Kale? Really? Well Ok Then.

I have decided that it is time to get healthier and loose some weight...ok like a lot of weight. About 60 lbs or so. Yep ya'll I'm a tubby. I usually don't eat a lot of junk food, and we usually don't have much processed food here. Most of what we eat is homemade straight from my heart. Yeah right, it is homemade though. So with that being said...


I have a pop addiction. Yeah big time. I love my pop, which is weird since I don't like to put a bunch of crap I can't pronounce in my body. I guess it is what it is, and it's bad for my health and body so it must go. Problem...I have no idea what to replace it with. I can manage to drink tea, but only with a ton of sugar( kinda defeats the purpose there). I hate the taste and smell of coffee. OMG when DH makes his espresso's I really want to puke. Water...it's so...blah. The only time that I can actually suck water down is when it's hotter than a witches tit (where did that saying come from? I just can't picture a witch's tit being hot, can you?) outside and then that is the only thing that will quench my thirst as long as there are tons of ice cubes.
Diet anything is for sure out. I do not like the taste of it, nor will I allow myself to grow attached to the taste of something artificial. I have a hard enough time getting used to the taste of stuff that's actually good for me. Juice is not cost effective enough, and shouldn't be sucked down like there's no tomorrow anyhow. So as you can see...I'm screwed.


Moving on...a couple of months ago, well I guess sometime before Christmas I saw a documentary about some guy doing a 60 day juice fast. It got me thinking, and that's about all it did. When I told DH about it he on the other hand was like, "hell yeah, why not?" So I found him a juicer. Then I got him the recipe for the Mean Green Juice. Then I got him the ingredients. Can you guess what came next? Yep, I made the juice for him. Can't you see it's all about the patterns here people?


This recipe had Kale in it, not a lot, but it had it. I don't know about you, but Kale is not my thing. At all. It stinks when you juice it and it is so strong and, and unpleasant tasting. The next time I made him a batch of this juice, I cut the amount of Kale in half and it still overpowered everything but the ginger. 


So I have established the fact that I do not like Kale. I don't care if it is the new super food to eat, and will wipe out every disease on earth. (Damn would't that be awesome?)  I do not like it. With that being said...


Last night, or rather early this morning I decided to try making my own veggie chips. So I looked it up on the good ole net, cuz that's were it's all at right. I found a recipe for carrot chips or rather strips, and since that's all I really had in the house that's what I made. So at 12:51am I started making them. Turned out pretty good too, and DH liked them. Think I will do things a bit different next time.


Now this brings me on to today. Guess what I'm making? Come on try and guess. Re-read over the last couple of paragraphs. Did you figure it out yet? Jeez...I'm making Kale chips with fresh shredded Parmesan. Bwahahaha! Guess what? They are pretty damn good, for Kale. I wouldn't call them chips though like everyone out there is calling them. Just cuz something is dried out and crunches don't mean it's a chip. You sure could never dip these things. They are fricken dried leaves for crying out loud, but I'll eat them. In fact, I can't seem to stop eating them. If DH don't get his butt up soon there wont be any for him to try out.


Here's what I did if you would like to try these:


I only made a small amount just in case they were gross.


four stems of kale
olive oil spray
sea salt
fresh Parmesan


Pre-heat oven to 350F


Wash and make sure you dry the kale well. Very important that it's dry.


Remove the leaves from the stems and place on a cookie sheet that has been sprayed with olive oil.


Spray the leaves with the olive oil


Take the sea salt and with your fingers sprinkle on the leaves of kale.


Shred some fresh parmesan and sprinkle lightly on each kale leaf.


Bake in heated oven for about twelve minutes. They will be done when the edges dry out and they feel crispy. 

Forget the Laughing Garden

Ok so enough with the serious stuff already. I spend about 90% of my time being serious and depressing, this blog is supposed to be a way for my humor, to come out as I struggle to deal with my Crazy life. At least I think there's some humor in me somewhere. And on that note...

