Rachel Ray Eat My Dust!

Today is Mexico's Independence Day. I'm not particularly up on Mexican history so I'm assuming they're celebrating independence from Spain, but I don't know for sure. I do know that everyone assumes Mexican independence is what is celebrated on Cinqo de Mayo, but I have it on good authority that the celebrating done on May 5th is done for the benefit of Mexico's two neighbours to the north and is not actually a holiday in Mexico. Go figure.

Where am I going with this?

Well, I took it upon myself tonight to create a dinner that celebrated all things Mexi-flavoured and so I will share my self-made recipe with you!

Polo Burrrrrrrrrito! Ayayayaya Bueno!!!! Loosely translated - Really tasty chicken burrito

Couple of chicken breasts, boneless, skinless and sliced into bite-size pieces

In hot pan with olive oil, saute chicken breast slices until browned. Season with salt & pepper

Cheater Step:

Once chicken has browned add two cups of Salsa (I use Pace salsa in a jug from Costco).

Follow that with 2 or 3 heaping tablespoons of cumin and 1 heaping tablespoon of oregano

Add 1/2 cup of black beans

Simmer about 15 or 20 minutes to allow flavours to combine.

Warm tortilla wraps in the microwave - 25 seconds. Smear each wrap with a tsp of sour cream and then load on your chicken/black bean mixture. Take one side of the wrap and fold over the mixture once, then take the bottom of the wrap and tuck it up over the top and do the same with the top of the wrap. Finally take the whole thing with the one side, bottom & top folded and roll over until it looks like a little envelope of goodness.

Sometimes I also add a hit of homemade guacamole to the wrap just to shake it up a bit.

Anyway, there you have a low fat, high fibre, super-high flavour dinner that you can make in less than 30 minutes.

Rachel Ray you've got nothin' on me!

They Make them So YOUNG These Days!

This week marked the first week of classes at our local post-secondary institution where I am contracted to teach a Business Communications course. Today was Day 2 and already I have enough blog fodder to write an entire book, but for now, I'll just tell you two short stories because I sort of made this promise to myself not to write about my work, but you know...whatever, I'll take the inspiration wherever it comes from.

So yesterday I had three classes - my first class in the morning with Group "E" followed by two back-to-back classes with the PA Group. I'm a big believer in getting to class early and getting set up so that you know if your equipment is going to work and to calm any last-minute jitters before speaking to the group. Yesterday was no different...I got to my first class about 15 minutes before the class officially began, got myself organized and started greeting the students one by one as they arrived at class. "Hi! Are you here for B-Comm 135? You're in the right place - have a seat." that sort of thing.

It wasn't until they were all assembled at their desks that I really looked at the group as a whole and that's when it hit me. Unlike my students last spring, many of whom were starting second and in one case, third careers, these students are fresh out of high school. In some cases, due to advance placement, some of my "adult" students are only 17 years old. It was like looking at a sea of young Lukes, my talented, charming, smart and sweet 16 year-old nephew. Realizing that I'll be teaching a group that I can address as "Dude" made any pre-teaching jitters immediately go away and I set about reviewing our course outline before letting them go early to get the materials they'll need to be successful in my class.

Today, with this same group of students we were busy working through how to make an effective oral presentation - how to get over stage fright, how to thoroughly prepare for a presentation that sort of thing. We had plenty of time after learning the basic ins and outs of proper business telephone etiquette to give the students an assignment to hone their writing skills. While the class worked at crafting their memos I had one young guy raise his hand to call me over where he quietly asked if he needed permission to leave the classroom to go to the bathroom, now that he's at college.

Isn't that the sweetest thing? When, as an adult, was the last time you asked another adult permission to use the bathroom?

I quietly told the kid "You're a college man now, you don't ever have to ask permission to pee again."

Welcome to the big leagues, Grasshopper!

Never a Dull Moment

Someone recently commented on this blog that I seem to have a lot of "unique" experiences. People - you have no idea. I choose NOT to blog about my work (much) or Buzz's work (hardly ever) and pretty much the deep, meaningful stuff of my marriage and our families are off-limits too. So, yeah, the REALLY entertaining stuff - I don't even mention here.

But, stuff that happens in my living room? Well here there are no boundaries and so if it happens out here in the OBB it's fair game.

Take Sunday for instance.

