Category Food

Enough is enough! (Take that, Tupperware cupboard!)

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

I’ve been stressed. There’s a lot going on in my life between relationships and work. And for weeks, if not months, I’ve wanted to clean the Tupperware cupboard.

When my husband moved out in late June, I encouraged him to take more of the storage containers in the cupboard. I honestly don’t remember how much he took. But I do know I look at the cupboard and think I have too many containers left.

Purging and organizing makes my soul feel free and light.

Today I finally did it…

I ate way too many pierogies for dinner and then I tackled the abyss.

My heart celebrates order over chaos.

Why you should always be nice

Angel Ackerman 3 Comments

Today I kept my head above water, but I often still feel like I’m drowning.

Physically I’m still struggling a bit so that makes it a little harder.

Dinner tonight was Little Caesar’s deep dish.

I ordered it for 5 pm so the teenager could come with me to pick it up, but she had a kitten pinning her down and we all know how hard it can be to escape kittens. 

I arrive early since I didn’t stop home. The person staffing Little Caesar’s front desk is super apologetic that my pie isn’t ready. I said it was fine, and told her that my daughter being held hostage by kittens.

She gave the only response she could, “Awe…. you have kittens?! Like little kittens?”

And as she drank her Mountain Dew I told her the story of trapping the kittens and how I don’t have the heart to separate the remaining siblings.

Next she asked, how old is your daughter?”

“Almost 16,” I replied.

“You don’t look old enough to have a daughter who’s 16.”

“I’m going to be 45 in a couple months,” I told her.

“You look damn good for 45,” the woman said as she handed me my pizza.

I thanked her. And then she told me to wait and she gave me big bag of cookies, for my daughter, even though my daughter was too old for cookies, she said, but everyone likes cookies.

It made me think of all the times I used to give out things like popcorn.

But who knew Little Caesar’s had cookies?

Anyway, those cookies felt like winning the lottery.

In closing, enjoy this photo of the teenager exploring the cookies and Nala, the cockatoo, and I, eating pizza.

Friday: “It’s so basic”

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment
  1. Kittens/laundry
  2. Bird/plucking update
  3. Coffee smell better
  4. It’s so basic

That’s the list I typed for myself early this morning to remind me what the heck I wanted to write tonight.

But let’s go out of order from my original list. It’s Friday let’s go wild.

The smell improves

You may have heard that Nala, my four-year-old Goffin’s cockatoo who swindled me into bringing her home early last month, rather dramatically spilled my coffee into my rather cheap lime green bedroom rug.

I attacked the area with some lavender Johnson & Johnson’s baby soap. As of tonight, the smell of stale coffee has dissipated unless you are on the floor.

So, stay off my floor.

Kitten update

Day 2 of letting our two kittens roam the house. They are drawn to the laundry room and as kittens do, they tear all the laundry down. First they drug the sheets everywhere. Then the knocked down my blouses. Then they tackled all the towels.

Kittens.

I used to fold all the laundry nicely and pile it in the laundry room to put away during the weekend. I also left the dry laundry linger on the drying rack.

Guess everything needs to be put away right away. Leave it to those silly kittens to find the one lazy arena of my household routines.

But Opie is doing his best to babysit. Opie and the kittens are all exhausted by the end of the day.

Nala’s plucking

She’s got her wings pretty badly stripped.

I keep telling her she’ll never be able to fly if she keeps this up. The ladies at the pie shop suggested I get her a companion.

My teenager can vouch for me. This bird is spoiled and loved!

I came home for lunch today and spent time with her and put on Shrek the Musical for her.

“It’s so Basic.”

  • My thought for the day:

I found myself scraping dried cat food off a spoon at 6 a.m., again, because the teenager more often than not forgets to rinse her dirty dishes.

And I ask myself all the time, “how?” She’s not an idiot, so why is it such a challenge to remember to rinse the dishes.

Husbands and wives are also prone to situations like this. One partner can’t quite fathom why the other doesn’t find something as common sense as the other.

