apparently i greatly exaggerated

I have only posted 717 times on this blog, not nearly 750. Ah, well. Numbers were never my deal.

Do you want to hear a sad thing? I have already eaten all of my Easter candy. It is not even a full month later! I am a candy fiend. Also, apparently I am getting old. Sitting cross-legged or with my legs tucked up under me is no longer comfortable. It makes my hips hurt and my legs go numb in about seven seconds.

It's been raining for about four days now, and very overcast. Thank goodness! I've never been so excited about rain! It means that at the creperie, no one wants to sit outside, and at my marketing job, no one wants to call to have the outside of their house painted. Woot woot! I hope it is rainy ALL SPRING! Keep your fingers crossed.

I am looking WILDLY forward to having this Sunday off and to having ALL WEEKEND off for two weeks after that. It will be rad! We will party! We will rock out!

(When I fall asleep at 8:30 p.m. on Friday, the instant I step out of the car from work, I'll have Greg take a picture and upload it here so you can have a chuckle.)

Oh, that brings me to the other part of my life that will be changing. Starting next Monday, I'll be working 3-8 p.m. on MWF. Which, quite frankly, SUCKS. But in June, I will only have to work 3-8 on Mondays and Fridays. Which is mildly better. MILDLY.

Yes, O Complain-O Tron, I live spout misery on my blog.

Really, things are not bad. I am just tired from working the last ten days in a row and looking at the next three days knowing I will have to work all of them. But now it is only three. So that is a win. And I get two whole weekends off later this month. So that is a win, too.

But still keep your fingers crossed that it rains for the next three months so my life is more sane.

so let's ride bikes into the sea

I know, I know, I should update more than once a month, right? It seems that part of the difficulty of graduating is creative frustration induced by massive laziness. And that includes feeling like I don't have anything thoughtful or interesting to say. But Grandma said she liked my hummus recipe -- so my last post was a win! And after nearly 700 blog posts, I'm too stubborn to just stop updating altogether. I mean, that's an investment.

Anyway. It's rainy but warm here today, and I'm going to work seven days this week and six next week so essentially YUCK. I'm also moving to some evening hours at the marketing company next week, so. . . well, I'm not very happy with my job right now.

What I am happy with is our home-made yogurt from the yogurt-maker we got for the wedding! It is delicious. With Greg's home-made granola and some canned peaches from Suzanna, it is like the ultimate summer breakfast. Pretty sure when strawberries and blueberries come out, I'm gonna be in heaven.

So keep praying for fruit. We've had enough rain!

the ultimate hummus recipe, ever.

Hummus always sounds better in the abstract. College hummus? Oh sure, a great idea to satisfy the vegetarians out there. But the result? Lackluster. It just doesn’t have a lot of flavor, good or otherwise. Grocery store hummus? Not bad. Too garlicky for comfort. Husband’s former roommate’s homemade hummus? Too much lemon and parsley. And those of us who do not live in New York City might have some trouble finding tahini to put in it (what the heck is tahini anyway? Anyone? My best guess is that it has something to do with sesame).

But it’s a protein-filled, theoretically healthy snack. Especially if you scoop it with carrots and celery. So yesterday I set out to make my own version. My own version that is free of bizarre ingredients like tahini and as cheap as possible (my secret? Look in the international foods aisle, where chickpeas and sesame oil are often much cheaper).

And you know what? It is a massive win. So simple and so delicious. It is so awesome (and such a representation of my “that doesn’t sound right so I'll make it up instead” cooking attitude) that I’m thinking of naming it after myself. Because that’s not egotistical at all.

But seriously. You will love its earthy, almost smoky flavor, especially when dipped with fresh veggies or paired with some fresh light herbs like parsley. And you will never go back to grocery-store, college, or any other hummus recipe again. And that’s a fact.

Mackenzie’s Hummus:

1/2 cup olive oil

3 garlic cloves

1/2 tsp. salt

2 cans chickpeas, drained

1 Tbsp. sesame oil

2 Tbsp. lemon juice

1/2 can burgandy olives

Blend together, being careful not to crap up your blender. Stir frequently with a spatula, adding more olive oil as necessary to create a smooth-blended paste.

Other alternatives to the olives would be adding a handful of fresh parsley or a handful of toasted pine nuts (can’t wait to try that one, but we ran out of pine nuts after making Pine Nut Porridge — which, despite being called a porridge, is delicious). Or some pimiento. Or some roasted red peppers (if you roast them yourself, you will be a happy human. But it will take you more time). I also want to see if basil or mint tastes any good in hummus. As soon as we have fresh herbs. If you have any other ideas, leave me a comment. This summer, I am going to go hummus-freaking-crazy.

a what now? a count up?

Graduating was so weird. I literally had no idea how to spend my time, especially when I was looking for a job. And after I found a job, I came home and read books and played video games and watched TV and felt vaguely bored and miserable.

But after several months of not knowing what to do with my life, I am happy to find out that after I get home from work one of the first things I consistently want to do is do art. It's just enjoyable. I do all those other slacker-face things, too, as well as occasionally the dishes, I cook good dinners. . . and I also do art. For fun. Because I like it and that's how I want to spend my time. Wow. You know what this means?

I didn't produce art for all the scary professors standing over my shoulder all four years of college. I did it because of me.

In other words, I went into the art major for the right reasons, and that major gave me valuable tools to enhance the quality and viability of what I do for fun anyway. Gone are the days of throwing a temper tantrum because my tree drawing looks rather more like a stalk of mangled celery. It looks rather like a tree, so I'm satisfied.

