Great chicken pasta dish

I find it hard to always come up with new ideas for dinner, and yesterday was no exception. I had a giant tub of blue cheese, some chicken breasts, and some pasta available, so I experimented with that and came up with the most delicious dish! It took 20 minutes to make and is super easy. Here it is:

Serves 3 - 4

2 chicken breasts
Bowtie pasta (or whatever shape you prefer)
cup of blue cheese crumbles
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 whit or yellow onion
1tsp dried rosemary
garlic salt
pepper

1. Boil pasta according to directions on package
2. In large saute pan, add 1tbsp olive oil, onion and chicken. Season with garlic salt, pepper, and rosemary.
3. Brown the chicken and turn the heat down to low.
   
4. When pasta is cooked, drain and pour into the pan with the chicken.
   
5. Add the remaining 1tbsp of olive oil and toss it all around to get the pasta mixed in well.
   
6. Add the blue cheese. Toss it all around again to mix the blue cheese in. The cheese will melt with the heat from the pasta

Things you could add to make it even better (not all, choose one):
Asparagus
Artichoke hearts
Fresh tomatoes

Interesting article about religion and its correlation to standard of living

http://www.gallup.com/poll/114211/Alabamians-Iranians-Common.aspx

I'm very tolerant of other people's belief systems so long as they're not pushing their views on me and condemning me for mine, so I say this with as much objectivity as I can muster:
I found it interesting that Texas is one of the top 10 most religious states, and yet more than 75% of my friends are either non-believers, agnostic, or non-practicing believers. I imagine that's largely due to the fact that I live in Austin. I've always thought of Austin as being like an oasis in the middle of Texas where open mindedness still dominates. That's not to say that I think all religious people are closed minded. I don't think that at all. I do think that to choose a specific religion and to follow it to the exclusion of all other religions closes a person off to all of the other possibilities. I'm just sayin' ;-)

recent observations

There are a lot of cool things happening with the little guy lately:

• He's been talking in sentences, such as "more cheese please" (accompanied by signs for each word), expressing what he'd like to eat (and getting a little pissy when he doesn't get it) for example, he wanted ice cream for breakfast yesterday, but he settled for yogurt.
• Bed time is never a fight anymore. He willingly goes to bed and calls out "I love you mummy!" as I go down stairs.
• He knows about 50 signs and on our walks to the park he enjoys playing "show mummy the sign for....".
  
• He's starting to understand colours and during our walks to the park we play "what colour is mummy's shirt" where I name a colour, he repeats it, and we both say "naaaww!" if it's the wrong colour until we ge to the right one and we nod and say "YEEEEESS!"
• If you say "one, two..." he'll say "three, four, five".
  
• After the recent hail storm, we went out for a walk (because the weather in TX is crazy like that) and he was so amazed at all the ice laying around he kept pointing and saying "Ice! Ice!" (he tried to eat some, too)
• He can build things really well with lego. Last night we built tunnels for his train to go through and he clapped every time the train made it through a tunnel.
• He has mastered the stairs.
  

I have seen other children develop in this manner and I thought it was cool, but you can't really appreciate these small things until your own kid starts to do them, then they become REALLY COOL.

Better 'n gaffer's tape

I feel compelled to give credit to Brian for a couple of things he's done recently.

1) on Friday evening he made dinner. Not Pizza, not Macaroni and Cheese, not something he can reheat in the microwave, but actual dinner. He made Chicken Parmesan. It was delicious.
2) this morning he got up with Trent and let me sleep in because I went out last night and got home very very late (or early if you're counting it as this morning), and I woke up to the smell of delicious cornbread muffins baking. When I came downstairs he made me a cup of tea and served me breakfast.
3) I managed to break the on-off switch from my hair dryer last night. It snapped right off and I thought for sure it was a goner. But Brian fixed it by drilling through the plastic and reconnecting the switch with a screw, which is far better than I was expecting.
4) keeping his clothes off the bedroom floor, and not getting defensive when I point out all of the other things he does that piss me off, but actually trying to improve them.

Ok... I don't want him to get a big head and think he's in the running for HOTY yet, so I'll stop there. So thank you, Brian, for all the sweet things you do for me.

Streak of violence continues

This just in:
Nerves were frayed in classroom A4 of Bright Horizons late morning on Monday when toddler on a rampage, Trent B, continued his recent streak of violence by biting a friend. Eye witnesses reported that the victim, whose name is being withheld at this time, tried to take Trent's chair from him.

