Week in Random Review

Since there hasn't been much posting around here this week, and I'm not currently up for a thoughtful post, here's a random recap of our week..Last week ended with a major desire to get rid of some stuff around here. I had read Organized Simplicity which I downloaded from Amazon into their cloud reader. Never done that before, and generally don't like reading stuff on the computer screen, but it worked pretty well. Also having the book in e-format made me feel more freedom to skim and skip whatever I wanted...interesting how media types affect the way you look at information. Anyways, even though I'm not doing many of her suggestions, I did go through my kitchen and put a pile of give-away together. Then, I decided I would rather have people I know take the things than just drop them off at Goodwill...so, I snapped some pics and sent an email out to some friends to see if anyone wanted any of the things...and, viola! they are all gone, just like that! wonderful! Highly recommend that means of house-simplifying to anyone...although I guess my simplifying means another's amassing of junk...hmmmmmmm.

In the kitchen while cooking/baking this week, I came across two new and amazingly helpful things. First, and I bet most of you already know this, but chicken cuts really nicely with a butcher knife when it is half frozen. I was making a bunch of Parmesan chicken and was not looking forward to cutting lots of chicken into small pieces. For some unknown reason, as the chicken was defrosting, I decided to try and cut it like you would a melon or something, and it worked perfectly. Normally I cut chicken with kitchen shears (which works great for defrosted chicken), but this was probably twice as fast. Secondly, I used for the first time cooking spray/flour combination spray (I did not pay $12 for mine). That stuff is amazing! I used it for pumpkin bread and there was no sticking in the pan at all! I'm interested to try it in those fancy mini cake mold things that always seem to stick for me. 

We all watched Courageous last night...we weren't so sure about the kids, but they seemed to like it well overall. The dramatic stuff was not their cup of tea, but they thought the police stuff was very exciting. Anyways, if you haven't seen it; it is worth watching...good, challenging message on being a father. 

Some other random realizations: Snow is a great babysitter - my kids have been playing for hours in it. Making lots of goodies is bad for self-discipline. When inviting teenagers over to make dinner for you, be prepared for things not to go as planned. Working out in the evening somehow rarely gets done. Writing blog posts when you're tired and should be in bed tends towards circuitous ramblings. :) 

So, that's it for this random post...and, it'll close with some even more random pictures. Susan has been doing a photography class with the kiddos, and this past week they learned how to play around some in Picasa. These are Josh's as is evidenced by the primary color choice of green. :)