I embarrassed myself twice last night. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t so quick to blush. Both happened at the movie theatre where my boss and I were to see the new Mission Impossible movie. If you were considering it, it’s pretty good. Of course all I can think about is Tom’s one giant tooth and his Xenu inspired $10million bunker he had built at his home in Telluride. Ok, so the embarrassment: the theatre was sold out and we got second row seats at the side of the theatre. No one sat in front of us until the very last minute when a couple mid twenties dudes came along and one said “I wonder why no one has sat here, what is wrong with these seats?” and I cleverly said “oh, we peed on them.” Then laughed like a maniac while dudes just stared at me and politely chuckled. Which spurred me into saying “JUST KIDDING!”.

Luckily the previews started quickly after that but I think I must have been still feeling stupid because I almost did pee on my seat I was laughing so hard at The Dictator. I re watched that preview when I got home and it wasn’t as funny the second time.

You can’t take me anywhere.

I like this recipe because it makes a reasonable amount, about three bowls. Of course if you ate it with rice you could make it go a lot further but I eat it as soup, on it’s own.

1 onion, diced
1/2 a green pepper, diced
1 carrot, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbsp ginger, minced
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp coriander
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp garam masala
1/4 tsp cayenne
1 cup red lentils
2 1/2 cups broth

Sauté the onion, green pepper and carrot in some oil for about 4 minutes. Add garlic and ginger, cook another 2 minutes and then add all the spices and cook until really fragrant, another 2 minutes. Add lentils and broth, bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer until the lentils are soft, 15 minutes. Serve with a squeeze of lemon and maybe some chopped up cilantro if you have it.

It’s warming and delicious! I think, if you’re inclined, that adding other veggies, like spinach or peas or a tin of rinsed chick peas, would be very nice too.

Has anyone even used this before? W often has interesting vegetables and herbs but they never last long.

They came out okay.

Actually, they’re really good, total hit with the fairer sex of this household. What I did differently was using margarine instead of butter and I added half a cup of raisins (and only half a cup of chocolate chips). My mistake was buying milk chocolate chips, ugh. They just taste like sweet. My cookies turned out much thicker than the recipe, but that’s ok because I like a hefty cookie.

Delicious!

(Super bonus-leftover pretzel sticks dipped in peanut butter-I call them shit sticks- are my favourite snack.)

Ok. I loved Rango. I know I’ve been going on about it on twitter and Facebook, but for everyone else in the world? Go see it. Don’t worry about if you have a kid to go with or not, they won’t enjoy it as much as you anyway. I took Ari yesterday and practically gave myself a hernia I was laughing so hard. Maybe it was stress related, I don’t know, but I’m going to see it again, hopefully in the theatre. And it’s NOT in 3D! Woo!

And I also loved The Adjustment Bureau. It’s a smart movie about love. About waiting for love and being true.

We watch Bob’s Burgers each Sunday and I just said to Shannon how much I like it because it’s odd and funny and very silly. The voices are great, it’s a good show. Especially compared to the rest of the crap you get to watch on Sunday night. I haven’t enjoyed an episode of The Simpsons in at least 8 years. And I don’t like Family Guy and I loathe Cleveland. It’s awful.

I’m still going to the gym twice a week but I think I’ve lost the fever for it. My legs hurt when I use the treadmill and it makes the rest of my workout pointless. So yeah, I use the elliptical (or cross trainer as it were) and that hurts way less but still. And swimming is hard. I love the swimming part but I hate the wet hair afterwards part. And swimming caps don’t help. In fact, I don’t really know what a swimming cap is for.

Ok, so other than sewing like crazy (like, literally, CRAZY) I still do knit sometimes and I’m working on a couple other things.