Then I found myself thinking even more.

After all, I’m an extremely intelligent and self-aware person. But as a new(er) employee, in a brand new career path, I’m sure some people at my office look at me and wonder how I miss things that to them are completely basic.

It’s a profound reminder of how different our experiences and points of view are.

For example, my teenager learned to change a tire by watching her father change one of my flats. Once. She keeps saying she’ll teach me, because it’s really easy. It’s so basic.

I told her I’ll join AAA, it’s easier. And after six months of trying to stop by the AAA office, I finally thought to join online.

And it turns out that AAA remembers me from the membership I had before the teenager was born. It won’t let me join online because it’s a renewal and I can’t renew online because you need your membership card.

Seriously?

PS–

I also went grocery shopping today. Bought a ridiculous pile of stuff from Grocery Outlet.

Highlights include:

  • Matcha protein drink
  • Protein cold brew
  • Pecan yogurt smoothie
  • Fish pie
  • Epic pork rinds
  • Various noodles
  • Parsnips
  • Blood oranges
  • Marinated feta

I started some chicken bone broth in the crockpot, so by Sunday night I’ll be able to make homemade chicken soup with carrots, parsnips, potatoes and alphabet noodles for dinner Monday night.

An average day

Angel Ackerman 2 Comments

This will be a walk through my day today, a tad random, a tad sporadic.

This will include lots of silly animal posts.

But let’s start with my alarm at 6 a.m. I let myself sleep in because my rest has been irregular. I’ve had mild bouts of insomnia brought on by stress and hormones so it was hard to get out of bed.

A French Dream

I woke from a dream I don’t quite fully remember but I remember when the alarm sounded, I was dreaming that I had reached the end of some sort of tour, while on a trip, and was ordering alcoholic beverages for everyone in my party in French. I think I was the only person who spoke French. And I really was speaking French. I don’t usually speak French in dreams.

Perhaps this stems from my executive director eating a vegetable sandwich on a croissant at the networking event we attended last night.

Speaking of work, today started better and I feel a little less discombobulated about my job. I have an important report due Friday and three grants I need to have ready by Valentine’s Day.

Then the high school called.

An automated message informed me that my child was not in school. Text to teenager, who left at 7:15 with a heavy backpack. “You in school?”

No response.

(A sign that she is in school and not on her phone.)

“The school just called. They don’t think you’re there.”

She responds. “Sh*t. I must have forgotten to sign in.”

I tell her to fix that and to text me a photo from the school office holding today’s newspaper. She didn’t respond to my comment, though she did tell me she talked to the attendance office.

I had lunch with a friend who always lightens my spirit and has intelligent conversation. I’ve worked so many hours this week, I need to remember to make these connections.

And you always need those friends who give good hugs. A friend who bakes brownies is also good.

The afternoon went quickly and I decided my teenager and I would have a picnic. I took the leftover pizza from last night and a big old salad and we ate it on my bed with all the animals out, normally (to my chagrin) the kittens are locked in my teenager’s room.

Menagerie tales

So the kittens ran through the whole house, up and down the stairs, up and down the hall.

And, of course, Nala, the cockatoo, refused to eat salad in favor of pizza. Video of Nala eating pizza

Then I hung laundry and watched Opie, our 3-legged cat, play with the kittens.

Videos:

Misty attacks Opie

Opie and the kittens

My sore arm and the gym

I opted not to go to the gym as I’m still not sure I’ve recovered my strength. That fall scared me. A lot.

(See Grit and getting published on The Mighty.)

I have noticed my right arm has that vaguely sore feeling like after you get an inoculation. I couldn’t figure out why. Then I remembered, I fell on that arm. And I also noticed a bruise on my elbow. And a new bruise and scratch on my leg.

Finally

After teenager and I gathered the trash, I hopped in the shower. I found the teen “trapped” on my bed with an Oz on her back.

