Wonderful Things:

• Homemade pudding pops
• Peach milkshakes made from vanilla ice cream and a can of peaches (plus juice)
• Dishes being done (right now they're not)
• Gourmet hamburgers

And a few random notes:

• Our dishes pile up in the sink.  We don't have a dishwasher, so if we don't stay on top of the dishes, it gets pretty bad.  About a month ago we created a rule that you couldn't turn on the TV for any reason (DVDs and video games, since we're not actually hooked up to TV) unless the dishes were done.  This works great on days when we have extra time.  When we're both working all day long...oy.  The dishes.  I need to just suck it up and do them before it gets worse.
• Last week I grew my own enchanted castle.  My mom sent me one of those little expanding-sponge things in the shape of an enchanted castle.  And now I am the proud owner of a very wet enchanted castle which is reportedly 600% of it's original size.  Anyone know what you actually do with these things, anyway?  I guess I have to let it dry out now...seems like such a shame.

Pasta Salad

Vinaigrette:
1 c olive oil
4 T Balsamic vinegar
2 T dried basil
1 t fresh oregano
1 t salt
3 minced garlic cloves

Put all ingredients in blender and pulse on high.

Marinade overnight:
Vinaigrette
1 lb cooked pasta
2 T parsley
3 cloves garlic (chopped)

Add diced tomatoes, cucumbers, artichoke hearts (optional), and 1/2 lb grated cheese (mozzarella). Serve cold.

Things have been going slowly, and yet quickly. I've been writing every day (okay, I slacked off this weekend. But I'm back with it now) and the book is going well. It's a mess, but it's a first-draft mess, so that's okay. I'm having to hold back to keep from pushing myself to do more than I set as the goal, but I don't want to end up frustrated with the book.

I've also been having adventures in cooking. I've become mildly obsessed with learning to make things with what I already have in my kitchen, and with using the random things I've a acquired in the last month. Recent experiments have included fruit smoothies, peach milkshakes, and pasta salad, all of which turned out really good. (I've always wanted to know how to make that italian pasta salad you can buy at grocery store delis. It's one of my favorite foods, but it's too expensive to buy often. It turned out to be really easy and cheap to make, so yay.) It's nice to actually have time to mess around in my kitchen and see what comes out of it.

Today I got it into my head that I wanted to read Feed (by M.T. Anderson) to Drew while he worked. I knew I loved that book, but I'd forgotten just how brilliant it was. We're about halfway through it (it's not that long, but my voice hurts.) I've also been reading Kitty and the Silver Bullet (really amazing it's lasted so long without being read) and LOVING IT.

My life is boring, but that's okay. I needed the break. It's raining today and we took a break to take a walk in the rain...but now I need to get to work and get my writing done. *sigh*

One of my failings as a woman is that I don't bake. Drew cooks as much as I do (maybe more) even though I have to teach him how to make things, because I just don't like it. I don't make desserts, because I don't like sugary things much. We cook together once a week and eat left overs all week, because there's just no way we're going to make food every day. I just can't schedule that much time in my life to care about food.

But in the last several weeks I've gotten sick of the leftovers. We've started making waffles on Sunday mornings and have discovered that we can freeze them and eat them for breakfasts for weeks on end. As a result we actually ran out of flour. (That hasn't happened to me in three years, and I buy the small bags.)

Last night I was not in the mood for the leftovers we had, and I wanted pizza. We were already over-budget for the month, so even two dollar frozen pizzas (my favorite! way better than the deliverable stuff!) were out of the question. So for family night we made pizza from scratch out of a cookbook I'd never used. It came out wonderful even though Drew said it needed something on it besides cheese.

Being married has done strange things to me--one of which is that I now make things from scratch. On second thought, I think this has less to do with being married and more to do with knowing that my income only accounts for a little over half of our expenses every month, and our savings won't last forever. Our budget allows us to stock up on canned goods and basics, but we don't get to buy any ready-made stuff, because it's all too expensive and goes too fast. That means if we want to eat something other than our designated leftovers for the month, one of us has to make it. I've been discovering, though, that this is a good balancing factor for snacks. I have to really want it, which keeps me from just munching all the time. Eating extra things becomes a battle between my laziness and my munchiness, and it's usually a toss up between the two. I feel better than I used to, and I'm down to a really healthy weight, which makes me happy.