It's freaking COLD!

It's 34 degrees outside.

What happened to fall!? Seriously, I love winter, but some more of that nice 50-degree days would have been nice. And it's been snowing! In October! (okay, almost november, but still!)

I forgot how bitter Ohio winters can be.

Of Baking, Speeches, and Jobs

I think I was a baker in a past life.

No, I'm serious! I find great joy in baking. I like making cookies and breads and just about anything that involves flour, butter, and sugar. I like cooking too, but I don't "get" cooking. I "Get" baking. It makes sense to me. We eat a lot of baked goods in this house. Baking is also stress relief. I feel so good when I peek in the oven and find 12 little orange pumpkin cookies puffing up to their fluffy goodness. I would love to open a little bakery one day.

So one of the classes I'm taking this quarter is speech. It didn't occur to me until recently that part of a speech class is, well, giving speeches.

I had to give my first speech last Wednesday and was terrified. I had too much information and ended up rushing through it with some stuttering and going over the time limit, but all in all I must have done pretty good, because I got 190/200 points. Tomorrow we get a better report of what we did right, wrong, and what could be improved.

Also, Ben got a new job (with a raise!) that he starts Monday. It's a 9-5 job this week, which means we had to find care for Mori. Luckily a girl downtown who I know from the Columbus board offered to help out. I told her I needed her for Monday and Wednesday, but now, thinking about it, we don't have school on Wednesday... so I might go ahead and have Ben drop Mori off anyway and take a day to myself. JUST myself. It would be very, very nice. Good golly, I could sleep in, and take a bath, and maybe get some housework done...

Ugh. Housework. Speaking of which, here is today's To-Not-Avoid-Doing list:

• Call Paypal and get them to reopen my account.
• Search for Tracfone phones (Walmart?) and pricing.
• Pick up the livingroom
• At least get all the dishes done in the kitchen
• Bag up icky produce to throw to chickens
• Do something with the apples... Applesauce?
• Get all the laundry put away
• Pack up Mori's bag for tomorrow
• Do some homework
• Lay out clothes for me and Ben tomorrow
• Set alarm extra early for tomorrow
• Vacuum kitchen and livingroom
  

versatile, cheap, and fulfilling! Homemade pizza!

Since I started cooking from scratch, I've found that one of the best meals we have is homemade pizza. It's cheap. It's very, very filling. And it's SO versatile. And it's EASY! I have about six different crust recipes, four different sauce recipes, and plus all the toppings... different cheeses, meats, veggies. All that jazz. We never have the same pizza twice (unless it's pepperoni... that's a pretty common one). I use the bread machine's dough cycle to make the crust, which makes it much easier. I just pop in the ingredients and wait, then roll it out and add stuff and throw it in the oven! It turns out wonderful every time.

Recipe for parmesean pizza crust and cost breakdown:
(Note: prices are estimates and based on Aldi prices)
3 cups whole wheat flour (.20/cup, $.60 total)
1 1/2 cups water (free)
1 pkg of wheat yeast ($.37)
1/2 tsp salt ($.05)
1/2 tsp sugar ($.05)
1 1/2 tbsp oil ($.05)
1/2 cup parmesean ($.20)

Toppings:
Sauce ($.50)
2 cup Mozzarella cheese ($1.90)
Pepperoni ($.50)
Chopped onion ($.10)

If you're not using a bread machine: Proof yeast. Add in other ingredients and mix until dough forms. Let rise about an hour, punch down, let rest about 15 minutes. Roll out. Stick with fork numerous times to allow 'airholes' through crust and make sauce stick better. Add toppings. Bake at about 350 until cheese is turning gold and crust is golden.


Total for the pizza, not including energy usage to oven-bake: Less than $5
If you make your own mozzarella or buy in bulk, it could easily be less than $3 per pizza.

The way I do it is I make sure the crust is thick so it'll fluff up really nice (and it does... the pizza in the picture ended up being almost half an inch thick after baking!). That way we get 'full' with the cheap stuff (the crust!) and the toppings are 90% for flavor.
Ben takes a few slices to work the next day and he says it's just as good, if not better, reheated.

And I meant to take a picture of the pizza after baking, but, well, it was gone too fast. ;) Even Mori had a slice!

Dear Kids in Class...

Dear Teenagers,
I understand you think your cell phone use is taking over your life. I understand that you think texting is a life-or-death activity. I understand that your phone has two hundred neat ring tones and sounds and doohickeys that go 'ping!'.

