Its New Years Eve, Is It?

Hello hello. So its December 31st, 2008... 2008... 2008? seriously? Holy crap! Tomorrow it will be 2009, in two months I'll turn 29, and in two years we'll be commemorating the 10th anniversary of September 11th. Holy crap (again).

So I guess you could say I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by the new year this time. I'm not sure why, although this year I've definitely realized how it feels to be over-extended, to have too many hobbies, interests, commitments, and obligations. Not that its been a bad year; actually its been a really good year. And in the current age of layoffs, foreclosures, and gaps in health coverage, we certainly have a lot to be thankful for. But that was another holiday.

After ruminating on it for a few days over the countless open bar / food / music / $40 a head (and those are the cheap ones) packages offered around town, Nick and I finally decided that we'd spend our new years eve at home having chocolate and cheese fondue, which is what we did last year. Usually I get a bit twitchy about staying in on new years eve. I think its because I spent what seemed like an eternity during my teens and perhaps even early 20's sitting at home on new years wishing I lived in a cool enough place / had friends close enough to hang out with / was old enough to get into bars, all which I saw as pre-requirements for new years eve fun. I spent so much time envisioning flashy exciting new years eve party events that I think a part of me fears that staying home is a bit of a failure.

But you know what? I think perhaps I shall go ahead right here and right now and declare this fondue-at-home thing a new years tradition. There, that takes some of the lameness out, right? Fondue is fun because its something we don't do very often... as a matter of fact I don't think we've had fondue since LAST new years eve. Also, it gives us a chance to sit around and talk about our year and inevitably talk about our plans for next year and all those resolutions begging to be made.

Ok, there, I feel much better now. Tomorrow we'll of course be heading to one of our favorite restaurants in Chicago (Cafe Baba Reba) for Spanish style tapas. If you wear your pajamas then you get gift certificates equaling the amount you spent to use at some other point during the next year. Do I hear Valentine's Day anyone?

So that's it for now. Have a good new years everyone!

OMG, My Blog Hasn't Been Deleted....

I wonder how long a blog has to go untouched before it gets automatically deleted off blogger... Apparently my recent lapse of over a month was not long enough. Neither is the hiatus of nearly six months I've taken from my garden blog. Well, good. Its not like I've been trying to get my blog deleted... I've just been... busy, um yeah that's it. Well I have been busy yes, but lets face it, I'm just a slacker by nature so I guess this is what you get.

I did want to make an announcement that I plan to do a my-2008-garden-season retrospective using the millions of pictures of the garden I took throughout the year. Even though I wasn't garden blogging since July, I kept taking pictures, having it in mind that I'd post them some day. Yes, this sounds like a good idea.

Right now I'm at work trying to kill some time before I can go home. We've been hitting it pretty hard around here for the past few weeks so don't even ask me if I feel guilty about the fact that I came in an hour late, took an hour and a half lunch, and will leave "on time" today. The way I see it, I've earned it. I'll get back to being productive tomorrow, at least that's the plan. But it doesn't help that I have my x-mas gift and chore list floating around in my head 24/7. I took care of two gifts today, actually. That what made me late and made my lunch break so long. This always happens this time of year and it seems to be ok. I'll make it up sooner than later when we have a big dealine and I'm in the office until 10PM for a week.

So, that's about it. I just wanted to check in over here, make sure my blog was still here, and let you know that I'm still alive.

:)

Ready Set.................................................. Go!

Hey look, I'm blogging twice in the same week. Wow! Lets all try not to freak out. :) Anyway, I'm sitting here at work waiting for it to be hit the "minimally respectable going home time" notch on the clock, so I thought I'd take the time to blog and tell you some exciting news:

Remember the community garden I talked about like.. months ago? Well, it appears as though my attempts to kill the project via months of doing nothing and procrastination have failed... no wait... what I mean to say is that after months of playing bureaucratic phone tag, it looks like the various local and state agencies who had the say so have finally said.... YES! That's right, the community garden, in our first choice location, has been approved! So, now I've got to get off my butt and get to work making this thing happen. The most immediate concern (even before fundriasing the $15,000+ we'll need to build the garden) is that we'd like to take advantage of the season (and the offer of a dump truck of free leaves) and get a leaf composting operation started. The leaves are falling as I speak so our time frame on this is extremely short. We need to build some sort of composting structure to hold the leaves, so they don't all blow around or look messy. So, we've got a lot to do to make this happen. I'm still not even sure if we have the clear go ahead to start building things--like compost bins--on the site, so this may not work out at all... but we're gonna try. Here we go!

