it wasn't the pupusas that killed the bird!

it caught me a little off guard the yesterday when on house hunters hgtv the guy looking at a spacious room said, it doesn't seem like much space. in fact, i became a little indignant. i don't know why, because i watch it often, and i've heard similar comments. but this time when i looked up at this beautiful home he was talking about, my mind went back to HONDURAS where i lived with my parents while they were missionaries there. i thought about how many little one room shanties we'd visited, where church members lived with their families of 3 or 4 children with dirt floors and a suitcase with some clothing and perhaps a few dishes. we are more fortunate than we realize, and we don't appreciate what we have often enough.

i could tell that the flea medicine was annoying chaco today, so i gave them baths (thank you inventor of the shower cap, because i didn't want to mess with my hair too). when they got out, they just looked so great! "chaco, you're hot!" he giggled, "i'm a hotdog!!" then he thought for a second and followed it up with, "better than being a weiner! get it? anthony weiner?! ha!" they're never too young to start teaching them about politics and right vs wrong.

for lunch i decided i'd throw some italian sausage kabobs and a brat on the indoor grill.remember when i mentioned the open nature sausages? well, they make italian sausage too! (worth it! if you're interested in trying it, click on italian sausage and it'll take you to a coupon site)

yea for grilling inside!! boo when it gets smoky!

wow, nice grill marks!

 why hasn't some amazing man snatched me up? why am i still single? who knows...and at this point who cares? more food for me. i absoLUTEly love brats! the only problem with the indoor grill is that for whatever reason (probably because it's dual use and i didn't get the gridle side as clean as it needed to be) i came into the living area and noticed that it seemed a bit smoky-and chaco went into the bedroom and bruno wanted out on the balcony. amazing that the fire alarm didn't go off-maybe i should check the batteries. so i opened all of the windows and grabbed a piece of foam board and attempted to 'fan' out the smoky wild-fire look. and in the midst of fanning, dust fell from the ceiling fan (i know moss doesn't gather on a rolling stone, but dust does gather on revolving fan blades). so nasty dust clumps fell and i was grossed out. after setting down my makeshift de-smoker, i got the vacuum out and cleaned up. the entire time, my lunch was cooling off. when i finally finished and grabbed my food, chaco had made his way back into the living room and bruno came in off the balcony-fair-weather friends.

ok, i have loved pupusas since my very first tasting in HONDURAS on a bus ride to tegucigalpa-when there was a rest stop and the kids got on the bus selling their goods...and it was good! so....why have i waited so long to try my hand at these things?? especially once i realized that i am actually a pretty good cook?! again, why am i single?

masa is fairly inexpensive, so it will last awhile-especially since i was able to make about 6 pupusas with 1 c of the flour...and i can't even eat all six of them (but, you can bet i'm not putting them away yet-i may be snacking tonight!)

now i need a little garden to grow some yuca ! i'll just have to buy the platano!

 i cannot believe how easy these were to make! you'd better believe i will be doing more of this this summer! the smell of masa when mixed with water brought back memories of making dinner for BIRD, our macaw. he was beautiful! he was a red and blue but he wasn't super friendly. we would make masa balls and mix in bird seed. well, rat poison should not be stored next to the bird seed. nuf said.

oh summer, you make me forget what day it is! that's why i have to watch t.v. because i know when certain shows come on! i know, poor excuse-get your calendar out!

i'm sure you've had enough of me being impressed with myself!
julie

thank you watermelon, you are a superstar

i would like to begin this post by giving a special shout out to the watermelon!  your performance today has been spectacular!

pulled out the dehydrator again last night! raisins in the making (i didn't realize that raisins take 36 hours until after i bought the grapes...apples and watermelon. so, i find myself longing to eat more and more of the dehydrated watermelon, but what if it reconstituted in my body after i drink a lot of water? i also threw in some tomatoes, and they are like watermelon's right hand man, they are delicious as well! if they could be a superhero duo of the world of dehydration, they would be unstoppable!!

i spent a lot of time today in the wanna-be kitchen of mine. i decided that i wanted to make pupusas and tortilla chips. so i had to go to the store to buy tortillas, masa and mexican cheese. somehow i got lured into purchasing 5 lbs of top round-so when i got home i portioned it out and i now have 15 steaks. (the reason i got the bulk size is because it was priced at $23.00 and $10.00 off-you can beat that! that's 15 steaks for less than a buck a piece. yep...grill baby grill!

