Salmon Chowder

So I made Salmon Chowder and it turned out pretty good.

1 onion diced

2 cloves of garlic diced

6 carrots sliced thin

1 tablespoon butter

Sauté over medium high heat for about 10 minutes add

6 medium potatoes diced

Continue cooking, stirring occasionally till the potatoes get a bit of color add

1 can chicken stock

3 Tablespoons of worcestershire sauce

3 tablespoons cognac

3 Tablespoons port

1/4 teaspoon corse ground black peper

Cook for 10-15 minutes medium high heat till you can easily poke a fork in the potatoes turn the heat down to low add

2 bay leaves

1/8 teaspoon(2 pinches) ancho chile paper

1/8 teaspoon pumpkin-spice (could not find the old bay and believe it or not they have a lot of the same ingredients)

1/4 teaspoon paprika

1/4 teaspoon spicy brown mustard

2 Tablespoons butter Gently stir, this lets some of the starch from the potato thicken the soup. once the soup has cooled to a mild simmer add

2/3 cup heavy cream

1.5 lb salmon cut in 2 oz chunks

1/4 teaspoon parsly

Cook till salmon is just pulling apart when stirred. Remove bay leaves, salt to taste and serve hot.

Also no fancy flatware here, when I make food its to be eaten so not a lot of time was spent on plating or photography, but it was !tasty! and thats what counts. Also the having EDS make everything complicated so just making chowder was my accomplishment for today. A big Thank You to my husband for helping so much that I could even try this :)

Growing Wasabi in an AeroGarden

Each year about this time my husband and I sit down and order seeds for our garden. Me as a culinarian wanting to grow as much of our food as possible. My poor husband trying to keep me in line with how small our garden is at the place we rent now. this year we were both pleasantly surprised when our favorite place to order plants, Gurneys was offering Wasabi. You see one of the first dates we when on was to sushi. In the midwest back then sushi was not a thing many people liked or would even try. We had both been exposed to it in the past and loved it! So to find someone that would go to sushi with you was pretty cool. Our love of sushi continued through me going through culinary school. I learned how to make real sushi from a guest chef that came each year from the best known hibachi place in town to teach sushi to our program. I of-course have done tuns of research, and I even gave one of my speeches in my communications class on sushi. All this to say we found out that getting real wasabi in the USA was harder then silk in the middle ages! Now time ofter documentary we kept hearing how bad american wasabi is and how the real thing is hot not burning with a floral after taste. You see the stuff we have here is just green food-coloring and horseradish, a relative of wasabi... Much like President Obama and Dick Cheney are relatives.... I digress. We ordered two little wasabi plants. Me with only the knowledge that wasabi is notoriously impossible to grow and that a few years earlier an east coast chef smuggled some wasabi tubers to the states hidden in his babies diaper, before then wasabi was unheard of here. Well it seems like the east coast is a good start for wasabi as it need shade, controlled temperatures, organic heavy soil with good drainage or a creek side with some flooding but not so much as to rot the delicate roots. Mist and fog are a plus just don't look at it the wrong way or it might die.... okay the last part was an exaggeration but when you read in to it its not too far off, and look in to it I did. this was one of the more complete guides on growing wasabi, it will give you the basics.

How were we going to accomplish all this in the Midwest? With our 100+ degree temperatures in summer, floods in spring and good foot of snow in the winter. Well we thought back to an old Christmas gift the AeroGarden. It was great for our basement that had no windows and for me in the long dark weeks of winter! Like most other people with the basic herb garden the basal took over and was the shining green emerald in my basement. So after more research and finding that they now have bowls for growing other plants(that don't fit our original model) We decided on the MIRACLE-GRO AEROGARDEN BOUNTY ELITE and the AEROGARDEN GROW BOWL AND STRAWBERRY KIT FOR BOUNTY ELITE GARDENS So far so good. The plants came looking much hardyer then I would have expected. The AeroGarden was super easy to set up and adjust(I just put the strawberries in our garden outside). With the grow bowl it always showed needing water so I called and they said to remove the little bobber and now it's happy. I keep adjusting the settings based on how the plants react and the more I learn about wasabi. They are putting on some stress growth but not too bad. The happy balance we have found so far with the AeroGarden setting is a 2 minute water pump every 58 minutes, with the light a foot above the plants, on for 10 hours from 7am - 5pm. Now this is a lot of light! Wasabi is a shade loving plant you read this over and over but ours was still reaching for the window with anything less. Our solution was to use the same privacy window film that was already on the window that the plants were growing towards, in my mind the plants were approving the film not taking to much UV from them. We took some of the film and folded it over and stuck it to it's self (very hard to do with out a tun of bubbles, but the spray it comes with really helped). I cut it to shape and we placed it over the grow guide rail that came with the AeroGarden. Now that we have the ?shade/ light-defuser? on, the plants are super happy and growing well. I'll post more later as we they mature seeing as it takes 2 years to develop a tuber. 17-5-16

