YUM!

So, I’ve been busy and I’m way behind on this one. I’ve been shadowing Marvi Marti on her 100 things I love posts. She posted her 10 Foods I Love 2 weeks ago! So, I guess the sun is out now and oh look, It’s shadowy ole me! Marti, I’m still with ya!

10 Foods I Love

in no particular order

1. Soup - I know I’ve mentioned how much I love soup before. Right now I have Stuffed Pepper Soup on deck for lunch tomorrow. I look forward to the coming months and a lighter Spring Vegetable soup and the in the summer, homemade gazpacho made with farmers market tomatoes!

2. Hershey’s Candy Coated Milk Chocolate Eggs –

Okay, by Hershey’s Candy Coated milk Chocolate Eggs, I mean chocolate. It’s my favorite food group! The Candy Coated Eggs are my favorite Easter Candy and they were tonight’s dessert. I have about one dessert left in my first bag of the season. Then it has to go on the next grocery list!

3. Hummus –

 
I love Middle Eastern food, and hummus is a staple in my fridge. Tori and Rina and I have a standing date when either of them is in town to go to Ya Halla for lunch. Tori dubbed their hummus “Middle Eastern Crack,” for its addictive quality. At home I like Sabra Roasted Red Pepper Hummus. I usually go carrots and celery for dipping but I also like it with really good pita bread and in a vegetarian wrap in lavash.


4. Organic Carrots – Not everyday carrots and not mini peeled carrots and don’t cook them, just pull a carrot out and eat it Bugs Bunny style. Organic carrots have a sweetness that makes them like crunchy candy! I eat a couple or three a day and pick up a 5lb bag when I shop. Tonight, my darling husband picked me up a bag on the way home from work because my bag in the fridge was just about empty. He really does spoil me!

5. Ice Cream – 2 scoops of Baseball Nut on a waffle cone is 20 WW points. I know this without looking it up. It’s my summer staple when we go to Baskin Robbins and last summer I did well only using my weekly extra points for a double scoop of Baseball Nut in a waffle cone each week. :)

I don’t like Rocky Road, Cookie Dough or Black Walnut ice cream. The rest of the flavors are my favorite.


6. Cincinnati Chili – A trip to Cincinnati is not complete until I have a three-way from Skyline.

7. Nuts – My undoing! When I started really figuring out portions and the weight loss thing, I discovered that 6 almonds or 5 hazelnuts is a serving of fat. 10 peanuts in the shell is a serving. But I thought that big bag at the ballpark…I mean you had to work off some of the calories taking them out of the shells, right? I get the 100 calorie packs of almonds to snack on in the car now and David always tells me “you are what you eat.”


8. Pretzels –

I love all kinds of pretzels! My favorites are the UTZ Selects in the big barrel; pumpernickel, sesame, butter and honey wheat. I also really like the Rold Gold Everything Bagel pretzels. I like regular old pretzels dipped in honey mustard and the big soft pretzels with lots of salt and mustard.

9. Ham Steak – The pig is possibly the most edible creature on earth, but the best part of the pig is ham! I like ham sandwiches and occasionally ham spread, LOVE Honey Baked Ham for the holidays, complete with soup end, but my absolute favorite is a nice ham steak made with honey cooked just until it caramelizes.


10. Shrimp – my top three preparations would be scampi, coconut and low country boiled served hot. I also like a gazillions other preparations, just not crazy about fried shrimp when it’s not coconutified.


I’m glad that’s the end. It’s too late in the evening for me to be getting hungry! Oh, but what I wouldn’t give right now for a Sheetz black forest ham on a pretzel roll with honey mustard!

Links

Marvi Marti’s 10 Foods I Love

These Are Some More of My Favorite Things

I told everyone I was following Marti’s lead at Marvi Marti on the “Things I Love” and yesterday she did list 2, “10 Websites I Love.” My lists are in no particular order. There might be a website I love more than one of activities I love that I listed a couple weeks ago.  So, in NO particular order, here are 10 websites I love!

10 Websites I Love

1. Digital Scrapbooking Studio
This is the Digital Scrapbooking site I call “home.” I’m not as challengey as usual right now because the project I’m working on doesn’t so much lend itself to challenges. It IS the challenge and it would take too much of my work on it time to t4y to squeeze it into a challenge mold. I figure I’ll be back to challenges and Creative Team duties by the end of next month.

