Movies

Have you read The Hunger Games yet? One of the nicest things about Our Man Cub being thirteen now is that we not only read together*, but we can share books independently. I read the book (well, books) after hearing about it for probably a year from all my friends. I have no idea why it took me so long to get around it it – prolly ‘cos I was buried in  the Song of Fire & Ice books for the better part of three seasons, right? But anyway, Hunger Games, the whole series (there are three books), was wonderful – a page-turner, and a quick read as well, and I passed the books on as I finished them, to Man Cub, who devoured them, and then passed them off to Jaquelyn, who also loved them. Her beau listened to them on audio book, too, so all of us wound up chatting quite a bit about these books after we’d all caught up – a merry little book party, for sure!

Well! When it was announced that the first book is being made into a movie, we all got pretty excited. It’s coming out on the 23rd, and I’m keeping fingers crossed that it’s done well,** and planning to pick up movie tickets in advance. We are stoked =D

Also out soon (June 22nd) will be Brave, a Disney Pixar film that looks pretty fantastic. It appears we finally have a Disney with an actual girl hero \o/ The trailers give me chills, both with the content and the beauty of the whole thing (also the score sounds gorgeous). Look! Look!

Complaints, I Have Some, or, It’s Not You, It’s Totally My Back

This delightful kitty picture is by Dan Borris. Click on it for more of his photography.

Ok, so I want to talk about pain. Not because I want to solicit sympathy, but because the topic has been preoccupying me for, like, the last six weeks or so, and I feel like I need to explain my All Aboard the Grump Train demeanor of late.

So my back is a mess. The good news being that after five years of dinking around with mentioning it to my doctor, minimizing and then as it got more irritating, insisting, I finally have a diagnosis that makes sense. In a few weeks I’ll meet with the doctor to talk more about what we’re going to do about this ankylosing spondylitis business and get back in the groove. The bad news is, well, my back hurts, and I think it’s making me a whole lot of no fun >.<

WoW Pets Update

Zomg, finally! I thought this little guy would never drop out of a Heart Shaped Box. Granted, he’s not terribly different from my Disgusting Oozeling, but still. Still working on the Darkmoon Faire pets* (scored a cub last month), but now I’m up to 163. And still have no idea why I love collecting these. But I do.

 

*I know you wanted to know, so I did the research for you: unless you have the book in your inventory that they give you at the entrace of the Faire, you totes won’t get the ears to drop, no matter how many of what you kill. If you’re seeing them in the dungeons, it’s because someone else in your party has the book in their bags. Which is to say, don’t be dumb like me and forget to not ditch the book, and then sigh a lot in frustration.

The Return of Soup Night!

(Ok, almost – it’s nearly soccer season and weekly soup again. But it’s also been cold, and I like soup when it’s cold.)

So if you’ve been following along at home, you’ll know that I like to stretch the weekly chicken into as many meals as I can. If I’m really on top of things, I can make it through two an a half, the half being chicken stock that I’ll use for a meal at the end of the week.* I use Michael Ruhlman’s slow method to make the stock  over the course of a slow day when it can sit on the stove the full eight or nine hours,** and then if not using immediately (immediately being relative – I like it to sit in the fridge a day so I can separate the fat off the top), I freeze it.

So I’ve managed to make a variety of soups with the stock, including a lemon basil chicken and rice rice soup that rocks, some gumbo that I riffed into creation (the original recipe called for turkey stock, so I had to play around to get the flavors right) and a couple of Martha’s  variations of chicken soup. There’s also this really delicious artichoke and sausage soup that someone gave me the recipe for, and I wanted to do that the other night, but as it turned out, I didn’t have a bunch of the stuff that goes in it. But after rifling through the cabinets, I found some other stuff, and then this happened, and at least five people were really satisfied with the results \o/

Sausage And Okra Stew – feeds six, maybe more

2qt chicken stock
1 28-oz can of diced tomatoes
1 1/2 Tbs basil
1Tbs oregano
1 Tbs hot pepper flakes
1 tsp onion powder
1 large onion, diced
3 Tbs garlic, minced
2 14-oz cans okra, drained
2 c parboiled rice
1# italian sausage, hot or medium
salt to taste

Stuff to Do With Ground Chicken

Ok, so turns out I really don’t care much for beef. I know, right? When did that happen? I think it actually happened about three years ago, but I haven’t really been keeping terribly good track, so there it is, I’m going to say that I put two and two together sometime fairly recently.* And so, therefore, our family dinner go-tos are generally Something Made With Chicken.** Which almost always means a roast chicken, followed the next day by chicken croquettes made with the leftover meat, and then a soup a few days later based on chicken stock from boiling the bones down.***

And then there’s ground chicken. It’s on sale at the grocery pretty regularly, with a lot of buy-one-get-one, and it’s not beef (which leaves me nonplussed), and it’s not turkey (which I really don’t like in very much – I think I just don’t like the smell of it cooking), so I’ve learned to do delicious things with it.**** This week I figured out how to make some amazing asian meatballs. Here’s the scoop:

Asian Chicken Meatballs – serves four (three if one is a hungry teenager)

1 1# package of ground chicken (not ground chicken breast- that stuff’s too dry for meatballs)
4 large scallions, cut into thin rounds
4 finely diced cloves of garlic
3 Tbsp finely diced ginger
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
1 sprinkle of salt

Always A Beginner

Yoga marches on, and we’ve made it to the second week of the Yoga Journal 21-Day Challenge. This a super nice change-up from the dvds that we’ve been using to practice with the last few months – new poses, and new instructors, and so far, I’m liking it really well.