Up date photos

End of May

June

PS The poor plants got shocked when we were away and our house sitter forgot to water them. They are still very much alive and Huge but I'm going to wait till they are looking a bit better to post the photos.

After the not getting enough water and a major cutting bock of most the damaged leafs.

It put out a lot of these taller shoots and stress flowered.

Still recovering but now so big it goes though about a salon of water in two weeks. so we added a extra tank. Dec 16

not quite back to size but getting there! Jan 17

May 2017 update: The Wasabi is still growing strong the biggest challenge is keeping enough water in it. We go through this bad cycle of adding water then a couple of weeks later the whole plant goes all floppy and it needs more! Then the wasabi stress grows (using more water then it would normally need) with lots of flowers and tuns of new growth, then I have to clean up the dead leafs(about half as much as shown on the plant went into the trash before this photo). Then we add the monthly nutrients and repeat. So basically this is a pet more then a house plant, but one that I'm pretty proud of. Three notes this far in 1, we are going through almost a gallon of water a week, and with the AeroGarden you have to use distilled water, so the cost of a pet wasabi is something to consider. 2, you have to clean up the dead leafs every month or so anyhow because any extra cover shades the growth medium and promotes mold, so if you see to much shade or dead plant matter get it out of there! 3, Flavor: The leafs (witch are edible) are pretty gross, if you try the young leafs the sappy bitter flavor isn't as bad, but they are Not going on anyones salad! However, you do get that floral, spicy but not burn kind of tingle note at the end of all the leafs, so I'm pretty excited for the rhizome... witch I have no plans of harvesting any time soon... again this became a pet at some point...

Children Rant

Child free is the new PC for the old childless! But I still feel that's not the right way to say it, you see your life will never be child Free between nieces, nephews and your lovable breeder friends, kids will be in your life, and in that comes the awkward balance of the endless prods of "when are you having kids" "you're next" "time to start a family"(like two some how will never be a family) "are you trying yet" I always want to get snarky with this one and go all off caller and say "thanks for asking about your grandsons rate of penetrating my vagina!" But alas I still play nice. then when you answer, the forceful shaming starts: "you'll change your mind" I think of this like knowing your gay I knew when I was six I did not want kids, it's who I am! "what if your spouse wants kids" "but The Lord said go forth and multiply" "what if when you're older your spouse resents you not giving them kids" implying that you are to dumb to talk to your spouse before this nosey random relative. This is a big cultural issue no means NO people! Do I really have to pull out the shocker "I hate kids" to shut you up? I don't really hate them but in the last 20years it's the only thing that has remotely gotten you off my back! Here is the truth I love my nieces nephews and my friends kids are a big part of my life. Dinner with the girls is now dinner with my friends and catching up with their little ones(that are quickly getting taller than me). So how does a person that has No desire to breed walk the line of happy aunt with out the world instantly assuming your secritly pining to pop out some crying stinkbags of your own? Well you don't! Do what makes you happy and when they push, walk off. laugh at them or get creative about it IE "I love kids, yah I love sending them Home" "we are just so happy getting a full night sleep" "just because I'm a decent person to kids doesn't mean I want one, I'm a decent person to snakes and spiders but I don't want them in my house!" "What are you talking about I am a great mom to my dogs, but it helps that I can kennel them and Leave!" My stand by is a simple "I was ment to be an aunt" it inplys purpus in a respectful way, with out any of the condasinding know-it-all they repededly shove at you, and some how reassures there need to believe children should be worshiped.

Pottery Chess Set

So if you'd like to try something similar some time this is what it took to make this full chess set and bored for my hubby for Christmas.

First thins first, I did a tun of research on different sets and options I found lots of simple options on pinterst but I had to do something unique, I saw some animal and nerdy pieces but I decided to go with animals: Dogs VS Cats. I knew I could do mice with the cats but it took time to decide on rabbits for the Dogs pawns.