And now I’m drinking a double stiff mug of Traditional Medicinals Nighty Nite Valerian tea.

The Pizza Weight Loss Plan

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

If you’re reading this after seeing the title and thinking I am proposing pizza as a fad diet, step away. I am joking. This is a light hearted, humorous piece about how Dominoes and Little Caesars have become my stress foods.

I can cook. I can cook well. But stress eating is a hobby of mine.

My daughter introduced me to Little Caesars as they have one pretty much across the street from her high school (and a block away from the other high school).

The pizza there is mediocre, the deep dish is pretty darn good, Crazy Bread is delicious and Im addicted to their cheesy jalapeño dip.

Now I can blame my current job for Dominoes. If our CEO orders pizza, it’s Dominoes because it’s close to the office and cheap.

When my teenager had ear tubes installed in November, she wanted pizza and I thought of Dominoes. She’d never had it before. And she found the pizza tracker extremely entertaining.

But now between the Parmesan bread bites and the seasoned crust, I’m a junky. I’ve been ordering Dominoes about once a week and Little Caesar’s about once a month.

Irony is, I’ve lost almost 3 pounds. But that’s stress. Not pizza.

Cuddly kittens and a fresh cup of iced tea

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

I can’t stand the cuteness in my house today!

I’m sitting here with Nala, my Goffin’s cockatoo, and Oz, my teenager’s big, dumb 9-year-old cat who thinks he’s a teddy bear. I just had some ring bologna for breakfast and made myself the best glass of iced tea:

This particular glass is two parts Tazo Organic Earl Grey Noir and one part Tazo Vanilla Bean Macaroon black tea.

In the crock pot, dinner is bubbling. Crockpots are the perfect cooking tools for witches. It’s a cauldron with a plug!

I made a marinade of organic apple juice, brown sugar, Briggs liquid aminos, Chinese cooking wine, fresh ginger and garlic and dropped a pork loin and some potatoes into the mix.

But wow! I totally digress. We’re hear to talk about kittens and cuteness!

Kittens and cuteness

So the teenager is with her dad and I’ve been taken care of the kittens. Fog, the last trapped member of the brood, followed Opie out of the teenager’s room. Opie is our 9-year-old cancer survivor 3-legged cat.

Fog apparently adores him.

Oz tried to join, but he was afraid of the kitten. Opie heard Oz hiss and served as bodyguard for little Fog.

Video here: Opie protecting Fog.

Now I waited as long as I could but I needed to vacuum the dining room. Even though it was in another room, Fog heard the noise and hid behind the cat tube.

Opie stayed on the ottoman as if standing guard. When I finished vacuuming, they got back on the couch together.

I was worried that Misty (short for Mistofelees) might think something happened to Fog. So I brought Misty to the porch.

Misty wasn’t as enthused. But Fog stayed with Opie.

You can’t really see it, but they are touching.

A new Target run?

Angel Ackerman 3 Comments

8 a.m. Originally my friend Nancy and I planned to go to the Grocery Outlet. Nancy is blind and likes to shop with me because of my love of food, how frugal I am and my eye for weird stuff.

I start looking at my list, and at my emails, and I realize for much of my list I can shop at Target. I worked at Target up until the middle of last year so I know Super Bowl weekend is a big grocery sale weekend. The things you learn working almost 9 years at the Bullseye.

It also looks like with the switch from Simply Balanced to Good and Gather, corporate strategy has moved into trendier products. Like vegan, Gluten free and other high-end groceries.

Our local Target is very middle of the road. I wonder how many of these products won’t be available because we aren’t a community high enough on the socio-economic scale.

10 a.m. Picking up Nancy. It’s always better to get in and out of Target before noon on weekends.

10:10 a.m. Arrive at Target and start to see old work friends. Wendy, my trainer from cash office, and Courtney, who used to supervise me in the front end, both meet Nan. And Nan almost shakes hands with a box instead of Courtney.

In their defense, Courtney was holding a box and a Frappuccino so she was too slow maneuvering.

