Scattered Sundays and Meal Plan

Can I ask you all a question? It’s a deep one.

Why are overalls even a thing again?

Did we not learn our lesson back in the 90’s? And the 80’s. Are we really not willing to learn from our mistakes? I don’t care how cute or trendy you make them, anything that potentially can cause me to pee my pants due to the length of time needed to remove them is a complete non-starter in my book.

What’s next? Are we bringing Jelly (Jellies?) sandals back too?

Look, I get that I’m not cool or trendy. My personal style would likely be described as “practical sexy librarian”, minus the sexy part…but overalls? Can we just not?

Phew, it was a rough week to be a chicken in our house!

Sunday afternoon we came home from a birthday party to find my beloved Buff Orpington chicken tits up in the chicken coop. I took the boys inside and Troy headed out with rubber gloves and a garbage bag (it is illegal in my area to bury deceased livestock). I sent a text to a group thread with some friends “my favorite chicken just died”.

As I looked out the window in sadness, I’ll be damned if that chicken wasn’t up and walking around the coop just a minute later!

She has had a hurt wing for years and can no longer get on the roost at night. We have to lift her up nightly, and it turns out that now she can’t get back down safely. She had tumbled off the roosting area ass over teakettle earlier that day and somehow we hadn’t seen her until the afternoon.

Her name is Chicken Knocks on a Door…Whaaaaa? (named by Jack when he was three). This chicken is by far our favorite. She is the prettiest and hands down the sweetest chicken in our flock. The kids can pet her, and she is fine being handled. She is also the smallest in our flock. Sunday afternoon Troy commented, “I’m surprised the other chickens don’t pick on her”.

He freaking jinxed that sweet little clucker.

Monday afternoon I looked out the window and saw her huddled in the coop in an odd way. I ran out to check on her and found those other assholes had pecked a 2-inch circle on her back. Her feathers were missing and the skin underneath was red and bleeding.

Chickens can be assholes man.

The presence of blood can make chickens go nuts, so I immediately removed Chicken Knocks on a Door…Whaaaaa? from the flock. Picture that scene from The Bodyguard when Kevin Costner is carrying Whitney Houston out of the concert. I may or may not have been singing “I Will Always Love You” at the top of my lungs as I whisked that little clucker to safety.

No one will ever know. That’s between me and my chicken. And all my neighbors with the bleeding ears.

Bennett and I cleaned her wound and applied Blue-Kote to it. She’s a light blonde chicken so with a blue spray dyeing her feathers she looked like a mid-1990’s raver. There was limited teeth grinding and glow in the dark pacifiers involved. The EDM was totally on point though.

I let her free-range for the rest of the day and snuck her into a safe part of the coop once those rabid assholes were asleep and wouldn’t notice her. The next morning Troy built her a nice little pen in the grass and she will remain there until she seems better. I’m going to make her a chicken saddle when she is reintroduced to the flock to protect her from those fluffy-butted jerks.

If you saw one of my Instagram stories this week, you’ll know that I bought some Nekstella this week from Amazon. It’s an all-natural, GMO-free, and sugar-free version of Nutella. And we all know how I feel about Nutella.

I’ve been working on being sugar-free during the week and just keeping sweets to Sunday. Overall it is a fairly successful tactic for me and is helping me fight my intense sugar grazing that can easily happen during the day. But in the evening I still really want a small something while I’m working. I have been eating Banana Chocolate Chip Energy Bites but ran out of baby bananas and was ready to punch a peacock due to some hankering for sweets.

While bitching on Facebook about the fact that a spoonful of cashew butter at night is not the same as a spoonful of Nutella, extremely intelligent blog reader Eve recommended Nekstella. Because I am always willing to put in the hard work and research products for you all, I went ahead and ordered some.

It’s absolutely delicious my friends. I have a tablespoon of it with an apple at night and I’m insanely happy. If you’re interested in the details, check out Nekstella’s website for more info. <—-this isn’t sponsored; just sharing my chocolatey experience.

My sister, mother-in-law and I attended a local March for Our Lives yesterday. I’m so damn proud of all those kids who organized the main event. It takes a lot of balls to survive such a horrific event and then to be hatefully attacked on national TV by adults who should know better. To think about what is says about our society that victims of violence are threatened for speaking out just boggles my mind.

ETA: As I have spoken about on this blog before, we are gun owners of multiple firearms. As responsible gun owners, we march and support sensible gun legislation.

I didn’t want to make this about us, but I’m always cognizant of group shots. Perfect strangers haven’t agreed to be on my blog.

Bennett and I were at the grocery store this week and I was picking up a few Easter items for the boys. I grabbed a Cadbury Cream Egg and randomly burst into tears. My mom HATED cream eggs. Hated them. My sis and I enjoyed taunting her with them each and every year. What is the point of Easter if you can’t get your mom to dry heave?

Despite her extreme hatred of these eggs, she would buy some for my sister and I every Easter. It was the yearly definition of true selfless love.

Ninty percent of the time I’m ok. I miss my mom terribly but I have forced a space into my life for joy to visit daily.

Those eggs were a random trigger and I’ve come to realize there will always be something. So I bought my sister two cream eggs and maybe I’m going to start a new tradition of my own.

Last night, Jack and I went to a glow in the dark Easter Egg hunt for the fourth year in a row. For the second year in a row, Troy and Bennett were both at home sick.

Our friends started this as just a fun thing to do with a few friends and family but it has grown exponentially each year. They now raise money from the attendees and bless two local charities with a hefty donation. And as usual, they always have a creepy Easter bunny for photo opportunities.

I had fun with some posts this week!

Desert Island Reading List – all the wonderful book lust in one place. I had a blast reading your own “end of days” reading list. So many good suggestions that I need to reserve from the library. Because, libraries rules.

10 Minute Instant Pot Roasted Garlic – words I have never said before “this has too much garlic in it”. We love garlic in this house and I use copious amount of it in my cooking. Given my uber-pasty skin, it is the only way I can prove to people that I’m not a vampire. This recipe shares a super easy way to roast a ton of garlic in 10 minutes (hence the name of the post) in the Instant Pot, but as always I share non-Instant Pot ways to do it as well.

Hey, are you signed up to get my posts via email? I’m going to be sending out a special (free) opportunity to subscribers in the next two weeks. If you’d like to get up on this (<—-don’t read anything dirty into that) you can sign up for my email list here. All content, no spam. Unless I someday created a recipe with Spam in it, but I don’t see that ever happening, so we cool.

Meal Plan Time!

Monday:: A new recipe I’m creating. It involves sweet potatoes. And there will be salad (snore)!

Tuesday:: Chef Salads and bread. Jack’s first official baseball game of the season. All two and a half hours of it. FML.

Wednesday:: Breakfast burritos and Home Fries.

Thursday:: Vegetable Soup With Mini Cheese Ravioli and garlic bread

Friday:: Popcorn, leftovers, and movie night.

Saturday:: TBD

Sunday:: Easter!

Smith Brother’s Farms: $21.62 (plus more that the boys stole before I got a photo)

Fred Meyer:: $19.53

Local Butcher: $12.51  (no photos, because no one wants to see hamburger. Am I right, or am I, right friends?

What are you having this week?