always be prepared and a challenge

my pantry is empty. normally that's not good news. but i have once again eaten myself out of house and home. by doing this twice a year, i eat everything without it being expired. no waste.

i also have the second part of my pantry purge: coupons! now when i restock the pantry, i will do it cheaply. i will stock up on the basics, but if it's on sale or i have a coupon or both! i plan on having posting my receipt this time, instead of throwing it away like i did in january.

i made a few interesting dishes: angel hair pasta with a chunky marina full of sliced olives, garlick-y shrimp scampi, sausage balls (served with scrambled eggs for a delicious late night breakfast).

i do know that this time, i will be donating the sardines in mustard sauce to my friend's cat. i am not putting them back in my cabinet again  since i have no intention of ever eating them.

fails and fixes

blogger still won't let me post pictures. once this is feature is fixed, i plan on going back and adding some color to this place. i changed the colors last week when i changed the picture, but i did something and now there are so many ads on here it makes me head hurt to read.

i also have tried to make pancakes a few times. i am not a baker, whether an oven or stovetop is used. i am a cook, not a baker. i require a burner or flat cook surface to do my magic. i have a list of fails:

* turned one batch into one botch by adding 3/4 cup corn starch, when the recipe called for 1/2 teaspoon. tasted like sweet concrete. i looked at the wrong recipe. lesson learned: collect and measure ingredients beforehand. fix: mis en place and a double check would correct this problem.

* make a perfect batch that turned out to be crepe batter, which would have been good, but i thought it was pancake batter. i had dumped the whole thing (i made 1/4 recipe) in the pan at once, otherwise, i would have enjoyed a lovely plate of crepes (for some 5th grade reason, i keep typing in craps. fix: read ahead and know what you are making.

* tried to make chewy vanilla fudge but it was too crumbly and wouldn't hold together. fix: find a different recipe.

* tried once again to make vanilla fudge but made hard english toffee instead. i think i added too much corn syrup to the recipe. it lost all pretense of being chewy and became downright hard. fix: stop trying to make vanilla fudge. i don't need it. it is fattening, unhealthy, a waste of money, stupid and a wate of money and food ingredients.

plus it made my face breakout. my face hasn't broken out in a while except for the occasional eruption. i know have a big zit on each cheek, kind of like dimples. i hate zits. it was still edible but hard as a brick. i took some pieces and put them in a baggie with loose sugar. i am going to box up a few pieces )i have some mini cupcake liners and a godiva box i can use) and include it in a package to my friend kat.

cool giveaway you should enter now!

go to lynnette's blog and check out her prize! WOW!*

i love my vintage appliances but something about this chrome kitchenaid mixer makes my heart pitter-patter.

hurry over and enter get one entry now, then go back each thursday for another!

i think she gives away something every month- but i'm a new reader so don't quote me on it!

*yes, i was so excited i had to use capital letters!

it's not about the money...i guess

my friend layla and i had a yard sale this week-end. i made $80, she made $79 i owe her $19 for some items she had that i couldn't live without. so i have a huge gilded mirror, old platform rocker and nice bookcase. i also got an old tin box, a fake white orchid, a mr. coffee to make tea in and several books. 


i got rid of my williams-sonoma dinettte set. for $45. i sold it to a woman with 4 kids. they are eating off the floor. she came by first then sent her mother over, who went back to get the daughter and the money. i was sorry to see it go for cheap, but it went to someone who needs it.


i like driving into the garage and seeing space. i think somehow when i moved, somehow some boxes of stuff to be trashed got moved. i am going to spend a bit of time out there every day until it is cleaned up.  we are having another sale in the fall after it cools off. 


surfaces i need surfaces! kudos to the person who can tell me what series/movie that came from.

hello, is anybody out there? and a give-away!

i hope someone is actually reading this. i only have 4 followers. i need more followers. i want more people to read me. i feel lonely and abandoned.

so i have a contest.

i am going to try to get 100 followers by the end of june. 15 days. if i get to 100 followers, i will give away a $25 amazon gift code. i was not given this code. i earned it in an on-line game. and i am passing it to one of you!

and we all know amazon.com has the stuff, baby! it's the next best thing to target!

pass the word. let's hit 100 by june 30!

