• Turkey and Stuffing for Two

    This is the recipe for Turkey and Stuffing that I made for Canadian Thanksgiving yesterday.  The picture was found here, because I was too lazy to take a picture.  I should have done so, though, because mine looked even better than this does.  The recipe is on the same page.  I changed the recipe by being totally lazy….I made Stove Top Turkey Stuffing, and used that instead of a corn muffin.  So what I did was pound the turkey cutlets out, put some stuffing on them, then roll them up and tie them with some twine.  I put this back in the fridge to wait until I was ready.   I…

  • Happy Thanksgiving!

    (picture found here) Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends and family!  I say family, because Canada clarified their regulations recently, so that all you have to do to prove your citizenship is to show your birth certificate, that you were born in Canada.  Which Ted was.  Yay Canada!  So tonight, for dinner, I’m thinking Stuffed Turkey Rolls, yams, cranberry sauce, and salad.  Fun, huh? Maya has the day off of school today, for Columbus Day.  I have the day off of work for the same reason.  Poor Ted, the Canadian in the crowd, has to work.  Not fair, really.  It’s a good thing that Maya has the day off, though,…

  • XTC ~ Dear God

    [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk41Gbjljfo[/youtube] One of my favorite songs ever, and one that sums up a lot for me.  A lot about atheism.  A lot about not being able to make the leap of faith to understand how the tragedies that affect so many people: earth quakes, tsunamis, sick asshats who kidnap kids and keep them in the basement, etc..  How can these things be explained in a world with a loving God, who at the same time, is involved in our lives and answers our prayers.   I can’t make that leap.  I know that many people can, and that a big part of it is being able to say, faith.  Faith. …

  • Broken For You

    Immediately following her diagnoses of a fatal brain tumor, Margaret Hughes stops in at a small pastry shop in Seattle, and orders four desserts.  Sort of a ‘what the hell’ approach, because really, if you only have a year to live, who cares what you eat?  She strikes up a conversation with the shop girl, a painfully thin girl with black lipstick and a nose-ring.  Margaret asks, “If you found out you had only a short while to live, maybe a year or two, how would you spend your time?”   The answer surprises her. “I suppose I’d think about whatever it is that scares me the most – relationshipwise, I…

  • The Wallflowers ~ One Headlight

    [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEeqDk7203U[/youtube] I remember being really impressed by Bringing Down the Horse, by The Wallflowers. Loved all of it. My favorite three songs were probably this one, One Headlight, along with Three Marlinas, and 6th Avenue Heartache. The pop hook is great in all of them, but I particularly think that Jakob Dylan got some pretty decent lyric writing chops from his old man. Here are the lyrics to 6th Avenue Heartache, which I think I like even more than One Headlight, but I couldn’t find a copy that would embed on YouTube. Click the link above, to listen to 6th Avenue Heartache. Written for a homeless man in New York…

  • It’s not the falling that hurts somuch as the LANDING

    (picture found here…wish I had at least been jumping…) So I fell off a horse last Saturday morning.  (Stupid horse…)  It wasn’t anything dramatic or crazy, like being bucked off or doing dangerous jumps, or riding a crazy horse or anything.  Just him zigging and me zagging and me not holding on like I should have, so I lost my balance and fell.  Damn, that really hurt.  REALLY. HURT. For the record, I didn’t feel like anything was broken, so I got back on the horse, and showed him who was boss.  Made him walk backwards and in the direction he didn’t like.  Not sure it helped.  Helped my pride…

  • Chicken Breasts Stuffed with Goat Cheese and Olives

    (sorry for the blurry pic…) One indulgence we have been enjoying is On Demand for our cable TV. It’s part of the cheapest package that gives us HBO, etc., and we really like it. It’s expensive, though, so who knows if we’ll keep it. On Demand allows you to watch certain TV shows whenever you want.  It feeds Ted’s True Blood and Rescue Me addictions, fills us in when we go to bed early and miss an episode of Mad Men, and allows us to find movies to watch if we’re in a TV mood but there’s nothing on.  I wish they had everything ever made, but they’re far from…

