rachel's continued ramblings

last night, I made a YUMMY dinner! I got a small bunch of fresh basil in my veggie box yesterday AND I had tomatoes! that equals bruschetta, in my mind. normally, when I’ve eaten bruschetta, it’s been on bread, as an appetizer. but I wanted to make it as a main dish, so I decided to put it on chicken. first, I thawed about 10 chicken tenderloins. you could use half as many breasts, that’s just what I had on hand. I sprinkled some salt on them, then brushed them w/ a mixture of equal parts EVOO and balsamic vinegar. then I broiled them, flipped, salted, brushed, and broiled them till done. you could cook them any way you want (grill, bake, etc.), just get the chicken done. then I topped them with 2 slices of mozzerella cheese, and a couple spoonfuls of bruschetta topping and put it back in the oven to melt the cheese and warm the topping. or, if you don’t do dairy, just skip the cheese and spoon the bruschetta straight onto the chicken. this is how I made the bruschetta topping: I...

sunday:      10:30pm. micah still has his cold, which meant that he took a nap that day. micah taking a nap is bad news. he will not go to sleep at night. ugh. so he was up in the evening and finally passed out like this. oh, and before any family members get all up in arms about those jammies, don’t worry. if you ask him what kind of jammies those are, he’ll say, “boo sea-chicken jammies!” monday:      my new RED french press dave picked up for me! red kitchen stuff makes me very happy! and I’m super happy to have an ‘every day’ coffee maker that doesn’t take up the whole counter! tuesday:      just one of those random things you find when you have kids… wednesday:      quite possibly the world’s shortest pencil! layla insisted on doing her homework with it. thursday:      another adventure in making broccoli-cheddar soup. my blender does NOT like hot stuff. friday:   ...

sunday:      layla had a birthday party in the afternoon to attend. here she is with the birthday girl. monday:     for dinner, we had tacos. when we do this, I just put bowls of all of the ‘fillings’ on the table and everyone builds their own with the stuff they want in it. this is what micah put on his plate. yes, we took some back. we had to or no one else would get any cheese! ignore the wierdo look on his face and just look at the huge mound of cheese… tuesday:      layla made this fancy volcano cake out of playdough. wednesday:     dave was doing some work from home and had his CAD program open. micah got all excited about the stuff he was ‘drawing’. it’s hard to see in the picture, but dave used the program to write micah’s name. he thought it was great! thursday:      the return of the elvis sunglasses. this time on toby. poor cat. friday:      micah had a little co...

I have a love-hate relationship with eggs. I would love to be able to love eggs. but in reality, they give me the heebie jeebies. there’s something about the texture of them, the way they change texture, the way they smell, where they came from, why we think they are supposed to be food… pair that with many years of waitressing and serving trays full of eggs, cooked in various methods and smelling various ways, and I’m just really not a fan. but, eggs are good for you. a good dose of protein is a great way to start your day. but the ways I will eat eggs are pretty limited. pretty much, scrambled is it. nothing can be runny. NOTHING. nor can it be spongy. nor can it be rubbery. nor can it be stinky. so hard boiled, soft boiled, over easy, over medium, sunny side up, poached, baked in a quiche… all of that’s out. and over hard is out as well, because I can’t stand hard yolk by itself. so yeah. scrambled. even scrambled, I don’t really like them. I have to cook them VERY well, and sm...

to follow up the ‘spin the fork’ incident previously mentioned… yesterday, after shane got off the bus and it was pulling away, I noticed, in the back, a large crowd of girls waving and blowing kisses his direction. eeeegad! also, this little bit of information was a tad curious: in his 6th grade class of 27, there are 6 boys. that’s right. SIX. TWENTY-ONE GIRLS, people! oh, and he’s also got the cute-little-sister thing working for him as well… apparently, any time their two classes happen to pass each other, or be in vicinity of one another at the school, several of the girls have taken to hugging layla! EVERY. TIME. she says she finds it annoying…

sunday:     monday was our actual anniversary, but we went out on sunday afternoon/evening. ever since I was a kid, and would cross the 520 bridge, I would always look down in the water by the arboretum and see people paddling around in canoes. it looked like so much fun and I’ve always wanted to do it, so we did! honestly, it was totally as great as I had imagined it would be, maybe even better! not outrageously exciting, but still, SO fun. we will definitely do this again. after that, we headed over to varlamo’s for dinner and finished of the evening w/ some starbucks and a stroll around u village. monday:     it was labor day, and dave didn’t have to work, so he and shane went fishing with our neighbor, chuck. shane was SUPER excited to go (big truck hauling a big boat, putting big boat in the water, driving big boat, fishing, putting big boat back on trailer and hauling it home behind big truck… you get the idea. doesn’t get much more shane than that.)...

well soccer season officially started today! we had a full day of it, with layla’s game at 9am, shane’s at 12:30, and then dave reffed a game after that. dave is coaching both kids’ teams this year. first up, layla:     same team this year as last year, same 6 girls. she’s #8 this year… 8 has been shane’s number for years. how cute is that?      at U-7, they still don’t have an actual ref, so each team is supposed to provide someone to ref one of the halves. shane got to be the ref this time!      we’re still working on layla’s level of aggressiveness, and actually WANTING to get the ball… but she’s not a complete space cadet this year!     and of course, snacks are still very important. then it was on to shane’s game:      this is definitely a different team than former dynamite. we retained 7 players from last year and have 11 new ones. we also lost todd as head coach, so dave is running the...

so shane gets off the bus today, laughing hysterically with his friend. when i asked what was so funny, he proceeds to tell me about 'the funniest game' they (meaning the 6th graders) played at recess today. it's called "spin the fork". the explanation goes like this: it's like spin the bottle, except it's with hugging. we were all hugging each other, until the stupid recess teacher told us we had to stop because it was "inappropriate". geez! it's just hugging! hugging is a good thing! oh, and i won because i hugged the most people. help! help me now!

so, I don’t know how many people will be interested in this. angie, maybe. I’m trying to eliminate enough CRAP from my diet and working on putting into me only that which is healthful and nutritious. I’m kind of skirting paleo eating and just sort of dabbling in it. but the biggest thing I’m trying to get rid of right now is sugar. sugar is TERRIBLE for you. some people probably quake at the very thought of that, but really, for me, it’s not that huge of a deal. I have never had a huge sweet tooth. most of my snacky cravings are in the form of salty junk, rather than sweet. a little bit ago, I wandered into the kitchen looking for a little something. I remembered that I had some bananas in the fruit bowl, and figured I’d better eat one of them before it got too ripe for me (I’m a little squeamish about bananas and there’s a very narrow window where I can eat them without gagging. it’s not the taste, it’s the texture.) so I peeled myself a banana and was thinking how much I really did...

sunday:     after church, we went to dave’s company picnic, and from there, we went to the rehab center where my mom was staying (post hospital) for a visit. she requested some starbucks coffee and a slice of pecan pie from shari’s, so we brought them to her. there was a wheelchair in the room, and the kids (and dave) had fun ‘playing’ with it. isn’t my daughter sweet? monday:      in the evening, we went over to my parents’ house and did some organizing/cleaning. I brought our dinner and cooked it over there, but the pork chops were so thick that they took forever to broil. the kids played on grandma’s computer while they waited… and waited for dinner. I thought it was cute to see them all crammed into the chair together. tuesday:      after some back to school haircuts for layla and shane, we were over visiting at our neighbor’s house and shane started giving layla and micah rides in her wagon. at some point they thought it woul...

so, for the last month or so, I’ve been getting fresh produce delivered to my door from mother nature’s organics . so far, I’ve been very impressed with the quality and variety that I get. I especially like that you can see what will go in the box, and if there’s anything you don’t like or want more of, you can go to their website and make substitutions… so this week, I saw that they had corn on the list. we love corn, especially micah, and the standard amount was 4 ears. that’s not enough. so I went down the list and found something I didn’t want (I think it was mushrooms) and clicked on the drop-down list of possible substitutions and clicked on corn. the last time I did this, I saw that corn was an acceptable substitute for something I didn’t want, so I selected it. it said “1”. wasn’t sure if that was 1 pound or 1 serving or what, but it turned out to be 1 ear. what the heck was I supposed to do with one ear of corn? so I figured this time I was safe because I already had 4 comin...