However, you're in college now. The teacher kindly asked you twice to put your phones away for the class period. Note that she didn't say "put your phones on their lowest setting/vibrate". No, she said put them AWAY. She says this at the beginning of each class period, so please don't tell me you forgot.

If you decide to blatantly ignore this rule, please remember the teacher can see you... and hear you. So can the other students. You phone may be on vibrate, but it still goes "BZZZ! BZZZ!", which is not only distracting and annoying, but extremely obvious. Please don't hunch over, hiding your phone in your lap. It's obvious, dude. Seriously. How many other kids do you see staring at their crotch with their hands in their lap?

Please don't text during class. I understand it's an OMG-IMPORTANT-MSG! but it can wait. Really, it can, I promise. The clickky sound that the buttons make as you push them distract me enough as it is... when you've got ten kids in one classroom doing it, it makes me want to scream. And, yes, kids. Texting is USING YOUR PHONE.

Not only is this distracting to me, but it's extremely rude to the teacher. Extremely. Rude. You don't want to be rude to the lady who will be determining if your GPA remains 4.0 or drops to a 3.4.

So put away the f*cking cell phones before I put them away for you.

Kthx,
Ket

----------

Rant over.
Hi guys!
So yesterday Ben got two more large loads of wood. (Say that ten times fast.) He was talking about putting it in the barn because he thought it would get wet. Jokingly-but-serious, I told him not to worry about it, because we haven't had rain in a long time and would probably go on not having rain for a while.

So what happens? I wake up this morning and it's raining. #*$&*#.

I really don't want to go to school today. Or rather, I really don't want to leave the house today. It's icky! And cold! And in here, it's nice and warm because we fired up the stove again last night. I'm in one of those moods where I want to take my blankie (yes, I have a blankie) to school with me and rub it against my cheek like Mori does. Do you think they would notice?

At least it's a short day. Only three classes. I hope it's not raining when I start home. I'll park in the garage today to keep from getting soaked.

Now, off to find something for breakfast and ignore the McD's temptation.

TGIS: Thank God it's Sunday

I find it highly amusing that, as you get older, things start going backwards.
Make sense? No? Okay, let me explain.

Back in highschool, I distinctly remember the "Thank God It's Friday!" drama. EVERY Friday. "Ugh, I'm SO glad it's Friday... I'm so sick of school. I want to be at home."

Now? I thank god it's Sunday. I go, "I'm so glad it's Sunday! Tomorrow I get to leave home and go back to school!" while dancing and throwing confetti.

See the backwardishness?

Don't get me wrong. I love being with Mori, and most of the time I love staying home. But 'staying home' is literally 'staying home'. We have no car and we live 15 minutes away from the nearest, well, anything. Four days of enforced homebound-ness can be excruciating, especially if Mori is having a bad day.

However, school! Oh, school. School not only gives me adult (or semi-adult, depending on what class we're talking about) interaction, but also gives me a whole day in which I am not chasing around a 1-year-old. Am not changing diapers. Am not listening to squeals of "COOKIE!".

I can, at school, stop, sit, and think. I can eat lunch without interruption. I can do homework without dear child stealing my erasers and trying to stuff them up her nose. I can look around and see PEOPLE.

It's glorious. So glorious.

So, anyway. Ahhem.

Today has started out great. Not only did Mori wake up in a great mood, but she also ate 90% of her breakfast without throwing it, sat quietly through half of Cinderella while mommy caught up on math homework, allowed me to change her diaper, and went down for her first nap with no fuss or hollaring. Rarely do we get a morning this... peaceful. And not only that, but mommy got a shower - a real, soap-and-hot-water shower, all by herself during kidlet's nap.

Peaceful.

On the list of Things To Not Avoid Doing today includes:

• Making brownies with a new, yummy-looking recipe.
• Call to cancel bike insurance.
• Finish Speech homework.
• Poke and prod at the wet (and probably moldy) towels that have been in the corner of the shower since last, um, month. Try to remember to tell DH to pitch them.
• Load up the dishwasher
• Try to sell Mori's old halloween costumes
• Go through more baby clothes. Will they ever stop?
• Laundry. 'nuff said.

Not too huge of a list today. So heeeeeerrrrreeeee we go!

