mrtl

Fruits of My Labor

This was my weekend.

Mister mrtl took the above to work tonight. Back platter has banana bread, Bailey's fudge and Cuckoo cookies. The front is the peppermint bark.

The rest. Still some wrapping and other preparations to be made, but the baking is FINISHED!

By the way, I totally take back what I said about the Cuckoo Cookies being a rarity. The glaze? Makes the effort absolutely worth it. I bow before Cat's (Mom?) "Grandma Sue." The glaze alone will be a staple for cakes in this household. Can you say YUM?

Download the Recipes! (DOC File - 26 KB) - Right click on link to save target to your hard drive.

My Thumb Hurts, but That's Neither Here Nor There

Note: Motif Monday has been delayed indefinitely. We're stuck on the good deed, and something that was going to happen hasn't quite happened yet. But that's all I'm saying.

Another note: ::TMI ALERT:: Puke talk follows! Read at your own risk.

A new issue has arisen with this pregnancy stuff. It actually started a while ago. It's some kind of reflux thing, but it's really odd and I've been unable to figure out what sets it off. It may be dairy, but I'm not sure of that.

Some nights I have no problems falling asleep. Other nights, I know the second I lie down that it's going to be a problem night. What's the sign? Burping. Constant burping. They're mostly little burps, but sometimes they're bigger, especially if I start on my right side and roll to my left; I'll let out something worthy of competing against cousin Tony! The burps are accompanied with a little reflux and throat clearing. (Oh the joy for mister mrtl when he's working days!) This can go on for hours! If I do fall off, it's temporary. The reflux will come and go directly to my windpipe. Feel the burn! I'll wake up choking and coughing. It takes at least ten minutes for my throat to settle back down to try to sleep again. The other night I woke up twice every hour with this, till one time I woke up and promptly puked. Good thing mister mrtl is on mids and was out of the room and that I was alert enough to roll over his side of the bed to get to the bathroom without, you know, getting anything anywhere. As gross as this was, I didn't have issues after that.

So last night when the burpfest started and I awoke gagging for the first time with the burning throat, I let it go. To the bathroom, hugging the porcelein.

Slept like a baby after that.

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In COMPLETELY unrelated news, I spent Friday night and most of Saturday baking. Banana bread (will add recipe later), Bailey's fudge, Martha's peppermint bark and Cat's cookies. Lessons learned?

1. Buying two of those baking things that have eight mini bread pans each was the best purchase for this! It made making the bread and fudge much easier, and the size of each loaf is perfect!
2. The peppermint bark? Never again. Trouble started when all I could find was candy canes, which were really hard to unwrap. They also made a HUGE mess. Granted, I probably shouldn't have tripled the recipe... or put the candy canes through the Cuisinart because pounding them was taking too long. (And what's up with Martha's site posting a different recipe under the recap?)
3. The combination of chocolate and Rice Krispies is totally yummy. That I will do again.
4. Cat's cookies? Shouldn't have tripled this recipe either, or used my smaller scooper to make more cookies; I thought I'd be up all night baking. I haven't even gotten the glaze step done yet and I'm exhausted. I may be speaking too soon since I haven't tried the final product (and I do believe that the taste of the cookie with the glaze is going to change my mind because it sounds soooo yummy), but these will be a rarity. I'm dreading putting the glaze on all of these, which I'm going to be doing today. Gah!

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Update:

Banana Bread

2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1 egg
1 cup mashed overripe bananas
5 tbs milk
1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)
Sprinkles (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

In a large bowl, cream sugar and butter/margarine. Beat the egg slightly and mix into creamed mixture with bananas. Mix in sifted ingredients until just combined. Stir in milk and nuts. Spread batter into two greased and floured (or sprayed) 9x5 loaf pans.

Bake till tops are brown and cracked along the top (45-55 minutes). Wrap immediately in tin foil to retain moisture.

