World War III and Fridge art.

I've been waging war.

In my own home.

Fleas.

They are the ultimate enemy.

What started this was that Emma laid at the foot of my side of the bed on Sunday.

Sunday night, I went to sleep about 1AM, and kept dreaming that my feet were being eaten.

Finally, at 5AM, I got up, and went and looked at them in the bathroom under the light, and my feet and ankles looked like this:

 I had 12 of these bites. Ridiculous. And this was taken about 36 hours later, after most of the swelling had gone down.

I spent the rest of the night on the couch, and since then I've washed everything fabric in my whole house, and they've both had flea meds.

I will win.

Take that, fleas.

In more happy news, I got a new kitchen compost container!

 It holds 2.4 gallons, fits perfectly under my sink freeing up counter space,

 and has a great carbon filter to keep odor down, and came with 3 replacement filters!

I'm really excited about it, and the fact that I got it for about 60% off! It's also not clear, so you can't see all the yuckiness, which is kind of nice.

We had a cookout at our house this past weekend, for all of the people who play or sing in our church worship band with us, and their families.  We had a really good time, and I was left with some lovely refrigerator art.

The left side was done by Wyatt, and the right side was Jacqueline.
I love them, they make me smile.

I will leave you with a video of my crazy, funny dog.
She has been extraordinarily needy lately! She just wants attention all the time.
Turn your volume all the way up, and listen to how stinking needy she's been!

She did this for 30 minutes.
She's actually doing it right now.
 As I type this.
Crazy, crazy dog.
♥

Adventures in drying Basil!

I have two decent sized plants of Basil.  There's no way I will be able to use it all in my cooking before it goes bad.  So, I decided to dry a portion of it, to save for this winter! I picked the plant that isn't flowering yet, as it is supposed to have the best taste when dried.

First I cut a majority of the stalks off.

I then made sure to rinse all of the dirt and bugs and grossness off of the leaves by soaking them in the sink for a few minutes.

Then I got them out, checked each leaf for any brown spots, or bad leaves, and then laid the stalks in a bundle.

Using some pink yarn, I got from my lovely student teaching mentor, I tied the bundles together very tightly, because the basil tends to shrink, and you don't want them to fall.

Then I attached them to paperclips, and hung them in the storage closet in our office.

And voila!

In about 4 weeks I should have dried basil to use for the entire winter!

♥

Re-committed. And tired.

Today my friends, will by day 8 of 8 straight days of work.

all of the shifts were 6-10 hours long. 

For 8. straight. days.

Needless to say, I'm ready for a break, and that is a large part of my lack of non-simple blogging.

I've been at the new store now for 3 weeks, and it has gone a lot better than I expected. I actually really enjoy it. Just not 8 straight days of it. =)

I have re-committed to being a flexitarian.  It will be super difficult when school starts, but for now it's not been bad.  I just make 2-3 vegetarian meals a week, and eat them and their leftovers at work and at home, keeping me meat free, and then allow myself fish or chicken once or twice on the weekends. 

The vegetarian section of the "Healthy College Cookbook" has become my best friend. 

I love that cookbook.

Last week I had brocolli-tofu stir fry, garlic and tofu green beans, and pasta salad.

This week I've had Sesame noodles, a different pasta salad, and today I made ginger-soy tofu over rice.

It's delicious. 

Other than massive amounts of work, things have been pretty good in this household. Recycling is taking off, which I am so excited about. It's a real eye opener to see how much we've been throwing away that we could have been recycling. 

We re-potted the mandarin tree, so there is more dirt under it now.

And we have peppers from the garden, but everything else is kind of stalled due to this ridiculous heat.

Jamie and I have been getting to spend a lot of time together lately, and it's been so nice. We've finally gotten into that summer swing. Unfortunately, school starts in less than a month. But, I don't want to talk about that yet. 

Tomorrow we are hanging out with our friends Amanda and Joe.  Joe and Jamie are going golfing, and Amanda and I are going to get pedicures. Neither of us have ever had one, so we thought we would go together to try it. I'm really excited, I love seeing those two. It's nice to have friends we can get together with, and I always feel good when I'm with them.

And I got to talk to Misty yesterday, which was so great. 

Oh yeah, and Minnie's in heat again, so you can imagine what she's been like to deal with. If you can't imagine, here is a picture from the last time.

And I will leave you with a thought from the other day.  When I was a kid, I read the book "Harriet the Spy" by Louise Fitzhugh about 50 times. I loved it.  There is a simple passage in there, in the 3rd chapter, where Harriet is talking to her best friend, that says:

"She never minded admitting she didn't know something. 'So what?' she thought; 'I could always learn.'"

I realized the other day, when the grocery store clerk looked at me like an idiot because I didn't know that scallions and green onions were the same things, that this one tiny passage has helped shaped my life. As I started to feel really stupid, and stopped and thought, "So what? how was I supposed to know if no one ever told me?" And then I didn't feel bad. It's amazing the kind of power books can give us. That one small passage has helped shape me into the person I am. I feel confident even in not knowing things, because I can just learn them later. 

