Today was the first day that Olivia told me “I love you”. Unprompted. She has said I love you before but in response to us telling her to say it.
But today, we were both sitting around on a bunch of pillows half watching Martha Speaks and half playing around and she stopped and looked at me and said “Ah luh u”. She can’t pronounce her Ls so she says N instead. But she can say the L in love. Funny.
Ah luh u, too, mija.
But first, a quick aside – isn’t this new site so pretty? B is amazing and worked super hard to get the way I wanted it. And I’m really picky. Um, hun, could you just left justify that word but leave the rest centered? Um, could you make that the same color as the rest? Actually, no, can you change the color? Um, can you pick another graphic? No, I don’t like that, go back to the first. Poor guy. But he loved every second of it. He talked to me endlessly about all the different coding and other things I did not even begin to grasp. I imagine this is what he feels like when I talk about clothes or fabric and stuff.
So, welcome to my new site. I hope you like it. I love it! It’s just so pretty 🙂
Ok, back to the drinks. Since January of 2009 I have only been able to drink beer or other alcoholic beverages with no concern of its effects on my babies for 2 months. If that. I weaned Olivia and then got pregnant pretty soon after so it actually may have only been a few weeks. Now, if you know me, you know I love beer. Even more than margaritas or mojitos or wine. So having to go without for so long, I decided to do something about it this summer. I decided to find non-alcoholic drinks that I liked more than beer that don’t contain high fructose corn syrup. Thing is these drinks are expensive and hard to find. So I decided to make my own. And they are amazingly deee-licious.
Here are the recipes if you want to try them. Seriously when I’m drinking this stuff I don’t envy Kraft who is downing a Bud Light Lime one little bit.
Basil Lemonade: This is a Giada recipe. Honestly I don’t have much luck with her recipes. Every time I cook something of hers, it doesn’t come out well but I had so much basil from our CSA box that I had to find something that used a lot of it fastbefore it turned brown and gross. I will warn you, though, for sure water this puppy down A LOT. I only use about half the sugar that the recipe calls for and use about 2-3 cups more of water. Oh, and if you want to feel fancy, which I usually do if I’m trying to not think of beer, use sparkling water.
Orange Mint Tea: This is from my Mennonite cookbook. Again, I needed something that used a lot of mint quickly, although it does hold up better than basil. Obviously, this recipe is not on the web so I’m going to give it to you from the book – Bring 3 cups of water to a boil. Put in bunch of mint, turn off burner, and cover. Let steep for 20+ minutes. Stir in 1/3 cup of sugar. Add 2 cups of orange juice (no pulp makes it better). Add 1/2 cup lemon juice (I add more). Stir, then add water until it’s no longer strong for you.
Knockoff Arizona Green Tea with Honey and Ginseng: The last drink I found was really more for my dad. My dad gets swept up in fad diets and fad exercising equipment all the time. The latest diet he was reading about said that he should drink lots of green tea. Now my dad does not take to structure at all so he ignored the rest of the diet but decided that he would stick to the green tea thing. So what has he been guzzling down? Arizona Green Tea. Yuck. Might as well be a Coke. So I asked him if I could make a tea that tastes better, would he drink that instead of the Arizona stuff? Sure. Ok, so I embarked on a quest to find something he liked better. Apparently a lot of people have set out on this quest. So it was actually no quest at all, I just googled Arizona green tea with ginseng and there was the recipe. Although I would suggest using 2-3 tea bags instead of just one. I like my tea strong. Oh, and I left out the ginseng. We just didn’t have it. Nor do I even know what it is.
So if you are pregnant, nursing, or don’t have the same affinity for beer that I have, try these recipes out.
From Brandon:
Welcome to the new V’s Voice. I hope you will find Vanessa’s site visually appealing, more feature rich and easier to use. If something within the design or structure doesn’t seem to make sense, leave a comment on this post and let us know. As you, the readers, continue to explore the site, we will continue to tweak and improve areas that we may have missed during the initial creation.
On the front-end, in addition to a whole new visual look, you’ll notice some great features. The homepage now has a slider for the three most recent posts—a quick and easy way to see V’s latest thoughts. The top has two navigational bars. The blue bar is for Vanessa’s primary writing categories and the pink tabs are for special pages. There are two additional features to assist you in finding Vanessa’s content—a search feature and a “tag cloud” with her category names sized based on the number of articles she has written under each category.
We added two features to help interact with you, her readers. The first is an e-mail notification of her new posts. You can subscribe at the bottom of any page and you will get a daily e-mail any day that V posts. No posts, no e-mail. Five posts in a day, one e-mail. This is in addition to the instant notification available through her RSS feed. Secondly, we have migrated to the Disqus commenting system. This system, used by a wide variety of sites, includes greater functionality to continue the discussion, including my favorite of being able to not only receive notification of a new comment, but be able to reply-by-email to respond.
In short, I am excited to be able to construct this new site for Vanessa and she is excited about the refreshed platform for sharing her thoughts with the world.
Image via Wikipedia
From the beginning, Brandon and I have been in love, love, love with The Voice. We’ve watched it from its first airing. The following are things that I think would make it better for its second season:
1) Cee Lo. You are a brilliant, brilliant entertainer and I enjoy your part of the shows more than anyone else’s. I even like that you wear sunglasses all the time. Even in a dark room. Keep these on. But please, please wear pants that fit your crotch. I know that sounds weird but the fact that the crotch of your pants is about a foot lower than your actual crotch just makes you look like a little person. Very disproportionate. Oh and the outfit you wore tonight – matronly. I never thought I would call a man’s outfit matronly, but it was. The red and black with the flower rhinestones. It was not good. It looked like an outfit for a mother of the bride. Love you and your performing style and pizazz, do not like your regular clothes.
