The bread bowls I made with the chicken salad last week were such a hit that when it turned a bit on the nippy side this weekend, we decided to have some chili served in bread bowls for dinner tonight. It was great. The recipe I've been using for the bread bowls lends itself to all sorts of uses.

On other fronts, K. has FCAT testing this week. She's been preparing by watching episodes of the old television show Soap (borrowed from the library) and Highlander as well as playing dress-up dolls online. She's also eager to go to the Renaissance Festival next weekend (the 15th, weather permitting).

This weekend A. started making me an excel spreadsheet (full of formulas and drop boxes and all sorts of neat things) to calculate the labor and cost of supplies used in the jewelry and chain maille I make, just in case I ever take the notion to actually try and sell anything (rather than give it all to the kid).

While I haven't been getting much writing done, I have been creative in other ways (like the necklaces, bracelets, and earrings I keep making for K.). And I've been aching to bake again. I've missed baking bread several times a month and am currently researching ways to satisfy that desire but still keep my expenses down (whole wheat and other wholesome grains are just too expensive lately).

And I guess that brings us to a menu for this week.

Despite feeling like I'd been hit be a truck a few times, I made bread bowls today. They were insanely easy. I used a recipe called Parmesan Bread Bowls that I found over on the Betty Crocker site. (TIP: search for "bread bowl", not "bread bowel".)

Of course, I didn't have the right size bowls and had to improvise, but it turned out ok. This is what they looked like about fifteen minutes out of the oven.

And this was my dinner tonight.

I loaded up half the bowl with chopped romaine, used the ice cream scoop to make two little balls of chicken salad (boiled chicken, Miracle Whip, chopped celery, pickle relish, all to taste), then topped those with some finely grated cheddar and decorated with pineapple and mandarin orange pieces. It was very yummy.

Now, I think I'm going to make a necklace while I digest.

Not too inspired with the menu this week. I seem to be running on auto-pilot tonight, falling back on more familiar foods and things I don't have to think about, a lot of which are pretty repetitive. That's ok, though. I don't think we'll mind.

A. will be going to his grandmother's funeral on Tuesday, assuming he can get the time off after having just taken three days vacation to do some serious work on the cars. He'll have to drive up on Monday night and drive back shortly after the funeral on Tuesday. K. and I will be staying here. She has school and his mom doesn't want us to go through the "hassle" of it all. I have mixed feelings about it, but I'm not going to argue about it.

I have no idea what I'm cooking for Valentine's Day, which also happens to be my 16th wedding anniversary.

Instead of having fish tonight for dinner we went to Cracker Barrel. No real reason for it other than I was terribly disgusted by the very notion of eating fish and desperately craving steak. It was a mood thing, I guess.

Anyway, we ate dinner and afterward I was sipping a cup of tea when K. started licking the lemon wedge that came with my tea.

Now, when she was a baby we let her lick the lemons because what better way to teach a child that's not the most yummy thing to do, right? Also, the face the kid makes afterward is always funny, and it only gets funnier with the second, third, and even fourth times. It's a learning process and some kids aren't always quick on the uptake. K. was usually pretty quick to decide lemons were not good eating, but for about a year it was always something she had to try again the whenever she saw one.

So tonight A. and I are sitting there looking at K. like she's lost her ever-loving mind, 'cause lets face it, someone reaches over and picks up a juicy wedge of lemon and starts licking it and you can't help but wonder if maybe they have a screw working itself loose. Of course, the eleven-year-old girl child bursts into a fit of giggles and "What??"s accompanied by a few "it's good!!"s.

Now, when she was a baby, it was her father that tormented her as all parents torment their babies. He'd be the one to put the lemon wedges within her tiny little reach. He'd be the one that, after she told him she hit her head on the wall, would ask for a demonstration knowing full well that she'd give it... five times. He'd be the one that would tell her things like pictures were always in color but before a certain year the world was in black and white... and in some areas of the world the color fades, reverting back to black and white until some technician somewhere refilled the color toner cartridges. Ever read "Calvin and Hobbes"? Calvin's dad was the inspiration for many of A.'s amusing little tortures.

Seeing how A. wasn't jumping on this giggling eleven-year-old sucking on a lemon thing with both feet, I figured it was my turn. I offered K. just a bit of sugar on a spoon. Being an eleven-year-old girl deep in puberty, she took it. I told her to chase it down quick with a suck on the lemon she had... and she did it, much to our amusement. After a few minutes I repeated the offer of sugar with another suggestion of a lemon juice chaser... and she took it and did it again. It only happened once more, but only because she'd sucked all the juice out of the lemon and A. really wanted to leave the restaurant.

Well, almost all of the juice. Just before we left the table she took that poor little lemon wedge and squeezed it for all she was worth. It gave her very little juice -- it didn't even fill the spoon halfway -- and what did my darling little girl do? Yup. She stuck that half a spoonful of pure lemon juice in her mouth.

I'm not sure which was funnier, the face she made with the sugar/lemon juice combo or the pure lemon juice.

No, I stand corrected. The face with the pure lemon juice was far funnier.

And now she has requested that I pick up some lemons next time I go to the grocery store. Seriously. The kid wants lemons on a daily basis. And she wants to try a lime, too.

Well, it is a fruit and it's not like she's going to eat too many of them and I can think of far worse things for her to be begging for, so what's a mom to do? I don't know about other moms, but I put lemons on the shopping list for later this week.

Hey. Early posting of the menu. Yay.

Actually, the menu got done because I'm pretty much couch-bound due to some Ny-Quil knocking me flat on my big fat behind. Now I remember why I don't take that stuff. Seriously.

Because I'm still fairly stoned out of my mind from the dose of Ny-Quil I took last night, I've got nothing to say beyond that I'm ready to go back to sleep now.




Have a great week, world.

So... yeah, it's been a while. Life is still working on getting back to normal, or at least, my version of normal. It's taking some very detailed lists on my part, but slowly I'm getting back into the swing of things. I do need to work on getting to bed before 2 or 3am again, but I'm getting there.

I think the majority of my holiday gift shopping is done. I've got a lot of list making and revising to do to be sure, and then the wrapping begins. There's also the baking list to be seen to. I need to double check ingredients and make that shopping list... then I need to plan out a baking schedule. The next few weeks should be busy.

Having been awake until just after 5am this morning, I slept until just before noon and am... a bit... behind. My day is... off. Oddly, I doubt I'll have any trouble at all sleeping tonight... assuming I ever stop moving long enough to lie down and close my eyes, that is. Still, I need to get moving so that I try to catch up on some of the cleaning.

So, the purpose of this post. Food! And I've added lunches into my menu so that I don't have to think about what to eat while I'm so busy but still manage to actually eat. (I'm bad about skipping meals when I'm alone.)