Indian Summer in the garden or why we still have peppers growing

Posted: 2011/10/09 | Author: | Filed under: Gardening | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I took a good look at the garden last Thursday and took some pics.  I am pleased that we have been blessed with almost 2 weeks of good warm weather which has allowed my late tomatoes and peppers to keep growing.   We have had two light frosts already, but neither of them made to the raised beds or the retaining wall.   I will have to pull off  the produce by next Saturday or Sunday  depending on temps and frost.  So I hope they grow like heck this week.  I also have a ton of clean-up and fall bed creating to do, some plant moving to plan and accomplish and a yard to get ready for the hood Halloween Decorating contest.  And I must have more mums and spring bulbs.   Now sure how I’m going to pull all of that off in the 50 hour work weeks I have going on right now.  But I’m betting you won’t be hearing from me as much.   But for now The Husband and the Destroyer are at the game and MiniMe is off exploring on her bike.   I am going to start the laundry and pick a project from the very long list of things I need and want to do. Meanwhile enjoy these pics of the garden in Indian Summer.

PS. Wasn’t the moon just awesome last night.  I was out enjoying in until around 4:30.  I good time was had by all.

It’s getting spookier

Posted: 2011/10/08 | Author: | Filed under: Decorating | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

20111008-092630.jpg

I will write more later. Today we are working on the ghosts in the yard. And tonight is Girls Night Oooooouuuuut!!!!
Followed by The Husband’s B’s and G’s and a lazy laundry day on Sunday!
I’ve got some posts in the draft stage including one I’m mulling over about me crossing the age when my Mom died line in 10 days on the 18th.
I’ve taken on a huge 3rd project at work and have to find ten extra hours in my week for work. That ten hours has to come from somewhere and so far it seems to be coming off running and writing. This is no good. I need to refocus on the run as I committed to running a half in early November. But haven’t even signed up yet, let alone trained properly.
Still my family is happy and intact. That makes me feel so blessed every day.
Have a great weekend lovies. I might end up with some time to tell you a story before it is over.
Best,
Lola

Chicken Marsala; Spinach Salad, home made Croutons

Posted: 2011/10/07 | Author: | Filed under: Cooking | Tags: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Dinner

My Husband says my chicken Marsala is the best he’s ever had. with one minor exception for a local restaurant.   I’ve talked before about how I am  a recipe fiddler.  Basically by the time I’ve made something more than a few times I pretty much just keep it in my head and then whip it out via memory when the time comes.   Now that being said, I haven’t made this dish in a long while.  But I was feeling  cocky and I was also short on time and attention span.  I made this dinner Tuesday night for my husband and SIL while trying to supervise home work and get the kids fed a snack.   It’s been better, but it was still good.   The pics below will show you what it all look like, but the recipe basically goes like this.

Chicken Marsala

Boneless skinless chicken breasts, pounded thin.  anywhere from 2-4, anymore and your pan size could end up being an issue, but you could always cook them in batches.

Lightly dredge in flour, you can add salt and pepper to taste, I do not.

Cook them in a large flat bottom skillet in a little olive oil until they are browned on both sides and you have a nice pan full of cooked brown bits.  Take them out and set them to the side.

White or yellow onion,  diced fine, about a half an onion, you don’t want a ton of it because the focus is the shrooms.

Couple cloves of garlic, smash with a knife and peel.  Then I run them through a garlic press and dump right on top on the diced onion pile.

This time I deglazed the pan with red wine,  you could use white whine, Marsala, beef or chicken broth. Heck you can even use water if you need to, but you MUST deglaze the pan before you put in the onions and garlic. You want to cool the pan down a smidge and also get all the flavor up form the bottom to go into the sauce.   Then I added a little butter and olive oil and sauteed the onions and garlic until soft.   The red wine made it a bit difficult to keep an eye on heat and make sure the garlic did not burn, if you ever burn garlic in a dish you should probably just throw it out and start fresh, there is no  rescue from burnt garlic.

80z or more of mushrooms, I hoped to use the rest of the Criminis we got locally, but they were dry moldy yuck.  I  just used sliced button mushrooms, about 12 oz, and gave them a rough chop to break them down to something with a little smaller/better mouth feel.

