The awesomeness that was today

I normally have a “to-do” list to tackle every Sunday. It’s the usual “getting ready for another busy week” stuff. Washing school clothes, getting the kids’ school stuff together for the morning rush, planning meals for the week and putting together tomorrow’s grocery list. All that fun stuff. But it seems lately that I am making notes on OTHER things to tackle during my weekends, like an ongoing project or cleaning/organizing an area of the house/yard/garage. (Stuff I can’t do during the busy week!)

                                        

Well, I had that going on this weekend, and I split the list in two. I got some stuff done yesterday and some stuff done today. Unfortunately, I didn’t get ALL the stuff for today done because, first of all, I could not get the thing I needed to work on my recipe project and, second, when I stopped to take a nap, it was DARK when I woke up! So that canceled out taking the car to the car wash. (I still cleaned out the car, though.)

It was still a great day. I wanted a BLT for lunch but, unfortunately, we didn’t have any tomatoes. So I whipped together a different sandwich for lunch: Bacon, ham and Swiss. It was YUMMY!!

I also updated my website, cleaned off the top of the fridge (which was very dir-tay) and updated my files. I also tackled a stack of papers on top of one of the bookcases and got the mail ready to go for tomorrow.

Another AWESOME thing that happened today? I FINALLY finished something I have been working on for weeks! I have this YA fantasy series going on and I'm building the fictional world and naming everybody and everything as I go. It's like the story is unfolding in bits and pieces. One major part of it is the worldbuilding. I have been spending some time studying maps and researching how to create a fictional map to go with my fictional world. Well, today, I was reading this month's issue of National Geographic, and on one page, there's a picture of how the North America continent looked thousands of years ago. We're talking a LONG time ago. And part of that continent seemed to grab me. I don't know what happened, but as I looked at it, I saw my fictional world take shape. I saw the kingdoms and what it was all supposed to look like. It was just...surreal. I tried tracing it onto paper based on that picture but I couldn't do it. So I asked Jennifer to give it a try. The first thing she did was tear out the page! GAH! ( I love National Geographic and actually collect the magazines, so I died a little inside after that page was torn out.) She could not do it. I wouldn't give up. I grabbed the torn page and pressed REALLY HARD with my pencil to shape it out on the paper. The faint outline was there, so I traced over it then got to work creating the rest of it. I added all the other details like names, etc., and soon, voila! My fictional world for this series was finally on paper! I was SO HAPPY to get that done! I had to sacrifice a page from my beloved National Geographic, but it got done.

And I was also able to make the brownies I had been unable to make last weekend. I didn’t have everything for the recipe last weekend so I decided to make them this weekend. Alas, I was 2 eggs short after we were in the process of melting the chocolate. Fortunately, my awesome neighbor saved the day by giving us two eggs. (Thanks, Julie!) It was quite a job making these brownies! It was certainly a two-person job, because at one point, you have to pour and whisk at the same time. (With my left hand being the way it is, that’s not quite feasible.) It was A LOT of whisking, too! My hand got tired so hubby took over. So we both made the brownies together. And they were SO GOOD! Yummy! The recipe is called “Supernatural Brownies.” And we are ending this awesome day by watching Supernatural. Very cool!

The recipe project

I said earlier this year that I would NOT become a foodie and that decision still stands. Despite my interest in trying new recipes and gathering together other recipes that I’d like to try sometime, I’m not a foodie. Used to be crazy about cooking, but not so much anymore.

Still, I like to try things. And if a recipe sounds good, then I’ll try it!

That said, I have many recipes for things I’d like to try. But I have quite a few other recipes, too. Some of them are recipes we tried and loved, some of them are family recipes and still others are recipes from friends and family who wanted to share them with me. There’s also a few of my own creations.

That collection of recipes got to be pretty big. That was one problem. Another problem was that they were scattered everywhere – in my drawer, in a box, on the computer or on the Internet as a bookmark. Whenever I wanted a certain recipe, I would have to go hunting for it or get back on the computer to look for it. A third problem was that some of them were not all clear or very legible. In fact, I had to hunt down the original of one recipe because the copy I had was not very clear.

So, yeah. My system wasn’t perfect. It was time to come up with a new system!

The problem was, I could not figure out what kind. How would I organize ALL of these recipes? How can I possibly find the time to do it?

Well, it seems that Life took care of solving the problem. I despaired over this for a long time and then, it was like the answer to my problem was born within. Out of nowhere, I started the process of organizing this ginormous recipe collection. I started gathering the things I needed and started editing/retyping/organizing all of the recipes. That’s what I actually started to do today. I spent some time last week getting a few things I thought I’d need – an 8-subject folder as a temporary storage, a LARGE binder for the final collection and subject dividers – then, today, I took some time working with the recipes themselves. I’d gone through about 80 pages of the recipe collection and I haven’t even made it halfway through all of them yet. But that was as much as I could do today. I still need to go through others in my hard drive and print out a bunch of others which I have bookmarked.

After working on this recipe project today, I realized that the 8-subject folder will not work for me. I am using it temporarily, yes, but there are 12 categories of recipes altogether. So I will definitely need to use the binder. I just have to get my hands on a 3-hole puncher. (I seem to have misplaced mine.)

