Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Veggie House

& and Rob built a little greenhouse for plant starts and etc.  They got the finishing touches on it last night and loaded it with our plant babies. We will be putting things in the ground in about two weeks. I harvested a whole lot of weeds in our garden that are LOVING this unusually warm April weather. It is supposed to hit 90 again today.

Not the best pictures of the green house. But it was pre-sun and I was excited.

Four screen shelves for drainage and sun. A top and front that open for easy access. 

And look at the babies. We have teeny lettuces from seeds, baby tomato plants (Heirloom, from seeds saved from the best tomatoes from our CSA last year.) There was a micro Cilantro harvest last night and we will have sage and basil.

Now that we know what's taking off from our plantings a few weeks ago, we'll start some more and pop them in our new plant incubator. And then use it through the fall for herbs and lettuces.

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Awkvard Ramblings

Awkvard!

Is one of my favorite words. It's overused for sure, but it's one that I generally toss out in an, uh, well, uh, awkvard situation. Then I laugh. You might notice that my awkvard is slightly different than the average person's though. We once taught this all-purpose-ice-breaker word to a visiting German. He did a great job using it, but added his own spice. Try it. 

On a side note, we were forced to teach him this word because, well, he wanted to pick up some American style of hanging out and was working on social subtleties. We thought a rousing game of Bananagrams would be just the fun way to interact and help him work on his social "American" English. 
It was fun alright. He did great. However, he kept wanting to spell out anatomical terms. Liver, okay, foot, another socially and family friendly word. But Rob caught him spelling a certain anatomical word that was not appropriate for the younger eyes in the room. Rob explained that to him. It grew quiet. Someone said. "Awkward!" So that then became the word of the night. And has been beaten to death since then but is still good for a laugh in my world. 

So back to my current awkvard moment. Here's my situation... I preloaded a blog post to go up early Monday morning on Sunday night. Apparently my calendar skills are lacking. So instead of Monday, I clicked Tuesday. So now, on Monday night, when I should be posting a blog post for early Tuesday morning, I just can't  because Monday's is still sitting, blinking at me. 

This buys me a few hours, and clearly gives me something to blog about. In case you were wondering, I was going to have to be a bit random anyways. Here's why. Busy, long day. Seven hours at work, home for two to whip together a new recipe for dinner. Then back to work for two hours for a meeting, then back home, arriving just when the Bible study participants started pouring in. 

Now. Quiet. And bedtime. Yes!  So. Let me just post some pictures. Too tired to add the recipes right now, and I must add a few tweaks before I give them to you anyhoo. Here are some pictures of yummy things I've been working on the past few days. 

I'm going to set this to post on Tuesday afternoon. If for some reason you come by on Tuesday afternoon and don't see a post, well, you might guess correctly that I tripped over another of my skill sets and did a face plant. Awkvard.

Scraps and Snippets ~ Peanut Butter Mocha ~ Yum.

&'s coffee shop makes the best Peanut Butter Mocha. It's a frozen coffee drink that is beyond delicious -- if you happen to like peanut butter and chocolate. 

But. The coffee shop peanut butter contains high fructose corn syrup as does the chocolate syrup. But since & knows the "recipe" and has opportunity to think through making this a better choice we've been working on making it reproducible at home. 

She has discovered that flax seed and spinach don't even tweak the taste, and that chocolate syrup can be swapped out for Vegan chocolate flavored protein powder. Coconut, almond or flax milk work great, too. Almond butter would as well, but will change the flavor. 

Peanut Butter Mocha

4 ounces brewed or cold press coffee
6 ounces of vanilla or chocolate non-dairy milk
3 TBSP peanut butter
1 TBSP ground flax seed
2 or 3 TBSP chocolate syrup (or powdered chocolate Vegan protein powder)
1 Cup packed (= what you can grab with both hands) organic spinach leaves

1 to 1 1/2 Cup ice.

Combine all in a high speed blender. Whir. Add one cup to 1 and 1/2 cup ice. (Depending on how thick you want it.) Combine and pour into two or three cups/mugs.

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Law Lessons ~ Murder, Mess and Crime Scene Investigations

What we learned at Citizen's Police Academy...well, two pages of notes later, writing as fast as I could, I say quite a bit.

I asked & and she said she learned that what you see on television is not necessarily true. And she's bummed. I think she's kidding. However, there is some truth in her statement.

We had the detective division and Crime scene investigation question and answer session last night.

In a word, fascinating. But, maybe not so fascinating that it can turn into a hit television series.

The detectives are called in when there is a reason that the uniform division can't clear up a case or situation. An obvious example would be a corpse and no clear reason to assume natural death, or the evidence of a violent death. The detective stated that when they are called in, they assume guilt and that a crime has been committed until evidence shows otherwise.

The majority of the detective's time is spent in interviewing and questioning. The detective spends a whole lot of time on this for some cases. Our local team of detectives is broken into divisions, and they each juggle twenty-five cases (give or take) a month, and each case may take a few to several months to dot all the i's and cross all the t's. Oh, and the average case may contain something alone the lines of 3000 pieces of paper. (Reports, findings, documentation.) He said when things get really crazy he'll have to ask return phone calls which case they are involved with. 

We went through the details of a solved murder case. From the two 9-1-1 calls, to the crime scene photographs, to some important clues, we saw the overview of the process the detectives went through. The lecturer was kind enough to remove the slides that showed the eviscerated gut of the victim. We all learned a very special lesson about Miranda laws, too. However, the killer had loose lips with more than just the arresting officer, and his confession was admissible in the court of law...since he'd told several people about his conquest, walked around in public with blood on his clothes, and a knife hanging out of his waistband.