Chicken is chicken is chicken

Last Monday was the first day of my Calculations & Dosages class. We started off with an introduction; name, major, if we had kids, etc. A lot of people were listing their animals, so I decided I was going to be cheeky.

"Hello. I'm Ket. I'm majoring in veterinary. I have one little girl. Four dogs. Oh, yeah, and 95 chickens."

The class paused. My teacher peered at me. "95?" She asked. I nodded. Class resumed.
Later on, the instructor was going over the class rules.
"I don't care if you eat a bag of chips or a candy bar," She mentioned. "But if you bring in steak and potatoes, you'd better bring enough for all!"
Me being my cheeky self, I piped up. "I can bring in roast chicken!"

One of the girls sitting down the row squeaked. "Wait." She said. "You actually eat your chickens!?"
I kinda gave her A Look. "Well, yeah." I said, wanting sorely to add (and what else would we do with 95 chickens?).
Her face took on a horrified look. "You mean you slaughter them?"
"Uh... yeah." I said, peering at her. She gagged, but by now I was curious. "Are you a vegetarian?"
"Well, no." She said with a valley-girl twang.
Confused, I asked "So... you eat chicken?"
With a teenage-girl e yeroll, she goes: "Yeah... but it comes from the store!"

I waited a moment to see if that statement would click in her head. Meanwhile, our teacher is looking between us with a pained, I'm-trying-not-to-laugh look on her face. The class was silent.
After a minute, I realized that this girl just didn't get that chicken = chicken... whether it's from the store or in your backyard. Either way, the bird dies...
"Yeah." I said, and turned back to the front of the class and opened my book.


Now, this isn't the first time this has happened. I got a similar response when I mentioned in a chat room online that I slaughtered chickens. "Well, yeah I eat chicken, but it comes from the store!" It seems to be... well... a pretty common response. Despite the lack of sense of it.

Next time, I'm going to reply with "Yeah, and someone slaughtered that store chicken too, I bet!" all cheery and smiley-faced.

No-Bake Oatmeal Fudge Cookies

Two years ago, Ben gave me a recipe. "This never works for me," He said, "But maybe you can make them. If you do, I'll marry you. Or something."

Apparently, Ben's lack of cooking finesse stepped in every time he tried to make these delightful cookies. Mostly, I believe this is because time is crucial in this recipe, and Ben... well, he's just not very observant. I can see him leaving the fudge on for five minutes (it's supposed to be on for ONE) and getting a block of fudgey mess instead of cookies.

But anyway, here's the recipe. It's egg free, but milk and butter are essential. I've never tried it without the peanut butter but I imagine it would still work. (EDIT: I tried it without peanut butter... and it was melty and gross. Apparently the PB is needed after all!)

No-Bake Oatmeal Fudge Cookies
Ingredients:
1/2 Cup Milk
1/2 Cup Butter
Pinch of salt
3 TBL cocoa
2 Cups Sugar
3 Cups Oatmeal (Quick oats work best)
1/2 Cup Peanut Butter
1 Tsp vanilla

Directions:
(I have gotten the best results by using a wooden spoon for all mixing, not metal or plastic!)

Mix milk, butter, salt, cocoa, and sugar in a saucepan. Bring it to a rolling boil. After it hits a rolling boil, boil for 1 minute. Time is crucial - too much and it will solidify too quick, and too little time and it won't solidify at all!
After one minute, remove from heat. Mix in oats, peanut butter, and vanilla.
Drop by spoonfuls onto waxed paper. DO NOT scrape the saucepan! Let cool until set and firm. Fudge should not be shiny; it should be pretty dull after it sets.
I don't recommend using the fridge to set these... They turn out more sticky and less firm.

This makes about two dozen medium sized cookies.

Problems?
1. Fudge doesn't set and is still sticky and runny after more than 20 minutes: You didn't boil the mix long enough.

2. Fudge is crumbly and doesn't hold it's shape: You boiled the mix TOO long.

3. Fudge is grainy, has a sand-like texture: The sugar didn't melt all the way OR you scraped the pan, scraping accumulated sugar crystals into the cookies.

4. Cookies disappear minutes after they're firm: Hah. :D This isn't a problem! It's the expected outcome! As you can see in the picture, two of my cookies have 'mysteriously' disappeared... and they're not even all the way firm yet. XD


Anyway, today I'm making three batches of these for Ben to take to work tomorrow. I'll probably end up making another whole batch just to keep here at home and munch on. :) Enjoy!