Exceedingly Mundane

I go through phases of enjoying cooking, and loving cooking, and then some days, not so much. I love to eat, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t grow up learning how to cook. My mom didn’t teach me much, so I’ve learned slowly, over the years, through trial and error. My mother-in-law has taught me to make many things, including things that my husband likes and grew up with. I’m very blessed to have married a man who is not at all picky (a lot less than me), and who is willing to try most anything. There’s things that Tim does not like to eat and flavors he’s not fond of, but he’s always willing to try something once. That makes my job so much easier, and so much more enjoyable. I like trying new dishes, and I like making his favorites – it’s a win-win thing for me.

My love of cookbooks and recipes goes hand in hand with this whole line of blog-babble! 🙂 I love cookbooks and always have. I would have dozens more, except I ran out of room for them years ago. One day… one day, I’m going to have a lot more room for books and cookbooks! In the mean time, I “collect” recipes via the Internet, cooking blogs, message boards, forums and many, many favorite food and cooking websites. I print them out, I email them to myself, I bookmark them. I don’t have a great system for the ones I want to try. But, through the years, I have worked hard on a system for recipes that I have tried, and that we’ve liked.

Over a decade ago, I started using Mastercook. And when we talked about setting up our family website, the two main things I wanted were a place to share photos and a place to share recipes. The photos have migrated to other areas (mostly, Flickr and my local drive), but the recipes live on. We had an old recipe system on our website that I liked fairly well. Then… the spammers found it. And they started entering recipes that contained links to spam, and nudie pictures and drug sites and everything else unsavory under the sun. Sheesh, people, get a life! Some of us enjoy cooking and recipes, leave our recipe site alone!

So, my darling webmaster/guru husband installed a new, more secure system on our website a couple of months ago. He converted all 350+ recipes into the new system, those entered by myself, family and friends. I had to go into each recipe and edit it, but that is all done, and we’re now enjoying the new system. Our old system didn’t do photos, but the new one does, so I’ve been happily snapping photos of the food I cook, to add to our recipe database! And, having the new system has also spurred me into trying new recipes …. “so I can enter something on the new recipe system!”. Tim gets a kick out of just how much of a geek I can be on any given day!

Here’s a few pictures of the food I’ve been cooking lately:

And you can find our recipe system here. If you get a chance to visit, I hope you like what you see! 🙂

I got a belated birthday present a few days ago!

Tim had offered to get me a camera originally for my birthday, but I said, no, I already have a digital Rebel, I don’t need a smaller camera. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized he had a really good idea. It’s nice to have a small one to stick in my purse or tote around and not carry the digital Rebel (bigger, bulkier) in some instances. This one takes good pictures and little movies, something my Rebel doesn’t do (so we had bought Tim a flip camcorder for Christmas). Anyway, it’s nice to have, and I know I’m incredibly spoiled (or blessed, however you prefer to look at it!) to have two cameras.

So, that brings me to a question – is there anything useful I can do with my old digital cameras? I have a couple of older ones, that I used before I got my digital Rebel. They’ve been sitting in a corner, collecting dust, and not being used. They are each a few years old, and I doubt anyone that I know would want them (they all have newer nicer cameras, for the most part). Is there anyway to recycle this kind of digital device? Or any worthwhile charity I could donate it to? Does anyone have any good ideas? I’d hate to just take it to Goodwill or try to put it in a neighbor’s garage sale or something.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful day! 😀

What does this look like to you?

To me, it looks like cough syrup. But, it’s not. It’s what I’ve been putting in my morning coffee for the last few weeks. I have blogged before about my love of flavored coffee creamers in the past, and we’re definitely coming up on my favorite time of year – when Coffeemate brings out their holiday flavors like gingerbread, peppermint, etc. I normally buy other flavors of Coffeemate (as many in the lowfat variety as I can) to use throughout the year. But a few months ago, I tried buying a bottle of flavored syrup at Sam’s Club, and just using fat-free half and half in my coffee. I think the syrup lasts a lot longer and I think it may be a bit cheaper to go this route. Either way, it’s always nice to change things up a bit 😀

This is the cough syrup flavored syrup I’ve been using:

The raspberry tastes good, although I think I like the vanilla and caramel flavored syrups better. I just can’t get past the look of it! It’s a bit disconcerting to put that red syrup in my coffee, it looks just like cough syrup! And, with the red syrup and white half and half, my coffee comes out looking pink! 🙂 Good thing it tastes good….

