Trade Day, How I Love You

Cars line the roads as far as you can see in any direction. Vendors begin setting up long before sunrise (so they can sit and watch the crowds while they hold their double barrell shotguns; see above photo). You can smell the livestock area from the street. Oh, Collinsville Trade Day. An event that Mark and his family have been going to since he was a kid. I was initiated long ago, but with this last visit, I just had to share. Should you ever find yourself in Collinsville, Alabama on a Saturday morning, c'mon by. Here are just a smattering of the treasures you can find:

• A man named Daryl (I know that's his name because it was airbrushed on his shirt)
• A Peacock (that I was told "needed me as much as I needed him")
• A Horse with blue eyes
• 1 million roosters
• Used makeup
• Opened pill bottles and boxes
• 22-caliber rifle
• Children selling puppies out of a fish tank
• Army camo gortex jackets
• A baby pig the size of a wallet
• Tomatillos
• Justin Bieber tshirt
• Diamond Alabama earrings
• Corndogs dipped in mustard
• Turquoise snakeskin cowboy boots
• Cajun boiled peanuts
• A sign advertising creamed oppossum
• A billy goat
• A reindeer made out of firewood
• A Bootleg copy of Jillian Michaels work out video
• People lighting their cigarettes from a burn barrell
• Funeral flower arrangements
• Pleather Auburn purses
• A house flag with a giant picture of Bear Bryant's hat

Brussels?

This (last) week: Pan-Seared Tilapia with Citrus Vinaigrette, Almond Couscous, and Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Delish! Fish was great (Mark even cleaned his plate, which NEVER happens with fish. He's usually taking too long to uber-chew every little bite to ensure that he doesn't swallow a bone.) Found the key to the best Brussels sprouts ever...way more olive oil than I had been using. They were great. Also just found out that they are "Brussels sprouts" rather than "brussel spouts"...who knew? First time for pan-roasting nuts, too, and Rachael Ray is right! Your nose DOES let you know when they're done!

Triple Play

This week's new recipe(s): Potage Parmentier, Mini Hamburger Sliders, and Cuban Braised Beef with Peppers

A week full of new firsts...the year's first snow in Nashville, 3 recipes tried for the first time, and the first Alabama National Championship of my fan-hood. After watching Julie & Julia (which my husband surprisingly liked), I made Potage Parmentier (leek and potato soup; thanks, Andrea!) in honor of Julia Child (NOT Julie Powell) with French bread, a Romaine salad, and Chardonnay. I've decided that, for the new year, I would like to try to be more like Julia Child and less like Julie Powell (watch the movie and you'll see why; Julia is much more likeable). Oh-and we're just talking atittude-wise, not cooking-wise! The soup was simple and delicious. For the Alabama-Texas game, my husband insisted we eat some type of cow (to push the Tide toward beating the Longhorns), so we made my mom's recipe for White Castle sliders. Mark bought 80-20 ground beef, thinking that it would be better for burgers. He's right, but not if the meat is being cooked on a cookie sheet. Let's just say that there was a lot of grease-blotting after the meat came out of the oven! Next time we'll go leaner. But they were fantastic, and the whole lot of them were gone in a flash, despite us throwing away some of the beef because we just couldn't imagine how all of those sliders would get eaten. And lastly, while the snow fell, my lovely crockpot cooked braised beef for me. It was delicious!!!! Once again, the crockpot reigns supreme. Shredded lean beef in a sauce of red peppers, diced tomatoes, and spices, served over white rice with fresh cilantro and avocado slices (which really made the dish for me). And it was so pretty that I couldn't help taking a picture, which Mark laughed at for a good 10 minutes. Will definitely be enlisting my crock again for this one! Let It Snow, and ROLL TIDE!!

Lemony Goodness

This week's new recipe: Lemon Penne with Ham and Escarole

Yummo (and I'm not just saying that because I think the recipe came from Rachael Ray)! This may be one of the best pasta dishes I've ever made, and that's saying a lot considering how much I love pasta. The sauce was made with eggs, parmesan cheese, and lemon juice/rind. So creamy and lemony. And even though the escarole was pretty much just wilted lettuce, it was great. Next time I might try it with broccoli or spinach instead. But there will definitely be a next time!

