Deep thoughts while running : Spiders.

F*$k Spiders.

I started thinking about what I hate most about them.  I started with the ones with fat bodies and scratchy pin like sharp short legs.    And then I went onto small body spiders that have crab like jointed long legs and huge "fangs" you can see.    Then there's ones that jump, spiders that grow to the size of Atlantic King Crabs, spiders that can walk on water, spiders that crawl out from under your couch and at the corner of your eye you catch it scampering across the floor as you wonder how long the two of you had been sharing a quiet evening on the couch watching Expendables 2 together.  Too fucking long.

I hate the way spiders move, I hate the way they look.  I hate that they live inside and outside and that all they do is kill flies and some insects.  Well you know what spiders?  Someone new is on the block for that job and they're already much better at it than you.  Black Flag called and they said to pack your bags we're going to kill insects through harmful carcinogens.  Your week long building web thing,  catching two flies, eating one slowly work ethic, just isn't going to cut it anymore. Spiders, you suck at your job, you're slow, ugly to look at and your webs aren't in the same place they were the day before and it freaks me out to walk through them.

Yes, I like to eat crab and they are called the spiders of the sea, sometimes.  Crabs are DELICIOUS.  I can see them, control them, boil them and dip them in delicious BUTTER.  Spiders are sneaky little bastards, they get in through the plumbing, my door cracks, windows and well, other ways I don't want to think about right now, I'd actually like to sleep well tonight.

Spiders can make not only webs, but NESTS.  Just Google Spider Nests.  Yeah.  No sleep tonight either?  Cool, see you on Facebook at 3am.    I'm not going to post any photos of spiders I hate on this blog post because I hate ALL OF THEM.  Just Google images of "spiders" and that's what I mean.


Ok, so I hear the hippies talking.   There's a place for all animals on this planet.

This place for spiders is on the bottom of Mr. Price's shoe.

Why Mr. Price's shoe?  I don't want spider guts on my shoe, I don't want them anywhere near my shoe, I want spider guts spread about the wall as a warning to the rest of them.  I'd like to make a Mexican drug cartel joke here but that shit is getting serious and my spider joke is just a horrible example in bad taste.  But you see where I wanted to go with that.

Did I mention I'm from Australia?  Yeah, grew up with the most deadly snakes and spiders in the world.  Maybe that had something to do with it.  I'm even more of a wuss now knowing what danger I was in growing up in the land Down Under.  

While running and in deep thought I thought about how all children should watch Arachnophobia and THEN watch/read Charlotte's Web.  I took the liberty of realizing a future where all children approached spiders in this new educational format and I re-wrote Charlotte's Web for the kids.  Here  it goes.

This is a cute story about Charlotte.  She's a spider.  So I took off my shoe and I smashed her spider brains in and killed her and sent her to spider hell.  Just because all dogs go to heaven, doesn't mean that spiders go anywhere other than hell.  That's where they come from and where they go back to when they meet my shoe.  The End.  PS.  The pig won first place.  For best organically grain fed BACON.

So how does this tie into running?

I'm back at it again.  So I'm back to deep random thoughts because that's what I do when The Offspring is blaring in my ears as I pound the pavement.  I actually don't see many spiders when I go running.   This could be a good thing for me but maybe I'd run faster if I thought I accidentally ran through a spider's nest?  Nope.  I'd just freak out and 1 mile down the road my heart would explode from my adrenaline attack and the spiders would find me and eat me.  First they'd start with my eyeballs.

Spiders are fucking awful.  Now that I've written this hate blog against them, I expect for all the spiders around my house and property to march together in a massive frightening organized fashion and wake me in my sleep by crawling all over my body and just being creepily disgusting.  I shall be expecting this.  I will be sleeping with MANY shoes under my pillows.  Bring it.

This is my Pizza. My Pizza is amazing.

Yes, yes, the dough from scratch and FRESH ingredients.  I DID go laz-o-mode on the sauce and pre sliced mushrooms, but, if you had tasted my pizza, these minor details would have been sun-blinded by your adoring gaze upon my pizza as your mouth devoured it, one delicious nom after another.

Also, if you think I'm lazy by using pre-made sauce and not slicing my own mushrooms, then piss off anyway.

Here it is.  This is my Pizza.  My Pizza is amazing.  And I'm going to tell you how to make it as well.

If you have spent hours and hours on Pinterest looking at a ton of Pizzas for ideas like I did, save yourself the forehead slap and just go with mine it's so simple stupid.  I can't BELIEVE making pizza and my own dough was this simple.  Forehead slap, again.

