Stuology

I decided that it would be a fun thing to get up this morning and go out for breakfast before I start work. The conversation on the way there went like so:

Mac: So, where are we going?
Me: Ada, what do you want to eat this morning for breakfast?
Ada: Rabbits!
Me: Did you say you want to eat rabbits?
Ada: Yeah!
Mac,laughing: I guess I don’t need to get repellent for the yard. I just need to send Ada outside.
Ada: Daddy, that’s not funny.

Jay brought home a virus last week. I will blame daycare. He passed it to me. I passed it to Ada. So far Mac is the only one to not get sick. I got over the virus and ended up with another migraine yesterday that sent me to bed by 6:30pm. I even left the table in the middle of dinner because I thought I was going to die anytime someone spoke. I woke up a little after 2:00am with more pain. I took some more powerful pain relief and finally feel back to sleep after 3:00am. I didn’t get back up again until 10:30am. The headache is still here, but the migraine is gone. I took more meds with hope that I’ll feel normal soon. My headaches/migraines are getting more frequent.

I’ve been slacking on posting weekly menus. That’s because I’ve been slacking on planning weekly menus. This week will involve the following based on what I took out of my freezer: Hobo Burgers; Chicken, Lettuce, Bacon and Tomato wraps^*; Italian sausage pizza and one more thing with chicken breasts. I also desire to try this salad.

Also, my mixer has been repaired and is ready for pick-up. We are doing that today. Yippee!

*Darn, my migraine made me miss going to the market. That means I’ll have to settle for super market tomatoes. Blech.

I’m getting more excited for my vacation. I am suffering from short-timers syndrome so it has been increasingly difficult to work. With so much to do and one last out of town work week, it will go by quickly. I’ve been mentally making a list of things I want to do. Book reading is on the top of that list. Between work becoming over consuming and children, I can’t remember the last time I’ve finished a book. At least, the last time I finished a book that wasn’t 90% pictures. I think I read two last winter, and I’m halfway through another one now. I have two books on Sensory Processing Disorder that I will read first to help with Ada. I really miss the therapy that she did have. She still receives help through the school district, but it is a lot less of it. Unlike her therapy before, we are not involved. And she isn’t getting anything over the summer.

I have been getting more frequent headaches as well. I’m hoping those will subside once I remove some stress. I’ve been getting them quite a bit, and last week, one did turn into a full blown migraine that disabled be from doing anything useful for most of the day. Jay woke up vomiting on Monday. Today was my turn, so I lost yet another day of useful work.

The sickness had an impact on No Knead Bread, ver 1.1. The inside texture was much better, but the bottom crust was still burned. It is not as bad as the first time. I’m going to try two sheets of parchment next time and adjust the heat a little. My illness increased my rising time to 19 hours. Wow, that made a difference in flavor, but I’m not sure if it is a 100% good one. It tastes almost salty. I used whole wheat and high gluten in this one as well.

I scared Jay this evening. I was sitting on the kids’ bedroom floor playing when this gigantimous spider darted out from between some toys, heading straight for Jay. I grabbed a book and slapped it down on top of it. When I lifted the book up to collect the carcass, it resumed its mission to attack and eat the brains of my only son. It got to his leg when I swooped Jay up over my shoulder with one arm while I grabbed a toy and successfully smashed it with the other. After I sat him down, he stared at me in wide-eyed silence with what I assumed was awe over his mother’s heroic act. That lasted about 10 seconds before the tears flowed and he started crying that he wanted his daddy. I’m not sure what is up, but the spider population seems to have increased around here. What spider predator got removed? My deck is constantly being used as the frame for spider luxury condos.

Back in the days before I cared much about cooking, I was happy to have my two stainless steel storage containers: one for AP flour and one for sugar. That’s all I really needed to make brownies or cookies. Having an appreciative audience sparked my interest in cooking, and once I had all my college debt paid off, I could afford to buy cooking gadgets. I have expanded quite a bit what I keep on hand in my kitchen. My AP flour has been joined by whole wheat, high gluten, rye, semolina, spelt, wheat bran and flax meal. I wanted more containers, but to get ones that matched my stainless steel ones at the same gauge as the two I had was really, really expensive. The flimsy ones with the flip-top lids were annoying because when they aren’t very full, they tip over when the lid is up. The cheap plastic ones were, well, cheap, and I wasn’t happy with the lids.

