Oh Okra!

On our quest for better health, Greg and I have been trying a number of new vegetables. For the most part we have been happy with our new discoveries, but tonight was definitely a failure. We've never tried okra and had no idea would it would taste like. While it was cooking I thought it smelled "Green".


Greg dished up first and ate all of the okra on his plate while I happily ate my delicious Tilapia. Greg asked if I had tried the okra yet and I said no. He didn't want to tell me what it tasted like or if he liked it, so I knew something bad was coming. I took a bite and started chewing. The flavor was fine, but in the few seconds of chewing, somehow the vegetable in my mouth turned into a big mouthful of snot. Gross! It was so disgusting! I had to jump up and spit it out to keep myself from gagging. I didn't even try to swallow.
(This is a picture of some okra slime. It happens just by cutting into the fruit once. Sick.)


I'm not sure who decided okra is an eatable food, but I think they were crazy. It reminded me of those "snot fish" we saw on Dirty Jobs and MythBusters. Those fish are a type of eel that continuously produce slimy snot as a defense. And that's exactly what happened with the okra when I started chewing it. Gross gross!


If you happen to like okra, please comment and explain yourself. Maybe you have a good recipe that keeps the snot thing from happening...?


On a positive note, you may have noticed I mentioned my delicious Tilapia. We've tried a few recipes that were all good, but this is the one we made tonight:



3 tablespoons coarsely chopped mint leaves
1 small garlic clove, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
Pinch red pepper flakes
2 tilapia fillets (about 1 pound total), halved
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Some extra virgin olive oil
Some lemon juice (Oil and lemon juice were not measured. We just poured it until it looked good.)

We mixed up all the spices and made a kind of soup by adding some lemon juice and the olive oil in a bowl. Then we brushed the mixture onto the fish and baked it at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. You can flip it halfway through if you want. If your fish is thicker it might need to cook longer. Our fish was really thin on parts and really thick in the middle, so it had to cook longer.


Sorry, I didn't get a picture. I found this online in case you were wondering what raw tilapia looks like. When it's done baking, it should be white (not see-through at all) and it should flake easily. When I took it out the first time I tried to cut a thick part and it was kind of chewy and hard to cut. That means it's not done.

After we got over the grossness of the okra, I steamed some broccoli to have with our fish instead. Definitely a good choice. I think my favorite vegetables to have are steamed broccoli and cauliflower mixed.

What are your favorite vegetables and how do you like them? (Raw or cooked in a special way?)

What's new with Choir

I'm singing in the Idaho Washington Concert Chorale again. It's been fun to see all my old friends again, and interesting as I sing in the soprano section. (I usually sing alto, but this time I auditioned the director said my voice "Really wants to sing soprano.")

Anyway, I thought I'd give you a sneak preview of the beautiful music we're going to sing. (This is not my choir.) Actually, I think it's probably going to scare all the kids in the audience. It sounds like crazy chaos for most of the song. It's like the soundtrack for an action adventure movie with religious undertones. (The words are sung in Hebrew.)



There's a part in the 2nd movement where they write in the music for the women to sing "Blissfully unaware of Danger." At the same time the men are supposed to sing, "Savagely." Do you think you can recognize that part? The women's part really is pretty.



I won't put the rest of the song and give it away for the people going to the concert. I have to leave a few surprises to jolt you awake for the rest of the song. (Don't you love how it lulls you to sleep and then surprises you with a bang? haha.) We really are singing other songs that are pretty, so don't be afraid to come to the concert. One of my favorites is, "Sure on this Shining Night." It's soft and peaceful.



The other exciting thing is that we will be getting new dresses for the choir. Our current dress is like a big black tent, best fit for wearing to the funeral of someone you don't like. They haven't made an official decision yet, but I think we will get the dress that I like the best. It's a velvet top and a separate skirt with pretty sparkles.

Treasure Hunt!

I forgot to finish and post this! This is from the first week in January. I made a treasure hunt activity for the kids at church for our Wednesday night activity. It was lots of fun--to plan and to participate!



I started by looking up scriptures that could be used as clues. For instance, one clue was Hosea 7:6. "For they have made ready their heart like an oven, while they lie in wait; their baker sleepeth all the night..." So they would go find their next clue in the kitchen of the church around the oven. I came up with 13 clues so they would stay busy for about an hour.

This activity involved all the kids (girls and boys) 12-18 yrs, so I had a large group to work with. I divided them into 6 teams, each with an adult leader to keep the group on track. Each team had their own set of clues to find around the church, and each group leader had a cheat sheet in case they couldn't figure out the clue, or the clue was taken by another group or person. With each clue there was a small assignment. Some of them were silly, like, "Jump up and down while patting your head and rubbing your stomach." Most of them were serious, like case studies about what to do in a certain situation. It was fun to walk around the church and see groups of kids excitedly flipping through their scriptures and running to the next clue.

At the end we all met in the gym for a closing prayer and treats. My partner in crime (another adult leader named Kathy) made the treasure chest cake, along with a bunch of cupcakes for the treat. I thought the cake was so cute! I wish I had a good excuse to make one now.

Mega Mind

Our friends invited us to go see this with their family and it was fun. Greg actually got shushed by the kid behind us for laughing too much.



I found this clip that is short and funny. All the trailers I could find basically showed the entire movie with the slow parts cut out, so don't watch those.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day is fun because I have an excuse to make cookies and treats and give them to people.

(You can pick which picture to look at...one is flash and the other is no flash.)



The above pictures are the "Heart Attack" I did for my neighbor friend. My girls at church did this for an activity on Wednesday for a few people at church. I thought it was fun.