PLEASE LEAVE ME SOME LOVE! LEAVE A COMMENT! PLEASE!

you get one entry for following me. leave me a note in the comments.

then you can earn an additional entry per POST, and sometimes i post a couple of times if i feel like it. just leave me a comment and you will get an entry.

i may be adding facebook and twitter links for entry. i may not. i make no promises!

if i get more than 101 followers by june 30, i will add something else to the gift code, something nice. i just don't know what it is yet! so if everybody gets all their friends to follow me, someone might end up with a nice stash of goodies!

not dead yet...

sushi flu didn't kill me. i'm still kicking. but i will be very cautious about the consumption of cheap sushi in the future. there is a nice restaurant that has a conveyor belt type situation where small plates (about 1/2 a roll) are available for $1.50. i think i will try to keep this place in mind the next time i need a sushi fix.

i bought a book with tapas recipes off ebay, but to be honest, i haven't cracked the cover. i seem to lack the energy to do anything. i don't know if it's the heat because i have been trying to stay inside. i did go meet my mother and sister today for milkshakes at red robin. chocolate milkshakes and good company go well together.

i also was able to buy my son's birthday gift today. target had something i know he will love AND i had a $10 gift card in my wallet AND i got a free $10 gift card by purchasing it, so i can blow it on myself! he likes hunting, so i bought him the wii game "monster big buck hunter" which comes with a rifle to use. i got approval from the succubus that a toy gun was okay. a few months ago, i bought him the book "more dinner, drive-ins, and dives". i got him the first volume last year for his birthday. the covers are SO similar, i'm sure he will think i'm going crazy and giving him the same book twice.*

so i actually did something frugal today!

i have a ton of stuff for the yard sale. it's still on for saturday! i have about 2 carloads of stuff to sell. i don't plan on bringing it back home. we are only doing it from 7 a.m.-noon.  that way we will get the earlybirds and the stragglers.

here's hoping i make a lot of money!

* when he was younger, his great-aunt gave his the same thing for 10 years in a row- a puzzle of a map of the united states where each state was a piece of the puzzle. when he was small, i used to threaten to simply start giving him the same thing for every birthday.

death by sushi

i've done it. again. by my own hand, of my own free choice. i even tried to talk my son into joining me.

i ate a big plate of sushi at a chinese buffet.

and i think i got sushi-flu.

i got sick after sushi about a year ago, at a different restaurant. i picked my niece- called bones because she is studying to be a forensic something or other- up for a week-end visit. we went to the "upscale" buffet in rich town. i got an assortment of sushi, so i could never nail down which type of sushi might have been the culprit.

i felt fine when i went to bed. 

i felt fine when i woke up bones and told her to get ready so we could head out for a breakfast at the dive i like to call "big ass bowl of gravy shack" or BABOGS.

i had a slight headache as i got out of the shower.

by the time i had dressed, i was deathly ill. my niece helped me get undressed and settled into bed. she brought me popsicles and ice water. i couldn't hold anything down. i felt like i was dying. my niece was so convinced i was dying that she called my sister, who told her to stay with me, as my husband had left early that morning to go with my son somewhere. my niece she told me later that she was afraid i would be dead when she checked on me. 

i puked and slept alternately all day long. about midnight i had a can of coke over crushed ice (there is a grocery store here that sells crushed ice made with an illegal ice maker: they are only supposed to use it for putting ice under the meat but if you ask for a bag of mixer ice- the code word- and they know you, they will sell you a 10 b. bag of crushed ice for $2. it's a must to make fancy cocktails!)

the next morning i was fine and 6 lbs. lighter to boot. bones and bobo and i went to eat at a country food buffet. i couldn't eat anything. the owner came over to make sure everything was okay. i explained to her that i had just gotten over the flu. she didn't charge me for my lunch, which was untouched. she brought me out a quart of chicken noodle soup to take home right before we left. she also gave bobo a styrofoam container to pack up my plate, since it couldn't be served and was destined for the trash anyway. is it any wonder that i love to go muffin's restaurant? bobo ate it for dinner. i had the soup.

i'm getting that sick feeling now. but i just remembered i made the mistake of drinking a cup of milk after i got home. i don't care what anyone says, fish and milk don't mix. hopefully it will be temporary. but i'm filling my biggest mug with ice water and putting a bucket beside my bed before i go to sleep, just in case.

right now i'm praying like a drunk, "please god, don't make me puke! i swear i'll be good! i'll never have sushi again! please don't make me puke!"

and god, if you're listening, please don't give me a brain bleed. i'm out of bandanas at the moment.

