Yummy Breakfast Potatoes

Ingredients:
- 1 bag frozen O'Brian Potatoes

- 1 can of beans, drained & rinsed (black or kidney beans)

- 1 to 2 cups veggie broth (1 c for sauce, extra to add as needed to avoid sticking to pan)

- 2 TBSP Nutritional Yeast

- 2 tsp white miso paste

- 1 tsp dried dill

- 1/2 tsp granulated garlic

(- black pepper and salt to taste at finish)

Directions:

Whisk everything except potatoes and beans together in large frying pan over medium heat. Once the sauce is smooth, add the potatoes and stir to coat with the sauce. Cook until potatoes are nearly done, turning them carefully/when needed. Stir once more before adding the beans, being sure to scrape the bottom of the pan to be sure no potatoes are stuck. Cook for another minute or two to heat the beans. Taste and add salt & pepper as desired. Serve as is or in tortillas as breakfast tacos with fresh salsa. Serves 4 - 6 

i love cheese - and it shows

I've been trying my hand at some short stories. I'm hoping with lots of practice, they will get better. Right now they have all the cheese factor of the Star Trek TNG episode "Up The Long Ladder" or Star Trek Animated Series "Bem" - the idea had great potential ... but, well... maybe you should watch the episodes to understand what I mean, as I'm not posting any of my stories here yet! Other great cheesy shows to watch include "Eerie, Indiana" and anything with William Shatner hehe :)

Mystery of the Ratty Couch Transport

When my brother and I were little, I'd guess around six and eight years old, he had a bunk bed in his room. His room also had two large windows that looked out across our driveway with an excellent view of our next door neighbor's back yard. Every so often we'd convince mom to let me camp out in his room. Then we'd sneak in some papers and pencils, and each lay on our respective bunks next to the window and watch across the driveway to the yard. The yard consisted of gravel and a generic assortment of grasses and weeds and wasn't very interesting in and of itself. The neighbors, however, were interesting - at least to a couple little kids who can't imagine being outside past ten o'clock at night. There were always people stopping by just for a few minutes, then leaving quickly. Occasionally someone would go in, never to be seen again (or not to leave until after we'd fallen asleep on our pages).   The mysterious guests would always pull right up to the back step, and we'd write down their licence plate numbers and the time and other details, like "wearing plaid shirt" and so forth. Once, they even moved a ratty old sofa onto a decrepit trailer. Imagine our disappointment that there were no license plates to be seen - they backed the trailer in at an angle. The thing is, I don't remember what started all this, and what we did with the note pages. I'm just glad I didn't wake up with a pencil in my nose, falling asleep writing like that. Decades later, I still remember wondering WHAT was the point of moving the couch so late at night? For all our sleuthing, we never discovered the Mystery of the Ratty Couch Transport.

Telling Myself: I am Energetic

I did this for a while. I reminded myself, "I am an energetic person." This would trigger thoughts of the most energetic, get things DONE person I know, and I'd realize I hadn't even come CLOSE to what she could accomplish with all the energy. This kinda sounds like a downer, putting it all out here in blog land, however, it was a real motivator for me. I kept myself on my feet, getting a ton of things accomplished around my house that I'd been putting off in my lethargy. Then there was an incident with my pantry: I decided it was completely unacceptable. I emptied the entire thing, threw out anything I couldn't justify as good enough to feed to my children, and made a big donate box of all the random containers, dishes and thingamabobs that I couldn't remember the last time I had used. Sounds great? Sounds energetic? I ran out of steam about 10 days ago, about 87.3% done with the task. The last bit is piled up on a folding table in my kitchen, being a real hassle to get around. Turns out I'm energetic with a bad memory for reminding myself that.

These oranges were grown just for me, and my little family. A lot of seemingly random things fell into place and here they are, in our kitchen. Someone nurtured them with us in mind . . . we are blessed, and every once in a while, I realize it, and appreciate it.

LOL. no, really, i'm laughing out loud!

Things that made me laugh out loud today:

. . . On Facebook:

"Warning: Girl Scout cookies are no longer made with real Girl Scouts. I blame the economy."


"Tonight i saw a spork being used as a knife. Two uses not enough? I will never understand this kind of utensil greed."


"And so it begins....one dog out one cat in, one cat out. another dog out., one back in...one dog wants out again...one cat is black, can't see if it wants in ...both dogs in ...to hell with the cats.......good night!"

. . . On a website:

What do vegetarians eat? . . . FOOD!! hahahahaha

. . . On a blog:

Where does Fat go when you Lose it? ... i was laughing so hard by the time i got to the end i started to worry i'd wake up the kiddos!

This post . . . when I realized that all this is so much more funny when you are very, very spelp
speel slepe sleep deprived! *giggles*

let the light shine on your efforts

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us" Ecclesiastes 1:9-10
Don't let Solomon stifle your creativity - pick up the Book and get the context of the futility of trying to create some temporal immortality, toiling under the sun. Bearing that in mind, just because it's been said or done before, doesn't mean that your personal touch on something won't make it ring true for someone now.
There's all these inspirational quotes about going for it, you can do it, some followed with an at least you tried (anyone else thinking of Lord Tennyson's famous "Tis better to have loved and lost"?)
But then there's that crystallizing moment, when something you've seen, read, heard, so many times before, suddenly clicks. This quote was it for me when I read it the other day:

“If you’re going to risk and maybe fail, 

fail at something that matters. 

Fail gloriously 

so that even in failure, 

lives change.”