The Root of the Matter

This (last) week's new recipe: Roasted Root Vegetables

Never before have I had to buy fresh beets or a rutabaga. Never again will I buy a rutabaga. Overall, it was OK. I roasted carrots, turnips, beets, potatoes, rutabaga, and onion with garlic, olive oil, and rosemary from our garden. Turnips were my favorite, beets were delicious (but seriously staining), and the rutabaga just didn't cook. If you're a vegetable and you can't cook in 45 minutes in a blazing hot oven even when you're cut into small pieces, you do not have a place in my kitchen. (Maybe this is why everyone I talked to has always had boiled rutabaga?) In sum, it was a heck of a lot of chopping, a heck of a lot of trying to change my hand color from fuchsia to skin-colored again, a seriously delicious smell, and a so-so dish. I think next time will involve more olive oil and salt and less weird hard-to-spell vegetables in the mix.

Squashtastic

This Week's New Recipe: Whipped Butternut Squash

From: All Recipes (with some tweaking)

Result: This was great. It's basically mashed potatoes but with squash (so better for you, right?). I just roasted the squash and then mashed it and whipped it with butter, sour cream, and salt and pepper. Delish! We ate it with roasted brussel sprouts and chicken tenders. Right...chicken tenders. They said "chicken cutlets" on the package, but the package lied. So I just dusted them with a little flour and seasoning and cooked them in a skillet with a little olive oil and butter, then squeezed a lemon over them at the last minute. Yum!!

Dessert-o-rama

This Week's New Recipe: Peanut Butter Cup Pie

From: Kraft Food & Family

Result: As Mark's grandmother said, "It's sinful." Kraft, you may have redeemed yourself. The pie was fantastic! And it looked professional, too...always a plus. The pie certainly claimed it's place next to my chocolate trifle, pumpkin bread, and spiced cider, and Mark's mini pumpkin cheesecakes. Yea, Thanksgiving!

Another Crock Pot Dish

This week's new recipe: Slow Cooked Tex-Mex Chicken & Beans

From: MarthaStewart.com

Result: Delish. I know I've said before how much I love crock pots, but I totally love crock pots. It deserves saying at least twice. And, a new fave...chipotle peppers in adobo sauce..sooooo good. Although the recipe called for chicken thighs, I don't cook with chicken thighs as a rule (bad experience in the past), so I made it with chicken breasts. And actually, used yellow onion and green pepper rather than red onion and red pepper. (Why are red/yellow peppers like twice the cost of green peppers anyway???) So it turned out like a thick stew of shredded chicken and pinto beans in a spicy sauce. Really good. And today we'll be eating the leftovers wrapped in tortillas while we watch Alabama win!

Garlic Overload

This week's new recipe: Pasta Primavera Alfredo and Garlic Bread

From: Kraft Food & Family

Result: There is a reason that pasta alfredo is good. And there is a reason that pasta alfredo-ish is not as good. This recipe was mostly light cream cheese and skim milk, rather than mostly cream and real cheese. As a side note, I don't remember ever eating so much garlic in a meal that the next morning, all I can taste in my mouth when I wake up is garlic, even after brushing my teeth twice and downing a bunch of water and iced tea. (But this was due mainly to my homemade garlic bread rather than the extra garlic I added to the recipe.) Anyway, decent pasta with good vegetables, but didn't quite live up to it's promising title. No thanks, Kraft.

Slow Cooking Saturday

This week's new recipe: Italian Sausage and Zucchini Soup

From: All Recipes

Result: Delicious! Mark actually drank the broth in his bowl...and he never drinks soup (as a personal rule for himself)! I think there are 2 kinds of crock pot dishes...the kind that you can do on a work day (where you just toss everything in the pot in the morning) and the kind that are best on weekends (where you actually have to do stuff to the ingredients before you toss it in). This one was the latter kind, but perfect to make before kickoff and eat after Alabama clinches the division! I totally heart crock pots (and husbands who clean them).

And so it begins.

This week's first new recipe: Beef & Bok Choy Stir Fry
From: Real Simple
Result: Pretty good, but I've figured out that the whole stir-fry technique isn't my cup of tea. The combination of super high heat and quick timing of everything stresses me out a little too much. But I do love bok choy!

