stocking up

you may wonder why i'm so gung ho to stock up the freezer (see food related posts below). it helps to have back up meals in the freezer when you're pregnant and tired and for after the baby is born (and you're supposed to take it easy).

so this weekend i will probably be a pasta sauce making machine to add that to the cache. and maybe some artichoke soup as well.

holy marketing batman!

mark morford on the official product tie-ins of The Passion.

i think Jesus was probably doing fairly well in the marketing department on his own...He's probably just not familiar with officially licensed products as say, mel gibson.

2004 resolution report, week 9

in honor of mardi gras, i decided to try my hand at something new orleans-ish. so i found a recipe for chicken gumbo that had neither shrimp nor okra in it. not as easy as it sounds. the finding the recipe part, not the recipe itself.

the only thing i changed from the recipe was that i did not get a whole chicken and cut it into 14 pieces. i mean come on, i'm pregnant AND have a 2 year old. spending time in the kitchen trying to figure out how to make a whole chicken into 14 skinless pieces is not the way i need to be spending my time. so i got about 3 lbs of boneless, skinless chicken boobs instead and cut each one into 3 or 4 pieces. AND i didn't burn the roux. so there.

it turned out pretty well. not very spicy, which is good for me. there was lots of it-it almost filled up my beautiful new 9 qt oval casserole/stockpot. i brought some into work to share on monday, we gave some to steve and lis on monday night for dinner because lis is having back problems AND they'd had a shitty night's sleep, and i put a few yogurt containers full in the freezer.

that means i only have to think of one recipe this weekend. i'm thinking it's going to be a baked good. i haven't really done much baking lately. it helps when there is some holiday or occasion happening during the week. i've already got an irish stew picked out for the week of st patty's day. next week is dr suess's 100th birthday-maybe i should try my hand at green eggs and ham????

2004 resolution report, week 8

couldn't really think of anything to make this week, but since i'm in the mode of tryig to think of things that can both act as lunches for me, and make enough to freeze some for future meals, i went with soup. again, from a friend's cookbook, i made curried lentil soup. super-dee-duper-dee easy, and made enough to put a couple of containers in the deep freeze and provide me with lunch for the week (don't forget the beano!).

severe emotion day works both ways

i just got a little teary reading this article about a marriage at SF city hall.

if i had been in SF valentine's weekend, i would have been one of those people bringing breakfast, coffee and flowers to people waiting in line to be married. hell, i would have signed up to marry them if i could.

no, i'm not crazy, thank you very much

i don't know what it is, but i am cracking up today at almost every posting on gawker and wonkette.

for example, this one regarding GW and gay marraige, or this one regarding open jobs in the magazine industry or this one regarding the NYT gossip columnist.

laughter is soooo great.

is this a parent trap kind of thing? or maybe freaky friday?

which barbara rolled her eyes and didn't admit to being a republican?

dooce

a new mother's observation

TiVo was invented so that you can pause what you’re watching, switch the baby to the other boob, and then resume your show without missing a single second!

Gawker

good one

this entry from today's gawker gossip roundup totally made me laugh out loud:
"Britney Spears, homewrecker. Idiot dancer tells all about his hot night of not having sex with Britney and how it ruined his marriage. [NYDN, 3rd item.]"

RE: GW AWOL?

Bill Maher has an interesting post on his website on the whole whether-or-not-the-president-did-his-military-time question.

he points out that GW often tries to portray the folks interested in getting to the bottom of this question as besmirching the national guard. well, consider this: in the vietnam era, 0.03% of the troops were from the national guard, today, in iraq, they compose 22% of the troops. maher points out that GW's guard was clearly a different insitution than the national guard of today.

also, colin powell says in his biography: “I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well placed managed to wrangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units”

and another thing...

what happened to howard dean and his campaign? i mean, i know polls don't tell you anything, really, but his caniddacy has just spontaneously combusted. went from everything to nothing in about 10 seconds. and don't give me that 'it was the scream speech after iowa' crap because i don't believe that for a second.

