Tag Archives: olympics

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Dear god it has been hot. It has been in the 90s all week, and the humidity has been high. It isn’t helping that I’ve been making BBQ sauce downstairs and it has been boiling/cooking down for the last 3 1/2 hours. Yup, that is what happens when you make BBQ sauce from fresh tomatoes. The plus is that I now have a bunch of sauce that I can freeze and pull out as I need it over the winter. But it is making my house really warm.

I noticed something I’ve stopped doing. I use to keep a log of all the produce I got from my CSA and made a list of meals I was making with it. For example I got 16+ lbs of tomatoes and only used 9 of those pounds for that BBQ sauce. More mind boggling is that for the average price of organic tomatoes is about $4 per pound, that makes my BBQ sauce $36 for 3 jars! I have to say the tomatoes alone is the main reason why my CSA pays for itself.

Farm Round Up:

What I got:
1 quart of purple tomatillos
1 quart of green beans
1/2 pint blackberries
1 large spaghetti squash
8 lbs slicing tomatoes (about 12)
8 lbs big ass cherry tomatoes (more like tennis tomatoes)
3 asian eggplant
3 bell peppers (2 green, 1 mostly red)
3 red italia peppers
2 poblano peppers
4 white onions (very small)
1 lb 4oz okra

What I’m cooking:
BBQ Sauce (9lbs of tomatoes cooked down and frozen for future use)
Tomatillo Coconut Ice Cream (working on a new recipe)
Black Bean & Tomatillo Soup (using a few tomatillos, more tomatoes, and a poblano pepper)
Bhindi Masala from Isa Does It (tomatoes and okra)
Black Bean Tacos with roasted peppers and fresh salsa (peppers and tomatoes)
Jajangmyeon Spaghetti Squash (spaghetti squash, older zucchini, and maybe peppers)
Eggplant Stir-Fry with Green Beans and Cashews (eggplant and green beans)
Maple Cupcakes for Jon’s Birthday (using absolutely no produce ^__~)

What really stinks is that I was originally planning on making some Nacho Tots with some peppers and maybe tomatillos on top. Then as I started to make this list I saw that I never wrote down the planned recipe for the eggplant and green beans. *cries* I keep seeing photos of roasted potatoes and french fries and have a weird desire for them. Actually, I’ve been really craving processed starchy comfort foods but keep knowing that I should really be eating all this great produce. *sigh* I guess I shouldn’t complain. We got 16lbs of organic tomatoes, which at retail prices would of been $64! Better start eating.

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This old YA novel shows us how far women’s gymnastics has come — and how far it hasn’t

This is an interesting review of an old 70s book targeted for teenage girls. It talks about how much the sport of gymnastics have changed in pop culture and how the pressures on girls have changed. What I find funny is that the main character criticizes the Russian team for being TOO athletic, while today, Russian athletes have criticized the team USA for taking the grace out of the sport. I am all for taking some of the “dance” and “grace” aspects out of the sport, as they are starting to look a little silly. Don’t agree? Watch the men’s floor exercises and then watch the women’s. What is with all the these weird octopus arms ladies?

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The Secret Lives of Cadavers

My work is a little weird. I work with two people who are pretty open about death. We have talked a few times about how we would like be buried. Yes, I know what I would like done with my dead body, and Jon knows this too. It is his fault for making me watch Six Feet Under and made me aware of the funeral business. I am not 100% what I want to have done, but I am considering donating my body to be a cadaver after reading this article. 

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Simone Biles’s adoption defies a foster care system that punishes black families

This is a nice article talking about how the foster care system in the USA is broken and racially bias. They talk about Simone Biles because she was very lucky to be adopted by her Grandparents, as appose to being placed in the foster system. I’ve heard a lot of shady things about the foster system, and I remember reading a memoir about being placed in the system for school.

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This “wacky wallpaper house” in Minnesota will assault your eyes with patterns galore

Totally a fluff piece but I am loving this. Offbeat Home features a house that is just so beyond matchy matchy. Would I want to decorate my house like this? Uh no. I actually was a little dizzy the day I read this post and just felt more sick from looking at all that pattern! But there is something admirable about being so over the top that it works.


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Hey guys! Another Sunday Reading list that didn’t get out for Sunday. Surprise! There are lots of reasons for this, the main two being really busy and then my husband had to work some over the weekend so I spent more of my free time looking up information about baby mattresses. Enthralling right? I know you are dying to know more about how to buy a baby mattress, but I won’t go into the those details today. I’ll just jump right into the posts. Oh, and for anyone who wants more food posts, there should be three restaurant reviews coming up and possible *crosses fingers* a recipe! Yeah, I think I might of finally nailed the savory zucchini muffin.

