Impromptu Date Night

In an effort to eat healthier and save a little money, I am slowly making the switch from canned beans to dried beans. Of course, this means a little more planning and preparation on my part as dried beans take longer to prepare. I read online that you can cook a huge pot of beans, then divide the beans into bags and freeze them for later use. I liked that idea and decided to give it a try today, which meant the beans needed to be soaked last night. The hardest part of cooking dried beans for me is sorting through the beans and discarding the bad ones. So, last night as I getting the beans ready, I asked Husband to help me sort. As you can see by the picture, he was less than thrilled. In an effort to put a positive spin on a dull and time-consuming task, I said "This can count as our date night!" He was not impressed by my fast thinking, mumbling something derogatory (and probably unpublishable) about date night . I am guessing that my next date night idea - alphabetizing the DVDs - is not going to go over well either!

Taste test anyone?

What happens when I ask husband to make and frost a German Chocolate Cake while I am at work? I come home to find the cake I was planning on taking to a party missing a piece or two. I took it anyway. You can never go to a party empty-handed; that's just rude. But taking a cake that is half-eaten? Totally acceptable!

Let's talk turkey

Today is Thanksgiving in Canada. Being Canadian myself, I cooked Thanksgiving dinner, even though we aren't in Canada (To all my American readers: Yes, we have Thanksgiving in Canada. No, it has nothing to do with the Pilgrims. No, we don't have a cool story about the first Thanksgiving. No, we didn't steal it from you. You didn't invent being thankful!). Because it's just the two of us, I bought a small 2 pound turkey breast. The instructions said to cook it for 2 hours. Well, 2 hours later, when I stuck my meat thermometer in to check the temperature, the gage moved backwards! Ummm...pretty sure that is not supposed to happen. So I cut into the turkey a bit; still ice cold. This presented a bit of a problem because everything else (potatoes, vegetables, stuffing, etc) was minutes away from being done! So, I cranked up the oven a bit, and found ways to keep the other dishes warm until the turkey finally decided to be done (thank goodness for multiple crockpots with a "warm" setting!). Total turkey cooking time: 3 hours, 10 minutes. Now I am no expert on cooking turkeys (my experience is limited to the one I cooked last Christmas), but I am pretty sure a 2 pound turkey breast is not supposed to take 3 hours to cook. Does that sound too long to anyone else?

How does your garden grow?

I inherited a lot of things from my father, some good (such as my quick wit and my love of history) and some bad (like my ugly hobbit feet and my need to use every dish in the house whenever I cook), but the one trait I never inherited was a green thumb. My father could make anything grow anywhere. I remember the flower beds (is that one word or two?) he designed and maintained. They were beautiful. The house we eventually settled in has a huge backyard and the back third of it was dedicated to a vegetable garden. My dad would spend all winter planning out the garden, where he would plant what and when. He would get so excited as the middle of May neared and the weather warmed up. I remember summers spent weeding that stupid garden! Oh, how I hated to be out there pulling those weeds! But Dad loved it. He loved his gardens: flower and vegetable. I never understood what all the excitement was about. After I graduated from high school and moved away, I decided to get a plant. I can't recall what type of plant it was, but I remember telling Dad about it and he said something about that plant being a hard one to kill. Well, 8 days later it was dead. Too much water? Not enough sun? I have no idea what caused the quick death of this plant, but I was pretty sure it was something I did (or didn't do). Since that day, I tried to keep plants alive, and have failed.(One unlucky plant live three days, but I blame the treatment it got in the store before I bought it!) It appeared that I had been cursed with a black thumb.

Well, my dear readers, this may be a bit premature, but I do believe that I may no longer have a black thumb! A few days ago (11 days ago to be exact), I decided I was going to start a container garden on my apartment balcony. So, I went and bought the two plants I figured would be the most difficult to kill: tomatoes and cucumbers. And I am pleased to announce that after 11 days, not only are they alive, but they are flourishing! The tomato plant has grown a couple of inches and even has some yellow flowers on it! The cucumber plant was in rough shape when I bought it, but it too seems to be growing like crazy! I know it may seem to silly to be excited about growing two plants, but given my track record with plants, this is monumental! I cannot wait for the tomatoes and cucumbers to appear! Hopefully the plants will live that long! If they do, I will officially call myself a gardener!

My plants (when I first bought them)!