2. Playlist
Thanks to Edna of Miss Edna’s Place for directing me to this site. It’s the source of the playlist at the bottom of The Chronicles of Nani and also I site I’ve often gone to when I want some music while I’m cooking. They have some great featured playlists, including pretty much whatever genre my mood calls for be it dance music, hip hop, country or classical, and yes, the mood will strike me for any of those. I even favorited a Frank Sinatra list for myself!

3. Amazon
I LOVE Amazon! It’s not just Home of my personal collection of Kindle books, but I pretty much always get my textbooks for school there too, always a little to a LOT cheaper than the bookstore at school. I also got my first year as an Amazon Prime member free because I’m a student. Now I still get half off as a student and even at full price it’s worth every penny! How can you beat free 2-day shipping on pretty much everything! There are other sellers who post through Amazon, so if Amazon doesn’t actually carry it, they can hook you up with someone who does. I’ve also gotten MP3 credits when I order text books and, oh yeah, Amazon is where I spend 45 minutes a day, sometimes twice, to watch episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer for free as a Prime member. Most of my gift shopping is through Amazon. My fuzzy red slippers were from Amazon and most recently, my feather duster set got here just in time for the ceiling dusting!

4. IKEA
This one is recent. IKEA is key in a lot of the shelving and organizing items I’m using for the white tornado project. It’s also where I found the kit for the chest of drawers and night stand I’ve needed to replace for a while.

5. Site Meter
I’m a stats junkie! Site Meter is where I see how many people visit the Chronicles of Nani and from where they come when they visit. It lets me know what posts get the most hits so I can “serve the drinks everyone in my Cyber Coffee Shop likes the best!”

6. Pinterest
This is new for me, thanks to Marti for the invite! I read a pinned quote on Pinterest that “Pinterest is like Fantasy Football for women.” I think that’s fairly accurate! It’s a great place to share ideas. I’ve repinned and pinned some great recipes and craft ideas. It’s where the Stuffed Pepper Soup recipe came from and an organizational craft project I’m working onto. I also pin things that I want to think about purchasing. Cool thing there is it links to where the photos come from so Pinterest itself organizes and keeps recipes, craft directions, my White Tornado plans.

If you’d like to see what I’m in to or follow me, I’m Nani_Noted on Pinterest.


7. Craft Crave
I check out Craft Crave every couple days to see what’s new in the scrapbook freebies. Sometimes I’ll see one element that finishes a layout to my satisfaction or a word art that inspires an entire layout. It‘s also a great place to see kits from possibly up and coming designers!


8. Good Search
I try to remember to use Good Search whenever I need to search for anything on the web. I’m signed up so that when I use Good Search it credits a few cents per click to our local chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. If you’re looking for something simple to do to “give back” and you’re looking for an organization to help out, try Good Search and use National MS Society Northwestern - Ohio Chapter as your charity of choice! I’d really appreciate that, but there are so many organizations that would benefit from a few cents per click, every click, every time and spread the word. It adds up!

9. Toledo Blade
I read my national news through assorted links from iGoogle, but the Toledo Blade is my local newspaper! I get my city and state information here!

10. Patients Like Me
I stop at patients like me at least once a day to check in and fill in the “Instant Me” feature. Remember, love analyzing stats here. I allows me to record how I’m feeling by time of day, day of week. I also communicate with others dealing with MS, even people taking the same medications as me!

100 Things I Love

It’s not an original idea of mine. I’m riding coattails! Marvi Marti posted the first ten things on her list today. She initially got the prompt from Abundance Blog at Marelisa Online. The list is done in tens, Marti did her first ten today, so now I am too.


Okay, let’s get this love-fest started!

10 Activities I Love

1.  Baseball Games - I love baseball and I don’t really think there was a time I didn’t.. I’ve told the story about Mom dancing with me when the Tigers won the 1968 World Series and how much I loved following the Tigers and Reds as a kid. I saw a game in the 1984 World Series and watched the final game in an all ages club on the big screen with my parents. I was allowed to TRY to watch the Reds World Series games in the 70s, but my single-digit aged self couldn’t make it.

