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Sunday, February 28, 2010

Unwritten Letters Project

I just found out about this site, The Unwritten Letters Project. It is a place to submit anonymous letters to anyone you want to. Some are written to family members who have died, others are to living family members, and some are to the author's own body.



If you wrote an anonymous letter, who would you write to?

Even Monkeys Have Problems

In this article Reuters tells about an alcoholic chimp who was sent to rehab.


"MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian chimpanzee has been sent to rehab by zookeepers to cure the smoking and beer-drinking habits he has picked up, a popular daily reported on Friday.

An ex-performer, Zhora became aggressive at his circus and was transferred to a zoo in the southern Russian city of Rostov, where he fathered several baby chimps, learned to draw with markers and picked up his two vices.

"The beer and cigarettes were ruining him. He would pester passers-by for booze," the Komsomolskaya Pravda paper said.

It added he has now been transferred to the city of Kazan, about 800 km (500 miles) east of Moscow, for rehabilitation treatment.

(Reporting by Tanya Ustinova, writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman)"

In My Opinion

Previews are the best part of the entire movie watching experience.

I don't particularly love going to a movie theater. For one thing, one ticket costs $8.75 in Fort Wayne, so I'm sure it's almost a million dollars in bigger cities. Another thing, I have to sit in the same seat and watch the whole thing all the way through. I like to watch movies at home because I can pause them, walk around, make something to eat, or whatever, I just don't have to sit in the same place for two hours. And I can get movies for $1 at the Redbox.

I have always loved watching the previews. It's kind of like watching the whole movie in a minute. You get an understanding of what its about, who is in it, what happens, and then it's over. I never let Josh fast forward through the previews, they're my favorite.

Sherlock Holmes
Trailer starts at 0:30.


Dear John

So ladies, how sad was it? I think almost every girl I know went and saw this movie. The preview almost makes me cry. Let me know, seriously. I can't handle Nicholas Sparks anymore.

Alice in Wonderland

Joshua wants to see this. Johnny Depp is kind of freaking me out, and I'm not a big fan of Helena Bonham Carter.

Shutter Island

I saw an interview of Leonardo DiCaprio on GMA, and thought the movie looked interesting. I like Mark Ruffalo and just saw that he is in this movie as well. I am definitely not a scary movie person, but I do want to see this.

Remember Me

A movie I don't particularly care to see. I never even heard of it before last night. I don't think Rob Pattinson is particularly talented, but I thought I'd put it up here for anyone who does.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Fun Clip Friday

From the movie Up:

My Boys Were Tired


I thought they were cute.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Joshua, I'm Posting This For You.

This is how they do in the EU.

This Nigel guy is welcoming their new president to office.


"You sir, have the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk."

I thought the guys laughing at the 0:20 mark was funny.

Quote of the Day



“A happy marriage is a long conversation that always seems too short.”
― Andre Maurois

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

New Layout

My Healthy Living and Dog pages are complete. Check them out. I will add to them periodically, but I'm happy with how they look for now. I'll be working on the wedding page soon. Saving the longest for last!

Updated to add:
My wedding page is mostly complete. I don't know what more I'd add. I've added a little more to the More About Me page. Check them out and tell me what you think.

Quote of the Day


“It is more easy to be wise for others than for ourselves.”

― François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

Very Low Carb Pizza

The other night I was looking for a picture to put into my post about the diet we're trying. I Googled something like "no carbs" and before I clicked "images" I saw this link. It is a recipe for a NO carb pizza. Well, it's a no added sugar pizza, but any way you cut it, tomatoes have carbs in them, so I call it a very low carb pizza. I also call it delicious.

Like I said the other day, I thought I was going to fall over and die on this diet. I'm just now starting my 5th or 6th day (I can never count days, I always mess it up) and each day gets a little better. I'm actually enjoying it. One conflict though, is that my Nanny and I go out to lunch about once every week, and she's a food pusher. I'm almost certain that not once in her life has she ordered dessert and expected it to only be for her.

She called to see if I wanted to go to lunch yesterday, and wanted to know if I wanted Chinese. I do love Chinese but I got her to settle on Cracker Barrel. I knew they have a low carb menu so I just decided to order off of that. Well we ate (she had potato soup with corn bread) and then she decided she wanted a Coca Cola Cake. I told her before she ordered it that I wasn't helping her eat it, but she didn't believe me. The whole time she ate it she kept saying "are you sure you can't have just one bite?" I love her to death, but she's evil.

