Damn You Pinterest Halloween edition

Justin has now informed me that I've become "that mother that the other mothers hate." Oops. Anyway, here are the pins that I did for the kids's school treats:

The Pin: "Jell-O flavoured popcorn balls."

The Verdict: This totally worked! I however wrapped my popcorn balls around pretzels instead of tootsie rolls for the stems and decided to forego the leaf, something I regret because you can't really see the pretzel very well (should have used pretzel rods instead of sticks) and it makes it just that much more cute. But it tastes.....overworked. By the time the popcorn has cooled, it's nasty anyway, then you add a liquid and microwave it some more and form it into balls. When you're finished, the popcorn has been through the wringer and tastes exactly like Jell-O flavoured popcorn. But they're very cute.

The Pin: "Cute Idea- Always looking for party ideas that don't involve candy! Draw jack-o-lantern faces on mandarin oranges for a school party."

The Verdict: Okay, so there really wasn't anyway this one wasn't going to work out. It took me a xl QI episode (about 45 minutes) to do two Costco bags of oranges. The only problem that I had was that the oil from the peel kept making my pen not work until I cleaned it off onto paper, so I went through about 2 sharpies. But once they dried, there was no smearing. It did look like I was being stalked by a horde of oranges when I got done: 

The Pin: Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Pudding Cookie, a chocolate chip cookie flavoured with pumpkin spice pudding mix. Nicely soft and chewy.

The Verdict: The baking of this went okay. It was a remarkably forgiving cookie. I had to bake it for 12 minutes instead of 8 since I stuck my dough back into the fridge because it was too soft. Even with the extra baking time, they stayed soft and chewy. However, they aren't earth shattering taste wise. There's a little bit of a cinnamon taste but not much more. Maybe doubling the pudding amount? Still pretty good.

So this is what I ended up with:

The orange thing on the left is a juice box wrapped in a napkin. So it's a pumpkin full of pumpkin stuff. Aaaaaaand now you can hate me.

So Justin woke me up AGAIN when he went to bed. It was 2 am this time. Around four I gave up trying to go back to sleep and went into the kitchen to start cleaning. At 6 am, Justin found me on the stairs steam cleaning the carpet. I finally took a nap when Liam went off to school in the afternoon, but I woke up about 2 hours later. I'm running out of things to clean because of my nervous energy. Despite all this mania though, I still haven't folded the damn laundry.

Today:

Made popcorn balls and pumpkin pudding cookies

Drew faces on 20 juice boxes, 20 paper bags, and 12 lbs worth of oranges

Cleaned my kitchen (twice) and steamed the floor

Steam cleaned the carpet stairs

Vacuumed the upstairs

Repaired my purse. I love this bag. It's one of the last thing I bought in Singapore. I want to be buried with this bag.

Cleaned and organized Alana's room

Grocery store

Curry

Lorelai: "What about Paris? Does she ever sleep?"
Rory: "I think she periodically makes a whirring noise and then just shuts down." 

-Gilmore Girls, "The Bracebridge Dinner" 

I think that I'm about ready to make that whirring noise. Last night, Justin woke me up when he went to bed at 2:30 (!!!!) and I didn't go back to sleep until 6:30. But I woke up at the usual time feeling fine. Today I took the kids to Alana's speech therapy, then to the post office, and then got to Costco with the intent of picking up more pills and oranges. But when I got there, I figured I'd look at the phones since we needed to upgrade them. I noticed that they not only had the phones we wanted, but at a cheaper price, no activation fee and they gave you a free bundle of "stuff". As if I didn't love Costco enough before. I called Justin to get his butt over there as fast as possible, did the rest of our shopping, and then we bought some phones (seriously, easiest thing in the world). Then we fed the kids a costco deli lunch, and then Justin went home for a phone call and I took the kids back to the therapist for Liam's appointment. Then I went home and thought about raking leaves, ignored them, moved a shelf from my garage into the back shed, thought about moving stuff from the garage onto the new shelf, ignored it, ignore the boxes of clothes I keep meaning to repack into plastic containers and then went inside to make curry and rotis.

So my productive day ended up being not so productive and I didn't get to the gym or ballet class, which was really my goal today. Oh well. Anyway, here is my recipe for yellow chicken curry and roti (a fried Indian bread):

Taken with my new phone, but still doesn't change the fact I'm a crappy photographer.