well, whatever-i'm adjusting my presidential primary leanings now. dean was not really THE choice for me, but i had thought he was the best in the field. i'm now trying to decide between kerry (feeling no connection at all to him) and edwards (looking like an option).

in any case, i have until march 2nd to make up my mind. a lot can happen between now and then. starting with 1pm EST today, when dean has scheduled a 'campaign event' (read: campaign status report, possible withdrawal)

want a hummer?

so, you think SUVs are safe? think again.

there was a time when i thought i might want a jeep grand cherokee (and honestly, they are still a little appealing), but i was never enamoured of the expedition, or any of its like. lincoln navigator? puleez. my dream car is another volkswagon-the passat wagon. although those touaregs are also looking tempting...and i think they don't have the truck chassis of the big monsters, so that's a good thing.

UPDATE: my friend sarah just told me NPR reported that the VW Toureg is the worst car for the environment - has more toxic emissions than ANY other car made - not just in its class. not that i'm buying a car anytime soon, but i think if i were, it would NOT be the touareg.

please don't take this the wrong way

i would give up my left eyeball right now to be able to fit into my cute little NON MATERNITY jeans and some cute little NON MATERNITY shirt.

let me explain. when you're pregnant, you go happily along gaining weight and girth while your little offspring is growing and kicking inside you. along the way, there are some points where you reach some magical cosmic marker in the intergalatic pregnancy rules and it just tips you over from feeling fertile and ripe and glowy to feeling like you're a beached whale. i've had a couple of those instances in the recent past, and had another one more this morning. i was bending over to do something and my stomach was just so IN-THE-WAY that i got a little pissed.

i'm at the point where i'm gaining about a pound a week, so it's very possible these moments may increase in frequency from here on out. of course, the ability to bend over to do seomthing will drastically decrease in frequency at the same time.

i just want to point out-it's not that i'm unhappy that i'm pregnant-i'm super excited and can't wait to meet the little guy or gal when he or she decides it's time. it's just that the second pregnancy is not the time of wonder that the first one was. it's just something i'm going through to get another happy result.

i do still totally dig feeling and watching the baby kick. it's a mega-surreal experience.

2004 resolution report, week 7

get this: i managed to try THREE new recipes last week. of course, i have no idea what i'm going to do this week, but that's beside the point because on of last weeks recipes was kinda hard and i'm still basking in the success of that one.

i made 2 recipes from a friend's cookbook: easy tortilla soup and greek rice salad. these recipes took no time at all to make and were almost dissapointing in their simplicity. but since i made them on a weeknight, i didn't really mind all that much, plus we had soup and rice salald left over for dinners and lunches for a few days...

friday night, we had a couple of the neighbors over to NOT celebrate a birthday (our next door neighbor doesn't like to make a big fuss-'it's jus like any other day!' she says). so i decided to make soemthing special-a chocolate souffle-for dessert. i know it would be labor intensive and time consuming, and i think somewhere in the back of my mind i knew there is a possibility that souffles can fail miserably, but i hadn't considered the fact that this souffle could fail until our neighbor mentioned that she had never had any success with souffles and had given up trying. then, i got nervous. so i did everything very very carefully, worried about whether i'd done everything, especially the egg whites, correctly, and voila! it all came together and was yummy and lovely and puffy. the cool thing about it is that it tastes like warm chocolate mousse, but doesn't have all the cream and stuff that mousse has, so it's not quite as rich. and let me tell you-warm chocolate souffle with a little dab of creamy, cool freshly whipped cream is TO-DIE-FOR. take my word for it. brian said if i make it for his dad sometime, he would shit twice and die.

RIGHT ON!

my heart literally bursts with pride when i hear about things like this. it makes me incredibly proud to tell people that i'm orginally from the bay area (even if i'm not exactly from sf).

let it snow let it snow let it snow

these pictures of snowflakes are so fricking cool

colin powell loses his cool at a congessional hearing

as reported by wonkette:

At one point in the hearing, Rep. Sherrod Brown made a casual reference to how Bush "may have been AWOL" during the Vietnam War. Responded Powell: "Mr. Brown, let's not go there."

