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Java Jack's Coffee HouseFebruary 18, 2010

My freshman year of college was spent at Stephen F. Austin State University (SFASU) in Texas. There is now an actual Starbucks across the street from the campus, but I don’t remember if it was there when I was going to school. It wouldn’t have mattered if it was, because I would have gladly walked the few blocks it took to get to Java Jacks!

Java Jacks has WAY better coffee and the store has a much more unique character. They roast their own coffee in-house, and have excellent customer service. It’s been four years since I’ve been there, but we have made many orders for their signature Lumberjack Blend coffee. The last order was 22 POUNDS of coffee! There are many fans at our church.

If you’re ever in that neck of the piney woods, make sure to stop by and order a cup!

Food Interests

PhobiaJanuary 18, 2010

Several years ago I was told that everyone has a phobia of some sort to some degree. I think this is probably true, even though the phobia might be of a very small degree. A phobia is an irrational fear of something, be it an object or a situation/activity. At the time, I couldn’t think of any personal phobias. I thought about it for a few days and then replied with a very very stupid angsty “this will sound cool” teenager answer: the moon. Keep in mind that I was 15 or 16 years old, lol…

In fact, I believe I LOVE the moon. I really like it when it’s full and you don’t need a flashlight to see. What a stupid answer! But hey, I was all into wolves and being cool and stuff. Plus, I had completely forgotten my actual real phobia that I have had since a small child. As you readers may have gathered from the photo, my phobia has to do with sewage in general. I think this sort of bleeds into my slight germaphobia as well. That phobia seems to be localized to my hands, but it is very common. A lot of people can’t stand having dirty hands. I’m not really afraid of it, unless it has to do with sewage, lol.

When I was very young, we lived in a house that had a poorly installed septic tank. When it would back up I had to be accompanied in the bathroom and would become upset when I needed to go because I really really didn’t want to go in the dirty toilet! I would sometimes resort to going in the bushes in our back yard. Other times I would pee in the bathtub and “flush” with the shower head. Gross, I know, but keep in mind that I was very young and terrified!

The roots of my phobia might go back even further to my potty training days. I believe I was training fairly early, but I’d have to confer with my parents on that matter. Once I was out of diapers, I only had two accidents. I only wet the bed once. My other accident happened while I was standing next to my mother, who was kneeling on the floor for one reason or the other. She says that she saw I had begun to wet (there was an audible terrified gasp from me), looked down to what she was doing and began to give me a gentle verbal correction, but when she looked up, I had scampered off to the bathroom, in obvious distress. I don’t know if my phobia started with a general fear of accidents or not.

To exacerbate my phobia, when I was around 9 or 10 years old, I watched the movie It. Granted, watching it again as a teenager revealed that it is actually quite a stupid/corny movie, but as a child who already was terrified of toilets, it was very scarring. It caused my toilet phobia to expand to everything that had to do with bathrooms! I became scared of drains; especially of stepping on them or having to get anything out of them. There are a few scenes in It of blood coming out of the showers and of It (the clown) coming out of a shower drain. I believe there is also a scene of blood bubbling out of a sink drain, but I wasn’t afraid of sinks, although I didn’t like that slit that allows water to drain out so it doesn’t spill over. Oddly enough, the movie didn’t make me afraid of clowns at all, lol.

I remember when automatic flushing toilets were a (scary) new thing. And as with many new technologies, there was some tweaking that needed to be made with most of the new sensors. The early models would flush if you got anywhere near the thing, never mind sat down on it. I was in a bathroom once that once you were in the stall, any movement across the sensor would make it flush. That toilet must have flushed 15 times by the time I got the heck out of there. My first meeting with an automatic toilet was when I was 10 years old when Andrew my dad and I were on our way to Colorado for a ski vacation. We stopped at a rest stop for everyone to use the potty. As I was the only girl on the trip, no one could take me into the bathroom and calm me down enough to use those darn things, so I ended going in the bushes! The worst are the ones that flush if you just lean foward too far while you’re STILL SITTING DOWN. Even now it takes immense will power to keep from freaking out. That happened when I was little and I jumped off the potty and plastered myself against the stall door until I willed myself to sit down again. I can just picture myself catapulting headlong into a stall door and falling out into the isle, heh.