Toss mushrooms into onions and garlic and saute until tender and clear, but not caramelized ( though that might be yum)

You sauce is basically some  ratio of butter, Marsala ( buy a good one) and broth.  I prefer beef broth because I like the darker color.   Now thickness can be an issue here.  Butter wise I try  not to use more than 2-3 TBs in the sauce itself.  Too much fat and sauces are harder to keep together and do not reheat well, think Alfredo…

I also don’t prefer to use corn starch when thickening sauces. I am a make a roux girl. And you kind of already have roux in your pan because the chicken had flour on it, and you have cooked those meaty floury bits in olive oil and butter (fats).  Then deglazed and incorporated them into the sauce.   Got it? So you can a- be bold and  trust your skills ( what I did this time) b-make some more roux paste in your pan. If I had done it this time it would of been 1-2 TBs of flour and butter.  Be sure to cook until paste is brownish, not raw and yellowish white.  You will need a cup of liquid for each tablespoon of flour you used in your roux.  ish…  Sauces are so fun!

c- just use corn starch . If you do,  use 1 tsp corn starch in a cold cup of broth and shake it well.   I think I usually temper the broth/starch with some warm broth from the pan as well before putting it in the pan.

Now you add your broth and Marsala and simmer and stir until your sauce is right where you want it.   This is TRULY a taste issue.  Husband made it last week with an online recipe that called for no broth and 1.5 cups of Marsala. When he cooked it down the sauce was very light brown and very thick, Marsalaly. It as good, it wasn’t mine.  This time I used about 1.5 cups of the broth and maybe 1/4 cup Marsala.  At the end 2  Tablespoons of butter was stirred in and it turned out great.  Next time I’m trying, white wine, chicken broth and more Marsala..maybe…

When you are comfortable that your sauce is together and the taste you’d like place your breasts back into the pan and simmer for a bit until you are happy with it and serve over Gemelli.

Now the croutons.

I use my big white bowl I use to make dressing for Thanksgiving or pasta salads for pitch-ins.  Though lately it has become the defacto Spinach Salad bowl.

In the bottom of the bowl warm butter and olive oil and then add your spices.  I use a crap load of dill and something called Garlic Garlic sold by Tastefully Simple.  You want a lot of spice in your oil/butter and you can spice it however you want.    You do NOT want too much butter/oil so error on the less side until you learn what works for you.

Cut your french baguettes into cubes and then take off your rings and toss the cubes with the oil/butter/spice mixture.  Leave it sit for a little bit and make sure you have tossed well.

Dump them in a single layer on a cookie sheet

DON’T wash the bowl, put your salad directly in it and it will pick up the spices left behind on the sides.

Bake them in a 325 oven until they are “done”. I do this by watch and feel alone.   Start with 10 minutes and then check about every 5. You can also pull them out and turn them all, I usually just shake the pan a few times.  You want them dried out, but not  so hard they rip your mouth up and not so soft it is like eating bread cubes.   If you get them a little too hard don’t worry ( mine went a tad too far) just make a wetter salad, think  juicy tomatoes and toss the croutons in with the whole thing. They will pick up the salad juices and get very very yummy.   What you don’t use,  store in a plastic baggie in your pantry. You may be able to freeze them too, but I’ve never tried.  They don’t last that long.

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It’s getting kind of spooky around here

Posted: 2011/09/23 | Author: | Filed under: Decorating | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The final pumpkin baby verdict. Quads!

The Destroyers Birthday is coming very soon.  He will be 6 and he has always loved spooky things.  When he was a toddler he would turn all the lights out during dinner and proclaim that we  were playing  “dark spaces” .  His favorite shirts to wear each year are his Halloween Spooky shirts.  He starts wearing as soon as he can in the Fall and stops when the weather changes and he has no choice.   Thank goodness fashion has skulls in right now because he is completely outfitted in skull/spooky shirts for his wardrobe.   I’ve had these Dept 56 Halloween Houses for years, and each year he begs for them to be put up as soon as possible.  I usually do it inside before or over Labor Day weekend and then pretend we are really a normal family until October 1 when the outside stuff goes up.   This year it’s all up now. Instead of the big Fall tree I did  last year I put a a little Spooky Tree on the porch.    There is more Fall decor for me to get up, but I’m done for now I think.  I’ll switch it out to Fall only after Halloween because I finally get to have Thanksgiving wherever the hell I please this year and will be doing it at my house.   It’s by no means a decorator show house job but I’m pretty pleased with it and I love sharing ideas for decor.    If you do something really cool for fall please share!!