The start of something small

I just finished reading "Julie & Julia" by Julie Powell. Steering clear of how I felt about the book (since I haven't completely made up my mind yet), I want to jump right to my latest inspiration. If nothing else (the jury is still out), Powell made me see the power of the blog, in particular, the power of accountability, which I decided to harness.

In our house, I usually make dinner every night, or at least every night during the week. (OK, so maybe sometimes me "making" dinner is actually me dumping canned soup in bowls, or me turning to the lovely blue box of dried pasta and yellow cheese powder, or at my worst, me running by Krystals...) One of the things I've been wanting to do for a long time is try to make something new every week. But like most of my endeavors, this attempt has, in the past, joined the ranks of learning to knit, adopting a grandmother, and quitting smoking (these three are yet to be completed). So, I'm hoping this blog will help me out. I mean, let's face it...I only blog once in a blue moon anyway, and it just makes me frustrated to see the same tired blog entry title facing me day after day on my iGoogle homepage.

From now on (what a ridiculously hopeful open-ended phrase), I will post at least once a week. The post may be short and sweet, with a quick recipe title and a 5-star rating, or it may go on for days if the culinary result is good enough. Like Powell, I'm using this blog to motivate me. Unlike Powell, I will try not to bore my 3 readers with unneeded/unwanted stories about my husband's friend whose wife can't stand to be around us, or about how many Republicans exist in my office. I'm not setting any time limits or goals of any sort other than to try new things. And if the accountability factor works, I might extend this to other aspects of my life, and finally get that scarf knitted. But I doubt it.

Vacation...Had To Get Away

Prebeach Day: Berry, sweet Berry, how I have missed you. So beautiful and so memory-filled! But, really, with all the construction?? And then meeting perfect little 5 pound 6 ounce Callie…how can anything be so small and so precious?! Topping it all off: Happy Birthday dinner to Dad with the Birthday Boy, Mom, and brothers…which Dad paid for because all of his children
are broke. Still. Found out Mark has always thought crepe paper was cray paper. Yep.

Day 1, “Arrival”: Oh, so nice to get to the beach when there is still some daylight left (we usually arrive late at night). You gotta love a man that will make you pull over just before the bay bridge so he can drive and you can hang your head out of the car like a dog and ooh and aah and scream with delight while he just laughs at you. Lovely walk down to the beach with my hubs and some pina coladas.

Day 2, “Mistakes”: Thought I lost a finger. Jammed it while putting up my brand new pop-up tent (a birthday present from Mark). Couldn’t speak for several minutes. Really disliked the tent for a while. Turns out I may just lose the finger nail. Also, learned that apparently spray-sunscreen doesn’t work at ALL on a windy beach…burned the crap out of myself the very first day. Laughed HYSTERICALLY at my husband when he thought he’d get smart with the wagon containing ALL of our beach supplies (2 chairs, the tent, a camping table, a cooler, beach towels, football, etc.) and just roll it down the stairs rather than picking it up. Not only did half of our stuff fall out along the ride down the stairs, but towards the bottom step, the sides of the wagon itself fell off.

Day 3, “Achoo!”: Woke up with a head cold/sinus infection. Fantastic for the beach. Luckily, it rained, so we went to a movie. FYI: “Transformers” is awesome, no matter how lame it actually is, if you are an 80’s baby. Woke up in the middle of the night with cramps. Yippee.

Days 4 – 6, “Beachy”: I love the ocean! Despite the lack of dolphins coming to greet me, we had a great time at the beach. Sandy, sunny, beery,deliciously awesome. Found out that 1 pound of crab legs is just about my limit. Finished reading “Wicked” in 3 days…can’t wait for the musical

(thanks, babe, for the birthday book!). Hung out with Scottie T. Scottie fell out of his chair at the restaurant. Mark tried to take a picture of Scottie throwing a pack of crackers at him...over and over and over. Not successful. Had a fishbowl-sized drink at Harry T’s while laughing at my husband who apparently has wanted to go to this restaurant since all the “cool kids” he grew up with had Harry T’s t-shirts…picture a 5-year-old on Christmas morning and you may get an idea of how excited he was. Maybe. We were so close to the ocean that I thought we could probably spit in it (hypothetically). To Mark, it wasn't a hypothetical...and yes, you (he) could spit in the water from our table. Ended our stay with a romantic night beach walk, during which we convinced ourselves that if a shark were to just walk up out of the ocean onto the shore and attack us, we could get really rich from selling it to a museum.