  • Violent Femmes

    [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocQeP1UOwss[/youtube] Here we are at V already, coming mighty close to the end of this mostly ignored experiment called, The ABC’s of Music, which I copied and morphed from Gina, and was then copied (yay!) from me by Simon.  I thought of Veruca Salt, who I do enjoy from time to time, but I’ve mentioned them before already.  Thought of the Verve, but then I remembered The Violent Femmes!  Oh my, does this take me back to a particular time and place, that being my sophomore year of college, in Stockton, CA.  We didn’t get much ‘good’ music in Stockton, or at least it didn’t feel like it at the…

  • Tough Times

    (I couldn’t resist this little kitten…remember those stupid posters that said, ‘hang in there baby’. HA! Anyway, picture found here.) My bloggy friend Michelle wrote a lovely post yesterday about things that she has learned after her husband was laid off from his job 6 weeks ago. One of the things she mentioned learning was that now she knows what to say to people when they are going through something similar. She’s always been caring and concerned, but now she really *gets* it, you know? The worries and fears and shame that so often go along with such a thing. That struck me, because since losing my mom, I also…

  • Changing The Rules

    I’ve decided to switch out a few of the books on my reading lists. There are only three months left in the year, and I keep getting distracted from the books that I’ve ‘challenged’ myself to read. Maybe I’ll get to some of the books I had originally planned to read, and maybe I won’t. So there. I thought of being all sneaky and just changing the list on my sidebar, since no one seems to read my book posts, and the people holding these challenges couldn’t care less if I switch my books or not. But then I thought, hey, I can get a blog post out of this.…

  • Saving Fish From Drowning

    I could see the details of the world they passed through.  Now that I had the gifts of the Buddha, I could flow unimpeded by safety concerns, and the hidden forms of life revealed themselves: a harmless snake with iridescent stripes, myriad fungi, flowering parasites of colors and shapes that suggested sexual turgidity – a wealth of waxy flora and moist fauna endemic to this hidden spot of the earth, as yet undiscovered by humans, or at least those who assigned taxonomic labels.  I realized then that we miss so much of life while we are part of it.  We fail to see ninety-nine percent of the glories of nature,…

  • Until December ~ Free Again

    [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biSbmPYbwzo[/youtube] There’s no video for this song.  As a matter of fact, it’s not a very easy song to find anywhere, probably because it wasn’t their most popular song, and Until December wasn’t ever big as a group.  But I loved this song, love the very 80s sound of it all.  Love the bitter lyrics, which while I don’t agree with them, there are certainly times in our lives when they feel very real.  Maybe right after a break up, for example. Enjoy the crackles at the end of the song, proving that the person who posted this on YouTube ripped it from their LP.

  • Udupi Palace

    (Photos found at Check, Please! Bay Area) There’s a television at Ted’s office, and on Friday he decided to watch a little TV to unwind during his lunch break.  Happily, Check, Please! Bay Area was on, and one of the restaurants reviewed was a Southern Indian place in Berkeley called Udupi Palace.  The large majority of Indian restaurants in the Bay Area are Northern Indian, influenced by Punjabi and Pakastani flavors.  We love that, but the idea of trying something from another part of India entirely appealed to Ted.  He came home thinking we might go that night, but I didn’t feel like getting in the car and going to…

  • Honest Scrap Award

    I’m tickled pink (an expression I very rarely use, VERY rarely) to receive this award from the lovely and overworked Chrissy, a lovely woman living on a little island up in Ontario, on a farm with her husband and her beautiful baby.  Anyone who thinks farm life is easy has never read any good farm books (Like the Little House books, for me), and doesn’t read any farm blogs.  Chrissy’s is a good one.  She is also a champion blogger…last year, during NaBloPoMo, she honored that commitment, blogging every day that month, even though she was sent to the hospital in the hopes of keeping her baby inside of her…