If you'd like to follow the progress of the community garden, you can check out our blog (and website) here.

Regrets

In case there's someone who hasn't asked me already, I'll go ahead and say it again. Um, No, I wasn't in Grant Park last night. Why? Because I am apparently an idiot and chose to avoid a large (and potentially dangerous) crowd and instead stay at home. I think I said something like "I don't have tickets for the rally area so all I'd be able to do would be watch his speech on a jumbo-tron in the middle of the park. I can watch him on TV from the comfort of my own living room." How could I have anticipated how magical the scene at Grant Park was going to be. How could I have imagined that everyone I freaking know would call / e-mail / twitter me and beg me to tell them that I was in Grant Park. How could I have known that they would call the election in Obama's favor before 10:00 therby aliviating any fears of riots.

So yeah, I suck and missed out on being able to experience history... blah blah blah. I guess its lucky for me then that today was so unbelievable and euphoric that I barely had time to dwell on what I missed last night. I think I'll semi-quote Michelle Obama and say that I don't think I've ever been as proud of my country as I am today. I can't believe we actually did it. I can't believe that Indiana went blue (barely, but that's good enough for me). I can't believe that these past two years of pre-election craziness are finally over. wooo-freakin'-hooo!!!

However, I must say that my enthusiasm and patriotism today was tanted by some otherelection outcomes that I can't believe. At least three states, including California, passed amendments to their state laws that would make it illegal for same sex couples to get married. WTF California et. al.??!!??!! In the same election where we come as close as we've ever come to achieving equal rights for one group of people in this country, we simultaneously take rights away from another? Ugh... I could rant about this for a long time, but I wont, at least not now. This is my first blog in like... three months so I'll try not to totally take you guys off the deep end.

I think I'll leave it at that for today folks But, there's been a lot going on with me lately so I hope to start blogging on a more regular basis so that I can share it all with you.

Thanks for reading!

Hello From Suburbia

Partally because of the intensity of what I'm feeling right now (and ok, fine, also because I need to do something productive on the internet in order to justify the fact that i just spent $10 bucks on an hours worth of internet access) I wanted to do a quick post just to say that

I. LOVE. PUBLIC . TRANSIT.

I'm at a conference today (its a one day session covering the new features of the latest version of a mapping software I use for work) that's taking place in Lisle, Illinois. Now, before I offend any people from Lisle, I should admit that today is my first experinece here, so I'm probably not getting to see the full Lisle Illinois experience. But, I can also tell you that this will--hopefully--be my last experience here. Why? Because this place--this hotel in which I sit that's surrounded by expressways) pretty much epidomizes everything I hate... well not EVERYTHING... but a lot of stuff. Like: no pedestiran access to anything along this main road and no bus to catch either. There's a commuter rail station about a mile away, but I'll have to rely on the hotel shuttle--or, if that doesn't work, a cab, to get me to the station. Once I get to the station there's a traina bout every hour that can pick me up here and drop me off close(r) to my house. After I get off the train I'll have to catch a bus, then I'll finally be home. Perhaps I'm spoiled now, after having living in the City for a few years now where there's pretty much always a bus or a train within walking distance--and sidewalks to allow you to get to them--that can get you anywhere in the city. Yes, they're often late, crowded, stinky, and in other ways unpleasent. But OMG, not having them at all is just, terrible.

I could go on about this for a while, so I'll go ahead and stop myself. I've got to finish my gourmet lunch of wheat thins and cheese I brought from home--since I don't have access to a car which is required to get to any of the restaurants around here. I'll enjoy the remainder of my $10 internet and count down the hours before I get to theve this sidewalk-hating, box-store loving, transit-free wasteland I guess they call suburbia.