There have been a few sessions so far with Jason Crandell as the instructor (here’s a rather good one), and I’ve already decided that were he based anywhere near where we live, that I would go out of my way to attend his classes. It’s not just that his offered practices include a lot of poses that I really like (I do love me some triangle pose), but the manner in which the practice is presented is pretty great -

Listen: I’m always a little worried about injuring myself. See, I’m a bit of a klutz. Not like bobbling, face-planting, walk into trees kind of klutz, but the kind who can be imprecise of movement when not paying attention. Also, I multi-task. This is to say, I generally have at least one mystery bruise, and practicing yoga really calls on all my concentration. So, being asked to stretch and grow and push is nice, but I have to be super careful every time not to try to push too far, or lose concentration while stretching and growing – otherwise my lower back goes and makes that sick wet popping sound, and then by morning I’m hunched (again*).

O.O Spiders

Ok, so the following commercial just about sums up what I fear about spiders every time I have to deal with one.

I once drove a car that had spiders living in the vents. Every time I turned on the defrost, they absailed out onto the dash. When I moved out of Florida three seasons later and the cold of Ohio took care of that problem, I was never more relieved.

That is all.

Stuff I Loff, Achievements & Ticky Boxes Edition

You may or may not be asking where the heck this blog went*. So what up, Apple Moskowitz, where have you been? We’ve seen nothing but a kiwi video since freaking Hanukkah, Ms. Maam. For reals, what the hey?

Well! It’s been a bit of a Thing around here at Chez Moskowitz, what with all the holiday stuff.** If you’ve been following along, you know that the family comes in from far flung parts of the States for Thanksgiving, and then things really don’t slow down until about now. I really like now – there’s way less stress, and I can discover cool stuff like if you add a can of mushrooms, a little paprika and a the juice of half a lime to some leftover buttered rice and then warm it in a skillet, it’s a pretty osm side dish for dinner. It’s the little things, friends. It’s the little things.

Also, I’ve taken over handling the Poets Asylum blog – whee! Go check it out – mostly it’s stuff that relates to the Sunday night reading here in Worcester, MA, but there’s also some fun stuff about poultry poetry events out and around the region, info on deadlines and opportunities for poets, breaking poetry news,*** and the occasional cartoon. Good Tiems.

Also I’ve been doing yoga with Dearest Will. Ikr? As my brother said when I told him, “Wow… I guess the floor did feel a little bit colder…” But in seriousness, it’s been really lovely to have a partner for yoga, and to get bendy and bondy at the same time. Speaking of bendy, did you know that Yoga Journal just started another 21 Day Challenge? I kinda loved it last year – they put up different little videos every day so you can try things out.

This year they have two levels of videos – stuff for newbies and then an intermediate level set. This? Is absolutely wonderful on a number of levels. First and foremost, because due to some chronic pain issues (mean old sciatica. Mean old S/I joint), in spite of daily practice, I’m sort of always at the beginner level. Also, Will is just beginning, and hopping in at the deep end really sucks. This year they also have a tracking thing, where you can tick off what you’ve done, and see it laid out for you. I love me some ticky boxes, I do.

Speaking of ticky boxes… Other stuff I adore right now includes 750words.com. It’s a website where you sign up and write every day, and it counts you off to 750 words (see what they did there?) It’s totally private, which means that you can write any little thing at all without fear of broadcast (or accidental broadcast). Also, and this is my favorite bit, you earn badges for your writing – there’s a badge for starting (it’s an egg), there’s a badge for writing 30 days in a row, there’s a badge for writing without distractions (a hamster on a wheel – adorbz), a badge for your typing speed, a badge for participating in their monthly challenge to write every day… You get the picture. Totally fun.

Oh, Kiwi, how I do love you.

Holidays

So December by us is such a flurry full of celebratory business as to make the whole thing nearly overwhelming – actually, it starts in November, with the full family Thanksgiving and my family in town, and doesn’t really slow down until a few weeks into January, but let’s just concentrate on what’s going on by us in this fine month*:

Man Cub and I have birthdays, then Skipper Jane’s comes up. Hanukkah, Christmas, then Will Dearest’s birthday. Then right there, BOOM it’s New Year’s Eve. It’s a good thing I like cake,** I’ll tell ya. It’s a little zooey, and I joke that we hemorrhage money, but I try to take it one piece at a time, and it generally works out.  I’ve finally finished shopping for Hanukkah and the birthdays, and the Hanukkah stuff is wrapped, with just the rest of the Christmas stuff to pick up and wrap, and I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I’m even a little bit in the spirit of things \o/

Tonight we will sit down to a traditional Hanukkah meal*** of that pasta I made last week that was so yummy, and we’ll light candles and trade presents, and it will be lovely.

Which is to say, A Very Happy Hanukkah (or just a Very Lovely Evening if you’re not celebrating) from our family to you and yours ♥

Also, the Maccabeats have a new video out for the holiday!

(more videos under the cut)