i know, raw meat gross-don't worry, i washed my hands

i also finished portioning out the soup and vac-sealing it. then i decided to try to make powdered eggs. so i scrambled them all up and now i have to put them in the oven tonight after the game because they have to cook for 10 hours. then i'll grind them into powder (i want to see if it really works or not).

does anyone else do this? i like my eggs to be balanced, so whenever i take one from one side, i balance it out...so they don't fall? idk

i also took the pulled pork and added my bbq and a bit of ken's honey mustard (the secret!) best honey mustard EVER! the first time i was introduced to honey mustard was in college at applebee's i was a-ddicted to fries w/ hm!
anyway, i took the bbq pork and froze it in muffin tins (found the tip on the internet) and then i portioned them and sealed them-perfect portions for sandwiches! thanks lady on the internet!!

bbq muffins!check out THOSE muffin tops, jenna!

and then i cut up the tortillas and fried them into chips for the game! i didn't get around to the pupusas-tomorrow's a new day!

ready!

obviously i was watching master chef last night. 

and as i came in to sit down, i let the boys out onto the balcony, and bruno paws at the glass to get back in. chaco licks it (which is a little harder to hear). good thing he's got bruno!!

if you go to visit someone, either knock on the door, or ring the doorbell, don't lick the door-you don't know where it's been!
julies

your flea ointment looks like an alien

so this morning i opened my eyes and bruno was ready to be up. chaco...was hiding deep under the covers somewhere off in a corner. so i told him, "oh chaco! you were in your man-cave!" he believed that it was a man-cave, so that will cut costs in the far off future when we look for a house-all i have to do is throw a comforter on the floor and say man-cave and he'll be happy. bruno on the other hand just sat behind chaco looking at me, shaking his head with that 'i-can't-believe-you-just-told-him-that-and-he-fell-for-it' look. now i just have to distract him if we're ever watching hgtv and they have a segment about man-caves.

after i woke up and checked on my loin. if you're dyslexic, you might think i'm a zookeeper checking on the king of beasts...if you're not, you might wonder what? didn't the men in the bible 'gird their loins?' but if you read last night's post, you will recall that i prepared pork loin and put it in the crockpot. and wowzers! i stepped into the kitchen and i had one last step to prepare it-one more hour. but i wanted to eat pulled pork for breakfast! it is so juicy and sweet! again, i wish this were a scratch and sniff blog!

since it wasn't ready, i just had some caramel truffle coffee with my heavenly creamer! (i was actually introduced to the caramel truffle by my previous roommate, heather-we love our coffee!)

and then when i got the keurig, i loved the kcups. although they can get ridiculous expensive! so thank goodness for the filter! if you have a keurig and haven't heard of them, the filter is a must! it allows me to go to central market and get my texas pecan coffee! melt in my mouth please!

and for the record, once i pulled the pork out, it was falling apart as i tried to take it out of the pot! i may or may not have gone ahead and eaten a generous portion for breakfast...it was so good i really didn't want to stop eating...i kept praying that i wouldn't get full. but i did.(which is actually good so i will have a meal or two more during the week). honestly i didn't use any measurements, but if i were guessing, i used about 3 squirts of honey mustard, about 3/4 cup brown sugar, a little garlic powder, a couple splashes of balsamic vinegar, and after poking several holes in it, i rubbed it all over with this little mixture and let it go on low for about 9 hours. then i drained it and took about 1/2 cup of brown sugar mixed with dried onion, garlic salt and a little more honey mustard, rubbed it on and let it form a carmelization for an hour..delish!

i know it's hard to tell, and it would look prettier with some colorful veggies, but i thank the pig that gave his life.

 well, we went to the vet for bruno's blood draw (finally) and he came out smelling like alcohol (rubbing alcohol, not like he'd been back doing shots with the techs). and they told me he has fleas. ew. so we got flea stuff for both of them and i couldn't think of where he could've gotten....oh but wait! when we went to the doggie park...? or how many times has he been in the kennels there at the vet over the last week around the dogs there? or...it could have been that wasp banging on the door yesterday-perhaps he was carrying his little flea friend on his back and dropped him off on my balcony-jerk. (remember the old cartoons with the flea circus??) inevitably when one of our students has lice, my head begins to itch. well, today the same thing happened with the idea of fleas.

