i heart sisters! and sheets. and couscous.

If you have an aversion to cotton and/or lovely biological relations and the impact both things can have on your/one's life, please skip this post. ;)

Of course, that was just a joke, so please feel completely free to peruse the rest of this. Hehe. And the stuff mentioned above won't come until after I get the food talk out of my fingertips and onto the blog world. Just to warn ya.

The other night, the 11th, we made this awesome everything-from-scratch pasta and meatballs. I say pasta because I can't remember exactly what the name of this certain pasta is.... 

The nameless pasta. ^^

The wonderful sauce that Anna made....the meatballs, which I minced garlic and several pieces of toast for...  ^^

Looks done to me! ^^

Yes, at the dinner table with the family...no, no natural light darnit ...nighttime already. We don't eat early dinners. 7pm is a fine time, but the other night we ate even later than that.

This was when we were finishing the edge...see the straight line? Yep, that's finishing.

And the last shot of caning for a while:

That was an interesting experience. Fun, tedious, and filled with sibling bonding time in silence. Heh heh.

Now...to the subject matter at hand.

Yesterday, 'twas a good day.

Of course, a lot of days start with French toast, but mostly they start with any good food.

Right?

Okay, nevermind that.

Then I made some carrots, too, with copious good amounts of butter and sugar and a dash of salt. :D

I tell you, homemade maple syrup is pretty much divine. ^^

Hey now, what is this? Well. It's a flat sheet and a pillowcase, freshly laundered, of the colors black and a pale lovely yellow. When we were in Walmarticus, I told Anna that I was okay with going the way of Bumblebee. I mean, what else does black and yellow remind you of? Tell me.

So on the warm, muggy day that was yesterday, I stayed inside (except for taking these pictures) and drank coffee and made my bed.

And this is where the title comes in.

Sheet ramble: once upon a time....
 
Anna has spread her obsession with sheets to me.  
Colorful cotton sheets.
Well, I didn't get the "colorful" part of the obsession this time, or at least it appears that way.
But you have to admit, not everybody buys black and yellow sheets.
Now, Anna on the other hand, she has a set in aqua, and a set in a lovely teal.
I got fed up with the plain old sheets that have been in our laundry heritage for the past several years, and made the plunge at Walmarticus...after seeing the prices at Kohls and deciding that I'm not ready to spend more than $25 on simple summery bedding right now.
$12 doesn't bite you too bad, does it?
Nah.....that's why I swallowed my thirst for beautiful shades found only in House Beautiful magazines and got some normal colors.
Humph. Walmarticus, you need to upgrade from hospital shades!
I mean really? At least, beneath those lights 80% of their choices looked like they could've been found at the hospital. The white, the pale blue. The green, the gray, the...well, you name it. Except for the pale yellow and black --and of course the teal and aqua Anna has, but of course I wanted to buy something different....and the brown they offered (I was thinking, Hey! I'd like a shade found in the chocolate family!)....well, it looked like a pile of you-know-what you'd step in at the farm.
At any rate, I'm quite happy with my purchase.

Sheet ramble: The End.

Oh, Siri Mitchell's books are so good. ^^

I just got two more by her in at the library today. :)

Went to Caribou Coffee, filled up my thermos for later and got a small cold caramel cooler thingy. What a sentence. There's three c's in a row.

So tonight I made part of dinner...a couscous thing. Pretty easy to throw together-- just a bunch of veggies to slice, dice, and saute in olive oil...

So, you see 3 peppers. ^^

This is what a certain sort of cooking face looks like. Surrounded with dirty dishes on that one counter.... hehe. They're not mine to take care of, I swear! Tomorrow, though, is another story... :)

Lovely peppers. I love the color. ^^

Aaaaand, I'm rushing. Here's the recipe. ^^

Why am I rushing? Because I'm about to dash out of the house and go on an evening walk with my lovely sister, Anna. :)

Okay. It's 9:56pm, and we're back, and I'm wondering why I couldn't just post about sheets have this taken a lot less time...er, well, broken-up writing times...

Sigh. 

I'm going to quick finish this. :)

So, you have some zucchini up there. ^^

Here you have some couscous. Yes, it formed dunes of that shape when I poured it from the bag. ;) ^^

Ya wanna put 2 cups of couscous into the little pot of nicely boiling chicken broth. 32oz of it, baby. ^^

Now, you wait. ^^

Hehe. Such a fun thing, this waiting. 

I suggest you do something else while this cooks for several minutes.

You can check up on the rest of you veggies, if you like. Make sure you don't overcook them... Next time I'm going to be more careful about that....ahem.

Yay! it's practically done. Good job. 

See, it's kind of like a hybrid of pasta and rice. It soaks up most of the water, just like rice. But it doesn't take as long to cook as rice does, thank goodness. Which means, quicker last-minute meals out of this stuff. 

See? It's pretty.

Anyhow, I really like those bamboo utensils Mom got the other day at the suggestion of Lyddie.

Mix that into the veggies, and you've got a good thing going.^^

In fact, this is what our dinner looked like tonight... ^^

That's my stack of books today. I'm reading the top one. it's so good. About halfway through.

I can't wait to read Chateau of Echoes.

That one looks good. And after being surprised with the one I'm reading being on the smaller side (and from a narrator's p.o.v., unlike the last two I read by her), I'll be glad to read her writing in the character's p.o.v. for so many more pages. She does it so well. :)

I'm thinking I'll write tomorrow about the other coconut cream pie we ate tonight.

Ahhhh, so good. ;)

I mean, this post is already long enough, and then I'll have something to write about tomorrow. (laugh)

Following Jesus is simple, but not easy.

[Shane Claiborne]

I'll save the other quote for tomorrow. ;)