These are the recipe categories for the final collection:

Breads

Salads

Appetizers & Snacks

Desserts

Main Courses

Breakfast Recipes

Side Dishes

Sauces & Dips

Drinks

Sandwiches & Wraps

Soup & Stew

Seafood

It’s definitely going to be a large collection. I already have one binder filled with recipes but that one is not as organized as this one will be. So I’m looking forward to putting this all together and completing this project. It’s going to take me some time because I can only find time to work on it during the weekends (as I only work on non-writing projects during the weekends) but if I stick with it, we will have yet another binder of recipes to turn to anytime we need them. The bonus is, this time, they will all be found in one place.

Cemetery visit

On Thursday, I told Jennifer about a cemetery I had visited shortly after moving to Eugene. She wanted to see this cemetery, too. Since she was getting out of school earlier than Jesse the next day, I told her I would take her then.

When we got to the cemetery, I parked across the street. Just before we crossed the busy street, however, a guy came out of the building behind us and told us we could not park there. He warned us we would get a parking ticket. I confirmed the exact area he meant then told Jennifer to get back in the car so we could move it. (I am grateful for the warning!) I moved the car across the street and parked in a metered area. After I paid for 15 minutes (because that was all I could afford! Damn meter parking), we walked into the cemetery. I was thinking about the parking thing as we walked. When I’d been there all those years ago, I’d parked in that same spot. I didn’t get a parking ticket. But then, maybe things had changed. Still, I was angry. How could the city of Eugene put a time limit on how long someone could visit the final resting place of their loved ones? To me, that was just uncool. Just another way the city bilks its citizens out of money, grieving be damned!

So we walked through the cemetery. We just started looking at random graves. I’d told Jennifer before that when I had visited there, I had seen quite a few graves of infants. (Some of those graves are very old! Dating back to the 1800s.) I guess she went off looking for them because I soon lost her in our walk. I spent some time clearing some of the stones, removing tree debris where names were obscured.

And the whole time I was there, I felt like we were being watched. Not just by people. But … by those no longer among the living.

I stopped to read tombstones and look at burial sites. I occasionally had to check my phone to see the time so I did not worry about running out of time at the meter. (Grr!) Some of the graves were really interesting and I started to wonder about the history of some graves dating back to so long ago. Jennifer asked me about one in particular, because it was such a large and fancy grave, but I did not know the name. I also found one resting place of what looked like a mother with her three babies buried together.

As I walked through the cemetery studying the graves, I started to wonder if I would be back here in 3 or 4 years time for a book I plan to write. I’d just got an idea for a nonfiction book related to graveyards that morning and I wondered if I’d be including this particular cemetery in that book.

Well, the time came when we had to go and I told Jennifer it was time to get back to the car before I got a ticket. As we walked out of the cemetery, a lady and her dog joined us. One minute the dog was walking just fine then, suddenly, he/she reared back and looked to the left, past us. He/she looked for a minute longer then turned away to join his/her owner back on the walk out of the cemetery.

Both Jennifer and I noticed this happen. When we got to the car, I told her, “I think that dog saw something.”

Here are the pictures I took, starting with the area the dog freaked out at.

Colby Jack week!

It all started when I was dissatisfied with a fast food purchase. I’d seen the commercials for Wendy’s Monterey Jack Ranch Chicken Burger. So I wanted to try it. But when we got it, I was disappointed right from looking at it.

First, it was small. Then, the taste wasn’t so great. It was ... okay. For a small chicken burger sold to the tune of a dollar twenty-nine.

I thought, you know, I could do better. So I set out to try.

But I didn’t imitate THEIR burger. What I did was end up using a DIFFERENT kind of cheese for MY chicken burger. Which was a lot larger, I might add. I used Colby Jack cheese. And, oh my Lord, it was delish!

This set me on the task of trying other ways of using Colby Jack cheese in recipes. The following are the results.

Monday

My chicken burger:

Mayo on the bun
Breaded chicken patty
Colby Jack cheese
Lettuce
Ranch

Result: DELICIOUS!!

Tuesday  
Ham sandwich:

Mayo on both slices of white bread
Mustard
Colby Jack
Lettuce
Ham  
Result: I slapped both slices together and ate. Yum! Would like to try it with sourdough bread.

Wednesday 

Grilled cheese with Colby Jack

Tomato soup

Result: The sandwich was really good but it tasted even better when I dipped it into the tomato soup.

Thursday

Breakfast sandwiches:

Toasted white bread
Ranch
Colby Jack
Fried egg

White bread
Mayo
Colby Jack
Lettuce
Fried egg
Salami

Result: Both were good but the first one was MUCH more tastier!

Friday

Cheese quesadilla

I LOVE quesadillas so I tried out the Colby Jack cheese for a plain cheese quesadilla. I also had one of the beef fajitas we were having for lunch and the flavor combo of both was AWESOME!

Result: The quesadilla was good. Combined with chicken or beef, it would taste great!

I am so glad I discovered Colby Jack cheese and tried it out with different recipes. We’ll definitely be keeping it as part of our regular cheese supply!