Day 7, “Departure”: As I blow good-bye kisses to the ocean (and the dolphins who must’ve gotten the days that I was visiting mixed up on their calendar, or else they surely would’ve shown up), I look forward to 8 hilarious hours in the car with Mark and a certain perfectly perfect black puppy waiting for me at the end of the drive.

Lessons from Green Meadows

What I Have Learned So Far From Our New House:
* DO let your husband surprise you with a Johnny Depp poster hung behind all of your clothes in the closet so that, whenever you pull a shirt from the hanger, a gorgeous pirate smiles back at you.
* DO clean your tiny master bathroom mirrors with Barbisol shaving cream so that they don’t fog up in the morning when you can’t open the bathroom door to let the steam out because your sleeping husband’s face will catch the brunt of the light.
* DON’T decide to clip the irises around your mailbox after you get home from the bar at 1 in the morning, only to wake up the next day and see a plant massacre on the front lawn.
* DO get a label maker and label everything you own so that there is no question as to where the king sheets go in the linen closet any longer.
* DO get a Swiffer to magically attract all of the dog hair on the wood floors.
* DON’T wait to use the Swiffer until there is so much amassed dog hair on the baseboards that you burn through 6 duster sheets and still don’t get it all.
* DO buy a lawn mower so that your husband dances around the yard while he mows the grass because he’s so excited to mow his own grass for the very first time. (Added bonus=the song and jig that he made up while we were at Lowe's buying the mower and he got to get a cart because we had so much big stuff!).
* DON’T buy your first lawn mower 1 hour before you have to be somewhere, because your husband will not be able to stop himself from immediately cutting the grass, front yard AND back, appointments or not.
* DO throw things away that you hate, regardless of the emotional attachment. It's much better to apologize to the person that gave you that antique lunchpail than to look at it every day with disgust in your heart and a not-often-enough-used duster in your hand.
* DON’T assume that the kitchen faucet isn’t leaking just because your home inspector told you it wasn’t.
* DO force your husband to give you one of his dresser drawers even if he needs it because you are so over your stupid collegey plastic closet drawers and need a place for your underthings.
* DON’T make fun of your husband for all of the ridiculous mementos he keeps in his top dresser drawer…(OK, you should absolutely make fun of the “keepsake socks” from Boy Scouts and the blinking LED belt buckle and the beer bottle caps from Colorado that he has every intention of making into refrigerator magnets…).

More lessons to come…

Tennessee's Hold

For the last 7 years, I've had dreams of getting out of Tennessee. My Tennessee life has always come in spurts...2 years here, another 3 years there. It started with 1.5 years of grad school in Chattanooga, then moved to a 2-year job there, then unexpectedly transitioned into 3.5 years of grad school in Nashville. And now, just when we finally thought we were free, Tennessee has exerted its pull on us, yet again. It looks like our family will stay in Nashville for another length-to-be-determined section of our lives that we will never get back! I realize I'm making it sound a little bleak...those who know me well know of my feelings about this odd, yet beautiful, state. But I should point out the many upsides to staying here for a while...my job is perfect for me; Mark can keep his job that he likes; we have plans of buying our first house (which, Cami, does NOT mean we will be here forever) which we can furnish with great furniture at a great price, thanks to Mark's job; and best of all, it's closer to Georgia than most of the other positions I looked at. After all, we could've ended up in Dubai, seriously. So, for another several years, we will continue to proudly sport our Alabama car stickers all over this horribly orange-stained town. We will continue to cheer Vandy on whenever the Big Orange (no fruit sucks like it) comes to town. We will continue to avoid the downtown honkey tonks at all costs until out-of-town guests visit. We will continue to be amazed at how everyone in Tennessee thinks that the lack of a state income tax is a great idea while important things like roads, air quality, and a little thing called education continue to go down the tubes. But, we will continue to frequent our most favorite of biker bars sans bike, we will continue to attend the most awesome church we've ever been to, I will continue to look for Willie Nelson around every corner, I will continue to find new favorite roads every day that wind through incredible farms and valleys, and we will continue to enjoy traffic that, although Nashvillians complain about, true Atlantians know is pretty close to rush hour heaven. We will continue to root for any team BUT the Titans (thanks to people like you, Albert Haynesworth), we will continue to look forward to Trader Joe's arrival, and we will enjoy finally having some money to spend at the great restaurants Nashville has to offer. So even though sometimes I want to cry when I think about not being in the city that I love, a city that houses both of my brothers, most of my best friends, and my in-laws, and is oh so much closer to my parents, I think Mark and I will try to look at this time as yet another boost to our future...I just can't help but wonder occasionally when this "future" we keep talking about will start!

