crickets

I wonder if the crickets I heard last night were coming from my blog? Totally possible!

Anyway. The culinary adventure of the week is the grilled pizza! My sister is hosting her own birthday party tomorrow and we are doing grilled pizza. This will be the third pizza grill out. I'm making some of the dough right now, a slightly sweet oat flour mixture that will be for some raspberry peach dessert pizzas and cherry pizzas. It's an experiment, kind of made up the recipe and I hope it works!
I will also make semolina dough (nice and crispy for pizza) and some whole wheat dough. We've made some crazy concoctions involving salmon, funky cheeses, sauces, and vegetables. Not sure what's in the mix tomorrow as I usually end up rolling out the dough and Bubba (sis's husband) makes the actual pizzas.
I just had a thought. Beer batter pizza dough? Hmmm. I may mix up a small batch tomorrow!

Last minute substitution

I haven't really done anything fun with my cooking this week yet. Made the kids chicken noodle soup (Campbell's) with green beans for dinner. I did a sneaky thing though. We were out of milk and I wanted to make drop biscuits to go with the soup. Box of dried milk powder I use for some of my bread machine recipes saved the day! The kids haven't said anything about it and I doubt they'd even notice. We couldn't have grilled cheese because I was out of sandwich bread too. I sense a trip to the grocery store in my future!
Watch out for a coming post on experimenting with Oreo truffle balls. I'm going to attempt them with candy cane oreos this year.....

So I was wandering around the blogging world tonight and realized I'd not been here in months. Bad me, I know. I'm sure I could make excuses saying life has been busy, work hectic, kids a handful, whatever. But it really was just laziness.
I've also realized something. I love food. I don't even have to eat it. Just cooking it, baking it, or grilling it makes me happy. Having people tell me what I made was yummy makes me smile. I watch Food TV. I'll discuss recipes forever. I ENJOY getting new gadgets and appliances for Christmas, my birthday, and Mother's Day. I love cookbooks and food magazines. There are so many things I want to try. I want to roast a pig in a ground oven. I want to bake bread on my bbq grill. I want to grow more of my own food here at home.
So in the next few weeks I'm going to come up with a game plan for this coming year. I'll be experimenting in my kitchen and will post stories about my adventures here in my blog. I will also learn how to put pictures in and upload those. That will be the focus of my blog for 2010!

Work Work Work

So those that know me IRL know I'm back at work. I didn't HAVE to go back right now as I babysit for my sister. But I was worried that with the economy, I wouldn't have a job in the fall when I will most likely need it so I went back to Subway. I like it. I dont' work a lot of hours. I'm working about the same number I used to work, between 15 and 20. Right now most of it is going into my savings account for a rainy day.
But of course with the job, comes the DRAMA! A girl I used to work with before I left last spring is still there. She's the only one I knew from before. The first few weeks back were fine. This last week, she reprimanded me for staying past my scheduled time by 20 min. She's not a manager but she is a crew leader which is one step below. I did not know she was only in charge of cleaning detail and had no business telling me I was in trouble. The reason I stayed late that day was because CL (Crew leader) had left me and closer with 90 min of work that CL should have finished before she left. So the next day, CL tells me the manager was upset I stayed late (I found out this was false) and that I should have left by 8 (was scheduled til 9, stayed til 9:20). There was NO WAY I could have left at 8. At 8 we were finally starting on things that should have been done by 7. Plus I'd checked the computer and I was definitely okay to stay with the amt of orders we had.
Well it bothered me for a week. So I finally see manager last night and told her why I was upset. I told her exactly why I stayed over that night. I told her that CL used to work with me and KNOWS I will get out of work as soon as possible even if it means shorting myself hours on my paycheck. If we're not busy and things are done, I'm going home. I understand labor costs having been a manager at a restaurant previously. Manager said she never told CL she was upset that I stayed over. She had seen how busy we were and had no problem with me staying over by 20 min. So what CL was saying to me was complete BS.
I work for the first time with the manager this saturday. She scheduled herself so we could work together finally. She likes to work with everyone at least once a month so she can talk to us about how things are going and all that. I'm glad it's her because usually I work with CL on saturdays. I'm sure we'll talk about the CL situation.

Babies, Babies, Babies

I've had a population explosion in my family the past few months. Back in November, my sister Bethany had a baby boy Joshua. In December, my sister Lisa had a baby girl named Norah. And yesterday my sis in law Jennifer had a baby boy named Collin. Still unknown baby Wethington is due in August to my brother Mark and his wife Elizabeth.
I'm excited by all the babies but sad that they are all spread out over the US. Joshua lives in Michigan, Norah lives down the street but will move later this year to Findlay. Collin lives in Erlanger Kentucky (outside Cincy) and Baby Wethington is in Nebraska.
I've crocheted them all baby blankets, I finished Collin's last week, not knowing if he was a boy or a girl. The girl one sits 2/3 finished beside my chair. My neighbor is due with a girl in 2 months, I may finish that one up for her. Baby Wethington is still due far enough away that I can go yarn shopping for a girly blanket next time I'm in Toledo. I have boy yarn already.

Lifetime!

I'm now officialy a Lifetime member of Weight Watchers. I received that status today at my meeting. 6 weeks of maintaining my goal weight actually went a lot better than I'd thought especially since my first week of maintenance was the week they started the new Momentum program. After it was explained, I realized that it was pretty much how I did WW anyway so it wasn't the big change I was afraid of.
I'm a size 6 jeans. I still need a large in many shirts because my chest didn't go down too much (yay, lol) but I'm able to wear some mediums there too. I've not been this size or weight since fall of 1996, prior to getting pregnant with my oldest child. 13.5 years ago on my wedding day I was actually 13lb heavier than I am now.
I'm very excited and glad I did it. I plan on keeping up with it and attending my weekly meeting faithfully so I can keep at goal.

Bummed

Mark has to work afternoons when he goes back to his job next week. When the kids were little, it wasn't an issue. But now with them all in school, he won't see them unless he takes them to school in the morning. Also now my Yoga and Power fit classes are on hold because what little money I make babysitting needs to not be traded for babysitting for my kids.
Due to the babysitting, I can't get another job. I can't take in more kids due to having no vehicle to take my kids and babysat kids to school. ARGH! Everything was going so well. Things like this always seem to happen. I was doing so well and having fun with my classes. Last time he got back from deployment, he was put on afternoons about 5 months after he got home, forcing me to quit my job. So I guess at least they told him this time before I found a job. I'd just started looking.