Musings of a Louisville St. Louisan

Soup, SOUP, soup.  If you are like me and have a chronic medical condition that requires you to be on a restricted diet (like interstitial cystitis , aka IC), this is the WORST time of year for you.  It is cold outside and all you want is a bowl of nice, warm soup.  You are at the mall doing your Christmas shopping and you get hungry.  You decide to make a trip to your local Panera.  Standing inside, you ask yourself what sounds good.  Soup .  Soup sounds good, but you sigh.  You can't have their soup.  Because it has onions, because it has pepper, because every body seems to think it is necessary to put tomatoes in their soup.  Or what about the infamous "spices", which could be any spice fr om cayenne pepper to basil.  Why, oh why, can't they just list out what spices they are using?  You want to cry, but you realize, it is just a bowl of soup, so in my case you go down to the Subway to get a $5.00 footlong because all you can have at Panera is a ham and cheese

Zucchini is something I would love to be a big fan of.  I always pick some up when I am at Aldi.  However, it seems that every time I buy it there is a lovely place at the bottom of my crisping drawer that it sinks down to never to return again...until it becomes inedible.  Aldi sells it's zucchini in a three pack at ridiculously low prices.  At first I thought the three pack was extremely convenient so that vegetable didn't roll around and get lost in refrigerator nothingness, but I soon discovered that keeping it in the sealed container from the store seemed to make the produce get slimy sooner.  And there is nothing worse than slimy vegetables.  You may ask why didn't I use my zucchini?  The answer is quite simple:  I didn't know how to cook it.  Every time I took a gander at making cooked zucchini edible, it turned into a gross, slithering mess.  One time I tried to pass it off as fries, but my clever 2 1/2 year old daughter did not fall for it.  I stopped buy

Hi Baby This blog will go into some medical details about interstitial cystitis and pregnancy.  If you don't like TMI or are a little squeamish I want to give you fair warning.    Last time I got knocked up it took a whopping 2 and a half years.  We were actually one week from starting our adoption classes with the state of Kentucky when we got that lovely plus sign (or in our case with our Dollar Store pregnancy test two lines).  My husband and I knew that we were going to have another child at some point, however we did not realize how challenging our spirited little girl would be that we would want to wait so long before we tried for numero dos. When we finally got to a point where we could see a second little DoroJohn (that's our celebrity name) in our future we never thought in a million years that it would take a mere 2 months.  I had been prepared for the long haul.  You can imagine how surprised I was when I got that positive pregnancy test with the two little lin

This isn't a new recipe to me, but it is too delicious and simple for a chicken recipe not to share my interstitial cystitis friendly version.  The original recipe, which I have been told is divine, came from The Shiksa in the Kitchen blog.  However, I can't have smoked paprika and never follow anyone's directions word for word, so I made a few slight alterations.  The worst part is cutting the raw chicken in half (my remix of the recipe), but after that it gets much better...especially when you let your 2 1/2 year old assist in it's preparation.  Now before you bring up the obvious objections:  What about salmonella?  Should you really give your child a meat tenderizer?  The answers are:  Eh, don't worry about it (okay, maybe just a little bit) and what child doesn't love playing with a metal hammer (supervised of course). One of my favorite memories as a child was hanging out with my mom in the kitchen while she made dinner.  As I got older, I sta

We all have those moments.  The moments when our child is acting like a possessed demon from the ninth circle of Dante's Inferno .  The moments when we want to literally dig a hole and bury ourselves in it.  The moment when you look at the sky and shout to God, "Why me?"  Every parent has been there.  If they haven't had that moment with their first child, they just need to wait.  It is inevitable.  It will happen.  So, why is it, if every parent has these moments do they still they tend to look down their nose in judgement at another parent when they are having one?  To be quite honest, I am not proud of it, but I have done the same.  Most often it was when I was married without children and thought, "My child will never do that."  Or "I will never talk to my kid that way."  Now, when I think of my pre-child self I just laugh.  (One piece of advice for parents or non parents-never say never.  And I hope that you have the song from American Tail

One of the things I love most in the world is art.  When I was a little girl I wanted to be an art teacher.  I remember my art teacher in my sophomore year in high school told me I was too shy to be a teacher.  He would be quite surprised to find out that this year I am co-leading the organization of the third creative event at Revolution Church of Kentucky .  In 2012 we had an Art Show in May and a Craft Fair in December.  This year we decided to combine the best of two worlds into, "Have Yourself a Crafty Little Christmas!"  It is on Friday, December 13, 2013 from 6:30 to 9:00. Our past events have been filled with some EXTREMELY talented artists and craftspeople. Here are some of the awesome items we had at last year's craft fair: Handmade Jewelry Decorative Journals Wreaths More Wreaths!! The Lovely Em Dash Designs Graced Us with Her Presence And the Art Show in May 2012 Liz Richter (Right) Sculpture Watercolor/Sketches P

It's that time of year again.  When pumpkins are carved, pies are made and butternut squash isn't so ridiculously expensive.  There is much rejoicing!!   I will share with you my secret to buying butternut squash as long as you try these muffins out.  Most stores sell butternut squash by the pound.  They are not on sale the entire fall season, so you have to keep checking the ads each week to find out where it is cheapest.  One time I ended up buying $9.00 of butternut squash because I did not realize how big the squash I was purchasing was.  Grocery stores do not tend to keep very many scales around so you can know how much your produce weighs anymore.  (When I was a kid and walked up a hill two miles in the snow to get to the grocery store there were two scales on every produce aisle.  Now you have to walk in circles trying to find one).  Stores like Aldi and Trader Joe's (who are owned by the same company) do not use scales for their produce, they sell their food o