January 2023 in Review

The year has started with a bang, and I am so in shock we are almost 1/4 done with the century.

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Week 1

I have a lot of funny stories surrounding food this week.

That big picture is a baby quilt I finished for a former student. It was a scrappy quilt using fabrics I already owned but trying to match the colors she picked for her nursery. It turned out pretty well for being a scrappy quilt, and I think the fabric I chose for the cup ended up perfect.

I started out the week going to lunch with the Artist at Pei Wei, when we were there she got a bowl of wonton soup which they served in this giant container. It was a weird visit because when we went there they had so many items on their menu they were out of or said they couldn’t make, which we were very confused by.

Then later in the week we needed somewhere we could eat really quickly, and then we got there and it was closed, that’s that yellow picture. It was closed for health code violations. Which is not in the least bit worrying. Thankfully we didn’t get sick from it.

In the Lorehaven group chat we were talking about a big drama in “Romancelandia” (as my friend the clean romance author said) where an indie author had faked her suicide and just came back from the dead. It was super crazy. She was “spilling the tea,” and The Artist said I looked so offended the idea of spilling tea she had to make that illustration. I LOVE IT SO MUCH.

Back to our food stories.

First on Monday I remade the Crispy chicken bites (chicken nuggets) from several years ago and I reprinted the recipe and the kids read my original directions and were absolutely appalled at my directions. APPALLED,”Mom you really put that on the internet?”

Tuesday I made Sri Lanken crepes, which The Artist read the recipe and said, “Mom, this isn’t a meal, this is dessert.” I replied, “But we’re adding bacon to it, so there’s protein, now it’s breakfast for dinner.” Then she read this some more and said, “Mom you’re making syrup, you need a candy thermometer.” Why don’t I just replace it with normal syrup? More sounds of indignation. In the end it was a delicious, if very sugary recipe.

Wednesday since we were studying South Korea we went back and made Korean bulgogi again, I figured since the two countries have only been split for 50ish years they probably still have very similar foods, and I kind of didn’t want to try and hunt down another recipe. Repeat another round of amazement at my directions from 10 years ago.

Then on Saturday I cooked a recipe for Mali, and nothing interesting happened, but it was significantly more mustard tasting than I really wanted. Oh well…

Since people still didn’t have the busyness of school and work for part of the week we played a couple more games from Christmas:

• Pathfinder Level 20– it’s supposed to be competitive but we enjoyed playing it as cooperative
• Dad Jokes– we ended up slightly revising how the game is played, changing it to did you smile rather than did you laugh because it’s too easy to stop from laughing

Then because I’m trying to keep better track of books I’ve read, here are the books I read this week:

• Northanger Abbey– an author I follow is about to do a Beauty and the Beast and Northanger Abbey mashup
• A Crown of Chains– a fantasy retelling of the book of Esther, I’ve come to the conclusion after reading this I don’t really like Esther retellings. I liked the overall story of this book, but because of parts of the story of Esther, it makes the story a little difficult to endure
• Sew It’s a Quest– a fairy tale mashup, that was fun
• Engaged to a Supervillain (betaread: sequel to Captured by a Supervillain)- superhero book

I was sick on Thursday so read A Crown of Chains in a day, then Friday came about and Leezard had a seizure and so I spent large parts of the day watching over her, so I read it all in one day also.

Week 2

This was a busy week of geography lessons, practicing for our Hamlet skit. It’s going to be awesome, I don’t know if I can share the video when we do it because we’ll have some other people’s kids in it briefly.

We learned about and made recipes from Haiti, Honduras, and Jamaica. This of course, meant we ate several recipes with a similar flavor profile, and I had to figure out how to make something from their cuisine, but not make it so spicy that The Artist wouldn’t eat it, since she doesn’t like spicy foods.

I used habanero peppers, but severely cut down on how much of the pepper each recipe used. I also discovered the scotch bonnet pepper is a very spicy pepper, but my local grocery store doesn’t have it.

Both the Jamaica recipe and the Haiti recipe which used the peppers were incredibly tasty, but I was so paranoid about touching my eye for hours after cutting those peppers and causing them to tear up and get red, even though I washed my hands like crazy.

We continued to play our way through the Cthulhu game, there are some missions that are super hard. We had one that we flat out failed as, wait no, that’s on week 3.

We did play the Cthulhu game more this week, but the failure was this week (I’m writing week 2 on the 17).

Batman got his braces off and is very happy to no longer have braces, but said his teeth felt weird after years of having braces on. I remember how weird that was when my braces came off.

The Artist had her birthday party, only a couple of months after her birthday, the trickiness of scheduling a November birthday. She made an amazing mushroom log cake, and it was gorgeous.

