Back to My Universe

Hi folks!  When I originally started this blog a long while back, I had planned to make it a regular thing.  But, as with a lot of well-intended ideas, life gets in the way!

I'm back now...for how long?  Who knows!  I'm a wing-it type of girl!  Life's more exciting that way!

Anyway, back to my universe...

Just over a year ago, I had myself a mid-life crisis...at the age of 41?!?  Now this wasn't the normal kind of mid-life crisis that most women seem to experience...I already had THAT one...at age 27...

This was the type of crisis that led me down a path of learning, knowledge, rethinking so much of what I had been taught, rethinking what I thought I knew...what we all think we know...

About the very basics of our everyday lives.  What we eat.  What we drink.  The products we use in our everyday lives.  EVERYTHING!  I didn't just wake up one day and decide to become some kind of crunchy health nut AND I am FAR from that today!  However, I had a few major, eye-opening experiences that led to start doing a little bit of research about a few basic things and once I started, I couldn't stop!  

Here is how my mid-life crisis materialized.

Spring 2009:  6 weeks post-partum.  I end up in the ER with a BP of 190/170.  OB thought I was going to stroke out.  Blood work, thyroid and renal artery ultrasounds ALL come back normal.  BP returns to normal on its own.

Summer 2009:  6 months post-partum my hair started falling out.  Blame it on the hormones, right?

Spring 2010:  Wake up one day and completely out of the blue I start having panic attacks.  Dr blames my age, puts me on anxiety meds and sends my on my way.  Blood work is perfect.  Meds don't work so I suffer through til the Fall when I have a follow-up.  Dr tells me to keep taking meds.  I never set foot back in said Dr's office again.  I go home and start going through my diet.  I was using Splenda in my morning tea and drinking iced tea with Splenda in it.  I googled "Splenda and panic attacks" and WHOA!  I started looking at labels of everything that I was ingesting and the damn stuff (also found on labels as sucralose) is in EVERYTHING!  Even stuff that I was feeding my 1 1/2 year old that I THOUGHT was good for her!  Crap!  I tossed it all out that very day.  I haven't had a panic attack since and I don't take any medication other than an occasional Advil for a headache or cramps.

So I get back to living a normal life without artificial sweeteners and we're all good for a while...Until...

DH brings home a jug of Sunny D.  My DD wants a taste.  Within FIVE minutes of her drinking it, her hands swell up in a red puffy rash and she's screaming and crying that they are on fire!  Flush her system with water and gave her a benadryl.  Hands calm down after a little bit.  No more Sunny D for her!  I come home a few days later and DH tells me that HE had a reaction to it as well.  His fingers kind of cramped up for about 20 minutes and he couldn't even open up a snack cup.  So we dump that shit down the drain and never buy it again!  

There have been other minor incidents of stuff like this happening and with each new incident, I had been spending more and more time researching ingredients and learning....Oh, so much learning!  I'm STILL learning!  There is so much to learn!  At one point, I had to fight the urge to throw out hundreds of dollars of food that I had bought, all the while thinking it was healthy!  Boy was I ever wrong!  We began our journey to leading a more chemical-free life.  We are not perfect but we have made a lot of changes and we continue to do so.  I'm not gonna lie.  It's hard!  I haven't eaten from a fast food joint in a year.  My littlest hasn't either.  We try to eat real food.  Not a ton of processed but we can still do so much better that we are doing!  It's a journey!  I've been working on finding out what works for us.  From food to cleaning products to health and beauty products...we are trying!  I've been dabbling with essential oils with great success!  We are really trying to embrace a more natural way of living!  It's exciting and exhausting at the same time!  

I've taken to creating a fb page where I can share the information that I come across.  I share it there so it's easier for me to find and also easier for those who follow me there!  I will link the page here for those who care to head on over and check things out.   

One last word here today...if you come across something that interests you, here or anywhere else, I would urge you to do your own research and make your own conclusions!  "Let life be a journey, instead of a guided tour"

The Bake Pop Pan Incident

Silly me!  Deciding to try something brand new, something I've never done before, 3 hours before the New Year's Eve party I was to attend....(Santa bought Bake Pop pans for Christmas.  My toddler-going-on-teen, being bombarded with infomercials, put them on her Christmas list early on and Santa didn't dissappoint!)..So I decide to make cake pops for the party.  I ventured out on NYE and hit the local grocery store.  I bought 2 different flavored cake mixes, 2 boxes of flavor-matched pudding(suggested on Bake Pop instructions) and 2 containers of coordinating icing, ya know, just in case things didn't work out and I had to make them the regular way!

I decided to go with Red Velvet. My favorite. Following the instructions that came with the pans that say to follow the directions on the boxed cake mix BUT add an extra egg (did it), add a pudding mix, (did it), substitute milk for the water and cut the amount in half (did it). I also added the correct amount of oil called for on the box mix. No changes there in the BP instructions.
So far so good.