The Ladies are coming, the Ladies are coming!!!

Posted: 2011/09/21 | Author: | Filed under: Adventures | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

It’s big excitement in the Lola house today.    I am officially getting my maids back!  Which of course prompted me to want to tell you some of my maid stories.

I am an extremely picky to work for.  When I hire maids, if I am using a service, then I usually go through 2-3 crews before landing on one I trust to clean my house to my specifications .I expect you to pay attention to details, I don’t mean I go all crazy bitch if you miss one little thing. I mean I think it is fairly reasonable to expect that when I am paying you to dust my home, you will dust the  actually objects  sitting on the dusty surfaces as well as the dusty surfaces themselves.  That when you mop my floors I can not bend down and find spot I can scrape up with my fingernail of gunk still stuck on my floors.   That when you make the beds you will make them nicely and a litmus test is what  do you with Mr. Bear.   Mr. Bear is the ratty ass  bear I’ve slept with since my sophomore year of college.  I got him the summer I sold books  for Southwestern, but not until after I got home.  Mr. Bear has had many adventures and is fairly special to me.  Though I would not need a PTO day if something happened to him or  anything.    I try to be a good home owner by taking the  time to pick things up so the maids have surfaces they can  actually see and  access to be able to clean them.  This has resulted in many what was many  Tuesday nights running around the house “cleaning” for the maids to come. I set the sheet outs to change the beds etc…   Also I work from my Home Office quite a bit and they have to pass the don’t drive me batty test.   I have permanently solved this part of the problem by having the current service clean on a day I am in the office ( Wednesday).  I explain my  expectation to the  owner of the service and they put up with me until they send me a crew I like, and then I stick with them as long as I can unless something goes wrong.  Now lot’s has gone “wrong” over the years.

We  got maids sometime when MiniMe was a baby, and kept the same company for years until we put our  first house on the market when The Destroyer was about  18 months old.   This service had a few crews and 2-3 ladies would show up at my house, one is the supervisor and the other 1-2 are workers.  Greasy the owner had to send over a  few crews until  I landed on a few select ladies. As long as C, K or L where in my house, and preferably all 3 then life was good.  These were The Ladies!  It started out that only K was a supervisor, then C became one and her own team. L was usually on one of their teams.  New girls would rotate in and out, but I was happy as long as the crew had C, K or L in it.   Now I work for an amazing   mother friendly company. I worked from home 2 days a week when both kids were babies, and they stayed at home with me while I was working so I could breastfeed them.      They both went to daycare part time until they got mobile or in the way. For MiniMe this lasted 18 months for The Destroyer about 6 months.  Our office has a locking  nursing mothers room with this amazing leather chair that I totally need to tell our facilities manager I  have dibs on if we ever get rid of it.   When  The Ladies started coming to our home there was a baby, and when they quit there were two. There was always a nursery to clean and often a kid in the house as well.  The  Ladies took care of both of us.

If there were a few things left  out, they picked them up.  They folded blankets on cribs and  big girl rooms, they put Mr. Bear on the bed up at the top by the pillows. They did a good job cleaning and were very responsive to  feedback fro tweaking things.  As the months and years progressed they became a part of our lives in what felt like a permanent way.  They gave a stressed out, working from home but has been up since 4:45 EVERY stinking morning mother, some adult human interaction.  The respected my vacuum or no vacuum the babies room because he/she is sleeping/sick/fussy right now wishes and they ASKED every time how it should be.   They came in, greeted me/us, had a short review session with me for any special instructions and got the hell to work.  Then they worked their asses off for 2-3+ hours and left my house spotless and my soul a tiny bit refreshed.  It became easy to get MiniMe to pickup her room and play room  because she was doing it for The Ladies, not just for Mommy.    As they spent time in my house I got to know them and a little bit about their lives.   They became a little more than just maids.  The became The Ladies.  So much so that we still call maids The Ladies in our house today.   They have also set the bar so high on both a professional and personal level that I fear no other  set of ladies is ever going to earn the name.

