Cobb Salad

I love salads, but they rarely ever taste as good as they do in a restaurant when I make them at home.  However, my Cobb Salad is an exception.  Yes there is some effort to wash and chop and cook, but the end result is so worth it!  Especially when you line up the ingredients like I did in the picture, above.  I think my presentation is Food Network worthy.  ;o)  So here's how I built it:

• On the bottom is chopped romaine and iceberg lettuces, but you use whatever greens you prefer
• I grilled some chicken breasts in Wegmans' Basting Oil but I have also cut up ham and turkey lunchmeat from the deli into ribbons
• Hard-boiled a couple of eggs and ran them through my mini-chopper, but you can just slice if you prefer
• Diced a red onion
• Cut up an avocado
• Cut some grape tomatoes in half because, as good as they taste, the explosion that occurs when you bite into a whole one is not pretty
• Crumbled up some Feta cheese
• I ran out of room for the cooked and crumbled bacon in the salad bowl, so I served that on the side and we sprinkled it over our portions of salad on our plates.

It a one dish meal!  You can serve some bread on the side or not.  Enjoy!

TastyKitchen.com's Scalloped Hasselback Potatoes

I have drooled over this recipe since I found it on my very 1st day on Pinterest.  Scalloped Hasselback Potatoes.  What a beautiful sight to behold!  I have been wanting to make them for so long, and today I finally did it.  They were worth the wait.  I, of course, had to make adjustments to the original recipe, and have noted them, below.  Please check out the original recipe and give them a try!

I scrubbed, dried and sliced russet potatoes almost all the way through, and alternated thin slices of butter and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese in the slices.  I drizzled the potatoes with Wegmans' Basting Oil, since I am allergic to olive oil, and sprinkled freshly ground pepper and sea salt on top.  I lined a sheet pan with foil and baked in the oven at 400 degrees for 40 minutes.

There was so much liquid on the pan from the melting butter, that I moved them to an 8"x8" baking dish after the 40 minutes.  Then I poured heavy cream over each potato, sprinkled with cheddar cheese and put them back in the oven for another 10 minutes.

Here is the hubs' potato with peas and sliced, grilled sirloin steak.  I topped my potato with sour cream.

Easiest. Best. Man Dinner. Ever.

 

The hubs is one of those people who can eat fresh tomatoes, but cooked tomatoes give him heartburn.  That makes it challenging to make dinners on a budget or make quick dinners for our family since he and I are now both working full-time but on opposite schedules.  Most budget meals involve a tomato base with various ingredients.  *sigh*  I love tomato products - tomato sauce, tomato paste, crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes, ketchup, pizza and I make my own spaghetti sauce.  None of which, agree with the hubs' tummy.  So here is my easy-breezy, go-to meal for him that both me and B will eat.

Take a 16oz pkg of frozen meatballs and dump it in a crockpot (this fits perfectly in my 1.5 qt one.)

  

Pour a can of beef gravy over the meatballs.

Put the lid on, turn to high and set a timer for 1 hour.  That's it.

Once done, I put them in a Tupperware container for the hubs to reheat tomorrow.   He'll make rice or noodles to serve them over with a veg on the side and be in hog heaven.  I told you it was the easiest!

Look What I Found at the Target Dollar Spot?

I have been struggling to find a good book to read lately.  Maybe my expectations have been set too high after reading the Harry Potter series for the last 2 years (once to myself and then to Ben).  I tried some Nora Roberts novels but have been unhappy with the way she writes and with the similar plots.  She tends to write inside the head of every character and I don't care for that.  I also don't care for the antagonism she puts between the main male and female characters.  Most men are mean and rude and act like they despise the women, yet they grab the women and take kisses and cop feels against the women's wills.  Not for me.


I checked Dannielle Steele's lates book, 44 Charles Street, out of the library earlier this month.  I'd read plenty of her books in my 20s and I thought a novel of hers would be some easy, light reading.  Wrong.  I could not get past the 1st few chapters.  She kept repeating the same character descriptions over and over again.  I understand the need to establish who is whom and how they tick in the beginning, but it was insulting to the reader to continue to repeat it and the story wasn't moving along because of it.  *sigh*  I really wanted something good to read besides homeschooling non-fiction!