I really hate my forgetfulness, it makes life so complicated and chaotic. I listen to the boys babbling on to each other when they aren't trying to kill the other (when they are trying to kill each other, I don't listen), and the things that come out of their mouths just makes me chuckle. I would love to share some of the things, but alas my forgetfulness strikes. I am seriously thinking I should invest in a recorder so that I might share the cuteness with others.

In fact last night while driving home from picking Princess up from night school, the boys were have great conversations. I mentioned the recorder thing to Princess between chuckles and she got out her phone and tried to record them. It didn't really work, but thanks bugs for trying. Yes I call my daughter bugs, and it isn't because she likes bugs either. She's just my luv bugs. He he, I got to embarrass her!

Jokester and Superman have a typical brother relationship I guess. I personally think they do way more fighting than the average brothers, but then again I don't have to sit and listen to other brothers all the time. During the rare times where they are not trying to kill each other, these two get along fabulously and peels of laughter abound. Jokester, being true to his nickname loves to make Superman laugh, and he will stop at nothing to make this happen. Superman thinks he is hilarious. You know those videos of the babies laughing hysterically? Superman laughs just like that. His laughter is contagious. It makes you stop whatever you are doing to listen, and then wonder what they are doing or getting into.

On a different topic...the weather here in Minnesota is deifying all weather norms. We have virtually no snow, although we are supposed to get a light dusting today and tonight. Yesterday the temps were 52 degrees, which I think is much better than -20 below. I do understand the need for snow here, since we don't get rain...well usually don't get rain as I speak it is misting out, our spring will be very dry. Not a good thing for the farmers if we don't get some form of precipitation here. I decided to go out to the garden and see if my carrots were still going. I just threw some leaves over the tops of them in a half hearted  attempt to see if I could get carrots in the winter. I had read that if you throw about a foot of mulch over them they would keep going. My leaves didn't even come close to being a foot, more like four inches. To my surprise...there are carrots still growing, and to an even greater surprise the onions that I thought had died are growing too.

It's a carrot!

Some of the carrots didn't make it, or rather some of the tops didn't make it. I suppose when I go out this spring to start digging I will find some more. Hopefully they will have become good size by then.

My surprise onions. If you look close there is actually some green in there.

These really took my by surprise since I thought I had killed them this summer. They didn't have the ideal spot to grow and were over shadowed by the cabbage which went crazy. I'm very glad they are coming back since I use onions in just about everything. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

They might be small, but there they are, my carrots!

I had a really hard time getting a picture of these little guys, for some reason the flash on my camera is powerful enough to cause permanent blindness. That is, unless I stand fifty feet away from whatever I'm taking a picture of. I really need a new camera. Carrots...that's what I was talking about. I have never planted carrots before, in fact the only veggie's I have ever grown have been tomatoes for Princess. She loves tomatoes with a passion, and she really had her fill this summer. Jeez back to carrots here. I planted them kind of late and a bit too close and was too lazy to thin them out and didn't really have anywhere for them to go had I actually thinned them so they didn't grow very big. I also apparently have the soil that is the consistency of concrete as you can see from the largest white one that was starting to curve back up. Lessons learn right?

In all my garden was a huge experiment, and one that I really enjoyed doing. Before the earwigs attacked the corn, and the rabbits attacked everything else but the beans, carrots, and tomatoes my garden looked awesome! I found out that I really need to start my seeds much earlier than I did as some things didn't get to fully grow before the frost hit. In fact I should be starting them now I guess. Not sure where I will put all these to be soon to be plants someday, as my house is stuffed to capacity. I suppose I can always use the huge coffee table that is in my upstairs bathroom. Yes I have a coffee table in there, don't ask...please.

I would post a picture of my beautiful garden, but alas I can not find one. I know I took pictures because I was so proud of myself, but they are no where to be found. Which means I must have deleted them. The only picture that remains is of bare ground when I dug up the garden or rather when DH and his oldest dug it up...not very interesting if you ask me. 

Random thought of the day: hell I don't have one right off the top of my head. Minds a little on the blank side today.

On a side note, did you figure out how I got the tile of this post? I forget, the boys laugh, and I grew a garden...pretty good huh? Pa leeez it's called lack of imagination, you should re-read the random thought line again.