Then I had to work on size and workable shapes so I printed out a paper with chess pieces on it and cut out each piece, then marked out the size of each of the pieces and sketched out individual unique art for all 12 different pieces:

2 kings Lion and GrateDain

2 Queens Lioness and Husky

2 Bishops Russian blue and Greyhound

2 Knights Bowing cat and Hyena

2 Rooks Cat on pillows and Dog house

2 Pawns Mice and Rabbits

Next was to cut out the drawings and make them 3d in clay, I cut out each drawing and an extra in card-stock incase the clay was too wet and destroyed the original. I rolled out the clay to just over an inch thick and set each cut out on the clay and with a x-acto knife cut out the shapes(much lick a cookie cutter would).

1 fore each King and Queen

2 for each Bishop, Knight and Rook.

8 for each Pawn.  

Each time I cut a piece out I carefully shaped and sculpted it into a semblance of the animal I was trying for, really this was the most painstaking part of the whole process (it killed my hands). Then I set them all to dry and be bisque fired. Once that was done I started working on the chess board by rolling out a sheet of clay 1\2"thick and just over 14" squared trimmed it to size, marked each of the 8x8 grid with a ruler and set it to dry and bisque bake.... Full disclosure the fist bored I made was to thin and and brooke to pieces before it even dried so I went through this process twice. 

After supper stressing about it all making it though the kiln they all came out looking great the board was a bit warped but all together for clay it was a miracle that it all made it through.<p>

  From here it was just wax coat the bases of each piece and glazing them, for the board I painted the wax on the bottom (this keeps the glaze from attaching the pieces to the kiln)I did a coat of a light gray wight glaze on the top, then I panted on 3 coughs of glaze on each of the odd squares to make the checkered pattern with some dark greanblue, I also put some on the edges just to finish the look. Again it was time to sweat and pray that it all would make it through the next kiln.

  A week latter I went in to the lab and picked up the whole thing !It All Made It Through! after getting it home and setting it up some of the pieces rocked a little witch was fine cuss to finish the set I put eva crafting foam on the bottoms of everything now it looks grate and my hubby is crazy impressed!

Well I hope this inspires you or helps you get a better understanding for your next craft.

The Inventing Process: According to google and my lifes happenstance.

So I had an idea and we my husband and I are going to try to make it a reality. from time to time I'll come on here and update were we are to give a sort of timeline

fall 2013; I had the idea I have many all the time. *We had just got a cat and were dealing with the all the hassle of cat litter. now I grow up with several cats and it was alway my job to scoop the poop so I have spent far to much of my life doing just that. as an adult living in the 21st century I just could not wrap my head around this rally being the only option, the gears in my head started turning and I could not get the idea out of my head. I looked up what other options were out there and just could not buy in to any of them most only did half of the job or just made a bigger mess to clean up.

spring; 2014 refined it enough to start to really believe in it, research what to do next. *I started looking in to what it tacks to get a patent the difents between a patent and a copyright or triad mark. Start a journal that i sing and date each time i work on the project. work on finding someone I trust to get answers about Pattens

march; call patent attorney, more research. *veary nice upfront with the real cost a realist $10,000 to get a patent and at leat two years before you have it if you get it, some one can alway turn something in a day before you and get the patent first.

April; meet patent attorney, they do patent such. more research. *Patten such, basically does it already exist if so don't wast your time. $1,200 one of the most important starting steps! Always Google to see if it exists before you do anything else!

May; It is a unique idea! more research. *though there are some automatic litter boxes now work like mine or the way mine dose this is when thing start to feel real the gravity of the commitment to bringing this to life sets in at the very lest this is a five year commitment!

Holy cow what now? more research.

Find engineers! more research.

More research, well crud someone else is trying to develop in the same market! Edasen nation is a inventing website that focus on solving real world problems that they know there is a market for, this is when i found out that they were doing a call out to salve this exact problem, this can be seen two ways 'All of the internet vs me" or "the people with the nonie to know a good market just confirmed I'm solving a need" I choose the latter.

patent attorney suggest moving forward with patent. more research.

meet with engineers, more research.

June; start working on domain names FIAL! work harder, find a great name, its being sat on, put in an offer and wait... more research to the tune of about 10,000 names....... this is a helpful page for giving you way to many options http://www.leandomainsearch.com this one is much better for less options http://wordoid.com

more helpful sits when making a domain http://www.bustaname.com/help/video http://www.rhymezone.com/?loc=bar http://www.scrabblefinder.com http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/ http://wordoid.com http://www.valuate.com 30,000 names latter we have a website.