I'm off topic. If you've been around my blog for five minutes, you know we love pizza. Big time. We love it enough that I started making it at home to save money. Very serious. So I saw this link to NO carb pizza, and I jumped on it like it was a limited time offer the day after Thanksgiving. No joke.

Last night I was making it and the whole time I kept thinking "this can't be good", "it's not going to taste like pizza, there is no way". I made it anyway, and it was so worth it. I would eat this even if I weren't on this diet. I obviously would make some changes so it didn't have so much fat, but we'll get into that in a minute. It would be very easy to make this into a low calorie meal.

Here is the original recipe from Blogger: What's That Smell? I love her site.

Ingredients:
For the crust:
1 (8 oz.) package of full fat cream cheese (room temp.)
2 eggs
Freshly ground black pepper
Garlic powder
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese


For the pizza:
1/2 cup jarred marinara sauce*
A pinch of cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
Sauteed pepperoni
Garlic powder

*Finding a sauce that doesn’t contain added sugar is not easy, but I did find a “no sugar added” by Ragu that with a few added seasonings tastes fantastic on the pizza. You could always make your own too but I’m not THAT brave yet.

Directions:
For the crust:
Preheat oven to 350°.
Butter a 9×13 baking dish
Blend cream cheese and eggs and season with pepper & garlic powder
Add parmesan cheese and stir until combined
Pour into buttered baking dish
Bake for 17 minutes or until golden brown
Let crust cool for 10 minutes before adding toppings

For the pizza:
After crust is cooked, raise oven to 400°.
Mix together marinara sauce, garlic powder, cayenne pepper & oregano
Top crust with marinara and spread evenly
Top with mozzarella cheese
Add toppings
Bake for 8 minutes or until cheese is bubbly


I was actually going to try to make my own sauce because I thought I could do it without any carbs, but even if I used tomato puree just like Ragu, I would still end up with more carbs than if I just used the jarred pasta sauce. Walmart carries the No Sugar Added Ragu. The whole pan had 9g carbs in it, which really isn't bad at all. We cut it into six pieces so each piece had just a little over 1g carbs. This was so much better than I thought it would be. The crust isn't crispy like a regular pizza, but I may have not cooked it long enough. My oven is really sucking lately so it took way longer for me than the directions said.

This is the crust right after I put it in the oven. If you want to make a healthier version, buy a lower fat cream cheese (I wouldn't go fat free because it is harder to melt in my opinion), reduced fat parmesan, and egg beaters instead of the whole eggs.
Pasta sauce. I was kind of nervous because this is a really small amount of sauce. I thought the pizza would be really dry, but not at all. The sauce is actually pretty healthy for any diet.
Definitely get low-moisture part-skim mozzarella if you're trying to make this a lower fat way. It was nearly impossible to get whole milk mozzarella cheese at Walmart.
I have never worked with a block of mozzarella before, so I thought it would be like any other cheese I've ever grated. Wrong. I used my box grater for about three seconds before I just started shredding it in my hand like string cheese. It worked. I ended up with huge chunks, but they melted all the same.
This is when I took the crust out of the oven. I think it should have been more golden, but at this point it stopped getting darker and started getting too dark on the edges.
The finished product. You should try this.
Also, for a lower fat option, try turkey pepperoni.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

New Layout

So, what do you guys think of the new layout? I'm really into it. At the top is my pages section. I'm still working on those, and I'm hoping to have some stuff on each page tomorrow.

What do you think?

Quote of the Day


“Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.”
― John Lennon

Introducing...

The Bomlet.

I had a hard time deciding how to spell the name. It is essentially an omelet with bacon and spinach. I originally named it the Bomlet because it's a bacon omelet...but now it's call the Bomlet because it absolutely rocks. It is so good. But if I spelled it correctly it would be the Bomelet (which doesn't sound like bomb) or the Bomblet (which makes little sense because there is no "b" in omelet.) What do you think?

Yes, we use a wok to make eggs. We're unconventional.

Yes, my kitchen is a mess right now.