I hate it when this happens...

I went to the grocery store to get a couple things for the chicken pot pie I am making for dinner. (I have never made one before, so I am really hoping it turns out!). I needed 2 things. Almost an hour and $40 later, I put my bags of groceries in the car! How does "get onion and green pepper" turn into $40 worth of groceries? The clincher came when I unpacked the groceries and realized I had forgot to get the green pepper! I think I better send Husband to get it. It's apparent I can't be trusted!

The fruit of my labours

There is a new grocery store in town here. I went there today, and I think I am in love! It is one of those whole food, organic, crunchy granola, hippie type grocery stores called Newflower Farmer's Market. It sells non-organic as well as organic food. The prices are wicked cheap and the selection is unbelievable! In the freezer section, they had elk meat! I got really excited about this. Growing up, we ate wild meat. Whenever I go home, I have my mom make me some elk or moose or deer. Now I can go to this store and buy it! I love it! We all know how much I LOVE Farmer's Markets; well this store is like a farmer's market, except it's open everyday and has a lot more for sale! It is amazing. It's a small chain that has stores in Texas, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado. If you are reading this and live in any of those states, go their website and see if there is a store near you: http://www.sfmarkets.com/ You won't be disappointed!

Newflower had a sale on strawberries: one pound for 99 cents. I bought a couple pounds, thinking that I would freeze them and then use them to make jam later on. But when I got home, I realized that I had nothing going on today (still no job), so I decided to make the jam. Why go through all the trouble to freeze the strawberries? I made jam last summer and it turned out pretty good, so I was confident in my abilities. This batch turned out pretty good as well. The only problem is that I only got a jar and an half due to an incident involving a clumsy girl, a dropped jar, second degree burn and jam all over the kitchen. (I am what some would call an idiot!) Anyway. Despite the mishap and all that work, it was worth it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a kitchen to clean. It looks like Strawberry Shortcake threw up in there!

I just have to share this...

This is a bit embarrassing, but I am really excited about it and have to share! For the past few weeks, I have not been able to get our toilet clean. When we returned from Austin, there were rust streaks in the toilet, and I was able to scrub most of them off, but there were a few stubborn ones that no matter what I tried or how hard I scrubbed, they would not come off. Every time I walked in to the bathroom and saw the toilet I would cringe. Those streaks were taunting me, challenging me to just try and get rid of them. Over the past few weeks, I have tried all sorts of cleaning products and techniques, but nothing worked. Today I as I was cleaning the bathroom I was overcome with this intense determination to clean that darn toilet! After trying everything I tried before, I was about to give up, but determination is a strong motivator. So I grabbed my handy dandy housekeeping book, Home Comforts, the art and science of keeping house by Cheryl Mendelson (this was a Christmas present from Ryan, one that I asked for. It is the best book on keeping house!). I flipped through the pages trying to find some idea that would work. I came across a paragraph talking about the cleaning power of baking soda. I remembered hearing somewhere before that baking soda was great for cleaning. Now, here it was again. I decided to give it a try. I figured it couldn't hurt. I had tried everything else. So, I made a paste, and applied it to the streaks. After a couple of minutes and a bit of elbow grease the streaks were gone and the bowl was clean! I am surprised it actually worked. Who knew? Apparently someone did and shared it with the world, and now I am sharing it with you. No more expensive toilet bowl cleaners for me. I'll use my 49 cent box of baking soda!

The difficult life of a Military wife, part three

The army has thrown up in my livingroom!

That's a lot of gear!

Can anyone guess what movie is playing on the TV?

Our first Christmas together

Our first Christmas together! Husband and I were dating last Christmas, but he was in Iraq, so compared to that, this Christmas was 100000000000 times better. Our friend Ian, who couldn't fly home because of all the crazy snow storms, joined us for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. He was a pleasant addition to our celebration. We started our own tradition of making pizzas on Christmas Eve. I used the pizza dough recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, which was simple and very delicious. Husband practiced his domestic skills by kneading the dough. After pizzas, we incorporated my family's tradition of playing a board game. Trivial Pursuit was the game of the night, with Ian proving to be full of random, useless information.

