Mandajuice

Poor Renny Renerstein

Did I ever tell the story of the time we took Harry (our dog) to the gun range to see if he would work out as a hunting dog for Dave?  We had just adopted him from the SPCA and he had already shown great prowess as a rodent hunter, so we thought we'd give it a shot.  He was so utterly petrified by the sound of the gun that we actually thought we'd lost him!

It turned out he was just hiding.  Dave would turn around to look for the dog and poor little Harenzo was so terrified that he huddled so closely behind Dave's feet that no matter which direction Dave turned, he couldn't see the dog.  Needless to say, we discovered that Harry is no fan of firearms.  It probably had something to do with the tiny shotgun pellet we had removed from his chin when we first got him, but he even cowers in the corner if Dave so much as CLEANS a gun.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying that we're two nights into the legal 9AM-11PM fireworks and the dog is not a happy camper.  The moment the blasts start going off in the neighborhood, his ears go up and he lunges toward the nearest adult for shelter.  I keep reassuring him that everything is okay, but he's a dog!  He has no idea what I'm saying.

Tonight was really bad.  The next door neighbors were shooting off something loud in their backyard and Harry jumped onto my lap. 

Where he promptly began the BARF MANEUVER. 

Fortunately I was able to get him out the back door before he set off his own fireworks, but man.  The poor dog got so upset that he threw up his entire dinner!  I feel terrible for him.   It's like he's being forced to relive his abusive puppyhood.

We had actually been planning to buy some fireworks to set off on the fourth, but I hadn't considered what we'd do with Harry.  What's the doggy dose for Xanax?

My dogs are barkin'...

Saturday morning was Alex's first T-ball practice.  It turned out to be more of a meeting just to see which team he's on and when games and practices will be held, which was good because even though the meeting was at 10:00, it was already a million degrees.  (It got to 101 degrees that afternoon.)  While the coach was suggesting practice times and passing around the equipment for the kids to see, Alex raised his hand and said,

"That bat doesn't have any dents on it.  I hit the ball SO HARD.  When I hit the ball, I'm going to dent that bat."

Everyone laughed.  I thought it was a great example of Alex's blinding four-and-a-half-year-old personality.  He's like the perfect mix of adorable over-confidence and social plight.  At least we don't have to worry about his self esteem.

After the meeting, we went to Portland to the mall with the "buffalo".  I don't know where he got that word from, but he meant ZAMBONI.  ZAMBONI may actually be one of my most favorite words, right after underpants.  Anyway Dave got some new shirts and then we headed for Annagrace's baby shower, where Alex had even more fun running around in the heat with the big boys.  They played a game called CREATURES out in the backyard while Genoa managed to play with her friend Penelope for almost an hour without anyone screaming.  At nap time no less!  I consider that a huge success!  And the shower was lovely all around.  Annagrace has fabulous friends.

I spent Sunday helping Carol unpack her guest room and getting her house generally ready for all the company we're having for the 4th of July.  Dave's brother John, his wife Lynne, her two teenagers and their grandparents are coming next week.  WE ARE SO STOKED.  The fourth here is incomprehensibly cool what with all the highly LEGAL fireworks and I'm glad they'll all be here to share it with us.

It does mean that I need to clean my entire house, top to bottom, and then figure out what to cook for all eleven of us for two days.  Not that I mind!  It's going to be like a big long house party for me and you know how much I HATE parties.

Goodbye 20th Century

I just finished reading Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty, a book which surprised me first when I pulled it off the library shelf and again when I realized how much I LOVED it.  I've never read a Western before.  I picked it for its size more than anything else.  It isn't my genre, but this book is now probably in my top five.  It's that good.  I loved every character and I was sad to find I'd read the last sentence:

"The woman.  They say he missed that whore."

It was at the bottom of the page and I was disappointed when I turned to the next page and it was blank.  Even at 857 pages, the book was too short!  Reading it made me mourn, yet again, the loss of Deadwood.  I am definitely looking forward to reading the Prequel and Sequel.  Who knew I'd love reading westerns so much?!