Yellow Chicken Curry (adapted from this recipe), makes 6 servings

Ingredients

Yellow curry paste:

1 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp coriander seeds (crushed with a pestle)

2 tbsp hot madras curry powder (regular curry works too, but hot madras really adds to the flavour. If using regular curry powder, use 3 tbsp)

2 tsp crushed red pepper

2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1 small onion, peeled and quartered

4 large garlic cloves (or minced equivalent)

Put all  ingredients into a blender. Add 1-2 Tbsp of water to help the ingredients mix better. Process until smooth, scraping down the sides with a spatula as necessary. Set aside.

Curry:

2 Tbsp neutral vegetable oil

4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1" chunks

1 small onion, chopped

1 recipe yellow curry paste (see above)

1 can of coconut milk (14 oz / 400 mL)

6 golden potatoes (yes it really makes a difference to have yellow potatoes), cut into 1" chunks

2-4 carrots, cut on the 1/2" bias

1 red bell pepper (optional because I hate bell peppers), seeded and chopped into 1/2" chunks

1/2 tsp sugar

Instructions

In a large skillet, heat the oil over high heat until it shimmers. Add the chicken and chopped onion, sprinkle liberally with salt, and saute just until the point no pink remains. Transfer the chicken pieces into a bowl and set aside.

Reduce the heat to medium. Scrape in the curry sauce from the blender jar (be careful - it may splatter if the pan is too hot). Stirring constantly, cook until the liquid evaporates and only a fragrant, golden brown paste remains, 3-4 minutes.

Carefully pour in half a can of coconut milk and stir until the curry paste is dissolved.

Add the potatoes and carrots, the rest of the coconut milk, and the sugar. Heat until the coconut milk begins to bubble.

Reduce the heat to medium-low. Simmer until the potatoes and carrots are tender, 10-15 minutes.

Add the chicken, any accumulated juices in the bowl, and the red pepper. Stir to coat with curry sauce, and simmer 5 minutes, or until the chicken is just done.

Serve with jasmine or basmati rice.

Roti (from this recipe), makes 8-10 rotis


Ingredients

1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. Baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp melted butter
1/4-1/2 cup water
vegetable oil

Instructions
1. Mix wheat flour, all purpose flour, baking powder, and salt, and sieve them together.
2. Pour melted butter in the flour and add water bit by bit and make a smooth & elastic dough and set aside covered with moist muslin cloth for 1/2 an hour.
3. Cut off small balls of dough, slightly bigger than a golf ball, and roll out thinly into circles of about 10" diameter, dusting with AP flour.
4. Heat an oil in a frying pan or electric skillet until hot. Place the roti carefully over it and cook for about 1 minute. The bottom will puff out a little bit and the edges will start to bubble a little. Flip and cook about 1 minute on the other side. Removed from oil onto a plate.

A variation of this is to beat a couple of eggs with water and dip the rotis into the egg before frying. The egg cooks on the outside of the roti, giving it more flavour.

Mania and why I hate Halloween

So that past couple of days I've woken up (before my alarm went off) feeling like I could take on the world. Is this how normal people feel? For the past year, I've been dragging myself out of bed, obsessed when the next time I could take a nap was, and feeling like everything I did, I did moving through waist deep mud. I'm thinking that I AM going through a manic period that I occasionally get, but it's just a euphoric mania instead of a dysphoric one. Dysphoric mania usually ends up with me fighting with everyone and trying to rip up the furniture with the bread knife.

The rare times I get manias (maybe once a year) usually are marked by me spending a lot of money and starting a bunch of projects, convinced that I can do everything. Sometimes I sign up to be costume director of a play. Or a color guard instructor. Or painting half my kitchen and then forgetting about the rest of it for a year and a half. You know, the usual stuff. I also get really jittery, have a tendency to lose weight really easily because I forget to eat, and get really impatient people because they are too slow. Basically, I turn into Paris Gellar from Gilmore Girls.

I'm going to still list my accomplishments because this has become an interesting exercise in what I actually get done in my day, but you can expect my lists to get very sporratic and probably to stop making sense (why sure, I totally thought that the roof needed to be scrubbed down with a toothbrush).

