My first Ipsy Glam Bag—pre-unboxing

March 13, 2020March 13, 2020Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

As you may have been able to tell from my posts about dentists (Tooth and nail) and budgets (Budgeting and Budgeting, part 2), I had a hard week. Not to mention the whole Do I have high blood pressure? issue. So I’m going to lighten it up a bit tonight— we’re going to “unbox” my Ipsy Glam Bag.

And if you noticed that odd photo that is the featured image for this blog post that is Fog, the feral kitten we trapped last trying to get to Nala, my Goffin’s cockatoo. Fog is getting sooooo big (as is her brother, Misty) but the teenager didn’t believe me when I said they’d doubled in size.

March 2020 Ipsy Glam Bag without my cat

But anyway… it’s Friday night and I had to work late unexpectedly so by the time I got home, the teen was leaving to have dinner with her grandparents and spend the night with her dad.

Which means I get to have Vanilla Coke Zero and peanut butter pretzels for dinner. I gave one to Nala. Well, more accurately, she demanded I share.

And here is a funny video of us: Nala tries to open a peanut butter pretzel.

But back to the Glam Bag. Focus, Angel, focus.

So I started the dishwasher, and a load of laundry, and took my peanut butter pretzels and my Diet Coke out to see if my neighbor wanted to unbox my Ipsy package with me since the teenager wasn’t home. My neighbor is an economics professor and faces a midterm deadline. I thought it best not to bother her. Nala and I ate our pretzels and opened the makeup.

We also kept Fog at bay, while her brother frolicked in the basement.

Then my neighbor texted she had coffee ready at 6:30ish at night. That’s pretty wild for my Friday night.

I walked out the door and met my other neighbor, whose adorable Yorkie-Maltese mix likes to visit instead of go for a walk. We all went to the professor’s house and even the dogs got to visit.

I got home, retrieved the laundry and the kitten from the basement, and fed my mini-pride of lions before hanging the laundry.

Nala joined me while I hung wash, watching Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen. Roomba vacuumed my room.

Now I’m in bed, taking a breath, playing a little Words with Friends and listening to kittens play. I’m going to watch more Gordon. Hell’s Kitchen is not my favorite but I finished Kitchen Nightmares on Hulu, as I also finished 24 Hours To Hell and Back.

I can’t find any more Hotel Hell and for some reason, The F Word is starting to bore me. I think it’s because Gordon Ramsay is a nice guy on that program.

More on that another day. I’m hoping to formally review Gordon’s shows one of these days.

Gordon has inspired me to try harder with my cooking. Last night, I actually trimmed my chicken, made a marinade, and chilled the chicken in the marinade before cooking.

The marinade was:

Low sodium soy sauce
Honey
Bragg’s Liquid Aminos
Minced Garlic
Fresh Ginger
Water
Sesame Seeds
Lemon Juice
Sesame Oil

I cooked that, and sautéed a bag of broccoli slaw in the leftover marinade and reheated some leftover rice and seasoned roasted chick peas I had made earlier in the week. It was delicious.

But remember that Glam Bag?

I promise I’ll play with it tomorrow. For $12 I received:

A studded teal bag (it matches my room!)
A full sized eye shadow
A full sized chapstick/lip balm
A sample nail polish in a mild creamy cafe au lait color
A sample “hair mask”
A sample primer
A sample body lotion

No More Gordon Ramsay for me

January 26, 2020Angel 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.

Happy Friday!

January 24, 2020January 24, 2020Angel Ackerman 5 Comments

I think I might have said two or three hundred times that this week was hard.

But there was some goodness between all the hard.

Our CEO got my department a mentor. Someone we all love and trust, though I am the only person in the group who doesn’t have a pre-existing relationship with this man.
My coworkers are all so super nice. My former office mate makes the Folgers in the kitchen palatable and I normally hate Folgers. He makes the coffee so strong it tastes like chocolate.
My new development partner and I are getting along great and I love her energy.
My other colleague invited me out for a drink after work. She was meeting some friends and wanted someone to keep her company so I had a lovely oatmeal stout at Pearly Baker’s.

At home, I watched the episode of Kitchen Nightmares that was filmed in Forks Township, “Bella Luna,” and saw some nice shots of Easton:

And tomorrow our favorite little dog, Sobaka, is coming to visit so for the next week we will have…

One Yorky Maltese
One kitten
One cockatoo
Two nine-year-old cats (with seven legs)
Three parakeets

And for your viewing pleasure, here are Nala and Opie: Nala and Opie check each other out

Organic Black Bean Pasta

January 21, 2020Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

It’s certainly not pretty, but it tastes better than it looks. It looks like a pile of slip.

I bought this gluten free black bean spaghetti at Marshall’s. I don’t usually shop there as my soon to be ex-husband worked at Marshall’s and I didn’t approve of their practices as employers or their merchandise.

But I am always looking for trendy forms of protein.

I got inspired (I blame too many episodes of Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares) to make Asian-inspired glazed chicken meatballs with pineapple and the black bean pasta with a cheater method peanut sauce.

The sauce is an easy 30-minute meal starter, and vegan. See the recipe on my old cooking blog where I chronicled every meal for about seven years: Peanut Butter (Thai) Noodles

The chicken meatballs turned to mush in the pan. It’s my own fault as some of the ground chicken was still frozen. I don’t know why I thought I could work around that.

Flavor was fine, but texture was like scrambled eggs.

As for the pasta, I liked it. The teenager didn’t like the texture of it, but I did. If anything I would call it a tad sticky. The teen referred to it as gummy.

Turkeys and Trophies

January 18, 2020Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

The title and format of this post is homage to our local daily newspaper, The Express-Times, and their weekly column on the op-ed pages celebrating the best and the worst of the community that week.

Trophies

I did three workouts this week.

I packed several smart lunches.

I went to the grocery store.

My daughter and I worked well together trying to keep the house clean.

I started the week eating fresh fruit. (I’m not a fan of much fruit.)

Turkeys

Zazi

in the Metro

Those workouts were five to ten minutes each.

I ordered Dominoes twice and ate a ridiculous amount of pizza and two doughnuts.

The fruit is languishing in the fridge.

I watched way too many episodes of Kitchen Nightmares.

Angel Ackerman

Writer, Editor, Passionate Participant in the World

Tag kitchen nightmares