Thanks for reading, and I promise to be less pissy next time. :)

Update: Grumpiness has diminished due to arrival of COOKIES to the conference room as well as confirming that the hotel can indeed give me a ride to the train.

Veggie Loaf

Its not even 10 AM yet and I'm already looking forward to my lunch which is left over vegetarian meatloaf which I made for Nick's meatloaf contest at work. Since this loaf would be competing against actual meat meatloaves, I wanted to make something similar to traditional meatloaf rather than some of the really tasty yet not very much like actual meatloaf veggie loaves. I looked on the web and in my veggie cookbooks, but I had difficulty finding something that I thought would really fit the bill. So, the following recipe is what I finally went with. Its a modification of a recipe found in PETA's The Compassionate Cook cookbook. I sort of made it up as I went along so many of the measurements are approximate and open to your own likes and dislikes. Here it goes...

Makes 2 loaves

1 mild onion, finely chopped
1 red bell pepper, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 package Morningstar Farms Griller Crumbles
1 package Morningstar Farms Sausage Crumbles
1/2 cup Italian breadcrumbs
1/4 cup almonds, chopped
1/4 cup pecans, chopped
1/4 cup cashews, chopped
3 Eggs
1/3 cup ketchup
1/4 cup Woostershire sauce
1/4 cup Olive oil
1 tbs dried thyme
1/2 tbs dried oregano
other savory spices and salt and pepper to taste
a bit extra ketchup to top the loaf once its in the pan

Directions: Saute the onions, garlic, and bell pepper in olive oil until soft. In a bowl, mix the Morningstar Farms crumbles (fully thaw them out in the microwave first), bread crumbs, and nuts. Then add the onion mixture. Then add the spices, ketchup, Woostershire sauce, and Olive oil. Beat the two eggs and add them to the mixture. Mix well. Fill up your loaf pans (I only have one loaf pan, so I do them in shifts). I recommend coating the pans with a nonstick spray or Olive oil. You can really pack the mixture into the loaf pan--really squish it in there--to create a dense loaf. Fill the pan to about half an inch to the top. Then coat the top of the loaf with a generous layer of ketchup. Bake at 3:75 for about 40 minutes. When its done cooking, it should be slightly crusty and firm to the touch. After removing it from the oven, let it rest for about ten minutes before cutting it. You can remove it from the loaf pan or you can serve it in the pan.


Variations that I have not tried but would probably work well:
-add some A1 steak sauce to the mixture
-add celery to the onion mixture
-use oatmeal instead of bread crumbs; this is the way my mom makes meatloaf
-use Quorn brand crumbles instead of Morningstar brand
-use TVP instead of crumbles
-add anything else (except the meat of course) that your mom used to make meatloaf when you were a kid. Meatloaf is a comfort food, so the more it resembles your mom's cooking the more you'll probably like it.

Enjoy!

Things I Learned This Weekend

1. Apparently I am much better at Nintendo Wii bowling than I am at actual bowling. My Wii bowling score (185) was about 6 times higher than my real life bowling score ever is.
2. Barbecue "Chik'N" sandwiches made from Morningstar Farms Chicken Strips drenched in BBQ sauce are a surprisingly successful party tray item, even with the meat eaters.
3. It is entirely possible to give ones self a muscle strain from playing Wii Tennis.
4. Tomato season is now here. I picked literally a dozen huge tomatoes from the garden this morning and am now resorting to giving them away to coworkers.
5. While I spent all spring and early summer waiting on tomatoes and making plans for the dishes I'd make once they ripened, now I can't seem to think of what to do with them all now that I have them coming out my ears.
6. The movie "The Namesake" is waaaay more sad than the preview would lead you to believe (but still good).
7. Following running on the treadmill for the first time in months with a meal of two huge tomatoes from the garden is a bad idea.
8. It is possible for a piece of birthday cake to be too big and rich for me to be able to finish it.
9. Cats love wine bottle corks... and sitting on the keyboard of the laptop...
10. Making a dinner of fresh baget, goat cheese, Spanish tortilla, and wine is still romantic.