Monday. Blech.

Another Monday, and it looks like a Monday, too-- all grey and foggy and generally unpleasant outside.

My foot is still bothering me.  The bruising has really set in now, and my little piggies are black and ugly.  It's swollen, too.  I was thinking that nothing is broken after all, but now I'm starting to reconsider.  The hubster thinks I need to go to the doctor to have it looked at.  Maybe he's  right, but I kind of hate to waste the money if all they're going to do is tell me to stay off it for a while.  It's not as though there's a chance that will happen, either.

Put up a couple of new recipes:  this one for some awesome creamy polenta with mascarpone cheese and cream that you can make in your crock pot or slow cooker, and a recipe for green beans with pine nuts.  Yes, I still do hate green beans, but everybody else seems to love them and isn't cooking about making people happy?

That cat's happy, anyway.  She's curled up on my lap, which is making it hard to write.  It's not good for my foot, either-- the extra pressure from her weight is making it throb.  O well, it's time to get ready so I can tend to GF's Pomeranian.

My foot. Italy's boot.

The charity dart tournament on Saturday went fine and I had a fantastic time-- right up until I got home and broke my foot on a rogue rock in our driveway.  Spent all day yesterday on the sofa with my foot up and iced down.  I should proably be doing that today, too, but life marches on and I must limp along with it.

New article up at Examiner today, a vegetarian recipe for Meatless Monday: Spicy Italian Lentil Soup Ponza style.   Meanwhile, my Japanese Soba noodle recipe from last Monday STILL hasn't indexed.  I'm getting annoyed, and I don't know whether linking to it again will help or hurt at this point.

So, yeah, we're still rocking that whole Vegan Month thing at Examiner.  And one of the Vegetarian Examiners-- from Cleveland, I think-- wrote an article of outrage that Sarah Palin has nasty things to say about vegetarians and vegans in Going Rogue.  Oh, and now she writes about being shocked at the response from the ultra right.

I'm sure that article has made her a lot of money, but was she really surprised at any of it? Really?  I mean, cheap shots, sensationalism and wading around in moose blood like she's some sort of Julia Child for the New Frontier is what La Palin is all about, right? 

Well, that and hypocrisy, but that goes without saying, too.

Pee Wee Salinas and the Dallas Tamale Festival

The Festival del Tamal is tomorrow.  I love a good tamale and the relentlessly cute Irvin Pee Wee Salinas will be performing, so it sounds like a day full of win.   I wrote an article about it here.

To every thing, fail, fail, fail.

Today has been full of housework and fail. 

Although fail and housework might be more accurate.  And I was hoping to get so much done today, too!

All that, and this recipe for delicious soba noodles tossed with veggies and topped with yummy Asian peanut sauce that I wrote for Meatless Monday still hasn't indexed with you-know-who.

Why, the only thing that could possibly make this this day better is to get my ass whipped at darts-- which is, of course, exactly what I'm heading out to do.  Go me.

I'm still stuck on Monday

So, yesterday when I got up-- not necessarily bright, but very early-- the internet was out.  And by the time the hubster stumbled out to greet his day 2.5 hours later, I had just, finally, got it back up.  My computer was still rebooting, hadn't got a thing done but fix it.

Monday: 1; Kat: 0.

Today still feels like Monday.  (sigh)

Two new articles up at Examiner, and important ones:  my easy basic vegetable stock recipe , and today's article  on how to turn that master stock recipe into dozens of ethnic stock recipes so you can make all sorts of ethnic foods.  Pretty cool, right?  Bookmark it, my friends; it's good stuff.

Oh, and I made some soup.  Awesome soup.  I'll be posting the recipe soon, methinks.
And now, I have to go brave teh grocery sotre.  More Monday, I'm afraid.

I am a slave to my insomnia.

Or at least it feels that way.  Up at 3:30 this morning once again.  It's frustrating, because I tell myself that at least I'll get things done and it never works out that way-- my brain is far too mushy at that hour, and it stays that way all day long.

Another article up at Examiner yesterday.  This one's about the Addison WorldFest and I really, really want to go.  They're serving Efes!  No word on lamacun, but there will be Adana kebap and doner and borek and a bunch of things that I've been missing lately for some reason.  Maybe it's because tomorrow is Turkish Republic Day? 

I did a totally awesome world food slideshow that hardly anybody will look at, either, I suppose.  It was a pain in the butt but at least it's complete and it's better than the stunted Piazza di Spagna one I did to go with the Slow Food article.  So that's something, I suppose.

Darts tonight.  Must remember to take my fatalism, along with plenty of beer money. (sigh)

What happened to my weekend?

It sure doesn't feel like I got much of one, that's for sure.

Two new articles up at Examiner, including a stunted slide show.  What is it about my slide shows that makes the publisher want to swallwo them whole?  I don't know what the deal is with the flaky photo server, either, but I'm starting to take it personally.

Anyway, an article about Slow Food, including a tiny little peep at the McDonald's near Piazza di Spagna, and a yummy recipe for Portuguese roasted pork loin, or Lombo de Porco Assado.

The hubster is at darts, so I'm going to grab the remote whilst I can!

Another day, another headache.

We got blown away at darts last night.  Again.  Of course, when it happens every week, it's not really news, is it?

Woke up this morning to find three articles published at AC:  self acupressure to induce labor,  top twitter tips for beginner tweeters and the one on stem cell transplants to treat MS I mentioned before.  I guess it doesn't matter how far apart you space your submissions-- they all get published at the same time anyway, so why bother trying?

Tried to catch up on my reading some, too.  I made a dent in it, but there's still plenty left.  I need to take a break from it for a while so I can write and submit the my last two recipes to the Examiner Fall Cookbook.  Guess I should get started on that now.