On Sunday, we got up at a reasonable hour to finish up the last of the household chores, all the better to enjoy the day. I scrubbed bathrooms, tidied up the kitchen and got a few loads of laundry done. After a fabulous breakfast of veggie omelette made with veggies right out of my garden, Buzz and I discussed what we'd have for dinner...because Lord knows we don't want to go more than a couple of hours without knowing what we'll eat next! After reviewing the full menu of what we've eaten the past 6 nights we decided white meat was out because we've been indulging in chicken, pork and pork and chicken all week and so we decided it would be Beef Tenderloin for Sunday dinner. Buzz took the steaks out of the freezer to defrost and we went about our day.

A couple hours later I was on a long-anticipated and much overdue phone date with my friend Carla when suddenly, right in the middle of a really good story about how someone recently got fired the phone lines went dead. So did the TV. Dammit, so did everything else. Thinking quickly, I jumped up and grabbed our analogue phone and quickly plugged it in so I could continue my gabfest with the west coast (you know, on the other end of the country where all the really good things and people are). Unfortunately the analogue phone doesn't work when there's no power either so there we were...no power and nothing to do.

Right about the time I saw our neighbours evacuate their house to go watch Sunday afternoon football at their son's place I decided I needed to know just when exactly we'd have power returned to the OBB and so grabbed Buzz's cell and started dialing. The less than helpful agent at Maritime Electric informed me that no, it wasn't an island-wide issue and yes, they knew the power was out in the OBB, and no, they didn't know what had caused the outage and no, they had no idea when power would be restored. Super! Thank you!

With a house shining clean from top to bottom and so therefore no chores to be done and with it rainy and wet outside and so nothing to do on the land, we decided we'd pass some time by going for a Sunday afternoon drive. Unlike Saturday night when we went for a drive to the beach we did not take the dogs with us and so we locked them in the house as we drove off in search of houses with signs of electricity, just so we could figure out how far this outage was.

We were only gone about an hour and when we came home the power was still out. "Fine," I thought, "this is a perfect opportunity for Buzz to help me with some stretching." You see, I have a bad back which is exacerbated when my T-bands get too tight and the only way to effectively stretch them is to lie on my back with my foot resting on Buzz's stomach while he pushes my leg back over my head, releasing the tension in my back. It works every time.

So, I mention to him as we're coming in the house that I could use his help in stretching my back and start to make my way to the living room. I rounded the corner from the kitchen and you know those Beef Tenderloin steaks we had left defrosting on the kitchen counter a couple of hours ago? Uh huh. The remnants of their plastic bag were strewn from one end of the dog bed to the other. WTF. SOMEONE who shall remain nameless but looks an awful lot like a big brown dog, ate our dinner...in the raw.

Power was finally restored about 3:15, but by then it was too late to take out another steak and have it defrosted in time for an early dinner. So instead we made due with left-over mushroom stew & rice with a salad which Buzz enhanced with a couple of peanut butter sandwiches. Not exactly the kind of Sunday dinner we're accustomed to, but you know, when you have an always starving dog, this is sometimes your reality.

Classes are in session starting today. Buzz is working on budget all this week. Since I don't write much about my work and seldom about his, and with this week being such a busy week for both of us on the employment front, I hope to have time to write here each day, but if I don't, just keep checking back in. I'm sure someone will pop a boob (you can read about that here) or insult my age (you can read about that here) or something else will happen to provide lots of blog fodder!

Peek A Boo! The Whole Pool Sees YOU!

Recently, in my on-going attempt to get in shape (part of the No Crap For Kim Campaign) I have added swimming laps to my work out routine. Five days a week, after I climb Mt. Everest on the eliptical and sashay my way to Bette Midler singing the Rosemary Clooney songbook on the treadmill, I jump in the pool and swim laps for half an hour.

Now wait a minute. I know what you're thinking. "She race walks to the Rosemary Clooney songbook? What the hell!" But I'm here to tell you, there is no better song to race walk to than Mambo Italiano! It's got the perfect rhythm to swing your hips to as you speed walk - I am SO not kidding! Okay, admittedly, I look like a dork, but I'm not really trying to impress anyone at the gym, so who cares?

Okay, anyway, back to the pool. Most days I work out in the morning because it's a great way to wake up, it sets the tone for the day, plus how much energy you exert in the morning dictates how much food you can eat throughout the day and you know I'm all about the food.

