A Win & A Fail

A Win

For the past several months I have been looking for the perfect bookshelf for my children's room. We read every night and acquire new books on a regular basis because we want our kiddo's to enjoy reading.  By new I mean new to us. Most of our books are yard sale and thrift shop finds. As a teacher I can testify that being able to enjoy a book is something that can make the difference between students who struggle and those who are successful. Anyway, the book situation was getting a little out of control in their room.  We are talking piles of books creating a trip and slip hazard of ridiculous proportions. Every bookshelf I found was over priced or cheaply built. This morning I stopped at an estate sale and picked up the perfect shelf for less than half of what they had it priced for. I ended up not putting it in the children's room because it was a little wobbly on the squishy carpet, but there was a good spot for it in the living room. My little dude was super excited to help clean it and put the books on it. It is big enough that it also holds most of the toys that are usually randomly strewn around the living room. Score one for Mommy!

A Fail

I am vegetarian and I am outnumbered in my home by people who are not. Sometimes we all eat vegetarian and other times I make a combo meal. Vegetarian spaghetti with frozen meatballs on the plates of those who partake (heated up of corse). Portabella fajitas with chicken strips thrown in the pan after I fix mine. Point being, I gotta get creative sometimes. Sometimes I get carried away. Tonight's meal was supposed to be vegetarian, a simple pasta dish with some added veggies from our garden. It started out decently enough with some sautéed diced bell pepper. I started adding tomatoes from our garden, because they are really sweet and I thought they would make a good sauce. I should have googled  "making spaghetti sauce" but I didn't. That was where it started to go downhill.

Mr.PJ informed me later that sauce can take a day. I wanted to be done in half an hour. After destroying  dicing five perfectly good tomatoes I decided they weren't cooking down fast enough and I threw the whole mess in the food processor with some garlic salt. The result of that was orange runny tomato soup. Not being one to give up easily I just named dinner tomato soup with pasta and served it with a wheat roll. My husband quietly pretended to be too busy feeding the baby to eat. My toddler son loudly announced he didn't like it and began to play with it. I don't know if you have ever smelled real fresh parmesan cheese, but it is on the somewhat stinky end of the cheese spectrum. Our pasta was parmesan tortellini served in warm watery tomato juice that was slightly chunky. I have made some cooking blunders before but tonight was an all time low. The meal I tried to serve my family tonight looked and smelled like bowls of vomit. I've got to get some sort of meal plan together.

The good news is I went grocery shopping today so I have lots of ingredients I can use to follow a real recipe tomorrow.

Take care,

Mrs.PJ

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