best autumn soup ever!

This soup is so good! I used shallots instead of leeks since that's what I had. This is a pretty quick soup once everything is peeled and diced, 30-35 min. 5 min for onions to soften, 20 min for potatoes to cook, then puree time. After the onions were soft I put the potatoes in and let them saute while I cut up the ham. YUM!

Ham Yam Soup

1 onion, finely chopped
3 leeks (white part) chopped
1 T oil
1/2 pound diced ham
2 pounds peeled, diced sweet potatoes
4 C chicken stock
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
nutmeg (optional) sprinkle
1 C milk or cream

Cook onions and leeks in oil to soften. Add ham and potatoes, toss to coat. Add chicken stock, salt & pepper & nutmeg. Cook until potatoes are sofft. Remove 2 cups of potatoes and puree (add as much stock as necessary to puree). Return puree to soup with 1 cup milk. Heat through.

why why why

Why is it that when I am in the grocery store I think,

no, don't buy those high priced cookies and side dishes, they are so easy to make at home!

Then when you wake up early on Sunday morning and are laying in bed reviewing your Sunday School lesson in your head you realize "oh, these are little kids - they are going to expect a snack!"

So what do I have in my pantry to take the tiny tikes?

pretzels? sure, if they could eat the giant bavarian beer pretzels with their tiny little baby teeth

cookies? nope, none ready. I have some homemade dough frozen, but I think it is chocolate cookies with walnuts and I don't know these kids - what if one has a nut allergy? well, wait....I do think I have a hidden package of Pepperidge Farms brussels cookies with maybe 2 left in it. Can I divide 2 wafer thin cookies between a whole sunday school class?

chips? no, the only kind left in the variety pack are spicy chili doritos, probably not the best choice. Plus what kind of Sunday School teacher gives the kids CHIPS?

Graham crackers? that's a maybe....I don't THINK I have any, but I'll check before I do anything drastic like make cookies at 5:30 in the morning


I guess I'm stuck making cookies.

And now that I think about it, those 2 brussels cookies might just give me the energy boost I need to get the job done!


The moral of this story is.....buy the stupid premade snacks and stash them away somewhere...you WILL need them


EDIT:

HEADLINE ON MORNING PAPER:

MICROWAVE POPCORN SAVES THE DAY

While getting out the baking supplies from the pantry, I realized I have microwave popcorn! that will do for the SS kids, but since I have the mixer already set up I decided to make a chocolate cake to keep the natives at home from getting restless...they need homebaked goodies to be reassured of their manliness....ugh..woman bake..me eat...I good man...get treats,..me special

Okay, NOW I remember

why I got a job in the first place.

because when you are not working the whole house becomes your responsibility.

Not that it wasn't still all your responsibility when you were working, but NOW there's no excuse why everything can't get done and be perfect, because YOU'RE NOT WORKING! Yay you!

And guess what? you better cook, too. Every night. And pizza doesn't count.

And guess what else? They secrectly expect you to make desserts and treats. An actual quote from my child on the night before the first (half) day of school: "So Mom, what pastry are you going to make us for tomorrow? You are going to be at home now, right?" They think there should be home baked treats every day after school.

Now tell me, how am I supposed to read a book a day if all this housework and cooking keeps getting in my way?

Total Drama Island

it's a kids' cartoon along the lines of Survivor with teenagers

anyway,

did you ever find yourself in the middle of a drama?

and you didn't want to be there

and it's not really your drama

but an innocent display of concern somehow took a left turn?

and your still not quite in the MIDDLE of the drama, but a little too close for comfort.

sigh.

Quote for the day

be the kind of woman that when your feet hit the floor each morning the devil says,

"Oh crap, she's up!"

learn from my mistakes!

When the gas light comes on and you are in an unfamiliar car running the air conditioner, get gas sooner, not later.

I ran out of gas yesterday - the first time since 1987. Not a terrible track record, but still pretty annoying. Praise the Lord (literally!) it was about 300 feet from the Comm. barry bridge where there was still a shoulder. Once you are on the bridge there is no place to even pull over.

I was trying to make it 6 more miles to the gas station in New Jersey so I didn't have to pump my own gas :(

Also, if you go to help someone who is out of gas, please bring at least a 2 gallon gas can! My friend (bless her) brought me gas but the container her husband uses for the weed wacker was the smallest I've ever seen. It had to have only been 1/2 gallon because it certainly wasn't as big as a gallon of milk! With 6 miles to the closest gas station and 18 miles to the gallon on my van, that 1/2 gallon of gas almost didn't get me far enough!