We treated ourselves to a drink at Starbucks, made by my soon to be ex-husband’s niece, who is a dental hygienist on weekdays.

10:30 a.m. Shopping begins. I was hoping for some clearance hosiery, no luck. There were some beautiful clearance boots (and I am rapidly running out of shoes) but nothing under a size 11.

Run into several former colleagues who want to say hi and help Nan look for a can opener. There are five to choose from but we still can’t find the right one.

Run into a colleague from my current job.

Ran into the widower of one of my Target colleague whom I worked with very closely in food service. She died of cancer two years ago.

Discover my favorite deodorant is up to $8 and they changed the formula so my rose and vanilla is now rose and black pepper.

11 a.m. We finally hit the “Market” section, which is what Target calls grocery. There’s a lot of hit or miss. Avocados are an amazing value at 79 cents each, but the avocados themselves are lackluster. Most of the produce seems beyond it’s prime.

That’s a big problem with groceries at Target. Fresh produce isn’t culled regularly and the non perishables are often way out of date. I’ve found items on the shelves that the use by date is more than a year out of date. So you really have to check everything.

I know for a fact that the employees try, but the more Target increases wages, the more each employee needs to do. Retail survives by keeping employees at part-time hours so they don’t have to offer benefits and then they schedule at ridiculously low levels so it’s a challenge to keep the store properly manned. This isn’t just a Target problem. It’s the whole corporate/consumerism system.

People want cheap stuff with no concern for quality, its longevity, how it was produced, impact on the environment or the community, or whether or not they need it.

But that’s another tangent entirely.

I didn’t find many new products nor did I find some of the sale items I had wanted.

Noon Nan and I head to the front end.

I bought $100 in groceries and earned a $10 gift card, but I also didn’t appropriately load the $20 in gift cards I already had.

Highlights of my purchases:

  • The $7 giant tub of peanut butter pretzels. It was on sale and it’s the perfect pre-workout snack. Listen to me, I’m under some delusion that I will be going to the gym.
  • Doritos. The ultimate stress food. I shouldn’t even buy them but $2 a bag.
  • An $8 pork loin for $3. Expiring. But I can toss it in the crockpot for dinner tomorrow.
  • Turkey Perky jerky. On Target Circle for 30 percent off. Going in my desk drawer at work for those days where workload means lunch doesn’t happen until 2 or 3.
  • Waterloo sparkling water. $3 for eight cans. I got it as a treat. I wanted to try the watermelon flavor.
  • A giant bottle of white vinegar for $2.29. I use it instead of fabric softener. Cheaper, less chemical-y and less slimy that traditional fabric softener.
  • I got some canned carrots and peas. I don’t normally do canned veggies but if I want to make a shepherd or cottage pie, they will be perfect.
  • Cafe Mosaica and Traditional Medicinals Nighty Nite Valerian. My favorite coffee and my favorite pre-bedtime tea. Both on sale.
  • Smoked Paprika. $3.39 for the tiny spice bottle. Another splurge. But it’s amazing. It’s Gaz Oakley’s favorite spice and he has me hooked. If you haven’t looked up Avant Garde Vegan on YouTube, do it. His recipes are usually easy and delicious. Regardless of your dietary preferences.
  • Another splurge (which I ate for lunch): Birds Eye shaved Brussel sprouts. $3.19 a bag which is supposed to be two servings. But I sprinkled some imitation bacon bits on top and ate them for lunch with a side of Doritos.

  • Caulipower Pizza was on Target Circle for 20% off. They are normally $7 but with the discount and the sale price it was $5. Nan has wanted to try them so I will make it for her when she comes over for dinner Monday. I love them, but I’m not paying $7.
  • And ice cream. I promised the teenager malted milk shakes this weekend so I bought a pint of vanilla bean ice cream for $1.79. They have some very odd flavors in the full size containers, including my old favorite Unicorn and the new Mermaid. But I had to buy Rainbow because it has strawberry rhubarb swirl. And there is a Breakfast Cereal variety with, no lie, cinnamon toast flavored ice cream.

