Rebecca Homecca

I had to go to some training for work. It was terrible. I am not against learning, but I am against bad training. Here are the top five things that made this training ridiculous at best.

5. People taking too many of the free snacks. Don’t get me wrong, I love free snacks as much as the next person. As a matter of fact, I often joke about taking my big purse somewhere when there is going to be snacks. However, I joke about it,  I don’t actually take half a dozen cookies and a fist full of nutrigrain bars off the table. I was embarrassed on their behalf.

4. The hostile environment. I guess I always figured training was a fairly neutral environment. It started with the fact that it seemed like the trainer drew the short straw in having to come there. She was a bit surly. Combine that with the fact that the room is filled with people who are not really interested in doing things differently, and it felt more like a hostage negotiation. Had they run out of pretzels the whole place could have turned into a riot.

3. The trainer doesn’t know how to use the software. Well, that’s not fair, she knew how to use it, sort of. However, there was more than one occassion when she had to click on several things before she got the right one (which led to mass confusion from the not wanting to be here in the first place masses) and answered at least three questions with “ummm…I don’t know…I don’t really use this that often”. really?

2. The trainer is hard of hearing. You have to repeat your question a minimum of four times and literally scream it at her. And she is the one that is irritated because you are not talking loud enough (thereby adding to the already combative mood of the audience).

1. Many of  the people there being trained barely know how to use email and feel the need to ask obvious questions. This was the “advanced” portion of the training, so I guess they figure you have at least googled something at some point in your life. However, based on some of the questions, I’m not sure if these people even HAVE computers.

Bonus Reason: After explaining how to use a certain feature of the software for an hour and half, the presenter says “But I don’t know who would ever use this”.

sigh…

We got a giant head of cabbage from the farmer this week and the only thing I really know what to do with cabbage is make cole slaw.

This of course required more shredding, which did make another mess. What is it with this shredding?

Anyway, I wanted to make a lower fat version than the norm and also wanted something a little less vinager-y. So I kind of made up a recipe.

I found a recipe for a Waldorf type dressing that used yogurt with a little mayo. Since my dressing was Waldorf style, I also shredded an apple to mix with my cabbage.

The dressing went sort of like this (I had too much cabbage and had to fudge the amounts a little)-

1/4 or so of plain yogurt

2 Tbs mayo

1 Tbs honey (I added a little more because you couldn’t really taste it)

1-2 Tbs lemon juice

1/4 tsp pepper

It’s sweeter than your usual slaw dressing and we both thought it was quite tasty.

You could easily shred some carrot, pear, or other veggies too. I also thought the addition of a few walnuts (like a Waldorf salad) would be good, but hubs doesn’t like it when you add nuts to recipes.

Last year we had a family of Cooper’s Hawks build a nest in our woods. We really enjoyed watching them and learning about them.

I didn’t know they came back to the nest, but they must because they are here again.

We had been hearing the familiar calls of the babies for the past week or so. Then Saturday night, they started to venture out. We could hear them making quite a ruckus as they explored the woods and tested their wings. I kept seeing them flying across the yard and even the cat’s ears would perk up at the loud sounds from outside.

Since we’ve been getting veggies from the farmer one of my favorite meals has been lemon pepper noodles.

It is crazy easy and so good! Basically chop up some veggies, keeping them in fairly large chucks. This is a rustic dish, so don’t spend a lot of time dicing.

Tonight I used 2 kinds of squash and green & yellow beans. You could thow in some onion if you have one or peppers, whatever you have. I have also made it with chicken, but tonight we had it without (forgot to take it out of the freezer).

Then cook some noodles (spaghetti, angel hair or fettuccine work well). While those are boiling away, put some olive oil in a pan (I have an awesome stir fry pan that works great, but any skillet will do) and heat that up.

Once the oil is warm throw in the veggies and stir them around coating with oil. Then add the super secret ingredient: Mrs. Dash Lemon Pepper Seasoning Blend.

Toss it around some more and then a couple more times as it cooks. Once the noodles are done and the veggies are tender crisp, put the pasta in the pan with the veggies. I just use tongs to pull it out of the water and into the pan. No need to dirty a strainer.

Add a splash of pasta water and then squeeze a lemon on the noodles before mixing them in. This is important! The noodles will soak up that lemony flavor and it is awesome. I found this out on a happy accident.

Mix everything around with the tongs and enjoy!

Oh and if you are using chicken, just cook that in the stir fry pan before you add the veggies. You can sprinkle Mrs. Dash on the chicken too.

I don’t think it is one of hubs favorite dishes, but he doesn’t complain. Because he was raised right by his parents (thanks you guys!), is super supportive on my no salt situation, and vowed to be more open minded about veggies since we signed on with the farmer.

And it doesn’t hurt my feelings if he has a PB&J later.

This morning I had prairie class for my naturalist class. One of the defining characteristics of a prairie is the lack of trees.

Lack of trees means no shade. And it was very hot today.

As with all my classes so far, I learned the importance of this particular eco-system. I suppose most people (including myself) would just look at it and think “oh a field. hmm.” or maybe wonder why someone isn’t growing corn there.

Turns out there are many species of animals that live there and it also important for erosion control & water issues.

Who knew?

Here are some folks in my class. They are all hot and wanting a drink of water right about now.

Here is the instructor standing in some of the taller grasses. This prairie is newer so the plants are not real tall. Over time they can grow to be 8-10 feet. Historical accounts tell of people getting lost in prairies because they are so tall.

Unfortunately most of those have been turned into farm land or housing developments. There are people working on reconstructing those or like this park, creating new areas.

We saw a ton of different flowers and grasses in this small area. My head was overflowing with info by the end of class!

