Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Posted on August 30, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Nothin’ Could Be Finer Than–HEY LOOK A SQUIRREL!

We interrupt this irregularly scheduled blogcast to present some extreme cuteness. It’s like cute overload without the kitty l33tspeak, y’all.

But also, it might be a little sad.

I will warn those of you who, like me, pretend to be bad-ass but are marshmallows on the inside when it comes to helpless baby h’aminals that these pictures might make you start blubbering. I warned you.

I slept in this morning, as I often do on Mondays (and other days ending in “day”), and when I took Heath out around 8AM he started acting weird. He really wanted to go over to a certain part of the lawn. Really, really bad. Like the way he does when there’s a rabbit or a squirrel. So I walked over there with him, and he immediately ran over to…

…a baby chupacabra!

No? Well, it did take me a minute to figure out that this was a baby squirrel, largely because there was a dog standing over it. I thought it was dead, but as Heath and I looked on out of morbid curiosity, I realized it was breathing every few seconds with big, gasping breaths.

So I ran back inside, got dressed for work, ran back out, and picked up the baby squirrel with my bare hands. Rabies-schmabies. He was cold (it was in the 70s this morning), so I took him inside and wrapped him in a dish towels and cuddled him and tried to warm him up. After a little while he started breathing better and moving his paws a little, so I took him back outside and put him on the ground, still in the dishtowel so that he’d be a little warm and my neighbors wouldn’t step on him. I made sure his mom could get him out if she came back for him, then left for work.

I’m still not sure whether he fell out of the tree or something took him out of it–he had some cuts on him, but that could easily be from falling through the branches or from his littermates’ wicked squirrel claws.

While at work, I used my mad resources (aka Jamie) to track down a list of local wildlife rehabilitators, and  a couple of hours later, I used my lunch break to come back from work to check on the little guy. He was still there, so I scooped him up, took him inside, and put him in a box with an old t-shirt and a bottle of hot water. Then I took Heath out and he immediately ran back over to the area where we’d found the squirrel. I figured he just wanted to investigate since he never realized that I’d picked the squirrel up and brought him inside, but no–he found a second baby squirrel that unfortunately was already dead.

That sealed it–baby squirrel number 1 was coming with me.

I took him to work and left him in my nice warm car (with the windows down a little so it didn’t get too hot), then grabbed my list of rehabbers and started calling. The first call went to an answering machine that said they weren’t accepting wildlife, but I managed to get a hold of someone on the second call and within a half hour I’d taken an extra-long lunch and driven to her house in Cary to drop him off.

He was a lot warmer than he had been on the ride over to Cary, but by the time we got there I couldn’t tell if he was breathing still. I told the rehabber I wasn’t sure if he was still alive and she said, “Well, we’ll see about that, let’s warm him up” and grabbed him and stuck him under her shirt. She told me to call her if I found any others. God bless wildlife rehabbers–that’s a ton of work for a unequal share of sorrow, but I bet when the little guys pull through it makes it all worthwhile.

I suppose I could call to see if he made it, but I’d rather leave it like this. If I don’t know, I can speculate that he’s still alive and warm and fed at the rehabber’s house, and I can console myself with the knowledge that if he died at least he died somewhere warm and soft instead of cold and alone in the leaves.

After I got home from work, I took Heath out and he led me back to the second baby squirrel. I buried it under the tree it fell out of and put a big rock on top so nothing digs it up. We’ll keep checking the area for a couple of days to see if any more baby squirrels turn up.

My Heathcliff is such a good boy! I wish he’d always find cute things instead of snakes…

Posted on June 25, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Bloggity Blog

On today, the sacred Lazy Friday which comes but once a fortnight, I take it upon myself to distract you from the lack of posting this week.

-Look! FoodBuzz’s Daily Special is frying pans! Special green frying pans that are ceramic! That’s pretty cool. My frying pans are stainless steel. That’s not nearly as cool.

-Look! My new MP3 player arrived!

On the left is my new 16 GB Creative Zen Mozaic; on the right is my old 4GB Creative Zen MicroPhoto. So far I like the Mozaic very much, although I find it to be a) rather slippery and b) not quite weighty enough (I would never own one of those postage-stamp-sized MP3 players!). I’m sure I’ll get used to it, though.

-Listen! My dog is quietly wuffing at something at it is driving me crazy! Grr.

I was actually hoping to spend this Lazy Friday doing some hardcore cleaning–my kitchen tends toward entropy and I’m still working on decluttering certain areas of my apartment. Unfortunately, my afternoon is booked after about 2:30PM; I have a PA appointment because my foot hurts still/again (and now my calf hurts thanks to the massive cramp I got in it yesterday morning ) and then a cooking/eating party later this evening. I have to go pick up a couple things from the store at some point and I also might go to the library and get a library card, because I’ve lived in Wake County for over two and a half years and don’t have a library card yet.

Also, North Carolina is very hot. The end.

Posted on October 4, 2009 - by Ashley Jackson

Lots of Potatoes…

I didn’t realize I hadn’t posted since Tuesday…whoops! My schedule got thrown off by the sudden drop in temperature in NC, a couple of sleepless nights and subsequent late days at work, and the final preparations for Saturday’s yard sale.

There were a lot of raw fruit and nut bars eaten over the past few days, but in the interest of not having 15 billion pictures in this post, I’ll just tell you about them.

