Atlanta Flood

So, we got a bit of rain here. Yeah, okay, more than a bit. I ended up with 2-3 inches in my basement. Now I have a brand new 5.5 hp Shop-vac water vac. If you have a basement I suggest one period. I have never had water in my house before and thank goodness I already owned a dehumidifier. Between the two I dried out pretty fast. However, I did spend about 2 days walking around in golashes. Okay, so that was kind of fun.

But in the meantime, I have been looking through my cookbooks I bought before I really got into cooking. Ones I got because they said they had cheap and easy recipes. I want to trim down my stash but thought I'd get some of the good recipes out of them first... So, since its been an expensive month I even went ahead and tried the Baked Chicken 'N' Pasta. Only thing I really changed was that I didn't cook the frozen peas ahead or melt the cheese first. I let it melt/cook by mixing it in with the cooked pasta before baking. Oh, and I added bread crumbs on top. Why? Because I had them. It turned out okay, and I saved two servings in the freezer for later. However, definitely not a meal to make when friends come over. It was your typical boring old casserole. And yet the work Baked and Pasta in the name had had me so hopeful.

And since I was trapped in my house by pouring down rain I made some Cocoa-Oreo Crispie Bars - recipe by Culinary Concoctions by Peabody - for my nephews. Delicious and dangerous. I had to give the extras away as I was continuing to eat too many of them. Luckily, thanks to the flood all my friends from work are making their way into town to assist with the flood. I was able to give the extra to my friend from Arizona and told him to either eat them all himself or hand them out.

Oh! And I seeded my grass just before the flood. The majority of my grass ran away with the water but there's still new grass sprouting up every day. Its so exciting to see it sprout up where there used to be no grass at all. I love it!

Quesadilla Yum

Mmmm.... Frozen corn, sundried tomatos, white onion, and mozarella in a corn quesadilla? Delicious. And I already had all the ingredients in the house! I must say thank you to Cooking Light for that one. You may find I will be doing a good many of those recipes in the next few weeks, or other recipes from other healthy sources. I really have been feeling a tad bigger than normal lately and am going to see about losing enough weight so that I can start eating mostly whatever I want again. I also need to get more energized and athletic so hopefully the eating healthy will help with that too.

My dog Audrey is a funny little thing. Fearless even in the face of defeat! First on Sunday I met up with my family at Kennesaw Mountain and while the cannons surprised her she was otherwise fine. Unlike my parents dog who tried to shoot off every time. And then this morning she realized there was a cat next to the fence and ran at it. Well the cat wasn't the type to take that so they were arguing through the fence when Audrey realized there was another cat actually on our side of the fence and started to argue with it. I yelled at her from inside and by the time I got outside they were both on our side of the fence going after her. And as she hurried inside the house one of them was batting at her hind end. Which was only funny after it had backed off and I knew it wouldn't be following her into the house! Well, I just let the little one out again, and she went straight back to the scene of the crime to try and give it another go. Silly girl. And no, neither cats nor dog were harmed in all this.

I love my camera. Its a Canon S3-IS. And I know that they say that a good camera can still only do so much... but really I think that picture is pretty darn nifty. And all I had to do was put it on the right setting and whalla (or is it walla? I never cared before). It had been out of service for awhile because I didn't want to do too much when its lens cap was missing. However, new lens cap arrived yesterday and my friend is back in order. So I am playing with it again just like its a brand new toy. What does this have to do with cooking? Not so much. It kind of means I can take photos of my food I guess. Which I wanted to do for my own little recipe program. We'll see if any become worthy of being posted. Tonight is leftovers.

However, as much as this is about me starting out as a beginning learn it as you go cook, I like the idea of being able to include my other first time homeowner stories as well. Well okay, right now I just sort of want to brag. No more bees!!! They're gone. All gone. And not a single one chased me. I cut the vines away from the nest yesterday day, and then last night soaked it with two cans of bee killer stuff. And now not a single bee has come out of their little hole. Paranoid that I was just missing them I stuck a stick down inside to stir them up and still nothing! Ding dong, the wicked bees are dead! So now I can get back to getting all the weeds out of my ivy. Bah. But hey, at least my zinnias are looking pretty. By the way, all zinnias were purchased off of Lowe's 50% off carts. Of course, so were the petunias that are now dead. And the marigolds that have since died, but the zinnias and the salvia (obviously not pictured) are alive and well.

Lemon-Poppy Chicken

Another Rachael Ray recipe. I have made this before but I think I prefer the way it turned out when I screwed up on it a few months back. I am not always good at reading directions, especially when entertaining at the same time. And as I am still learning, I thought it told me to add the couscous to the pan the chicken was in. When all the tastes were mixed together and the couscous was lemony and the chicken minty... Mmmm... Otherwise it is still good but I think it really tasted best when all jumbled up and cooked together.

But on the other hand I think I failed bad at another task. Killing bees. Tonight I got all suited up to protect my skin the best I could. See on the far side of the driveway is a retaining wall and yesterday I was cleaning out the weeds in the vines that spill over the wall when I was stung. I stepped back and looked down and sure enough bees were going into a crack in the wall. So today I got the stuff to kill the nest and planned as per my father's instructions to attack the nest once the sun had gone down. Well it went down and as soon as it did I realized I couldn't find the nest! So I guessed. I think I hit the right area but then no bees came swarming out at me! So now I think I must have gotten it wrong. But I used the whole friggin' can practically so I'm going to have to get another can tomorrow. And I will again get dressed up in boots, leather jacket, thick gardening gloves, and scarf around my head and face, and attack it again.