Plan B

Everyone needs a plan B.

Especially when they're a grown-up. Ick I hate that word.

So I had to sit back and think, 'what if? what if this doesn't work? what can I do to make a contribution?'

Let's be honest here. Rockstar Hubby is indeed a rockstar, but even he can't climb trees for the rest of his life. He needs to focus on the fire department and writing his promotional exam and the gaffer. And he wants to get back into Timbersports. He's worked two jobs for a long time now and with the gaffer starting school full-time in the fall, who am I not to contribute.

So what if the books don't do well?

I know they will. Deep way down deep in my heart, I know they'll do well. It's not something I worry about. I gave it all up to my Maker and He's taking care of all of it. So what's plan B?

Plan B will be yoga instructor.

I've always enjoyed yoga and there are some teachers out there I do not care for as they are not compassionate, nor do they go around the class and re-adjust your pose. Plus, I really don't care for the whole, 'find your own energy' crap. God's giving me plenty of energy on my own, thank you.
So before the book started its roll uphill, I had chosen yoga. So if it all falls down, yoga.

But I prefer to write...

The Daring Kitchen Challenge #2

I hate that this post is late. I don't like being too busy for things.
Ok, so here we go.
This month's challenge was to make pate and bread. This challenge got me very excited because I absolutely adore pate, especially with brie and baguette! Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of a The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook’s challenge! They’ve provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.
We were given the opportunity to do a couple, and I chose the chicken liver pate. Of course being an inexperienced cook, I did have some issues.
One recurring theme that seems to be prevelant, is that I need a food processor. I have a teeny little dinky one that I bought to make baby food, and it did just fine chopping up beans, peas, spinach, broccoli... but I had to process bacon and bacon and more bacon.

So, first I cooked the chicken livers. It took 4 grocery stores to find them. Farm Boy. Who knew? (Am taking a frustrated moment to say that my pictures are not uploading properly. I apologize in advance for this craziness.)

Then when they started the cooking, the smell was absolutely horrendous and I convinced RockStar Hubby to cook them for me. He did so willingly. Then I tried shoving all the bacons into the food processor and that just made a disaster. So I took them out and then tried chopping them all into fine little bits. Ha! Then I threw everything into the bowl, along with the pureed chicken livers. Then I couldn't find a proper mold for it. So I figured I'd put it into the smaller roasting pan and then put that into the larger roasting pan as it needed to cook in water. Two and a half hours later, it smelled great!

The baguette, I was allowed some free reign so I made my usual baguette with flour, salt, yeast and water. I threw the whole thing in the breadmaker and let it mix it and then instead of letting it rise for just half an hour, as it is supposed to, I let it rise for ten hours. I don't usually plan on letting bread rise for that long, but I always manage to forget about it. But it always turns out light and fluffy so I'm never concerned.

And here's the finished product. At the top of the page of course, because these pictures uploading are not listening to me...

A trip to North Carolina

I find it bizarre that I never blogged about our trip to Paris. Because I figured I wouldn't stop talking about it. But I didn't. But that's for another time.

The gaffer and I are currently sitting in a Starbucks, somewhere 3 hours from Winchester, Virginia. Rockstar hubby is at some non-descript garage about 4 km away, getting the wheelbearing fixed on our car. We were supposed to be in Winchester at 6pm. It is now 5:42 and we still have three hours to drive. What's even more amusing is that the other wheelbearing went on the drive down to North Carolina. This is fun.

We left on Friday morning to go to Gaithersburg, Maryland after a 9 hour drive which actually took 13 1/2 hours to discover the wheelbearing was broken. But there was a Ford dealership two minutes away so rockstar hubby planned to go first thing in the morning. We stayed at the Marriott and I'm sorry to say that at 10pm, one does not want to go into their room to discover it smells like marijuana. So then we changed rooms and got to bed at 11pm. The next day we were on the road by 10:30am (after 300$! and as I write this? the non-descript garage is fixing it for 60$.) and arrived at North Topsail, North Carolina at 7pm. And it was perfect. We immediately threw on our bathing suits and ran down to the ocean. Perfect. Perfect salty smells, perfectly disgusting salty taste and a sunset in the sky. We then spent 6 full days alternating between the ocean and the pool. It was fabulous. The boys went to see the North Carolina battleship and took a million pictures while I hit the mall. I bought a pair of skinny jean capris (not too bad) and a cute pair of sandals. And then they went to see Shrek 4 while I bought a pair of sandals and a pair of Spetty Top-siders (both plaid and never noticed) and got some writing done.

Not much else to say. I burnt my bum? We're on our way to Niagara Falls to the Great Wolf Lodge for a few days and to see our lovely wine friend Andrew who owns a lovely winery. Home by Wednesday I think.