And guys - if you use special gas mixed with oil for some of your machines - label it! but that's a different story......

PS: I've never gotten more than 13 gal of gas when I fill up. Yesterday it took 19 gallons! I had no idea my tank was that big.

my blue heaven

well, really just my blue pool, but I'm REALLY happy about it! It's been over 3 weeks since I've been in it. I was swimming already, now I'm going to go soak again before I mow the lawn.

Thank you, God, for swimming pools that keep my kids busy and active for hours at a time and make them tired enough to go to bed at a decent hour.

IKEA

Do I love it or hate it? YES.

Do I frequently get lost? yes, and not just getting there like today when i forgot to get on the blue route off of 95 and couldn't figure out why I was seeing the airport. I get lost inside the store, too.


Do I realize at the checkout that all the cool organizational things for the kitchen are up in the kitchen department not in the marketplace where I have wandered for the past hour? YES

but sadly there is no way to get there from here. so I just go home.

On the bright side, I was able to pick up the $850 worth of kitchen stuff that they left out of my order without too much hassle. On the other hand, it's a hassle that they forgot to send me $850 worth of kitchen stuff when i picked up all the rest of my kitchen stuff. See what I mean?

And yay for some fun purchases:
5 bin hanging organizers for the kids' closets so that we can pick school clothes for the week on Sunday night and not have to have a clothes discussion (you can't wear that, go change) every morning.

a red cutting board to be reserved for meat - we already have a blue one for veggies. David learned this at cooking camp and I kind of like the idea.

more wooden hangers so I can get rid of the plastic ones in my purged and organized closet.

crispy cookies that I will bring to Grammie's tomorrow to share.

a giant metal tray for only 99 cents...why didn't I get several for all the summer picnics???

and...ta da... my own huge blue ikea bag



PS: Jason, the pool is blue again!

cool purchase of the week!

for the "new" kitchen, though of course I'm using them right away. there's a copyright on the pic, so have to just send the link. I got 2 sets and LOVE them. They are prettier in person! yay!

http://www.collectionsetc.com/Provincial_Mixing_Bowls/product.aspx?Ntt=bowls&productname=Provincial_Mixing_Bowls&No=0&N=0&productid=417361#

either nobody is reading this, or you're not paying attention

Oh, COME ON PEOPLE!

I wrote this 2 days ago and NO ONE has called me on that last post???????

"I am going to give up my manic/depression cycle about the kitchen"

HA

That's like saying "I'm going to stop crying over movies"

Not gonna happen

Despite the fact that at this very moment my husband is prowling around the empty (floorless) attic above the kitchen and dining room, let's not kid ourselves that I will have a new kitchen anytime soon.

I should have known this. All the signs were there. 10 hr days with 1 hr commute each way, meals, sleep, sex, chores and the damn green pool -- were we really expecting a huge project to even get underway????

yes.

stupid us. or maybe just stupid "me". I left out the parties every weekend that we are not away camping, which is almost EVERY weekend. While this is quite entertaining, it is not very conducive to getting major renovations done at home.

so

I'm going to stop my manic/depression cycles regarding the kitchen and just assume it won't be started until .... January? Let's face it - October starts crazy outage schedules that last through November, so why even bother starting in Sept when there's bullets to mold and more trips to take?

These are the facts, and they are undisputed.

(Sorry, I watched A Few Good Men the other day and some of my favorite lines are from it)

I hope bad things don't really come in threes

after my last sad post lamenting about my lack of a new kitchen, you'd think I would get over it and just be cheery again.

no such luck.

now it's the pool. for 2 years we've kept a beautiful ice blue pool that the kids swim in for hours and hours a day. This year there is a filter problem and the damn thing is green. and green. and green again.

we've been having too much fun on trips every weekend and not taking care of things at home and I am starting to get pissed.

UN

un started
un progressed
un finished
un defined
un fulfilled
un done
un happy

...un....

becky home-ecky

With my new kitchen poised to be born and the end of the school year just weeks away, I find myself in a very nesting mood. I imagine baking wonderful things in my new oven and purchase special flour. I think of all the homecooked meals I will prepare each night and stock up on ingredients. I envision myself trekking to the produce outlet and order Debbie Meyer "Green boxes" from HSN (my first time ever!) to keep all my produce fresh. I daydream of my fridge with orderly little boxes of pre-prepped ingredients. I go to Costco and get new glass storage containers with snap on lids as I inwardly scorn the pitted plasticware my less becky-home-ecky friends use, and feel pity for them.

