First times

So everyone raves about these, but i never tried them until today. I don't know if it's lucky coincidence, but i will definitely be trying them a 2nd time!

I decided to put as many zero-effort items into the crockpot as i could find, and see how it came out. So i combined:

1/2 a bag of frozen chopped onions and green peppers
1/2 a bag of frozen chopped butternut squash
2 frozen chorizo (or so i thought, i think they were the similarly named portuguese sweet sausages)
2 frozen portabella asagio sausages
1 can of diced fire roasted tomatoes
1 can white beans
1 container of chicken broth
several turns of salt and pepper grinders
some (few shakes?) of oregano or italian seasoning, chili powder, paprika, and garlic powder
1 package frozen cheese ravioli

Combine everything except beans and ravioli, and cook for 6-8 hours on low. Add beans and ravioli with about 1 hour remaining, voila! I took the sausage out right before serving and chopped up, but it's pre-cooked. There are no rules. Served with some parmesan because i had some. mmmm! What should i call it? Crock-pot-sausagy-soupy-breeze?

Maybe it's not the tomatoes... i've also never ever before used frozen chopped onions and green peppers, frozen chopped butternut squash, nor either type of sausage. But who cares, it was one of the easiest meals i've ever made, and delicious! Almost like a really great minestrone... only with ravioli and sausage, haha.

Mmm, snow!

I've been up since 6, and i'm only just getting to breakfast! As someone who used to eat cookies before she even got in the shower, this is mind boggling to me. For the past few months i've been taking some early morning meds that require me to wait 30 minutes before eating... by which time i've begun my commute. I feel bad eating on the train, so the 30 minute wait turns into an hour and 15... and then i don't want to eat while i'm walking as fast as i can through the streets of manhattan, so add another 20 minutes... plus however long it takes me to get settled in at the office. All in all, it took 3 hours and 45 minutes for me to settle down to breakfast today! I'm both proud and mortified, think of all those neglected cookies i could have eaten in that amount of time.

Word on the street is that if you don't eat within the first hour you're awake, your body goes into "starvation mode" and you have super slow metabolism for the rest of the day. Maybe THAT's why my pants don't fit! It's not the cookies, it's the medicine/commute combo!

Today I ate snowflakes on my walk to work, the snow was so crazy that all i had to do was open my mouth, but i did catch myself unconsciously sticking my tongue out a few times... i wonder if anyone saw? haha

PS - According to the Blogger timestamp i live in California... which makes it sound like i only had to wait 45 minutes to eat... and this is not the case.

get your motor runnin...

I am buzzed. Bzzzzzzz! Too much caffeine! Or sugar? Or bagel? I don't think bagels make you jittery, but you never know. I had a thing at the doctor yesterday where they drugged me up something good, and i've been pretty slow coming out of it. I was still tired this morning (though i think that was probably just because it's morning) so i decided i deserved not only a coffee, but a coffee with real sugar AND a bagel with butter. I only intended to eat half the bagel, but once i started drinking that coffee, my mind and mouth and eyes just took on a life of their own and now the bagel's gone. Maybe i'll go get some cheetos out of the vending machine like my receptionist did this morning? She sent another guy to get them for her, but he couldn't figure out which bag was the cheetos (???) so she came back to show him which ones she wanted. I asked her if it was too early for cheetos (9:30) and she answered "not for me!" Maybe we can be friends after-all! I love cheetos!

hungry hungry hippo

I find myself chanting "hungry, hungry hipp-Oh!" quite often. Hungry Hungry Hippo used to be one of my favorite games when i was little. Surprising? No way, it involved eating! Granted it wasn't me eating, but still, i was controlling the eating, without bustin' out of my kid pants. (Another favorite - ready, set, spaghetti!)

I wonder how many kids have tried eating the hippos' white marbles? I'm proud to say I don't think i ever did. But i'm pretty hungry right now, maybe i'd try one. Or maybe i'd be more fun to play the game with yogurt covered raisins or after dinner mints instead? Faux-healthy snacks, made into a game with multi-colored hippos! Even better!

Oooohh! Inspiration! Cheese-ball eating hungry hungry hippos! But holy cow (or holy hippo?) that would leave quite a mess to clean up. Licking the game platform? Probably not acceptable.

PS - that reminds me of something i wrote a long time ago...

Oh delicious round orb of orange, from what planet cometh thee? I don't really care, as long as you're here for me to eat. So what if you look like you're made out of toxic chemicals? So what if you taste like you definitely could be made out of toxic chemicals? If I someday find that I'm dying due to cheeto-induced radiation, it just might have been worth it.

Is it the cheese? The salt? The color that makes you so addictive? You smell a little bit like feet, but my craving seems to defy all common sense and eats you anyway... I don't eat other items that smell like feet! But the feeling you give my tounge is near orgasmic. Who needs vegetables? Can I count you as a vegetable? You're the same color as a carrot... and one of your main ingredients is vegetable oil...

I've proved many times that I cannot buy a package of cheese balls and eat just one serving... my will is not strong enough. But I'm glad that there is someone out there, be they man, machine, or alien, that can do it for me. Thank you 100-calorie-pack-maker-man!

PS - Once upon a time, many years ago, I tried smoking a certain weed. Many people claim that this causes them to crave orange things, and I now support this theory. I cried that night... because the super market was out of cheese balls.

Sweet!

These are delicious.

And a relatively healthy sweet tooth solution.

I just wanted to share.