When Alan and I moved into our Waurika apartment, the toilet got stopped up really badly. We tried to fix it ourselves, but it didn’t work. At one point, my friend Dustin was here with us and while Alan was working on the toilet, I heard water start to hit the floor. I went into a panic attack—tearing up and breathing hard. Generally freaking out I guess. Dustin told me to stay put and they both cleaned the floor so I wouldn’t have to go in there, lol.

When we moved into our house in Duncan, I was under stress for about two months learning to live with a septic tank again. I hadn’t dealt with one since I was a kid, and my fears were still apparent (and highly irrational). We weren’t even having really bad problems, but I still had a very hard time of it. We did have a clog in the pipe below the bathtub, and it took a few days for the plumber to come out. It was actually somewhat therapeutic, even if it was stressful. I was forced to face my fears and use a stopped-up toilet and shower while standing on a small plastic footstool. I am a little better from the whole experience. I’m sure if the whole thing backed up and sewage overflowed everywhere that I would have come out WORSE from the experience.

So, while I still view an easily plungged stopped up toilet as a crisis, still hate automatic flushing toilets, and sometimes have nightmares of backed-up septic tanks, I believe I am on the mend from this phobia. I can’t imagine what having kids is going to do… Maybe it will serve to further desensitize me to the whole thing…hopefully without scarring any of my kids in the process.

Sorry for the potty post! It’s my blog afterall. :)

Interests

Clock AddictionDecember 03, 2009

I’ve had an affinity for unique clocks for as long as I can remember. I don’t buy them very often, but when the bug bites, it bites hard… The desire to buy clocks only comes around about once every one or two years, and can be quite expensive. Here are the more unique clocks that I have at home right now:

The first one is a barber clock. It is and runs completely backwards so when it is hung opposite a mirror, it appears to be completely normal. Mine is running a little slowly as of late… I might try one more new battery, but if that doesn’t work I’m going to have to hunt down a new backwards-running mechanism. The second clock is made out of a genuine 13” bronze Zildjian cymbal. The third clock is self explanatory, heh.

I’m afraid the bug is upon me again… I’ve finished the search cycle, and the clocks that I have found are as follows. Here are the ones that are out of my price range:
That cuckoo clock is probably the only one I’ve found that I like.

Leather clocks:

That cuckoo clock is probably the only one I’ve found that I like.

These are the clocks that are within my price range:

Bronze clocks:

Wood clocks: California redwood root, backwards clock, and cypress tree.

I am buying the musical notes clock to put on my will-have-one-day upright piano, and I bought the red wax-seal looking clock, the backwards wood clock, and the tall skinny steel clock. I would bid on the cypress tree clock if the numbers were in a perfect circle… I would really like to get the swirly clock, but we’ll have to see what my money situation turns up looking like!

Interests

Italian hour! Calzone, Pizza, and Baked PastaNovember 16, 2009

We seem to really like Italian food. I think it’s one of my personal favorites to cook. It’s really fun, and relatively easy. Not to mention extremely rewarding!

This was my first try at making a calzone. It’s arguably not that different from making a pizza, but I do think it’s a tiny bit more difficult, and a tiny bit more fun! Maybe a little prettier too.

I made the crust with a very basic pizza dough recipe from my Granny’s old Betty Crocker cook book. The original recipe says you can use all purpose or whole wheat flour. And if you use self-rising flour, you omit the salt.

1 cup warm water
1 packet active dry yeast
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour

Dissolve the yeast in the water and then add all other ingredients and combine.

For the sauce, I got a can of crushed tomatoes and added a whole bunch of dried seasonings to it. Pepper, salt, oregano, basil, thyme, and sage. I also added some cooking sherry. I let that cook for awhile to let it get happy.

