Crystal Madrilejos

Does anyone like licorice anymore?

Personally, I love it. But the finding brethren in this tasty pastime proves to be very difficult. We are an elusive group apparently. I inherited the palate from my mother, who in turn received it from her father.

This was my grandfather’s choice (Läkerol has a number of licorice varieties and I can’t remember if this was the flavor he used to like, I just remember it being quite potent.):

Growing up I remember my mother opting for a more conventional choice:

And this is my latest licorice craving:

So if you like licorice, let me know. I feel like I’m carrying the torch all by myself.

-a.

PS – And don’t even talk to me about “red licorice.” Blasphemy!

[Image via Le Bouton]

My dream would be to dress like this every single day. Every piece of clothing on this site is perfect.

–c.

There seems to be a void in the world of tissue box design. For whatever reason, the patterns that adorn boxes of facial tissue are inevitably horrible. And this isn’t a new revelation. Grandmothers across the globe have been crocheting tissue box covers for years now and others have come up with even more impressive solutions. For example, one of my favorite remedies does away with the box altogether:

Since Crystal and I battle the occasional allergen and we have boxes of tissues throughout the house I wanted to try and ease our eyes from the patterned hell. I focused on our bedroom where end table space is limited and access can be a problem. Here was my “solution”:

-a.

The below picture was on Yahoo!’s homepage a few days ago. Michael ‘s face and the word “Bad” both seem to be brightened a bit as compared to the original album cover so some photo retoucher was hard at work, it’s just unfortunate that they forgot to clean up that crackhead’s thumb nail.

And yes, it is ironic that even after all of Michael’s real life facial “touch-ups” the media still feels the need to do their own tinkering. The lesson here? “You’re gonna be the only you that there is or was, so be you, please oh please, be yourself.” -TG

-a.

As we’ve mentioned many times before, this is our first dip into the gardening pool. We’ve learned a lot thus far and have been surprised by many things but nothing prepared us for the vigor of the small, dirty starch balls we call potatoes. They grow like mad! Our garden rows are packed and our build-as-they-go container is even more so. We literally could not dig up enough dirt to keep up with them. We had to give up and just let them go. This is the picture we posted before of the container right when the taters started to sprout:

And this is how far we got in building up the sides of the container before the potatoes got out of control:

Some of the plants are blooming which means there are potatoes down below. We got a little shovel-happy and decided to dig up one of our Yukon Gold plants, below was the yield:

Needless to say, they were so, so good. For the rest of potato plants we’re going to let them bloom and start to die a little before we harvest them so the potatoes can continue to grow and it’ll allow some time for their skin to toughen up a bit as well.

-a.

I’m 28 years old and Crystal’s brother is about to be 23. Five years doesn’t seem like that much, but there’s a definite generation gap.

For example, one time he asked Crystal what websites she used to go to when she was little. Websites? Our computer use was limited to heavily pixelated games, banners that we’d print out on a dot matrix printer and then color in, or maybe if we were feeling studious, some Mavis Beacon typing exercises. We didn’t have this Internet thing.

Another example: One time we were watching TV and a Ford commercial came on with Journey’s “Any Way You Want It” featured in it. He turned to me and said, “Can you imagine these studio musicians totally getting into this song when they were recording it for this commercial.” I said, “What! This is f*#@ing Journey, man!” He simply didn’t know. The name Steve Perry means nothing to him. It’s a shame.

And lastly, his generation loves sour candy.

-a.

Out of all the things I wanted in the garden, lettuces were right near the top of the list, which went: potatoes, lettuces, corn. See, I told you it was near the top. And I’m happy to report that our little leafy greens are flourishing. They’re to the point where I think we totally overdid it. Note for next year: A full row of arugula is way too much. I think we were arugula-deprived heading into spring so we overcompensated, and then some. But, there are worse things than having too much arugula, like having no arugula.

All the varieties we planted (Swiss Chard, Green Oakleaf, Lolla Rossa, arugula, Red Romaine, Tango, Gold Rush, spinach, kale and some all-inclusive mesclun mix) are up and producing wonderfully. There’s nothing like picking fresh, fragrant salad greens minutes before a meal.

Below is a picture of our first salad bounty. These are just the thinnings.

It’s nutty to look at the above pictures because they were taken a little while ago and the lettuces are so much fuller now:

-a.

Ever since we cleaned out our barn for use as a woodshop we’ve (Crystal, Crystal’s bro Tomas J., and I) have been collecting “stuff” that we feel could be used for something in the future. I’m always happy when I actually get to use this “stuff.” It makes me feel like I’m breathing new life into something, and I’m not just a hoarder. Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on a little outdoor coffee table of sorts for my parents that utilized some of what we’ve collected. My folks have a seating area on their porch and needed a table to accompany a bench my Mama recently painted. So I scoured the barn and put a table together with materials that all had former lives at one time.

1-2) For the frame I used an old rusty, musty thing we found in Crystal’s parents’ backyard. After some of my elbow grease removed and sealed the metal from future rust it turned out pretty good.
3) The majority of the tabletop was this piece of wood. I’m assuming it’s pine. When in doubt, just say it’s pine. This picture is of a leftover section.
4) The board in image 3 wasn’t quite wide enough so Tomas J. and I cut it in half and added a strip from a scrap piece of 4×4 in the middle. Again, the pictured piece was leftover from one of the ends I cut off. To finish the top I put end caps on each end to hide the ugly end grain. (The word “end” made up 17.6% of that sentence.)

Below is the finished product.

-a.

We have two new additions to our yard for the summer!

Andrew set up a horseshoe pit (which is fun, but totally dangerous). The stakes are distanced 40 feet apart and set in the center of 4′ x 4′ patch of dirt. Most people use sand to absorb the impact of the horseshoe, but we make do with what we have. There are a whole set of rules that I have yet to memorize, but you can check here for further details.

The other game I call the Ring Game, though I’m not sure if this is the real name. I did a tiny bit of research and some places call it the “Bimini Ring Game” and others call it “Ringing the Bull” and the basic idea is to swing a ring attached to a string and try to get it on a hook attached to a wall or in our case, a tree. Andrew learned about the game from his Mom who saw it being played in Florida while on vacation. The versions I’ve seen online have fancy plaques but we went the simplified route. It’s surprisingly fun and frustrating.

–c.