I Consider Buttering My Bread Cooking

So, like. . . I'm taking a break from me studiousness. But now I am wrenched with a vex. "Why," might you be asking, am I irritated? With myself, of course.

Since I have been le fini with school, I've been cooking at home. A passion of mine that I love to do. I've missed it for 6-months and I'm entirely sick of eating out. My waist line is unhappy with me over all this eating out too. In the end, I would rather have a home cooked meal than a restaurant meal anytime, anyplace, any day. My last weeks cooking has consisted mainly fresh fruits and vegetables. Speaking of which. . . . have any of you realized how expensive said items are now at the grocery? Holy cripes! Though, this is not why I am irritated.

I am bothered due to my latest creation. Just over 24-hours ago I began to cook a pot of sopa de frijoles negros. AKA: Black Bean Soup. High in fiber and low in fat. Awesome! Directions are as follows:

Soaking: Place beans in a large pot, cover with 2 quarts of water. Allow to soak over night, or at least 8-hours.

1. after soaking, drain water, add 7 cups of water
2. bring beans to boil, reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 2-hours
3. in a skillet, saute onion, pepper and ham*** for about 5-minutes
4. add mixture to bean pot. Simmer uncovered for 1/2-hour
5. add contents of seasoning packet. Simmer for additional 1/2-hour

I followed the directions to a "T" minus the ham. What's the problemo you ask? Well, I ask it too! The beans are still as hard as a rock. Hard. As in my dog(s) wouldn't even eat that. Blehck.

To be honest, I did somewhat deviate from the recipe as I was reading yesterday on the Internetz, ". . . Some people blame beans for intestinal distress. It actually isn't the fiber in the beans that causes gas but a sugar that requires an enzyme to be digested, which humans lack. When soaking beans, add a pinch of baking soda to the water. It will help leach out the sugar from the beans, making you less gassy after eating them. Also, to avoid the sugar, don't cook the beans in their soaking water. . . " so, I added a pinch of baking soda and didn't cook them in their bath water.

Does anyone know if adding baking soda will cause a hardening of the beans? Have I done wrong? I was only trying to help my as well as the husbands intestinal distresses.

Um. One more thing. I just checked my second time around simmering soup. Not only do the beans continue to be hard enough to load in a BB gun for ammo, it appears that my genius-chicken-instead-of-ham-idea has turned a tasty looking purple. Yep. You read that right. The chicken is now freekin' purple.

Pffft. Stoopid bean sopa.




*** I exchanged the ham for chicken. Brilliant! Mucho healthier, right? Hmpf. If you have not already, please re-read the 2nd to last paragraph above. I see now that there is a reason pig instead of fowl is used. Whatever.

I'm going back to studying. . . le sigh.

So You Think You're Einstein

I am studying.

That is all.

A Very Boring Post

. . . . it's very weird to me to not have to be somewhere by 8:00 AM. Almost 6-months of regiment and I don't know what to do with myself now that it's gone?

I have loads and loads of studying to do for my licensing. But who wants to do that on their first day off of class and/or internship? Besides, I continue my wonderful tension headache that started yesterday afternoon before the husband took me to dinner to celebrate. The food was great, the company even better, but my head was not. Unfortunately, it's still not very nice. Bad headache. Boo.

What shall I do today that doesn't involve me climbing back into bed to rest my big fat head?




I'm a poet & didn't even know it. . . . Tee hee

Two-Faced

A sentence about "The Dark Knight":

It should be tonight's entertainment. "You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villian. . . . "

Okay, that was actually 2 sentences. Who's counting when even Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 94% fresh? It was more than just entertaining! It was yummy! I can't even get into Heath Ledger's portrayal. He was full of delectable evil. Then again, each one of the characters in this flick added more than their names to it. It is a must see.

Fantastic!

It Pays To Be Obvious, Especially if You Have a Reputation For Subtlety isaac asimov

Apparently, my reputation precedes me.