It's a Twista!

i should never go to walmart. i just should never go. something crazy always happens. but i had to buy diapers!! i had a diaper cake to make!! first, i didn't know where the diapers were and had to ask. i felt like such a dumbass. but i've never had to buy them before! and by the way, for those who don't know, diapers are expensive!! i told mark we need to come up with a way to potty train our kids before they turn 1. and, for those of you who don't know, diapers are not (as i thought) in the toiletries area where the adult diapers are. no, they are in the baby clothes section. diapers look a whole lot cuter when they're next to onesies and baby socks than they would if they were next to some Depends (i think it's a marketing ploy). so i spend a zillion hours trying to decide which diapers to buy...i decided to just go with one of the 3 names i've heard of (huggies, luvs, pampers) and ignore the fact that no diapers exist without baby pooh on them...huggies, it is. just as i was finishing up, the walmart head honcho came over the loudspeaker and said "attention walmart customers and shoppers (and here i thought those were the same thing) and walmart attendants (are these like mixes of stewardesses and grocery store clerks?), we need everyone to move to the center of the store. there is a tornado headed this way"...so we kind of all just start moving toward the center. when we're relatively close to the "center of the store", we can see old women who apparently can't hear the announcements wandering back and forth in front of the cash registers, not able to figure out why there are no cashiers. several old women try to leave and one employee says "look, i can't stop you from leaving, but i can't check you out." old women who want to go home are not very open to the idea of standing around like a bunch of cows with 200 other idiots in the middle of walmart while witches fly by the windows singing "dun-da-dun-da-dun-da, dun-da-dun-da-dun-da, dun-da-dun-da-dun-da DAAAAA". i happened to be standing in the pet aisle. one of the employees was next to me and resolutely informed me that when the tornado came, she was going to get some of the dog beds and put them over her head. the boss woman comes back on the speaker like 10 minutes later and tells us that we ALL need to move near the ladies' dressing area. if you've ever been in the ladies' dressing area at walmart, you'd know that it only has like 3 dressing rooms in a closet-like, no-roof area in the middle of the store. needless to say, all 200 or so people that were in walmart at that time were in no way going to fit anywhere near the ladies' dressing area. she then comes back on the speaker and tells us that the warning isn't over until 11:30 (it's now 11:05), so we just better stay put until then. then, 5 minutes later, she comes back on the speaker and tells us we can go home. then i went to publix and laughed with the cashiers at all the idiots at walmart who are afraid of a little rain :)

PHinisheD!

i'm done! i'm done! dissertation has been written and successfully defended!
here are the stats without appendices:
175 pages
46,080 words
1,235 paragraphs
1,000,000,000 pounds of stress relieved

if anyone would like to read about measuring the quality of prekindergarten classrooms and assessing the early childhood environment rating scale, you are welcome to it. and, thanks to the $60 fee that i am required to pay, it will also be available on microfilm which, as we all know, is the wave of the future...or at least it probably was 50 years ago.
i, on the other hand, will be searching for employment.
yippee!

Where's my rainbow?