Beauty

Note: This week has been the biggest clusterfuck of time. I never thought I'd have trouble with making hours when all I have is 5 each day. Go figure. Right now? 10:40am. Just woke up. Long story. So no, this isn't my Motif Monday post either. It'll come, sometime. For now, I give you a gift.

Last night I discovered an Alaska blog that has the most incredible pictures on it. I would have shared it immediately, but Typepad wasn't cooperating. Anyway, just scroll through the first page to look at his amazing shots of the scenery up here. You won't be sorry.

Accountability

I told Susie that I'd participate in the fun cookie/holiday idea exchange she planned for today, and promptly got swept up in everything else.

I know. No excuses. "Show me the cookies."

It's a good thing that this is killing two birds. I had promised to send Dima these cookie recipes as well.

Following are my two favorite cookie recipes. I would make neither without my trusty Kitchen Aid mixer, since the oatmeal cookies require brute strength to mix, and the peanut butter cookie recipe was in the mixer's recipe book. (The oatmeal cookie recipe came from my Fanny Farmer cookbook, which is a must have for everyone.)

I'm also including the Christmas Curry instructions. We've decided to keep it this year instead of making turkey again. It's been months since we've had curry.

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Cape Cod Oatmeal Cookies

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup melted butter
1 tbs molasses
1/4 cup milk
1 3/4 cups uncooked oatmeal
1 cup total other stuff (raisins, chopped nuts, chocolate chips, whatev)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in large bowl. Stir in remaining ingredients. Arrange by teaspoonful on unbuttered cookie sheets (not baking stone!) and bake till edges are brown, about 10-12 minutes. Remove and cool on wire rack.

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Peanut Butter Cookies

1/2 cup chunky peanut butter
1/2 cup butter/margarine, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups flour

Preheat oven to 375. Preheat cookie sheet as well. Mix peanut butter and butter till smooth. Add sugar, brown sugar, egg and vanilla and mix well. Add remaining ingredients. Roll dough into 1-inch balls. Arrange by teaspoonful 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheet (not baking stone!). If desired, press flat with fork in a criss-cross pattern to 1/4-inch thickness. Bake 10-12 minutes or till golden brown. Remove immediately and cool on wire rack.

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Christmas Curry

olive oil
potatoes
baby carrots
large onion
S&B Hot Curry Mix
chicken breasts
Hot & Spicy Shake n' Bake (Oven Fry is good, too)
water
Oriental rice

Amount of oil, potatoes, carrots, onion and water will depend on the size of curry box. (And really, these directions are on the box, too, although slightly altered here, namely in not putting the meat into the curry.) Other veggies are welcome, too. Throw in whatever you want!

Preheat oven according to Shake n' Bake directions. Prepare chicken. Get rice cooker ready (or if making on stove top, get it going first).

Cut up onion and saute in olive oil in a huge pot till transluscent. Cut up potatoes and carrots. When onions ready, add carrots and water. Wait five minutes before adding potatoes (unless you want them super mushy). Bring to boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

Once veggies are simmering, get the chicken in the oven and rice cooker going!

After veggies have simmered, add curry mix and stir well. Remove from heat and let sit uncovered till chicken and rice are ready. (The longer it sits, the thicker and yummier it gets.)

Serve all together. If you have access to hard apple cider, it tastes wonderful with this. (We discovered that by mistake.)

I Need Your Help!

Note: No, this isn't my Motif Monday post. There are more important issues here. Or hell, you could say that this post is a good deed. Nah, that would be slacking.

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It's crunch time for buying Christmas gifts to get to the recipients on time. What makes this more problematic is when said recipients aren't being forthcoming with ideas on what to get them.

Case in point is my brother. Yes, I've blocked his ass from commenting, but he still visits regularly, so I know he'll see this. Maybe when he reads this he'll realize that it's in his best interest to email me with his wish list.

