It’s All My Dad’s Fault

In honor of Father’s Day I thought I would write a touching tribute to my own father.  Then I realized it would be much more fun to share with you some random facts about me and my dad.  You will see that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in this family!

70′s couch anyone?

Here they are in no particular order:

1) He still talks to a dog, Domino, that died 10 years ago.  I talk to anyone and anything, even when there is no one there to listen.

2) He is hairy.  I am hairy.  Most of my hair is on my head.  The same cannot be said for my dad.

3) He sings, hums and/or whistles all day long.  I do the same, minus the whistling and humming.  I heard once that humming is a sign of insanity.

4) He is super smart and knows everything about everything.  I want to know everything about everything.

5) He breaks everything.  Nothing glass is safe.  I have only plastic wine glasses and stainless steel water bottles because I broke all of the glass ones.

6) When I was little, he picked me up out of my crib and exclaimed “She is so fucking cute!”  Coincidentally, fuck is my favorite word.  After that exclamation my mom reminded him that he couldn’t say those words around me so he changed “fuck” to “fungus” which then became “fungus berford”.  A new language was born.

7) He plays the guitar, both electric and acoustic.  He wrote and recorded the song that was playing as I walked down the aisle during my wedding.

8) He is a PGA professional (for those of you who don’t know, PGA is Professional Golfer’s Association).  I can hit a golf ball over 200 yards.

9) He loves to cook.  I love to cook.  Really, are there any Greeks who don’t love to cook?

10) He is almost completely incapable of fixing/building/putting together anything that requires tools.  I take after my mom on this one!  My mom builds everything.  She even pressure washes the deck.  I have put together at least 1/2 of the furniture in our house and I fixed a toilet once (I was very proud of myself for that one).

11) When I was little, he gave me a bicycle and told me he built it.  I now know that was a joke.  See above fact.

12) Every time I would ask my dad what time it was he would say “2:15″.  Every time.  One of my first posts on here was called It’s Only 2:15???  At first this seemed to be an accident but I find it strangely coincidental that the time of day I went nuts was 2:15.

Reading this list makes me wonder how my mom made it through 18 years with the two of us living under her roof.  Thank goodness she loves us anyway!

Happy Father’s Day to all of you dads out there and remember, it’s all your fault. 

Honey Flax Peanutbutter

I did it.  I made peanutbutter.  It couldn’t be easier and it’s cheaper, cleaner and tastes SO much better!  All you need is a food processor and some roasted, unsalted peanuts.  Or you could go with roasted salted.  Or honey roasted.  There really are no rules here.  I chose shelled, roasted, unsalted and I added some ground flax seed, honey, sunflower oil and salt because we like that kind of thing around here.

All you do is pop those shelled peanuts in the food processor and process until they are creamy.  You think I am kidding?  Seriously, it’s that easy.  The nuts will go through stages: crumbly, clumpy, ball-o-peanuts then the ever so gratifying breakdown into creamy deliciousness.  I like it to be extra creamy so I add a bit of oil (about 1-2 tbsp per lb of peanuts).  For flavor I added about 1/2 tsp, maybe more of salt and about 1/4 cup of honey.  I also threw in some ground flax seed for added nutrition.  My son actually licked the food processor and spoon clean so I would say that’s a win for me!

Ingredients (Makes almost enough to fill a 14oz (liquid) coconut oil mason jar.  By weight it would be just over an LB but you could probably figure that out already.  Great measuring, I know.):

• 1lb shelled, roasted, unsalted peanuts (according to Alton Brown if you get Spanish peanuts you don’t need to add oil for creaminess)
• 1/2 tsp salt (to taste)
• 1-2 tbsp sunflower oil (or stream in until desired creaminess is reached)
• 1/4 cup honey (or more to taste)

I think I might have set a record for use of the word creaminess in one blog post yet I feel strangely unashamed.

If you make this let me know what you think!

Meanwhile, in Other Useless News…

I have a serious problem.  I know that isn’t really surprising to anyone but I felt like I needed to start with something that seemed important and dramatic.  I mean, who doesn’t have any problems?  What fun would life be if we didn’t have problems to solve?  Of course, one of my problems is that I want to solve all of the problems that exist in the world and the fact that I can’t do that makes me sad and overwhelmed so I go back to focusing on my own “problems” that thankfully aren’t really problems so much as inconveniences.  Phew.  You still with me?