In other news, I'm still loving my new hair.  Thank you SO MUCH for all the sweet comments about it.  You all are making me feel a lot better about the fact that Dave hates it.  HATES.  IT.  I knew he would, so it was no surprise, but still.  Men are weird about long hair.  His first comment to me was that I officially looked like a housewife now.  So far I haven't let it hurt my feelings - I kept my hair long mainly for him for the past decade.  It's my turn.  And I love it more every day.  It's so EASY!!  I slept on it wet and it still looked fine the next day:

If I did that when my hair was long, I woke up looking like Medusa and had to rewash it before facing the world.  It was evil.

Also!  Our new TV rocks the Casbah.  Between ditching my glamrock hairdo and getting a flat screen TV, it's like this was the week we were finally destined to become part of the 21st century!

Recipe for Simple Pizza Crust

I love pizza!
 
Next to cheeseburgers, pizza is probably one of my most favorite foods.  I could eat it almost every day.  Sadly, Dave and I have yet to find a pizza place here in Vancouver that we like.  It's been a year and we're beginning to lose hope.  We've honestly experienced some of the nastiest pizza ever conceived - pizza so horrifically bad that we're scarred for life and a little afraid to try any new restaurants.

But our bad news is your good news because not getting pizza delivered means I've been honing my own DIY pizza recipe.  I LOVE this crust recipe.  It's fairly simple and results in a chewy, firm crust that holds the pizza toppings well and is never soggy.  It even gets a little crispy on the bottom and sides, which is exactly how I like it.

The ingredients couldn't be more simple.

3 Cups of flour
1 cup hot water
1 package of active yeast
2 Tablespoons of olive oil
1/2 teaspoon of salt

Choose your own toppings. 

To get started, fill a cup with hot tap water.   I would tell you the temperature, but I honestly have no idea what it is.  Hot!  Not scalding.
Dump a package of highly active yeast into it.
And let it sit for about ten minutes.  In the meantime, measure out 3 cups of flour. 

And dump it into a large bowl.   

I like to use this big shallow metal bowl because I can also knead the dough without having to get anything else dirty. 

Wait.  I lied!  Only dump about 2.5 cups of the flour into the bowl.  You want to save some to add later.

After a few minutes, the yeast should be looking slightly frothy.  If it hasn't begun to get fuzzy on the edges at all, it's probably either bad or your water was too hot or too cold.  If so, just start the recipe over (yeast is cheap!).

Now measure out two tablespoons of olive oil.

And dump them into the yeast/water mixture.

One of the things I've done (sadly more than twice) is to add the olive oil directly to the flour.  It clumps and unless you feel like kneading dough until your arms fall off, it will pretty much ruin your crust.  So now that all your wet ingredients are combined, throw them into the flour.

Add about a half teaspoon of salt (and here's the good time to add any embellishments you might like - garlic powder, herbs, etc) and begin mixing the the dough with a spatula.
 
Once the ingredients form a loose ball, you can ditch the spatula and finish mixing it with your hands.  You'll want to knead for about five minutes until the dough is smooth.  Add the remaining flour a little at a time if the dough gets sticky.

After you knead it, throw it into an oiled glass bowl.

Cover it with a dish towel and leave it alone for an hour.

If you're rushed for time (like I usually am), turn your oven on and then sit the bowl right on top, so the heat from the oven helps the yeast rise.

Out of curiosity, I decided to make a second batch using bread flour.  It didn't really make any noticeable difference to me, so I guess you can use whatever flour you have on hand.  I've also used wheat flour to great success, so you can also go that route with this recipe as well.

While the dough is rising, I always grate a virtual MOUNTAIN of cheese.  I always use the same mix: 50% whole milk mozzarella and 50% Monterey jack.  I always grate my cheese in the Cuisinart.

And here's the reason:

The jack and mozzarella somehow form this delicious creamy substance on the underside of the top of the bowl.

It's like cream cheese to the power of ten and the kids and I fight over it every time. 

Depending on how long your oven takes to heat up, now is probably a good time to preheat your oven to 500 degrees.  You want to give it LOTS of time to heat up because it will help maintain the high temperature as you take the pizzas in and out of the oven.
Once the dough has about doubled in size, turn it out onto a floured surface.