To which Brown sniffed, "Talk to the hand,"only to be bested by Powell's retort, "Mmmm-mmm, I know I didn't hear you say that, girlfriend." Powell then snapped his fingers while waving his hand, picked up his purse, and left the room.

(actual story here)

to round it out

i am not the nutrition queen today, which doesn't really help the situation at all. my lunch is scant because a certain 2 year old was throwing fits this mornign while i was trying to get ready for the day.

i've pretty much missed my window of opportunity to order anything in, so i'm eating what i brought. that would be rice and veggies, to which i've added about 5 little restaurant bags of soy sauce (and it doesn't taste the least bit soy sauce-y), and for dessert, maybe about a thousand dove milk chocolate hearts

and you know what else?

i don't need that kind of shit when i'm pregnant.

just need to say

i've been pretty fortunate to mostly work/have worked with folks that i really get along with, work well with, and think the same way as. but when you come to those rare occasions in which you're working on a project that you both have good, but different ideas about, and you keep butting heads over it, it can make your work day pretty fucking awful.

2004 resolution report, week 6, part ii

didn't make anything else new this weekend, but did try some variations on some old recipes. both involved the addtion of english toffee bits to an established recipe. made some coffee toffee ice cream and regular old toll house cookies (with toffee bits). both were totally yummy and i ate far too much of each of them before retiring last night.

gonna try for 2 new recipes for dinner tonight-oooooo weeknight cooking, watch out!

Perfect launch / Stanford wins with longshot

that's what i'm talking about

stanford men beat arizona with a three point shot at the buzzer. YEEHA!

2004 resolution report, week 5 (i almost forgot!)

i made polenta mushroom pie from the moosewood lowfat cookbook. although i've made polenta in the past and it seemed a little time consuming, this was easy. plus it made enough for left overs for a few days. my sister had made it and told me about it, so i thought i'd try it.

2004 resolution report, week 6

tuesday night this week, i made real spaghetti carbonera (sorry, no link, but you can find it in lots of cookbooks). a real peasant-y italian pasta dish-basically spaghetti with bacon and eggs mixed in. it turned out pretty well and pretty tasty, a little dry though. i think next time i might add a little butter at the end so the pasta isn't so dry.

i got this recipe in so early this week that i might have time for another one or even two (!) new recipes this weekend. partly also because the weather is supposed to be fairly crappy tomorrow and maybe saturday, giving me some time at home to play with my food.

buy natural meat!

the meatrix

not a good start

this morning i've already had to deal with:

-runny scrambled eggs, lovingly made by my husband to help me out but he forgets that runny scrambled eggs tend to make me a little nauseous, ESPECIALLY when i'm pregnant.

-the garage door breaking as i open it up and almost getting brained by a 2 foot long heavy spring as it swung down after coming loose of its moorings in the garage.

-being locked out of my office because i can't find my key right now and, amazingly, at 8:00 AM, i was the first person here.

-deciding to make my decaf coffee (the second floor, while empty of worker bees, was inexplicably unlocked) early, so when i did get into my office (on the first floor) i could just grab my cup and go get my decaf.

-going upstairs to get my decaf and discovering that someone had thrown out the decaf thinking it was yesterday's coffee, so i have to make more.

-having to deal with a pretty much non-stop hammering noise because, apparently, the offices below us got flooded last week and they are now having to do major work on them to restore the ceiling and remove all the asbestos (which we knew nothing about thank you very much dartmouth safety office).

thank god it's the end of my work week. too bad i'm out of black licorice jelly beans in the snack drawer in my desk at the moment and that the chocolate covered raisins are just not cutting it in the sweets department for comfort.

not really surprising

lieberman drops out. not enough joementum.

well, duh.

given the popularity of tivo, and how many freeze frame shots of the incident i've seen on the internet, this is not at all surprising.

funniest line from a superbowl ad. ever.

"Erections lasting more than four hours, while rare, require immediate medical help."

the great nipple debate

did they mean to do it or didn't they? you be the judge.