Another version of people who'd rather be drinking, than cooking.

Ingredients for the dough:

• 1 packet of yeast (they come in a three pack at my local Kroger for 89cents) - don't stress out about the measurement here.  Literally one of those small three packets.
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2.5 cups of flour (regular all purpose)
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• 1 and 1/2 cups of warm water
• You will need a mix master.  Kitchenaid thing.  Bloody heavy and well worth the $200 + price tag.

So, here I am, Tuesday.  I'm nursing a powerfully painful combination of limited at home tough mudder workout with Mr. Price along with a night filled with the bottom of two wine bottles.  A hangover and a hurt body.  My mind is twitching like Macauly Culkin looks (Seriously, have you seen him lately? Check out a photo of him here and even in photos he looks like he's twitching.  ugh.  Yet another "child star" gone down the child star path.  Twitchy McTwitch.)

I have to think of carbs.  Not just greasy salty carbs, but delicious nom carbs, I must think about them, set a goal towards them and achieve that goal.  I drink 3 liters of water today and I pee once.  My liver and kidneys have staged a mutiny and I must give them a peace offering before they team up with my colon and I can't afford an at-work organ failure-to-comply with neurological rules.  Homemade pizza it is.  Pinterest, here I come.

Looking for a vegetarian pizza as we have a friend who, for some reason, WON'T give in to Mr. Price's relentless tirade of "Just try a steak, you'll love it." onslaughts and insists she STAY vegetarian.  She's nice for putting up with that, so I make vegetarian stuff, which really, is just stuff I like, without the meat part.  So it's a win for the friendship all around.

I decide the vegetarian will consist of fresh sliced tomatoes, red onions a SHIT TON of garlic, fresh spinach and all the mushrooms on planet earth that I can find (pre-sliced of course) with a healthy Roald Dahl BFG fist full of mozzarella.   Whole mushrooms and mess with a cutting board and large knife AND I'm already MAKING MY OWN DOUGH?!!  Ain't nobody got time for that.  (Only regret here is that I didn't use FRESH MOZZ, but it was spastic delicious anyway, forget your food snobbery, so yes, that was pre-sliced too.)

So, even though I am making this pizza, I'd rather be drinking, but I can't because my left kidney will file the paperwork necessary with my intestinal tract to go into renal failure as payback, so I don't drink, but I made delicious food as a substitute/organ peace offering. 

Instructions:

• Start at 5pm and dinner will be ready by 7.  Hang out, play cards against humanity during the down times and watch everyone else enjoy social drinks while you silently barf.
• In your mixer put the warm water and yeast together, stir for a bit then let sit for 10 so the yeast can "activate".  I don't know what that really means so here I'd take a drink, (can't - barf) but instead think about how yeast is actually a bacteria and it's alive, and that starts to freak me out but still, occupies me for a solid ten minutes until I complete the next step.
• Yeast looks weird with the water now, cool.  Assume this is "activated".
• Put in your sugar, and salt and put your mixer on low for a while.  Starts to smell like yummy bread. (that's yeast doofus) and add olive oil and keep mixer on low.  Totally mix it through.
• Add your flour and beat on low/medium until the dough is sticking mainly to your paddle of the mixer and not the mixing bowl.  Like, 3 seconds.  It's quick.
• Spray a big silver bowl with PAM ready for the dough.
• Pull the dough out of the mixer and it's sticky, so coat your hands in flour first, actually, have a bowl of about 1/2 cup flour handy, just for your hands to handle the dough.
• Toss it about a bit, roll it into a ball and dump it in the big silver bowl coated with PAM.  Roll it around in the PAM in the bowl.
• Cover it with a tea towel (Americans call this a hand towel or kitchen towel) and put it in the sun for ONE HOUR.

Play a few rounds of cards against humanity, check on the dough once or twice as the yeast makes it rise and one hour later, punch the middle of it with your fist.  That's pretty fun.  But coat your fist in flour first so it's not sticky.

I took the dough out of the bowl, attempted to roll it around (on wax paper) to make a ball, I cut it in half, placed one half on top of the other, rolled it out and realized I didn't have a pizza pan.  BUT I DID have a Candy Corn teflon pan I bought at Target on Halloween clearance.  So Candy Corn shaped pizza it is.

