Wednesday, September 29, 2010

More Teeth

I don't really like going to the dentist.

You may have gathered that I've had some dental work done lately. 

I think my dislike of the dentist stems from when I lost that tooth when I was 9 or 10. I need a root canal that took many visits and it hurt A LOT and I now hate the dentist.  I'm  not a good dental patient. I'm just not. I don't make a lot of noise or swear or anything but I gag a lot. And I grip the arms of the chair and mostly I keep my eyes shut.  I look like, well I look like some at the dentist....

Today I went back to start the work on my new tooth. It's a 2 part appointment because they have to take impressions and then make a new tooth.  And remember how I wasn't supposed to eat anything like a sandwich or corn or anything I needed to bite directly into. Well, that probably wouldn't have mattered.

BECAUSE THEY HAD SO MUCH TROUBLE GETTING THE DAMN THING OFF.

I had been given novacaine because while the tooth is dead, they were working a lot around my gums. (My very healthy gums, I might add-thank you cutie dentist man for saying that because it was probably the highlight of the whole 90 minute visit.) and it's probably a good thing I had novacaine because after lots and lots of drilling, they were BANGING on my tooth to get it off. Which made a sound inside my head like they must have been using a hammer. At one point the dental assistant (who I thought was a little rude) said "Does that hurt?" with kind of an astonished look on her face.

When I said "No" she responded with "Well I couldn't tell because you were making such a bad face."
Seriously dental assistant woman, I have someone BANGING on my tooth to get it out of my head. What am I supposed to look like? I'm not at the spa......

My whole mouth hurt a lot, later.

Anyway, this evening I have a temporary tooth in that is a wee bit smaller than my last tooth so I'm sporting a mini Lauren Hutton look. I can't wait for 2 weeks from today when I get my new beautiful tooth. (It better be, for the $500 co-pay-exactly half of the cost of the work.) You think they would have offered me a gold tooth for that price, although with the cost of gold these days, I would have probably had to settle for silver.

I realize this post is not at all related to my blog theme. I suppose a good life includes good healthy teeth and I'm really lucky I have dental insurance. 

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Food Prices Got You Down? Check Out Your Local Farm Stands

Today I stopped by a farm stand on the way to my parents house and purchased

1 4-lb Butternut Squash-$.50
1 4.5 lb Cabbage $.50
4lbs of Apples $2.00
2 Zucchini $.50

I spent $3.50 on food that would have cost the following at Wegmans.

4 lb Butternut Squash $4
4.5 lb cabbage-$3.11
4 lbs Apples $4
2 zucchini $1.98

$13.09 or a little less than 75% more for food that is avaliable locally, now. In fact, the cabbage was from the farmer's tractor-He had just picked them. That's a huge difference. Last week I got some Delicata squash from this farmer for $.50 each-At Wegmans it's much much more.

Now I'm not anti-Wegmans or anything. Certainly I love shopping at their clean, have-ANYTHING-I-need stores and everyone needs to make a buck in the transaction, I'm not against that. But never forget for a minute that you pay a premium for that kind of atmosphere and service. If you have the opportunity, stop by that farm stand you pass all the time and see what they have to offer. This ones happens to be right on my way to my parent's house but I would drive out of my way a little if I had to for prices like this.

Certainly not all stands have this great a deal but you need to check it out. There is a stand near my home where the woman charges $2 each for her zucchini. Yes, I'm proud of my zucchini too and probably wouldn't sell it for less than $2 either, however, that is why I don't sell my zucchini.  I prefer to give them away (and I'm so stingy I won't even give it to someone unless I'm pretty sure they are going to use it and appreciate it.)

And as you'll notice in the example above, I actually bought zucchini today as my own zucchini was pretty stinky this year and I didn't have enough to even give away to deserving friends!

** Note-The squash is so big that I'll be able to use it for 2 meals. Tomorrow I'm making this and then later in the week I may make some butternut squash soup. Tomorrow's side dish will use:

1/2 squash-$0.25
1 apple- $0.17
2 onions from my garden $.05 (because I started them from those tiny onion sets)
A little olive oil (which I'm not going to figure out the cost of)
salt & pepper
$0.47 for a side dish for 3 people-That's $0.16 per person.  Did you think you could feed anyone, anything for $0.16????