Then yesterday, B and I popped into Target quickly to pick up 1 thing - a bottle of carpet cleaner to remove a stain.  We were there for at least 45 minutes.  Their "Dollar Spot" was at the entrance where we went in and I let B browse for a little sumpin-sumpin.  I was looking, too, and low and behold, on the bottom shelf, I found unabridged and annotated novels!

1. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
2. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
3. The Scarlet Letter, A Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne
4. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austin

The Phantom of the Opera was there, too, but I did not buy that one, just the 4 listed, above.  Each book was $2.50 - awesome!  Although Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet and Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightly are two of my favorite movies, I've never read a Jane Austin novel.  Shocking, I know, for a bookie like me.  Sense and Sensibility and The Scarlet Letter (also a book I've never read) are for me.  Around The World In Eighty Days and Black Beauty are for me to read to B.  I'm so excited!  I already started reading Sense and Sensibility this morning; perfect activity for this cozy, rainy day.

I'm Married to Snow White

The hubs is an animal whisperer.  Not a horse whisperer or a dog whisperer but an all animal whisper.  Creatures great and small seem to seek him out and trust him.  They come close to him, look him in the eyes, allow him to touch them, even pick them up, or rub up against him.  I mean wild as well as domestic animals.  I have seen dogs, cats, hedgehogs, rabbits, chipmunks, ferrets, fish, horses, giraffes, monkeys, birds, elephants and even penguins come to the hubs.  It is absolutely amazing to witness!

A couple of weeks ago while I was working my afternoon to late evening shift at work, the hubs and B went on a nature walk in the woods across the street from us.  They took pictures of animal tracks, sketched mushrooms and trees they saw and enjoyed being able to walk far enough into the woods to not see the suburbia in which we live.  After they had been exploring the woods for about 20 minutes, they heard rustling near by.

The hubs signaled for B to stop moving and be quiet.  They listened.  In less than a minute, 3 deer appeared and walked right up to the hubs.  There are kids in these woods on a regular basis, playing "war" games and shooting paintball guns at each other.  Deer are pretty skittish animals.  So why would they walk right up to humans?  Because they were seeking the animal whisperer, of course!

Being 9 yrs old, B could not keep quiet for long and exclaimed in excitement over the closeness of the deer.  That scared them off.  Being the wise man that he is, the hubs decided that he and B should go home and leave the deer in peace.  When I called home during my dinner break to say good night to B, he told me all about their adventure in the woods.  He was so excited, but I was not surprised at what had happened.

It was close to midnight when I turned down the alley behind our house on my way home from work that night.  I was tired but I still kept an eye out on the ground for the rabbits that tend to dart around the alley at night.  As I approached our garage, I saw a flash of movement to my right and slammed on the breaks as a deer walked in front of my car to stand in front of the hubs' garage door and look back at me.  After a couple of seconds, I decided to proceed on, slowly, and open my side of the garage.  The noise, along with me getting closer, finally caused the deer to step aside and then finally run down the alley and towards the woods.  I am convinced that deer was hovering around our house, looking for the hubs.

I am still wondering what she sought from him?

Back in the (Teaching) Saddle Again

I admit it.  I have not been teaching Ben regularly since I started my night hours.  I've been stuck.  And I finally figured out in what - denial and unacceptance (the spell check just informed me I have created another new word.  Yeah, me!  Note to self - create a page on my blog with the list of words I've made up and their definitions.).  I think what I should really call it is self-pity.  From the moment I wake up each morning, I am walking the plank, watching the clock tick off each minute closer to going to work.  And it's pretty much thankless work.  Not to my employer nor my supervisor.  They are great.  They understand what a hard job I and the other specialists in my department have and appreciate us.  And when other departments have job openings, they love hiring peeps from my department b/c we have such a broad knowledge base of company products and we've battled it out on the front lines and survived.  ;o)

But it's still a tough job with not much thanks from the customers.  In fact, the majority of my customers are downright rude and outwardly hostile.