Oh, and my indigestion is back, despite taking my nexxium. Yipee.

O for a place in the sun!

Another cloudy day, and I'm longing for the sun. Oddly enough, even though we haven't seen the sun in (what seems like) weeks, my hibiscus is loving it.  It looks incongruous, with all those bright red blooms.

Did two medical articles for AC yesterday, although neither one has been published yet.  One is on acupressure, and the other is on stem cell transplantation therapy for relapsing-remitting MS treatment, which is a fascinating topic.  Really!

Did two for my ethnic foods page so far this week: the best middle eastern and mediterranean markets in Dallas, and one on a french culture in Dallas event, complete with wine and cheese.  And you know how much I love wine and cheese.

DH is not having the best day ever.  Consequently, neither is the cat.  She ought to be thanking her lucky stars-- and me!-- that she's still alive (actually she ought to be doing that every day) but I'm pretty sure she's sulking in the bedroom because I've locked her in.

O well.  Enough of this.  Back to work.

Not quite perky.

But not quite dead, either. I think I'm getting over the flu or plague or whatever it was that's been making my life miserable lately. It's about time, too-- I've fallen way behind on everything in the last few days.

You might think I use this blog only for bitching, but that's not always true. On the bright side, I won a Rising Star Award from Associated Content and over at examiner.com I've been made a Featured Examiner for Dallas. Oh, and I ended up getting the full $25 for  this article at AC.  Things are looking up!

I'm about to write an article on French food, which will make a nice change from the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean ethnic food kick I've been on lately.  Not that it hasn't been fun: aside from the usual recipes, I've published a comprehensive guide to the best Middle Eastern grocery stores and Mediterranean markets in Dallas, plus an awesome bit of food porn slash cuisine guide  that I'm pretty proud of.  Check it out!

Monday, monday.

This is annoying: Associated Content has not been posting links on twitter as my articles are published.  There are at least two articles for Breast Cancer Awareness Month that I've published that haven't been sent out for a start:  alternative herbal remedies for chemotherapy side effects, and one about the common breast cancer drugs Tamoxifen and raloxifene, which are SERMS and commonly prescribed for ER-positive breast cancer tumors.  It's annoying because it means less pvs (and therefore money) for me, and also because I think these articles could help a lot of people.

In other news, I'm still waiting to hear back on my $25 AC call for content article.  It sounds like everybody else has heard back and been published, but not me!  I suppose I should be used to it by now. (sigh)

It's a rainy cold Monday here in the big D, perfect for writing.  Which is exactly what I was doing until DH discovered that worms have been eating my heirloom tomatoes, which necessitated a writing break  to spray those suckers down, as well as the rest of my tomato plants.  Peppers and pomegranates, too: basically whatever looked like it might be yummy to bastard bugs.  Also, I noticed that my basil seems to have come down with some sort of fungus.  I'm blaming that one on too much rain.

Finally, over on Examiner.com, I'm getting good response on my Dallas Ethnic Foods Examiner gig.  I wrote an article on my recipe for Warm Patlican Salatasi that has been well recieved, and readers loved the pictures accompanying my article on the Lebanese Food Festival so much that I'm working on a slide show of middle eastern food.  In fact, I suppose I should get back to it now.

Very verde.

It's raining again.  Or, rather, it was when I started this post, in the blogger widget back on my Google homepage.  No matter:  it will rain again soon, just like it has for the past three days.  Or is it four?

I don't know if it's because of the rain or just normal fall migration, but all the hummingbird activity is making our backyard look like O'Hare.  Or the Death Star-- I haven't decided which.

It's also made things very, very green.  (And muddy, but I prefer to gloss over that bit.)  Maybe that's why I've been focusing on green salsa lately.  I haven't made salsa verde in a long time, mainly because my husband and friends love the red stuff so much that it's all they ask for.  I made some salsa verde last night, though, and it's a good thing I did because that's when I realized that I made a mistake in this article at Examiner.com.  It's been changed now, but the original might have led to exploding tomatillos in the homes of my readers, and that would have been bad for everybody.

I've written an article about tomatillos, too.  Find it here.

Grrr.

I have just figured out that when your iGoogle homepage refreshes, it eats the post in the blogger widget instead of oh, say, saving it or even publishing the damn thing. I am NOT happy.

Hummingbirds.

It's August, and that means hummingbird season is in full swing. All the juveniles have left the nest and there are new arrivals every day. I'm guessing that a lot of them are migrators, since the hummingbird fall migration started in early August.

The adult male hummingbirds migrate first, followed by the females and both male and female juvenile hummers when they've put on enough weight to make the trip. My backyard hummingbird population is mostly female, although a couple of them seem seem to be sporting five o'clock shadows, which tells me that they're juvenile males. It's too early to tell whether they're ruby throated or black chinned hummingbirds, yet. I have female "customers" of both species, so it could be either breed.

Lately, the hummingbird action is all about who owns the feeders. Usually, it involves one or more of my resident females chasing off a male ruby throated hummingbird who has popped by for a quick sip of nectar. Sometimes, it's the other way around.

Yesterday, four hummingbirds -- two females, one male and one sex not available-- spent quite a lot of time chasing each other around the feeders, through the crepe myrtles and doing figure-eights around the tomatoes planted in the topsy turveys. It was hard to tell who was chasing who, and I'm not sure they knew themselves!

I've written an article with a hummingbird nectar recipe and some feeder tips. You can find it here.

I've also written about hummingbird gardening. You can find an article about heat tolerant plants to attract hummingbirds here.

Hello World!

Welcome to my new blog. More to follow.