Into the mixer for the appropriate amount of time and spooned in pans sprayed with cooking spray.  Now it says to fill them up so that's what I did.  I filled both pans, that's 36 pops (of course Santa brought the free set, as well) and...

...still had enough left over...

....for 10 more!  That's 46 pops from 1 boxed cake mix!  I'm SURE I could've gotten more.  I ate some raw mix.  Oh well, that's how I roll.

Not quite ready for the 350 degree preheated oven JUST yet.

I sprayed the lids with cooking spray as well, put them on the bottom pans and attached them with the little, yellow, silicone-y, rubber-y things that keeps the pans together. On a side note, those yellow things are definitely necessary because...






(Note: This oven says it's Self Cleaning but supposedly a human is supposed to tell it when it needs to be cleaned. I've never done it. THAT'S my husband's job so judge HIM!)


...this is what happened! Without those holders, I'm sure things would have taken a turn for the worse. The instructions say to bake for 25 -30 minutes. I took these babies out before 20 and they were quite overdone which...

...made it really easy to pop those volcano-tops off. 

The tops, btw, had a kind of styrofoamy feel to them. My son ate some anyway.

After they cooled a bit, I popped off the lids nd this is what I got.  Cake pops!  Slightly overdone, with little nipples on the top and a ring around the middle where the pans meet!

Here are the tops from both pans.  Next time I will fill the pans a little LESS than full and maybe squeak out a few MORE pops.  This is wasteful.

Here's a closeup.  Those rings were overdone enough that I just ran my finger around them and they crumbled off.

I filled the third pan (last 10) a bit less full and still had overflow.  Now if you'll notice the top left pop, you'll see that it's quite a bit smaller than the others.  That's the RUNT of the litter!  I guess I didn't have that well filled quite enough!

I also cut the baking time WAY back!  25-30 minutes really didn't make sense to me initially anyway.  I kept testing this batch with my little cake tester and they were done within about 11-13 minutes.  This batch wasn't overdone so they looked a little better BUT ALL of the cake pops were kind of dry.

At that point, I didn't care anymore.  I melted some white chocolate chips (which DO NOT melt well) and some milk chocolate MELTS (which DO melt well), rolled/dipped the cake balls in the chocolate and topped them with assorted sprinkles and such.  They looked pretty.  They tasted OK but were a little dry.  I took them to the party and everyone seemed to like them.  I wasn't REALLy worried because I figured it was New Year's Eve and everyone would be drunk anyway!

I forgot to take a picture of the finished product so the next day, my brother's girlfriend posted this picture on fb for me! 

AFTERMATH

The pans cleaned up easily although there were 4 to wash (2 pans, 2 lids).

I will try this again, sometime in the future, and see how things turn out with a little tweaking.

Making cake balls the regular way seems to be a bit easier!

A (not so) White Christmas

Although we didn't have a White Christmas this year (we haven't in quite a few years), it DID snow a bit during our trip to my inlaws to celebrate the holiday the Wednesday after Christmas! It was SO pretty that I had to get out and snap a few shots! I've chosen this photo of the bit of snow that had accumulated on the Rhododendron bush as my The Simple Things entry!

2012 Photo Scavenger Hunt

I am SO excited to be a part of the  Rhonda Brockman Photography 2012 Photo Scavenger Hunt!
I would never consider myself a photographer.  A photographer is someone who has the "eye".   I don't.  I'm OK with that.  BUT I do love to take pictures.  Pictures of my family, pictures of the natural world, pictures of whatever catches my eye at the moment!  I strive to take better photographs and am constantly reading up on how to better them.  That's why I am participating in this project!  She has invited ANYONE to join!!  How awesome is that?
I have seen professional photographers take on projects such as this one and am awed at the photos they capture.  Some people are so creative!  I am not.  But I try.
If you wish to join in on the fun, you can find THE LIST HERE.  
I will be posting my photos here on my Blog and linking to them on fb.  The link back to this blog will also be posted on her blog for reference (I hope). 
So, Happy Hunting and Happy Snapping!!!  I can't WAIT to see everyone's photos!

                                        Welcome to the 2012 Photo Scavenger Hunt!

                                                                                                                        

                                                                   Wooden Fence


Day 2  #296 Something that separates

                                                                                                                   
                                          Paper clip holding my Photo Scavenger Hunt list



Day 1  #218 Paper Clip   

New Year, New Blog!

I decided to start a personal blog in the event that I have something that I want to say, rant about, rave about, or simply share with others.   Posts may be humorous, interesting, informative, entertaining or just plain offensive!  Consider yourself warned!  Happy New Year and welcome to 2012. 

If you are wondering why I chose such a title for my blog...I am the Queen Of The Freakin Universe AND I have a t-shirt that says so!  I'll be sure to get a pic up of it as soon as I can.