The next topic of the evening was crime scene investigation. Once again, not real glamorous. The majority of her job is photographing, photographing, photographing. She told us that shows like CSI are entertaining. Really entertaining. But they often depict one person doing the job of ten different people. And shows like that help the public to expect miracles. Crime scene handling has more down and gritty leg work than miracles. And fingerprinting...well, it's great if they can get em and there are lots of variables and science involved in getting one. 

One of her more surprising comments was that she thought she could handle anything without getting rocked when she was going through her master's level courses. Iron gut, a fascination with science and detail, she thought she could be detached and professional. Even though she said she's never had a work related nightmare, she finds that she gets more bothered the more time she's exposed to the harshness of life and death.

Both the Ident-tech (evidence gatherer CSI person) and the detectives mentioned that one never gets used to the smell of a decomposing body. One classmate asked about the Vick's under the nose trick. One of the detectives said that Vick's opens up your sinuses letting more of the stench permeate and that he was told to get a hospital style face mask and put a drop of essential oil inside of it. But, he also said he'd not tried either. On a side note, all the slides of murder scenes showed some pretty pathetic housekeeping issues. One place had tires stacked in the living room. One of our classmates leaned over..."I think your odds of being murdered go way down if you clean your house." So let's all take that to heart.

As for me, I'm pretty sure I'll be content with what I saw tonight. I don't need to see it up close and personal. I'd probably toss some lunch at my first exposure to a bloody tube sock. I'm also pretty sure I wouldn't want to work in the evidence department.

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Law Lessons - Tunneling and Dead Ends ~

A few more thoughts on my Citizen Police Academy time. 

There is so much information and most of it is fascinating. 

One day's coverage was not enough for last week's class. 

I'll have more facts and stories tonight. I believe we are going to pick the brains of CSI. (sorry for the really icky pun...but now that I've made it, I must share.) 

But....here's what else I picked up last week.... Can someone die of extreme shock, a broken heart, surges of adrenaline? I learned about a couple of infrequent but “they happen” scenarios via my Citizen’s Police Academy class. 

Our officers are given tools to help them do their jobs. One of those tools is reading people, situations, body language and other signs. Some examples of this training -- our police officers are required to get blasted with pepper spray so they can develop the ability to work through the pain. Often pepper spray, when aimed at a perpetrator, is going to blow right back into the officer’s face. They need to be able to deal with those sensations and not lose their heads. A police officer is very aware that if they lose their heads lives could be at stake. 

In their preparation they are are also trained to recognize things about themselves and others. Tunnel vision is something real and they are given skills to keep ahead of the mind altering results. In the midst of extreme noise, activity and uber sensory overload the mind will funnel information and block some out. One officer told of a moment of tunnel vision that ended up giving him nightmares. It was a dark night, a tense negation with an armed man. A cruiser shone a spotlight on the suspect's face and the suspect took it up a notch to horror level extremes. The policeman who told the story said that his mind literally closed off all sound and any peripheral vision and he was riveted to the visual spotlight in front of him. When the shot was fired, the officer saw the effects, heard nothing and didn’t know where the shot had come from. He even wondered if he’d shot the man, not understanding until several minutes later that he'd witnessed a suicide. 

Another bizarre condition is called excited delirium. This doesn’t affect the officers, other than complicate their lives. Middle aged men, who have an addiction to alcohol or drugs, who have a big beer belly and the perfect storm of stress, have been known to literally drop dead. When a police officer encounters a man who fits that profile, they are very aware of this type of possible sudden death. Imagine the paper work scenario involved in a death during an arrest. A piece of brain tissue has to be sent out to a specific lab to confirm this diagnosis. It’s real enough that they are schooled about the possibility bizarre as it sounds. 

Our police are also trained extensively on the use of handcuffs. Apparently this is extremely important. I'm so naive. Less so now. Kinda

Scribbles and Scrambles ~ Recipe Tweak-a-thon

By jove, I think I've got it. 

My weekend conquer-the-recipe quest, fueled by Julia Child DVDs, and recipe contests is bearing fruit. 

I'm not going to lie. There was a delicious nugget of gold, FINALLY, at the end of the recipe rainbow. But I had to slog through a few fails before I found it. 

And the other two recipes... One...still a fail...but it was only attept two and the future tweaks are in mind and promising.

The third. Well. Four out of four of us liked it. So it's a keeper. I'm not going to share them quite yet. Gotta send them into the contest first. But. They're coming.

And. Somehow I've ended up finding or buying three more Vegan cook books. Yup. I'm crazed. 

The pictures are of the keeper recipes. Let's just say they are classics with a bit of a twist.

Scraps and Snippets ~ Asian Quinoa Lettuce Cup Filling or Quinoa Fried "Rice"

Asian Quinoa Lettuce Cup Filling or Quinoa "Fried Rice"

3/4 Cup Organic Quinoa
2 TBSP sesame oil
3 organic celery stalks chopped/diced

3 TBSP slivered almonds
2 TBSP rice vinegar
1 1/2 TBSPs soy sauce
1 tsp garlic powder
1 Cup veggie broth

In sauce pan toss non-cooked quinoa and almonds and 1 TBSP of sesame oil. Heat until almonds begin to brown and the mixture grows fragrant, stirring frequently. Add celery, broth, garlic powder, vinegar, soy sauce and rest of the oil. Bring to boil. Decrease heat and cover and simmer until all the liquid is absorbed.

Serves 2-4 depending on whether it's used as main or side.