I browned a pound of ground lamb italian sausage in a cast iron pan. I guess I should have drained that, lol. I bought shredded cheese at the grocery store. I got parmesan and 6 cheese italian.

I divided the dough into two equal parts and rolled them into circles. I rolled them on a floured surface of parchment paper. I put corn meal on my pizza peel (to facilitate sliding the finished product into the oven without it sticking) before I transfered the circles onto it. I then added the filling (sauce, 1/3rd pound of sausage, chesse) on one side and folded the empty section over and pinched the edges. Snip three vent holes in the top with scissors. I baked this in a 400 degree oven until it was golden brown. I think that took 10 to 15 minutes.

It was really good! We used the extra sauce for dipping.

This is a whole lot like my calzone entry, but it was so beautiful, it deserved it’s own post.

This is a whole wheat crust pizza. I had to fold over the crust edges like that because I made the dough circle too big for my pizza peel. It turned out a little like stuffed crust, so that was a happy by-product. This project is what made me dump bunches of corn meal on my pizza peel. I was getting very aggrivated with it sticking!

I made the crust with a very basic pizza dough recipe from my Granny’s old Betty Crocker cook book. The original recipe says you can use all purpose or whole wheat flour. And if you use self-rising flour, you omit the salt.

1 cup warm water
1 packet active dry yeast
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour

Dissolve the yeast in the water and then add all other ingredients and combine.

The meat is pepperoni and hard salami.

I used shredded cheese from the grocery store. Some mozzarella, 6 cheese italian, and parmesan. My favorite brand of shredded cheese is Sargento. It’s a little pricey, but it’s often on sale at Homeland, and it’s the BEST next to blocks of fancy cheese. Not as much work, either.

I actually made the tomato sauce from scratch because we didn’t have any canned and we had some fresh that were going to go bad soon. I cut the tomatoes into quarters and put them in the food processor with some peperoncini peppers and a few garlic cloves and dumped the liquid into a sauce pot. I added some cooking sherry and bunches of dried herbs and spices (salt, pepper, thyme, oregano, sage, parsley) and cooked it down until it was thick enough to use.

This is one of our favorite dishes. We almost always overeat when I make this dish.

This is a fairly simple dish to make. Just whip up some marinara-ish sauce, boil pasta until it is al dente and brown some lamb (or other animal) italian sausage in a pan. I put the pasta in the bottom of a 4 1/2 quart casserole dish. I then pile on the meat and pour the sauce over the top. I cover the whole thing with lots of shredded italian cheeses, and throw it in the oven until the cheese is starting to brown.

I’m getting hungry just thinking about this!

Food

Steak, Potatoes, Mushroom sauce, and SaladOctober 26, 2009

I have a lot of these pictures saved up for posts inside my camera, and I finally uploaded a bunch, hence the recent burst of posts.

This was a combined effort between me and my husband, Alan. One day I got a really bad hankering for a complete, old-fashioned southern meal, and Alan thought it sounded good too, lol. This was the very delectable product of said hankering.

Alan grilled the rib-eye steaks (salted and marinated in some oil and spices) over charcoal with hickory wood chips. We like our steaks about medium-rare. He also helped me with the mashed potatoes, which were mashed with lots of butter, cream, and milk. I don’t use any of the boiling water in my mashed potatoes, because I like it full of yummy dairy products. They were also spiced with dried oregano, sage, thyme, and various other stuff, along with salt.

The mushroom sauce was made with the drippings from the steaks, some flour, and sauteed mushrooms. At least, I believe that’s it. It’s been awhile since we did this. The salad was simply green leaf lettuce, cucumber, and cherry tomatoes. The salad dressing was our personal favorite made by Bragg: Ginger & Sesame Salad Dressing.

It was a wonderful dinner. We actually had enough leftovers to repeat the entire meal the next day! Everyone needs to do something like this every once in awhile.

Food