When God flooded the earth, He sent a rainbow to remind His people of His covenant. When God flooded my bathroom, I got nothing! Last night at 4 a.m., I woke up to my dog barking her fool head off. Mark is out in Colorado having the time of his life snowboarding while I try to get my dissertation finished and simultaneously attempt to mop up what can only be described as 20 toilets worth of water spilled all over my guest bathroom that is about the size of 1 toilet. Trinity's bark wasn't the "I need to go pee" bark or the "I hear a noise outside" bark, but it was more like the "There is something seriously wrong going in this house and my goal is to make my mom as scared as I am" bark. I was really out of it, being woken from a deep sleep, and I'm pretty sure I thought there was someone in the house and I put the covers over my head in the hopes that the intruder wouldn't see me. Then I realized that I was hearing a weird hissing noise coming from the bathroom in the hallway. I considered getting Mark's hatchet from beside the bed before venturing out of the bedroom, but I decided against it (probably a smart move, because I may have tried to hack the toilet to pieces). The bathroom looked like a volcano, the toilet spewing great spouts of water from two spots. The floor was already covered with a layer of water. Apparently I really don't think well at 4 in the morning and my first thought was to open the top of the commode and see what I could do. After moving random things around inside the toilet, I remembered (duh) that I could shut the water off at the wall. So with the water gushing right in my face like a scene from Tom & Jerry, I pushed my way to the wall to turn the water off. With Trinity hiding in her bed, I called the apartment emergency number and left a message. The guy called me back a minute later and I told him what had happened. His advice? "Do you have towels?" Well yeah, I have towels. Apparently he lives 40 minutes away and wouldn't be getting to my flooded bathroom until the next morning. So I used every towel in the house trying to sop up gallons upon gallons of toilet water from my floor. In the process, I discovered how dirty my floors are because dog hair was floating by me from spots that the mop hadn't reached, ever. After moving everything out of the bathroom and laundry room (where the water had flowed underneath the washing machine...which is a much dirtier place than the bathroom floor), I sopped up enough water to be confident that the apartment below me wouldn't be flooded, as well. Trin and I got back in bed around 4:45. All I was thinking as I sopped and soaked and squeeged was how Mark would probably have a much better solution to this mess if he were here. So where's my rainbow? I guess the rainbow is hidden in the fact that if it had happened 12 hours earlier, I would've been in South Carolina and I'm fairly sure that much more than a few magazines, a couple rolls of toilet paper, and part of our wedding guest book/wall hanging would've been ruined! Plus, I get to go pick up my hubby in about an hour and a half...what better rainbow is there?

Dissertation Deadline

This is exactly how I feel right now. I just set my defense date for March 19, which seems so far away, but then when I remember that I have to send my paper to my committee 2 weeks before that and give it to my advisor for revisions like 2 weeks before that, I'm pretty sure that means I have to be finished with it sometime last year. Couple that with the fact that I'm still waiting for some data to come in from people who promised it to me last month, and you get a recipe for a time bomb. Tick...tick...tick...

One man's trash...

Ever since I can remember, I've had virtually no money to buy people gifts, at Christmas or otherwise. Comes with the territory of assuming a career as a student, I suppose. So I've had to get creative with presents, and often those presents have come out of some sort of junk-ish item. For instance, there was the clock made out of an old record; the end table made from an old cable spool, a gallon of grout, and a few bagfulls of glass scrap from a nice stained glass maker; the $5 garage sale dresser decopauged with free rave flyers from Little 5 Points. (Actually, it's starting to sound like I only give this crap to my husband, who was the recipient of the three gifts mentioned above...should he be concerned?) Anyway, this Christmas is no exception to my trash-to-treasure (well, I can call it treasure, anyway) gifts. But I'm sooo proud of this one! My littlest brother is a huge car nut, and clearly, I can't buy him a lamborghini. He's getting ready to graduate and move out on his own, so I decided to make him a wall clock out of an old hubcap. My husband and I went to the car junkyard the other day and spent 2 hours walking around in the rain to find the "perfect" (meaning: intact, not too heavy, not from a minivan, and not too shiny) hubcap from which to make this clock. By the way, this is a pretty fun and cheap date...it's amazing what things people leave in their cars, and it's equally amazing what other people will pry off of those cars to take home with them. Anyway, I'm so stoked about this clock; almost as stoked as I am that I get to go home for Christmas (cue Michael Buble singing in the background) and give it to my bro. In fact, when I told him his gift was coming from a junkyard, he told me that was just like telling a woman her gift was coming from Tiffany's. Man, I love that boy. Hopefully this "treasure" will last longer than Mark's did (the record clock and the end table never made it out of his hell hole of a bachelor pad, but the dresser...drumroll...now has a happy home in our closet).