I’m not a good enough writer to share any information with you without a picture, so I’m afraid that I can’t share any reunion information with you. Sorry. Wait for it…. wait for it….. (Wait until tonight, and I’ll make a post.)
Archives for September 2008
I am such a sheep.
All ’round the foodie sites they’ve been raving about cold-brewed coffee concentrate. It’s supposed to have better flavor – not as acidic, more ‘chocolate notes’, and other things that my terrible palate can’t identify. It does, however, have gadgety-ness attached to it, and I’m all for that!
You can buy a special giant filter for it, but that’s foolish, in my opinion. No, it turns out that I can use my thrift-store Bodum french press. ($3.00, thank you very much.) You put about a cup of coffee grounds in, pour on some water, stir it so everything gets wet, then leave it for 12 hours or so. Smash down the grounds, pour the strong liquid into a jug/bottle and keep it in the fridge. I have no idea what the right proportions are for this, since I really don’t make good coffee under normal circumstances, but I fill a mug 1/3 of the way with the concentrate and the rest with hot water and it’s good enough for me.
It’s also supposed to have less caffeine than regular-brewed coffee, but then again it’s also supposed to cure warts. Believe what you will.
If I should die before I accredit.
We’re leaving today (Friday) for Lloyd & Brad & Sam & Karla’s (and you too, John, but you never comment) 20th high-school reunion down in Missouri. I’m actually pretty excited about it because I know so many people from their class! We’ll be checking comments from the road, thanks to the iPhone, so wish us well!
Our house is not clean enough we could die, but I’m learning that if I’m dead – I won’t care. However, in case of emergency, all my accreditation files for school are in this milk crate. Those piles (on the floor, the dining room table and in the spare bedroom) need to be filed inside. So, there you go. Make it look really good, will ya?
The Mantis that Ate New York
We’ve had several GIGANTIC praying mantises (manti?) visit our classroom the past couple of days. No kidding, these things are over four inches long. I had a boy bring one yesterday and not five minutes after he took it home, a dad brought in an even bigger one that was trying to break into his truck. We watched the larger one today, and after everybody went home for the day, I set it free on the playground. I took pictures of him from behind a nearly-closed door, fearing for my safety.
That’s a two-gallon fish tank. He’s enormous!!!
Before you ask, I had a quarter for scale, but he put it in his pocket.
Ikea Hack 2
Oh, I am so ready for winter. All this summer nonsense with trying to keep cool is making me crazy. Give me the cold! And also the candles and hot drinks that I will use to heat my spouse and my house!!
I was thinking about hot drinks the other day and was wondering how I could keep my coffee piping hot in my freezing cold house during the winter. (Sorry, Lloyd.) I didn’t want a plug-in warmer, since that goes against my eco-freakiness. That leaves …. fire. I searched on the internet for warmers that use tea lights as fuel and almost bought one that heats up a teapot, but then thought surely I could cobble something together myself. As luck would have it, I saw the votive holder that Brad brought this summer. It’s called Oregano and it’s perfect for my mugs! This won’t work with my flat-bottomed mugs – they’ll slide right off. Woo-hoo! C’mon, winter!
*sigh* When will we get an IKEA in Nebraska?
That’s gonna take some work.
So it turns out that I stink at grilled pizza. I’m confident that at some point in the future it will go well, but certainly not this time. I read about it on the internet, so I knew you could do it with or without a pizza stone. Some people said they used their cheap stone in case it cracked. Not me – I foolishly bravely used my only stone anyway, thinking I had the heat set at ‘medium’.
I did not.
Whatever. It still works – just push it back together like a puzzle and carry on. (One of my kid’s moms sells Pampered Chef, so I’m good for a replacement.) This was not the worst thing that happened – that is yet to come. I pre-baked the crust a bit, as is my custom, since I don’t like soggy crust. Since I had the heat on medium HIGH instead of medium or medium-low, that stone was rocket-hot. It was fine when it was still just plain bread, but cooking the actual pizza on it was a bit of a disaster. By the time the cheese was melted on the top (yum),
the bottom was a blackened mess (yuck).
God bless Lloyd – he’ll eat anything. You can’t scrape pizza like burnt toast, so I just tried to pull off the worst bits from my pieces, but Lloyd at them straight up. He’s got an iron stomach, that boy.