i just ate an arby's roastburger

it was kind of gross. the sad thing is, i expected it to be gross and i bought it anyway.

some people have been having problems viewing the pictures on my blog. if you are seeing red x's or flickr error messages when you open this page, could you please leave a comment on this post? i'd like to get it fixed if it's an html error.

gatsby: wannabe bonsai kitten

and here we have the tale of gatsperaux, who doesn't have a whole house full of soft places to sleep. no, his owners make him sleep in a paper-lined canvas basket on a shelf in the kitchen.

someone alert PETA.

brown beans and ham

some recipes are almost too simple to post, but i take for granted that everyone in the world didn't grow up in their muddah's kitchen like i did.  i made brown beans and ham tuesday night and they're so good i thought i'd share.

brown beans and ham

ingredients:

1 20 oz (or so) bag of pinto beans

1 medium white onion

3 cloves of garlic

1 ham hock

1 ham steak (optional - if you want bites of ham in your beans)

1 bottle or can of good, dark beer

seasoning salt

cracked black pepper

agua

rinse the beans:

pot a large pot in your sink and set a colander in it.  pour the beans into the colander and run cold water over them, swishing the colander around as water fills the pot.  throw out any wonky looking beans or debris.  lift the colander and drain the beans.

do a quick soak:

fill the large pot about half full of water and bring to a full rolling boil.  dump the beans in and bring it back up to a boil, and then boil for another two minutes.  turn off the heat and let them soak.

while the beans are soaking:

dice the onion and the garlic clove.  take the ham steak and cut it into bite-size cubes.  set aside.

rinse the beans again:

dump the beans back into the colander and get rid of the soak water.  then put the beans back into the large pan.  now they're ready to cook.

combine ingredients:

add the onion and the garlic to the beans.  season to taste with seasoning salt and cracked pepper.  be sure to salt the beans thoroughly, because otherwise they will be too bland - the salt needs to soak into them during the cooking process, like pasta.  

add the ham hock to the pot. the ham hock is for flavor, and as the fat cooks out of it, it will thicken up the sauce.  the nice thing about ham hocks is that you can buy a package of 4 at the grocery store for about $2.00.  i use one in the pot of beans and throw the rest into the deep freeze for next time.  also, after you're done cooking with the ham hock, you can make your resident canine very happy.  (you can also use leftover bits of a holiday ham.  last christmas i took the ham bone from our sugared ham, which still had lots of small bits of ham on it, and threw it in the deep freeze.  a few months later i used the whole thing in this recipe.  it was amazing.  never throw out a ham bone!)

add the bottle of beer to the pot.  try not to use a pale lager or pilsner like budweiser or coors, although these will work in a pinch.  use an ale or a porter.  i like red stripe or fat tire.  all the alcohol will be long gone by the time the beans are done, you just want the flavor from the beer.  also add 6 cups of water.  you can add more water as (and if) needed.  the longer you cook the beans the more water you'll need due to the evaporation factor, so start with 6 cups and play it by ear.

cook:

the quick method is to cook for 1.5 hours on low heat on the stovetop.  add the cubed ham and cook for 1 hour more.  

alternatively, you can cook the beans and ham hock for 4-5 hours in a crock pot and then add the cubed ham and cook for 1 hour more.

the longer and slower you cook the beans, the thicker and richer the liquid will be, and the more ham flavor you'll have.

serve:

when the beans are finished, discard the ham hock and freeze half the beans for another day.  serve the other half with fried potatoes and corn bread.  when you're mixing your cornbread batter, pour in a good couple of tablespoons of local honey.  

i like to top my beans with tabasco.  or you can do as my dad did and pour yellow mustard over the top.  now that i will never understand.

enjoy!

paint

on saturday, autumn helped me decide what color to paint all of the rooms.  autumn (in kindergarten) is very into making lists and little books these days, so i had her make a list of all of the rooms and what color we'd paint them.  i had her spell everything by herself as "practice."  the following are the results - see if you can translate:

1.  lagree: top

2. cichin - dork red

3. ofis/peeano room - ?

4. liveng room - ?