I have already gotten BB one gift, but wanted to get one more thing. I'm at a loss of what to get him, so I turned to my links of the strange things one can buy over the internet. The following four items were selected:

• scrolling belt buckle
• fuck you in binary t-shirt
• bumper nuts (note: BB drives a BMW)
• peep maker

I'm asking for audience participation in selecting an item. Please peruse the above items and vote for your favorite in the poll you should see below. Should BB not contact me with other ideas, I will go with the winning selection.

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Update:

::tangent::
First off, let me just say that it's a damned shame that a valuable natural gas resource here in Alaska is going to waste. Haven't scientists figured out how to harness fart power yet? They wouldn't even need to add the smell so people can detect it; it comes with one that no one can ignore.
::end tangent::

BB was quick in emailing me today with some suggestions. Of course, I misread one, thinking he said he already had it, and spit back that he'd have to return the one I sent him, then. If I had read it, I would have seen that he was saying he didn't have it.

He did make a very good point, asking "And you don’t want to take it there do you, creatively obnoxious gift giving? Remember WHO is the “line crosser”."

Toosh. Right, Cat?

Discoveries

Note: Motif Monday is still on. I spent yesterday with mah Bug playing personal nose wiper and trying to get work in otherwise. Today was just as busy, so I'll be working tonight instead of writing. Maybe tomorrow... maybe.

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Today was a day of many discoveries. Some of them were good -- really good even -- and some were not. None involve Martha; I haven't watched today's show yet.

1. Money fell from the sky today. I love unexpected windfalls. Windfalls, not windiness, mind you.
2. Ray and Ralph Fiennes are the same guy. "Ralph" is pronounced "Ray." Did you know this? Am I the only one living under a rock, thinking that Ralph was the less attractive brother of Ray? Go figure I never made the connection, that I only saw Ralph on paper and Ray on TV. He mustn't photograph well.
3. Brian Williams can't lipsynch for shit. When he was on "The View" today, he got mesmerized by his flutist (or pissed that the flutist -- or is it "floutist"? -- was stealing his sunshine), and missed the next cue. Dude was singing a common Christmas carol.
4. Raisin Bran for two meals in a row makes for a very windy mrtl.
5. I'm not talking a pleasant breeze, either. I'm talking about a foul, "What died in here???" kind of windiness.
6. Windiness sometimes makes for an incontinent mrtl.
7. The Mommy Gag Reflex is not strong enough to deal with this. Can't she stay in diapers till she moves out?
8. According to today's ultrasound, Frida is still a girl, and she is measuring in at 31 weeks. That is, except for her head, which is leading the pack at a gargantuan 33 weeks. The tech says that they average the measurements to approximate a due date, but apparently the head counts for a lot more than the entire rest of the body; the average came out to 32 weeks and a day. No pictures today; she wasn't cooperating with getting a good shot. :(

RIP Winter Wonderland

We've had several days of rainy, record-setting high-temperature days now. Gone is the beautiful white.

::tangent::
Humming now... anyone know that one? By The Pursuit of Happiness? Love Junk album? Which includes "I'm an Adult Now"? The song with the best line in a song EVER? "I'd sure look like a fool, dead in a ditch somewhere with a mindful of chemicals like some cheese-eating high school boy." It's a shame that this doesn't get more play on the 80's music circuit.
::end tangent::

Sigh. Good thing I got some pictures before everything melted. It's amazing what happens to trees when it's 10 degrees outside and the humidity level is high. It's only appropriate to post these today and marvel at the beauty, given that just about everyone else in the country has snow right now, while we're a wet mess here with threats of dropping temperatures. Tomorrow I'll be bitching about the ice rink streets, which will probably strand me at home.

::tangent::
I've undergone quite the transformation since I've gotten here. You'll see in one of the pictures below that a street near our house has (had - blah) a cover of snow on it, a driving condition that would have been avoided at all costs when I was still in Maryland. I have fairly quickly adopted the Alaskan snow-driving mentality, going about life as normal despite the roads. Ice is another story, though. I may have some newfound confidence/balls/je ne sais quois, but I ain't crazy.
::end tangent::

The first two pictures were taken on base, the second two closer to home. The blue cast to the images is a normal state here given the high humidity we've had. It's particularly cool at one place on base that regularly has ice fog. I'm not sure why it's always there, at the end of the runway, and not prevalent elsewhere, too.