Actually we just make such a big thing of eggs that we didn't have a pan big enough and then I remembered that right after our wedding I bought a wok because I thought I had to have one. My stir fry was a flop and I didn't have any room for the wok so it was retired to the basement. I remembered it this weekend and brought it up to use. I used it to fry the hamburger last night and I used it to make the breakfast Bomlet.

First, we fry the bacon. I use my KitchenAid Kitchen Scissors to cut the bacon into smaller pieces. It's way easier than using a knife and then I just drop them into the dishwasher.

We buy frozen spinach because it is a much better value than buying fresh because of volume. After the bacon starts to brown we put in some spinach until it looks right. We add eggs mixed with heavy whipping cream and wait for them to cook.

If you want to try this, it would be very easy to make lower fat and calories. You could use turkey bacon instead of pork. I would keep the spinach because it is so good for you. You could use whites instead of whole eggs, and you could use skim milk instead of cream, or skip that step entirely.


Just saying, it won't taste as good as the Bomlet.

Taco Seasoning

This is the new me. Ugh.

We started a no carb diet. Lots of people have their opinions about it, mine was "this sucks, it's stupid, I'll die without bread". And look at that, I'm still here. We started this diet last Friday, and its gotten better every day...mostly because I've learned that I do have energy without the carbs, and I am liking the food we're eating. Let me tell you, my coffee tastes so much better with real cream...and so do my eggs.

I made a big salad on Sunday night for us to eat throughout the week. We eat a lot of Mexican food here, so I am missing that. Last night Josh suggested I check out corn tortillas at the store to see how many carbs were in it. We assumed that corn tortillas were made with corn (strange right?) but they're make with corn flour, and end up having more carbs than flour tortillas. So we decided to have a taco salad without tortillas or chips. I've had it before so I knew I'd like it. Instead of salad dressing I use salsa, and it really is tasty.

I got the taco seasoning down out of the cabinet and saw that it had some carbs in it. I checked out the ingredients and decided to make my own taco seasoning.

The main ingredients were corn flour, garlic powder, salt and paprika. It had a few other things but I kind of ignored it. They didn't seem necessary.


I browned my hamburger and added about a teaspoon salt, tablespoon garlic powder and a tablespoon paprika, and it tasted just as good, but less saltier than the taco seasoning I typically use. It was so easy, and it didn't have any of the ingredients I couldn't pronounce inside.
I would recommend this to anyone making tacos. It's cheaper, and tastes a little better in my opinion. Josh approved.

Monday, February 22, 2010

A Few Photos

I was looking through photos on my computer and found a few of Duckie. She died yesterday, and I thought I'd post some pictures of her.


What she was missing in looks she made up for with energy.


Sunday, February 21, 2010

Sunday, Sunday.

I hope you're all having a great day. Give your loved one a big smooch.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Hilarious

I can't embed this in my post, so PLEASE PLEASE click here to watch this video. The link will take you to YouTube. It's a video of a three year old girl crying because she loves Justin Bieber so much. It is so cute, but the end is the best part. Check it out.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Small Kitchen?

I Googled "small kitchen decorating" and these came up:



These are not small kitchens. I would like to invite these magazine people into my home and show them what a real small kitchen looks like. And this isn't some NYC apartment either. This is the Midwest.

Great Buy, Sad Day

I wrote a few days ago about my coffee mug woes. I have these amazing Fiesta mugs, which are a tad too big. I love them, but they're a bit heavy for the handle, and not super comfortable to hold. Don't worry, I'm definitely not getting rid of them, but when I got a Kohls gift certificate for my birthday I decided to compliment my mug collection with a few smaller ones.

Little did I know that I would hit the mug jackpot. At Kohls, Wednesday is senior citizens day. My Nanny is a senior citizen, so we often go shopping on Wednesdays. I found these Food Network mugs, and you won't believe the deal I got.

Round on the top, square on the bottom.
The mugs came in a pack of four. They were marked down to $11.99 per pack. They were originally priced $39.99 per pack. We got the 15% discount, and then for my birthday gift my Nanny bought one of the packs for me. So I got $80 worth of mugs, for $10. It's a steal!

This is the new home for our Fiesta mugs. Don't worry, this isn't retirement. I use almost everything in these cabinets. If we drank champagne more often (or ever) I'd use everything in these cabinets. :)
The sad news is, shortly after these photos were taken, my brand new Keurig Coffee Maker went to the big coffee shop in the sky. For some unexplainable reason it is broken...after two weeks of use.