This week, with the start of the college school year I've had to play around with my gym time to work around my school schedule as I prep to welcome the youth of Canada to their first year of post-secondary education. Those youth are paying a lot of money to learn how to cook and the very least I could be is prepared to welcome them to the class they will dread every day - I'm just saying.

So anyway, a few times this week I've had to do my workout late in the afternoon and of course there is a whole different group of people at the gym in the afternoon than in the morning. Personally, I prefer the group in the morning because I've already got their quirks figured out (you know, like who hogs the treadmill beyond their allotted 20-minutes, who doesn't wipe down the equipment after they've used it - that sort of thing), but this afternoon crowd, not so much.

One of the people that works out in the afternoon is an older lady (and by that I do not mean that she's a card-carrying member of CARP - but she should be in a few years!) who is decidedly much heavier than she should be. I'm guessing 275-lbs on her 5'5" frame. So good for her for getting herself to the gym every day and putting on a bathing suit and swimming laps.

But here's the thing. It's her bathing suit. Being that she's a very large lady, I'm sure finding a bathing suit must be pure hell and when you find one you like you latch on to it as though it were to give you life itself. I know of what I speak because I once had such a bathing suit - it was styling (Tommy Bahama), it was beautiful (a lovely shade of blue with creamy yellow hibiscus flowers) and it had a matching sarong that completed the outfit. My swimming companion's bathing suit is a tank-ini with thin spaghetti straps and no real support whatsoever for her, shall we say, enormous bossom!

Who am I to judge? I'm really just there to get my 75 laps in in 30-minutes, so I tend to stay focused on my lane and rhythmic breathing....in stroke, stroke, out, stroke, stroke, in, stroke, stroke, out, stroke, stroke. Yesterday while I was concentrating on my breathing and crawling I glanced over to my right (can't be helped, it's the side I breathe on) and what to my wondering eyes did I see? One ginormous BOOB popping out of the no-support-for-her spaghetti straps tank-ini! There it was, just floating along with its owner as she did the back stroke down the pool.

I know, I know, I have plenty of floatable parts of my own (can you say gluteus maximus?) so I really shouldn't be judging, but I can't help it! Oh, when she got to the other end of the pool she discretely tucked her mammoth mammary back into her bathing suit before doing another lap on her back. And I? I had already made tracks to the other end of the pool and had just done my turn around to head back to the far end - all the better to stay away from floating boobies. But our paths crossed again at the midway point of the pool and there it was again...POP, huge nipple and all, floating by as I took a breath! People, I'm telling you her boob was the size of her head! Just bobbing along in the water with every stroke she took.

"Focus, focus, focus!" I silently screamed to myself. But the sight of the detached boob floating in the pool is too much for my chlorine addled brain to shake and I begin to chuckle, which of course then screws up my rhythmic breathing, which then leads to sputtering and choking on the litres of water I'd just ingested. Which then leads to the pool attendant hollering at me from the check-in desk "ARE YOU ALRIGHT?"

Not wanting to embarrass my swimming companion by having the young stud come closer to inspect what was happening in the pool I quickly gathered my wits about me and hollered back that I was fine, just got my breathing out of sync as I quietly did the breast stroke back to my end of the pool.

Is My CARP Card in the Mail?

Yesterday I was cruising through a collection of high flavour, low fat recipes where I came upon this recipe for mushroom and wild rice stew...nothing sounded more like a fall flavour to me than an entire stew made of mushrooms and wild rice - yum yum yum.

Even though I promised Buzz I'd stay out of the grocery stores this week and "make do" with what we have in the pantry (a fun little game, if ever there was one because it really challenges you to be creative with what's on hand) I decided that I neeeeeeded to make this recipe even though I had no wild rice on hand. So...on my way home from town I stopped at our local Bulk Barn to get some. An aside here, if you've never shopped in one of these places - OMG it is the best thing since sliced bread because they have everything - except sliced bread actually - in neat, tidy, CLEAN, containers and you only have to buy the amount that you actually need. If you're a baker this is pure joy because they have all sorts of things that go into baking that you can't find at the local grocery store. Last May when we were in Nashville I stocked up on 6 boxes of Kikkoman Panko crumbs because our local grocery stores don't carry Panko. Imagine my delight when I saw that the Bulk Barn carries it! Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!