Have a wonderful day!

I know it’s been talked about ad nauseum in the media, and I don’t want to get into a huge discussion here. But, I’d still like to know! Do you normally get flu shots for yourself or your family? And if not, do you plan on getting a flu shot this year, either the seasonal flu shot or the special H1N1 (swine) flu shot? I know the H1N1 flu is serious and more likely to affect younger people and children, and it’s a big concern.

As for me, I don’t plan on getting either one. I should have blogged about this years ago, but I don’t think I ever did. Years ago, when I worked full-time, my company offered flu shots to employees, as a preventive measure I’m sure. I got one (this was a very long time ago, maybe 18 years or so) and boom, a couple of days later I was sick. And I mean, very sick! I had the worse case of the flu I have ever had. I was out of commission for 5 or 6 days, and I could barely get up to go to the bathroom. I remember being miserable, and I remember laying there thinking, I am *never* going to get a flu shot, ever again! And so, to this day, I have not gotten a flu shot since. And you know what, I haven’t gotten the flu again either!

So, how about you? Vote in the poll or leave me a comment and let me know what you or you and your family are going to do this year about this.

Hope everyone is healthy and happy!

[poll id=”17″]

Well, here I am, falling behind on blogging again! I have lots of things to share, but I can’t seem to sit at the computer and get them translated into any kind of “meaningful” blog post, hahaha! Most recently would be my birthday, but shhhhh, we don’t have to talk about just how old I really am! 😀

I had a nice birthday this year, although very low-key. Tim took me out to eat (dinner at Chili’s, lunch at Zaxby’s), and let me pick out whatever I wanted for my birthday. He wanted to buy me a camera (and I just might “let” him get it for me soon), but I didn’t think I needed another camera. I have a wonderful digital Rebel that he got me a couple of years ago for my birthday, but it is heavy and sometimes cumbersome to lug around. He wanted to get me just a small point and shoot to keep in my purse, and after thinking about it and “chewing” on it for a while, I think I might ask for it as a belated gift, after all 🙂

While we were out shopping the day before my birthday, he asked what I wanted and I said, well, if I see something I like, let’s just get that. So, that’s what we did! I got a book I wanted (the new Nicholas Sparks, “The Last Song”), and a warm fuzzy blanket to wrap up in now that it’s feeling more like fall around here. I also got this:

It’s not a Le Crueset, although I had mentioned to him a while back that one day I’d like to splurge and get a red one. He said, I’ll get you that if you want, but I just don’t see paying 250 bucks for one of those. And he’s right. And I’m sure this one will be great, and I can replace it several times over if it doesn’t hold up like the name brand one. This one came from Sam’s, and we usually have really good luck with the things we buy in there!

Also, on the day of my birthday, he sneaked off to Fresh Market and got these for me:

My birthday was on a Sunday this year, and our beloved Saints were playing a big game against the Giants. I kidded Tim all week that I was going to tweet Drew Brees and ask him to be sure and win on Sunday, since it was my birthday, LOL! I didn’t but they did pull out a win, going 5-0 for the first time since 1993. For this converted Saints fan, that was a pretty nice gift too!

Back soon (hopefully), with another post. Hope everyone is having a great day, and week 🙂

I haven’t had a chance to blog lately. There’s several posts I have “brewing”, but first I wanted to do a quick catch-up.