Pull in half and form two balls.
Technically, you're supposed to let it sit for 15-20 more minutes at this point, but I rarely ever wait that long.

Next, grease a pizza pan (I use a single-layer baking sheet lined with tin foil).

And flatten the dough with your fingers.

I never use my rolling pins since they don't work well inside a baking sheet.  Fingers work fine.  Even if my pizza isn't perfectly pretty, it still tastes good, so who cares!

Put it in the oven for six minutes.  SET A TIMER.  I can't tell you how many times I've gotten this far and then ended up with a piece of toast instead of a crust.  When you pull it out, it should be just beginning to get a tiny bit brown on the top.  When you take one half-baked crust OUT of the oven, be sure to put in your next raw crust, so you can use that six minutes to get the toppings on the first one. 

Next poke some holes in any bubbles and be careful not to burn yourself on the steam.

And go ahead and top your pizza.
I tend to use jarred pasta sauce (Prego with fresh mushrooms is my favorite), but I always perk it up with... ketchup.  I know it sounds ghetto but ketchup makes it SO MUCH better.  I mean NOTICEABLY better.  It's my killer secret ingredient.  When your timer goes off again, switch the pizzas, putting your topped pizza in for 6-8 more minutes while you work on the toppings for the next one.

As you can see, I like my pizza a little well done.  Crispy.  I love to pick the melted cheese off the sides of the pan.

You're also supposed to wait a few minutes before slicing a pizza, but again, I rarely ever do.

My kids are too hungry!

For some reason they both eat their pizza upside down, which is both amusing and frustrating.  I guess it makes sense though since the cheese is the bestest part.

ENJOY!  And let me know how it goes when you try it!

Manda's Simple Pizza Crust (Makes two 10-12-inch crusts)

3 Cups of flour
1 cup hot water
1 package of active yeast
2 Tablespoons of olive oil
1/2 teaspoon of salt
Choose your own toppings.

Fill a cup with hot water and add one package of active yeast. 

Let sit for ten minutes, then add 2 tablespoons of olive oil. 

In a large bowl, combine 2.5 cups of flour with 1/2 teaspoon of salt. 

Add the yeast/oil mixture and combine with a spatula until the mixture forms a loose ball. 

Knead by hand for five minutes.

Form the dough into a ball and set aside in an oiled bowl.  Cover with a dishtowel and allow it to rise until doubled in size, one hour.

PREHEAT YOUR OVEN to 500 DEGREES FOR AT LEAST 30 MINUTES.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and separate into two balls.  Let them sit for 15-20 minutes (or not).

Throw the dough onto a greased pizza pan and form into a circle (or a square if you're using a baking sheet like I do). I use my fingers, but you can be more civilized and use a rolling pin if you so desire.

Bake at 500 degrees for 6 minutes.

Remove from the oven, poke holes in the bubbles and add your toppings.

Return to oven and bake another 6-8 minutes.

Voila!  Easy pizza!

Hair today, gone tomorrow...

OMG!

So.

I went from a very nervous this:

To a pretty giddy this (still wet):

I'm still not sure if the cut is EXACTLY what I wanted yet, but we'll see.  It was my first attempt ever at short hair, so I'm sure I'll learn from it and be able to better describe what I want to my stylist next time. 

Once it was dry, I started noticing that I wish the front was a little less layered because it is already starting to poof a bit and you can't really see the A-line as much as I had hoped.

I shouldn't be, but I'm also surprised by how DARK it is.  I cut off all those sun-washed blond streaks!

Honestly, I'm already a bit melancholy to see the photos of my long mermaid hair.  It was really great!  But then all I have to do is remind myself that THIS is what I looked like 98% of the time:

That's a look I won't soon miss.  Remember when my friend Tonya told me she saw me for the first time WITHOUT A PONYTAIL and it was something like six months after we met and I'd seen her literally twice a day EVERY DAY that entire time.  As much as I'm sure I'll miss my pretty long hair, I really almost never HAD pretty long hair.  It was too much of a pain in the butt.

And here's the best part!

Tomorrow I'll be mailing my long hair to Locks of Love and some sweet little girl will finally have the princess hair she always dreamed of.

