Puddlelucious

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Listen to the song for you, bare your feet and still your thoughts
as it dances upon you ears with rhythms that you know -

oscillations of the tide, and surgings of the heart,
raindrops on soft blades of grass, and flickering firelight’s glow.
Heaven’s most angelic choir drips honey to your soul,
filling in cracks and caverns, healing where pain’s passed through.
The song of nature’s making brings life where life has left.
Love bursts up from hardened ground and passions spring anew

ⓒ 2003

Fun in Durham

Daniel and I went to Durham yesterday to visit Amy and Micah. Daniel had a good time running around and staying busy, while Micah was lecturing a large fish about the benefits of eye blinking, and got a little irked that the fish was not taking his advice. Both enjoyed watching all the other kids, and Daniel even got chased by one.

Spinach and Feta Stuffed Chicken

Many of the meals I cook are accidental. Last night I wanted to cook Greek Chicken Pasta, but unfortunately, I forgot to buy red onion at the store - red onion is essential. I ended up doing a recipe search with the ingredients I had on hand: chicken, feta, but no red onion. I browsed through and found one with spinach, and having just read an article on superfoods, I was craving spinach... or at least feeling guilted into eating some. This recipe is a derivation of one from Allrecipes.com.

Serves 4

4 chicken breasts
10 oz frozen chopped spinach, thawed
1/3 cup mayonnaise
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 cup feta
8 strips bacon
3/4 cup chicken broth

In a bowl, mix the spinach, mayonnaise, garlic and feta. If mayo isn't your thing, substitute with two eggs.

Butterfly the chicken but not all the way through (fancy way of saying split it open so you can stuff something inside).

Open the chicken breasts in a pan or on your cutting board and spoon a quarter of the spinach onto each one. I chose to do the smooth side of the breast down since I am not very good at butterflying the chicken and the rough side had holes in it.

Close the breasts back up and wrap two pieces of bacon around each breast, securing them with tooth pics.

Heat up a large skillet with a tablespoon of olive oil. I bring the temperature up to high, then reduce to medium-high.

Place the chicken breasts in skillet, drizzle tops with more olive oil, and let them cook for 4 minutes before carefully flipping them with tongs. It is okay if some of the stuffing falls out. Cook the other side for another 4 minutes and flip back over.

Add the chicken broth and reduce the temperature to medium and cover with a tight lid. Allow the chicken to simmer until the chicken is 165 deg F. The cooking time will vary depending on how thick the breasts are and how hot the pan is. Mine took 15-20 minutes.

When the chicken is fully cooked, set the chicken aside and continue to simmer the sauce for several minutes. With a spatula, loosen any of the yummy browned pieces of stuffing from the bottom of the pan.

Serve over pasta or with your favorite veggies.

Before and After the Benjamin Moore Nantucket Fog

Before - Restrained Gold (Sherwin Williams)

After - Nantucket Fog (Benjamin Moore)

We painted all weekend and finished the downstairs and about 90% of the way up to the ceiling in the foyer. The first morning after we had started the living room, I woke up at 5 am and was unable to go back to sleep because I was worried I didn't like the new color and had made a huge mistake... as in we purchased seven gallons of paint and there was no going back. Once we covered up the last of the yellow and pulled up the blue tape, I felt much better. It's a drastic change, but definitely an improvement.

Benjamin Moore Nantucket Fog

We moved to our current house in May 2007. We loved the color of our walls at the old place, which was a greenish-blueish-silver from a Pottery Barn catalogue, but for some reason, Joe insisted that he wanted something warmer at the new place. We painted all the major walls of our new house a "Restrained Gold." It's really not a bad color. I see similar shades in Better Homes and Gardens often.

But if I look at how my life has interacted with the color yellow, one might say we were casual strangers. I have one article of clothing that is yellow - an old Crabby Mike's t-shirt from an Easter trip to Myrtle Beach in college. As the paint was going up, I told mom, "I'm afraid this color is going to give me a headache, but maybe it will grow on me... not the headache, the color." Since then, I have decided that yellow = headache. It makes for a very ugly background in pictures and I think it just makes me cranky. Most of the time, I prefer to have the lights off in the living room because the yellow... uhhummm... RESTRAINED GOLD, causes me to lose my personal restraint.

Much to my surprise, two weeks ago, Joe casually asks, "So, are you ready to paint the house back to the color we had in Cary?" Yes... but what was that color? We didn't pick the color. The only thing we know about the color is that the previous homeowner found it in a Pottery Barn catalogue and that it was the most heavenly color ever. Yesterday we went to Sherwin Williams and looked at an old Pottery Barn and a recent Benjamin Moore fan deck and think that "Nantucket Fog", though maybe not exactly what we had, should fit our current space and go with the other colors. The other colors (shown in the swatch) are Fireweed, Garden Gate, and Oyster Shell. The kitchen and dining room are Fireweed, the front sitting room and guest room are Garden Gate, and the bathrooms are Oyster Shell. Garden Gate looks more green in person, but it is very dark. What do you think? Would Nantucket Fog be an improvement?

