What I wrote about in July

I really wrote a lot about food (click for a larger view) this month, but I guess that's not surprising. I am notoriously food-centric.

Get your own word map thingie at Wordle.

Roadmap of scandal

Slate has put together a lovely venn diagram of some of the major Bush administration scandals, showing who was involved and giving a nice overview (click on the scandal name).

Scary, scary stuff.

Everything is interconnected

I'm a little late to the game on this, but I'm currently reading The Omnivore's Dilemma. It's fascinating and not a little mind-blowing. I can't pass a field of corn without thinking about all the myriad food products it's going to end up in. I drove hubby up to Lancaster, PA yesterday, and had trouble concentrating on my driving as we drove through corn country. Even his hotel was built next to a field of corn!

I used to look at those cornfields and see simple beauty. Now I can't help but think about the massive construct that is our food industry. I'm not sure if I'm better for that shift. (Hey, I never claimed I wanted to be enlightened!)

But I am thinking more about where our food comes from, and what the process that creates it means. I need to go back and finish What to Eat. And I'm very grateful I had the sense to sign up for a CSA share for next year ...

Caffeination

Fascinating post on Metafilter this morning about caffeine. I recognize myself in a lot of the commentary in the NY Mag. piece (the first link).

Belated menu, sort of

I forgot again to post a menu for this week, but so far I've made scrumptious pulled chicken in the crockpot. I didn't think it was going to be so good, so I didn't buy any sides. I'm off at lunch today to pick up cole slaw, corn bread, potato rolls for Hubby, and maybe some deviled eggs. We ate the last of the homemade deviled eggs last night with the chicken.

Yummy!!

Splurge-y

Charles St. north of Penn Station was closed last night for Artscape (which I don't think I'm going to get to this year, darnit), so Hubby & I ended up having to take 83 home last night. So we splurged and drove up to Hunt Valley and had dinner at Outback.

I've got leftovers for lunch today - oh nomnomnomnomnom ... :)

I can take just so much, and not one drop more

So how the HHS is trying to define contraception as abortion. Weren't these the same people who tried to tell us that women of child-bearing years who were not currently pregnant were to be treated as pre-pregnant?

Yeah, fuck that noise all to hell. Fuck the religious right, and their minions in government.

Complain here, if you feel motivated. I, personally, have had just about enough of this crap.

Yet another one for the cat people

If the embed doesn't work, go here.

Previous videos here and here.

Fat in the fire

Want to know why you're not losing weight, and why you're hungry all the time? Read this article and find out.

This is not a new article, but it shocked me, even though I knew some of it already from working Radiant Recovery. We've all been blinded by the combined forces of government public health and food marketers.

Oh, and when this article talks about carbohydrates, it really means refined carbs, not whole grains. I've noticed a lot of that kind of sloppiness in this kind of reporting. Drives me bonkers.

Doin' mah happy danse, part deux

The new Temeraire book, Victory of Eagles, was just dropped off by the UPS guy. Oh, happy day!!!

This is me today

(via ICHC, my favorite happy place)

Doin' mah happy danse

Dan Patrick is rejoining his old Sports Center & Big Show on the radio partner, Keith Olbermann, on Football Night in America. I never got to see them on Sports Center, and only got to hear a random few episodes of the Big Show, but I love these guys together. And I can't wait til Bob Costas has to duck to get out of the way of all the snark ...

Menu for week of 7/6/08

Forgot to post this yesterday:
* taco meat
* 7-layer dip (made some for changejunkie's 4th BBQ, and wanted MORE! and while it doesn't really sound like dinner, with blue corn chips for a brown and the addition of some of the taco meat, it works pretty well.)
* crustless quiche (new recipe, something of an experiment - we'll see)

No poached chicken breasts this week, for the first time all summer. I think Hubby & I were both ready for something else, even something like the quiche which will heat up the kitchen.

Clear view

I'm probably admitting way too much here about my housekeeping habits, but spending the past couple of days looking through the new windows has made me realize I've never lived in a house with clean or new windows.

The view is astounding.

I joked to a couple of people before we did the windows that the motivation for doing them was to not have to clean the ones in the dining room, which were so filthy you could barely see through them. Now I think maybe I wasn't joking, after all.

Temporary withdrawal of the banging

And now the windows are done being replaced. I didn't take good pictures this time, and completely missed the opportunity last night to do a perfect side-by-side of the old wood under the old vinyl next to the new, beautiful vinyl. Suffice it to say that the new windows are gorgeous and I'm very glad we did them, even though we're going to spend a chunk more change getting new blinds and curtains. Well worth the money all around.

Now we get to see if all of this makes any difference to our summer power bills. Probably not, probably no change until winter. But we shall see ...

Next, we do the tiny kitchen reno. New countertops, sink, faucet, one new cabinet, and the Installation of the (now 2 years old) Dishwasher. But only if we can find a weekend day this month that's free enough to go talk to the kind folks at Home Depot ...

OK, universe, just stop it

Now Don Davis, who played General Hammond on the Stargate SG-1 series, has passed away. I'd seen him in a lot of other things (like X-Files, the movie A League of Their Own, etc.), but to me, he'll always be Gen. Hammond, who was one of my favorite SG-1 characters.

Hey, Universe? I know we've got this moving toward entropy thing going on, but do you think you could slow down the pace just a bit? This rapid-fire grief thing is a little hard to handle ...

Huh?

Remember this kid-sized hamster ball?

Now there's a grown-up sized one!

Brain bent, drooling ....

Restart

I've been working on my second 28-day exercise cycle, and life keeps getting in the way. So I've decided to restart this second cycle on Friday. It gives me the chance to refocus, and also to make some changes to my exercise selection. I bought a heart rate monitor, which makes the job of figuring out if I'm working out at the right level a whole lot easier, and that made me rethink what I'd chosen to do.

Back to the salt mines ...