**incidentally, i have a 2' X 3' poster of the photo above. i emailed  the kikkoman company asking if i could buy the poster, as i had seen it in several sushi joints. i got no reply. 2 years later i got a big tube in the mail. it was the sushi poster! turns out i emailed someone in hong kong!

dilemma solved

a few years ago, i had a garage sale with a friend. i made close to $100 by selling things i  didn't need, use, want or miss after i sold it. i had crap. she had a few big ticket items so she made about $600, which she used to redecorate her living  room. i will have to get pictures and post them.

she is having another garage sale week-end after next. soi  have 10 days to clear out the garage and get things organized to haul to her house. i have a pt cruiser,  so it's really easy to remove the seats and fill up the back. i can do it.

the bad thing is that she has 3 bookcases i really like. she needs them for the sale, but i am buying them from her right after the sale. for $10 each! i plan to use them in the garage to organize what i want to keep so they will be visible and handy. the worth thing ever is to KNOW you have something that you need and can't find it,so you buy it twice. i think they will just slide into the back of my car for the trip back to my house.

so i am starting off my garage sale $30 in the hole.

i'm not going to price anything. i will do like we did before. people pick out all they want and i give them one price for it all. i don't need it anyway, don't want to haul it home and maybe i will make someone happy when they find the item of their dreams for a mere pittance. it will be nice to have a clean garage again. i have a large garage so i am still parking my car in there. once it's cleared, i'm going to arrange the things i keep and make a "rec room" out there. i will have space to do crafts and not have to put everything up until i am finished with the project.

since my  husband is not working at the moment, he will in all likelyhood be going to visit his elderly aunt for a few weeks. she lives in middle tennessee in the area affected by the floods. she didn't get any flood damage but her property is trashed. my son will be driving him up there next week-end so he can visit too and i will pick my husband up once the work is completed. we haven't been very nice to each other lately, maybe absence will make the heart grow stronger.

dilemma

i have a garage full of crap i want gone now! but then i go out to the garage and i am overwhelmed. my baby niece came over the other day and i gave her a trunkload of tuff forher to use when she moves out. she had a unique solution- just break it! without meaning to, she managed to drop the box marked "important- do not throw away- fragile" and while i haven't untaped it, i can hear broken glass in there. i know there was one thing in that box i wanted to keep. i had a plate with a panda on it that a friend gave me before she died. i have a feeling that it probably the one thing that got broken.

my friend died a year ago. i hadn't seen her for 5 months before she died. we used to live in the same town, but then we each moved 20 miles in the opposite direction. she would call me and we would talk. i would try to call her but she never kept her battery charged and never checked her voicemail.

she died of an overdose. i knew she had a pretty serious drug problem during the years we "lost" each other. but she assured me that was in the past. i never noticed anything. but then she got divorced and moved in with this gay guy who was her old "doctor shopper" friend.

she got her alimony settlement on a tuesday. her roommate dropped her off in her oldneighborhood that afternoon. she banked most of it and she had $2K on her. when he picked her up friday, she had less than $100 left. they ate a bucket of kfc and both went to bed. he woke later and checked on her. she was fully clothed, kneeling in the corner facing the wall. he thought she was praying but she didn't answer. he touched her and she fell over. she was dead and her eyes were closed. he said she looked peaceful. 911 was called but she was gone. the police found her purse with a few crumpled bills and the bottom of her purse filled with assorted narcotics.


her ex-husband still had life insurance on her. at first, it was ruled an suicide after the autopsy. he and her father disputed that and it was changed to "accidental drug interaction". so instead of zero, he got $350K. i was in his neighborhood not too long ago. the outside of the house was neater, but what broke my heart was a brand new mustang sitting in the yard. she had a 2003 mustang that he sold 4 days after she died. now there's a $50K car in her old parking spot under the portico.

every once in a while, i miss her. her number is still in my phone. but she'll never answer.