Oddities

We all have our oddities. Most likely if we laid them out on the table like a deck of cards, we'd find we have many in common. The oddity that annoys even myself is what I will call habitual obsession - I won't say OCD because most Americans are at least partially control freaks due to excess of time, wealth, and choice.

My tendency towards habitual obsession is what drives me to drink a tall glass of Carnation Instant Breakfast every morning and evening. It is what forced me to stay up last night until I was satisfied with my new blog layout in both Mozilla and IE and caused me to dream of layouts on into my sleep. It compels me to fixate on something I wish to purchase until every possible price has been compared, options weighted, and I finally buy it a year later. It woke me in high school to write down verses of poetry and double check that I had completed homework. It had me drooling over blueberry bagels and cream cheese in the middle of differential equations, go through several months of grad school eating two fried eggs over easy each afternoon, and break open a box of pie crust only to diminish it spoonful by spoonful over the course of a week - several times. Some of these obsessions last a few days, some last for years. It is by habit that I fall into these.

Unfortunately, I am not farsighted enough to determine which are habitual obsessions and which are true passions. I have a whole list of hobbies and activities I have enjoyed over the years which I no longer do. I think I am actually in mourning over no longer backpacking because I placed my identity in being a backpacker. Pottery is another that I wonder what will happen to... same with gardening. I realize that people change and so do circumstances, but often the abandonment of these indistinguishable passions/obsessions leaves me feeling a bit lost, and honestly - petty and flighty.

At the same time, I relish building a repertoire of skills and tastes even if it is as simple cooking the best twice baked potatoes or as complicated as throwing lidded pots. Hopefully, although I cannot always approach these with the same fervor, I will still be able to dabble in these loves and share them in the future.

Silent Nights in Downtown Raleigh

Awhile back I posted about the late-night noise emanating from downtown Raleigh. Turns out it was the Cargill soybean plant. After fuming for weeks, I finally called them. They returned my call, but I missed it. After several more weeks of fuming, I called the number they left me and got hold of Joe P. Nice man. He was concerned about the noise and said he'd look into it. That night I heard the noise again, but several weeks passed with no noise. I gave Joe P a call to thank him for whatever he did. It turns out they did some maintenance on a fan in the air conditioning section which seems to have solved the problem. It looks like I am done fuming about the plant. Now, I am just waiting for the summer concerts at Walnut Creek.

Why, Hello There!

Garden Update

Over the past several weekends, Joe and I have been hard at work on the gardens. The garden boxes and brick walkway are complete, the grids are laid, and the early spring plantings have been done. The potted garlic and onion have sprouted, along with a couple peas. Out of curiosity, I dug up a potato and was happy to see many little tubers and a shoot starting to grow.

Indoors, many of the replanted tomatoes are up. Other new things that have sprouted are dill, spring mix lettuce, romaine, zucchini, cantaloupe, squash, and chives. Several days ago I put some peas in a Ziploc bag with a wet paper towel. In a day or two, those sent out roots and this morning I planted them in the ground by the bird feeder. Hopefully those will be a nice distraction for the mourning doves at the garden begins to look more tempting.

Concerning What to Wear to the 10 Year Reuinion

me: i hope it warms up by then

katieannfox: ME TOO
otherwise spring casual is going to be a bit of a stretch for me

me: yeah, me too
my dress is sleeveless
i need to find a cute sweater
... funny thing is, i don't do cute
i'm so conflicted

katieannfox: i KNOW
so conflicted
i'm sure there will be very cute outfits there

me: i thought i was a rocker chick awhile

katieannfox: really? that's cute

me: b/c i sang at church
HAHAHA
(suddenly aware of what a dork I am) wow

katieannfox: HAHAHAHA
that's hysterical

me: yeah, totally

katieannfox: this is why you're my friend

A Gardener's Indoor Pe(s)t

Woe of woes: I returned from church this afternoon to find my seedlings had been ravaged by none other than a cat that was sleeping nonchalantly on our bed. Every one of my 20 tomato plants had been chewed up, leaving sad little stalks twisted and bent from the peat pods. Most of the peppers were still intact. It really was my fault, because after I was done with the morning viewing, I left the dome lid off the tray. I even pondered earlier about whether the cat would eat these as they got too big to keep the lid on - I guess I got my answer. Fortunately, I planted 8 weeks out, and there are still 6 weeks before the last frost date, so I didn't loose too much time. I will have to plan a way to protect them as they grow. The Ace tomatoes sprouted in a week the first time around and the mixed variety took 1 - 2 weeks to sprout. Several of the Aces were already pressing on the lid.