Okay, where was I? Oh, yeah, so I decide to make this recipe and stopped by the Bulk Barn to pick up the 1 cup of wild rice called for. I got my rice and stood in line behind the ONLY cashier open (okay I said I liked their products, but not necessarily their customer service) who must have been new to the job because she asked her customer the contents of every bag she was ringing through. At this particular Bulk Barn you don't have to label your bags (except for spices) because apparently it's part of the training that cashiers can identify the contents of each bag on sight. Yesterday this was not so much the case and because of this, the check-out process was painfully long. Finally, at long last and after walking by the line-up that is now 10-people deep at least four times the 2nd cashier opened her register and called "the next person in line" over.

I happened to be "the next person in line" but some spry old lady behind me jumped the que ahead of me. Well, you know I can seldom contain my thoughts and there they were written all over my face...something along the lines of: "are you freakin' kidding me? I have ONE freaking item and you, YOU who has been BEHIND me for the last 10 minutes jumps right over to the newly opened cashier?". I don't care if she was an old lady or not, what made her time more important than mine?

Well, as I said, it's written all over my face and for once, the newly opened cashier realized what happened and actually told the old broad to wait one moment while she rings in the customer who was next in line...who happened to be me!

So, big bonus points for customer service, right?

Sort of.

Things were going swimmingly, she i.d.'d my rice, weighed it, rang it in and then looked at me and asked "Do you qualify for our Senior's Discount?"

W.T.F.?

Perhaps the Oil of Olay isn't doing what it's supposed to, or perhaps it was because I was coming from the gym where I had done 30 straight minutes of uphill climbing on the eliptical, followed by 20 minutes of race-walking on the treadmill followed by 30 minutes of swimming laps so yeah, maybe I wasn't looking my best. But Senior's Discount? Really? There once was a time when I was 15 I was thrilled to be mistaken for someone old enough (18) to get into a bar, but now? Now that I'm on the downward slope of my 40s? Not so much.

I'm guessing that in the future I will only stop by the Bulk Barn when I am fully coiffed and made-up. Either that, or I'm going to have to forge a CARP card and get that freaking discount!

Here's the recipe for the Wild Rice & Mushroom Stew:

Ingredients:

1-1/2 tsp olive oil

2 cups leeks, finely chopped (about 2 large leeks) - white parts only

2 cups shiitake mushrooms (I used regular they were just fine), sliced

1 cup carrots, diced

3 cups vegetable broth

1 tsp salt

1 cup uncooked wild rice

Those are the basic ingredients, I also added a bit more salt, a whole lot of freshly ground pepper and about a tsp of ground sage...perfect, but you can season to your own taste.

Method:

Heat oil in large skillet, add leeks and mushrooms and sautee until tender, about 5 minutes.

Spoon leeks and mushrooms into a 4 or 5 quart slow cooker. Add carrots, broth, salt & rice. Cover and cook on low 6 to 7 hours.

Yields about 1.5 cups per serving.

Then "Poof" it was Gone!

As I was laying in bed last night thinking about what to write today I came up with a brilliant idea. I lay there looking at the full moon outside our window and wrote the whole blog in my head. Then I rolled over and fell asleep.

I guess I should have gotten my lazy ass up out of bed and written something down, because now that it's the light of day again, I have no idea what I was going to write about. Nada. Zip. Zero.

Instead, I'll tell you with a couple of tales from the Big City...of Charlottetown.

Yesterday I was driving to town down University Ave., and while I idled at a stop light I looked over to see a middle-aged lady bent over putting something into the trunk of her car. She was wearing powder pink track pants and Mickey Mouse underwear. How do I know this you might ask? Well, her powder pink track pants were so thread bare that when she bent over and stressed the very fabric that covered her abundant derriere, well, enough daylight got in that I could see the outline of the head Mousekateer emblazoned on her rump.

Don't judge, but it gave me a good chuckle.

Last week I was leaving town, heading north on Queen Street, which for those of you that have been here, may recall that it is the main thoroughfare in downtown Charlottetown. This time of year is still crazy busy in the city with tourists mixing with businessmen mixing with students arriving back on the island for college. So lots of traffic both on wheels and on foot.

Now, Charlottetown is known for its shitty drivers - I kid you not - at a four way stop when four vehicles approach the stop-sign at the same time no one ever knows who is supposed to go first (hello...."right" of way mean anything to anyone?? I think not!) Anyway, with the city being so crowded, I take extra caution when driving through because you know, it would really wreck someone's vacation if I hit them with the Cranberry Cruiser.

