Holy Crap a New Post!!!

I suppose if I just start writing, something will come out. Hmmm…

I’ve been working at Hillside Village Child Development Center for two weeks now and it seems to be going well. I’m not getting paid shit, but I have to think of it as a paid internship. Also, it qualifies me for credit in my work experience class so I can get my degree in Nutrition.

The job isn’t difficult at all, and it’s kind of cool to be doing something that I feel I’ve been training to do for the last 20 years. I am the lead cook and nutrition advisor for the preschool. Perfect! Nutrition and cooking have been passions of mine for the last, well, 20 years. I don’t have a budget which means I can cook with whatever fresh, organic, and quality ingredients I want. Honestly though, I’m still getting my legs underneath me as far as getting my workspace organized and cleaned. The site director was the cook for the last month or so before I arrived and she didn’t clean a thing! Other than that, it’s a cool job.
Bonus! Zenden can go too! Karen only wants to start him two days a week. I would prefer he goes three. Whatever, some is better than none.

Z just got up from his nap, so I’m gonna go now.

Beef. Apparently it's always supposed to be for dinner, even for vegetarians.

I recently received the latest issue of Vegetarian Times in the mail and was pleasantly surprised at the number of actual “vegetarian” recipes contained therein. I’ve made two recipes out of it, which is about two more than I normally make. It’s not that I don’t like cooking vegetarian meals, it’s just I feel they have gotten away from recipes I feel are worthy of print in a cooking magazine.

I’m sick of seeing recipes that are nothing more than a cop out catering to convenience. To me that’s the antithesis of what a cooking magazine is all about. Cooking magazines should cater to someone who enjoys spending time in the kitchen, not people that want to get out of there as fast as they can. Unless it’s Rachael Ray’s (totally not healthy ) Veggie Meals, there should be actual recipes that require some sort of effort.

I'm speaking about recipes with titles like “Super Bowl Sunday Brats” or “Chicken Noodle Soup.” Both of these are just your basic recipe with a faux meat added. Now, I don’t have a problem at all with faux meats. As a matter of fact, I absolutely love tofu dogs and as soon as our budget increases, I intend to start purchasing them again. But when a cooking magazine starts including them in recipes, I must draw the line! Way too often I’ll see a “recipe” for vegetarian chorizo tacos in the magazine and one of the ingredients is “vegetarian chorizo.” Seriously, I needed a magazine to tell me how to make the exact same recipe for chorizo tacos that you can find anywhere and the only difference is that you tell me to use “vegetarian chorizo!” What I expect when I see that recipe title is a recipe telling me HOW TO MAKE VEGETARIAN CHORIZO!”

The same thing goes for vegetarian lasagna. Don’t give me recipe for veggie lasagna and make the only difference between it and the one found in the “Joy of Cooking” is some sort of processed faux meat!

I’m not saying not to use the variety of faux meats out there. I’m just saying that if I buy a cooking magazine that touts vegetarian recipes, don’t tell me to put a tofu dog on a bun, I already know how to do that.

Pavlov's Son

So, we have recently potty-trained our son. It wasn’t hard, but then again, nothing with our son has been very difficult. We’re going on three and the “terrible two’s” are the worst he has to offer, our life is a breeze.

Anyways, potty-training was easy; we just offered Zenden a cookie every time he used the potty. Since his only treats up to that point were dates and raisins, cookies actually were a treat. We got to the point where he was using the potty so much that we scaled back on the cookies and only gave them out if he pooped. Whenever he peed he got a piece of “ginger candy” which is just dehydrated ginger coated in sugar. For the longest time we were amazed that this kid could poop EVERY time he went to the bathroom. There’s nothing wrong with that, and even I’m overly “regular”, but geez this kid could poop!