Recipe for Parmesan Crusted Pork Tenderloin Chops

Recipe time!  Pork tenderloin edition!

I recently decided that pork, not beef, is my absolute favorite type of meat.  As much as I adore a good filet mignon, the pork version of the same cut of meat is even more tender and delectable.  And unlike chicken, the other white meat is almost impossible to ruin.  I mean, you're SUPPOSED to overcook it and at less than half the cost of a similar cut of red meat, pork is the way to go.  I stock up at Coscto for around $4 a pound.

I have two favorite reliable ways to not ruin pork tenderloin.  My usual method is a mustard-stuffed roast that I would LOVE to share with you, but until I grow a third arm or find an assistant, there's just no way to photograph myself rolling and tying the meat.  I've tried!  You'll have to settle for my other favorite way to cook it, this recipe I adapted from a Giada DeLaurentis cookbook.

Unless you have a double oven (which I COVET) (badly), it's nice to have a stove top method for preparing meat for when your oven is busy roasting tasty side dishes.  Last Wednesday, I made PW's Crash Hot Potatoes and my own roasted cauliflower (which is even better when you roast it with the potatoes at 450 degrees!).  All together it made for a pants-splittingly delicious meal.

So let's get started.  First, make sure your helper washes his hands!

Then get out the following ingredients:

2 pork tenderloins (they usually come two to a package)
2 large eggs
5 ounces parmesan cheese
1/2 cup flour
Salt
Pepper
Garlic powder
Olive oil

Go ahead and let your helper grate that cheese.  If yours is like mine, he's had plenty of practice in his Montessori classroom.

Meanwhile, measure out a half cup of all-purpose flour.

And dump it into a shallow dish.  Considering I bake about two pies a year, this is how my pyrex glass pie plates earn their keep.

Next get out your pepper.

And add some to the flour.  At this stage of the game, it's almost impossible to over-pepper the recipe, but about 1/2 a teaspoon is a decent amount.

Next add about a teaspoon of course salt.

And a couple teaspoons (or more if you love garlic like I do!) of garlic powder.

Whisk all that stuff together until it's well combined.

Then dump in all that cheese your slave labor has been dutifully grating.

And let him whisk it (all over the counter!).

Next get out another shallow dish or pie pan and round up your two large eggs.

 

And let your helper hone those whisking skills.

 

Next take out your pork, a cutting board and a very sharp knife.

And slice the tenderloin into one-and-a-half inch pieces.

Then trim the fat and tendon off the pieces.  You could technically do this BEFORE the slicing, but I find it to be easier to cut the tendon off smaller pieces.

Next you'll need to pound these babies a little flatter!  This is my favorite part.  I use (and ADORE) IKEA's super cheap plastic cutting boards.  They wash easily, bend just right and are perfect for flattening meat.

I group the tenderloin pieces in a smallish group, place a SECOND IKEA cutting board over the meat and then pound the heck out of it, basically sandwiching the meat between two cutting boards.

It works like a charm every time!  I don't have to worry about getting holes in ziplock bags or getting my meat tenderizer dirty.
Now get out a couple of NON-STICK skillets.  I've tried this recipe on a plain-old aluminum pan and NO.  DO. NOT. GO. THERE.  The cheese will melt and stick to the pan and you'll be left with a huge mess to clean up and coating-free meat.

I don't have a big enough skillet to cook two tenderloins at the same time, so I just use two.  You'll want to generously coat your NONSTICK skillet with olive oil and heat it up to medium-high heat.

Next get your ducks in a row.  The way to make the smallest mess possible is to go meat, then egg, then cheese/flour then skillet, so arrange your lineup in that order if you have the counter space.

Grab a hunk a meat and get started.

First coat the meat with the egg mixture.

Be sure to coat it well on both sides.

Then plop it into the cheese/flour mixture and get it good and covered on all sides.

Then place it gently into your hot oil.

And then keep going until you're skillets are full.

Keep the heat medium-high, adjusting as necessary, for about five to seven minutes per side.  You'll know the meat needs to be flipped when it looks crispy and golden brown.

Yumm.  After all that hard work, it's a good time for an adult beverage. 

