My week: repairs, reading, more snow, food, books...

No sewing today, but some repairing!  In December I broke my dining room lamp.  I accidentally hit one of the "arms" of the lamp, and it "popped out."  I thought I could "pop" it back into place but it had actually broken off.    I tried a lot of things, crazy glue included, but nothing worked.  Today I got back in the repair saddle and tried again.  So far, so good.  I've run the washing machine upstairs (which shakes this light fixture) and it held up; the next text will be the dishwasher tmw night (it also shakes the light fixture).



I used hot glue to keep the arm in position, though hot glue is not enough to keep it from falling over.  I used silver wire I had in stash from my flower days, wrapped it around all of the arms, so the other arms + wire + hot glue are keeping the arm from popping out. 


I don't think it looks too bad.  In the picture above you can see the glue and the wire; but in reality if you're at the table looking at the lamp you just see the wire, and it really doesn't seem so noticable.

I have to go to Home Depot tmw to buy a new toilet handle and lever tmw.  I took apart the old one today; it broke this week.  I totally understand what I need to do.  I'm feeling very confident I can fix it all by myself, which feels very empowering!

We are still getting snow!  It is so unusual for NJ to have so much snow, especially after last year's snowy winter.   There was snow into ice  Monday night into Tuesday morning.  I should have taken a picture of my car; it had snow and then was "enrobed" in ice.  Here I took a picture of a chunk on its side; it's half snow and half ice.  The yellow thing in my hand is my ice scraper.


Can you see the outline of the ice coating the trees??

Then Wednesday it was in the 40's and the snow started to melt, but there's so much snow, it didn't disappear.
Then it snowed again on Friday morning, 2 or so more inches on top of what remained.  I like the sunlight glistening on the snow.

I drove to work late both days even though the university was operating at normal hours--it just felt safer that way, though there's always a scary moment somewhere along the way on a drive through the snow.
  
I finished "Are You My Guru:  How Medicine, Meditation, and Madonna Saved My Life" by Wendy Shanker.  If you have a chronic illness, or chronic pain, you MUST read this book.  Highly recommend.



My friend at work saw the "Are you my guru" book on my desk (it was so good, I was carrying it with me, reading it on my lunch hour, at the doctor's office, etc).  She told me about "The Guru In You" by Cameron Alborzian; she saw him on Ellen.  I've only flipped through it so far, but if you want a former male supermodel to show you how to do some basic yoga moves, you're in luck; it's part of the book:


The Pain Free book Beth recommended last week was checked out of the library when I went on Thurs, but I'll put it on hold.

My orchids are in full bloom now!  Great job, orchids!


I used leftover ingredients (and of course all of that leftover rice) to make dinner on Tuesday night.  It looks a lot like Saturday's dinner, right??  But it's different; I put mozzarella cheese chunks in it, and didn't use soy sauce.  See, I even used a different pan (round, not square!)


I never got to do the navy blue sailor shirt photo shoot; maybe tmw.  Cooking, reading, doing my homework is cutting into my sewing time but it's worth it.  My back is feeling a lot better (this week is its two year anniversary), but I pulled an ab muscle so that's on my radar.

By the way, I'm going to PR weekend Chicago (though I still need to request the time off from work)--hope to see you there!

corn chowder redux; Vogue 8534 redux sneak peek

Today was the day of the redux.

First up, corn chowder. Last week's was too much liquid, not enough corn. So I combined the "Skinny B*tch" recipe with the recipe from "400 Calorie Fix". 1 cup more corn, 2 cups less veggie broth, what a difference! MUCH better.


I also finished Vogue 8534 redux, my first garment of 2011! Finally! It's been three weeks since I've sewn. As you may recall, the previous version suffered an accidental cut, and then was too small anyway. The redux version is navy blue and fits me a lot better. I'm not loving the loop for the bow, though. I can easily remake that so it's not as wide.


I'll write about the shirt sometime this week, and I'll do a photoshoot then too and write a pattern review of it then too.  I wish I had my sailor hat from Disney World.  It would really make the photoshoot.


I want to change my SPR name.  Right now it's kdburkhardt.  I'm thinking of changing it just to my first name, or my first and middle names.  I suppose I could change it to something sewing related, but I don't know...

Beth, I will look into the pain book you recommended, thanks!

Last question: What is a dutch oven? A lot of recipes use one--I'll google image search it now!

Snow, food, books, etc

It's so strange; the last few winters Jersey has been the recipient of quite a lot of snow. I would have loved this when I was in school!
Here's Wednesday's snow. It was 10am delayed opening that day.


How much snow? This much:




So, on Thursday night I made two eggs scrambled and french toast made with wheat bread. Easy and yummy, though the cinnamon sort of plummeted out of the container and onto one of the slices.


Tonight I made "Chicken Fried Rice" from the "Cook This, Not That!" cookbook.

So I really wasn't thinking about the whole "rice" issue. The recipe called for 2 cups cooked whole grain rice in the ingredients list.

First, I think it's sneaky for cookbooks to put cooked items in the ingredients list. This bit me in the a** a few years ago when a recipe called for cooked pasta in the ingredients...when it was time to throw the pasta in, I did and then ha ha, realized it was supposed to have already been cooked.  Oh, crunchy entree.

So I cooked the rice first, BUT I put 2 cups of uncooked rice into the pot to start--when it was time to put the cooked rice in, I'm thinking, wow, this looks like a LOT of rice and I couldn't fit it all in the pan, but kept on cooking til the end (I think this is analogous to sewing a wavy hem--I realize it's wavy and kept going--it took a few years to get myself to STOP when I realize something's going wrong).   THEN I looked at the box. 2 cups uncooked rice = 10 cups cooked rice. ohhhhh....I had to add more (lower sodium) soy sauce to my dish because that tablespoon got soaked up in all that rice.  But it was good dinner and plenty o' leftovers! 

I saw a bit of "Worst Cooks in America" on Food Network the other weekend. I feel like those cooks. And tonight I could sort of hear Chef Anne screaming in my ear to be more aggressive with my chopping, ha ha.

Here are 9 of the 10 items I have checked out of the Princeton Public Library.


I love the library.

I highly recommend "Food Rules". Easy read, common sense guide to eating.  As the author says, it boils (ha ha!) down to "Eat Food.  Mostly Plants.  Not too much."  I think one of my favorite rules is not eating anything your great-grandparents wouldn't recognize (it means it's overly processed).   Also, not eating unless you're hungry enough to eat an entire apple (to eliminate grazing). 

I just started "Are You My Guru? How Medicine, Meditation, and Madonna Saved My Life". Love it so far.

I've read bits and pieces of "Full Catastrophe Living." I like it so much I bought a copy so that I can annotate it. I think this book will play a big role in the elimination/reduction of my back pain.  

"Heat", written by someone who worked for Chef Mario Batali, is an audiobook that I can listen to during my commute. I currently am listening to "Half Empty" by David Rakoff on my commutes (not pictured). I already listened to "Wherever You Go, There You Are" by Jon Kabat-Zinn, but took out the book for good measure.

I actually sewed today for about 45 minutes! I'm hoping to do some more sewing tomorrow and finish the Vogue shirt. But now I have to finish my "homework" for the week (I'm doing the "Pain Free For Life:  The 6 week cure for chronic pain without surgery or drugs" program which has half an hour of homework per day, for 6 weeks.  I'm doing homework 5 nights out of 7.  Today is homework day number 10.)

Like I mentioned before, I'm doing less sewing to concentrate more on my back.  The time I spent cooking and doing homework, I would have spent on sewing.  It's well worth it.

Good night!