On Wednesday I started the day with a cashew cookie Larabar. I was running not-quite-late to work (it was cold! D= ) and didn’t bring my lunch, so instead a coworker and I walked over to one of the convenience stores on campus and I grabbed a turkey pesto wrap. It contained turkey breast, spinach pesto, swiss cheese, lettuce, and tomato…

…in a green wrap. I had half of the wrap with a well-ripened banana.

Later in the afternoon I snacked on half of a peanut butter cookie Larabar. I stayed at work until almost 6PM and I was famished by the time I got home. Fortunately, I’d put one of my favorite meals ever into the slowcooker before I left.

Beef roast (you can barely see it alllll the way on the back of the plate), potatoes, onions, and carrots. Deliciousness.

On Thursday morning, I was running a little late again (it was cooold again!), and had a Pure brownie bar for breakfast.

October 1st is the start of the fiscal year for the Federal government, so we had a small ceremony to mark the new year. At this ceremony, there were cheesecake-topped brownies that were actually cooked correctly.

That is what my brownies should have looked like! Very good.

We had a countdown and dropped a pineapple covered in gold stars from the ceiling.

It was a very slow drop–I was looking forward to seeing pineapple splattered all over the floor, but alas…

For lunch, I had the other half of my turkey pesto wrap…

…and a donut that was leftover from the morning’s ceremonies.

I stayed at work until 6PM again, grabbing half a LaraBar midway through the afternoon, and came home hungry but not so much that I couldn’t wait for some potatoes to cook. I decided to use the last of my blue cheese and some bacon to make the recipe that was on my blue cheese container.

Basically, it was potatoes tossed in olive oil, then sprinkled with blue cheese and bacon and cooked for half an hour. I threw in a piece of chicken as well. This was so good–it was like it much heartier loaded baked potato skins.

But blue cheese was involved, so they had class.

Definitely making those again…

On Friday I slept in, had a Pure cherry cashew bar for brunch, and then headed out for some food shopping early in the afternoon. I went to the farmers’ market, where apple season is in full swing and winter veggies are starting to make an appearance. I’m not so excited about this–not really a fan of winter veggies–but I’m willing to give them a try.

My Feeding America shopping bag was nigh overflowing when I left the market.

I purchased a loaf of sourdough bread from the Swiss Chalet bakery. I like their bread, but the lady behind the counter is always griping about something! Last time it was the cost of the bread, this time it was someone who was supposed to cover her at the storefront but bailed. So much drama…anyway, the loaf of sourdough was $4.20, which I thought was very reasonable.

At one vegetable stand, I purchased four turnips (minus the greens), three onions, four tomatoes, and three sweet potatoes for $10 even. I tried turnips last year and was disgusted, but it’s a great big culinary world out there and there must be some turnip recipe that’s good. I’m also not a fan of sweet potatoes, but I had sweet potatoes roasted with regular potatoes at a work potluck last year and was impressed, and I also buy and eat sweet potato fries from the store, so I think it’ll be easier to get accustomed to them.

I noticed that another booth had kale for $1.25/lb, and I’ve wanted to try it since so many food bloggers talk about how great it is. I stuffed a bunch in a bag and also grabbed a small cabbage at 49 cents/lb. My grand total: $1.25! Eating in season is so inexpensive. I wish I could do it year-round…

My last stop was inside the Market Shops, where I stopped for some mushrooms that I’m fairly certain were not grown locally since they were on a table with lemons and limes, but I like being able to get as many mushrooms as I want from a little bulk bin. Price? 40 cents.

My grand total for the farmers’ market was $15.85. I was trying to stay under $20 and celebrated by spending a dollar on a bottle of Diet Coke from the machine inside the market. Because next I went to Trader Joe’s and spent about $65. They were out of peanut butter cookie LaraBars!

Once I got home, I cleaned out my fridge…

…and was happy to find it was now full of fresh, healthy items. Well, mostly full of them, anyway.

At the checkout line at Trader Joe’s, they had a display of English toffee covered in milk chocolate and almonds. I had to buy some.

I ate half the container that day and there’s only one piece left as of Sunday morning…whoops…

But it’s so good!

I bought some not-whole-wheat pizza crust at Trader Joe’s and decided to have pizza for dinner. I topped it with marina sauce, diced sweet Italian chicken sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, yellow peppers, and goat cheese.

It was great–and the crust puffed up like pizza crust should! Like the whole wheat crust doesn’t!

After that, it was full-swing into final yard sale prep. I paused late in the evening to have half of a Harvest Cranberry Scone from Trader Joe’s.

It was good, but I want the orange-cranberry scones back.

Saturday morning saw me eat a cashew cookie Larabar and half of an apple pie one as I stood outside from 6:30AM until 12:30PM selling junk at the community yard sale. I had everything priced to go and was pleasantly surprised to count the days earnings at $72.75. The majority of that will pay for an order of spices from Penzey’s soon!

I had a piece of leftover pizza for lunch, and then crashed and napped for longer than I meant to. I’d invited myself over to dinner at my parents’ house earlier in the morning and ended up getting a later start than I would’ve liked. But I made it and a little while after I arrived there were steaks and baked potatoes, fresh off the grill.

Yummy. There was also this cake that my dad made–I think it was butter pecan cake? Something like that.

It was good except for the coconut. I’m not a coconut fan.

And that is the story of the last four days, foodwise….