Art is maybe even. . . a vocation?

So I'm no longer afraid I'll be one of those art-school casualties who either (a) had all the fun kicked out of creativity by school or (b) will stop working within a year after graduation for some combination of reasons.

Now I'm only worried that (c) I'll get too complacent with a life where I can earn a living with something dumb and make art on the side or (d) it will get too hard to take my art seriously in the real-world atmosphere and it will become a hobby, without any bones or honesty or strength in it.

The moral of the story is, to celebrate my productivity/ensure that I don't slack off, I'm going to start a count-up. Like all my count downs but in reverse. I am going to count up 24 months in which I do not stop making art for more than a week at a time. (Except that I am still going to count my unemployed post-college month, where I did literally nothing but sit on the couch and read and hunt for jobs, for morale reasons and because I think I genuinely deserved a break.)

Also, I hope I get accepted into a grad school within those 24 months. In which case the count-up will change into a count-down to graduation again. =)

Count-up -- three months.

lancaster, pa: where the organic chicken is the same price as the giant-brand chicken.

No lie. Greg just informed me that he buys our organic chicken from a stand in the middle of Central Market for about $3 a pound, the same as I spent today at Giant. So. . . a whole organic, grass-fed chicken for $12? Or four pounds of souped-up antibiotic- and steroid-laced chicken for $12?

For the past year and a half, we’ve been trying to create a diet for ourselves that’s healthy and as local and organic as possible. We knew that commitment might mean spending more on groceries than normal — but with vegetables and fruits, locally produced, organically produced, and affordable seem to go hand in hand. The problem has always been meat and dairy, and we resorted to not eating much of the former rather than exceeding our budget. Since we moved to Lancaster two months ago, we’ve been buying whole, organic chickens as a special treat, stewing them, and freezing the leftover meat to be used throughout the coming weeks. It’s been delicious. Slow-cooked chicken is my favorite. But I guess I never shook the idea that organic meat had to be more expensive than other meat, and that these chicken meals were a crazy splurge.

It turns out that they’re not! We could have them every week. (At least if Greg and I ate a whole chicken a week.)

I’m a little horrified that I bought chicken at Giant instead of this delicious, local, organic, affordable meat!

We all know I tend towards the frugal side, even when it comes to something important like the food we put in our bodies... But man what an all-around win our market chicken turns out to be.

Other recommendations in Central Market for the Frugally Minded:
Thomas Produce has organic, cage-free eggs for $2.50 a dozen. And homegrown potatoes for cheaper than any of those stands selling regular old Idahos that got shipped across the country. Bet you there’s no salmonella in any of their produce!

Also: today I successfully acquired a Pennsylvania driver's license, and it only took me half an hour of sitting and waiting around. Maybe Pennsylvania isn't filled with retards after all! Although their drivers licenses sure are ugly. . .

ooh, ooh! first post-grad revelation?

Today I came home from work and got really excited about making things. I started making baked oatmeal because our last few pieces went moldy. Then I thought, I'll just tackle that stupid fifth pumpkin that's been taking up half our shelf all year. Then I realized I don't have anything to take to work for breakfast tomorrow, so I make chocolate chip scones.

Why is it that I can't come home from work and be that motivated to go draw or do artwork?

Well, the kitchen is my favorite room of most houses. Granted, ours has NOT ENOUGH counter space, it's tiny, but it gets great afternoon light, it's far from the TV, and it's a radically different environment than I've been in for the rest of the day. And kitchen time is "me" time. I claim it as necessary and good time to take care of myself, to take my time and reflect, to make something delicious to feed my body with (and Greg, too). It somehow suits both my contemplative needs, my need to stake a claim to home somewhere, and my achiever needs (I tell you, I get stuff DONE in the kitchen. Except dishes).

Also it smells good when I have been baking, and I do not have to walk so far to get a snack! It is basically the perfect situation.

So I decided, why fight it? The kitchen is my best room. I'ma just draw out here. So I lugged all my stuff into the kitchen and spread out on the floor and started working with some music and some pumpkin bread with cream cheese on top.

Perfect.

send your pumpkin recipes express

Well, my lovelies, I haz a job. I actually haz 2 jobs. One is a job on Saturdays where I am a waitress. That one is kind of blah. The other job is the one where I work for a marketing company and man the phones, proofread stuff, and make other stuff in Photoshop. That one has the potential to be pretty sweet. At the moment, though, it is only 25 hours a week (moving to 29 next week). So I can't quite tell the waitressing place that I'm quitting. But soon, perhaps. This working-six-days-a-week thing is tiring, even when it still only amounts to 40 hours a week.

Also, my Messiah e-mail address will no longer be valid as of tomorrow -- so send your e-mails to my new address! Namely one kenzie.j.m at gmail.com. Of course, now I realize that it should really be kenzie.j.s, but changing it now would be silly and overly complicated.

Today I spent like two hours playing Zelda and didn't even feel guilty. What is this world coming to? Might I actually achieve balance in my life for at least a few short months?

Nah, that would be crazy talk.

Are you craving fresh vegetables yet? Tomatoes, sweet peas, lettuce, cucumber, zucchini. . . . ooh, and mint! I can't wait to make fresh mint tea or mint lemonade. mmmm. . . .

Once upon a time I read a book about how craving liver meant you were deficient in vitamins. Craving all these vegetables makes me wonder if I should be taking a vitamin supplement.

Oh, and do you want to hear a sad story? It is almost time for new vegetables, and we haven't even used up all the pumpkin we prepared and froze last fall! Lesson 1: 5 neck pumpkins is too much pumpkin for two people.