Christmas Day brought presents, food and more games. I was a bit concerned about cooking a turkey because I had never done it before. But it turns out it's not so hard. Husband once again showed his skills in the kitchen by mashing the potatoes. He had better stop doing things or I will know that he is good at them and make him do them all the time! Much to my surprise, all the food was done about the same time! I have no idea how that happened, but I call it my Christmas miracle.

Perhaps the highlight of the day, and the moment that will be talked about for years to come came when Husband opened up this present...

The difficult life of an army wife, part two

Ryan has been home less than a week and I have already failed as a military wife. My previous attempts to be a good army wife have been less than stellar, but I figured once Ryan returned from Iraq things would get better. I have been trying so hard to make his transition from the battlefield to the home front as seamless as possible. I stocked my cupboards with his favourite foods (read: chips, candy and other JUNK!). I've been letting him sleep as long as he wants to (read: ALL morning!). I have not said anything about his stuff being all over the house as he tries to organize it (read: at one point I couldn't even walk through my living room!). And being the good wife I am, I insisted that all of his clothing that was with him in the desert be washed. After spending 90 minutes at the laundromat and doing 7 loads of laundry, I was feeling pretty good about being such a kind and thoughtful wife. This would be a good time to point out that Ryan was with me at the laundromat and that he put himself in charge of folding all of his army related clothing. (Keep this in mind as you continue to read. This one fact is very important!) Several hours later, Ryan was getting his things together for work. He asked me (his wonderful amazing totally awesome wife) where I had put his Physical Training (PT) shirts when I put the laundry away. After thinking for a couple seconds, I told him I didn't put any PT shirts away. He insisted that he had given me the PT shirts to wash, I insisted that I could not remember sorting, washing or folding the grey PT shirts. Ryan, being the amazing husband he is, kept saying "I am not blaming you for anything." (and of course, I was thinking "You can't blame me! I never saw them!") We started searching the house, trying to find the shirts. I even searched through the garbage bag in the kitchen. It had potato peelings, onion skins and watermelon rinds (disgusting!), but no shirts. (Ryan supposedly searched the trash bag outside, but I have my doubts. However he came up empty handed as well.) Eventually, Ryan decided to go back to the laundromat to see if we left any clothes there. He left and I sat down to watch TV, convinced that where ever the shirts were, it was all Ryan's doing. After all, he was the one who "supposedly" gave me the shirts to sort with the laundry; the one who "supposedly" folded all his army clothes at the laundromat. I could not remember the shirts. And besides, a good wife would remember the clothes that she had laundered. This was clearly Ryan's misplacement problem. The trip to the laundromat turned up nothing and Ryan returned home, resigned to the fact that he would have to purchase new PT shirts. After his return, he continued to gather things up for work. He asked me where his army socks were. All of a sudden I was hit with a sinking feeling. PT shirts? I had no recollection of sorting or washing PT shirts. But socks? I remembered socks. Lots and lots of socks. It was at that point I had one of those flashbacks that you see on TV all the time: me putting the socks in the laundry basket; me putting the socks in the washing machine; me putting the socks in the dryer. And that was where the flashback ended. That was also when I realized I had misplaced a load of laundry! (ok, in all fairness I should say "WE" misplaced a load of laundry, since Ryan was at the laundromat with me). Yes, me, the wonderful amazing thoughtful wife. This was my first time washing anything army related and I had left some clothes behind! Ryan watched as realization dawned on my face, and I am pretty sure he knew that I knew he was right. So, back to the laundromat we went. Yep. Back to the laundromat. The one that Ryan had just returned from less than 30 minutes before, claiming that none of our clothes were there. One of the workers was emptying out a dryer full of PT shirts and army socks as we walked in. Ryan stopped her, saying "I think those are our clothes". Her response "I was just putting them in the back. They have been here all day". No kidding! I had left them there all day! I apologized to Ryan for leaving his clothes, but made it clear that I was not taking full responsibility because he was just as capable of making sure we had all the laundry before we went home! He laughed and said "You have to write a blog about this". Later as I was folding the PT shirts, I still could not remember ever having them at the laundromat! If Ryan hadn't asked about the socks, I never would have realized that I had left the clothes. I guess I can chalk this up to a learning experience: Lesson 1: Make sure you have all the laundry before you leave the laundromat! Lesson 2: Letting a husband help with laundry is a bad idea, because if something goes wrong, he will blame you even though he was right there with you; Lesson 3: Sometimes, (but rarely) a husband knows what he is talking about!