OK - Pizza Toppings:

• One jar of Simple Truth Organic Tomato and basil PASTA SAUCE.  I used half a jar on the pizza.
• Almost an entire packet of shredded mozz cheese.
• Half a packet of sliced mushrooms (should have used more, but the pizza was SO HUGE already)
• An entire medium sized tomato, sliced then halved.
• Half a medium red onion, sliced.
• Fist full of fresh spinach.
• 5-20 cloves of fresh garlic.  Ok here, I'm being obnoxious. But I love garlic and used like 5 or 6 big cloves.  Roughly chopped.
• Or just whatever the hell you want.  It's homemade.  Nobody is going to call your customer service line and complain about the cheese adhering to the top of the pizza box that it was delivered in.  Go crazy.

Your pizza dough is on the candy corn pan - yes?  Pour out the sauce on the dough, SPREAD IT ON!  Trickle over top the sauce, the garlic.  Add half your mozz cheese, put in the oven at 450 for 10-12 minutes.  Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you to preheat your oven. 

You're going to need to use your oven at 450.  Yeah, do that sooner than here.

10 minutes later, add mushies, onion, tomatoes, spinach and the rest of your cheese.  Continue baking for another 10-12 minutes or until you think it's done.

Slice it up, devour it and thank my mother for birthing you a homemade pizza genius.

Here it is again for you to admire:

League Dad, S.W.A.T. Dad and P90x Dad

You know those people, that show up every day in your life, that you don't know very well, but you are happy to draw massive, likely inaccurate judgements about them as you only peer from afar, never engage in conversation, but since you see them every day you wonder what the hell is their story and what they are about so you just make up one for yourself?

I do.

Another tale from the drop off/pick up line.  Sounds like Car Talk's personal limo driver, the Russian one....  (if you listen to car talk on NPR you will get that.)

So, every morning, when I drop off #1 at the school car pool line, there's these guys, I assume DADs that are hanging out in the cross walk, likely talking about last night's game or I dunno, not talking, cuz guys don't communicate...
 
But there they are. 
Every day. 

I have seen them every day and I draw lots of conclusions about who they are and what they do, based on their physical appearance and the fact that my brain has nothing else more constructive to do with it's time as I sit and wait for just the right moment to creep through the crossing before the banshee crossing guard deems my act insufferable and goes all bat shit crazy on my hood again.  I think she's given me PTCGSD (post traumatic crossing guard stress disorder)  Bitch.

S.W.A.T. Dad, League Dad and P90X Dad.  Here are their stories.  As made up and told, by me.

SO there's S.W.A.T. Dad.  He's always got a silver travel coffe mug, even when it was warmer, he wore a beanie over what I can assume is only a slickly shaved bald head, and has a dark goatee.  He's also about 6'4" and 250 and wears only dark clothing.  The bald head, the beanie, the tough travel mug, he looks like he just got off LPD S.W.A.T. Duty the night before. 

Dallas S.W.A.T.

I really like S.W.A.T. Dad.  He's big, tough looking and would scare any shit head kid as well as be able to stop a rogue school bus with his fist.   He's just come off the graveyard shift, kicking dirt bag ass all night and probably forgot to take off his kevlar vest before he hit the car pool crossing.  He's tired of scumbags but is ready to take them on should any approach his kid's school.   Take that mother-fucker.  He also says things like, when arresting said dirt bags, "How'd you like THEM apples, bitch."  and "How about I punch-a-size your face for FREE?" and "That's not a knife, THIS is a knife." and "Get to the chopper!!!."  Well, I dunno about that last one, but he could have an Austrian accent.


P90X Dad.  Slightly balding, but still a lot of hair, always wearing tightly or slim fitting clothing.  He's NOT buff, he's very trim, but you can tell, also very muscular, and he knows it.  Always the last one to join the group.  He also drives a very SMALL, SHORT and FAST sports car.  For, him, I think that's what she said if you get my drift...  Looks like what a dude at his age would be if they went through P90X, and completed it, and stayed on top of it, and it became his ENTIRE FOCUS.  He looks really into it.  The car, the conscious clothing choices, yeah, he's not beating up low life's like S.W.A.T. dad, he's beating up punching bags, so he can stay fit. 

Yesh, this is pretty accurate of P90X dad, though I don't know who the hell this guy is.

He's already counting down the minutes until when he can go home and complete a re-run of P90X in his basement that went from a man cave to a vain cave over the last 90 days.  He's uploaded FIFTEEN you tube videos of his work outs and his before and after shots and P90X STILL hasn't used one of them for their commercials.  But he still DVR's shows at 3am each day, just to make sure he doesn't miss his footage being picked up.  Just in case.

Then, there's League Dad.  He looks like a guy from The League.  Dead on.  I swear.

