Brew Day!

It’s about time to have the neighbors over for another round or five to get room in the keg fridge for more batches. I can’t wait to have BBQ’s this summer you bring some food to share, we supply beer! A little backwards but hey I like doing things differently!

Brew days are always great days J can tell not only from the smell of the wort but also from my jumping all over the place. Now I’ve been doing this for years so I really should not get this hyped but there is something about the smell of cooking grains and hops that turns me into an energy ball. Today’s brew is a summer wheat brew, I’d like to run some experiments with this one but as I have never made it before I thought I would be better off just letting this one run it’s course then playing with the next one (hopefully soon) it’s a wheat as I have said and it includes orange blossom honey and Whitbread yeast. The yeast should be fruity and bring out the orange flower in the honey. Now I read somewhere that you can’t taste such flavors in honey but the meads that I tried to make (aside from needing more experimenting and serious help) taught that there were distinct floral small and slight taste to the wild flower wild flower honey and well the buckwheat honey (J’s idea) well definitely tasted like buckwheat, not a great flavor for mead. So is this going to taste like orange or flower? Sigh four weeks until I find out. The next one I’m adding orange or lemon zest to the fermented wort and maybe even juice (not allot) to see how that will turn out 5 gallons I should be able to do all with a control. This weekend Irish Chocolate Stout! I wonder what J will do for a glass…

Hell has frozen over...

Dinner tonight was to be chicken and veggies with rice. Since I forgot to thaw out the chicken the night before (opps) J decided that he would have leftovers well I still wanted my veggies and rice. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with the morning farms chicken strips to get more protein in my diet. I decided to add that to my meal, they are great. As I’m stirring the rice and dishing out my own platter J comes up behind me and steals my tofu chicken so it’s on the way to his mouth and I freeze. I’m in shock my husband is eating tofu. “you know that’s my chicken right?” (Like he could possibly be mistaken in the matter). “it’s not bad” my jaw hit the floor, I literally didn’t know what to do. So after a few minutes I get over my shock and dish out my dinner and let him do the same. I go sit with my food and J comes and he’s got MORE tofu on his plate... He at the tofu I was going to have for lunch as leftovers.

For those who don’t know my pork, I mean meat, loving husband. He teases me relentlessly about my vegetarian ways. I used to cook him nice dinners for editing my school papers (I know I should have him edit these as well). The first nice dinner I made was a great meal completely vegetarian of course. The salad comes out and he says “looks nice where’s the bacon?” as he examines every inch of the bowl for signs of his beloved bacon. He loved every dish of the meal and asked for bacon with every one (yes that includes desert). At the next meal I served and abundance of bacon - we all had a great time making fun of J.

TV Night

I haven’t blogged in a while my life has just been too boring. Although I had a job interview with key bank Thursday and I think it went well (wish me luck).

Today has been great slept in until 8:30! Ran errands all morning looking for a bathroom rug since the last one got shredded in the washing machine (oops!). The rest of the day was spent cleaning (fun).

Tonight it’s Absolutely Fabulous, I love this show. This great show is about the fashion world specializing in Champagne, sex and dysfunctional families. Tonight’s episodes feature gigolos, orgies, bulimia, drugs, and books called “Sex with myself - sticky fingers” I’m thinking I should really write a book with this title it could be fun! I really think every one should see this show, make sure to have lots of cheep Champagne on hand.

Day one with the in-laws

Jason set the alarm yesterday so that it went off at 6:15, I asked him to turn it off but it took him three snoozes before I told him it was Saturday and to turn the thing off. Unfortunately I was already awake so I got up around 7 and was cleaning the vanity out by 7:30. After I got everything out Jason opened one of the doors and to be helpful I asked what he was looking for (to find it for him) but he was looking for nothing (i.e. that it was empty). He went to tear it out and found that whomever put in the sink did not believe in shut off valves; I went two hours with out water in the house until he got them installed. I had to wash my vegetables at the neighbors house so that I could get as much of the dinner done as possible. The dinner is the in-laws my parents and close family friends (parents neighbors). All get along very well but these are all people I like to impress.
So after shutting off the water he got the vanity out with a little help from me and Paul (it was too heavy for me) he installed shut off valves onto the sink pipes and finished prepping the bathroom for his dad to come and fix the electric (have I mentioned that we only have one electrical outlet in the bathroom and it is next to the toilet?). The got it wired and he is finishing the job of getting it ready I’m sure when he’s done we will have a plethora of plugs.
My in laws get here and they have a futon with a maple frame that I really liked and was excited to move into our spare bedroom (we had a twin in there which was not great for guests) it takes up less space and is a queen. It also matches the crib that our neighbors are saving for us! We moved that in within 30 minutes but now we have the extra twin that J does not want to get rid of. It might be nice to have but unless he cleans out the den we have no place for it oh and I have an extra long twin at my parents house that I can take whenever I need it. His mom wants to sell it now (would not drop it as she is as stubborn as J is) where I’m willing to wait a few days until he gets sick of tripping over it when he will be happy to get rid of it, we shall see what happens.
Dinner went well though the roast was done oh 2 ½ hours before they were scheduled to arrive I was pretty scared that it would be dry when I pulled it out, especially after the look that J gave me. But they all said it was fine (and they would tell me the truth). The best part of the evening was when discussing my issues with roasting on the grill and J told them that I put the chicken on the rotisserie the wrong way. They all laughed at me (okay it was deserved but maybe he could have told me that when he figured it out rather than just there so I could laugh with them instead of wanting to go upstairs and cry. I honestly don’t know how a vegetarian is supposed to pick up this info as nothing I read told me this. Oh well it was a fun night and I’m looking forward to progress tomorrow.

