Sabby Ann

With Eric taking night classes twice a week, I have a few hours to myself in the evening. When the weather is nice, I usually just play work in the garden, or take the dog for an extra-long walk. When it’s cool & rainy out, I just run errands and pick up around the house a bit. Either way, I have plenty of time to ponder. 

Tonight I went grocery shopping. Armed with my reusable grocery bags and coupon pouch, and throwing food items in the cart, I started thinking about what constitutes a good wife. 

Is it a good wife that buys her husband hot dogs and potato chips for dinner… knowing that he likes them far more than a stir fry or pasta salad? 

What about a wife who stocks the fridge with Lunchables for her husband… to make sure that he has something to eat at work when there isn’t enough time to make a PB&J sandwich in the morning? 

How about a wife that, when cleaning out the closet, doesn’t throw away the pile of raggedy too-small T-shirts from her husband’s high school clubs/teams… because she knows they have sentimental value? 

Who complains about her husband spending $8.99 on iTunes, but then spends $30 on some sexy sleepwear…?

A few weeks ago I decided to tackle a new craft project: crocheted curtains. I started off using some multi-colored crochet thread with varying shades of blue, purple, and green. I was a bit iffy on it at first, and quickly grew to hate it. I like the colors, but they looked more like a camouflaged ocean. And the camouflage color pattern seemed to obscure the ‘block’ pattern that I was attempting to crochet. 

So I decided to start over, using a solid thread color instead. It’s a fun project, and since I’m using thread instead of yarn, it’s much more portable. The down side is that since the stitches are so tiny (at least in comparison to yarn) that my hands start to cramp up after an hour or two. I’ve used 350 yards of thread so far, and the new curtain consists of a panel approximately 2.5′ long and 9″ tall… and it’s taken about 13 hours of time. 

Here’s a photo of the two attempts, side-by-side.  Opinions? 

Knowing that pork chops were the only defrosted possible dinner item, and that my husband doesn’t really like them, I decided to swing by the grocery store on the way home to pick up some beef. I’ve had a bit of a craving for beef stroganoff lately, so I decided to give it a try. 

I looked up the recipe on my new favorite website, Cooking for Engineers. It’s meant for “people with an analytical mind“, and each recipe is filled with pictures at each step. And to make it truly geeky, each recipe also has a gantt chart listing each ingredient, how to prepare it (i.e., chop, dice, cook, etc.), and when to add it. 

I think it turned out pretty well, though I should have used heavier noodles. I used generic-brand egg noodles, and they broke into several tiny pieces while cooking. The stroganoff itself was good though. 

What I didn’t realize is that Eric dislikes beef stroganoff (or at least “my” beef stroganoff) even more than he dislikes pork chops. And it probably didn’t help that I added a ton of mushrooms. So not even two hours after eating dinner, he made himself a couple of hot dogs for Dinner #2… 

Oh well, I’ve certainly never claimed to be good at cooking!