This assumes you have olive oil (which I always do) and salt & pepper, And ok, I grew the onions but they really don't cost much so if you didn't grow anything then you could still get off cheaply (Think $.20 per person!) if you try!

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Back in the 19th Century!

Over on my other blog for The Genesee Country Village & Museum I'm talking about:

 Oxen (yes, you read that right)





Check it out! There is always something interesting going on over there and in the actual village itself! If you haven't ever been (or haven't been since the 4th grade) you really should take a trip out there this fall!

You can also check out their website with the nifty Facebook feed at the bottom right and become a fan right from the page!

Monday, September 20, 2010

I need some sleep

I'm a terrible sleeper.

Actually, anyone who knows me will say I'm a great sleeper-I can nap like anything. At almost any time. In fact, we have a joke around our house that I'm practicing to be a competitive sleeper-My strong points being the "Long Sleep" and "Catnap" categories.

I'm actually just bad about going to bed on time. I'm a night owl and my husband and daughter are rather early sleepers. There is nothing I like more than a few hours of quiet time at night in my house. You can call me late and I'm usually up for a chat. It's peaceful and I tend to be productive at night. In fact, if I could just stay up late and then sleep until 9am with a short catnap around 3ish, life would be grand.

However, life rarely works like this. School every day and a new job have seen to that!

And so I found myself this past weekend, home from a dinner party at about 11:30. My parents had our daughter overnight and so the prospect of a morning to sleep in as long as I wanted was a juicy one. I went to bed at about 12am. At 11:30 am my husband came into our room and asked me if I was ok because I was still sleeping. (Don't get the wrong idea, I only had 2 drinks at the dinner party.) Later in the day I took a 1 hr catnap. Without issue. They say you can catch up on your sleep and I guess I believe that because today I felt just dandy. However, my ability to sleep 12.5 hrs actually makes me think I need to get a better handle on this sleep thing. (and just writing that makes me feel like I should go and get a physical but aside from being able to sleep at the drop of a hat, I feel fine.)

I KNOW it's not healthy, but staying up late is the hardest habit for me to break. I can read or blog or listen to a book on tape and fold laundry. I love being up late and most nights I decide around midnight that I should probably start going to bed. And then I like to read in bed a little. I hate getting up in the morning. This is not good.

So as an experiment, I'm going to be in bed by 11 pm every night. (I'll probably still read a little) I'd love to do 10:30 but I just don't think I can. I'm doing this for 2 weeks. Maybe a month. Maybe forever if I like it. I can't even remember the last time I went to bed for 2 weeks straight by 11. I was probably in the 10th grade. At the end of this sleep experiment I'll see if I actually feel any different.

My goodness, just writing this is making me sleepy.

Night folks!

Monday, September 13, 2010

Where Rachel Ray Has No Soul and I Cook Indian Food

My husband and I are good cooks. What I mean to say is that we like to cook and like different foods and like to make nice things, because really, anyone can be a good cook.  All you need to do is follow the recipe.

Provided you've picked out a good recipe.

And therein lies the challenge.

The other night I was talking to Toni Lynn about food and cooking and I was explaining how the recipes in my favorite Italian cook have something special. They have a depth of flavor that you just don't get from Rachel Ray's 30 minute races to the table. And don't stone me or anything, we've made some Rachel Ray recipes, they were good, but they lacked soul. Her recipes are one dimensional ways to feed your family real food in a reasonable time frame. I get it. It's not all bad.
 

BTW, am I the only one who wants to slap Rachel Ray until she falls down? Seriously, I'd like to stick one of her annoying SAMMIES in her big mouth every time she utters the phrase EVOO.   My husband recently read an article to me from her magazine. It was some dumb ass thing about cooking new foods from around the world with an Americanized twist and how "don't worry, they'll taste as familiar to you as pizza and fried chicken"

OMG, How sad is that? Cooking foods from around the world that taste just like they came from your own country. Does anyone really want to do that???? Do they? Speak up if you do. Especially if I know you because I'll feed you what I made for dinner this weekend to knock some sense into you.