Books read:

• Mr. Darcy, the Beast– a Pride and Prejudice and Beauty and the Beast mash-up that I am still not sure what I think of it, there were some times I felt it was needlessly crass, and I don’t really understand why Eliza fell in love with Mr. Darcy in this one
• Haunting Mrs. Trentwood– I enjoyed the book, but I feel like the resolution of a story plot wasn’t really handled as well as I would have liked
• I don’t know for sure if I finished anything else, I feel like I did, but I for the life of me can’t remember

Week 3

I just realized I titled this picture January 2022 week 3, and it is not 2022, it is 2023.

Sigh, I thought I’d gotten past forgetting to change the year. Clearly, I have not.

We continued to play the Cthulthlu game, and that giant picture is Superman having fun annoying The Artist and trying his best to see if he could make her do something. I don’t even remember what his goal was beyond seeing how close he could stick his face without actually touching her.

We continued to practice our play, and at one point we stopped to entertain the dog, and at one point she was so stubborn we were able to lift her up with the rope she was holding, which greatly amused everyone.

I’ve been working on getting all of my drafts written, and I’m down to like 9, including this post. But, the Sacrificial system post has been sitting there for like 4 years.

We learned all about various countries, and I made an attempt at making a fish recipe from Timor-Leste, which relied on many ingredients I couldn’t find. We came to the conclusion we like snapper as a fish, but the particular way we cooked it was not the best.

Oh, and The Artist had her Winter Court of Awards for AHG, which reminds me I need to go sew on the new patches and badges.

I didn’t really read all that many books, or not that many that I remembered, most of these are short stories. Oh crud, I just remembered I need to read for tonight’s youth group. I’m gonna go do that now.

• Do You Take This Quest?
• Woodcutter Quince
• Prior Quest
• Gift Exchange

Week 4

I’m writing this final one at 10:15 of January 31. It would have been earlier, but then The Artist and I spent like 30 minutes laughing at Aunt Barb (a satire FB account).

The week started off with The Artist getting her driver’s license. You have to make your appointment for that like 3 months out, and I did not make the appointment soon enough.

The week continued on and we went to go see a local production of Anastasia, I’ve been wanting to see it live and finally got a chance to. It was amazing to see live. I’ve decided I’m just going to go see a show if I’m interested, and not really care if it might be weird if I don’t know anyone in the show. I was right, it was awesome to finally get a chance to see the musical I’ve been listening to.

We studied a bunch of countries in Oceania, and I cooked a Samoan meal which we enjoyed, and tonight I made a Pauluan meal, but that was not as big of a hit. It was slightly spicier than I was expecting, and I didn’t like the rice quite as much as I might have.

I had a few things that upset me this week and had me down, not something I can really go into or explain, but as a result, Jeff wanted to cheer me up, and bought me that genius Muppets shirt. Isn’t it the most amazing shirt?

We had Pretty Dress Day with my small group and we all had fun wearing our fanciest dresses and then eating at Rosie’s Tortilla Factory. Afterwards we went to Barnes and Noble, and the girls spent a lot of time looking at stuffed animals and children’s books, which greatly amused me.

It was Batman’s turn to go grocery shopping with me, and pick where he wanted to eat, and he wanted to eat with all his siblings at Sams Club again just like we did back when the kids were little. So, we all ate at Sams Club and got their absolutely terrible pizza, and the boys just had fun goofing off and steering the grocery cart together. It was very amusing to see them run like crazy people through the store.

This was also as Texas was getting a cold snap, so everyone was grocery shopping because who knows, it might freeze for like 2 weeks like it did in 2021, so we HAVE to buy all the food NOW! Unfortunately for us, as we were doing our weekly grocery shopping, everyone else was doing their panic shopping for the freeze. I laughed as we walked past this one older couple and the husband was complaining, “Why are there so many people shopping here at 1 on a Monday afternoon?” Did you not see the winter weather warning, sir?

And the weather came in, schools closed, and we got some rain, and there was some ice, but no snow. Just cold. There was just enough ice it was probably good everything closed, but it was annoying.

And let’s see, what all did I read this week?

• Tress of the Emerald Sea– Superman back Brandon Sanderson’s Secret Novels, so he has eagerly been waiting for me to read it, which I did
• Bear Knight– this isn’t out yet, but I enjoyed reading it to write a review, it’s the second of the Lightraider novels, the first being Wolf Soldier
• To Protect a Wolf– this was recommended to me by HL Burke, and it was okay, I was curious what a topic I’m used to reading in urban fantasy (werewolf) would look like in a clean romance setting, I’m not sure I’m completely sold on the idea, but it was amusing to read. I actually bought the second book in the series first because it was on sale for 99 cents, and this one was full price, but it was free on Monday, so I got it then.

Oh, and while I didn’t play it, the boys played Zombiecide together, and I briefly tried playing Black Tale, which Batman has been wanting me to try, but it’s in the style of first-person shooter, and I can’t handle that style of video-game, so lasted about 15 minutes.