I made cookies and took some to be delivered to my girls at school today. It thought that would be a fun surprise. It was always the coolest thing to have something brought to you at school. I remember for my birthday one year, Wendy brought a small birthday cake to me at school during my lunch time. That was so cool! I got to serve birthday cake to my friends, and we got to stay at lunch a little bit late for the special occasion. I kind of feel like I get to do "Big Sister Stuff" for my 14-15yr old girls at church now, since I was never a big sister before. I think I would have liked to be a big sister.

Happy Valentine's Day! I hope it's a good one. What fun things are you doing (or other people are doing for you) today?

The skies are clear! Our troubles are over!

Old cartoons are the best.

CrossFit

My brother-in-law was recently in the newspaper:

(The Peninsula Gateway)

"College students can no longer expect to walk out into the world right after they graduate and be handed the golden career they’ve been studying so hard for. But two young men from Gig Harbor refused to let hard times get them down.

Instead of standing in the unemployment line, Michael Kelley and Matt Graham pooled their talents to start a new business. They recently opened a new gym, Narrows Crossfit, on Jahn Avenue in Gig Harbor.

(Michael is the guy hanging upside-down)


Kelley graduated from pilot school with dreams of flying for United Parcel Service.

“Every pilot wants to fly for UPS,” he said. “I applied everywhere. But it just wasn’t a good time for pilots.”

...Narrows Crossfit came together at lightning speed. The men devised a plan in September, got a business license in November and opened on Jan. 1. They worked around the clock to put the gym together on a steady diet of espresso.

“We worked 14 hours every day, including Christmas Eve, for 20 days,” Graham said.

At first glance, the knotted ropes that hang from the ceiling and the pull-up bars and free weights make it look more like a military boot camp. But Kelley said there’s a specific science to crossfit training. It focuses on core strength and mobility to produce visible results."

CrossFit Website



It was fun to see Michael and Lory (Greg's Mom) in the professional gym video. It makes me want to go lift some weights, or go for a bike ride or something.

Anyway, there's a little positive advertising for Michael...although I don't think anyone in/near Gig Harbor reads my blog...

Memphis Single's Branch

I was looking for something to help prepare for the wednesday night activity when I came across this website. The guys in this branch are pretty funny. They make short videos and post them to advertise the activities for the young single adults. Here's a couple of the ones I liked. (Of course, you can expect them to be ridiculous and corny...just the sort of thing I like. hahahaha.)

The Halloween Dance:



The Asian-Themed Break the Fast (This is a social potluck meal after church to end our fast...it's fun.)



Spudwood Dirby...I want to do this one. It looks like fun!



Funny Videos Website

Verizon Sucks

(That's not my car.)


This may be a boring blog post because it's not about treats or fun things...but because we live in America and we can speak freely about pretty much anything, I want to tell this story so I can give Verizon some bad advertising. I think they earned it after by trying so hard to rip us off.

I like having a phone, and it's pretty much required in our society...but we were really close to canceling our Verizon account.

A few months ago we decided to cancel Greg's phone so we could trim down our budget and save more money. So we called in November and asked them to cancel it. There were some cancellation fees, and they said the phone could not be canceled in the middle of a billing cycle (which I know to be untrue). In December we were supposed to pay the cancellation fee and the bill for my phone only. They told us about what that would be, and then they told us what we would be paying in January and forever while we just have my phone. December came and Greg's phone kept working. He had stopped using it, but used it again one day by accident and then realized he still had service. So he called them again and spent a LONG time on the phone, finally figuring out that the person made a note to cancel the phone, but never actually did it.

So they canceled it a few days late, and charged us for those days even though it was their fault... Since we pay a month in advance, we were supposed to be refunded what we paid for Greg's phone in December, but they didn't refund all of the charges. So in January when we were supposed to pay half of what we used to pay, our bill was only a few dollars less. Greg spent over about an hour on the phone with a guy trying to figure it out. The guy didn't understand it, so he'd put Greg on hold for 20 minutes at a time to ask the supervisor. The supervisor would convince the guy it was right, and then he'd talk to Greg again. And Greg would point out another problem and it'd start all over. Greg printed out several pages of our payment history and tried calling again. The lady on the phone said, "I will try to explain it to you." Instead of, "I will try to find the problem." She refused to look for a mistake on Verizon's part, and was irritated when Greg explained the first mistake to her. She still refused to look for mistakes and kept trying to explain why she was right. So he hung up.

We went to the Verizon store to talk to someone in person. Greg took the pages he printed out and explained step by step how Verizon had messed up and what our bill should be. The guy at the store then had to call the same people we've been calling, and he explained it to them step by step as Greg had done. FINALLY they recognized that they were capable of making a mistake and fixed the billing for us. That took an hour and a half at the store.


And at the end of it all, we felt like we should be compensated for the many hours we spent trying to fix the problem that was not our fault, but Verizon refused to do anything. I was mad that we had to work so hard to get our billing fixed, and had to spend so much time doing it. I'm mad that they continued to deny there were any mistakes, and I can't imagine what kind of idiot the supervisor was to continually go over the history with the other employee and convince him that it was right, while there were glaring mistakes. This makes me think they purposefully overcharged us and are dishonest in their business dealings.

Most people would have given up and just paid the bill. What a bunch of jerks.

I just can't understand why I'm not loosing weight!

We made 3 batches of muddy buddies and a batch of cupcakes to take to our friend's house tonight. We're going to have dinner, play games, and stay the night, so we thought we'd better be prepared. There's nothing worse than a party without treats and snacks!