All Jazzed Up with No Place to Go

If you were someone with the happy circumstance of being financially supported by your parents and living in Duncan and having no job or school work because the class you thought you were going to take has been cancelled you would know that sometimes you have days where you feel really jazzed up and you want to do something, but you don't know what the hell to do (phew, long sentence). When I first found myself in this situation it was easy to figure out what to do, because there was lots to do:

-clean the house
-purge the closets and get rid of stuff we don't need
-catch up on correspondence with long lost friends, relatives, and business acquaintances (haha, ok, I don't have the latter, it just sounded good)
-brush the cat
-exercise
-stockpile food of various types in the freezer so that when I actually am busy we won't go hungry because neither GP nor I thought about dinner
-take various online courses that give me basic skills I'd need in service jobs, such as Serving it Right and FoodSafe

Now that I've done most of those things (or have managed to form them into a somewhat mindless habit) there is very little to do all day, which is one of the reasons I have this blog. Right now I'm sitting outside with Friskies, enjoying a cup of tea and a cool breeze (what did we do before wireless internet?!). It seems I am, for all intensive purposes (hehe, a joke) an accidental housewife. Believe me, this does not thrill me but I'm coping asbestos I can (gawd, I'm hilarious today). So what do I do when I can't think of anything to do? Well, find out how to get certified as a fitness instructor, of course! Would you attend a fitness class led by me? Here's how I think mine would go.

Here are some pictures of the delicious things I've been cooking lately:

A few nights ago I made this yummy yummy seared snapper fillet with avocado and grilled veggies. Grilled veg is becoming a staple, it seems, and I am slowly starting to tire of zucchini, scrumptious as it is cooked on the grill with garlic and finished with a little lemon juice. If only we could eat chocolate zucchini cake, but no, GP never fails to remind me that I'm not eating what's best for my body every time something starchy or sugary comes close to my quivering salivating lips. Needless to say, I tell him I'd rather have a satisfied tummy than a perfect body, but he does have a point. I can't eat cake every day and feel good about myself. Goodness knows I've tried. Sometimes I think about making a pan of Rice Crispies Squares in the morning and eating the whole thing before he comes home. Pretty sure that borders on Bulimia, but let's not go there. Onwards!

Above you will see some chicken (quickly marinated in a simple garlic-rosemary-S&P-oil mixture) kebabs atop a basic Greek salad. I bought the olives pitted because I effing hate having to fiddle around with my teeth getting the pit out. Maybe it's a bit more expensive, but it's really worth it if, like me, you love kalamata olives but not the pits. Plus, if you buy your veggies at the Farm Market for a pittance you can afford to splurge on olives and scrum-diddly-umptious Feta cheese.

By the way, did you know that, since 2002, Feta has been one of those protected designation of origin products, like Champagne? Yup, it's only allowed to be called Feta if it was produced in Greece (or Lesvos) and is made of sheep's milk or a blend of sheep and goat's milk (the amount of goat's milk cannot exceed 30%). The more you know.

Anyway, the dinner was fucking tasty. We've been using a thermometer for our meat cooking and our chicken has been consistently amazingly juicy and tender. I think GP just likes using it because it makes cooking feel like a science experiment, but the results are amazing. People overcook their chicken so much, it's no wonder everyone is so afraid of putting it on the grill.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention the tzatziki I made! It's P90X-proof, meaning it has some added protein and no fat to speak of. I used the last of my most recent batch of yogurt, which I have been meaning to talk about here. I think the secret to a firm and successful yogurt is fourfold: add skim milk powder (I think I mentioned this in my post on yogurt), use a powdered store-bought starter, incubate for more than 12 hours, and strain half of the yogurt for about half an hour to add back to the unstrained portion. The last step is especially important for a thicker, creamier yogurt. I was impressed at how deceivingly creamy our skim milk yogurt turned out when I did this. It wasn't as mouth-stickingly thick as the very first batch in my previous yogurt post, but it was the exact consistency I was going for: a bit firmer than commercial yogurt, but not as firm as sour cream. Plus, the extra hours yielded a more sour and very pleasant taste.

Anyway, I kind of got sidetracked by the yogurt. The tzatziki consisted of the leftover yogurt, some garlic, lemon juice, dill, and S&P to taste. I didn't add cucumber because GP and I aren't too keen on lumps, but if you did add cucumber you would want to strain it after you grated it for maybe half an hour and then plonk it into the sauce.

Making Endsmeat

I'll be finishing my BA (double major in Linguistics and English, if you forgot) in December. I'm one of those exceedingly fortunate people whose parents saved up for her education when she was wee, so she didn't have to worry about money ever, really. (Aside: That's not to say I'm irresponsible with money, I have just been very lucky with it being provided for me... Don't judge.) With my impending initiation into adulthood coming up I've been getting more and more anxious about life after university and how the hell I'm going to survive without Mummy and Daddy's generous financial support.

I intend to become certified to interpret American Sign Language (henceforth known as ASL), but like everything there is a cost to this training. That cost, according to my careful, if somewhat liberal, calculations, comes to around $13,250 with textbooks and various other accoutrements, over a four-year span (one year of which I'll likely be able to work full-time, thank god).

Why am I talking about money crap? Well, for two reasons: one, it's my blog and I can write whatever I want, so nyah. And two, it made me think of the funny (well, I think it's funny) anecdote that forms the title of this post. Given that I (and GP, if he's so inclined, which I think he is) will have to move to Vancouver for my schooling, our lives are going to be hella (ha, I'd never say that in person but it seems appropriate here) expensive. And I am wondering how I'm going to make my ends meet. I doubt GP will really have to worry because he's a lawyer and we all know lawyers are rich.

Anyway, the point is I got to thinking about the idiom "make ends meet" and how, when I was a kid, I always thought it was "make endsmeat", like you're making a kind of meat. As in "What are we having for supper?" "Endsmeat and potatoes, dear.". That kind of thing. And now I think it's funny that I thought that, but it makes total sense because people always say "makeendsmeet" so quickly that it's hard to tell where the word boundaries are. (I want to make some nerdy linguistics joke here, but I'll refrain, mostly because I can't think of anything witty enough right now.)

What I'm trying to say here is that kids don't think about money because (hopefully) they don't need to. Obviously I have to think about money more and more, the less kid-like I become, but I think remembering your kid-ness is important because it reminds you that taking time to have fun and think up imaginary things like endsmeat is just as important as taking time to plan out how to make ends meet.

A picture (or two, or three) of a very simple dinner, which consisted of grilled garlic/lemon chicken, a beautiful salad, and some yummy iced tea I made (from scratch, of course):