Journey, Foreigner and Night Ranger

Posted: 2011/08/09 | Author: | Filed under: Adventures | Tags: , , , , | 2 Comments

Shorty and I as a hot mess at Journey, she's my fun size bestie.

“All I need is a pair of roller skates and someone to make out with ” Lola

“I’m like a teenage girl singing into her hair brush all over again”  Shorty

Last weekend my newest bestie Shorty and I had our 3rd date.   We have known each other  since the night of my 39th Birthday VIP Vodka Party, well over a year ago.     We started our friendship with mutual TMI across a dinner table full of other mommies.    A few months later after The Husband moved out and another MNO was planned she informed me. “I am going and I am picking you up and driving you there and buying you a drink” .   It still stands as one of the best gestures of compassion and goodwill shown to me by people not already in the inner circle during my almost divorce.     It was also a much needed night for me and a bonding moment in our friendship.   Shorty and I aren’t really the same per se, we share a lot of the same qualities and like a lot of the same things, but we are also very different.  Shorty and I aren’t  so different as to be different sides of the same coin.  We are more like the side of the coin we each wish to have point of view and insight and perspective from.   We always seem to be picking each others brains for another point of view.   I really enjoy spending time with her.  I’ve seen her plenty of times since that first night. But as far as girl dates go we’ve only had 3.  And The first two were plenty nice, martinis, shopping, sushi, girl talk.  But that concert last Saturday night was AWESOME.

Another summer Saturday night in the Midwest USA, it was hot but the breeze on the hill of the lawn was cool and strong.   There were drunken  hot Airforce men to entertain us in line and girls we met to revel in the eye candy with.     We had Rock Star Club VIP passes, so we could wait in a much shorter line to pee in air conditioning.  Shorty forgot her ID in her  car but the new laws got us wristbands with our tickets to the VIP club with no carding!   Sweet in and out the rest of the night with no wait.   Shorty is a little younger than me and I swear I’ve asked her how old she is like 4 times.  I promise to remember from now on.     She is younger than me but old enough to know most of these songs is how old she is!   I wanted to come to this concert and  started asking everyone I know if they’d go with me. I thought maybe Shorty was taking one for the team but turns out she is right there with me on the 80’s Rock.    These bands are my youth, I remember listening to Foreigner on the record player during indoor recess in the 5th Grade.   I’ve taken countless spins around the skating rink on roller skates to these songs.   I’ve  made out with boys to the slow 80’s rock ballads from Junior High on.   I’ve heard these songs while riding in…cars… with dates and groups and besties.  I haven’t really been a listener recently. Instead of prepping for this concert like I have for others,  I just showed up in a comfy outfit and a blanket with Shorty and waited for the magic to happen.

The weather was perfect.  We ditched both the Air Force eye candy  and the girls we met in line in favor of getting situated in our preferred spot and then all settled at the VIP bar.   As luck would have it we  hooked up with our new girl friends and they and all their friends hung out with us for the whole concert.   I must tell you that any 80’s Rock concert on the lawn of this outdoor venue is made better by larger group participation.   We sort of banded together in one big but separate group and had a blast.  BOY did the magic happen. The new singer for Journey is so stinking good.  His voice is the perfect match for the music.   All three bands put forth a light show  and delivered song after song with all the energy and mayhem we were hoping for.  The very very best thing about concerts at this venue are when it gets dark right as the headliner band is coming on.    The feel of all that open space and sound and sky and lights and screaming is SUCH a different experience than the tiny hot sweaty club of  the AK3 shows The Husband and I attended earlier that same week.   There really just isn’t anything like it. Except maybe that feeling at a really large festival, I hope to test this theory out at Cochella next spring with the SIL.    We danced, we sang, we thrashed, we swayed.  We worked ourselves into the hot mess of summer time rocking our cares away all night long.  We waited in  the parking lot for 45 minutes afterwards, and event that didn’t dampen the magic of the night, the music and the new friends we made and left behind on the lawn.