Keep an eye on your skillet, but honestly?  It's really almost impossible to screw these up.  I overcooked them when I was taking these pictures and even though the meat was well-done, it was still delicious.

This is what it will (hopefully!) look like when you're done.  It doesn't look pretty (all white, no colors!), but this tasted great with the roasted cauliflower and crash hot potatoes.
People have been curious how much I'm able to eat since my gastric bypass surgery, so here goes.  This is what I put on my plate:

And this is what was left when I was done.

I've said it before, but I basically eat like a normal person.  Not a 300 pound person, but a normal person.  After that meal, I was comfortably full and could not have eaten another bite if I wanted to.

Between the kids, Dave, Carol and me, we almost finished off the entire two-tenderloin plate.  I know I bitch about my food budget, but we love to eat and we eat a lot, particularly when it's something as tasty as this.

Enjoy!

Vixen hair

Last night Dave and I went to Best Buy and dropped a wad on a giant TV.  It's been a long time coming for us and something I should probably feel bad about, but don't.  We don't have expensive taste in most things: no German cars or Apple computers or iPhones for us.  Someone asked us recently what we like to do for fun and the only real thing Dave and I enjoy (besides food and sex) is watching movies together after the kids go to bed.  So spending a one-time chunk of money on the main thing we enjoy doing together as a couple seems like money well spent. 

Geek Squad will be here on Friday to install it.  I'm all atwitter!

The strangest thing will be having two televisions.  We've never ever had more than one TV.  I'm hoping that moving our old box upstairs will encourage me to fold more laundry.  We'll see.

We're super busy this week with play dates and camp, but I'll try to poke in tomorrow night with photos of the CHOPPAGE.  My hair cut is (finally) tomorrow at 3:00.  I still don't have a good idea of the exact cut I'm looking for, but I have an excellent idea of what I DON'T want.  I'm thinking of going REALLY short, like chin-length.  I figure if I'm going to rip off this band-aid, I might as well rip it off hard and fast, you know? 

Also, this is probably going to make me sound like a terrible person, but I'm SO SO SO sick of the kids always grabbing my hair.  Genoa has a first class mama hair fetish going on and can't bring herself to nurse unless she's twisting my hair in her grubby little fists.  Which HURTS.  She also sleeps ALL NIGHT LONG with either her hands or her feet wrapped up in my fro, which is about as much fun for me as it sounds.  I think her reaction to my hair cut is going to be negative and it's going to be loud, but maybe it's the first step in what I'm expecting to be an extremely long and painful weaning process, so whatever.  At some point Alex learned to comfort himself with his OWN hair (which he still does!) and maybe this will help Genoa get to that place a little faster.  And in the meantime, mama won't look quite so much like she belongs in a hair band video.

Gray hairs, laundry, garden

Look what Dave found while we were sitting on the patio the other night?

My first two gray hairs!  How special.

The funny thing is that I've been DREADING the day I would find my first gray hair and yet, it didn't really bother me as much as I thought it would.  You wanna know what bothered me?

Having to buy this:

Because I love spending our hard-earned money on LAUNDRY!  I tried REALLY HARD to salvage our old washer.  It was a good machine!  And the repair guy was going to fix it!  But then he tried to take the basin off and discovered it was rusted to the motor, which meant that another part had to replaced too.  The total cost to salvage it would've been over $400.  I wanted to be all green and RE-USE! REPAIR!  (read: spend as little money as possible), but I couldn't justify spending that much to fix a machine that was already 11 years old.  So I bought a new one. 

No, I didn't get a front-loader.  I spent FAR, FAR less on this machine and it will suit my purposes just fine.  (I actually used my mom's front loader while we were visiting her and it took TWICE as long per load as my top-loader.  It looks a lot prettier, but I couldn't justify spending twice as much to do half the laundry in the same amount of time). 

I also FINALLY got around to working on some other household projects yesterday.  Like this one:

The fireplace grates aren't BRASS anymore!  It only took me ten months to finally finish ridding our house of the brass hardware.  (I replaced the drawer/cabinet pulls, the door knobs and the door hinges before we moved in).  This project took me all of five minutes, too.  The only casualty was a cut to my right ring finger, the first of THREE I got yesterday.

