And boom goes the onion bomb
Ugh, today marked the return of an unwelcome chore – mowing the lawn. Fortunately I was a little smarter about it this year and didn’t wait until the grass was twelve feet high like last year (possibly an exaggeration, I didn’t actually measure it) and consequently it wasn’t that bad. Took me about two hours. I need to try to do it on regular schedule to help keep it under control.
On the other side of the wall in our backyard (beyond the mystery construction) is a Chicken Express. For those of you not blessed with a local Chicken-E, they sell chicken strips that are as addictive as crack. Or at least as addictive as I understand crack to be. Anyway, our backyard usually has the faint scent of Chicken Express – not overpowering, but just strong enough to make you salivate.
The only exception to that is right after I mow the lawn. We have a patch of wild green onions growing right off our back porch. When I run them over with the mower, it smells like a giant onion bomb went off in our backyard. And also in the house every time we open the door to let The Dog out. In fact, all of us generally smell like green onions for about a week or so.
The Wife hates the smell. She’s been complaining about it all day. I actually kind of like it. In any case, it’ll fade in a few days and we’ll be back to the scent of savory chicken. At least until I mow again.
The great experiment
The Wife and I have kind of fallen into a rut of just making a frozen pizza or some sort of pasta for dinner on alternating nights. It’s gotten so bad that we’re afraid that we may of ruined pasta for The Boy for life. So we decided to sit down and plan out our dinners for an entire month so we could make sure that we had the groceries necessary to add some variety to our gastronomic lives.
Tonight was our first night of pre-planned meals (Monte Cristo sandwiches) and it went fairly well. I know I’ll have no problem sticking with the plan, but The Wife has a problem with structure in general, so it may be a fight to get her to stay with the schedule. I guess I’ll let you know how it goes in May.
Fries at the bottom of the bag
- A scary looking storm passed through town on Friday but fortunately didn’t bring us much other than darkness and rain. Just to show you how dark it got, this photo was taken at 9:30 in the morning.
- The Boy had his final preseason teeball practice today and I finally remembered to take the camera along. He’s still somewhat tentative at the plate, but he’s becoming a better fielder with each passing day. First game is tomorrow!
- The Boy and The Girl have found something they can both enjoy at the same time.
- As I feared, The Boy’s interest in the world of Zelda has turned into a full-blown obsession for me. I’ve stayed up at least until midnight for the past couple of nights playing Ocarina of Time. That’s pretty late for an old person like me.
- After a week of games, I’m solidly in last place in my fantasy baseball league. I expect to stay there.
- I’m currently watching Ocean’s Twelve and liking it more than I did the first time I saw it. But it’s still the weakest of the three.
I like that onion smell…we don’t have it in our yard.
We plan our menus by the week. I once tried to do a whole month’s plan and it ended up being too hard to see that far in advance. And if I’m going to have to go to the grocery store every week to get certain items anyway, I might as well plan by the week. Plus inevitably I have to move something from one week to the next because something comes up and we end up going out to eat.
I like to go to grocery store every couple of the days, but apparently The Wife thinks I spend too much money doing so, hence the whole month in advance approach.
I had to plan our menu out like a submarine cook, fresh stuff gets used first with a slow transition into the non-perishable stock by the end of the month. No daily grog rations though.