In which I liked it enough to make it a second time, which means that the recipe goes on the intarwebs for YOUR reading pleasure!
This soup is easy to make, nutritious, and cheap.
I’ve made it twice — the first time I made it up as I went along, and it was yummy enough that tonight AmmZon requested it again! So I decided to write it down, lest it be lost like that amazing soup Chloe made that one time that was “too simple to forget” but was.
So here goes: a simple, filling spinach soup my household really likes.
Creamy Spinach Soup
In a large pot over medium flame, heat:
- 1 T. butter
- 1 T. extra virgin olive oil
add and saute until translucent:
- 1/2 yellow onion, diced
- 1-2 cloves garlic, minced.
Add:
- 2 c. whole milk
- 2 c. broth, vegetable or chicken
- 1 c. water
- scant pinch ground cloves (optional)
- 1/4 tsp. ground tumeric (optional)
Add:
- 1 large potato, peeled and diced
- 1 carrot, peeled and diced
- 1 pkg. frozen spinach
Bring to a simmer and cook until the potatoes and carrots are tender.
Using a slotted spoon, remove the solids into a blender. Add a little broth and pulse until smooth, then return to the soup pot and stir.
Adjust seasonings:
- kosher salt and black pepper to taste.
Ladle into warm bowls and serve with a good, crusty bread.
Servings: 4-6
Cooking time: 20-30 minutes
Recipe Source
Author: Me!
Source: goblinbox.com
Now that you’re into recipe mode, go read this one.
In which this is all the news that’s fit to print, and it ain’t much.
We had friends over so I stayed up way too late last night, and now I’m sleepy. You’d think someone pushing 40 would have figured out how to go to bed on time, but no. I act like a little kid and stay up too late even though I know I’m gonna suffer.
Today I had a Subway sandwich for lunch because I’m not convinced that Mexican food alone provides enough dietary variation.
My new PPC arrived yesterday! It’s not refurbished, it’s used. Fairly heavily used. It’s a little glitchy — it doesn’t respond to the touchscreen properly while the sync cable is plugged into it — but I surfed around and found out that the glitch is something I can easily fix if I’m willing to take the unit apart, which I am.
The best news in the PPC so far world is that the latest version of Mobipocket Reader Desktop is fuckin’ hawt! It puts me in mind of iTunes, actually. One can finally organize books in useful ways, and it connects directly to ebook stores (my favorites Mobipocket and Fictionwise, as well as several others) so that purchasing, downloading, and syncing ebooks is effortless. Yay! And the Pocket PC version is also updated, and allows one to have more control over how the library is organized.
In other news… I feel this terrible, dark, foreboding depression this afternoon… it feels hormonal, like I’ve got PMS, but it’s not time for PMS. I sure hope an after-work nap takes care of it because I don’t particularly enjoy feeling as if my dog just died.
Update: A nap totally helped. Now… what to do this evening? Laundry? Dinner? Hmm.
In which there might be a parcel!
My boss is out of town for a whole week and I was a busy bee today. I am probably going to have a drink with Raybo as soon as I leave the office.
According to the UPS site, my new Pocket PC was out for delivery today! IT’S PROBABLY WAITING FOR ME ON THE PORCH!!! You can more deeply grok my PPC nerdliness by going here.
(Note: The post title is from an obscure Harry Nilsson song. I don’t really think Thursdays are peculiar.)
In which I comment on the anti-abortion situation.
Last week, I read an article about a man who wants the State of Texas to pay women $500 to put unwanted babies up for adoption rather than have abortions.
Because it’s soooo constitutional for states to buy human beings.
Today while I was opening the mail at work, I noticed that one of our customers has return address labels that read Pray to stop abortion (in an irritatingly cutesy, child-like pseudo-handwritten font) below an image of a beautiful, chubby Gerber-style baby.
Oh, for FUCK’S SAKE! Normally I’m pretty quiet about the abortion thing because as long as it’s legal I’m content to keep my mouth shut — and folks who can’t see that we’re eventually going to have more people than resources aren’t worth arguing with anyway — because it’s so very personal. I respect the sanctity of life and the difficult feelings abortion causes, blah blah blah, but a being needs first to possess a life before its sanctity can be protected. And a zygote is not a person. [How do I know this? I just do. Just take my word for it.]
- It costs far more than $500 for your average human woman to carry a baby to term and deliver it. Paying someone $500 to give birth to a child they don’t want is so insultingly stupid that I start to sputter indignantly whenever I try to talk about it.