He's hanging out with S.W.A.T. Dad, about 500 below sea level compared to him, and is the most animated of them all.  He's likely the only one who is talking, and then talking about his league win or trade and how Shiva is finally going to be his this season.  S.W.A.T. Dad and P90X dad always seem unamused, but yet entertain his lively talks. 

League Dad is business dressed everyday, ready to continue his league talks in the cubicles surrouding his little cube at work.  He's all jazzed up, had his coffee, got his "man talk on with his dudes" that morning at the car pool line and is ready to hit the paperwork, hard, man, totally hard dude, paperwork sucks, man.  "These TPS reports are so inefficient."  He asks S.W.A.T. Dad and P90X dad if they ever want to grab a "java" outside of school drop off line, S.W.A.T. Dad asks what the "fucking hell is java?" and P90X dad, says, "No, I've got to re-do day 35 of day 90 because my lunge-squat-press ups weren't up to par on my glueteus maximus this morning."

That doesn't deter League dad, he's just as eager to continue talking to his peeps about whatever they are going to cut him off mid sentence about.


Ok, so none of this is actually really harsh judgement, what I do want to mention is how I really appreciate that there are dads that take the time out of their morning that can, to supervise my tiny #1 kindergarten baby bear as he gets from my car and walks 1/4 mile to his school.  They stand there and make me feel a little better about letting my little one go every morning.  SO I really appreciate them.  Even if P90X dad thinks he's the coolest.

Cooking for People who'd rather be DRINKING.

So I can cook now.  All it took was a $20 Williams Sonoma Apron, a sudden emphatic bi-polar type mood upswing and the energy to go shopping at the grocery store with two kids and promise myself "cook dinner or BUST", and I cooked dinner.  And it was edible.  AND it was delicious.  AND I am going to do it again. AND it wasn't just spaghetti.

Always wait 24 hours before saying cooking was a success, I say.  That's how long it can potentially take for salmonella or other bad cooking to show up on/in your guests.  (=The level of faith I have in my cooking, yes.)  But today, today I feast on the glorys of a meal well done, well prepared, well cooked, and totally gone. 

Today, I am cooking GODDESS.

Today, I am running on a delicious hand made meal post-high.  Did I mention this meal was hand-made?  BY ME? 

Oh yeah.
What?
OK. 
YE-AH!
(Yes, Dave Chappelle Rick James reference).

I'm going to start a label in my blog called "Cooking for People who'd rather be DRINKING."  This section of the blog will include my kitchen experiments that end in disaster or perfection, that always includes a bottle of alcohol, and the fact that I would, absolutely, most surely, rather be drinking, than slaving over a hot stove/watching water boil - but I'm going to do it anyway.  I'm going to be cooking, though I'd rather just be drinking.

I'm going to be a the woman who has it all dammit, clean, well-behaved children, hopelessly romantic husband, old dog that doesn't pee on the floor - yes, I'm going to have it ALL! 
I am going to:  COOK DINNER OR BUST.  Most nights, or just when I can, or just when I have one of those bi-polar type mood upswings again. 

I can't promise that this area won't include dinner that involves garlic pretzels and Nutella.  Head's up on that one.  I also don't promise that my five year old and 18 month old will love these meals, they are EDIBLE and tasty, but I'm not a short order cook, so the children have to suffer through eating adult meals and can pull as many faces as they'd like while doing it.

You can expect photos of REAL food, none of that "Barbara Walters" filter that makes food look totally appetizing and unachiev-able.  Real, creative displays of presentation, even if it SUCKS and actual techniques that include following a recipe, drinking, forgetting a step, trying to undo what you've done by adding too much garlic powder, drinking more and total exhasperation/and/or/success bliss.

Most importantly it will be fully representative of my minor skillset with cooking and food that you can replicate if it's deemed edible.  Ingredients, shit you'll need that might be in your house and has cobwebs on it and, hilarity.  I promise food, sarcasm and hilarity, afterall, it's only funny until someone get's hurt, then, it's HILARIOUS.

So if you need to cook dinner, but you'd rather be drinking, this might be the area of my blog that's just ice ice baby for you.

Up First:  Chipotle Cilantro Shrimp over a bed of Avocado and Lime Orzo.  Or as the lady who'd rather be drinking than cooking shall call it: Avocado Orzo and Grilled Shrimp.  I'll have to start a whole new post for this one, you've already skipped to the end here expecting a recipe.  So just come back next time you jerk, and take the time to scroll up and read my sarcastic self depricating cooking references above.

Merry Christmas Ya Filthy Animal.