Journey Set List

Up next on the Lola’s crazy summer of concerts is Train and Maroon 5 at the State Fair!! Followed  a few days later by Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow with the BGC crew.   It has been and continues to be a rocking summer.

Wanted: Bees to come frolic on my blossoms.

Posted: 2011/08/08 | Author: | Filed under: Gardening | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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I have been hesitant to show you my veggies, mostly because they are a pretty sorry lot of plants.

This is my fourth summer trying to grow vegetables. I have always  had a garden in my life, even when I lived in apartments  I tried  to have a patio with some dirt on it somewhere so I could grow flowers.    Once we built this house I quickly decided I would have an actual garden patch for veggies and try my luck.  How hard can it be right?  My parents did it for years and years.   I have numerous friends who are on their 2nd+ years of doing Square Foot Gardening and I  got the book for Christmas last year from one of my MIL ( I have two) .   After  the three previous summers of mediocre to nothing yields I was determined that THIS  gardening season would be different. I would plan ahead like I always do, but THIS year I would plan better, I would plan smarter, I would vow to get my seed started in time, to nurture them lovingly ( keep the cats and kids from killing them)  until it was planting time, to get them in the ground not too early and not too late.  This year I would make the garden pretty and functional.

In spite of all of that, this year the veggies have still been a comedy of  “errors”.

I painstakingly planned and organized, on index cards all of my seeds and space.  I planned for 7 kinds of peppers, 3 kinds of tomatoes,  2 kinds of peas, 1 kind of beets,  2 kinds of spinach and one lettuce. 3 kinds of pumpkins and 1 kind of watermelon.

Some of these are cold crops, which I did not get in this year, oops.  I blame the weather and  the mini marathon training.

I started two+ trays of seeds, I got most of them to grow. and then I got confused about which plant is what hen it was time to place them in the garden.  Veggie wise I’m not good at marking each little seed and then keeping the chaos out of planting time.   So what I ended up with is a garden with some tomatoes, peppers and pumpkins in it.

I had no idea which tomato  plants were what until they finally set fruit.    all but one is fruiting, and almost all of them have some kind of curled leaf funk going on.  It’s hard to know how much to water in a heat wave drought.   I tend to over water, but I haven’t killed them yet and some of my fruit is even ripening. Which helped solve the mystery of the which plants are which.   They appear to be as good as they are going to get.

I still have only a small idea of which pepper plants are what. I keep getting blossoms but not a single pepper fruit.  I am so bummed because I have plans for all those exotic peppers.  we cook a lot of recipes with peppers, I greedily wanted to use them to make  my  green tomatillo adobo sauce, and to roast and freeze for other uses.

The pumpkins are doing a great job of growing up the vertical trellis we made for them.   I only had one pumpkin actually growing  and I was getting a LOT of blossoms.   They just seemed to bloom, then die and fall off in a really ugly pumpkin herpes like fashion. Plus the ants in that bed have decided to just make my pumpkin vines their own playground. They  are either laying eggs on the plants or stealing and eating the eggs other bugs are laying on the blossoms and vines.    This was really perplexing me. I haven’t grown pumpkins before. and I know tomatoes can get blossom rot.  If there is a plant disease or plague in existence I’ve gotten it on my vegetables at some point or another during my numerous attempts to finally be a veggie grower.

Undaunted by my looming failure I turned to the internet.   Only to discover that pumpkins have girl blossoms and boy blossoms. And if a bee or other such creature does not take boy pollen and put in on the girl  stamen then I’m not getting nay pumpkin babies.   You can go out very early in the morning and hand pollinate your blossoms, assuming you have boys open when girls are open and in need of pollinating.  I am NOT into this.  I closed my womb with an ablation  almost 2 yeas ago, I’m not taking on pumpkin  sexing as a hobby…so far.    The  girl blossoms have a teeny tiny pumpkin looking nodule on the stem below where the bloom will form.  The boys are just straight stems.   So I have 2.5 vines chock FULL of boy blooms, with  very few girl blooms to be found.  I lost a full half a vine with 2 babies in waiting on it to either a. some kind of nasty vine rot or b. the  trimmer got too close and hacked off part of the base and killed the  “best” part of the vine. So my 4 pumpkin hopeful harvest has been knocked back to just 2 that are growing.

