pepto bismol shots?

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! It seems as though everyone survived Kraffle's wedding! It was a lovely day overall. Woke up at the parents house, got to chopping Veggs and cutting cheese and making bruscetta (sp?) Rounds. Then people start showing up. Then everyone was there. THen we had a wedding! Bread (kraffle's husband) had his roommate D officiating and he did a bread and kraffle special speed version. The proper ceremony took under 2 minutes...for real. And good thing too because 1) it was melt hot outside and 2) Kraffle's started to giggle and then I did and that could have been bad.

After the wedding came EtOH, food, and general celebration for the 30 or so guests. I think everyone had a good time. People started to leave around 7 or 8, with the final hotel-staying guests departing a little after 9. J, karrie, and I were staying at hotel parents... they charge less there and breakfast is included.

We went to bed around 11 and then I woke up feeling like nauseous butt. Awesome. After mulling things over I decided to get up, go to the bathroom and get my barf on... on problem was that I couldn't yak. After dry heaving for a bit and then lying helpless on the floor for a while, I heard my mom awake in the next room. I don't care if I am 26 years old dragged my barfy Ass to the next room, started crying, and told my mom I didnt feel well.

35 minutes later and 2 shots of pepto bismol down the hatch I think I'm finally better.

Congrats kraffle and bread. Next time I will figure a better way to share my happy emotions than with gastrointestinal acrobatics.

Free Kittens

Today we talk about the great (mother effing) outdoors. We have about 3/4 of an acre of land. Everyone in our neighborhood has a riding lawnmower, except us. I now understand why. When we moved here the grass had already grown so much that we had to call in professionals with their big-time mowers to do the first cut. It was very fun to watch them, but also out of our budget (53 dollars for the cut and weed whacking). It's only been 3 days but the grass was starting to get too tall for comfort. If we let the grass grow too much then our mower won't cut it and then we'd have to hire the 53$ guys... no thank you.

Today's schedule:

8:30- wake up

until 10:15- clean up a bit around the house and eat breakfast

10:30: go buy salt for the water softener (7$ for fifty pounds of iron remover plus salt)

11: grab ipod and mowing shoes, attempt to pour gasoline into mower... most gets in

11:03ish: mower starts on first try... I think I'm a rockstar

blah blah blah...

I got through the entire front lawn and decide to stop the mower to empty the bag. That was all good until it didn't restart. After much cursing, a cut finger, 1/2 liter of blue gatorade, and 10 minutes to rest, it restarted. 20 or so minutes later, it ran out of gas... replay me trying not to spill gas, replay me trying to start the stupid thing again, much more cursing, and it's off to more mowing. It got me all the way to the point where I had about 5 rows worth of mowing left when it stopped... why me??? Ok... again, much much much more cursing, more gatorade, more time and it's working one more time. Sweet! the home stretch! or so I thought. It does well until I have 8 feet left to mow... 8 freaking feet... and it dies. I'm sweating. I'm tired. I'm pissed. I walk around the house a few times and I consider just leaving the 8 feet... however, I'm OCD and to pigheaded... top off the gatorade and get it going again.

I WON! The lawn is now mowed. My shoulder and entire right arm is exhausted. I can't wait to do this again... NOT.

Finally... to round things out... we got lawn furniture... found it last night while out to get gas. It was 20 dollars for 3 pieces (we had to go out and get new cushions). They also had kittens there... anyone want a kitten? They were cute.

PS... I finished kreffles shoes. They're awesome. Pictures to come.

Lazy Susan

Today's adventure involved unpacking some more boxes in the kitchen/dining room. We'd done a lot of unpacking but there were still 5 or so miscellaneous boxes remaining. One of my finds was a third lazy susan. I had my spices on 2 lazy susans already, but lazy susans are best when they actually work... duh. Now the one that was missing the bottom spinny part is in the garbage... see: lazy susan into the garbage!