I also hate Halloween. I think this holiday embodies everything that is wrong with our society. I hate the slutty costumes, the stupid scary movies, the idiot teenagers that show up on my doorstep at 10 at night with no costumes expecting candy. I told off a teenager at the trunk or treat tonight because he tried to get candy from my multiple times and he wasn't even wearing a costume. Seriously?

Yesterday I:

Scrubbed out my fridge
Sewed- 2 skirts, 1 dress, one bow for Minnie Mouse ears, one pillow cover, a tabard, and got halfway through a doublet.

Today:

Went to my ballet class
Finished the doublet
Took the kids to a trunk or treat

Antsy

I need to get back to the gym. I'm getting antsy and restless. I need motivation. I'm getting fat again, I guess that's my motivation. I'm tired.

Today I went on a field trip with Alana's class. The local grocery store re-branded themselves and they're doing tours for the local schools. It was actually really cute because the manager came out and gave us a tour around the different sections of the store where the kids received a small item like a cookie from the bakery or an apple from produce and then "paid" a dollar (the fee for the field trip) at the check out. It was very fun for 12 very small, confused, excitable 3-4 year olds. We walked back and forth from the school since it was only three blocks and I talked to Alana's teacher a little bit. She's amazing. She has a 3 and 5 year at home as well, watches her nephew AND teaches pre-school part time. I get exhausted doing laundry. I need to start doing more.

Today I:

Went on Alana's school trip
Rented a hand snake and unplugged my shower drain that had stopped draining.
Scrubbed the pot that I'd burned rice in two days ago for over and hour and FINALLY got all the burned rice off and saved the pot. Yay for barkeeper's friend.
Couple loads of laundry
Cleaned my kitchen from top to bottom. Expect to last this about 30 seconds.

10/24

Today I:

Washed all the laundry in the house in between watching episodes of Suburgatory and Nevermind the Buzzcocks.

Casualties

So today, I burned the rice. Add this to the pot I burned last week and the one before that, and it's starting to look like I have about a 50% average. So why not buy a rice cooker you ask? HA. Well, one is that those puny rice cookers that you can buy in American stores don't make enough. And I've already killed three of them over the course of our marriage.

I started to think about the appliances I've killed over the past 8 1/2 years. So far it's been:

1 clothing iron
2 crock pots (one melted and the other started on fire. No, seriously.)
4 hand mixers (and one on the way out)
3 rice cookers
1 sewing machine (that was brought back to life)
2 toasters
1 sandwich maker (to be fair, that one was Justin)
2 waffle irons
1 blender (that predated marriage)
1 mini food processor

Whew. That's quite a list. I really am not that hard on small appliances. I think they're just crap most of the time and made to die. The best one was when I plugged in the last crock pot and it sparked and started smoking. How on earth did that happen?!? I am currently without a blender, rice cooker, crock pot, waffle iron or toaster. Anyone have a brand/model they love?

Today I:

Medical appointment
Hobby lobby (which deserves it's own blog post)
Library to return and pick up books
Costco to return a coat

The Ultimate Mommy Confession

So since I'm a stay at home mom, I really don't have a hard life. Plus Justin can work at home, which he does every Monday and usually at least one other day a week, so it's not like I'm really knowing what it's like for my working/single counterparts.

So why do I need a break from the kids?!?!?!? They are driving me CrAzY. Maybe it's the medication, maybe it's because the last time I left them with someone else was June, maybe it's the fact that I haven't ever had an overnight from the kids (seriously, I've never left my kids overnight ever. Liam is 5). The only time I spend away from kids right now is shopping or medical appointments. And getting poked in the chest is only marginally better than hauling around whiny kids.

Looking through blogs, parenting sites, facebook, etc. it's not shameful to admit to wanting to get away from kids. But heaven forbid you should actually take it. Apparently these two little monsters are supposed to be my greatest accomplishment or something. But my schedule is so wrecked right now since I have to be here 4 times a day at scheduled times to get the kids on and off the bus, and the one day a week they don't have school is taken up with speech therapy appointments 4 hours apart. Maybe I should pull them out of school for a day, leave them with someone, and actually have a day I could go into the city.

This is probably the point that I should warn Mindy that when she comes back from Utah, she'll likely be that person. Anyway, this is my post psychotic break, stream of consciousness, after sugar low and then rush blog post.

Today I:

Laundry
Grocery
Scrubbed out my hearth with tri sodium phosphate for 3 hours. It now looks worse than before.