Yes, I’m telling you my pumpkins aren’t getting enough plant sex=bee pollination.  Turns out that maybe our issue in the pepper front as well.  Sigh… Really?  I have Russian Sage, Oregano, Zinnias,  Sunflowers.  I have not one but TWO bird feeders. My flower garden is a veritable bee , bird and hummingbird pleasure palace. NONE of them can get their parts over there and root around on some  pepper and pumpkin blossoms?   These are some good looking plants? They have nice open blossoms, the blossoms seem to last awhile.    How besides planting things that bees like does one combat a lack of bee issue?    Maybe I should take out a personal add for my  poor pumpkins.

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Cut and Come Again Zinnia Cut #3 Plus sunflowers

Posted: 2011/08/04 | Author: | Filed under: Gardening | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Last Night’s Dinner- Finally a cooking post!

Posted: 2011/07/31 | Author: | Filed under: Cooking | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

In the next 48 hours I will see not one but two Alkaline Trio live shows.    For the next 3 days, The Husband and I will be ALONE and FAR AWAY from  MiniMe and The Destroyer.    Before I get to take advantage of all that time away I had to make sure the house, and kids and etc was taken care of.   So last night I totally sent The Husband to Sam’s  Club and stole making dinner from him.   I am a fabulous cook. But ever since the reconciliation  I have found myself relegated to sous chef in my house.   One of the ways The Husband coped and relaxed during the almost divorce was to cook.   Before we  split up we used to both cook fairly evenly.  There is debate on who is the better cook.  He is by far the better baker, I am better at sauces. He is  an amazing smoker chef as well.  The place where I excel though is taking what’s left in the house  that seems like nothing and making an amazing meal with it.   That’s because of the way my mind works when I cook.  When I’m deciding what to make for dinner this is what I do.

I take a look at what we have in the fridge or what I need need to use up, and then I just start thinking about what sounds good with it. It’s pretty simple really. Just add some flavor you are craving and voila dinner.  Sorry if the pics line up wonky, but I’m done messing with it.

Last night’s  dinner started with the Italian marinade chicken, fresh local green beans, beets, garden slicing tomatoes, and spicy  field greens. Even better, other than the salad and corn, everything  was being grilled.  Chicken was simply done in a an Italian marinade of The Husbands concoction and grilled for about 8-10 min per side.

Grilled Beets:Chop of tops and roots. Wash, peel, slice in about 1/4-1/2 slices. lightly coat in olive oil.  Grill for about 8-12 minutes a side, flip repeat until done.   Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Beets, peeled and sliced

Beets first side

Beets side 2, green beans on

Grilled Green Beans with garlic and shallots:I rinsed and broke the stem ends off of the beans. A few of them I broke bad spots off. The bean’s got a light coating of olive oil in a cookie sheet. Then I peeled and sliced the shallots, garlic pressed the  fresh garlic on top of that. Sort of cut, mashed it all in with some sea salt, then tossed it with the beans and oil.   I  put the beans on the grill after the beets were flipped and left them in there for the remainder of the cooking time, about another 8-10 minutes or so.

Sliced Shallots, red board is from the beets

Garlic, Shallots, Salt

Beans with the onion and garlic mixed in

Garden Tomato, Basil and Fresh Mozzarella salad:Slice the farmers market or garden tomatoes and leave them sit at room temperature.  Go pick some Basil form you garden and layer the rinsed and bruised basil leaves and fresh mozzarella between the slices.  Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Serve over field or other spicy greens.

Garden Basil plant

pinch

Basil in between. I did this first b/c I was waiting on the mozz to get home.