While in class today, my Advanced Business & Ethics instructor pointed out that if something you don't know how to handle happens, call . . . Jennifer . . . or at least she's going to call me. And then she laughed. Laughed. Semantics-schemantics: Jen's been there. Jen's done that. My classmate had to immediately chime in, "that's no joke ya'll! I just called her yesterday!"

I don't think that is necessarily a good thing.

I told all ya'll that if weird schutff is going to happen, it's going to happen to me. All you have to do is just read this here blog. This leads me to wonder, why am I such a sheet magnet?

Justifications appreciated.

More Shepoopie

So, I haven'ts been around for a wee bit. This is well known and not what I'm going to delve into. I'm still around. Still kicking the pig. . . .

I will say this, "stoopid people scare me."

*********************************************

To explain, because I know ya'll. If I leave it at that, you will want to know. So, to save computer trees and in a Texaconsin Diva nutshell, as nutshell as I can get, this is how it goes:

Driving home from my internship today I encountered my first road rage. I mean, I've run into others, but this is the first one where I was actually scared. For me. Really, really scared.

I had some young girl, whom apparently, I cut off (inadvertently). So bad was her anger, she chased me on the freeway. She was less than 2-feet from Coco's bumper widely displaying her two middle fingers at me to tell me how much I am number one in her world. At the same time that she's driving with her two eloquently extended middle fingers, she is screaming red-faced "F*CK YOU!" Over and over and over and over and over again. I got the message.

But I'm confused.

What has happened here? How had I wronged this girl?

I put up with her gesticulations and her madman screaming for a wee bit (read 7 minutes). Then I tapped my brakes - not enough to stop me or slow me down; but enough to make her want to get off my arse. Off my arse she did go, but instead of leaving me, she ended up driving next to me. I, once again, ignored her until I noticed her Honda Civic pulling over into my lane. Time and time again. She got so close I had to change lanes. I looked over at her and she's yelling, "pull over bitch! I'm going to kick your ass! PULL OVER BITCH!" I laughed and said, "You want me to pull over?" She was nice enough to display her two middle fingers again while shouting "YES, PULL OVER BITCH!" This was absolutely fantastic.

Notsomuch.

Her attempts to force me off the road only made me decide that I'd had enough and kicked Coco into 120-miles and hour in about 3-seconds.

I thought I'd lost her.

How wrong I was. Five minutes since I left her in the dust, she's on my arse again. Honking and screaming as well as running her two fingers at me. I made a decision and pulled off the nearest exit ramp praying she wasn't going to follow. How wrong I was. She never got more than 2-feet off my bumper. Honking widely. Gesturing fabulously. Completely classy.

I'm trying to call the husband to see what I should do. Should I call the police? Should I keep driving to nowhere? I couldn't get the husband on the phone. What do I do? I was, by this time, frightened. I don't scare easy. I'd half made up my mind to call 9-1-1. . . . .

I didn't have to call the po-po as she did that for me. I was pulled over as soon as I had exited the freeway. She pulled behind the police. I was visibly shaking at this time. He talked to her first & then walked over to me. She said I had almost run her over, but I mentioned that she never was in front of me, so that wasn't very likely. Then, I regaled the tale of her trying to drive me off the road. . . .and all that had really happened (I know there is her story, there's my story and the truth lies somewhere in between - say what you will, I'm too tired to fight).

He went back to her and had what I am assuming is a nice bit of a conversation; she pulled away with a nice little good-bye gesture to me. He let me go too, but not without telling me he told her that she needed to find a way to control her road rage. That she needs to be more careful of who she chases down in her car, because you never know who is behind the other wheel. And, what would have happened had she side-swiped me and her car flipped over or lost control? I told the officer of the law that I'm almost 40-years-old, I have no need to fight someone on the side of the road. He replied, "if it's any consolation, you would've taken her no problem." With that, he gave me a smile and a laugh and told me how to find my way back home.




Oh. Right. I almost forgot.

She also had a wee little child in the backseat of her Honda as Mr. Patrolman related this to me when he asked her how she would have felt had she actually hit the side of my car and flipped her vehicle with her child in the backseat?

Some parents should really obtain a license to have a child.