PIck-Me-Up

While shopping the other day with my sister, I found these sitting on a shelf in the dressing room area of the store. I just had to shake my head and laugh. I wish that was all that it took!

I was updating my IPod and I occasionally search for old songs that I want to add. This one had been on my list for years and it has finally become available on ITunes. WooHoo!!!

We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off by Jermaine Stewart:

Crafting with Noah

There is nothing better than crafting with my grandson, Noah. He will be four in April and it looks like he has inherited his love of crafting from his grandma. He also has a very talented poppa who loves to work in ceramics.


He was staying overnight at our house so we had plenty of time to create. First, he wanted to make his mama a necklace so I he went through my extensive bead stash and designed this necklace. I was really impressed with how picky he was with the beads he used. We used a beading tray to lay out the beads before he strung them.


He really wanted to paint and I don't have much in the way of paints in my craft room but he managed to find my stash of "Scribbles." I really didn't want to use them since they are for decorating clothing and if he would get any into his clothing, it would be there forever. But how can grandma say no when looking at a face like that. I decided to have him decorate washers with the "Scribble" paints.

He was very careful and picky about the colors he used.

We decided to take a toothpick to the paint to glam it up a little bit.

This is Noah working his magic with a toothpick. It was amazing how beautiful it looked.

He was so careful as he worked.

He ended up making three pendants: one for mama, one for papa and one for himself. Even Rocketman was impressed with how they turned out. It took most of the day to dry so we left them at my house for now.

Mandy

It was 1975, the year I fell in love with Barry Manilow. Don't worry, Rocketman has always known. "Mandy" was the song that introduced me to Barry's incredible voice and he still gives me shivers today.

I know that cats don't come when they are called like dogs. But recently I found out that if I sing a song and it's usually "Mandy" Louie will come running and jump on me and mew a really annoying mew like he's mad. I don't know if my singing sounds like a cat which very well could be the reason or if it is just the most annoying sound to a cat. Who knows.

This has been going on for the better part of a month when Rocketman sent me an email with the lyrics to "Mandy." He had been telling me that I was singing them wrong but I'm the Barry Manilow expert so I refused to listen to him.

Come to find out.............he was right. For 35 years I've been singing:
I remember all my life
Rain in Dallas, cold as ice

which really is
Raining down as cold as ice

Now that I thought about it and I never had, rain in Dallas, cold as ice doesn't make sense. But then when I look at any Stevie Nicks lyrics they don't make any sense to me either.

I still can't seem to sing it right but I'm trying. Maybe someday Barry will sing it to me but until then there is always YouTube:

Happy BIrthday Laura!!

Happy 25th Birthday Baby Girl!! We are so proud of you!

And When I Cook Badly This Can Happen

Rocketman bought me a Cuisinart food processor for Christmas. You may wonder where he would get an idea like that from but the heavy hint came from me. I've been making homemade soups and freezing single portions for him to take to work for lunch. It has been a much healthier lunch for him instead of the usual fast food he had been eating. The company cafeteria also leaves a lot to be desired and can be expensive.

The food processor would save me from chopping all those veggies with my increasing number of dulling knives. I still haven't figured out the right way to sharpen them so I haven't. Yesterday I was making a broccoli cheese soup and a minestrone. I had a lot of veggies to cut and also cheese to shred which was perfect for my new food processor.

I'm not one to look at the instructions so I started by using the metal blade attachment to cut some onions. I like my onions diced very small so I don't know they are there. A few pulses reduced the onion to mush but I put it into the soup because who would really notice that anyway. So when it came to the carrots, I knew I needed to put in the slicing blade which was round and fit on the top of the processor with an attachment.

I could not figure out how the attachment attached to the metal blade. It gets bad when I have to resort to looking at the instruction book. That was no help since it's wording was to attach one to the other and no pictures. Great, also the instruction book was about 1/4 instruction and 3/4 recipes. They also included a DVD so I put that in and watched. Again, the demonstrator said to attach one to the other and she should doing it on the DVD. Could I do it? NO! I tried off and on for hours and finally gave up and chopped everything by hand as usual.


The next disaster came after I made the broccoli soup and needed to blend it in the food processor. I took the soup and poured it carefully into the food processor. Before I even had a chance to turn it on, it started leaking soup all over the counter.