You can tell a lot about people by how they handle awkward  or potentially tense situations.   You can tell a lot about a  Cleaning Service or person by how they handle  feedback and um..when bad things happen.  I’ve had two maid services steal pain pills from me. Both times tight off my dresser right out of the bottle and while I actively needed them!   The first time it was while The Ladies were cleaning, I’d had a miscarriage between MiniMe and The Destroyer.  Yes, I’ve lost a baby myself and that is part of the reason I had no qualms telling you that IMHO PJ never actually had this  happen to him.   Anyway that day I had only 2 of the C,K,L trifecta and there was a new girl.  It is a cleaning service there is always a new girl and they often got trained on either C or K’s crew.   I had ten, had taken two, leaving eight.  I went to take one more that afternoon and there were only 6 in the bottle.  I swear people are DUMB!!!  I called   Greasy the owner and  left a message.  I was heartsick, please let it be the new girl I thought.  I don’t want to lose faith in my Ladies. I kept going over the count in my head, had  I taken more pills than I thought? No I had not I decided, I’d only come  home from the DNC the night before.    Within a few hours I got a call back. “She’s fired he told me.  We pulled the records and she was your duster. Obviously we can’t have that type of thing happening and we would be happy to replace the cost of the medication to do whatever else we need to do to make this right.”  The next time  The  Ladies came we got it right out in the open. I was so glad it wasn’t  any of them, and never thought it could be. They were very sorry it happened and that new girl was a mess anyway.  I still got new girls from time to time, they would be brought it introduced to me and told  how it was. Then They’d get to work and get feedback from C, or K during their time to be sure they did it right.

I had The Ladies until we put our house on the market.   I figured if I was going to have to keep the house spotless  I wasn’t going to keep paying  for someone else to do it.   Then we lived in a tiny 3 bedroom, almost basement like, dark, dank, and nasty apartment for many months  while the Dream House was being built and once we moved in I wanted The Ladies back.   But my new house was almost twice the size of the old one and the ladies we all loved  so much were no longer working for the company so I’ve been going through maids ever since.

I fired one because she thought it was crazy talk that I expected her to be sure and dust the stairwell bannisters and change my bed linens. Then she started taking longer and longer to clean my house and the job started getting shittier and shittier.   The lady down the street, who I had gotten her name from, had fired her as well.  I fired one cleaning company because when THEY stole pain pills from me in an eerily similar fashion after my ablation ( my poor uterus has been under siege its whole life) , their  owner REFUSED to believe it was them that did it.  He actually said to me. “If you told me they took something else I could see it, but they would never steal medication. I talked to them and they swear it wasn’t them.”  Really??? If  I’d said they  stole money or my jewelry that would be not a surprise,   but pain pills are a big shocker??? Really???    Then I had to talk business  as The Husband calls it.    “I can’t trust you in my home, you have handled this badly and you’re fired. ”

On a side note I had to talk business to the jackass that thought it was a good idea to stand on my porch yesterday evening after my 4 mile run and argue with me  about why I wouldn’t hire him to be my lawn service.   I have a lawn service guy, he does what I tell him and tells me when he thinks he really needs to do more.  D knows how to handle and do business with me and I am  quite loyal because of that.    I finally told I wanna be our lawn guy if he manged to turn Uni’s  yard  next door around then we could talk next fall.  He gasped and sputtered.  The end went like this.. “You can get off my porch now, I’m  done”   He  shoved a flier in my hand, shook his head, laughed and sulked off the porch while I shut the door.  I’ve seen that look in a dudes eyes when I dress him down before.  He’ll be back because getting my business is  a challenge now.  The Husband will handle it. I have no tolerance for people standing on my porch wanting to argue with me.  Or arguing with me in a combative way after I  have continued to say no.   Ask my kids how this usually goes for them… If you want to change my NO to a YES, you better be able to do it an an intelligent and respectful manner. Bring me your point of view as an adult not your “but your lawn guy  sucks I could be so much better way”..while you ogle the patchiness in my front lawn like it’s all the  current lawn guys fault.   D-bag…. Get the fuck off my porch.

Back to the maids….

The service after that is the one is coming back today.  They started  right  smack dab in the middle of the GW cam days and cleaned for us  until May 2010.  I kept the house on my healthy income  and the whopping  $150-300 or so (he paid more than the state told him he had to and quite frankly neither of us can remember exactly how much it was)  a paycheck The Husband was paying me in child support wasn’t going to be used for maids.  It was going towards  weekly double therapy session for the kids and Mommy’s Divorce diet of beer and vodka.  I’m super excited they are back and the owner already knows  each crew is a little test until we land on just the right one.  And when I walk into my house tonight after work it will be  MAGICALLY clean and pretty.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH… I love having maids.

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