5. mastr begroom - saying

6. ichree way - top

7. holway dan - top

8. master bath room - sag

9. starway - top

10. upstar helway - top

11. autumn's room - ?

12. aislinn's room - ?

13. upstars bath room - sag

14. gest room - bron

show me to the starway, autumn. show me to the starway.

occupational hazard

when you office above a pub, life is more colorful.  i can go downstairs and order a boulevard and some sliders for lunch.  and i know it's time to go home when they turn up the music and i can feel it in my feet.

and then there are the bright, crisp march mornings when you open your car door and narrowly avoid putting your alligator heel down in a puddle of dried vomit.

c'est la vie.

remember back in december...

...when i did the shelf project?

well, here's a picture of the finished product:

it works really, really, really well to keep all the mail and autumn's ten thousand pieces of paper OFF. MY. COFFEE. TABLE.

not that i don't love every shred of paper that she brings home from kindergarten.  the other major element in reducing the paper mess in this house is the FIREPLACE.  jake loves having a fire every evening, autumn loves tossing her pieces of scrap paper into the flames and watching them burn, and i love having all the paper OFF. MY. COFFEE. TABLE.

by the way, do you see the telephone on top of my shelf?

it's like a real, actual land line!  first i've had since i lived with my parents in high school.

things in my life that have made me feel like a grown-up:

walking into a liquor store? nope.

college degree? nope.

graduate degree? nope.

first real job? nope.

having a child? nope.

buying a house? nope.

opening up my own practice? nope.

having a land line? yes.  it was like a total reality check.

welcome to my castle

pictures of the house.  finally.  

i took these a few weeks ago, so these aren't even up to date, as changes are constantly being made.  but it will work for now.

the entryway:

oh, look! there's mildred's house across the street!

everyone say, "hi mildred!"

mildred's lawn and gardens are immaculate, and i am ashamed ahead of time about how our yard will look midsummer - so much that i've already asked jake if we can just hire a lawn service.

he said no.

the walls in the entryway are faux-textured, which is fine.  i'm generally opposed to faux anything, but at least they're not sponge-painted.  we hate the light fixture.  it will go.  actually, it almost went last weekend when we were moving out our old couches and smashed into it.  oops.

here is a close-up of the tile in the entryway.  not great, but i can deal.  at least it's not linoleum.

here is a shot of the "piano room" and the office beyond.

all the junk is gone to goodwill now.  i think the bookshelf is going to go into storage, and i'm going to get some seating to go there instead - maybe two chairs and a small table.  the radioactive yellow walls will, of course, go.  the room beyond is jake's office.  the two rooms will be painted the same shade, TBA.

here is another shot of this room, from the other side:

as you can see from this picture, something about that yellow is just not right.  it's not buttery.  it's kryptonite.  my grand piano will go on the right in front of the big window, as soon as i get around to painting the room, and then hiring the piano movers.

here is the kitchen, looking in from jake's office:

the tile floors are new and good.  the white dishwasher doesn't match the rest of the appliances. jake and i prefer black and stainless steel.  the countertops will be replaced with dark grey ones.  and all the cabinetry is going to be painted cream, and i'll replace the hardware.

here's another shot of the kitchen, looking from the opposite end:

wow, my kitchen looks cluttered.  i swear it's not. 

here's a shot of the kitchen sink and the countertops.  i want to replace the amber glass with white frosted glass, which will look nice with cream cabinets and silver hardware:

again, we have the noncompliant dishwasher.  we'll get a new faucet, too.  the sink itself i don't mind.  and look!  there's the microwave i bought in my previous post!  it's tiny, weak, and takes 15 minutes to thaw out a chicken breast, but it's alive which is the most important thing.

i don't mind the red walls.  they're not what i would have picked, but they're far from the most egregious visual offense in the house.  or so i thought, until about the third day after we moved in and i noticed this:

THEY PAINTED OVER THE WALLPAPER!

my brother-in-law thinks that there is a special place in hell for people who paint wood.  well, *i* think that there's a special place in hell for people who PAINT OVER THE WALLPAPER.

so the kitchen walls WILL get stripped and repainted, but it is FAR down on the list of things to do.

