Summer

Tim, Sara, Ne and I went out for ice cream last night. Here are a couple photos of my housemate doing her thing.

I made dinner last night: lower-sodium stuffed bell peppers. I altered a recipe found here. Sara kindly supplied the marinara sauce (recipe here), as we couldn’t find a low-sodium version in stores. Instead of ground round I used turkey and black beans. It came out pretty well–except that the recipe didn’t call for cooking the green peppers before stuffing and 45 minutes was NOT enough time to cook the peppers (actually, I added 10 minutes to what the recipe said). Next time I will cook the peppers first and then stuff and bake them.

Now I am off to DCI Quarterfinals. GO MAD, GREEN MACHINE!

Vroom

In preparing for a number of transportation scenarios that may materialize as a result of the divorce (one in which I keep the Civic and one in which I’m driving a borrowed car for some time), I’ve been thinking about what kind of car I’d like to get in the somewhat distant future. It’s enormous fun specing out car options but I’m also trying to be realistic. In the event that I don’t have a car, here’s what I’m thinking of working towards buying but first, the CRITERIA. [...]

Salt

Calli picks up knitting too.

I’ve been making slow progress on the scarf. Jessie showed me a new stitch to try to mix it up a little. She also SAVED me when I dropped a stitch. Woo!

The last two Wednesdays, I’ve made dinner at House Johnson, which entails low-sodium cooking. Two weeks ago, I adapted my usual chicken pot pie recipe into a low-sodium variety using Sara’s bechamel instead of the usual condensed soup. It turned out decently. I’m going to explore ways to amp up the chicken flavor for the next time I make it. Last Wednesday, I tried a low-sodium, low-potassium meat loaf recipe. We could not find low-sodium ketchup in our grocery stores so we substituted low-sodium tomato sauce and I added in a tablespoon of Sara’s homemade pickled relish. It turned out alright but the recipe really does need ketchup. More tweaking to be done! When I come up with a recipe worth sharing, I’ll do so here.

This week I didn’t have any ideas until AFTER the weekly grocery shopping was already done but in the meantime, I will explore ways to make my stuffed pepper recipe lower-sodium.

Catch

As a follow-up to my previous post, I’m feeling almost completely better. I’m not sure what was wrong. Whatever the ailment, my experiment showed that it wasn’t lactose-related. Maybe I had a bug, maybe it was stress. Le meh.

We lost Bobbi last weekend. [...]

Knit

Evidence of yarn industry. And Libby.

Thanks to Jessie, I’ve been learning to KNIT.  My first project is a scarf with alternating knit and purl stitches, nothing too fancy. I can’t say that I like knitting any more or less than crochet–I’ve only just begun. I can, however, say that knitting doesn’t give me the repetitive stress problems that crocheting did (different movement). Knitting, I’ve found, is just as addictive as crochet. Maybe it’s just the zone-out appeal, kind of like when I was doing latch hook as a kid. Just craft and dream.

In other news, I’ve had digestive problems for a week and a half now. Even though I’m not tracking calories anymore, I still pay pretty close attention to what I eat–and I have no idea what could be bothering me. I’m not ready to run to the doctor just yet (I’ve been there twice in as many months) but I needed to do something. So yesterday, I cut milk out of my diet. The only dairy I ate yesterday was half a tablespoon of butter on my bagel. Today I tried margarine on the bagel instead. I’ve felt much better today but it’s probably too soon to know anything conclusive. The experiment continues.

Oh and the hairs done been cut, if you haven’t already seen on Facebook or ::gasp:: in PERSON.

Right. That is all, comrades.

Scrap of Paper

Puddles has been silent while I’ve worked through some personal stuff but I needed to log in to upgrade my WordPress install, so I might as well leave some word-barf while I’m here. [...]

Grizzly vs Voter

Last week, I saw two articles regarding a speech given by Sarah Palin that disturbed me in an entirely new way. According to these articles, Palin “freely used” and “started tossing around” the word feminist/ism in a recent speech to the political action committee, Susan B. Anthony List. There was similar fuss about Palin’s “mama grizzlies” rhetoric. Predictably, these articles sent me into a Google Reader comment rant. I was on the verge of sharing said rant (now deleted) when I realized [...]

29

I took the day off for my birthday this year. Russ and I needed to be in Indianapolis in the morning so I took the opportunity to see the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art. The pieces were fascinating. [...]