Potpourri (Any Jeopardy Fans?)

I'm doing a camera dump this week.  I have quite a few pictures of very random things to share.

Over Christmas my sister-in-law and I went to this awesome place called Painting With a Twist.  You pay $35 and they provide all supplies and instructions and you paint a pretty picture.  The instructors are REALLY good at their jobs and make it easy to paint display-worthy art.  The canvas was blank when I got it.  Pretty good result, huh?

My new baby.  It needs tuning, and it barely fits in our suddenly small living room, but it is worth it.  I have really enjoyed playing it, although it made me want to cry when I realized how far I've fallen.  Happens when you don't play for 10+ years.  Good news is that while it's not quite as easy as the bicycle analogy, it's pretty close.  It's coming back, slowly but surely.  I love that we found an upright low enough to not block my ledge which would have totally messed up my family picture display vision.  Which will be finished.  One of these days.  Soon.

For Christmas my mom got me some bookshelves that are MUCH nicer than the metal break-apart ones I've been using since college.  The box, however, was too big and heavy to wrap.  So she solved the problem by using "ghetto-wrapping."  Her words, not mine.  She put small strips of wrapping paper over the pictures on the box showing what was inside.  :)

Bad doggy hair day.  This picture doesn't really do the mess justice.  Someone is WAY overdue for a grooming!

CSA Story 1:  Rutabags.  I massed them like potatoes with cheese and sour cream and all the yummy stuff.  I had read that they can be a healthy alternative to mashed potatoes, so I was all over that.   Turns out that while they are indeed yummy, they aren't exactly the same thing.  They taste more vegetable-y.  Which is hard to explain but Nathan and I independently came up with that description so it must be accurate.

I took a series of pictures to visually show anyone who hasn't been through a military move what one has to go through when unpacking.  This is the lid to a very small jewelry box that was packed as if it were very fragile crown jewels.  I appreciated some care and concern, but overboard doesn't begin to describe it.  Keep reading.

The paper the lid, and just the lid, was wrapped in.

The lid and the paper together so you can get an idea of the scale.  I'm not sure how many boxes of stuff I had--I'll estimate 20.  And this was just one very small item in one box.  So times that paper by, I don't know.  A lot.  And you'll start to get an idea of how much trash I have in my garage and why we can't use it to park the car at the moment.  I'll be visiting a recycling center this week.  And borrowing a van to get it there.  I was lucky someone came to take away my boxes after I posted them on freecycle.  I think packing materials are actually an alien life form who have discovered military moves as the most efficient way to take over the planet!

CSA Story 2:  Mustard Greens and Mango Chicken.  This meal was the first real failure, at least in terms of the stated goals.  1)  Eat healthier  2)  Discover new, yummy foods/recipes .  I learned that I do not like mustard greens.  At least, the way I prepared them.  I have since learned that you have to boil them until you think they are done and then boil them 10 more minutes, which I didn't do.  My recipe said to sautee them.  And they were bitter, bitter, bitter!  Yuck!  There goes goal #2.   The chicken was amazing.  I'm discovering that I love fruit in my entrees.  And it had 3/4 cup sugar in it, so really it was hard to go wrong.  But that is goal goal #1 was a failure.   I ended up picking out the mustard greens and just eating the chicken and loved it.  And if we get mustard greens again I'll be sure to boil them all day.  And I'll still probably give a bunch away because I'm not sure I'll ever like them that much.