Oh, I am also curious, would you guys be interested if I wrote a series about framing? This blog has never been so much about DIY nor have I really talked much about my job as a framer. I mean, did any of your guys know that? I really don’t know how many times the word “framer” has been typed on this blog. XD I have been talking a lot with my bosses about how our customers are largely people who have had their parents teach them to go to custom framing shops, or serious art collectors. I might do a few posts about what to look for in a framer, how to do your own frames/shadow boxes, and how save money on framing. 

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Millions of Women are Injured During Childbirth. What Aren’t Doctors Diagnosing Them?

I’m kind-of glad to be pregnant during the age of the internet since there are a growing numbers of personal blogs talking about the complications about pregnancy. I can also quickly google a bunch of wives tales like not raising your arms up too high because the umbilical cord will choke your baby. BTW that is total bullshit. Oddly Cosmopolitan (you know that magazine giving all those hot sex tips) wrote a pretty intense article about how little we treat postpartum injuries.

This is clearly a problem with the medical industry in general where we treat injuries with surgeries before doing physical therapies. What makes this case a little more interesting is that the side effects here might be so embarrassing that it would prevent women from seeking the help they need.  Or they get dismissed as just normal post pregnancy stuff like Sayward from Bonzai Aphrodite has written about.

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The world’s most expensive coffee is a nightmare for the animals who produce it

When you go vegan you get asked a lot of silly questions. You mean you don’t eat meat? Not even chicken? Well, what about fish? Reptiles? Bugs? Not even silk? When I get asked these questions I usually talk about poop coffee or kopi luwak. If you aren’t familiar it is an expensive coffee fruit that is eaten by the Asian Palm Civit (an animal in the Feliformia suborder aka related to cats, ferrets, weasels, hyenas, and meercats) then pooped out and brewed. It is a product that seems to not hurt the animal to get, I mean the civits aren’t needing that poop, right? But it is hard to find enough of this poop to fill a bag to sell. So people cram these animals into cages like how we cram chickens into cages. Pretty much, it is an example that if there is a market for it, the animals will get exploited.

I am glad that a news outlet is picking up this bit of information. But even the picture they used is pretty misleading. Most companies put the animals in worse conditions. Some companies outright lie and say they “forage” for the beans, which should be a big old red flag of bullshit- or civitshit.

Former President Bill Clinton salutes before speaking during the second day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia , Tuesday, July 26, 2016. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Hillary Clinton’s husband wore a fetching pantsuit to honor her nomination for US president

I thought this article was pretty funny. It goes through all the details of Mr. Clinton’s outfit in the same way we talk about the First Lady’s outfits. And if you are like my husband who said “I don’t get it, what’s a pantsuit? Don’t all suits have pants?” well I read up a little bit of the history of the term “pantsuit.” The term was first used for little boys who would wear blazers with shorts. As that style started to go out of fashion, women started to work more white collar jobs. Traditionally women would wear suits composed of a blazer and skirt, but slowly started to wear pants instead of skirts. To make a distinction from the traditional “suit” (read: skirt) from the newer ones with pants, they called them pantsuits (since they were already in the English vernacular.) So yes, pantsuits are just suits with a name that is more fun to say.

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Is Watching Gymnastics Worse Than Being an NFL Fan?

Hands down my favorite part of the olympics is the women’s gymnastics. I loved it when I was a little girl and vaguely remember begging my mom to let me take up gymnastics. I wasn’t allowed to because of the whole stunts your growth thing, but I am sure a large portion was because of money. I remember always not wanting to go to my dance classes when I had them, sorry Mom for wasting your money! I did like the classes, I am just a little brat about time management ^__~. But there is something different about gymnastics than some of the other sports I liked to watch when younger like rhythmic gymnastics and ice skating- it’s the muscle.

Now that I am more about some light weight training (though I plan on amping up my game post baby) I have a lot more respect for these girls. I find myself like more sports like Football (er.. American Football), soccer, and yes, embarrassingly enough American Ninja Warrior. Heck, I’ve even started to get into watching the men’s gymnastics, even it means there aren’t any lamé or rhinestones on anything. WTF guys? Jazz it up a little!

What I don’t like about this article is that it doesn’t go too much in depth. You would think by the end of the article everything is perfect in the gymnastics world. Plus they criticize the femininity of the sport as being anti-feminist… which might be true for 2nd wave feminism. 3rd wave feminists would argue that the pink and sparkles aren’t preventing the girls from being their physical best, so therefore the only thing preventing their respect is that the idea that femininity is bad.

I will be rooting for team USA, duh. But I am pretty excited to see Oksana Chusovitina who qualified to compete for the vault exercise for Uzbekistan. This is her 7th Olympics, and she is 41 years old. There is also Cătălina Ponor (Romania) who is 28 and has qualified for beam. I am excited to see these older women compete.