Nala helps around the house

Angel Ackerman 9 Comments

When Nala, my Goffin’s cockatoo about to turn four, is a good bird, I let her sit on the dishwasher and drink herbal tea while I make supper.

Today I made her cinnamon tea. She kept taking the tea bag out, I kept putting it back in. I made myself a mug of lemon tea.

While I unloaded the dishwasher, she took her tea bag out of her mug. When I didn’t put in back, she picked it up and dropped it in my mug.

I put it back in her mug and moved my mug.

Then she jumped into the dishwasher!

Oh Nala!

For dinner, the teenager and I had tuna sandwiches. I mixed up the tuna with light ranch dressing, mayo, some seasonings and a heap of cooked spinach from which I had pressed out the water. I toasted some almost stale buns under the broiler, heated the tuna a bit too and served with avocado.

I also enjoyed a glass of wine that I almost couldn’t get the cork!

Monday successes (kitten!) and Dollar Tree finds

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

So I had my annual physical today. I adore my physician. I’ve struggled to find a doctor that, honestly, gave the impression that he cared whether I lived or died.

I got my flu shot. Better late than never, right?

We interrupt this blog entry to say… I just got a text from my teenager who disappeared while I was on the phone… Misty’s final sibling has been trapped.

Sardines.

But I get ahead of myself.

I went to the doctor this morning and apparently they have a calculation for your risk of heart attack, stroke or other heart disease or something like that in the next ten years. Mine was 0.5%. But my blood pressure was also super high due to stress. I need to keep an eye on that.

And today I went to the gym. Did ten minutes on the treadmill. Did 15 minutes worth of weight training. Really I could do the weights at home and walk around the neighborhood… and if I don’t start working out in earnest I may do that. Cancel the gym and use what I have at home.

In other updates:

I made an Asian-inspired chicken for dinner that was amazing.

I put the candy the teenager bought me in a pretty jar. Ate some yesterday. Have been good today. I don’t think this is what they mean by eat your colors.

And we stopped at the Dollar Tree to get sardines to trap Misty’s siblings and I got groceries. And not processed junk either.

They had lentils, cheddar cheese and riced cauliflower in dollar-sized portions. I forgot to check the sodium on the cauliflower… usually riced cauliflower is plain. The cheese is real cheese. They had a big bag of shredded cheddar cheese, but it turned out that was cheddar cheese food.

We reunited Misty and her sibling, but that will be a story, with video, for tomorrow.

For this week, we now have:

  • 1 dog
  • 1 cockatoo
  • 2 kittens
  • 2 cats
  • 3 budgies

Heaven help me. I have the start to a petting zoo.

No More Gordon Ramsay for me

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

Just kidding.

I’ve been binge-watching Gordon Ramsay. Thanks to snippets I saw on Facebook watch, I started watching Kitchen Nightmares on Hulu. I got through about 3 seasons, and starting checking out a few other television programs featuring the chef.

I love food. I love men with accents. And I like to cook. The more I watch the more I am drawn to his two sides, Gordon inside vs. outside a restaurant kitchen in the middle of service.

I admire Gordon’s marketing and business acumen, and the food always looks beyond amazing. How does it make it look so easy?

After a day of much laundry, dog-sitting (perhaps literally, if you take a look at the photo) and a church service to represent the office… Gordon might have gotten into my head.

I don’t have many groceries left in the house and the budget is a tad tight right now. (The extra mammogram and ultrasounds my doctor ordered in October ended up costing me, as the first bill rolls in, $500, thanks to my old high deductible medical plan.)

For supper I started with some potatoes getting very old, cut them into wedges and seasoned. I sautéed some leftover ham and some peas in a skillet, sprinkled it with some grated Parmesan and served plated to the best of my ability.

Maybe I should lay off the Gordon Ramsay programs.