I actually was worried that something like this might happen. These coffee makers are sold in my place of work, and I have seen many of them coming back in for returns. I kept all of the packaging in case something like this would happen. Unfortunately mine was one of the last three in the store, and they no longer carry the model. I really wanted to keep it, and figured the only option I had was to take it back and go buy one elsewhere.

Wrong.

I called the Keurig hotline because I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to fix it. The guy on the phone was super nice and friendly. He asked what problems I was experiencing, so I described them to him, and he said "with the problems you're describing, we're going to ship a new brewer out to you, could I have your shipping address?" I was stunned. Really? It's that easy? He said in 3-10 business days I'll receive my exact same model and I don't have to send in my broken one. He even advised that I take apart my broken one and keep parts of it for spares. I gave him my info and I was off the phone in five...count them, FIVE minutes. I have never had an easier experience using an 800 number. Ever.

But until 3-10 business days, it tooks like I'll be enjoying my coffee from my old Hamilton Beach BrewStation. Woo. Hoo.

Incredible Find

Last Thursday I ventured into Bed Bath and Beyond and found this beauty.

Perfect abs could be yours for only $200. What do you say?

Organizational Solution

This is what I came up with for my K-Cups. I saw someone use a silverware organizer to hold their cups, but in my entire kitchen I have four drawers, so that isn't an option.

This works very well for us. I'm proud of my $3 Walmart purchase.

Basement Idea

I think it would be awesome to turn part of our basement into a wine cellar. Don't you?

This would be totally doable in our basement.

Phone Issues

I have Verizon, and I generally like them. We've really never had any problems and we've had them almost two years now. I remember way back when we first joined in cell phone matrimony .

So we both got the LG Env2, and we were cell phone twins. I really liked my phone, and as you can tell by my terrible quality blog photos, I used the camera religiously. This is my old phone:

The buttons on the outside started giving me problems a few weeks ago, but the real kicker was when I dropped it pretty hard on the cement floor at work. Then it was done for. Monday morning I went it for a new phone.

And I ended up with the LG Accolade. The sales guy thought I was an idiot because I didn't want a fancy phone with a million bazillion features. I told him that I talk, text, and take pictures. So he told me that the camera was crap.

Well, he's crap, because this camera takes the same crappy quality pictures as the Env2. So whatever. Here's to another year filled with my crappy phone photos.

You're welcome.

Luna Bars

Last Thursday I was grocery shopping and I was starving. That is the second worst scenario to be in. The first worst being in the breakroom during Jeopardy with Travis..but that's a different story.

So I was over in the protein section looking for something Joshua wanted and I came across this wonderful wall full of meal bars. I saw the words "caramel" and "brownie" and I had to have it. So I bought one of these, and it was fantastic.


I went back today and bought a box they were so good. You should check them out. They don't taste like protein, they actually taste good, like something you'd eat because you wanted to, not because you felt like you had to. Try it.


And if you're interested:

Source.

Random Puppy Picture


I was invading her space.

Even More Interesting...

When I took down the wallpaper in the kitchen, I found a wonderful assortment of items:

I found a metal curved thing, two giant feathers, an "Old Timer" pocket knife, a Crock Pot instruction book, and a section of a 2x4. Not pictured: Meijer egg carton.
I have no idea why these things were all on top of my cabinets. All I know is that they're not there anymore.

Interesting Day

I'm just now realizing how lacking I've been in my posting. These photos are from a few weeks ago. When I think back now, this day that they tore our yard up is nothing to how torn up it is now...

I looked out the front window and saw a man with this machine tool cutter thing. I had no idea what it was, but when it put it into the ground the whole house shook. (Side note: I'm not sure if you've noticed or not, but in every picture taken in my living room, there is always a laundry basket. I need to get on that.)
Then, that cutter didn't work, so he brought this:

Dear Cutter Guy, Your cutter thing didn't work because it is February in Northeastern Indiana. The ground is frozen. Come back in four months.

I was freaking out. That digger thing has been back every day since, and we basically have giant waist deep holes in our yard. I'm not even sure what they're doing.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Friday, February 12, 2010

Quote of the Day


“Love is always bestowed as a gift―freely, willingly, and without expectation. We don’t love to be loved; we love to love.”
― Leo F. Buscaglia

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