so i took them for a walk because the weather was beautiful and we were right near the beautiful dog-walk area in addison. so here are some pics from our walk.

again, wishing for scratch and sniff because these bushes with the white flowers had such a light and airy, delicate smell. a little secret garden

this is one of the secret entrances. it's kinda nestled into this neighborhood and you don't recognize it from the street because there is a huge bush wall hiding the area; we just stumbled onto it one day.

this is a view of the length of the pond-walk

duck..duck..duck..duck...CHACO!!

once we got home, i got the flea ointment out and pulled out treats so they would associate good things with this nasty ointment. i think it must tingle because bruno used to go nuts when he was littler..and this time it seemed to affect chaco a bit more. rolling around on every surface possible-couch, floor, chair, stair, anything...

my biggest issue was 1. that it looked like alien ointment and 2. that they are speceists (like racist only against a species-against cats in particular).

and now there will be no dog bathing for 48 hours.

as the Bible says, fleas are evil. oh, it actually says flee from evil,
julie

p.s. i stand with israel-in case anyone was wondering.

it's not really stalking, just checking out the situation!

today i saw the post of a friend of a friend on fb (an acquaintance to me). it said, whistle while you work. what a great notion and cute mental picture when you're thinking 7 dwarves. but it's not as cute when i remember first moving to costa rica and being mortified when i'd walk through a neighborhood where there were construction workers and cat-calls.

i had to go to the local walmart neighborhood market (i think that's what they call their grocery stores). i found everything i needed except pita bread (but they had every type of tortilla you can imagine). probably my favorite find that wasn't on my list was the...marketside chicken tortilla soup, broccoli cheddar soup and salsa.

.and the coffeemate white chocolate caramel latte.

yum-my

then i got to the cashier and the lady in front of me with her son (she called him tonto- which in spanish is kinda' like 'dummy', not the lone ranger's indian buddy), her bill came up to around $192. well, she handed the lady a card some card that took her cost down to 12.82 and then she gave the lady another card and her ending total was 2.12. hmm..must be rough to have almost all of your food paid for. so i watched her go to her car and it was a van. you know, the kind with the doors that automatically slide open...and i may or may not have followed her to see where they lived b/c it kinda pissed me off.

i'm not a stalker..i was just curious!

and i lost them, but the area they turned into was just south of walnut hill and west of midway... (it wasn't angela).
but it was in a cute little neighborhood, and that made it all the more frustrating! who am i to judge, i know, but i'm just trying to figure out where all this money is coming from if our country is in such dire straits financially.

on another note, i am excited to portion out the soups and also to get the pork loin into the crock pot-brown sugar/dijon rub, all night and we'll have pulled pork tomorrow! love, love, love! i will probably work on that in a few minutes and get what i can done before the game and save the rest for half-time.

by the way, the last couple of days i have seen a wasp again hangin out on my balcony and buzzing up against the door. so i have to search before i open the door to let the dogs out-if he's out there, i don't let them out. what a buzzkill! 

live with integrity and don't be a swindler!
jules

p.s. check out hollie's most recent creations here-cute easy puppy!

dogs are better than turtles..they don't get lost in the couch.

i lied. yesterday we went to hibashi, and i was not high maintenance. it's hard to be that person when you've been a server before. but i did wear shorts...and almost everyone else was dressed up. DEAL WID IT! the food was great-love the dressing on the salad! then i had to go back to school to finish up and it took longer than i expected it to.

my friends stevie and meredith were in town for a wedding, so they came over and we went out to gloria's. chaco of course was ridiculous and mere was convinced she was teaching him to high five...umm...perhaps. when we got to gloria's there was a sign on the door about acceptable dress attire after 6pm. what's that about? they were trying to make it look like a red carpet club. that was a little weird. i've never experienced that there. we looked around and everyone was all dressed up like it was a party club (not impressed) did anyone else know they have a dress code?

oh well. time well spent-it's always a treat to catch up with friends!! especially funny friends!

oh! and yesterday at hibashi i got amc movie passes!! movies have gotten so expensive that i haven't been out since i went at Christmas to see chronicles of narnia, dawn treader. unfortunately, there's really not anything out right now that i'm dying to see...but i'm sure there will be eventually.

