One night, while grocery shopping, I purchased some bananas with the intention of making banana bread. I finally got around to it last Sunday. The weather outside was grim and rainy and I loved it – absolutely loved it!

I put some soft music on the stereo, pulled out the electric mixer, and followed my grandmother’s recipe for banana bread. It turned out great, too.

The exercise in baking made me think about my homemaking skills (or lack thereof), which caused me to work on cleaning my apartment (bathroom and all).

When I finished, I felt like I had truly accomplished something for the first time in a long time. There was an observable result from the amount of work I expended – a clean apartment, smells of Sunday baking, brewing coffee and cleaning supplies. And for a little while, on that rainy day, I felt …

Content. Happy. Good.

It was nice, so I made a batch of sugar cookies after work on Monday.

There is nothing even vaguely oriental about our egg rolls. The wraps are the only thing I can think of, and I guess I don’t count them because I didn’t even have to go to an ethnic foods section to find them – they were in the produce section at both of the grocery stores where I bought them. We call them our American Egg Rolls.

They contain no exotic flavors, nothing you couldn’t taste at a steakhouse or greasy spoon-style diner. They were deep-fried in a kettle, for gosh sake, we couldn’t even be bothered to bring out the Fry Daddy. Nonetheless, we made them on Sunday at the home of my sister and her boyfriend. We all pitched in.

She browned the hamburger, mixed the ingredients together and then helped me wrap all the egg rolls. He supervised the deep-frying and said he liked to cook. When we teased him about that, he was quick to qualify it to frying (but the guy’s got tons of spices and sauces and things I’d never buy).

So, while our cooking efforts may not have been healthy…or ethnic…

At least it was abundant.                

That’s 45 egg rolls, folks.

45

Wow, it’s almost been as long since I posted a blog entry as when I worked out…

Ok, I’m lying, I’ve worked out since I posted last, it’s just been that long since I was one here, that’s kind of what it felt like.

Tonight was another night when I told myself I was going to work out (just a 30-minute one, an itsy-bitsy cardio stretching thing), and then didn’t.

I really can’t wait until the ground dries out and I can at least get outside enough to play a couple of rounds of disc golf at the local course. Or even just walk around downtown or something with a coffee, staring at store windows.

Anything, I just need something that can be done outside and that requires some kind of physical activity. I’m finally reaching the point where I’m going nuts being stuck inside.

I only have so many movies, folks, and I’m getting close to the end of my collection.

For this, I blame my grandma. Remember her? (See "Coffee – Not just an addiction.) The last time I was home, I spent part of Sunday with her and she made me dinner. Part of it, just for me, was some fried klub. She said she had made some just for herself for dinner the night before.

Before that, I had never thought of klub as something you make just for yourself. In my experience, it involved several heavy bags of potatoes, more than one person to peel, a food processor, and then the rest of the work was done by Gram or Gram and my mom and aunt…you know, the "adults." When we’ve all been together and there are over 10 people to feed, Gram’s been known to man three different kettles (and I mean the big ones, that could almost double as cauldrons).

So it was some kind of revelation that I could try to make this on my own, just for me. And that’s what I did tonight, in my typical organized fashion.

I got all the stuff together, right after work.

(The cell phone was essential, since I needed to keep in contact with an experienced cook, a.k.a. Mom, to make sure I was doing it right.)

So, ingredients: potatoes, flour, bacon (for the grease…). Kitchen equipment: peeler (I’m hopeless with a paring knife), shredder, and in the background is my pathetic little 2-quart pot (w/lid).

The next step, cleaned up, looked like this:

That’s the shredded potato mixed with flour. According to Gram, the key is to get just the right amount of flour in there so the klub doesn’t boil apart, but not too much or it becomes really hard and just tastes like flour.

And then it’s pretty simple. You just need to keep an eye on it while it all boils, and fry up your bacon at the same time (ok, or a little while after).

Then you just put it all together, spoon the grease over it, salt it a little (because I just used a piece of bacon to flavor the water instead of boiling a whole ham), and enjoy.

The finished product, while not Gram’s klub, was still pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Yummmmmmmmmm

As far as I know, I’m the only grandchild that has taken Gram’s lessons to heart and used them to make my own klub. Not bad for someone who usually just consumes tv dinners and/or fast food.

I swear I’m not looking for another job right now, the words that caught my eye on this story were "Top Jobs for Night Owls." I swear, I only looked because I have always been, and probably always be, a night person. I don’t feel truly alive before 10 a.m.

It’s actually a rule for my family. If they call before 10 a.m. (it used to be noon) on the weekend, something bad better have happened or someone is going to pay (and dearly).

But according to this story, and a little search after it, I found this. WOW! This makes so much more sense! I see so much of myself in this!

I just thought it’s been years and years of insomnia, but this makes a valid point. If I’m allowed to go to bed at what feels like a natural bedtime (for me), when I naturally wake up, about 8 hours later, I’m a much nicer person than I am on an average weekday morning.

Which actually says a lot, since my co-workers probably wouldn’t recognize me when I’m well-rested and feeling happy… which is pretty sad.

Ah, the smell of pork in the early evening! I finally used one of the roasting pans I received for Christmas. I picked up a pork roast last week on a good deal and decided I’d use it to feed my company tonight.

I used the round roaster I got at my maternal Christmas, because it was smaller and had a lid. Believe it or not, it was the first time I made a roast in something that wasn’t a cake pan. It was nice. I didn’t have to worry about the oven smoking from escaping grease. The lid was much easier to put back into place than the pieces of aluminum foil I had previously used.
One inadvertent side effect? The steam cleaned the lens of my camera very nicely when I got a little too close to take a photo. Mmmmm, doesn’t it look yummy?

