Garnier Fructis Bzz Agent Review

This past month I got to try out Garnier Fruictis Sleek & Shine shampoo and conditioner for free through Bzzagent.com.  My bzzkit arrived with full! sized bottles of the above named shampoos.  I already love Garnier Fructis shampoos but haven't bought any recently mostly because I'm a cheapskate and buy whats on sale.  It smells delicious (like apples) and definitely improves my hair's texture.  I have very thick wavy/curly hair that can pretty frizzy at times, especially if I don't use a good conditioner.

I'm Too Tired to Cook Cheeseburgers

When ever I come home too tired to cook and too tempted to eat out I make these burgers.  I especially like making these burgers when K-Mart is running a deal where you but 1lb ground beef and get the buns and cheese for free.  Dinner for $2.99?  Heck yeah!  Add chips or fries and lots of pickles and it's a whole meal for less then eating at McDonalds.

These burgers taste similar to McDonalds or maybe Whitecastle.  In fact you could cut them smaller and use slider buns if you wanted.

Sweet! Corn. {Sweet Corn Hash}

After strawberry and asparagus season my favorite time of the year is sweet corn season.  Up in the Midwest where I am from originally that meant waiting till about mid summer.  You can find corn but believe me it wasn't good corn.  As we say, "That's fit to feed a hog!".  Just sayin'!

Living down here in central Florida has got me spoiled.  I splurged and bought some corn at the local produce market and was sure I was in for some disappointment.  Holy cow!  That corn was delicious!  So apparently I can get awesome sweet corn a lot earlier down here and for cheap?!

In Which I Attend My First Booksigning

This past November I got to meat one of my favorite bloggers.  She has two blogs.  Cake Wrecks and Epbot and her name is Jen.  I have to read her Cake Wrecks everyday.  It's hilarious!  Epbot is fun too.  Full of geekery, disney and steampunk eyecandy.  So when I heard she was going to be at the Barnes & Noble I braved the traffic and headed downtown.

I have never been to a book signing.  My husband has quite a few books signed.  I don't normally care if a book is signed or not because I don't generally care who wrote the book as long as it is good.  Now that I follow a lot of bloggers it's different.  These are people I actually admire and feel like I know due to their daily postings.  Jen is hilarious and so is her husband.  She seems very approachable and I was so excited to meet her.   My husband also was excited on my behalf but sadly was unable to join me.  I felt weird going by myself because he is very chatty and I am so quiet.

John, Jen and me in our geekwear

I had a great time!  Besides signing books, Jen encourages  her fans to re-create their favorite wrecks in cupcake size.  I reproduced two Cake Wrecks:

Pin All the Things 5/20/12 {Organized}

Peter and me went grocery shopping today.  We do a major shopping trip every couple months where I stock up on meat.  Sunday is a good day to go to Target because they sometimes have some discounted meat.  This trip I went through the freezer to make room for the new stuff and discovered I had a lot more chicken than I thought we had.  We're going to be eating chicken for awhile, lol!

Now if I had stuck with my freezer inventory list this wouldn't have happened.  We don't have an abundance of room in our fridge, freezer and cabinets for bulk shopping.  It was a bit of a struggle to fit in the extra chicken.

I like to pretend I am organized but really I just like to make lists.  I'm weird like that.  I did straighten up the fridge and rearrange my fridge magnets to allow me to actually see my freezer inventory list.  Is it normal to have a fridge totally covered in magnets?  I really want some fruit shaped magnets.  I'd have to make some room though.  Not sure I could bring myself to toss any of the ones I have now.

This is what I pinned this week to help me obtain organizational nirvana:

Frustration

 

There just some things that no matter how hard you try cannot come out perfect.  I'm a perfectionist.  I like my projects to come out lovely and when I open something I expect it to be done with ease.

See this package of baking soda:

Strawberry Chocolate Chip Muffins & Derpy Hooves

Today I came home and decided to eat some strawberries.  I have been buying strawberries every time I go to the store which is often as I like grocery shopping and think it's fun to shop day to day (even though that really isn't really economical...but, hey, it makes me happy!).  What doesn't make me happy?  Coming home to mushy strawberries.  I will, and have, eaten green unripe strawberries.  Mushy berries though are icky.

Pin All the Things 5/13/12 {My Container Garden}

 

This week I pinned a lot of ideas for next year's garden.  I don't have a yard of my own because I live in an apartment which makes me sad.  I love giant gardens.  This year I planted a few veggies in pots and some herbs.  I'm always on the look out for cute ideas for doing a good job with my small space.

To give you an idea of what I'm working with I decided to share some pictures of my garden this year:

Smokin Blues, Bikes and BBQ 2012

Last weekend after Marching for Babies and being a semi-healthy good girl I passed a sign for a BBQ festival being held on the Lakefront.  My hubby loves BBQ and I love to eat so we hopped in the car to check it out.  It certainly wasn't what we expected.  The food was delicious, the music far from being blues and there were barely any bikes.  I think the time of day we decided to arrive may have been part of the problem.  5pm-ish and so hot!