i took bruno in to the vet, but they said they couldn't take his blood until monday, so we'll go back in then. on the way out one of my old students was at petsmart with her cousin, and they came out and pet the dogs. they were there trying to find a little turtle. i asked what happened and she said her cousin had the turtle out while she was playing wii and it got away and they never found it. that stinks.(or it will) can you imagine 10 years later seeing this big ol' turtle wander out from the vent or under the couch or something?

while we were at the store, since they couldn't draw blood, i decided to not waste the trip, so i got some bacon chew strips. they seem to be the only thing that really works to get them to sit still so that i can cut their hair. so today when we got home, the boys got a trim.

bruno is no problem, but chaco cannot see the value in a haircut, and has difficulty standing still-even with the treats. so, he has some hack shots and we need to continue trimming when he naps. but even then i can only get one or two cuts in before he realizes what i'm doing, grumbles and moves.

looking forward to a full week off next week!
julie

hibashi, gloria's and...SQUIRREL!

school's out!! only not really because teachers have to go back tomorrow...i just have a couple more things to finish up. it's taken awhile because i've been sorting reading from writing, keep and throw away, and  what i need for summer school...at least i tell myself that's why it's taking so long...i think what is actually happening is that i am getting  sidetracked-SQUIRREL!

like today i found these glow-in-the-dark bracelets! what a find!!

today was our field trip..we went to the local park-great end of the year celebration! the kids were pretty good for the most part. i got there late because i had to tie up some loose ends back at school.

oh, and did i mention that tomorrow we have our endoftheyear lunch at hibashi? well, we do. ok, so here's the deal. bmayes was in town awhile back and we really wanted sushi, so we stopped there, of course we were dressed casual, and when we went in, there were two girls standing back by the bar area, and they just kinda looked at us and didn't rush to seat us or anything, and seemed very snooty, so we turned around and left and went somewhere even better. but guess what, tomorrow i am wearing shorts and a tshirt, and i may just be very high maintenance... i taught my kids a saying yesterday: WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND.

but i'll be going to gloria's for dinner with some friends, so i need to not eat too much at hibashi, because i dream about the bean tip and chips at gloria's...but then again, they are going out for lunch with people as well, so perhaps we'll all be good for a late dinner!

i'm so tired tonight that i would like to just sit in the tub until i'm wrinkled...but instead i am glued to the mavs game. so up and down; if they could stop turning it over...

counting down to for a couple weeks of nothing! (semi-relaxing before everything and craziness begins)
julie                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

morticia, the unstuffed toy

chaco has disemboweled his toy. the innards are now on the outside. i heard him yell, "look mama, it's rigor's cousin, morticia!" he's getting funnier...you have to understand the first part; we were driving home from petsmart the other day and i saw a dead squirrel who was in the stage of rigor mortis where all 4's were straight up in the air and i said, "look! it's 'rigor the squirrel'!" so chaco said, "he sleeps like me! but why isn't he sleeping on a couch with his family?" and so i got to explain death and rigor mortis.(don't think he fully grasped the concept, we may have this discussion again) and yesterday, this is what happened.

he pulled the stuffing then came the squeaker...maybe he's part aztec and he was going for the heart

this seems to be a common phenomenon-my friend just posted some pics in which her big dog got revenge on his toy as well! (check out her blog below-the daily adventures of sage and erin).

i just gave the boys a couple of chew sticks and walked away. then i saw chaco just looking at me...without his chew. so i looked over and...yep, bruno has spirited away chaco's chew. "bruno! do you have chaco's chew?" and in typical amy poehler fashion (baby mama), "what? what are you talking about? maybe YOU took it."
"yeah, like i'm going to come home after a long day at work and steal chaco's stick to chew on it..."
"lady, i don't know your life!"
(ok, it's a loose quoting because i wanted to keep it somewhat kid friendly)

what?

tomorrow is the last day at school and we get to dress casual! woo hoo!! that's kinda fun! and the best part is that i am almost done with the packing up of my room!! although i am pretty sure that next year when i get back and start unpacking boxes, i am going to be asking myself why in the world i kept this and that! i'm one of those who keeps everything-which at school is partially because i know that they're cutting our budget enormously and even if i haven't used certain materials this year, it's always good to have access to them.

good night!
julie