And I love that.

♥ 

It's official...I'm a sell out.

So, these particular shoes...

Have been popular for years.

And I have never understood why.

Sure, they may be comfortable.

However, I have a little too much self-confidence to sacrifice style for comfort to that degree.

I have always spoken out against ever buying anything from the Croc brand for myself, because I don't like them.

That being said, I have had foot pain every single shift since I started working at Family Video two years ago.  Sometimes, after an especially long shift, the pain radiates up into my legs and back.

When I work several days in a row, there are mornings when I wake up, and I literally can hardly walk, because I'm sore and stiff.

I've always just thought it was part of having a job where you were on your feet.

But lately, I've been pretty fed up with it, and decided to do something about the pain.

We were walking by the crocs in Dick's sporting goods today, and I saw some crocs that didn't look like the normal crocs.

They looked like this.

And I thought "Hey, those aren't bad at all!" 

And then I put them on.

And oh. my. gosh.

They are so unbelievably, fantastically, wonderfully, amazingly comfortable.

So I bought them.

And I am so excited to get to wear them to work, because they are going to make my feet so much happier.

So do I feel like a bit of a sell out? 

After years of talking about how worthless Crocs are?

Yes. 

Yes I do.

But I don't care too much, because my feet are so happy.

And on a completely, random, seperate topic,

My mom had an excess of raspberries this year, so she made jam and canned it.

She's awesome.

And she gave me one of her jars of jam.

And I have had a bagel with cream cheese and raspberry jam practically every day since.

delicious.

It's been a great week so far.

Ready for more.

♥

Baked Chicken Eggrolls

First new recipe post of the summer!

I am in love with this little asia restaurant here in town, and especially their eggrolls.

So, I decided to make my own.

Jamie was really worried they would turn out like the homemade ravioli. 

Lame.

I found a great baked recipe on allrecipes.com, which makes them much healthier.

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients

• 2 cups grated carrots
• 1 (14.5 ounce) can bean sprouts, drained
• 1/2 cup chopped water chestnuts
• 1/4 cup chopped green pepper
• 1/4 cup chopped green onions
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 2 cups finely diced cooked chicken
• 4 teaspoons cornstarch
• 1 tablespoon water
• 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon brown sugar
• 1 pinch cayenne pepper
• 16 egg roll wrappers*

Directions

1. Coat a large skillet with nonstick cooking spray; add the first six ingredients. Cook and stir over medium heat until vegetable are crisp-tender, about 3 minutes. Add chicken; heat through.
2. In a small bowl, combine cornstarch, water, soy sauce, oil, brown sugar and cayenne until smooth; stir into chicken mixture. Bring to a boil. Cook and stir for 2 minutes; remove from the heat. Spoon 1/4 cup of chicken mixture on the bottom third of one egg roll wrapper; fold sides toward center and roll tightly. Place seam side down on a baking sheet coated with nonstick cooking spray. Repeat with remaining wrappers and filling. Spray tops of egg rolls with nonstick cooking spray. Bake at 425 degrees F for 10-15 minutes or until lightly browned.

Here are my ingredients.

There were a lot.

The first thing I had to do was make the chicken.

 I went back and forth on how to cook it, but in the end I just decided to throw it in a skillet.

While that cooked, I put the rest of the filling together. 

I decided to half the recipe, which I never do when I make a recipe for the first time.

But, I didn't know what the heck we were going to do with 16 eggrolls.

And i was still freaked out, because the above picture is 1/2 of the recipe.

Yeah. It was a lot.

After I added the chicken, I started the sauce. 

The first ingredient was cornstarch.

Can I just take a moment to say that I hate cornstarch?

Every time I cook with it, it messes up.

Every time.

So, I was nervous about using it again.

But, somehow, miraculously, it worked out, and blended fine.

Once I added this to my filling,

 It was time to start the rolling.

I had to use the back of the eggroll package to figure out how to do it right, but once i got it, it was really easy.

And here they are on the pan!

I'm SO happy I only made half.

I ended up having 12 eggrolls. 

I would have had way too many if I had made the whole batch.

They looked great after I baked them!

I took them to Jamie at work, and we had a dinner date.

hahaha, he loved them. He ate 3!

It was really nice to get to have dinner with him.

But, I had an ugly little surprise waiting for me when I got home.

My dog decided to get into the trash, and spread it all over the floor.

I was not happy. At all.

But, how can you stay mad at this face?

hahaha, love her.

So, while they were a lot of work, the eggrolls were a huge success, which is nice to have in my life right now. 

♥

New Organic Awesomeness!

I have officially found a new favorite organic cookie. 

They blow Newman-O's out of the water!

And this amazing creation is...

Oh my goodness. They are so amazing. 

I'm adding them to the list of awesomeness right next to Turtle Trails Ice cream.

I haven't tried any of the other flavors, but I'm sure they are equally wonderful.

The one downside:

I finished an entire box by myself in 2 days.

Dang.

♥