It was about then I notice that the the processor had a "Do Not Fill Above This Line" which happened to be about 1/4 from the bottom and I had filled it to the top. I quickly had to dump everything back in the pot.

I cleaned up the mess and then add the soup to the line to pulse it in shifts. Nada, nothing. I had it all lined up, the blade in the bottom and it wouldn't go. I dumped the soup back into the pot and lined everything up again to see if I could get it to work without the soup. Nope. The red light came up but it wouldn't pulse.

I gave up and waited for Rocketman to come home. He had a doctor's appointment with Dr. NBM (No Bedside Manner) and I was already is a foul mood but off we went. Poor guy, the entire trip which was about 15-20 minutes he heard all the details of my day with my new food processor. He felt so bad. The doctor's appointment went great and again Dr. NBM was cordial. Again, I wondered if he had been reading my blog.

On the way home we decided to eat dinner at a restaurant we hadn't been to in at least 10 years. I had gone recently with a girlfriend and the food was great. Who knew Happy Hour started at 4:00pm. The sign said to seat yourself and we found a booth. Poor Rocketman slammed his knee into the center post of the table as he climbed into the booth (it wasn't made for someone 6'5"). He was in pain and hungry. A waitress brought us menus and took our drink order. She came back right away with the Cokes and then disappeared.

Finally, another waitress cames and starts to wait on the booth in front of us that just came in (we had been waiting 10 minutes by now) and when she came by our booth, I said, "Excuse me, can you take our order." She just shooed me away. Rocketman and I were both really annoyed by then. She came back to the other booth and I told Rocketman to get ready with our coats because if she didn't come over to our booth next we would leave. She did come then and take our order but didn't seem happy to do so in the least.

With our order in, I then looked around the crowded bar area and restaurant and noticed that she seemed to be the only waitress in the whole place. The girl that had gave us menus and took our drink order had disappeared. So there was this one girl having to serve the Happy Hour guests and people like us who wanted to eat. I felt bad for her and now understood why she was so short with us.

Our food came and was delicious. Getting refills on our drinks was out of the question and getting the check was a wait. We ended up at the restaurant a lot longer than we had expected but that was fine. Time spent with Rocketman is always time well spent.

As soon as Rocketman came into the house, he went right to the food processor. In a split second he had the two pieces attached and had me do it myself so I would remember. You had to push a button to get them to lock together. He also figured out how to align the food processor and showed me what I had to do to make it work. What a guy! Some days I feel like a nut.

When I Cook Great...

When I cook something new and it turns out, I am surprised and thrilled. While cruising the Internet, I found Steamy Kitchen and this recipe for Korean Style Tacos. My friend Holly would lives out in the Los Angeles area has been telling me about the Kogi BBQ truck that Twitters where he is going to be and people line up for hours to get Korean BBQ on the go.

Steamy Kitchen had a recipe for Korean Style Tacos and when I saw that the ingredients were pretty basic. The only thing you would have to go to a Asian market for is the gochujang (red pepper paste) but I already has some.

I used the ingredients above which included a 1 pound pork roast that I had already slow cooked and pulled apart.


Wisked all the ingredients together.


Then added it to the pulled pork.

The recipe called for some cucumber pickles and I couldn't find any English or Japanese cucumbers so I just used some Romaine lettuce I had. I served them on a corn tortilla. Rocketman was SHOCKED by the taste. He couldn't believe I made them and they were so good. Remember, Rocketman has lived with my cooking for 30 years and it's not uncommon for a new recipe to spell disaster or a quick trip to Subway.

Wait until tomorrow's post to see the other side of my cooking.

New Craft Room

I moved my craft room from the basement to our son's old room. Rocketman painted it a lovely lavender and I'm over the moon about it. This is what it looks like from the doorway.


This is one of my work areas. I had to put up my posters from the South Korean drama "Boys Over Flowers."


I bought these garment racks over in South Korea and they are fantastic for holding my maedeup cording.

This is my other work area and you may recognize this table from my Korean blog. It is the one I garbage picked from my apartment building. It's in the tradition of Korean tables so it is low to the ground but I like to sit on the floor to work sometimes. It's good for the old knees and brings back many memories.

This is a shot of the closet which is filled with supplies.

Louie has already made himself at home. It was tough carrying everything up from the basement. My sister, nephew and niece came over to help move the heavy stuff. Rocketman can't lift for 6 weeks since his eye surgery.