here's the living room:

those couches are GONE!!!!!!!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

the wall of cabinetry in the back will eventually house my extensive book collection, but first it's going to get painted the same cream color as the kitchen cabinets.  i think it will really brighten up the room.  meanwhile it's home to miscellaneous objects d'arte, photographs that haven't been yet hung, speakers, phone books, a chess set, rocks autumn found, a shaleighley,a frieda khalo candle, a jar of rocks and sea glass from a beach in ireland, empty boxes from amazon.com, my first edition of aldous huxley's point counter point, and my camera equipment.

we're still organizing.

i can deal with the sage-colored walls.  again, not my first choice, and a little too garish in hue, but i can cope.  the fourth wall, however, (pictured to the right) is painted little boy blue:

(the entertainment center is standing out from the wall because we're still wiring behind it.)

so let's count.  so far we have stucco, kryptonite yellow, generic white, wallpaper red, sage green, and little boy blue.  these people were accent-wall-NUTSO.  i am personally opposed to all white walls, but this just makes me sick to my stomach.  co-or-din-ate!

let's continue on, shall we?

here's our bedroom.  it is the one room in the house that i'm not going to paint. it's a nice milk chocolate brown:

and the master bath:

this is the same sage green from the living room.  and you can't tell from this picture, but...

THEY PAINTED OVER THE WALLPAPER!

[slamming head into keyboard]

why?  why?  why?

of course the hollywood lights will go, as will the generic faucets.  i will probably leave the cabinets brown and simply replace the hardware.  and at some point, in a year or two, we are going to have the carpet ripped out (along with the cheap white tile in the adjoining shower area) and have it replaced with nice tile.

now, brace yourself...

BAM!

dizzying, isn't it?  and it goes all the way from the first floor to the second.  i have no idea how i'm going to get it down.  i've basically decided that this is the one area of the house that i'm going to hire out.  there's no way i can strip this and paint it without breaking my neck.

the creepy barn-like light fixture, again, will go.

here's a close-up of the wallpaper:

aislinn thinks it's fascinating.  i think it looks like a shirt my mom had in 1989.

upstairs there's more hallway:

the entry way, stairwell, and downstairs and upstairs hallway will all be painted the same shade of muted taupe.  similar to what's in the entryway now, but with less orange.  i'm going to hang a line of black and white photographs in square frames down this hallway.

at the end of the hallway is the guest bedroom, and we won't go in there because it's really just large and empty, except for a bed and entertainment center.  very low priority.  and then we have autumn's bedroom.

i don't know if/when i'll ever get around to painting the girls' rooms.  again, low priority.  especially since their tastes change so often.  one of my best friends from high school (hi, jessalynn!) had an adorable pepto-bismol pink room as a little girl that was the bane of her existence in later years.

here's aislinn's room:

embarassingly bare, but she spends zero time up there.  six months old, and has yet to spend a night in that crib.  the room is basically just used to house her clothes and give me exercise as i tromp up and down the stairs fifteen times a day to get her a clean onesie.

i will put more thought into this room as she starts to actually use it.  we are also going to be getting a beautiful pine bedroom set from my bedroom at my mom's house to put in here, and then i'll probably redecorate the whole thing.

right now i'm really fond of this owl pattern from pottery barn kids:

i think it would look adorable with a homemade quilt bedspread.  but it will be quite a while before she's ready for that, and the pattern will probably be discontinued by then, and i will be sad that i didn't buy it earlier, but if i buy it now and store it then i will change my mind by the time she's old enough because it's murphy's law, so i'm destined to lose either way on this one.

here's another funhouse element - the countertops in the girls bathroom:

your eyes are not deceiving you.  that is lime green marbled ceramic.  FANTABULOUS!

it's going.  right along with this:

MY EYES!!!!!!!!!!  *runs screaming out of this post*

here we have an example of the cheap white tile that is also in the downstairs bathroom.  my game plan for this room is 1) rebath the tub; 2) contract out the tile work; 3) have jake replace the toilet; and 4) paint the walls a color TBA.  but this is a few years down the road.  this room is low priority.

first i have to get all that wallpaper stripped from the stairwell before someone has a seizure and takes a nasty fall.  it's a liability.  perhaps i could get my homeowner's insurance to cover it?