He was doing so well that we figured that was it and we could stop with the cookies. It was all dates, raisins, and ginger candy from there on out. Everything was great, but Karen and I noticed that he wasn’t pooping every time he went to the bathroom. We weren’t worried, we just noticed a difference.
We’re not generally cookie or snack people but I recently got a wild hair up my ass and purchased some more cookies. To get rid of them I started giving them to Z when he went to the bathroom by himself. That was going great but he wasn’t using the bathroom by himself enough to go through the cookies as fast as I’d wanted. I started giving him cookies whenever he pooped again.

Guess what, we’re back to pooping EVERY time he uses the potty.

40

I think I really love being almost 40. I’ll be 40 in January in fact.
My whole life I’ve looked toward getting to be this old with a sense of fear. Now that it’s almost here, I really like it. It allows you to get away with stuff that I couldn’t when I was younger. My body for example, I can finally walk around without a shirt on. I will never have washboard abs, but who cares, I’m 40! That doesn’t mean I can let myself go again and become a fat slob, it just means I don’t have to worry about comparing myself to 25 year olds.

I love the wisdom being 40 carries with it. I finally feel I know what things I need to worry about, at least more so than when I was 30. 30 is when you officially become an adult, 40 is when you know how to act like an adult. So nya, nya, nya 30 year olds. Ooops.

I love waiting until recently to have a child. I was able to get all the partying and a lot of mistakes out of the way before bringing Z into the world. Because of this, I have more time to devote to raising him properly and better knowing what kinds of trouble he may get into (since I was still getting into trouble up until the day he came along).

40 means that Karen and I have been living together for 16 years. We’ve been officially married for 11, but I consider us married from the first day we moved in together.

There are plenty of other things I could say, but not now, for now I’m just happy to be at a point in my life where I AM happy.

p.s. Someone in my class told me she thought I was 30. THAT’S the best part about being 40 ;-)

Dollhouse

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That guy

As many of you know, I have been currently attending college since being laid-off last December. I vaguely remember attending from '88 to '90 but I got most of my GE stuff done so I must have been doing something. What I really don't remember is the amount of stupid people there are that go to college. Granted I'm speaking about community college, but it's still college!

In every one of my classes so far has been "that guy." The one who has nothing to add to the discussion and pretty much just likes to hear the sound of his or her own voice. They usually start by pretending to ask a question, but instead just start telling a story that goes nowhere and usually gives the professor no opportunity to stop them and go on with the lecture. Every time "that guy" opens their mouth you can hear the collective groan of everyone in the classroom.

What I want to know is where did "that guy" come from? I don't remember him back in high school or in my early days of college.

Gotta love peasant food

Let’s just get right down to business, no?

So Mon and Tues are my favorite days of the week because I get the mailers for Vons, Henrys, and Pancho Villa’s. What that means is that I go through everything and decide what’s on sale and make the menus for the week. What that also means is that I get the opportunity to make due with things that most people never eat.

This week was one of the more interesting weeks; I saw Tripas de Leche at Pancho’s for .99 cents a pound. Tripas? Milk tripe? I’ve had tripe but what the hell is tripas de leche? After a little research (yay Wikipedia), I found out they were the tube connecting the stomachs of cows that still haven’t been weaned off milk. An intestine. As you all know I’m down to try anything….twice. Thankfully, so is Karen. Zenden is frankly too young to know what he’s eating, and will hopefully have the same attitude about food as his parents as he gets older.
Anyway, back to the tripas…Here is the pic of me cleaning them. I just held open the end on ran water into it and out the other end.

After doing a couple I realized that they were braided together.

After cleaning, I threw them in a pot and simmered until tender.

While that was going on, I made a wonderful homemade tomato sauce

Here's another couple just for the gross out factor





After all that, chop and then combine with the tomato sauce




Simmer for a while and serve over white rice and top with parmesan cheese



Family eats and is happy!




Turns out it was awesome! Way better than expected. It was extremely tender and kinda milky tasting with extremely mild liver undertones. It was a winner and will definitely be made again.