Last weekend, my sister Suzanne came for a visit. We had a busy weekend, including a birthday party for our two year old great nephew, Sam. Then, we had a lot of family over for a visit, and we cooked out some hamburgers and hot dogs. My dad drove back and forth to visit several times, and my sister left on Tuesday flying back home. I got sick Tuesday morning and have been sick most of the week. Ugh, it’s never fun to run fever and have aches and chills. 🙁

I’ll try to be back soon with a “real” post, but until then, just wanted to do a quick update 🙂

I often joke with Tim about the saying “hunter/gatherer”, because that really shines through with the two of us. Tim is a hunter, but only goes out to get what he needs. I’m definitely a gatherer, and some would probably say, a hoarder. I don’t like to run out of things, like toilet paper, dishwashing soap, shampoo, and mostly – food! Tim is always joking, telling me, you’d think you lived way out in the boonies, instead of a mile from a grocery store, the way you stock up on stuff!

I have a big pantry, but mostly, it is just really deep. I know I should be grateful to have a lot of storage space in my pantry, but it’s sooooo hard to find things because whatever I put in the front of the shelf, obscures whatever is stored or stacked behind it. I’ve been going back and forth for a while now, wanting to declutter it and reorganize it, and I finally got around to it.

I threw out almost half a garbage bag of food. Things I had bought for a certain recipe and never used. Hey, if I haven’t used them in the past couple of years, I’m probably not going to use them now. Half opened packages of various seasonings. Cans that were past their expiration date. Etc.

One of the main goals was to clear up room on my counter-tops. I have a pretty set of white canisters to hold my flour, sugar, etc. But, I don’t have a lot of counter space and Tim was always fussing that we need more room. So, I bought a couple of the Oxo Good Grips storage canisters, and packed up my pretty ones “for when we get a bigger house, and I get a bigger kitchen”. 😀 I made more room on my counters, and right now at least, I have more room in my pantry.

I did NOT take before pictures. I would like to say that I forgot, but it’s more like I was ashamed. I had stuff packed in and really had no idea what was buried in the back of most of the shelves. I’m not sure how long my nice, clean pantry will last, but right now, I’m really enjoying it! It makes me more motivated to keep it this way, but I know that sooner or later, my hoarder/gatherer gene is going to kick in and I’m going to make a massive buying trip to Sam’s Club, and that will be the end of my clean pantry! LOL! 🙂

Here’s a couple of after shots…

Bottom of the pantry, the bottom shelf is so deep, it has a lot of wasted space, but, oh well!

A close-up of the Oxo containers, I really really like their products, and these are no exception:

Top of the pantry… I really like having that rubbermaid small basket on the top shelf. I can’t reach that shelf without climbing in a chair or ladder, but I can pull down that basket that has some small bags of rice and pasta in it. Works really well for me 🙂

If you know me in real life, you know I am a creature of habit and routine. And you know that it is sometimes hard for me to break those habits and routines 🙂 So, it might come as a surprise to some of you that we no longer get a newspaper every day. I know… gasp! 😀

I grew up with a daily newspaper. My mom worked the crossword and Jumble every morning, and my dad read the paper with his breakfast and coffee. Once I got out of college and got into my first apartment, I subscribed to the local newspaper. Since I’ve lived in our house, for over 16 years, I have received a paper every day on my driveway. My sister works in the newspaper business. My dog loves to retrieve the paper every day for a treat:

So, you can understand that I’m having a bit of a problem adapting to no longer getting a daily paper. Tim has been wanting to cancel it for a long time. We’re trying to cut some things in our budget, so this seemed like the easiest one to do (he wants to cut the landline, house phone soon, and I’ve been fighting that one too, mostly since he works from home full-time, currently). Our local paper does have a website, and I am trying to get used to checking it daily for news. They also twitter headlines, so that’s been the main source of me geting my local news. Sigh, it’s just different. I can’t sit at the kitchen table with my meal and read the paper. You’d think me, the computer girl, would really like getting her news on the computer, but so far I’ve had a bit of trouble adapting. 🙁

At least Tim did compromise and let me keep the Sunday newpaper, so I can see the ads and coupons 😀 One day is better than none!