Nothing In Particular

My kiddo is sick today so we are having a very mellow, lots of liquids and videos filled day.
It's really nice to take a break sometimes from your expectations of the day.

J's favorite video is Frosty the Snowman. He closes the lid to his dvd player during certain scenes and it took me a while to figure out why. They're all the scenes that involve crabby adults. Hmmm. Interesting. He also doesn't like the dragon in Shrek, the combine in Cars or the sharks in Finding Nemo. At first, I tried to reason with him or tell him I thought that those characters were funny but he really finds them scary and doesn't want to watch. And looking at the movies through an almost-three-year-old's eyes - those characters really are scary. They're loud, they roar, they have flaming eyes or very sharp teeth. While I can understand the context, J really can't yet nor can he understand the humor. I think I'm really glad that he's so sensitive to these things - it means he's not yet immune to seeing scary things.

My parents were in town from D.C. this past weekend and I ate WAY too much food both Saturday and Sunday evenings. Now those two things aren't really connected of course. Being around my parents doesn't lead me to overeat. But we did eat out both nights. We hardly ever eat out. And when I say hardly ever, I mean almost never. Unless we are going out with family, we eat at home. Saturday night we went out for burgers and fries and Sunday was Mexican. In both instances, I ate until I was ready to explode and then I felt ill. Not sure what it is about restaurant eating that makes me stuff myself but luckily it doesn't happen that often!

I'm already dreaming about our summer garden. There is a great post up at Northwest Edible Life about succession planting and how to make it work. It's something I've never had much luck with unfortunately. Our summer crops last well into the fall and by the time I'm thinking fall/winter crops it's too late to plant them.They really need warm soil and sun to get going. This year, I'm determined to get it right. My chard is a good grower but I have almost no luck with beets, carrots, spinach or peas. Maybe one less tomato (GASP) might make room for the fall crops....

I ordered stamps and things for making cards as well as the ingredients I need for making cheese yesterday. I'm pretty excited about both! Really excited about the cheese making. I love the idea of making cheese from milk that I know where it came from. Plus the difference from store bought - incomparable! Apparently homemade feta will last in the fridge for a year. Not that it will actually last that long in our house. Did you know that feta is not naturally salty? It's only when they brine it that it gets salty. I loved the fresh feta marinated in olive oil with some dried herbs. Divine!

Today is one of those days when I'm glad I can just pull something out of the freezer for dinner (carnitas in this case). It's such a wonderful thing to have yummy, healthy food in there waiting for days when I really can't handle anything more than slow cooking some beans and heating tortillas. D will make the guacamole. Voila - dinner.

My bathroom smells like a brewery and that's a good smell. D has three different batches of beer going right now so I know he's a happy man.

The two batches of kefir I made the past two days have both turned out good! I won't mention what happened to the first two I made. I finally seem to have gotten the hang of it. I like the taste, which surprised me. And J drank a glass I'd mixed with the pomegranate kefir I get at Trader Joes. Eventually I'm planning on easing up on the sugar infused kefir but gradual is the way to go. J loves his kefir :)

That's about all - amazingly enough this post got long while I was sitting around not doing anything ;)
By the way, when I spell checked this post it kept highlighting kefir. Get with the times spell check.