8-17-14 We are patent pending!!!! The world is big and we are about to jump in feet first, I've spent the last week at Gen Con and really enjoyed trade day. I feel a little better prepared for running our upcoming Kickstarter and my head is spinning with all of the things I've learned and how to apply them. Also this is a great link on attaching Facebook to Twitter http://thinkingoutsidethesandbox.ca/how-to-connect-a-twitter-account-to-your-facebook-business-page/#.U_FM8FZd78s

8-20-14 start back at school tacking an entruprnural class to help me get more of a handle on things.

August 2014, consult accountant on llc vs s corp ect they surest for us LLC

August 2014 make a first pick video and finely show the world what we have ben up to

September 2014: find a local incubated and joint their pitch competition.

September 2014: refocus with engineers on how the guts are supposed to work, end with simplify for better quality.

I've moved... again.

I've moved 19 times it's not fun, but you get really good at making anywere home, the problem with wanderlust is you don't know what home is. Chasing the sky is romantic, but all it is is running away. The best cure I know is be your own home, feel safe we're you are, with who you are and know your needs, once you are at home in your self surround your self with what makes you happy/healthy then travel the world. Home is a metaphor for safety and security it's something you can take with you, but it's also some thing you can build up and come back to after a long journey (like a privet battery with all the things that recharge you).  

The new face book game.

15 random facts about me: 

1: I'm an autodidact.

2: I've been happily married to my beat friend over 5 years but still count the three before that as much of the accomplishment. 

3: I have 4 out of 5 forms of dyslexia and have DNA correlated to  dyslexia.

4: I could not read till I was 12, and still find walls in my brain that only time will brake no matter my effort or dedication it just slips away(witch is maddening, till I remember all the other gifts it affords me). 

5: I'm simply bad at many things IE shaving and seeing clear things like plastic.

6: I'm simply good at some things IE seeing something crafty then doing it.

8: My love sing is time spent.

9: Any day I would prefer to talk on the phone over texting( to many things are unsaid in texts).

10: I adopt everything/one if I can feed you or you need on ear I'm here for you.

11: I get hurt a lot by letting so many so close but it's who I am to love.

12: boundaries are my new thing, I will offer much but within what my health allows, I have no space in my life for selfishness or negatively (Bry calls me lawful good).    

13: I stay busy, I have a blog, I have a body image health page, and I have a Vlog. 

14: I am happy, I have learned hard work is good work and apply myself daily to the good work of being positive.

15: I am endlessly proud of my friends, as they grow and change I see some of the parts they have had to hid to survive come out and make them amazing people, many of my closest friend are people I rarely get to see but no matter the distance they still light up my life <3

If you like this I'll give you a number feel free to try it or not but I'd love to know more about you 

Sleepless

A year and a half of my husband on his CPAP we have learned a lot: he starts getting crabby it gets worse, I ask how he's sleeping, he tells me his mask is giving him troubles at night, I order new caissons for his mask one for now one for latter, we find out that one last about 3 months if you clean them right. I learn what to look for, he learns its okay to tell me he's having trouble or needs something. Okay we are getting much better at this...  Friday night the CPAP Stops working!!!!! It's the weekend and all health care places are closed! Okay well I can order one online and get it rushed here overnight? We try, Saturday we here nothing, Sunday we here nothing, Monday and Bry is a zombie, thoughts are unclear, simple things are to complicated, frustration and anger are all that come easy to him. He has gotten an email saying he has to have a prescription  before they will send his CPAP we think no big deal will call his doc get it faxed over and only one more night without it. No his pulmanolagest refuses to send the RX she has not seen him in a year and he's out of state now.... no advice, no help, no general health concern, she just flat out will not sing it! 20 phone calls and going to a healthcare supply  store and no one can help us with our the RX. I call the pumanagests office again the receptionist is rude really rude, but can not answer my question of " can you tell me it would do more harm for him to have it than him going with out" so she transfers me to a nurse(an angle of kindness for all I know) she here's me out  but can't find a way to help but offers to take it directly to the sleep doc when he gets in in the morning  . The next day we find a doc that can take him  here, eventually, and put him on the cancellation list. By this point I'm not letting Bry drive he fights anger all day and works crazy hard to tell me how much he appreciates all I'm doing, all I can do is laugh when he try's to complement me and it comes out as "you'll be a crazy old coot when your old"  he loves me and is saying I love you thank you,  it just come out as crazy old coot. That afternoon the new doc office calls they "have a 7:55 am opening tomorrow do we want it?" YES!!! If its on the moon we will be there! 5:00pm that night the old doc office calls the pulmanolagest singed the RX no explanation Nothing! We still keep the 7:55 appointment. they are all wonderful at the new doc's office but don't have a CPAP he can use they send us home with the hope that the one in the mail will be here soon(still not here). then we get a call back at noon they found a loner can we come by at 1? YES! So 1pm we head back and Bry gets a loner Cpap!!! A week later and Bry is still catching back up on sleep. Life is much better, Bry can be happy about things and think straght, we still do not have his new Cpap or his old one but as long as he has one I don't care! This is what it's Really like living with sleep apnea, completely treatable hassle on a daly basses,  that makes things like travail or camping very difficult but you Never want to go with out!!! 