Birthday Part 1

Me and my twin are officially 28 and what a day. J woke up at three am and wished me a happy birthday while I was soundly asleep, or so he says - but he’s nuts so I believe him (if you don't read first post).He tried to make me late for work but even after stopping at the grocery store around the corner for a cookie cake and white cheddar popcorn I was only 5 minutes late traffic was great all the way in.

When I arrived at work it was the usual day with data entry (yippee) with the acception that I got to eat cookie cake, the chocolate cake (someone else brought in) and the popcorn. I ate junk all day I think I even shocked my boss because I usually don’t eat that stuff but hey it’s my birthday and I can eat ¼ of a cookie cake if I want ;) of course I didn’t have the foresight to bring or purchase a lunch so I ate more junk. In the afternoon my boss got me alone because she was worried that I had spent money to bring in food for every one, it’s a temp job and she was worried that I may need the cash later. Well after repeated assurances that I could always get cash off my husband if I needed it she said it was a birthday present and I couldn’t find a valid argument against that. So I didn’t even have to purchase the junk food that I was craving in the morning.

So I leave work 30 minutes early (she would have let me go earlier but I didn’t ask) and when I get home J has flowers on the coffee table and my pillow! Very pretty rodies from our garden, zinnias and well I don’t know what the other one is but I like them. He next gets changed so that we can go to dinner at one of my favorite restraints (Portobello) which I have been looking forward to all week.

After dinner it’s back to mom and dad’s for ice cream cake! (Yes more junk!!!) so after the obligatory picture with the birthday cake we are getting ready to cut the cake when my cell phone goes off and I rush to answer it. Excited I note that it was my best friend from high school I say hi and go around the corner to say it’s Anne, when mom says “see I said it was her” (thinking it was my twin) and her dad and J start enthusiastically singing Happy Birthday as only my family can. For the next few minutes I am rolling on the floor laughing and practically crying which doesn’t faze them at all. After I collect myself I learn that Anne is in town for her brothers graduation and has managed to escape her family for a few hours, she was on her way. So at the time that she was supposed to show my sister shows up 5 hours earlier than she was supposed to so I got to see her as well.

My birthday card…

1978 is Great!

You may be wondering why 1978 is such a great year (I was) but don’t worry the card told me what wonderful historical moments occurred in the year of my birth some of my favorite included
Cult leader Jim Jones lead 909 people to mass suicide.
Families left Love Canal after dangerous chemicals leaked from an abandoned dump.
Punk rocker Sid Vicious killed girlfriend Nancy Spungeon

Yup it was also great because I was born – I think my mom was trying to hint something…

All these memories are not complete with out some memories of my father who brought up such wonders as the vending machines at airports that sold life insurance policies for just a few quarters you could be assured of life insurance in case of a crash. No wonder so many people are afraid to fly.. and of course thoes beds that used to vibrate at hotels "they were great rides!" to bad they were all broken. What a night.

The House

Yippee my in-laws are coming and the house is a mess. Though I doubt it will stay clean while they are here it would be nice to have it clean in the beginning. J is planning on getting a lot of work done on the house while his dad is here. My new bathroom vanity may be in place this time next week! Yippee! I’ve also been dying for him to finish putting up the molding around the windows in the rooms that he has finished (well almost). One of these days we are going to have him fly out alone so they can spend a week just fixing the house I doubt that there would be much left to do after that. Another time… Goal in finishing the house is August keep your fingers crossed.

A day in the life...

So on the evening of asking my grandparents to write down some of their favorite stories of their life I decide to start a blog. Why? Because if my grandchildren ever decide they want to know why they are so screwed up they will know…

Seconds after telling my husband that I mentioned to my grandparents that they should write these stories or record them so they will not be lost forever we walk downstairs he looks at his wine (he makes his own) and goes out to the garage and tells me to grab some news paper. I think what the hell, why argue??? He is carrying with him some tissue paper, a plastic bag and nothing else that I can see though he did grab something off the shelf in the garage. I get outside, with the newspaper and he is seated in-between our cars with his propane torch and the tissue paper on the ground. “ Honey will you hold this bag?” Hands on my hips I ask him to remove himself from the vicinity of my car two or three times. “Trust me,” he says. I don’t know why, but him saying trust me always makes me nervous - especially when he has a lit propane torch in hand. Maybe it’s his grin when he sees the flame. After refusing to move away from my car (what do I care about his?) he asks me to hold his plastic bag. And for those of you that are as slow as me we are doing this for the purpose of making a hot air balloon. Needless to say being as cold as it is, the heat from the flame worked to fill the bag but after the flame went out the bag did not fly. My darling husband was disappointed that it wouldn’t actually fly off to become trash in someone else’s yard. So he tries again with the newspaper, which melts the bag and does little else, so goes a day in the life of me…