la ensalada deliciosa

happy thanksgiving!

the day after thanksgiving, garret's mom and i found ourselves in the kitchen store down the street for that morning i had, indeed, broken yet another french press.  while there, we stumbled upon my new favorite thing!

nerd alert! because, it is: a bottle that teaches you how to make salad dressings!

i've been making my own salad dressing for years, but it's been olive oil and balsamic and some salt and pepper.  not too exciting.  i started to mix it up slightly when i found a combo pack of flavored olive oils (woaah!! slow down!  that salad is TOO EXCITING!)... but now i can make legit dressings myself!

basically it's a bottle the size and shape of trader joe's salad dressing bottles, and on the side it has lines to indicate various liquid combinations to create different dressings.  last night i made a basic vinaigrette.  next up, i might just make french!

oh the horror!

last night, my dreams were filled with anxiety something terrible was happening to the dog.  obviously - nothing was wrong! i'm just a crazy person and she's my child, apparently.

we're going to garret's grandmother's place for thanksgiving - she lives in a senior housing community in new jersey.  we're going there and back in one day, but the initial thought was that we should probably put murgy in a kennel.  we live in the puppy capital of the world and i presumed we must have scores of top-notch kennels around here.  UNTIL i started reading reviews of the local kennels.

of one local kennel, a yelper writes:

"What I noticed next slowly turned my surprise to worry.  I saw his wound!!!  I asked what happened and can you believe what the manager asked me?  He said, "Oh was that there before you brought him in?"  I was SHOCKED.  First of all my dog had been there for a week and this wound was fresh, I couldn't believe he had the nerve to ask me that."

YIKES!  so i think "alright, well, that's not the place to go - i'll look elsewhere."  that's when i found!

"I took my precious dog "family member"  to this place for boarding after going away for a business trip for a couple of days. Well the owner and manager called me on a Friday night to inform me that my dog had been killed and that he had a heart attack or stroke but in any event he wasn't sure what happened to him and that he wanted to drop my dog off at my house, as if my dog were a bag of dirty clothes or groceries. 

He continues to share, that, after his staff gave him a bath and put him in the dryer for over an hour. Yes, you've read correctly, they put my small dog, a perfectly healthy 2 year old pug in the HOT heated dryer for over an hour."

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD.

i put off picking one of these kennels for more than three weeks, hoping the existence of thanksgiving would somehow evaporate.  then on wednesday, i realized i better get down to business, because all of these people require a pre-boarding interview with the dog and its parents.


[side-note:  you read that correctly.  in order for a dog to go to a kennel here in pup slope, they must go to an interview.  that's nice that they do their due-diligence and all, but yikes! i can only imagine what getting into people day care is like here.]


so i start click, click, clicking away at the various sites and it's like i develop hives.  i mean i didn't actually develop hives, but you know what nervous kids go through to develop hives?  it was like that.  i almost started to cry.  (I KNOW I'M CRAZY!)  i just could not imagine leaving this dog in a place where there were driers for her to potentially get left under!


i expressed this to garret, who pointed out that as we're going there and back in one day we're really only going to be gone a couple more hours than we are when we leave her here during the work day.  good point.  he also pointed out that we could ask a friend come take her out and hang out with her a bit so she wasn't alone all that time.


another good point!  


i'm already planning the cookies i'm going to bake for said friend, who has agreed to come over on thanksgiving and spend time with the dog.  


i may be a crazy lady who is afraid of kennels, but at least i'm a crazy person with baking skills!

oh, you put olives where?!

this may be akin to the time that i realized people put butter on bread not to be fancy, but because it's delicious... but has anyone ever put olives in an omelette before?!

it's freaking delicious.

tomatoes, goat cheese, and kalamata olives - mmmm.  this either means a) i finally figured something out that the rest of the world has known for years or b) i'm a genius.  either way, i think we can all agree that this solidifies the fact that when i'm one day a crazy pregnant lady i will indeed start putting pickles in foods they do not belong in.

other things to address... i am aware all i ever blog about is food.  i'm working on it.

