leafing through

After learning how to use macro mode on my camera, I went pretty bonkers about it. I was clicking at everything in closeup. Actually, even before I realized how wonderful macro was, I had unknowingly been using it all along. There’s a feature called “Best Shot,” where you tell the camera what you’re photographing and it adjusts accordingly. For example, one of the options is “food” and that automagically turns the macro mode on. I love cameras for dummies! Anyway, last month, I started taking pictures of my cereus as the flowers were just starting to develop and two nights ago, they bloomed. But the development of the flower is just as interesting. It’s pretty delicate and I started out counting about 10 or so buds. By the end of last week, there were 5 left and it looks like 2 more won’t make it, so that’s 3 out of 10. I suspect the cooler temps and shorter days had something to do with it.

October 18, 2007

October 21, 2007

October 27, 2007

November 4, 2007

November 11, 2007 (The one of the left didn’t make it, and neither did the bud on the right.)

November 17, 2007 (The shriveled bud on the right obviously wasn’t up to snuff either. Eventually the left bud petered out too. Something about being by the window – maybe too drafty and cold.)

November 22, 2007

November 24, 2007

November 26, 2007 (bloomed a few hours later)

I was only going to reply to K’s comment about how tired she is but then thought, well no, this isn’t something that can be summed up in a comment.  This requires some level of explaining, which is blog-entry-worthy.  The thing is, my family, including me, doesn’t sleep much during holidays.  People often say things like, “I can’t wait until XYZ Day.  I get to catch up on my sleep.”  For me, it’s the other way around.  During the holidays when the family is visiting and we’re all hanging out together, we just love each other soo soo much that we decide to forgo sleep.  We’ll play games, eat, chat, and otherwise hang out until we’re not really making any sense to each other and just throwing random cards at the general vicinity of the table and yet we’ll hang on.  Sleeping is like the biggest waste of time EVAR!  So I get really tired.  Sunday night, because it was the end of the holiday visit, we stayed up until 2AM.  We wake up at 5:20AM to get to the airport.  20 hours later, my head finally hits the pillow.  This morning I was so bleary tired I didn’t even manage to grind some coffee beans and hit the on button.  Thank goodness for the eye makeup.  I can use it to draw eyes on my eyelids so when I’m asleep, it looks like my eyes are still open.             

Yesterday was the last day of our Thanksgiving break. Our whole family, including cousins, aunts, and uncles, spent the day together, starting at a buffet and ending with, you guessed it, more food. These past five days can be summed up as one giant feeding fiesta followed by lots of card games and wine.

Then there was a little shopping, making a pit stop at Ulta, because it was on the way back from the buffet.

I love new toys.

Back to the very important topic of food – so this Asian buffet that we went to isn’t fancy, but they have pretty good mac ‘n cheese, fried plantains, and garlic bread. I know, go fig right?

Pretty much played Napoleon the rest of the time. Took a break for pizza in the evening, which we really didn’t need but the pizza was good, which is as good a reason as any to eat it.

… and that was how I spent my Thanksgiving break.

Oy, still feeling stuffed from last night. We had… well just see for yourself.

If you can’t tell what some of the dishes are, there’s butternut/acorn squash puree, sticky rice, shrimp with cocktail sauce, twice baked potatoes, pumpkin pie, and of course some turkey, gravy, and cranberry sauce. Then we headed over to have some birthday cake and pumpkin pie at my cousin’s house.

Oh yes, and we played a lot of Wii. I really like Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. It’s like Final Fantasy Tactics, (turn-based strategy) with better graphics. This game might just push me over to the dark side. No, I’m not gonna buy one, but I might just put my sister’s console away real safe y’know, and maybe forget where I put it, and then after she’s gone home, maybe I’ll just suddenly find it, but we wouldn’t want to risk losing it or breaking it in transit, so maybe I’ll just hang onto it for the time being until she visits again, which won’t be until next year. But no, I won’t do that because I’m good. I can see myself playing Fire Emblem over and over, good replay value. I also played Rayman Raving Rabbids 2, which by the time I load up the game, I’m already laughing my head off. To sum it up, it’s just a buncha’ silly looking bunnies doing some really stupid stuff. I woke up with sore arms and just now realized it was from the workout I got playing this game. Also played Trauma Center: Second Opinion which I find more fun to watch than play because I can’t hold my hands steady. Could’ve been the wine though. The stitches I drew to sew up cuts looked like driving directions through the city. When I got to our cousin’s house, after the happy birthday singing, cake and pie eating, I ended up playing World of Warcraft. My character (Blood Elf Priest) wandered around for a few minutes killing things and I got to level 2. I don’t have the attention span or socialization skills to play this one. You actually have to interact with other people. Well, maybe not “have to” but that’s a pretty big element of the game. So all in all, it was a pretty fun and relaxing day. I’m thankful for stretchy pants. What are you all thankful for?

I got an 11 pound free range turkey and I’m brining it in a salt, sugar, garlic, pepper, and herb (thyme, sage, rosemary, basil, oregano, marjoram, fennel seeds, savory) bath. Here is the general how-to. I got the herb mix from a farmers market but you can use whatever you want.

When I roast the turkey, I’ll probably loosely stuff the cavity with celery, onion, carrot, and an apple. I’m not basting it or rubbing it with anything except maybe some of the remainder of the spice rub and some pepper. I’ll tent it with foil then remove it for the last half hour.

