Monday, March 17, 2008

Crazy Ferret People

So on the plan this week was goulash and corned beef and cabbage. I made the goulash yesterday in the crockpot but it didn't turn out very well, for some reason. I had made some creative alterations to the recipe, which may have had something to with it. I also made Irish soda bread which came out much better, I love soda bread. I'm making corned beef and cabbage today, for St. Patrick's Day. I'm not Catholic so I'm celebrating it today lol. Hopefully it will come out better than the goulash.

We saw the craziest show ever last night, it was so ridiculous. It was called Ferrets: In Pursuit of Excellence, (no, really!) and it was about these people who are completely obsessed with their ferrets. It was so funny! One lady made up songs to her ferrets, and sang to them regularly, and another said her family knew that when she came home from work, she had to play with her ferrets for a minimum of three hours before they could talk to her. She had a entire floor of her house devoted to them, that no one else was allowed in! And I'm not talked a few ferrets here, she had like 20! And they'd all scamper all over the place, which was very cute, but these people were seriously crazy. When the ferrets died, a lot of people said they had them cremated and kept them in little boxes around their houses, with the ferrets' names engraved on the lids. I was like, where do you get ferrets cremated? Then it cuts to a lady standing in front of a chest-type freezer, and I was like, oh, no, you can't be serious, and she started talking about how it was cheaper to get ferrets cremated in bulk so she kept all her friends' dead ferrets in her freezer until they had 25 lb worth! She said she sometimes had more dead ferrets in her freezer than food! This lady had children! And was married! And these were not attractive people, in case you were wondering. It was the craziest show ever. The whole thing lead up to this ferret show in Ohio, which some of these people drove 500 miles for, and they were all acting like winning was a life-or-death thing. People cried, there were some people who said they got into fights with judges, they were way into it. After the judging, while they were waiting on results, the camera panned over the crowd and it was more strange people clutching ferrets to their chests than I thought existed. And at the very end, after all the drama about winning a ribbon, it said: 327 ferrets were in the show. 400 ribbons were awarded.
These were some lonely, lonely crazy ferret people. Just when i thought the world was weird enough, people who sing songs about ferrets come on tv.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Kittens and Nieces and Cooking

I was looking for my Kitten, I could not find her, so I called her name and she meeped at me from her hiding spot, somewhat annoyed to be disturbed:
I keep telling her, but she is the cutest thing ever!!

Well, maybe an extremely close second to my niece, Julianna:
Yay pictures!

So Boyfriend and I are trying to eat at home more often, because it is healthier and will hopefully be cheaper. He is saving to put a down payment on a house, at some point, I'm saving in case someone unfriendly to the space program gets elected and I get laid off. Not really, but it seems like a good idea to have a nice emergency fund anyway. We've been sharing the grocery shopping, but since he is in class every night until 7, I have been doing most of the actual cooking. (It doesn't hurt that I can reliably boil water, also.) We've been planning out a week's meals, dinners and leftovers for lunch, on Sunday and then going grocery shopping to get everything. It was surprisingly nice not to have to worry about what's for dinner every night! And awesome not to have to stop at the grocery store after work before I can go home. I do most of the prep work Sunday, and throw things together when I get home from work.

Last week we had my mom's chicken enchiladas, which I think Boyfriend could cheerfully live on for months, shrimp pil-pil, a Spanish dish I got from Rachel Ray's magazine, chicken casserole (which I narrowly avoided burning the house down making) and pizza with as many vegetables as will fit on top of it. We're also having the frozen veggies you can microwave in the bag with every meal, which has to be the best invention since sliced bread, I swear. We went the entire week without eating out! I don't think I've done that in years!

This week we are having chicken enchiladas, the rest of the shrimp over angel hair with tomato sauce, chicken creole from a Zataran's box, and pizza. I made the shrimp tonight, along with garlic bread the way I like it, i.e. strong enough to knock out a vampire at 20 paces. It was a bit strong for Boyfriend, I think, he is apparently more used to garlic bread that has maybe been introduced to a clove of garlic, maybe just waved at one in passing. Kind of like I like my steak to just wave at a fire in passing, maybe say hi, but definitely not get to know it well enough to ask after it's health, or it's children, or anything.

It is surprising fun to be able to put together a complete meal from ingredients you have in your house. And it doesn't hurt that Boyfriend is very obviously delighted to come home after a very long day to a "restaurant-quality meal, with lovely company and a charming ambiance," as he tells me. He's very sweet, and smart enough to know that the more he praises them, the more dinners he'll get :)

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Scary

Get Rich Slowly had a very good article yesterday about how a woman taught her children about advertising by asking them if they thought the product really did what the commercial claimed it did. It was very interesting, and the comments to the article had a link to an paper about the subject, which, among many other interesting and scary things said:
In 1978, the FTC formally proposed a rule that would ban or severely restrict all television advertising to children. [31,78] The FTC presented a comprehensive review of the scientific literature and argued that all advertising directed to young children was inherently unfair and deceptive. [31] The proposal provoked intense opposition from the food, toy, broadcasting and advertising industries, who initiated an aggressive campaign to oppose the ban. A key argument was First Amendment protection for the right to provide information about products to consumers. [31] Responding to corporate pressure, Congress refused to approve the FTC's operating budget and passed legislation titled the FTC Improvements Act of 1980 that removed the agency's authority to restrict television advertising. The act specifically prohibited any further action to adopt the proposed children's advertising rules. [31]
That's our government at work, protecting our children by "improving" the FTC out of authority to change things. It concludes with

Children, especially young children, are more susceptible to the effects of marketing than adults. Numerous studies have documented that children under 8 years of age are developmentally unable to understand the intent of advertisements and accept advertising claims as factual. [22] The intense marketing of high fat, high sugar foods to young children can be viewed as exploitation because they do not understand that commercials are designed to sell products and do not have the ability to comprehend or evaluate advertising. The purpose of advertising is to persuade, and young children have few defenses against such advertising. [...] [24] It can be argued that children, especially young children, are a vulnerable group that should be protected from commercial influences that may adversely impact their health, and that as a society that values children, there should be greater social responsibility for their present and future health.


Ok, end rant.