Incentive

My resolve to go to the gym broke after two days. Granted, two of the four days I skipped were justifiable. The other two were just laziness. I am trying to psych myself up to get going again on Monday. For that reason alone, I share the following information with you.

1. My snow boots only weigh two pounds.
2. Mister mrtl mistook my (lower) stomach for my ass the other night. He swears it's a good thing. I'm not convinced.

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Another resolution made this week has fared much better. I've done a lot of shopping and am closer to being finished with Christmas shopping than not.

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The breath holding and finger crossing continues... it's all good, y'all. You could say it's for a Christmas present for me, I suppose. No more. No jinxing.

More About Me

4. I am a dishwasher nazi.

Yesterday I had a near conniption. The cleaners were here, and they loaded the dirty dishes, the ones I took out of the sink and put in a bucket on the counter to get them out of their way, into the dishwasher. I heard the clattering of dishes ::insert Scooby Doo "huh?":: and got downstairs just in time to turn off the dishwasher. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster I did, because I later discovered some MAJOR issues:

1. Chick had put PLASTIC DISHES on the bottom rack. Plastic NEVER goes on the bottom rack. Why doesn't she know this?? Some "cleaning professional" she is.
2. Most egregious considering #1: Bug's new Dora plate was one of the dishes on the bottom rack. Oh the horror of such a close call! If that plate had melted, that plate that Bug has insisted on using for just about every meal since she got it from Mom Mom and Popeye a couple weeks ago, life would have been H-E-L-L.
3. She did not follow the obvious organization of anything in there. Shit was thrown in there all haphazardly. Gah! Knives mixed with forks and spoons with the spatula! And what's that glass bowl doing on the top rack? All its mates are on the bottom rack, but you were too busy putting a plastic bowl down there to notice, right? Stupid!
4. Girlfriend had used our last Electrosol tablet. Bitch! There weren't that many dishes in that bucket. Why would she start the dishwasher with so few??
5. Not saved by my quick action, but nonetheless a major insult to injury, is that the dishwasher already had dishes in it. Clean dishes. Made #4 clearer, anyway. I made the necessary corrections and let it run.

Is it just me? I can't stand it when other people fuck with my dishwasher. If someone else loads stuff in there, I avoid looking inside. Others don't know how to load it, and if I get in there before it's run, I end up offending whoever's involved by emptying it and reloading everything properly (read that: MY way). If I see the carnage after it's been run, I get highly annoyed. Better just to steer clear of it.

Needless to say, I called the office and asked them in the most polite way to leave my dishes alone from now on.

~*~*~*~

Today on "Martha"

"Lorraine [Bracco] and I have discovered the joy of Kahlua with whipped cream."

Martha is falling back into her old stick-up-the-ass self. She's not being flirty with the male guests anymore, and rarely do we see a glimpse of her playful side these days. It's such a shame.

It's Fucking Windy, Y'all

The whole house is shaking.

It's been raining all day; the temperature was up near 40 today.

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Not much else going on here, except some breath holding and finger crossing. I don't want to jinx myself, though, so no more about that.

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Oh, and here are some reasons (should I be needing any) to restrict her when she's 16.

1. Bug: The mommy on the bus goes Moooooo! (As you may remember, this is a sensitive thing for me.)
2. She likes tacky Spanish music better than mine, too. We're talking lame-assed Top 40 crap in Spanish. WTF?

And for honorable mention, we had the following conversation on the way home tonight:

Bug: ::sounding nasally:: Mommy! My fingered are in my dose!
Mommy: Your fingers shouldn't be in your nose. That's yukky.

Bug: Mommy! My finger wants to go in my nose.
Bug: Ready? Here it comes!
Mommy: ::sounding nasally:: My finger id in my dose!