(there's just so much to say about scrambled eggs!)

most of my breakthrough good ideas have involved places to live rather than words to put into scripts, but with any luck that'll change.

i'd also like to report that so far "early christmas shopping" has found me in many a gift shop finding things that i myself would like.

meanwhile - how cute are these stackable mugs that i may or may not have bought myself yesterday at starbucks??

SO CUTE.

hummus breakfast

i took the dog on a "long" walk to the park today, by which i mean it took forever because she stopped to smell every rose, dirt patch, tissue, and chicken bone along the way.

(side note:  you would not believe how many people throw chicken bones on the street!  i had no reason to notice until i had a dog but GOOD GOD! why are chicken bones unlike other garbage? throw them away in a reciprocal, people!)

once home, i'm tidying up the apartment when my spice rack falls again.  (it falls frequently because it's a heavy antique drawer that i have haphazardly attached to my wall and displayed spices on. you'd think i'd get the hint, but i really like the way it looks...) and i start to feel the kind of anger i feel when i haven't had enough coffee and/or protein.

there was enough coffee left in the french press to have another cup, but this protein thing was a problem.  after burning bacon AND eggs yesterday, i just wasn't into that... so i opened the fridge and perused for new ideas.

that's when i invented Hummus Breakfast Wrap, which is the easiest thing i've cooked in a while and is also letting me feel good about the fact that i finally used that tortilla that's been sitting around in the fridge for over a week, i used up the hummus that would have gone bad soon and i don't have any pita for, and i used a piece of the lettuce i bought at the farmer's market the other day.

here it is.

Hummus Breakfast Wrap (could also easily be consumed for Dinner or Lunch.)

Ingredients:

1 tortilla
3 teaspoons of hummus
Olives (if you like them)
Lettuce

You'll need a frying pan and a plate.

Throw your tortilla, which you've hopefully been storing in the fridge, into a frying pan on low heat to warm it up.  This way when you go to wrap it it won't crack and become a horrible mess.


Once your tortilla is warmed up, throw it on a plate.  Place your lettuce on top of it.  Put your hummus and olives on top of that.

Wrap it up!

Delicious and healthy.  Excellent.

who have i become? and why doesn't this listerine hurt?

you know how when you're a "kid" (by which i mean like 18), you see "older" people do things and it's like "why is she doing that??"

i'm feeling myself slowly slipping into becoming her.

things that have happened in the past week that 14, 16, and 18 year old versions of myself would get together and gasp at if it were possible for differently aged carnations of oneself to team up for gossip sessions:

1. i bought a purple puffy coat to supplement (read: replace on cold days) my super cool brown leather jacket which - frankly - is not warm.
2. i didn't go out for breakfast at all this weekend.
3. on sunday morning i went for a walk and then ran errands (okay this one isn't that bad, until...)
4. while running errands i stopped in a pet boutique where i spied a little dog coat that looked just like my purple puffy coat.  "murgy must have this!" said i.  AND THEN I BOUGHT IT.

now here's the thing.  firstly, i used to hate (i mean despise) people who put clothing on their dogs.  i was all "ugh, let your dog be a dog, lady!" so i've apparently thrown that part of myself out the window.

but this is the real problem: i honest to god justified this purchase.  "the dog is so small, i'm worried that she'll be cold!" the thing is - it's true that she is small and i am legitimately worried she'll get cold without a purple puffy coat!

perhaps this is "growing up" and realizing that things you judged way back when were really not worth judging, because there was not just rhyme behind them, but a little reason too.

but at the same time... i kind of feel like i'm an executive at listerine and all of a sudden one day i'm like "yo - i know we've always been all about telling people to 'power through! deal with the burning sensation, the alcohol in our mouthwash is what makes it the best!' but i was just thinking about it on my ride here and... i really hate how much it burns.  let's start making listerine without alcohol."

where has your identity gone, listerine exec!