- Sadly, there are women out there who regularly use surgical abortion as contraception. Those bitches, believe you me, will have no problem taking $500 from the state and then delivering a crack baby into the arms of the System to suffer indefinitely.
- Wouldn’t it be better to pray for the babies who are already here and starving instead of hoping for more unwanted, starving babies struggling through addiction-at-birth, DHS, and foster care?
To the genius who wants to convert Texas’ 75,000 annual abortions into up to 75,000 additional live births, I ask this: How much were you planning on budgeting for DHS to process all those state-owned orphans? Babies generally need to be white, pudgy, and healthy to get adopted as infants (unless Angelina’s adoptions have truly popularized adoptions of brown babies). Persons who are not adopted as infants have a likelihood of adoption that drops exponentially every hour they’re alive. In other words, it costs a lot of money to raise children, and they ain’t small and helpless and cute forever so you can safely expect them to end up costing the state money at some point or another.
I think I’d like have a bumper sticker that reads:
Pray to stop abortion! Because God knows…
we need more starving babies!
we need more starving babies!
If we could just get the church to quit saying that life starts at conception and move the moment instead to the second or third trimester, we’d be headed down a road of possible sustainability. As it is, we’re gonna cover the world with concrete in another hundred or two generations, which is totally, like, not nice at all to the children of the children of the children of the babies that Texas wants to purchase!
Don’t even get me started on the world’s apparent disinterest in a real space program. Any creature too stupid to leave an open cage when all the food is gone probably deserves to die anyway.
In which it is really entirely too damned nice outside.
The weather is gorgeous. Breezy, warm, balmy, just gorgeous. The lawns have turned emerald green in the past three days. I’m wearing a strappy backless hippy dress, people. It’s wonderful.
It also makes me fear for the upcoming summer. It’s only March and it’s acting like May which makes me think that May will feel like August… and August in the Midwest? Totally. SUCKS. ASS. (And not in the fun way!)
I’m devouring Otherland, one of the books my mom sent me. In hardback, even, which one would assume would be a more luxurious reading experience but in actual fact is unwieldy and irritating. (I can’t wait to start reading ebooks on a palmtop again; they’re lightweight, small, and backlit, bitches! Such a superior reading experience, when you’re a voracious reader. I mean, it’s not that I don’t dig an old musty tome when I’m in an Indiana Jones movie, but for general consumption the e-device is the way to go.)
The reviews at Amazon are divided between yum and suck, but I think it’s delicious. I devoured 500 pages over the weekend. I’d tell you all about it, but it’s such a broad story with so many characters that not even the professionals at the publishing house could write a decent jacket blurb. (The jacket blurb sucked, omfg, what a ramblingly unattractive piece of shit.) (The only reason I started reading the book in the first place was that it was not only over 700 pages long, but the first in a series of five and all were present in the boxes my mom sent. I’m always looking for a long-term reading relationship.) It’s cyberpunk. There’s a tiny little bushman character with an ! in his name. The descriptions of the future web are awesome and I want VR gear installed in my head, I totally do. Typing is so 21st century; wouldn’t it be cooler to simply gesture at icons in an all-enveloping, 3D scape?
Yes, it would totally be better!
I have a job, good books to read, and a new Pocket PC on the way via UPS. I’m so happy!
In other news, according to the bartender Aki, who is sitting in my living room chatting with Truck and Peach, Southern Comfort should be called “bitch whiskey” because that’s what it is. Hah!
In which I get totally incensed about something for, like, ten minutes and then totally get over it.
Today I logged into the Drive web site to pay my auto insurance premium.
My ex and I are still on the same policy, and he’s always asking me about the account when he’s here dropping Truck off after work. Is it paid? When is it due? Can he give me cash for his portion? Can’t I just handle paying it?
It’s a pain in the ass because the bill goes to his house. He should know when it’s due and he should handle paying it since he’s the one with the bank loan and the full coverage and the late model truck. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t have a checking account, he doesn’t have a credit card, it’s too hard, he’s decided it’s easier if I just pay it online.
Newsflash! I don’t have a checking account or credit cards either, so it’s equally difficult for me to pay it! And since my premium’s $200 a year and his is $900, I think he should endure the arduous chore of opening the bill, reading it, buying a money order and a stamp, and getting it in the mail on time.
Yeah. Right.