There is speculation that the little tyrant issued a warning to the would-be chair thief using a hand gesture and the words "mine! mine!" before escalating the incident, however, no witness is willing to come forward and confirm this.

Nobody was seriously hurt in the incident and the victim recovered quickly from the attack. Trent served a stint in time out and got a jolly good talking to. Trent declined to comment on the incident, but his mother, Amanda B, said "Trent's been testing boundaries lately and trying to assert control over his environment. Just the other day he executed a perfect pimp slap right across my face. You can't learn that kind of violence on TV, obviously we need to determine who is influencing this type of behavior and remove them." Trent's father, Brian "pimp hand" B was unavailable for comment.

Happy Birthday Brian!

Brian turns 28 tomorrow. That means only one year to go until we are the same age ;-)

To celebrate his birthday we had a party at home. It was a great turn out and Brian had a wonderful time. We got to see some people we haven't seen in a while, hang out with best friends, play some Rock Band, and eat some of Brian's favourite foods, which includes pizza and Paula Deen's bread pudding (it's soooo good, yaaaawl). We were even treated to a rock concert a la Trent and Ethan upstairs as they rocked out on the drums. It was so much fun to see them both playing. Jett joined in at least as a spectator. I took some pictures, which I'll upload shortly.

Around midnight I knew Brian was drunk when he opened the back door to talk to those of us sitting on the back porch and he was wearing his drunk smile and slurring ever so slightly as he asked if we'd care for more pizza.

It also happened to be the night the clocks go forward. I don't recall what time we finally got ot bed, and certainly Trent stayed up much later than his normal bed time. This morning Trent didn't get up until after 11am (accounting for the time change). It was so great to sleep in! Today we're complete off, time wise. We seem to be off schedule by a couple of hours.

Trent and I went for a run and stopped at the park to play on the slides for an hour. It's now 4:30 and he's been rolling around in his crib for almost an hour, refusing to take a nap, but not minding hanging out in his crib... I can hear him talking to his bears through the monitor. CUTE!

Today we are going to make a new stepping stone with Trent's hand and foot print.

Pimp slap

Well, it's confirmed... the pimp slap is not a learned trait, but rather, it is a natural instinct in males.

How do I know this??

Last night we were playing in Trent's play room, when I obviously did something he didn't like. He walked up to me and just flat out slapped me. Right across my left cheek. A right proper, expertly executed "PIMP SLAP!". I am not kidding.

Now where the hell did he learn to do that? Certainly he hasn't seen me or Brian do it, and he hasn't seen it on TV because we only let him watch Disney and learning DVDs. Perhaps he learned it at daycare, but the optimist in me wants to believe that those parents live by similar rules as us and wouldn't expose their kids to that kind of violence. So I can only conclude that this trait is genetically coded into all males.

I have to admit I was rather shocked when he did it that I couldn't react other than to gasp. Of course, he didn't get away with it. Brian leapt to my defense like a knight in shining armour and very sternly informed Trent of the right kind of behaviour. I couldn't tell then if Trent was crying from whatever pissed him off and caused him to slap me, or if he was crying because he got told off. But he was soon over it and back to being my little sweet man.

In more positive news, Trent is now putting words into sentences. Last night he actually said "I love you" when he was going to bed, and then we call out to each other as I'm going down the stairs "love you!", "love you!". So freaking cute!

ROCK OUT!

This weekend I was expecting to have my patience tested based on recent toddler behaviour, but Trent was pretty well behaved, or perhaps Brian and I have become more adept at mitigating the meltdown risk. Anyway, we had a great weekend, which included some alone time for me, a visit with Ben for Brian and Trent, a stop n' chat w/Mike and Tara, a trip to Costco where we had hotdogs and churros for lunch, and a new set of drums for Trent.
We found them on craigslist on the recommendation of Andi (thank you). We only paid $30 for them. What a steal. These drums go for $129.99 on Amazon.com and they are in excellent condition. When we went to pick them up, Trent was a little shy, but on the way to the car he got very excited about hitting the drums as I was carrying them. When we set them up for him in the playroom he immediately picked up the drumsticks and started drumming. The kid has rythm! Here are some pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/trent.bauman/February09#