I’ve also been enjoying cooking more lately, I often find myself thinking about how delicious roasted cauliflower is (very!) and what goes well with quinoa (almost anything). Shannon and I ate at Rawlicious last weekend while Ari was at her Oma’s house and I’ve been thinking about going back soon. I had this zuchetti thing, zucchini spiral shredded with tomato sauce all raw and I loved it. And then we shared a piece of ‘cheesecake’ and died and went to the moon. So very delicious, wow. So I’ve been thinking abut making that and then thinking that it’s the type of food best left to the professionals. Like sushi. And pad thai.

On top of everything I haven’t been sleeping much lately. Every night I go to bed and sleep for a couple hours then wake up at about 3:30 and stay awake for about 2 hours. Or longer. Then when I wake up for real for work or…sewing, I’m exhausted. I feel dead. I know why. But I feel more secure if I have my ipad in bed with me. RAH. It’s the IPAD’s FAULT!! But you know? When you’re like, ok, sleep time, good night pillow, good night duvet, good night ipad. Oh, what? Did someone tweet something witty? Is there an email for me? Grr.

Technology will clearly be the death of me.

Ok. I love you all. I’ll post real pictures soon.

Also, I used raspberry jam. If we’d had strawberry, that would have been my first choice.

Sigh. New babies are the best. And like Ashley said, naming new babies is the super best.  Freddie? Love it!!

Now I have to beg all of you to make this frosting. I am not shitting you, it’s the best frosting ever in the history of frosting. Which I prefer to call icing, but frosting seems to be the more common term. I spread it on vanilla (made from a mix!) cupcakes and it’s delicious.

Caramel Frosting

3 tbsp butter

1/4 Cup heavy cream

1/2 Cup packed brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1 Cup confectioner’s sugar

Pinch of salt

Over medium heat combine butter, cream and brown sugar. Cook until it starts to boil (I stirred the whole time), remove from heat and stir in vanilla and salt.

Cool, then stir in confectioner’s sugar.

I think it would be delicious on any kind of spice cake or chocolate cake too. Or spooned directly from the bowl into an open, salivating mouth.

Can’t you just taste it right now? So delicious. So full of artificial everything. Yummmm.

Ok, and confidential to Gillian and Laura (no spoilers, don’t worry):

Here’s how I currently feel about BBUK.

I’m angry with John James for being a baby. He’s all angry and miserable lately and I guess it’s because he’s been nominated and is stressed out but spare me the hissy fits, please. He’s slowly crawling his way down my ladder. My love ladder. I’m not so sure if it’s John James ftw.

I hope Rachel goes home tomorrow. I don’t like her. But then again, I didn’t like Corin in the beginning and now I do.

Corin. I want to hate her but I guess I don’t. Like Gillian said, the whole diary room “He’s fit, right? Fit? Not fit? Is he?” turned me around. And then the fake video on BBLB (I think or maybe the post or pre eviction show) of kids acting as various house guests and the little girl with orange on her face “I’m buzzin’!”  killed me. I love her tragic back story and I super love that she’s very much aware of who she is.

Dave is still gross, I’d like the Baron to leave, Josie is always Josie, Andrew is a weirdo, JJ is fit, Jo and Mario are  just boring and that brings us to Sam Pepper.

I’m horrified by this child. He completely revolts me. He is, like Josie said, a ratty little brother, but he’s 21. I hate that he’s from Kent, where my family lives. I’d probably want to murder him if I had to spend more than half an hour with him, I am really feeling sorry for Josie. And everyone else. I understand that he thinks he’s being honest but he’s got no tact and that’s a part of being an adult. Ugh.

1 stick butter, melted

1.25 C sugar

1 C self-rising flour

1 C milk (I used goat milk because that’s what we have here these days)

2 C blackberries

Whisk together 1 C sugar, flour and milk, add butter, mix

Butter a baking dish (I used an 8×8 square dark metal pan) and pour in batter, sprinkle in berries and 1/4 C sugar over top.

Bake at 350 for 1 hour (although I took mine out at 45 min because it smelled good, was brown around the edges and was cooked all the way through).

Eat with whipped cream and laugh your troubles away.