I'm like a deadly blade of domestication...

I AM BECKY!

Panda shenanigans

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned, it's been 4 years since my last confession

i'm getting thinner

with just a few clicks of the cloning tool :(

some people are distracted by the details

so i cropped and cloned them out

you can change the world

Here's Dave changing the world!






the rest of us are just floating along on his
good karma

KILTS?????

Yes, ubby is actually going to wear a kilt to the celtic festival.

Roc and I spent last Tuesday "pleating to the line" 8 yards of tartan for 1 kilt - geez!

And, no, I don't know what he's going to wear beneath it!

am I just hormonal?

This made me cry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY&NR=1

what a painful song - I guess I never really listened to the words til now.

Lucky Lucky Me

We've been to 3 fundraisers over the last 2 weekends, and I must say we've been pretty lucky.
We've won:

$50 Redstone gift card
Partylite set of 3 candleholder bunnies (thanks, bill) and box of scented tealites
(also won at our table: wine, r/c motorcycle & spa gift bag)
set of nice glasses
4 Playstation 2 games
(also won for friend: awesome coffe house gift basket with lots of goodies plus a $30 gift card)
$50 Target gift card
$25 Applebees gift card
(also won at our table: Midieval Times tickets, AC Aquarium family membership, $25 gas gift card, local sports tickets)

Moral of the story....

you should come drink with me and win prizes

if my legs looked like this

I'd wear thigh Boots all the time!!!!

Sometimes I might even add a mini skirt!

something wicked this way grows

Is it my imagination, or can you see agony on the face of this tree too? or maybe it is terror?
Its eyes are almost melting down its gaping maw, and I think I see something slimy like a tentacle wending its way down to encircle its neck.








I'll admit this one is harder to see - the tiny whithered body curled with it's face snuggled into the monster's shoulder while groping roots extend around it like gruesome arms holding it tight as it is absorbed into the body of the beast, only the backward glancing elbow and bottom of the foot still visible as if once caught finally trying to turn away.









What poisoned soil has caused such deformities - branches twisted like broken arms never healed, hoary growths emerging from wizened orifices like nasty remnants from a diseased lover?




Maybe it's growing under the watchful eye of this ghost house.

I am NOT your friend!

grrrr.....I just checked my old Juno account, and a bunch of people from my high school must have discovered Facebook and are making friend requests. The first one happened to be one of my best friends in high school. I was Ok with that, not that I ever go on Facebook unless it's when someone requests me as a friend. Then I continued down my 2000+ email inbox and found at least 10 more (so far) requests from random people I haven't talked to in 25 years.

I couldn't help saying out loud, "I am not your friend!". by the 10th one I was really getting aggravated and decided the world (or at least my little corner of blogger) needed to know my position on this.

If we talk less than once a year, I am NOT your friend.

You may be a very nice person, but that doesn't make us friends.

Maybe Facebook needs to come up with a new category. Here's some of my suggestions:

-I used to know you and you were pretty nice
-We graduated high school together and you weren't a total jerk
-I didn't really even talk to you in high school, but maybe you keep in touch with my old boyfriend/girlfriend and I want to know what he/she's been up to
-I vaguely remember you so I want to add you to my Facebook so it looks like I have a lot of friends

*My Choice*

- casual acquaintances from the past that I don't mind acknowledging but don't really want to get involved with..and by the way, don't add me to your joke/prayer/inspirational /tupperware party email list, either! If I REALLY liked you that much, we'd still be friends.


And I'm not a cranky person...

shining happy people

I don't usually post pictures of myself, but

since I'm on a posting roll......

(see the street sign?)

(at an excellent jazz club in the middle of the night...

que "St Louis Infirmary blues" )

happy....until we had to leave...sigh

carnival

already crazy at 6 pm

and even more people at 1 am the same night

divine

It was fabulous to be away from my daily responsibilities of home and kids for a week. I can't believe how quickly I became used to partying all night, dining out and having someone else clean my room and make my bed. So what if it makes me a shallow person....I had fun!

woot woot!

Check out the awesome hotel we're staying at in New Orleans next week!

www.lepavillon.com

I can't wait! The city to myself while
bill is in conferences all day!

sweet like candy to my soul

I am obsessed by the phrases in the song Crash Into Me

Maine Vacation Pics