Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Pleeeezzzzzzzzze?!?!

This morning I woke up and decided that I wanted a rabbit.

Look...who wouldn't want this guy? This thing is awesome. I'd love to see it hopping around the house. I'd be scared of vacuuming when he was around, but he sure is cute!

I need to go pet Ermie for a few minutes, then maybe this urge will be gone.


(These are angora rabbits. Look how cute they are when brushed!)

Sunday, January 4, 2009

You Might Think...

That presents are necessary for Christmas. You might even think that's what my boys want.

Nope. They've stopped playing with those toys. Except the helicopter and the light-up moon. But that's it!

What they really want is a box! At least this year.


It must be one in which they can sit or hide.


A box that's big enough for the both of them is great, too! Such fun!

If it's big enough, I can be quite a jokester. "Hey Be, here's a present I got for you. Open it up!"

(Excuse my mess, please. My hair, too. I was trying to mail Christmas cards.)

"That's not a present! That's Ermie!"

Then after much laughter, Ermie gets scared and runs away. Poor kitty.

Step one- open the box. Step two - put a cat in the box. Step three- make kids open that box! Yes, that's a much nicer version of a similar song.

YUCKY! Yummy.

Ever since Christmas my family has been plagued. Papi got pinkeye from somewhere and gave it to Luke, who then gave it to the baby, who then gave it to me. Did you know that when a baby gets conjunctivitis, it often manifests itself in the form of an ear infection? Yup. Aidan has one of those, too. So do I. I've also had some type of nasty bug that started off as similar to the flu. This thing is AWFUL, it's the type of virus I imagine kills the elderly. It's that bad. I tried to chase it using Laura's witch-doctor-friendly recipes for curing all ailments. You can read about those recipes here.

I tried the Goot, which is a garlic oil ointment that you slather on your chest, feet, and neck, but it was much harder to do since:
a) I was the one who had to make the stuff - it takes a while to cool and harden. It was much more handy after it was in the fridge for a couple of days and had solidified. When I applied it, it was running everywhere and the experience was just a little too much for me.
b) I am a host to my darling little parasite, Baby A. He loves to suck on most anything and is still nursing, so I was incredibly nervous about him being exposed to garlic too early and developing some type of sensitivity to it, just like his brother had for the first 20 months of his life.

After a couple of attempts, my throat started feeling better, so I gave up on the Goot and tried to get my garlic via Naas-tea instead. That definitely helped. While the recipe says to use 1-2 cloves of garlic, I used a good 3 or 4. When I made this for Jason days later, I upped it to 6. It worked for him and cured those ailments, but he did not enjoy the process one bit!

Unfortunately for me, I think I chased the virus north and since I did not garlic it full-strength, it landed in my ears. I'm not one to put anything garlic in anything that cannot be easily cleaned, such as an ear cavity, so there the bug remained and festered while my symptoms multiplied. Today my ear pain is almost unbearable and I just pray that my eardrum is not ruptured. I finally gave up today and had Jay cash in that prescription for antibiotics. I have not taken antibiotics in nearly seven or eight years, so I really try to hold off unless absolutely necessary. Since I'm doing the dreaded antibiotic treatment, I thought it was a good day to make something with yogurt, you know, because of all that acidophilus and everything. I immediately started thinking about Yogurtland and its impersonators and how that was exactly what I wanted to eat!

(Have you been to Yogurtland before? It's like Pinkberry, only self-serve! Pinkberry must be PISSED!)

I decided that I wanted to recreate some of the "tart" yogurt here at home. I found a recipe on Heidi Swason's website for the stuff and decided to try it. She's a talented vegetarian cook and I greatly enjoy most of what she makes, so I had high hopes. Using her recipe as a guide, I combined 2 cups Greek-Style yogurt and 2/3 cups of granulated sugar and dumped it into my ice cream maker. It was delicious and is definitely one of my favorite new easy recipes.

In the end, I think it was a little too sweet to actually fall under the "tart" category. Next time I'll just add sugar to taste, just until the sweetness is able to be detected. While the machine was chugging away, I diced up 6 kiwis and placed them into three of my favorite Crate & Barrel ice cream bowls that we received as a wedding gift from Bruce & "2nd cuz" Diane.
I saved three kiwi slices as a final garnish and waited. At this point, I probably should have put the bowls in the freezer and walked away and let the machine do its job until the very end, but I was too excited. When the yogurt started looking frozen, I turned off the machine and dove in and dished up. It started melting right away as homemade ice cream and yogurt always does.

I wound up with delicious frozen yogurt!

It wasn't soft-serve style, of course, but it tasted remarkable. This picture was taken about 10 minutes after we dished up, which is why it looks like Luke is eating soup. He was.

It's also Luke approved!

My favorite part was taking the ice cream canister and scraping out any frozen stuff left behind with one of Aidan's spoons.

Mmm...
I'm not sure when the baby spoon thing started, but Jay likes to eat with them because "it makes him feel like a giant."

"The best frozen yogurt I've ever tasted." -Papi


Next time I'll be sure I have some fresh mango and maybe some raspberries on hand. I'm also going to try making this frozen yogurt with the low-fat Greek yogurt. We're going to be eating this a lot!