quiche, revisited

since i posted the recipe for spinach and mushroom quiche and the recipe for whole wheat pie crust separately and without pictures, i thought i'd come back and add some. here are links to the original posts:

spinach and mushroom quiche
whole wheat crust

the process:

1. prep, 2. whole wheat crust, 3. saute, 4. cheese, 5. herbs, 6. peppers and onions, 7. spinach and mushrooms, 8. milk and eggs, 9. baked

dinnertime!

three and a half

i listen to kieran playing, and i am stunned. he's enacting a play of his own devising in the living room floor. trucks are involved. dinosaurs, too. a recycling truck is central to the drama, as is a flatbed truck, many race cars, and a monster truck or two. apparently it's crucial that all the monster trucks be lined up all the way across the living room floor because there is to be a parade later. there are many voices and names that come up in the course of his play. my baby is totally gone, and there is, in his place, a rambunctious and vivacious little boy with many very strong opinions. his name, he tells me, is NOT kieran, but rather, ribbon. he's a nice t-rex. also a firefighter. sometimes. he hugs me with impulsive ferocity. he lashes out with a willfulness that i almost can't believe--i have to remind myself not to be hurt by it as i throw him in into yet another time out. then he turns around and makes me laugh so hard! he pretends to eat the whole town as we drive through, but assures me he's just teasing. he's constantly on the move, and prefers to be either outside running as hard as he can or inside playing with all his stuff. he's not all that into drawing or group participation--he prefers imaginative play and reading books and watching british television and dinosaur train. he knows the names of many dinosaurs along with what they eat and all their physical characteristics. he tells me they lived on the earth many years ago, but that they are now extinct. he has real friends at school, and other kids he likes less. he hates playing in the water, and is grateful that summer is over so no one is trying to make him do it. he is as stubborn as a rock. he loves one-on-one attention from either me or the hippie. he tries to take care of his little brother, while simultaneously keeping finn off his stuff and out of his games. he's learning to share. he has  favorite colors, favorite foods, and favorite toys. he loves his cats. he prefers vanilla to chocolate. where he goes, his hippo goes as well. he likes cuddles at night, no matter how his day has gone. he's a little bit afraid of shadows. in the end, he's a whole little complete person, and i love him so much i can't breathe when i look at him.

rant, general

maybe i am just feeling edgy tonight, but i have a few things to say. things i don't usually say for fear of stirring up the muck too much and causing conversations i don't feel like having about topics often seem pointless to discuss with other people, like banging your head against a brick wall. but here are some things anyway. i just want to get them off my chest.

1.  i wish i had the balls to go comment on every glaring grammatical error i see on the internet, even my own. i would especially like to ding every your/you're, their/they're/there, to/too, its/it's, effect/affect errors. not one of those words is interchangeable for the others. also, i hate it when people use the word THAT to refer to people, who are WHOs, not THATs. and, while i am on this grammatical tirade, i would like to point out that the words which and that are NOT the same, and that you have to separate a clause led by which from the rest of your sentence with a COMMA, which is, by the way, one of the most under-used pieces of punctuation in existence.
    
2. a person's rights should in no way be dependent on religion, gender, race, or sexuality. further, i don't think any group of people has the right to push their belief system on any other group. if everyone would stop worrying about what everyone else believes, and just treat everyone with respect and kindness, then we would be a lot better off as a people and a culture. if you are islamic, hindu, jewish, christian, black, white, mulatto, hispanic, asian, american indian, gay, straight, male, female, hermaphroditic, well--i don't care. i don't care what kind of sex you have or who you have it with as long as no one is getting hurt (who doesn't want to be) and no one is being forced to do anything against their will and no one is a child. this extends to any and all of the aforementioned being allowed to marry whomever they choose, however they choose. i have yet to hear a single non-religious argument against same sex marriage, and last time i checked, we had freedom to practice whatever religion we choose in this country.
    
3. speaking of religion...if you are going to embrace the bible and take it at its word and quote it at me, then a) you better know what you are quoting because i have read it a few times, even if you have not, b) you better not come at me with things taken utterly out of context, and c) you will never convince me of your opinion by quoting this or that restriction/behavioral statute from deep within the old testament without first showing me that you are also willing to embrace all the other restrictions around it. for example, if you tell me it is wrong to be gay because of the words you find in leviticus, then you must also be kosher, not eating seafood, willing to marry your sister/brother-in-law in the event of your sibling's death, etc. i do not believe you can cherry pick which parts of this you are going to follow--it's all, or it's not. in fact, that there's a pretty significant restriction later in the bible about taking things out of context to further your personal agenda. so you know, stop it.
    
4.  i hate news and politics. and yet, here i am with my opinions. i think my government wastes a shitload of time worrying about things that should be none of its concern and a shitload of money pushing its agenda onto other countries in the name of aid. and i think they don't spend nearly enough time worrying about what matters--taking care of its own people, preserving and enhancing its own culture, and producing things. somewhere along the way in the last 250 years, we have lost sight of what it meant to be free, and of what it was to be able to build yourself up from nothing. our class divisions grow, while our culture slowly dies. what do we produce here anymore? what is here that's worth having? don't get me wrong--i love this country, and i fully realize how lucky i am to have been born here where i feel safe and have the freedom to write a blog post like this without getting arrested. but damn, america! we need to get back to the making of things. when we made things, people HAD jobs, and the economy held its own because we had something to sell. we grew our own food and we made cloth, and we made clothing and home furnishings from that cloth, and people built cars and houses, and all manner of thing. now--now, we push money around. money with nothing to back it up on paper that's virtually worthless. we are in debt to our eyeballs to countries who would love to watch us crumble, and we buy all manner of crap from those same countries to fill the holes where we once had well-made products manufactured down the road from where we live. we need to take a step back and look at things more critically.
   
   4a. corporations suck. gigantic financial institutions suck. it's like having an entity that's chaotic evil running things to let them control what happens in this country. they are NOT people, yet are treated as such under many of our laws, which gives them license to just seriously screw things up in the name of the bottom line for this quarter, right now. there is zero forethought for next quarter, or next year, or 10 years from now, as long as the CEO and CFO and CTO continue to rake in the bucks and someone somewhere continues to invest. there's no interest in the greater good, or the future of anything. it fills me with impotent fury. 

ok, i'm done for now. there's more to rant about, but i am too damned tired to do it right this minute. besides, my teething baby is waking up, so there's some rocking and hugging to be done. rocking a sweet baby is way more fun tan thinking about all this mess anyway. 'night, y'all.