Last year, David and I tied my season high of 21 games seen, finishing it with a Division Series Tigers game. Would have broken the record if the Tigers had made it to the World Series. We had tickets.

My current dream is to be in Cincinnati on Opening Day


2. Train Chasing - It’s funny. When I finished trade school, I had firmly decided I was moving to Atlanta. My first interview was with Green Frog Productions, a railroad video company in Marietta, Georgia. I loved trains and the entire thought of chasing trains and videotaping them was just an incredible idea to me. Alas, I didn’t get the job and while my Mom went with me to museums and on tourist trains, she wasn’t going to go chase freight trains so I could photograph them and there wasn’t anyone else who would even go to the museums with me.

14 years later I replied to an email inviting me to a presentation at a Mensa event. I had no idea who the man was that was inviting me, but the presentation was trains he’d photographed, his hobby. This man did that I had wanted to do so many years ago. When I emailed back and said, “Trains, I’ll definitely be there,” it led to a few emails exchanged, an invitation to a baseball game for a first date and, well, we’ve been married 3 years now. We still love to chase trains together!


3. Scrapbooking – My scrapbooking is both the pictorial record of my life and an art, my self-expression. It’s evolved from photo albums from high school, most of the photos with no names or places, to photos with captions, hand-written, raped on paper strips. Then it became pages with ephemeris and typed and cut out captions and title on magnetic pages, followed by actual paper scrap pages and after a short while of printing the photos from my first digital camera, I started digital scrapping. That was 2007 and I was scrapping 2005. It was a couple years of “can’t afford to print the photos,” that put me behind. I’m catching up now.


4. Baking – I love kitchen stuff in general, I come from a long line of great cooks and I grew up with the kitchen gadgets in several drawers and a utensil pot next to the stove. That’s why the obsession with my future kitchen. I designed it in my mind and my storage is full of boxes of peach and greed gadgets, dishes and calicos. I have a green calico kitchen cat and a kitchen pig wand. The pig want removes the calories when you wave it over the food. :)

I’ve made my own recipes for many things from scratch or by doctoring up ready-made things, but I love baking the most of all the kitchen-crafts. Baking allows my culinary gifts to really shine and while a good meal makes people feel satisfied and they enjoy it, something baked and sweet always make everyone smile!



5. Board Games – I love games night with friends, I love just playing Yahtzee or Qwirkle at home with David. Games give your brain some good exercise and they aren’t like concerts or other activities you do outside someone’s home because it’s quieter. It allows for conversation and quality time with the other people of your choice.


6. Having Coffee – Coffee is not just a drink. To me “Having Coffee” is being with a friend of two for conversation. The act of having coffee with someone is much more intimate than just a beverage. I used to have coffee with my great grandmother every Tuesday once I started driving, I had coffee with Grandma on the phone on Mondays and I make a point of having coffee with friends in Michigan at least once or twice a month.



7. Aunting – Kids just get cooler and cooler as they get older! I truly enjoyed the time spent with Tori and Rina when they were little, helping them learn and learning from them too. As they got older and could learn at a higher level, it was fun watching them figure things out and then form their own opinions about things. Now they drive when they are over and we share many things we have in common and can debate, in a civilized way, they things we see differently. I mean, last mouth I had a political discussion with the baby I comforted when she had a tummy ache. How cool is that?


8. Reading – Since getting my Kindle, the old one with the grey background and black writing, I’m enjoying reading with a new vigor. You see that darker background has solved whatever conditions cause my dyslexia and I read much more comfortably and faster. I LOVE my murder mysteries!


9. Coin Collecting – this is something I started doing with Grandma, who did it with her uncle. My biggest passion in coins is pennies. I collect both American and Canadian pennies. My oldest Canadians are 1920 something and the oldest American ones are Indian heads!


10. Cleaning and Organizing – I think I would have to say I love this in the same way any addict loves getting their fix. Once I got started cleaning and organizing in the annex, I found myself in that addict spot. I can not pick up something when I’m near it. It’s a healthy obsession!



Whew! Okay, I see why it needs to be broken up into segments! Net ten will be…soon!

Links

Marvi Marti

Abundance Blog at Marelisa Online.