Maybe this sounds like a bit of food snobbery on my part and maybe it is. Hell I eat plain food and junk food and nothing special too. I just don't WRITE about it. If I write about something it's because I like it or care about it. It makes me think. Americanized French food? That is what Rachel Ray thinks about?


I'm also willing to admit that if someone were to pay me bags of money to wax cutsey about SAMMIES, I'd probably do it. There's no crime in it. I just don't have to like it when I see it.

And now that we've covered my hatred of Rachel Ray we can move on.

Back in June one of my husband's students who happens to be Indian, brought him a small cooler full of Indian food that her mother had cooked for him. This stuff was amazing. I mean I've had Indian food before,  restaurant cooking, this was home cooked, southern Indian fare.

There was this rice. And it intrigued me. I mean it came with the Star anise and cinnamon  sticks whole in the dish. It was aromatic and tasted like, well, I can't even describe it. There were just all of these layers of flavor in this one rice dish. That someone made in their kitchen...

There were 3 different kinds of rice actually and I've been pondering that rice all summer (and we've been mostly grilling and eating easy meals with our schedule and the heat-See what I mean...nothing to write about.)

This weekend, with a little time to spare,  (because I'm actually a pretty sucky cook when I rush) I made Indian food, Chicken Tikka Masala (my favorite Indian main meal) and this Indian Style rice with Cashews and Raisins. OMG... Seriously. Coconut milk in the rice cooking broth! The best rice I've ever had IN MY LIFE. It was yellow from the turmeric and sweet from the golden raisins and spicy all at the same time. The chicken had  a mixture of cinnamon and cumin in the marinade.  The flavor in these dishes was so RICH.   Today I made, Rajma chawal (red bean curry) to go with the remainder of the rice for my lunch tomorrow.


These dishes were like a wake-up call to my senses and I liked it! It's been a while since my own cooking has spoken to my soul like that.

(Well except for that lobster popcorn but I fear that boarders on gluttony.)

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

I don't like Kindergarten

With my new blog theme, I had planned on posting mostly positive and uplifting things.

Hence my lack of writing over the past week.

No, I still have a tooth, don't worry about that.

I'm just a little blue.

My girl started Kindergarten this week and I don't like it. I just don't. You may or may not get this. My lovely friends seem to understand.

Some moms seem to be doing that happy dance that their kids are finally out of their hair. I don't really get that.

I guess I just miss my baby.

Tonight though, as I was cuddling her before bed I had the realization that some day I will miss this too.

Does my mother miss cuddling my brother and I? I wonder.... Probably not me (she likes him better ;-)

Time marches on I guess, this week I just don't like it.

The only thing cheering me up right now are thoughts of butter and Jared Padalecki. (See below)

Lobster Popcorn

Just a little warning. You may think I'm a complete genius after reading this or you may think I'm completely disgusting.

This past weekend we had lobsters for dinner.

One of the things I love about having lobster is having a nice baked potato with it so that I can use some of the butter I'm dipping my lobster into, on the potato and it tastes all nice and lobstery.

However, the night of the lobsters we also had plans to watch my very favoritest show, Supernatural (Season 4, please don't say anything if you've watched up through Season 5. I can only watch one show at a time and since the last season of LOST was a complete disappointment, I'm hoping for the best. And seriously, Jared Padalecki, need I say more???) Anyway, the plan was to watch it with popcorn so I skipped the baked potato.

However, I melted EXTRA butter for the lobster and then I took that butter and heated it up for the popcorn and OMG, LOBSTER POPCORN. Could you die?!?!? I should probably be arrested it was so good.

Keep in mind that if you'll be sharing the popcorn (as I did) you'll probably want to only share it with someone who likes you a lot. Not only because it's so good but because you could easily be grossed out by eating someone else's lobster butter.

Just don't think about it too much.