My searching ended when I found these OXO storage containers. They are plastic, but more solid than the really cheap ones. They were less expensive than my stainless steel ones. What really sold me was the pop-top lid. Press the button into the locked position, and the seal is really tight. You can pick the container up by the lid. Pop the button to the unlocked position and the lid comes off with ease. No pulling or prying to get the seal lose like my stainless steel ones. I ended up picking up a ton of them. I put almost all of my baking items in them. They stack well, and tetris nicely into my pull-out shelf in my pantry. I picked up a few new ones a couple of weekends ago. One so I can add yet another flour to my line-up. And another because the seal isn’t working on my stainless steel container for my sugar. With the humidity here, I need that seal so it doesn’t turn into one gigantic lump of sugar. I may pick up another big one to replace the AP flour stainless steel container. The seal on that one still works, but I can’t stack it and I have to really pull to get the lid off.

Plus, I love these so much that they are bound to stop making them. I must collect a few back-ups just in case.

I started another No-Knead bread tonight. I’ll bake it tomorrow early afternoon. I’ll see if slight adjustment in the water helps, and I’m going to try to slip parchment paper into the mix to see if it will ease the burning on the bottom of the bread.

Ada pool side

We’ve had a busy weekend, but most of it was relaxing. Ada spent some pool time with her cousin. It was my first opportunity to use my new camera body. Today we headed to Wisler’s Cove at Perry Lake. Mac said he was going to wake us up early today so we could all go to breakfast, but he didn’t. I did make his requested cupcakes, and even bought hot dogs for the lake. That’s how much I love Mac. I bought hot dogs. I picked up some vege dogs so I didn’t have to eat one.

Here is where people are going to mark me as crazy, but the summer weather has hit my favorite time of year. It is still 83 outside and humid at 1:00am. I love nighttime in summer. When I was on maternity leave with Ada, anytime she requested feeding from midnight – 4:00am, I’d sit on the deck with her^*. The weather report did change. It was suppose to be 101 and very humid. It has since changed to 99 and very humid.

Vacation Countdown: 24 days. This is the number of days until I am going to have time to get used to my new camera body. This is the number of days until Ada and I can go swimming in the afternoons. This is the number of days until I get a break from working or even thinking about working. At least for a little while. At least until I’m excited about working again.

*With Jay, not so much. However, he and I played the 360 and watched The Cartoon Network during the really early hours of the morning.

This is why I am ever so excited about my extended vacation. I’m really close in life to this being me.

Mac took my KitchenAid 5 Plus into Kansas City 2 weeks ago. I love my KitchenAid with one exception: the planetary assembly keeps falling off and landing in my food. I can put it back together, but if I use anything higher than a 3, it will eventually fall off.

The status of my repair as of today is that there is a part on order than could take another 2 – 4 weeks. Am I so special that someone in a far off land is forging a part just for me? It doesn’t take 6 weeks for anything to arrive these days. The longest I’ve had to wait for something to arrive where my children.

I will anxiously wait. I will not buy a KitchenAid 600 to fill the black void in my heart and countertop that my 5 Plus once occupied.

I can still make pizza dough with the food processor, cookies with my hand held, and my brownies with just a spoon and a whisk. No Knead Bread will fill in until it gets back.

My pasta and ground meat experiments will have to wait. Hopefully it will get back right around July 15th. That would make me a Very Happy MellyStu.

Cylons? Fah! Just look at it! Thanks, M!

Anytime our phones ring, Ada runs to find the phone and bring it to us^*. Ada ran to me with my phone while I was preparing dinner. It was a voicemail that was transcribed by Google and delivered via text. I started reading it, and then I said, “Oh, that’s the call from earlier. That makes sense. What a minute. That voicemail makes sense! Perfect sense!”

It was a computer that called me–A UPS automated call letting me know that I have a package that will be delivered tomorrow that I need to be home to sign for. Computers that call you, Google can translate perfectly. People? Not so much.

*Which has come in handy when we’ve misplaced our phones. We call it. She finds it and brings it to us.

Cook an entire chicken in 15 minutes. Warning: It requires setting your yard on fire.