One more exciting thing that was done today was hang the paper towel roll dispenser. This paper towel dispenser originally came from Marc's and was under 4 dollars. J. has a random rule that only applies to some purchases some of the time. For example, he was only willing to spend 4 dollars or under on a paper towel dispenser. So I found this one at Marc's and we used it at our old apartment. Finally, it has an official home. Who knew that a 4 dollar paper towel dispenser would look so nice...

No yardwork for me today. I'm over ivy for the day. Not to mention it's like a bazillion degrees and humid outside and nice and cool inside.

As a random aside, I get to go try on my wedding dress today, but don't expect any pictures. Speaking of weddings, I have to finish bedazzling some shoes for Kraffles, she's getting married this weekend. Pictures will follow after the wedding.

Hungry Beaster in the houuuuuuuse!

Welcome to Hungry Beaster's Homeowner Humor. I realized today that being a new homeowner is pretty funny. Not only that, but being in a house with a nice kitchen provides the opportunity to make lots of good food.

Anyways, I'm Beaster... (nickname, of course, given to me by my sister a long time ago). My fiance and I purchased our first house in northeastern Ohio. We moved in 6 days ago and have been working to exhaust ourselves since then. I guess I should have taken a bunch of pictures of all the house stuff before we did anything, but eh, that didn't happen.

Let's talk a little about the house:
It's a lovely ranch, 3 bedroom 2 full bathroom. All you reallly need to know is that the kitchen is big. Lots of cook prep room, standard gas stovetop (big plus), standard other stuff like fridge and microwave. The house is otherwise awesome. Everything is updated and clean which means that the heavy work to do is outside, and believe me... there is work to be done.

In addition to talking about the work to be done outside, I will be sharing some of the successes and failures of food. Especially focused right now on summer appropriate items (read GRILL and yummy cool desserts).

Night 1 of having the grill was such a standard grill meal:
Steak, marinated vidalia onion, asparagus. And then baked potatoes. Omm nomm, delicious.

Grill night 2:
This was like... the best ever! This recipe came from my friend K, provider of many recipes and also inspiration for food... and inspiration for house things.

Greek Burgers with cucumber sauce

1 pack ground turkey
1 small container of regular feta cheese
1 small container of sliced black olives
black pepper to taste
a few shakes of dried basil

before turning on your grill, take off the grates and spray with non-stick spray. heat grill and throw the burgers on. try and grill one side well before flipping, turkey burgers don't take to frequent flipping.

while the burgers are cooking you can make the sauce:

1 container reduced fat sour cream
a few shakes of dried dill
salt
pepper
1/2 tsp white sugar
1 cucumber (peeled, seeds removed, chopped)
1T white vinegar

mix everything together... and avoid consuming all of it before the burgers are done.

throw the burgers on some buns, throw some sauce on the burgers, and you're done.


my plan for tonight is to take the leftover 2 burgers and chop them up, make some greek-ish pasta meat sauce and put it on top of some whole wheat pasta. side that with garlic bread and a fresh salad and dinner is served.

dessert is one of my simple favorites: pre-made graham cracker crust, filled with cook-and-serve chocolate pudding, whipped creme on top. Today I added some orange zest as I was cooking the pudding. Once the pudding was in the crust, I threw some pecans and sliced almonds on top. It's in the fridge right now, will keep you updated.



That's enough on the hungry beaster right now, now for the quick homeowner humor... I am trying to rip out ivy groundcover that has clearly not been tamed since before I was born. Anyways, as I was trying to rip some of it off one of the evergreen trees it is smothering, the ivy broke and I ended up on my ass nearly doing a backward somersault. Awesome.

Any recipes? I will try them and share.

Any good ideas for memorial day? We're having people over... I'm thinking about faux-cheesecake (recipe provided by Kraffles... aka, my sister) and easy key lime pie (found one the back of the pie shell, inspired by watching too much Dexter season 3)