I seem to be on something of a meat kick lately. I don’t know what started it, but I’ve had a carnivorous urge. I think I can trace it back to the phone call from my brother about the ¼ of a cow he received for a holiday bonus. And then there was the Friday night I worked at the video store. We were prepping movies for rental release the next Tuesday and one of the DVDs in my stack was the film “The Midnight Meat Train.” That was a couple of weeks ago. Then last week I had a chance to purchase some previously-viewed DVDs and included “Sweeney Todd” with the other movies (“The Mist” and “P.S. I Love You”).

So I watched “Sweeney Todd” last week, to make sure the DVD was in good condition (it was). I left for the weekend and thought my movie watching was at an end for a little while and that I’d retreat back into the world of books. Not so. I had a free Sunday evening, which doesn’t occur all that often, so I returned to the video store and rented “The Midnight Meat Train.”

Now, for anyone looking at the cover, it would seem that this is just your regular slasher film. But it’s got some great horror credibility, thanks to Clive Barker (the Books of Blood, “In the Mouth of Madness,” etc). I’m not a huge Clive Barker fan, but I’m familiar with the guy’s work, just not this particular story. A friend had recommended this movie a while ago, and I’d been watching for it ever since, so I gave it a shot.

Boy am I glad I did. While the movie is gore heavy (the CGI effects of a huge steel hammer crashing into the back of a guy’s skull, a camera shot of a woman’s blood-covered hands as she’s being dragged backward through a subway car awash in her husband’s blood before her own decapitation), it’s also a solid story. Oh, and the photography by the main character in the movie? I am so jealous. It makes me want to grab my camera, head to a big city for a weekend and just shoot black and white, looking for the grittiest photos I can find.

Not only is the movie a great horror story about a man’s descent into madness, it’s beautifully shot. The lighting alone is genius. It’s haunting and powerful and it just generally makes this small town girl pine for a weekend in the city, riding the subway and shooting photos like a madman. And while this movie probably won’t inspire you to fire up the grill and cook your steak rare, it’s worth a watch.

I know if I go without some form of caffeine, I have a difficult time, but it’s such an integral part of society, that it’s hard to separate the addiction aspect from the lifestyle aspect.

I’m not that old, but my lifestyle indoctrination began early. As long as I can remember, I’ve had a thing about coffee. It started with dunking my cookies in coffee and progressed to the two travel mugs a day that I consume right now.

When I was younger, it was a special treat to get my own mug of coffee, some of Great-Aunt Alice’s sugar cookies, and a spot at the grown-ups table for Saturday morning coffee. So I blame this lady, my Grandma Pearl, for getting me started.

Gram (as I call her) always has a pot of coffee on. At holidays and regular Sunday dinners, you can bring your own beverages, drink water, Diet Pepsi, root beer, or coffee. Those are your choices. She’s got it down to a science. She had a Bunn coffeemaker for 10 years that just recently went kaput (right before Thanksgiving!). She has at least 4 gallon jugs for distilled water. That water only goes into the coffee maker. Of course, her coffee is excellent, and I’ve started to use the distilled water, too.

It took about 10 years from my first coffeepot to come up with just the right combination for my morning and noon brew. So, if you see me around, with my travel mug in hand, it’s a dark roast coffee with sugar-free French Vanilla cream and two packets of sugar substitute.

I love this stuff. I’ll even have it with cookies for a meal.

Which I did the other night. Hey, just because I’m getting older, it doesn’t mean I can’t eat like a kid.

I’m sure I’m not the only one. But I’m an adult, and I guess I can if I want to, right? This was supper: caramel chocolate chip walnut cookies and decaf coffee (in my favorite skull mug).

It’s almost healthy, right? Later I supplemented it with a hamburger kid’s meal. It was just that tonight I ate dessert first. 

Meet the Beans.

I don’t have any children. I do have a couple of nephews, but I haven’t talked to their parents yet, so I don’t want to post any videos or photos of them without at least warning my brothers. So, for amusing anecdotes and funny stories, I need to rely on my dog.

I’m sure that as long as I continue to write here, I’ll be bursting with stories about the wonders of dog-momdom. I’m sorry, I’ll try to keep it to a minimum and stick to the more amusing stories. As my coworkers could tell you, though, whenever they talk about children, I talk about Beanie.

Her sixth birthday is coming up in a couple weeks. She’ll get some rawhide and some new rope bones and she’ll do lots of tricks for carrots and Nibs. She is sometimes referred to as my little goat. In her short life, she has so far survived: a pound of chocolate (she actually removed the wrappers from the Hershey’s Hugs before eating them), 2 bottles of Xanax (which I sometimes think she drove her dog sitter to take), aluminum cans, glass candle holders, numerous bags and backpacks, three comforters (maybe the stuffing tasted good?), tennis shoes, tons of socks and underwear (once again, at the dogsitter’s), lots of pens (punishment for me), and I’m sure a million other things I never knew about. She also dug a hole through the carpet, to the concrete, in my last apartment.

Most people would think about getting rid of her by now, but she’s just so darn cute. Besides, her training has gotten a lot better since I started keeping carrots in the house.

Here she is, performing some of her tricks.

Yay! Thanks to the wonders of the internet, help from friends, and the fact that I never get rid of anything I’ve shot (mostly), I now have multimedia capabilities. I’ve been waiting for this to work. Now I will be able to do a bunch more stuff, even though my movies will probably be on the boring side for a while until I hit my stride (or start attending more interesting events?).

I’m just glad I got the bugs worked out. It’s going to make things a lot more fun (yes, I’m a nerd).

The only thing that sucks is the video quality isn’t all that great. Also, there’s a lot of action, which makes it worse. So those are problems I’ll be working on, though I’m limited by equipment and the web.

Have a good weekend, all. I hope to have more stuff to post next week.