Old School Taco Salad

1. taco salad
2. tangelo

When I was growing up there was some fast food place in the next town over, can't remember anything else about it but I do remember the taco salad. I also remember loving that taco salad. They served it in a rectangular shaped aluminum foil container. After much trial and error I think I've come up with a pretty close copycat recipe.

Layer the following items in a bowl or foil dish.

Lettuce
Corn chips
Chili
Chopped onion
Cheese
Jalapeno slices on the side

Eat with a plastic spork.

OMG, I almost forgot to tell you what I've been reading!

The Wednesday Letters by Jason F. Wright
Seven pages in the wife dies in bed of a heart attack and by page eight the terminally ill husband gives it up and dies next to her. It was downhill from there. No, actually it's kind of a cute book. The husband wrote a letter to the wife every Wednesday the entire 40 some-odd years they were married. Their adult children find the letters after their death and through them find ... redemption? At least that's what you're led to believe from the -letter- pasted in the back of the book from one of them. I don't know, it was Cute. Capital C. I'm over it.

Clearing the Aisle by Karen Schwartz
Classic chick lit but I loved it. Know why? It was a Jewish wedding with lots of juicy little Jewish wedding details. I love that shit. There's always those certain things that continue to fascinate. Judaism, polygamy, nuns and boarding school are mine.

Chasing Harry Winston by Lauren Weisberger
Not her best effort.

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Over That Too

Well people, I think I'm souped out. I've explored the full range of ready to eat soups that Fresh & Easy has to offer as well as some traditional open can and plop it out soups not to mention a few homemade varieties. Luckily I still have the world of crackers to conquer.



1. seeded cracker
2. goat cheese
3. peppadew

Tune in tomorrow for Chicken in a Biscuit and Nutella!

Also over? YA serial fiction.

I finished the first two books of the Hunger Games series and finally read the last of the Twilight series. Maybe in a another year or two I'll be ready for Mockinjay, but for now? Pretty much done.

The best book of the year so far is a tiny little thing called Prayer for the Dying. The entire thing is written in second voice which would normally annoy the hell out me but it really works for this book. I think it helps to create a sort of barrier from the horror of what's happening to the characters allowing you to love the experience of reading the story. It's just beautifully written; lyrical, languid, almost poetic assuming of course you can get past the macabre theme.

The reviews are definitely mixed.

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Something Different!

Decided to try something a little different for lunch today. Soup!

1. corn chowder
2. bread and buttah
3. apple with unpleasantly tough skin

I also finished Nineteen Minutes (Jodi Picoult) today. Weird timing. Here's the story.

The girl child has been asking to volunteer at our county's animal shelter. I finally gave in, because I'm a good mom, and she scheduled herself for orientation on Saturday. It's pretty far from our house, too far to just drop her off and come back home so I decided I'd just bring a book and wait for her there. I'd just finished a silly little book about a woman that accidentally hired a prostitute. And had sex with him. And paid for it with the PTA credit card. Heavy stuff. Anyway, I was between books so I just grabbed a couple off the "to read" pile and away we went.

Well, the first book sucked, the second book was worse and nobody would talk to me on twitter. Things were dismal indeed. Then I remembered the emergency book in the trunk. Okay, I don't really keep an emergency book in the trunk but I remembered seeing one in there when I was hiding Christmas presents a while back. And there it was. Nineteen Minutes. A shooter story. Some kid goes wack and guns up his high school. On the very same day that some kid went wack in Tucson and gunned up the congresswoman's event. Weird right? Then on the way home we pass a restaurant named "King Wah" which was also the name of the psychiatrist's character in the book. Creepy.

And then it got worse. Now honestly it wasn't a good book. The plot went here and there and back and forth and nothing was satisfying and it was exhausting to read (like this post) and the back story seemed contrived and the ending, well the ending was just dumb and by the time I got to it I pretty much hated them all and just didn't care too much what happened to any of them. But here's the thing. The book focused a lot on the kid's parents. His mom in particular. Lacy. The author took great pains to show her as just a regular mom. A regular mom that made a few mistakes but did her best and loved without question and still failed. The ultimate failure of parenting I think because really, what is worse? If there is such a thing I'm grateful for the inability to imagine it.

And now I keep thinking about the Tucson shooter's parents. His mom in particular, I believe her name is Amy, and I wonder. I wonder how she's surviving this? How she's managing to pull in that next breath, and then the one after that. Knowing what she knows, my mind mixing her with the fictional mom I came to know. But I don't let myself wonder too much, I don't examine too closely or for too long before I pull back and look away. It's too horrific. Too real. Too imaginable.

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If It Ain't In A Bowl

I'm on a soup kick. Clearly.



1. Tomato Mostly Soup

Today I'm reading Secrets of a Shoe Addict which so far is completely lacking in emotional wallop. And I'm okay with that.

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An Old Wet Hen

Know what makes me madder than an old wet hen? Well not this. This is chicken noodle soup. I make it from rotisserie chicken, cooked twice so it's less likely to kill us. We're all quite fond of it.

Notice the way my lack of spatial reasoning skills left me with such a generous serving. Luxurious, no?

1. soup
2. stale cabinet-flavored crackers
3. caramelized onion cheese
4. grapes
5. chocolate con almonds

All lovingly packed in the way that has become mine.

Oh, but I am mad. I'm mad at a book. Well, not really at the book itself, but at the people IN the book. You know, the characters. Pretty sure that makes it (The Dive From Clausen's Pier) a novel worth reading.

What would you do? What you do if the person you were engaged to marry, the person with whom you were busy falling out of love, the person whose heart you were slowly breaking became paralyzed? Whatever you decide will be wrong. And I will sit here on my big red couch and judge you. Even if you are a fictional character. You've been warned.

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Well At Least It's Over

And that's about all I have to say about that.




1. Champagne chili made with roast beast leftover from Christmas past packed in my MD 20/20 lunch kit.
2 & 3. A corn muffin and a couple of hastily peeled carrots. The muffin is from Ina Garten's recipe found here.

I'll tell you now if she and Jeffrey show up for our Festivus celebration this year I'm going to have a grievance or two to air about this recipe. Yields 12 muffins my arse.

Anyway. What's new with you? Today I'm reading The Dive From Clausen's Pier



and my favorite words for the day are dichotomy and conundrum. But not paradox.

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