Right now my situation is that I am trying to get this post written because I haven’t posted in while but at the same time I am watching an Animal Planet show about hippos AND my husband is telling me about a show where someone declined being fed a cooked rodent but indulged in berries he recovered from bear poop instead.  It’s all so fascinating and I can’t imagine why I am distracted!!  Putting the computer down so I can focus on hippos and forgetting what I just heard about berries in poop.

I’m baaack!  It’s now the morning after my failed attempt at writing a new post (see above).  I have to so much to share in such a short amount of time.  I only have about 30 minutes before my 5 year old malfunctions because I am not playing the WII with him (damn you, Lego Star Wars), so let’s get to it!

Where should I start?  How about the garden?  You might recall my last post about my experimental Mother’s Day container garden.  I am pleased to say that this is what the plants look like now:

I Only Killed Two…So Far

BUT it’s not as horrible as it sounds.  I decided to start a mini container garden.  I wish I could say it was the success of my herbs that inspired me but as I predicted, those never grew so I tossed them.  Technically I didn’t kill them, because they never really grew more than the picture I shared in this blog post. And for the record, the scallions are still re-growing themselves and the celery is re-growing as well!

Anyway, so I decided to start a little container garden after the man at the farmer’s market convinced me that it really wouldn’t be so hard.  I know he probably just wanted to sell me zucchini but he was so old and cute and sweet I couldn’t say no.  I got a 4 pack of zucchini seedlings and a basil plant for $3.25.  Not bad, considering one zucchini plant is supposed to produce several zucchini per week.  I managed to get them home without killing them so I took that as a sign of good things to come.

Apparently zucchini plants are huge, about 3′ x 3′ feet so I planted 3 in a large pot and 1 in the ground, just to see what would happen.  I figured once they started to grow I would transfer them to the ground as well, or give them away to someone who has more space.  I also picked up a patio tomato plant and stuck that in a slightly smaller pot.  I made sure to put rocks in the bottom of each pot, then I raised the pots off the ground with tiles to ensure proper drainage.

My new little garden had 1 tomato plant, 1 basil plant, 4 zucchini plants, scallions, celery, 1 garlic clove (an experiment to see what happens) and some parsley, which was the only thing that survived my herb garden.  Here’s what it looked like on Mother’s Day when I planted everything:

Superbugs!

You might have heard of EWG because of their Skin Deep website.  Skin Deep is a cosmetics database that allows you to search for your favorite cosmetics and discover their levels of toxicity.  I was shocked by what I found in products that I thought were good for me!

EWG recently posted this informative article about antibiotic resistant bacteria in our foods.

Salmonella. She’s cute but she’s kind of a bitch.
Image from Wikipedia

The article even gives you tips about how to avoid tainted meats, decoding labels, cookbook recommendations and more!!  Regulations in the U.S. (or lack thereof) make it tough to properly educate ourselves about what is actually in the foods we eat.  We have to take it into our own hands.  It takes a bit of work, but I feel empowered by the knowledge and the ability to make healthy choices for myself and my children.

What choices have you made to better the health of you and your loved ones?

Curveballs

I have good news and bad news.  I am going to give you the bad news first, then lift your spirits with the good!

So…life has gone ahead and thrown a curveball right to the face and it hurts like hell!  We recently moved our family to Virginia for my husband’s new job.  This was not a choice we would have made had we not been unemployed for 6.5 months and in need of some income.  It was a tough move on all accounts.  It took my son several months to really feel like this was home and it took me even longer.  Close to a year later, we are settled and feeling like we could stay here but unfortunately, life had other plans.  So now, here we are again, jobless and wondering where we will live next.  What will we do?  It’s very stressful but it’s my job to keep everyone sane so I have to make the best of it!  One good thing about this is that my husband is home for a while and the kids and I are ecstatic that we get to see him more!

Winner Winner Greek Dinner!

** Update: I am re-posting this because today is Greek Easter and since I don’t like lamb I am going to make some of this instead!

I am on a spinach kick this week and I am pretty psyched about this Spanakopita.  If you aren’t familiar, it’s a Greek favorite with spinach, feta cheese and phyllo dough.  You can either make those cute little triangles or make it pie style like I did because I am too lazy to make 50 little triangles.  I also cheated and used store bought phyllo, though I prefer my family’s version, which is chewy, buttery and delicious but since I can never, ever give you that recipe, I figured I would spare you the pain of hearing about how awesome it is just to let you down.

Except I just did that.  Oops.

Focus on the positive.

It looks all picked at because I picked off pieces of the crunchy top layer. I told you, I have a problem.