So anyway, there I was, sitting at the stoplight at Queen & Kent Streets (the busiest of the busy intersections) just minding my business, waiting for my light to turn green when I scanned the crowd of pedestrians waiting for a crossing signal. As I said, there were all sorts of people, tourists, locals, businessmen, students. And then there was the lady with the crocodile.

Yep.

She was standing at the light waiting for a crossing signal with a crocodile (it might have been an alligator, I wasn't really close enough to discern) tucked under her arm. It wasn't a plush toy croc. It was a very real and I'm pretty sure used to be live crocodile.

Anyway, the sight of her crossing the street in front of me with this reptile tucked under her arm has not left me for over a week. I wonder where she was going? I wonder why she felt she needed to bring her croc. with her? It falls under the things that makes me go "hmmmm."

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

No, Buzz and I are not headed to D.I.V.O.R.C.E. Court. In fact today, when I got home from the gym and found that he had emptied the dishwasher on his own accord, without being asked even, I fell in love with him all over again. No the break-up I'm talking about is with my hairdresser. The time has come for me to make like the split-ends on my head and find another stylist who can better deliver the hair cut I want. You realize of course, that this is almost as bad as breaking up with a boyfriend? Except you can't use the old line "it's not you, it's me" because it most definitely "is you and not me"...as in, the haircut you keep giving me is more "you" than "me."

It's not the first time I've changed hairdressers. Hell, living in 6 places in the last 10 years, I'm used to making that change every few years or so. The best hairdresser I ever had was in Atlanta - she could do my lid like no one else before or since. When I moved to Maui and went for a haircut, I asked the guy to "texturize" my hair. My hair is VERY fine. VERY straight. VERY thick. And as such, in order for it to not look like seaweed on a rock, it must be thinned out every time it's cut. This guy, in his effort to texturize my hair took pinking sheers to it and had his way with my head. The result was that it didn't look like seaweed on a rock. No, instead it looked like a giant ball of fuzz poking out of my modified Bob. Then there was the $200 highlights at a salon in Vancouver, where, when I had first moved to the city, I asked for a recommendation and was told this salon and that stylist was "the guy" in the city to handle my hair. Unfortunately, his definition of highlights and mine were not in the same dictionary, let alone on the same page. I exited his salon with a head of platinum blonde hair and for those of you who read this know...blonde has never grown naturally from this head and so, I looked like a washed out old has-been, with over processed hair. I went back the next day and made him re-do it for free, but still, the whole episode was fraught with trauma.

So you can understand my hesitation in deciding to change hairdressers. When we moved to the island I asked an acquaintance for a recommendation and she gladly gave me the name and number of her stylist. And while she had a rainbow of colours in her hair, I thought her cut was rather au courant, and so I booked my first appointment. At the time, I was growing my hair out so that I could have an Up-Do for our wedding. My hairdresser listened closely to my objectives and really didn't do anything objectionable with that cut or subsequent visits for colour either and so I kept on going.

When it came time for the all important Up-Do for our wedding, I ended up with a stylized production that was more PEI Prom Hair than middle-age sophisticated Up-Do, but...by then, what was I to do? I was walking down the aisle (or the beach actually) in less than 2 hours and so, as a first time bride at the tender age of 46, I now have wedding pictures with hair straight out of High School Musical, The Middle Ages.

We've been married over a year and still I have continued to go to the same hairdresser even though I haven't been particularly enthralled with my hair. I guess I had enough change in the last year what with quitting my job, moving cross country, setting up a house, looking for work, getting married, teaching, etc., etc., etc., I just kept putting off the decision to change hairdressers.

Last week I decided enough already! I need a new lid and clearly I'm not going to get the style I want with my current provider of hair care services. I mean, how many different ways do I need to say "I'd like a chin-length bob, blunt cut on the bottom with lots and lots and lots of layers (and texturizing) throughout the rest of the cut. I need lift at the back and above my right eyebrow" before I actually get that haircut? Is it too much to ask? Buzz often says that the place he gets his hair cut should change their name from "First Choice" to "Her Choice" because no matter what you ask for you get the cut the stylist wants to give.

I think he may have a point.

Anyway, here's hoping that with Tuesday's appointment with a new salon and a new stylist that we will see the last of this monstrosity: