Thursday, August 26, 2010

Take the Peppers Out

In the interest of "getting organized" and "being more disciplined", I finally loaded the month's worth of photos from the camera to the computer. There were some from our beach trip. August really did have me in a heat-induced fog, I barely took any pictures at all during that trip. Not even one beach shot! Here's one of the boys from our last night of vacation:


After camping for four nights and cooking all our own food over a fire and on the camp stove, we treated ourselves to a nice dinner out. This was in front of the restaurant. As we were walking to the car, we noticed the sun sinking right across the way, over the water. Miles and I got our cameras and snapped some pictures of it.  This sign was advertising karaoke and congratulating someone for something. We were in South Carolina, south of Charleston, and the food was low country. They have a specialty in that particular area called Frogmore Stew, which does not involve frogs. Rather, it's shrimp, chorizo sausage, potatoes and corn in a sort of a broth. My mother-in-law tried it, and she loved it. I ate a bite of chorizo and it was amazing.

This sign has been posted on my oven door for several days now:


Josh has grown a ton of peppers, and he's working on drying them out. He makes his own crushed red pepper flakes, which are great to cook with. Apparently, he does not trust that I'll remember that he's left peppers in the oven, (he's right) and thinks that I'll turn it on to preheat without looking inside first, resulting in...well, I guess some burned up peppers. Though, surely he realizes how infrequently I've used the oven lately. He also informed me that the crushed red pepper flakes contain pepper seeds! Ack!


I guess he thought that since pepper seeds bother me so much, that he should disclose this information to me. Some things are better left unsaid. I'll enjoy them anyway.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

When Hamburgers Fall From the Sky

I can't believe it's been almost a month since my last post! Shameful! August has been so busy though. A round of visitors, a beach trip, more visitors, the start of the school year. Not to mention my own general laziness and malaise. This was one seriously hot bitch of a month. I haven't been cooking so much as preparing food. Because we have to eat.

So now I'm back, and I'll have to take baby steps to get into this thing properly again. This afternoon it's (finally!) cool so I'll turn the oven on and make roast chicken. With CSA corn on the cob and potatoes. If I get motivated I'll prepare the edamame that's in the back of my fridge: it needs to be shelled and boiled for a bit in salted water. For some reason, eating edamame seems like a slightly pretentious thing to do. I guess because I live in a town where people say things like: "Little Rainbow just loves edamame. He brings it to preschool along with his organic applesauce and veggie crisps." You know. But I like it anyway.

I'll leave with one thought, with hopes to be back tomorrow. The other night the kids and husband and I were sitting at dinner, eating tilapia, and the kids were eating very slowly. Because this is what they do when they don't love the meal we're having.  It was really frustrating me, and I kept asking them to please just hurry up and eat! Then it dawned on me: I think the kids actually believe that if they stall at meal times, if they wait long enough, that maybe a McDonald's happy meal will fall from the sky and onto their plate. Nice thinking kids, but it ain't gonna happen. Not on my watch.