It's Raining!

At last,
my rain has come along,
my driest days are over,
and life is like a song...

Ok, I'll stop singing. It's not raining hard enough to make much difference yet, but boy do we need it. I had forgotten how it sounds on the skylight in the kitchen. Yes, rain some more, please!

Edited to add: That lasted less than 5 minutes. It's not satisfactory at all. No.

I love El Bodegon

Really, I do. For the uninitiated, El Bodegon is a local chain of latino (latina?) grocery stores. A few weeks ago I got it into my head I was going to make fresh tortillas. Corn tortillas, that is. Thanks, Alton Brown, like I needed another thing I just had to try. So I bought a bag of masaca harina and made up a little paste. I tried to roll it out thinly but that stuff just wouldn't cooperate.

Being the gizmo kind of girl I am, I decided to get a tortilla press. Well you would think such a beast would be easy to come by in these parts, but it wasn't in any of my usual housewares spots. They are quite heavy and I didn't want to pay shipping, so I thought it would be better to drive all over WPB to find one. Just as a last minute desparate try I went into El Bodegon. It had been years since I had wandered its fascinating asiles, and it didn't disappoint me. There were 2 different tortilla presses to chose from. And they were cheaper than the ones on eBay, to boot.

As a bonus I found small cans of chipotles in adobo sauce. Publix has them in cans too big to use in one recipe. Alrighty then.

But mostly I love El Bodegon for its entertainment value. I'm sure I must have spent an hour in there looking at all the exotic stuff. The produce is wonderful and I bet the meat would have been good too, if I could have gotten close to it. It was busy in there and the peeps were 2 and 3 deep at the back of the store where I think the butcher section is. There are 2 different places to sit and eat, I didn't notice what the difference was, except the one on the west side seemed a lot busier.

Foodies, try it sometime, you'll see!

The tortillas were awesome, by the way. Problem is, I am the only one in this house who ate them, so I've got to make a little space in the freezer next time I have a tortilla making session.

Waaah! Mommy, they are making me work!

Did I mention how disgusted I am with entitled people? How many grown women do you know who call their mommy when their boss requests them to do something they don't think they should have to do?

GROW UP. Get the heck off that phone to mommy and fight your own battles, baby.

Weed watching

For about a decade I waged a personal war against a particular weed in my yard that threatened to choke out my ficus hedge. Virginia Creeper. So when I started seeing vines on the landscaping at work I started to document them.

Certain weeds grew so big that folks who didn't know any better thought they were part of the official landscaping. Like this palmetto behind the shrub here. Yes, I know some landscapers use it on purpose, but this one was strictly a volunteer. It got bigger and bigger and then it started to get a vine.

Can you see the size of the stump of that thing in this picture? To say that palmetto got out of control is putting it mildly.

I guess the point of all this is that nobody really took the time to tell the landscapers to notice the details. When they did actually work on these hedges they either gave the palmetto a crew cut, or just trimmed around it like it was part of the plan. We won't even comment on the vine because they obviously thought it was a losing battle too. Sometimes the only way to get rid of some weeds is to slash and burn.

My old Virginia Creeper? Well who knows, my solution was to move away from it. LOL.

Still moving the library, still not ready.

We're moving the collection (books, DVDs etc.) into the remodeled portion, but the building is still not ready. Everywhere you look there is stuff still in cardboard, stuff not assembled yet, and we are tripping over workmen and they are having to work around us and each other.

To me, nothing says "not ready" better than this picture of the construction supervisor in "his" office. That's going to be the professional collection room eventually. But does he look like he's ready to leave?

Nah, I don't think so.

Oh, and they tore up the road and put it back together again yesterday. Pul-eeeze.

Entertaining myself with chocolate

So, what else to do 2 days after the holiday of chocolate? Make cookies with pink and red candies, of course!

The practical part of me knows that Valentine's Day is mostly about business. Hallmark has nothing on the business Hershey's does. Even those of us without a SO buy and eat candy even if we don't buy cards. And buying it the day after at 50% off doesn't hurt either.


So, aren't the candies pretty in the measuring cup? And they are just as pretty ready to be mixed into the dough.

The mixer broke them up a little, but these candies have a tender shell on them to begin with. Now I have to go back and comment on my recipe that I need not bake them nearly as long as the recipe says. I prefer my cookies extra brown and crisp, but not everyone agrees with me. If anyone asks I'll tell them I meant to make them this way. If I had wanted the color of the candy to show up more I would have stuck them in the tops instead of mixing them in.

As overdone as they are, they will be eaten quite happily in my house, and perhaps at work. Did I mention that I love to bake? I will do a birthday cake later today or tomorrow night for DD. Maybe not chocolate though.

Happy February, everyone!

It looks like another drought, but who cares...

Well, here is Lake Sausalito Place. Do man-made lakes in planned unit developments have names? Anyway, you can see how far down the water is. We're not supposed to have a beach. Last year, 2008 we had above average rainfall, but it barely made up for the shortcomings of '06 and '07. Now in '09 we are having another very dry year. So it's usually wet or dry so what's different this time?

Well, you are not hearing about this very much on local news. Nope, local news is "bad economy" and "aren't you panicked yet?" it seems 24/7. Sprinkled in with traffic wrecks and other crimes.

Yes, I get it, scare the peeps and sell more advertising. I think it must work pretty well. But look at my lake! This was big news in '07 and it should be big news now. IMO. It's time to scare people about our water supply in addition to our job supply.