Long story short, it occurred to me this afternoon — as I was paying the bill online with a borrowed credit card — that the ex and I need to get separate policies.
I surfed around and ended up at Geico for a quote. In the process, I had a window open at Drive — to get my current coverage and VIN and such — and noticed archived PDFs of all the documents pertaining to my current policy. One document was called Notice of Continuing Action and the title intrigued me, so I opened it.
It’s basically a two-page document saying they’d reviewed my policy and did not give me the lowest rate available because of my driving or credit history. My driving record is spotless, so it appears they’re charging me more because I have lousy credit.
Continue reading »
In which I not only get paid but there’s a hot fudge sundae too, bitches!
Work this week has been great even though I made collections calls and have inherited an assload of tedious projects. Collections here isn’t aggressive; it’s more of a hey-you’ve-been-carrying-a-balance-for-awhile sort of thing. The tedious projects are things that have not been getting done around here for a long time, and dumping them off on me makes everyone else feel better and lightens the mood.
The guys here are fun and they all curse, which is definitely good by me. And today? Today my boss sent me to the Dairy Whore to get us hot fudge sundaes with nuts! HELL YEAH!
In other news, I totally fucking splurged and bought this today – a Dell Axim X5. I’ve been PPC-less for months and months and months and am totally sick of it. (The same model’s still retailing between $100-$150, so even though the one I bought is refurbished, I still got a pretty good deal!) Soon, I will be happily loading my new device with software and data and carrying it around everywhere I go. I’m so happy!
If I were a responsible adult, I would have spent that money at the dentist’s instead.
In which there’s a totally half-assed review of a book I’m still reading!
I’m currently reading Alpha Centauri, which came in one of the boxes of books my mom sent.
“From a grossly overpopulated Earth in 2239 A.D., an exploratory colonization mission to Alpha Centauri finds Mies Cochrane carrying an autovirus inside him that, after sexual intercourse, halts conception – the perfect birth control. The explorers discover the remains of an ancient civilization and a way to see what caused their extinction through the eyes of the last, long-dead inhabitant. The authors make a strong statement about overpopulation, solutions to it, and humanity’s purpose for existing. This thought-provoking book, a mix of sexually explicit passages and scientific exposition, is recommended for adult sf collections.”
Mies is not only carrying permanent birth control in his testicles but is a rapidly destabilizing schizophrenic as well. Another character is a voluntary neuter, and a third is a voluntary hermaphrodite. The sex is freakin’ awesome weird, and if there’s anything sci-fi needs it’s more awesome weird sex! I mean, seriously. What could possibly be better?
All the reviewers at Amazon hated Alpha Centauri because, apparently, the sentence fragments and gratuitous sex irritated them. I’d like to reply that not only is the science superfantastic, but the sentence fragments — usually used when we’re sharing a character’s thoughts — are not distracting but impactful, and if a person’s paying attention to the story arc at all the sex isn’t gratuitous. The destabilizing schizo is infecting other characters with permanent infertility when he sleeps with them; they’re an 11-member crew stuck light years away from a dying earth in a system with no habitable planets – the sex is not only part of the human condition but PART OF THE PLOT. The surgical alterations various characters have undergone help us to examine human sexuality in interesting, story-moving ways. When we find out that Doc really believes men are incapable of love and only say the word in order to get laid, we begin to understand why he chose to spend 20 or 30 years as a neuter, free of his sexual imperatives.
Sci-fi isn’t actually supposed to bore one to sleep.
In other news, BabyGirl has her own blog.
In which xkcd continues to be one my most favorite strips.
I love xkcd because interspersed among the math/geek strips are random gems like this one:
Heh. Guess what I’m doing this weekend!
In which my mom is better than your mom, because your mom didn’t send me TWO BOXES OF BOOKS.
When I got home from work tonight, I was greeted by the glorious sight of two boxes of books on the porch.
My mom sent me TWO BOXES OF BOOKS. Hell to the yeah, bitches!
There’s all kinds of fabulous stuff in there. Sci-fi. Fantasy. The Story of O. A little something by the Marquis de Sade. Ursula K LeGuin. Steven King. Barbara Kingsolver.
And more!
More more more!
We here at the little house on second street are beside ourselves with bibliophilical glee! AmmZon had already yanked out two books to read by the time I got home from my trip to the Dead Cock for an after-work cocktail.
Two.
Entire.
Boxes.
Of.
Books.
*faints*
VSCO
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4 random books from my Library!