We got a ton of veggies from the farmer this week (as you can see). There are more pictures over on flickr.
I have no idea why it takes me so long to process the veggies each week. I am certain it has nothing to do with the fact that I must photograph them all first…
I have 4 more bags of beans in the freezer. This is going to be bean filled winter! I’ve frozen beans before and they are so much better than the frozen ones at the store. And besides I hate that the ones at the store are cut. I like whole beans.
I’ve got plans for cabbage (which feels like it weighs about 10 lbs by the way) and I can’t wait to eat my little tomato (the first of the season!)
I do not have plans to shred any more zucchini, however.
As for the kohlrabi…tbd…a new adventure in veggies!

We have been so busy with summer activities and kitchen remodeling that I only made it to the gym twice in as many weeks. Even though I certainly burned my share of calories on dumpster day, it’s still not good.

Especially since the summer activities all seem to revolve around food I really shouldn’t be eating.

Exercising once a week does not work when you are trying to lower your blood pressure. So some genius (me) thought it would be a grand idea to get up early and go walking before work.

That way if there are evening activities, I would still get my physical activity quota in. If there is not an activity (like tonight) I get a bonus work out in.

And I’m not like a fitness guru or anything, but I think twice in one day will give better results than twice in two weeks. They might want to do a study about it, it’s just a theory.

Even though I am not really awake yet, the morning walking is quite pleasant. The only ones up are the frogs and birds, both welcoming the day with their songs. A few early rising deer crossed my path this morning.

I only see one car the entire time. Which is really nice because our roads are dirt, narrow, and people drive to fast.

Strangely, there are fewer bugs as well. It seems all the late night buzzing around makes them sleep in.

Yesterday it had rained a little before I headed out.  Something about the rain makes everything look greener and the bark of the trees is almost black. I love the woods in the rain.

It’s also much cooler in the morning than in the evening when we used to walk (before I started going to the air conditioned gym), making for a easier go of it.

This morning I had company as hubs decided to get up with me and rumor has it, he is planning on going again tomorrow.

Tonight I went about cleaning and freezing the green & yellow beans we got from the farmer. I’ve been trying to get this project done all weekend and finally got around to it.

I also had 2 very large zucchini I had to deal with. They were too big for eating really and the farmer recommended using them in bread. Since it is kind of hot to do a lot of baking, I decided to shred it and freeze it for later baking.

I have heard of people doing this and thought that sounded like a good idea. I have a food processor that would made quick work of the shredding, so easy peasy.

It was after the shredding that things got a little hairy. I pretty much had shredded zucchini all over the kitchen.

That stuff just went everywhere.

I managed to get 2 bags with 4 cups each and 2 bags with 2 cups each. The recipes I have take 2 cups. I figured this gave me options to make a little or a lot.

I just got done getting all the shreds cleaned up and have the bags cooling in fridge before they head to the freezer. I really hope it all goes well come bread time because it ended up being a little more of a process than I originally thought.

Where did the week go? These four day work weeks are AWESOME.

Seemed like we had something going on every minute after work (between filling a dumpster and hauling wet boxes out of the basement) so it went by extra fast this week.

The weekend does not show any signs of slowing down either. We have errands in the morning, then hopefully working on the pantry project some more, followed up by meeting friends for dinner and a baseball game.

I’m tired already just talking about it!

In other news, I recently read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingslover on the computer.

Did you know you can rent books from the library on your computer (or Ipad or Kindle if you are fancy like that) for FREE? It’s true. You can rent audio books too.

Isn’t the library awesome?

But I digress…

I’m not sure if I misunderstood or if they billed it wrong, but I thought AVM was about eating locally for a year. And I guess technically it was. But really it was more about growing your own food in your garden and raising your own animals to eat.

Remember when I mentioned I wanted to write a book about being a lazy environmentalist? Well this is the opposite of that.

Aside from the fact that not many people live on small farms in the middle of no where, most people have JOBS and the work involved in there endeavor was over the top at best.

It wasn’t all bad, there was some good info in there (especially if you are new to the slow food movement or whatever you want to call it).

I particularly enjoyed the recipes. They are simple, with few ingredients, and supposedly don’t take much time. I am not, however, going to bake my own bread EVERYDAY.

The other thing that bothered me about this book isn’t it didn’t have a clear path. It was part memoir, part cookbook, part encyclopedia (remember those? that is where we got information before Al Gore invented the internet) and part, well I don’t know what. It was all over the place.  I skipped whole sections because I’ve watch Food Inc and King Corn and don’t need to be convinced to eat locally, I just want to know how to do it better or easier.

I was really hoping it was more about shopping than farming. I was looking for some insight into the struggles with finding local foods and how to over come them. I guess the answer is in moving to a farm and doing it yourself?

BUZZ! Wrong Answer, try again.

Meanwhile, we ate good local stuff tonight. The farmer hooked us up with some green & yellow beans, summer squash, broccoli, and beets. Their neighbor brought over some extra zucchini for everybody too (if you’ve ever grown zucchini, you know there is ALWAYS extra).

Seems I am all about the ALL CAPS tonight. Hubs said I was sassy tonight. Guess so.

or should I say GUESS SO.

The first day back to work after a long (and fun filled) holiday weekend is always a bummer. I was so tired.

Despite the fact that I fell asleep on the drive home.

And slept on and off from about 3:30 – 7 after we got home.

And went to bed at my regularly scheduled time.

I guess staying up way past my bedtime every night and spending the day light hours out in the hot sun kind of took it out of me.

As predicted I ate pretty much nothing that was on my low sodium diet. I may or may not have consumed a total of 4 hot dogs over the course of the weekend.

It is also possible we had Pizza Sam’s (with ham of course) at 1:00 in the morning.

I have not seen 1:00 in the morning in a long time, but some how Pizza Sam’s tastes even better at that time of day.