Final Product

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Corn on the cob and Garlic Naan:We also had corn to use up and Garlic Naan in the freezer.  Corn I just husked and trimmed and boiled for about ten minutes. Naan went onto the cookie sheet after the beans came off to get some of the left behind garlic and shallots. Then onto the grill at the end.

Garlic Naan

Naan on cookie sheet

The grill all stacked up

Corn in the pot

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The Final Result:  Grilled chicken, beets, beans and garlic naan. With  Caprese salad, corn on the cob.  Oh and  Friday’s Blackberry cobbler (also made by me) for dessert:

Beans and Beets

Chicken, beans and beets

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Dinner

Blackberry Cobbler

 

Cut and Come Again Zinnias- The free flower garden you have to pick!

Posted: 2011/07/29 | Author: | Filed under: Gardening | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cut and Come Again Zinnias

It’s been too long since I did  proper gardening post.   I have  been keeping an eye on my garden and taking pics as it progresses, there just hasn’t been anything of note to write about.  That changed last night.

I LOVE to grow flowers.  There are two basic kinds of flowers you can grow.  Ones that if you cut them they are done, no more flowers are coming. Think most spring and fall bulbs, things like tulips, and hyacinth and allium,  etc..  Or  ones that if you cut or deadhead, more flowers will come.   Things like mums, and roses and one of my favorites.

Zinnias

They come in all different varieties, I have at least 3 kinds in my yard right now.  The background image of this blog is a Zinnia I  grew in a past year.   These are called Cut and Come again Zinnias’ They are perfect for an all summer long flower arrangement in your house.  You plant the seeds, wait for them to grow and then as soon as they get pretty you cut them off and enjoy them inside, or give them to friends.

I have ordered and planted this kind of Zinnia for a few years.  Every year I’d imagine  a vase filled with pretty flowers in my entry way or kitchen or office.  I’d imagine myself out puttering in the yard cutting my garden and making the arrangements. It was all very Martha Stewart meets Chelsea Handler in my head.   Last year they didn’t get into the ground and in years past I’d get them in later than I’d like and then basically neglect to cut them.   Or get one or two cuts of the season. In short , this little cutting garden fantasy of mine has never quite come to full fruition.   Still every year I keep trying.  It didn’t matter how badly I’d done with them the year prior, every spring I’d order more Zinnia seeds.   Every spring I try to get them in before it gets too late in the season and every summer as they start to grow in I VOW to myself that I will cut these zinnias.   I always want more flowers in my yard, I have plan for at least 3 new beds to be constructed this fall.   I like the idea of having more types like this that I should and can cut and i like the idea of paying attention this year to see how many harvests I can get out of these flowers.  I need to leave the last harvest on the stalks, so the flowers will make seeds out of them, and then I can get free more zinnias next year in the same garden spot.   This is part of my how to get more  years than one out of supposedly annual flowers.

So THIS YEAR I swore I was going to be a better flower cutter.  You have to cut them to get them to come again so when the bed looked ready for a first cut. I  made one and arranged my harvest in a small vase.  I was quite proud and took these pics.

Cut and Come Again Bed Round 1

Ready and waiting

Vase from First Cut

Then this week I noticed the bed was ready again. But I kept forgetting to go out there and cut the darn things. Last night I finally set  what I thought would be just a few minutes aside to go out and cut the 2nd harvest.  I knew I would have more flowers this time because we got rain in between cuts and more of the bed was maturing for it’s first cut.  What I didn’t expect was to have 3+ handfuls of flowers to arrange.    Cutting flowers is kind of a zen like business for me, but by the end I was like man how many more of these  must I cut?    But then I saw how BIG my pile of flowers was. I got all excited because I had enough to get out one of my favorite Fenton Milk Glass vases.   Here are the pictures from the 2nd harvest.  I can’t wait for harvest 3.

Cut and Come Again bed before 2nd cut

Ready for their vase

Second cut yield

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