25 August 2006

Another good way to use zucchini

My sister was in town for the last 6 days (hence the extended absence) and she enjoys vegetables as much as I do. One day for lunch she made us a treat. I sliced up some zukes about 1/4 inch thick (I think I had 4 small ones) and halved some cherry tomatoes (maybe like a cup?) She heated up some olive oil in a skillet, sauteed the zukes until they started to turn golden but weren't mushy, then added the tomatoes at the last minute and seasoned it. It was delicious!

16 August 2006

The Salad

I haven't come up with any clever name for this salad, so it will have to be something boring like Tomato-Zucchini Salad. It was inspired by Farmgirl's Colors of Summer Salad and it was really good. It's kind of a girly food, and while Frugaldad loves garden tomatoes as much as I do, he wasn't as impressed (because he is a man, and enjoys MEAT with his dinner, not just some sissy salad) I ate it with homemade pita chips, which were also fantastic, and the recipe for those can be found on the America's Test Kitchen website. If you have more zucchini than you know what to do with (even if you're like me and don't let them get past the "small" size) try this out! I used a Yellow Boy tomato and a Celebrity tomato, and they are awesome varieties. I imagine this would also be good with a little onion (but not too much) and with different beans, too.

Tomato-Zucchini Salad
2 medium tomatoes, seeded and diced
2 small zucchini, diced (unpeeled for color)
1 can black beans, rinsed
1 tbsp fresh basil, sliced in thin strips
1 clove garlic, minced fine or pressed through a garlic press
1 tbsp olive oil
juice of 1/2 lemon (about 1 tbsp)

Mix all ingredients together and let chill for several hours. Serve with pita chips. Makes about 4 cups.

Enjoy! I ate almost all of it myself!

Badd Spelers Anoy Me

Wouldn't you think that if a teacher wanted a parent volunteer to help kids with spelling, she would want the parent to actually be able to spell?

My daughter came home from first grade with a little slip of paper with the results of her first spelling test of the year. She got 100%! And the parent who gave her the spelling test wrote "Excellant!" Nice.

This might not bother me quite so much, except for the fact that it happened last year with Frugalboy. He had the same first grade teacher, but I guess she's not really to blame. He came home with the actual spelling test paper, which was marked 100%, but he had actually misspelled one of the words. I decided it wasn't worth a call to the teacher but I carried it in my bag for a couple weeks in case I had a chance to show it to her. I finally tossed it in the trash in an attempt to de-clutter the diaper bag. Now I wish I would have saved it, so I had some more evidence for my case.

Then a couple days ago I went to the local gym to take advantage of a free one-month membership offer. I had to fill out the paperwork and stuff like I was signing up for a paid membership, so the guy wrote on the contract, "Contract dosn't aply in fullness untill 9/15/06" Seriously, I am not making this stuff up.

If I should happen to make a spelling error, it's because I rush and don't proofread well, or I don't want to go back and edit after I've published.

I can't believe that people can actually function in society being such terrible spellers.

Anyway, that's the rant in my head today.

11 August 2006

Two weeks(!!???!!!)

So it's been two weeks since I started the whole sleep thing with Frugalbaby. I won't bore you with too many details, but tonight she cried for 2 hours and 15 minutes. She doesn't wake at midnight anymore. Usually it's around 1:30 now, and she's nursing every 4 hours instead of every 3. I'd say we're 20% better than before. We struggle with bedtime and the Frugalsisters. But I do believe that the earlier bedtime is better.

Sometime soon I will post pictures of the raccoon babies that eat the cat food, and a picture of the grilled zucchini I made for lunch one day. Plus the recipe for a great salad that I invented to use up garden produce and herbs.

07 August 2006

The Hollow Tree

Have you read Blueberries for Sal? It's about a little girl who goes with her mother to pick blueberries to can for winter. My mother-in-law gave it to Frugalgirl1 for her 2nd birthday. At the time she looked just like Little Sal, with wispy hair and a willingness to help her mom can. We had also been canning a lot of blueberries in the summer so my mother-in-law picked a great book.

I've added a new feature to the sidebar, so when I disappear for days at a time, you know that I have been busy filling my shelves and the spaces under our beds with yummy goodness for the winter.

03 August 2006

When two worlds collide

I had one of those weird experiences where two seemingly unrelated parts of life somehow merge. The last few weeks I have had my kids in swimming lessons. There is a woman whose parents are in our ward at church, and they have a pool, so for the last few summers she has come home and taught lessons. This is the first year that Frugalgirl2 has gotten to take lessons, and she was in the same class with three little boys. One of the moms of one of the boys was really nice and she had another younger boy, too. Last week we finally introduced ourselves to each other and her name sounded vaguely familiar but the way the world is today people have the same and similar names and I figured it was nothing.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I used to read this bulletin board for LDS women over at Babycenter. I met some of the women irl (that's In Real Life) at the park a few times and we had fun Girls' Nights Out and stuff. But then I was just feeling like I couldn't keep up with the message boards and honestly, I didn't really feel like I fit into the group. My values and ideals were just a little different and I didn't want to devote the time to keeping up with the messages so I quit going there, and consequently lost touch with most of them. Then I stumbled across their blogs one day when one of them commented over at Very Mom, (which, by the way, is the only blog I read for a couple years until I started blogging myself) A couple months ago I read this post over at The Constant Gardener, and this post over at Here Today...Probably Tomorrow Too. Then a little while later I read this one from the Constant Gardener again. And I clicked on this link.

Then yesterday, Friendly Mom from swimming lessons was wearing a T-shirt that said "Daring Young Mom." Well, I've been around enough to see links to Daring Young Mom and the wheels in my brain started turning faster that I can explain and you know how you can't really put into words how things come together? Friendly Mom from swimming lessons is Erin from Erin's Third Law and she is friends with Daring Young Mom and she knows all these other ladies too!

How strange is that how it all came together?

So after I put it all together in my head and found all those posts in the archives and stuff, to make sure I wouldn't make a fool of myself, and this morning I asked Erin if she had a blog and we had a nice chat!