again. (See? I'm all about the silver lining.)
  
• Gas prices! (At the end of the year, not the beginning.)
  
• We discovered I Spy. OH MY GOSH LOVE THIS SHOW. Usually.
  
• We all enjoyed good overall health.
  
• Nobody broke any bones or required any surgeries.
  
• We developed a few really lovely traditions, at least one of which involves mass quantities of deliciously unhealthy food, which is always a plus.
  
• My sister-in-law and two of her kids moved to town.
  
• We had two bathrooms for the first time in our family's history.
  
• Facebook and Twitter have enabled me to be in better touch with some of my distant friends than I have been in years. Yes, I am a sheep. Baa. But I'm a happy sheep.
  
• We solidified and put into practice some of our ideas about self-sufficiency and pleasure in small things.
  

So yeah, I liked 2008 -- economical issues notwithstanding. But then I'm an annoying Pollyannaish type -- or maybe more of an ostrich, depending on your point of view. But hey, I'm a happy and sane ostrich, and life is too short to freak out about stuff. (Prepare: good. Freak out: bad.) Here's to a blessed 2009 rich in the things that really matter.