Pudding Pops as Easy as 1-2-3

I don't remember eating a lot of pudding pops as a child.  I remember eating fudgesicles and those nasty fla-vor-ice pops.  You know, the ones that you had to freeze before eating and came in a plastic tube that will cut your tongue?  They tasted like cheap Kool-Aid.  So gross.  Fudgesicles delicious.  Jell-O Pops delicious.  Fla-vor-ice bad!

I found these randomly at my Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market

I don't have any children but I don't think that should stop you from purchasing uber cute Popsicle molds and making delicious ice pops.  I've tried to make pudding pops before and they always turn out kind of watery.  I found a recipe using half-and-half and the mouth feel of these pops is almost exactly like I remember pudding pops. Pudding pops are really easy to make too.

General Tso's Chicken or Why I Hate Cornstarch

I have avoided making my own Chinese takeout style food for many reasons: too much prep, steps and frying. But mostly the frying part. Than, I saw this recipe on the Brown Eyed Baker.  My mouth began salivating just looking at the pictures.  So I decided to get over my aversion to frying and make it.  Yeah, I was right.  A lot of work but it made a lot of food and it was delicious.  I'll try to kick up the spice next time I make it.  On a spiciness scale from one to ten I give it a 1.  I have a feeling that my red pepper is old so my fault.  I'll buy some dried red chilies from the Asian market before making it again.  I may regret that decision!  Spicy doesn't agree with me.  But it burns so good!

Gleaning {Cabbage Sloppy Joes}

When I joined Americorp I was so excited. I just knew I'd get to learn, meet new people and do exciting (i.e. interesting things). I was able to meet so many new people and experience different cultures, food and points of view. I just know that if I had stayed in the Midwest I'd be a much boring person (and still single!).

I served in Apopka, Florida (Foliage Capital of the World!) at a place called the Hope Community Center. They work a lot with migrant workers and immigrants. I didn't get to spend much time at the HCC because I was placed at a domestic violence shelter some distance away. While I love working at the DV Shelter getting to spend time at the HCC was a great experience too. Every other Friday was Americorp meeting time. Good times! Most times it was an oppurtunity to kind of relax and enjoy each others company. A nice change of pace from our placements for some of us. Sometimes we did service learning projects as a group. Those were fun too.

Couldn't find any of us gleaning, found this one though ala 2009

 The one I remember most is gleaning cabbage. Gleaning is collecting leftovers from a farmer's fields after the harvest. You would be amazed at how much food is leftover to just rot in the fields of be turned over to become fertilizer for next crop. I think we collected over 2 tons of cabbage for the Second Harvest Food Bank.

Picking cabbage is back breaking work. It's done by hand with a little knife and gloves. Gloves that soon become useless because the cabbage is moist from the overnight dew or rain. I had blisters on my hands and such an achy back! Picking veggies and fruits is not good times. I once picked peaches for a month one summer up north for pay. Not fun. Besides the aches and pains and low pay there is also the ick factor. As in the crop has been sprayed with pesticides at some point.

I learned a lot about where are food comes from, who picks it and the environmental and health impacts of producing food. look up info about Lake Apopka sometime. Scary!

Moving on...we got to take some of our cabbage home! So I have a few pounds of cabbage and no idea what to make with it. Cole slaw. Sure, but not my favorite thing. So nothing to do but Google cabbage recipes. This recipe came up. I can't remember where it I found it. Probably recipes.com. So I apologize for lack of credit. Thanks. It's yummy.

For this recipe you'll need half a head of shredded cabbage. I recommend using your knife and cutting board. My food processor shreds it too fine. Also needed: green pepper, onion, ground beef, ketchup, brown sugar, lemon juice, white vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, yellow mustard, and slat and pepper. It's a lot of ingredients but this Sloppy Joe isn't from a can.

In a large saucepan cook the beef,onion and green pepper over medium heat. Drain off excess fat. Icky!

Add cabbage. Cook till just crisp tender.

In a small bowl (or container or something else container-ish!), combine ketchup, brown sugar, lemon juice, white vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, yellow mustard. Stir well.

Add to meat and cabbage and than cover pan and let simmer about 10 minutes or until cabbage is tender.

I like to serve on hamburger buns with a side of mac & cheese. Try this recipe from the Pioneer Woman. It's so good!

Cabbage Sloppy Joe's
from recipe.com?

1lb ground beef
1 1/2 cup finely shredded cabbage
1 medium onion chopped
1/4 cup green pepper, diced
1 cup ketchup
3 TBS brown sugar
2 TBS lemon juice
1 TBS white vinegar
1 TBS Worcestershire Sauce
1 TBS yellow mustard
1 tsp salt
1 dash pepper

In large saucepan, cook the beef, cabbage, onion, and green pepper over medium heat until meat is no longer pink and vegetables are crisp tender; drain.  Stir in ketchup, brown sugar, lemon juice, vinegar, worcestershire sauce, mustard, salt and pepper.  Cover and simmer 10 minutes or until cabbage is tender. 

2009-2010