Got a big ‘ol salad for lunch today.  No fork.  I’m currently shoveling greens into my face with a spoon and typing.  Hoping no one drops by right now because this wouldn’t be one of my more graceful moments.  I get the feeling I’ve done this before too.  Which goes to show, 1.  that whole don’t make the same mistakes twice thing totally went over me, 2.  I don’t eat salads all too often, and 3.  if I keep this up, I’ll be able to win an eat-salad-with-a-spoon contest soon.  Don’t be jealous now.   

This happened last weekend. It’s taken me a week to recover from this traumatizing event enough to talk about it.

Here’s what happened: I was about to cut the lights to go to sleep when I turned around and saw this bug on my wall right by my bed. It wasn’t moving but I was certain once I turned off the lights, it would walk right into my bed. Or worse, when I was sleeping, it would leap into my slackjawed mouth. Y’know sometime between jaw clenching and teeth grinding I’m sure there’s an intermission yeah? So I was either going to forgo sleep that entire night or catch this dude by myself. I hate this kinda’ stuff. I used to catch bugs for fun as a kid. I don’t know what happened, or when I decided these things are untouchables but I really really don’t like this stuff.  I’m there staring at this awful thing thinking I need to take care of this, I need to sleep.  First things first though… let me just take a coupla’ pics for posterity… or the www.  He just poses, gratuitously enjoying the camera flashes.  Weird he’s probably sleeping, which is what I should be doing.   Ok back to thinking about how to get rid of this guy.  I wanted to catch him without smushing his guts into my wall right by my bed.  I also didn’t want him to run away while I’m in the midst of ending him.  I finally come up with this foolproof idea to take a sticky note and use the sticky part to stick him.  That way, I pull him off the wall and he can’t run.  I sneak up on him, get him, and he all but crumbles like lint on the sticky paper.  Who knows how long that thing had been there.  Anyway, I was just glad I got rid of him and didn’t really have to off him.  It would’ve weighed heavily on my conscience.

I can’t believe Thanksgiving is in less than a week! I’m really excited about making Thanksgiving dinner, because I have an audience of willing eaters. People willing to put food I cooked, into their mouths, chew, and swallow!! hahaha  Makes me giddy just thinking about this.  I look forward to this annual event.

If ya’ll can’t tell, I’m not much of a cook.  There’s this though: I like food.  I like eating food.  I like trying to cook food even if I’m not too good at following directions.  I only take recipes as a vague general sorta guideline.  “Juniper berries” reads thyme. What can I say, I was a child left behind. For the past week or two I’ve been studying my recipes and making lists of things I need for this big foodfest. It’s a bit too exciting for me. So far, I’ve made two grocery lists. One for an organic market and the other for the other place. There I go planning again. Ack! I can’t stop it! But wait! It gets better because I redid the list when I realized I forgot a bunch of things and then I went ahead and changed my menu. Nothing major, just a few tweaks. No stuffing this year. I’ve had two bad experiences with stuffing already. Not giving up, just need a stuffing break.  Could be the whole inability-to-follow-recipe-directions affliction I suffer.

Today was one of those days. Just had a ticker list of things running through my head. Car stuff, work stuff, holiday stuff, me stuff, household stuff, stuff stuff. Last night, I innocuously started a to-do list for the coming week and it kept piling on. Blah. Planning is for pansies. Anyway, this morning, I was feeling better and coughed up last night’s blah to just me being tired. Well then I got to work and Boss was in a bad mood, had a cow on my teammate, which we fixed but blah about the freakout. Why does he have to be rude, y’know? There’s no need for condescension. Gotta credit him for getting me to be better about not joining in with his drama and just listening to him rant. Ok, coming back to my whining, maybe it’s the dreary rainy cold weather and the time of year. I just feel like crawling into bed. I’m sure that’s what my horoscope said today. “Don’t bother getting out of bed. Stay put until manana.”

Something about cold weather inspires baking and cooking and all that housewarming jazz. Found this recipe off some website that I can’t remember anymore because I found a gajillion versions just searching for a simple banana bread recipe. This is simple. I like simplicity and minimal effort. Speaks to the lazy in me. I changed some of the original recipe based on what ingredients I had on hand and personal preferences.

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 cup mashed ripe bananas (you don’t need to measure, it’s about 3 bananas)
• 1/2 cup 1% milk (recipe called for whole)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter (1 stick)
• 3/4 cup brown sugar (maybe it was closer to 1/2 a cup – didn’t measure; recipe called for 1 cup of sugar)
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup toasted walnut pieces (original recipe called for pecans)
• 1 tsp cinnamon (recipe didn’t call for this, but I love cinnamon)

Start with the bananas, mush them up in a bowl. After that, put in everything else. It might be easier to mix together the liquids first, but really, it all just gets combined in the end so there’s no need to follow any order. I added the toasted nuts last. If you’re adding the stick of butter straight out of the fridge, zap it for 15 to 20 secs in the microwave to soften it.
Butter a 9 1/4 x 5 x 2 1/2-inch loaf pan. Bake in a 350 F preheated oven for about an hour or until a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Let it cool for 5 minutes.
Snarf.

Or be like me and cut an inch-thick slice and pretend like you’re only going to have half. Take a bite and greedily reach for the other half because it’s that good. Not too sweet, not too anything. Just right. A good dense moist bread. Goes great with coffee. Everything goes great with coffee for me.