2) I’m sorry that I am advocating for someone to lose their job, but Allison Haislip. I’m sorry, she has to go. Not just her but her position. I do not need a V correspondent. I do not need someone to ask the performers questions from Twitter. I do not need someone to read facebook comments to me on tv. If I wanted to hear this, I would get online and read it. I hated this part of the show. So stupid and a total waste of time.
3) The episodes do not need to be 2 hours long. This is another waste of time. Make it fit an hour. It doesn’t make me watch for 2 hours. It makes me turn it off when I realize that I will have to watch a whole additional hour and makes me not want to continue watching it next time.
4) While I always thought Carson Daly was a tool, this actually made me like him a lot. He really is a good host. He had no problem handling all the live shows. He is a really good facilitator with funny side comments. He is very good at his job.
5) Christina, you are great, but you looked the best in this last show. I don’t like the Madonna look you’re going for. It doesn’t seem to suit you.
6) One of the performers tonight came out with a rosary around his neck. If you’re going to wear a rosary, could you please at least not put your hand on your dancer’s ass? I don’t think that is too much to ask.
7) Love, love, love Blake Shelton. Wish I could drink a beer with him.
8) I think Javier Colon should win. With Dia as a close second. As Brandon put it, I would buy Dia’s CD but I would go to Javier’s concert and buy his CD.
Not that anyone at NBC is going to read this. But that’s my two cents. I can now stop yelling these things at the TV.
Image by NatalieMaynor via Flickr
I am totally, completely, absolutely in love with the idea of getting all of our food locally. From local farms. Local chickens. Local pigs. Local cows. Local McDonalds. You get it. It is one of the reasons I love Austin and never want to move away. We can actually do this. We gets most of our veggies from our CSA with Johnson’s Backyard Garden (which is freakin’ awesome by the way). There are tons of farms around that we can get fresh eggs, local meat, fresh milk, shoot, even fish.
Today we went to the Farmer’s Market and I needed to buy food for the camp we are helping with next week (I’ll write more about this another day). On Friday we will be providing lunch for them and all the food will be organic or locally sourced. That day we will be teaching them about responsible consumerism when it comes to food. So I planned out a simple menu and went around getting everything I could from the FM. We’re making BLTs so I got bacon and mustard from Dai Due and tomatoes from JBG. For the vegetarians, I bought Hummus from the Mediterranean Chef (I would have made it myself except I can’t figure out how to make it taste good no matter how many times I make it – which is at least 50 times). I looked for lettuce but it’s so hot that it’s out of season now. I’m making mint orange tea so I bought some mint from JBG also. Later on in the week I’m going to buy blackberries from one of the farm stands and bread from Texas French Bread. It’s just awesome how I can get almost an entire meal from local, sustainable sources.
I’m also starting to understand the value of making things when they are in season and freezing them for when they are not.
I guess this all just makes me feel like part of the world. The part of the world that doesn’t live off of quarter pounders and coke. The part that lives of the bounty of the earth. I’m not going to say something as cliche as it makes me feel like I’m in a rhythm with the earth but I do. It also just makes me appreciate the earth and the seasons a lot more.
Man, if you thought I was hippie before coming to Austin, think of where I’m going to be in 10 years. Probably taking care of my own cows for milk and chickens for eggs. Hmm, that would be cool.
Anyways, I totally buy into this food revolution thing. I don’t like Jamie Oliver. I think he is super aggressive and hostile but I completely agree with his message and am happy he is doing what he is doing even if he’s doing it in a pain in the ass kind of way. If you could taste some of the delicious food we’ve been eating because of these veggies we are getting, you’d see how easy it would be to be part of a revolution that just tastes so darn good and no bloodshed. You can’t really beat that.
Image via Wikipedia
In a marriage it is so easy to get frustrated with your spouse and just go crazy nit-picking at every little thing that he does wrong. I do it all the time. Really I do. Just ask him. I’m such a hard-ass sometimes. But my husband is wonderful. And this is why.
Because he still faithfully checks this blog most days hoping that I have started writing on it again even though he knows I probably haven’t. It has been almost a year exactly since I last wrote. So he has been checking for a year now. He pushes me so much to write because he knows I love it. Even when I don’t feel like writing he is always so encouraging. He loves that I love something that he can help me with. I don’t know anything about techie stuff. All I do is write and he figures out the rest, the website, the graphics, etc.
Another reason I love him, he lets me do the most ridiculous things and doesn’t bat an eye at it. I just purchased 20lbs of tomatoes from the farm that we get veggies from. 20! That is ridiculous. Most husbands would have said, “Uh, honey, are you sure? When are you going to find the time use up all those tomatoes? We are helping lead a camp next week, we’re still working on our talks and stuff for the camp, not to mention we have 2 little ones. What the hell are you thinking?” He didn’t say any of that. Just said, “Yeah, sounds good. Maybe you could make homemade ketchup like Jamie Oliver.”
He’s wonderful and I love him dearly…most days 🙂
Anywho, I’m back. I hope to make writing on here much more common. It’s nice to have this space.
Now I am going to continue researching tomato recipes. 20lbs isn’t going to cook itself.