I know times are tough.  I know what it's like living paycheck to paycheck, not leaving the house for days b/c there is no money in the account for gas, "shopping" for groceries in my mom's pantry to get us through to the next paycheck.  I've been there.  And I went looking for a job to relieve some of that stress, save up so we can buy a house and do nice extra things, like saying "Yes" when B asks if we can go to Disney on Ice.  So, I don't judge my customers when they call in.  I don't worry about how they got to where they are, I just want to help them, as much as I can, in the place they are now.  I am empathetic, helpful and very respectful towards all my customers.  But their frustration and fear and anger at their situation is, more times than not, unleashed on those of us who answer the phone when they call.

It has always been hard for me to not take things personally, to let things roll off my back.  I try very hard to treat everyone the way I want to be treated.  Even if I feel a business has made a mistake and it has caused me embarrassment or inconvenience, I have never gotten nasty nor rude with the person I reach out to for assistance b/c where would the incentive be for that person to even listen to me, let alone help?  But, sadly, I am in the minority.  I am surprised I have been able to hold off their attitudes as long as I have, but my shield, I'm afraid, has finally been penetrated and, I fear, is irreparable.

However, wallowing won't make the customers nicer, won't make the next year and a half go by any faster, won't clean the house, educate B, stop the daily tears nor get me out of PJs.  So it needs to stop.  My mom told me this morning that all I can do is pray blessings on the rude and cussing customers to get me through it.  That will help me.  I am allowing complete strangers steal my joy.  I am not cleaning my house and I am not educating my son at the level with which he deserves.  So, yesterday, we climbed back on the daily school bus and rode to the family room for snuggles and LEGO building while I taught and B learned.  It was wonderful, quality time between us, quality time we have not been getting.

I know I'm never going to be able to prevent rude strangers from hurting my feelings and making me cry at work.  I'm just built that way.  But I am taking a stand now and will no longer let them into my personal life and effect my family.

Our Weekend

Here we are at Disney On Ice.  We all look ridiculous and psycho and imperfect and I wasn't going to post this picture because, honestly, I didn't like that I squished my face back into my neck and I look all doubled-chinned.  But, this is us!  We are ridiculous and psycho and imperfect and we wouldn't have each other any other way.

I had a wonderful weekend with my 2 favorite people in the world!  We went to Disney on Ice, built with LEGOS, snuggled, ate, watched movies, listened to music, danced and laughed.  Oh, how we laughed!  We should have our own reality show b/c we are hysterical and the only one who would show their situation up in here is the 9 year old.

Saturday morning, B said to me, "I asked Daddy what the difference is between a vegan and a virgin."  I froze for several seconds until I could get my eyes to blink again and looked at the hubs.  He smiled and nodded at me.  "What did you say," I asked the hubs.  "I answered him," he said.  "And what did daddy tell you?"  "Well," said B, "I already knew what a vegan was.  I just didn't know what a virgin was."  "What's a vegan," I asked.  "Someone who doesn't eat meat or dairy."  I was impressed with his answer and afraid of the next one.  But I asked anyway, "What's a virgin?"  "I don't remember," B replied.  I look over at the hubs, he grins, gives me a thumbs up, wiggles his fingers like he's typing and points at the computer.  "Come on, get it up on your blog!  That's good stuff, right there!"  B never remembers what the hubs says but everything I say goes in B's ears and out his mouth.

Saturday and Sunday nights the hubs and I stayed up way too late, having heart-to-heart talks.  We haven't had one is sooooo long since I'm working now and it was sooooo nice.  He told me that after 17 years he has finally gotten something through his head: I don't like nor want things; I want memories.  And he realized B is the same way.  So, I will not be receiving anymore gifts from Best Buy or Advance Auto Parts.  Phew.  My 40th birthday is coming up and I am now completely relaxed and unworried about what he's going to give me.  Because I was not relaxed and I was worried before our talk this weekend.  It's nice to know an old dog can learn new tricks.  Even after 17 years.