Apnea, Sleep Study and CPAP

So with sleep disorders on the rise more and more people are getting sleep study's and ending up with darthvader masks at night IE welcome to the future. brief  theoretical explanation: our food is softer so over generations our jaws get smaller so too our air ways narrow and TaDa not breathing at night, add weight gain (more mass = more prasher on the air way) lack of exercise (weaker lungs don't help) and we have an epidemic. ". . It is estimated that 22 million Americans suffer from sleep apnea, with 80 percent of the cases of moderate and severe obstructive sleep apnea undiagnosed."

http://www.sleepapnea.org/i-am-a-health-care-professional.html

Now try to explain that to a 24 year old male who has not sleep well in about a year and all but gave up sleeping in the last two months. That was my life last year my husband slowly transformed into a constantly angry confused guy that was failing his classes, nothing made sense and simple things were to much, witch always ended up in an argument. Stubborn anger were how he existed for about 3 months. 

Then I got totally burnt out, I was mad he was not sleeping, I was angry he had not set up a doctors appointment, I was angry he could not  change doctors(his primary was less than helpful in the past and Bry did not want to go back to him) I was devastated that my caring intelligent husband was being robed of living! This is where I stopped  listening to his "ill do it"and the "ill take care of it" this is when I realized he actually could not make phone calls think straight or  take care of him self, heartbreaking yes but not the end of the world! I stated making phone calls, he was mad at first (that I did not think he could do it), then he was surprised that things started to happen. I found him a doctor got him an appointment and before to long this bright young doctor had him referred to a pulmanolagest and a sleep lab, a month later I'm walking Bry through what he is going to see and what is going to happen  during a sleep study( I used to work at a hospital and interned for a short time at a sleep lab and have many family members with sleep apnea) he was intimidated by wires being attached to his head and body, I asherd him they the wires are one way and can only register his current !Not send current! and that if you ask they can show you your brain waves after the test. The night of this study they let me stay with him as he got hooked up, by the time he was hooked up he and his nurse were chatting, he was antsy but very entertained about how cool it all was now that he could see it all! That night I went home all hopes of my husband and marriage riding on that little room in the basement of a five story hospital. 

5am I get up dive to the hospital and pick up My husband! My Bryan! My Happy silly sweet kind happy yes happy Bryan! He explains that he was bad enough that half way through the night the nurse put a CPAP on him and he slept the best sleep he could remember he was so hyper for the first couple  of hours  then went back to sluggish and annoyed, by that night he was back to not wanting to sleep, But this time it was " I don't even want to sleep with out it"  so I stepped in again and started making phone calls, you see when medical professionals  know you actually want their treatment, are thankful and want to take care of yourself they tend to push things through  a bit faster so in 2 week Bry had his very own  Cpap and I got the love of my life back! that was 2012 

-more in part 2-

Blogers Block!

So turns out Bloging is hard, and you can get writers block from having too big of a subject to wright about. Over the last two months I have been trying to wright and rewright, drafted and redraft a blog about love, and thats the thing about love It's a big topic we all have had hard times hart breaks and if we are lucky something bigger than the imagination could ponder. So trying to put in words what true love is, ends up a vast and complicated topic, and so all my time and effort has ben focused on that, starting a vlog, changing job positions, getting honored as a Paige in Amtgard and various a-sundry other life things, but I'm still alive and working on this blog, I have many other topics I'm ready to jump in to, that may just waylay the "true love"(said as the priest from Princess Bride) blog but rest ushered some day I will publish that blog and it will be long. Till thin remember your beautiful and all the generations of humans it's taken to make the person you are today you are a masterpiece of millions of years of survival <3