While we waited for the washing machine to get delivered, I also did some work in the garden!  It's coming right along:

Yesterday I added the netting for the beans to climb, a couple of tomato cages and some copper tape to (hopefully!) keep out the slugs/snails:

This is where cuts two and three came into play.  Apparently, copper tape has sharp edges.

Also, lettuce!

I see some killer salads in our future.

Dave came home a little early and was EVER SO disappointed that his chicken wasn't in the oven.  For the first time ever, he had checked my sidebar to see what was for dinner and his mouth was all watered for Quick Chicken and rice, but I totally had forgotten to defrost any chicken, so I made Angel hair carbonara instead.  (Nobody liked it, not even me!)

After dinner, I summoned the energy to finish delivering the fliers for the 4th of July parade around the neighborhood.  My feet still haven't forgiven me.  I see us taking it easy this weekend (while I catch up on laundry!).  Maybe I'll even get around to filing our tax return!

In which I offer myself an attitude adjustment

Genoa is standing next to me while I sit on the couch typing this and every few minutes, I hand her a fresh strawberries with the stem removed.  She keeps sticking them onto her pointer finger and enthusiastically exclaiming, "LOOK MOMMY!" as if strawberry fingers are the funniest thing EVER, so yeah, my bad mood is pretty much gone.

Alex also managed to redeem himself today by not only participating fairly well in the last day "program" of poetry and songs at the community preschool he's been attending, but by being awarded an honorary preschool badge declaring him the DYNAMIC LEADER of the class.  Each kid was given a specific title ranging from "The good friend" to the "Good listener" to the "Most enthusiastic".  After the little ceremony was over, I joked with the teacher that I recognize a lot of myself in Alex and that his badge might just as well have said "Most Bossy."  His teacher is sweet, but she told me that he's really not all that bossy.  That even when he's not telling the other kids what to do, they want to follow him anyway.  That made me feel a lot better about how I've been seeing him lately.

Afterwards, we headed to Wal-Mart for a Big Fat Shopping Trip and both kids were relatively well behaved for a change in spite of the fact that given the lack of decent naps and the fact that I went during the witching hour, it should've been a nightmare.  I made dinner when we got home and the kids got underfoot a lot much to my annoyance, but I think I'm coming to the somewhat obvious, no-duh realization that instead of looking to them to explain their misbehavior, I need look no further than the mirror.  When I'm cranky, they are.  When I pay attention to them, they pay attention right back.  It's not rocket science.

An airing of the grievances

1.  I'm feeling mostly better today, but would really appreciate it if my colon would act accordingly. 

2.  I'm starting another round of mommy guilt in which I lament the fact that I haven't been paying enough attention to the kids.  Today in an effort to improve things, I took them to the park and Genoa was good, but Alex was an evil, horrible, no good, very bad boy.  After being punished TWICE for hitting other kids and/or being a pest, he threw a huge fit when it was time to go, complete with tears and everything.  I told him he had to tell his friend Liam goodbye or we wouldn't come back next week, so he mumbled, "Goodbye" and my friend Callie answered, "Bye Alex!"  To which Alex grunted out an evil, "I WASN'T TALKING TO YOU!  I WAS TALKING TO LIAM!" 

Don't you just LOVE IT when your kids are disrespectful to other adults!?  Good times!

I made him apologize and I gave him the evil-threat-of-doom lecture on the way to school, but MAN, am I embarrassed.

3.  No washing machine!  It's making a weird noise and emitting a noxious burnt-rubber smell.  Repair man comes tomorrow.  I haven't done laundry yet THIS WEEK!

4.  No food in the cupboards.  I was going to remedy this during Alex's last afternoon of school, but at the last minute the parents were encouraged to come early for a last-day celebration, so now I don't have time to shop until afterwards.

5.  My kitchen is a mess.  (See yesterday's post).

6.  I need to finish delivering fliers to our neighborhood about the 4th of July parade and I would happily do so this afternoon IF MY COLON WOULD JUST COOPERATE.

It's like HAPPY FESTIVUS DAY!  What's bugging you?