Kickin' It Old School

Recently, a new store opened in my little hamlet and I have to tell you, it's one of the best things to happen here in quite some time. The store is called The B.T.C Old Fashioned Grocery and it carries local produce and meats, fresh bread, farm fresh milk and eggs, bulk foods, and spices. They also have a variety of ethnic food stuffs and premium beers that are hard to find in this town. They have daily specials and their baked goods are delicious with a hot cup of coffee. They even have a fenced in play area inside the store for the kiddies so parents can shop without worrying about their children touching all the produce or breaking anything.

To me, the great thing about The B.T.C is that we only have a farmer's market here once a week. Now I can run down to the end of my street SIX days a week to find something to whip up for dinner. Since most of their produce is local, I'm helping out the farmer's in my area.




I bought green beans yesterday. Here's how I prepared them for lunch today.

Roasted Green Beans with Steak Spice

Ingredients:

1 lb. fresh green beans

1 TBSP olive oil

1 tsp steak spice

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Trim ends from green beans and place in large mixing bowl. Add olive oil and steak spice. Mix with your hands, making sure the beans are all evenly coated with oil. Bake for 20-25 minutes, turning the beans after 15 minutes.

Single Motherhood: Day Three

After spending every waking minute for the past two and a half days reading about the Cold War, and having made it no further than what happened in 1950 at the 38th parallel, I decided to treat myself to a little retail therapy. Having recently received a windfall of graduation money, I decided to go looking for a couple of new nightstands and a piece of art to hang over the bed. I thought this was the best thing to do with the money because between you and me, it looks like we decorated the bedroom by picking pieces of dilapidated furniture from dumpsters and trying to pass them off as our own minimalist, chic style of decorating (if you call wrought iron, glass topped endtables serving as nightstands chic).
If you've never really been to an antique store in Oxford (I can only speak for these antique stores because they're really the only ones I've ever been in), you'll know that there is a ton of garbage in these places that isn't half as decent as the "chic" furniture we have now, but they put an expensive price tag on it and call it antique. The other thing about the antique stores in Oxford is that the things they carry are not all antiques. In every single store there are booths rented by local artisans looking to sell their contemporary wares at what is, in my opinion, also not worth the price on the tag. Don't get me wrong, that piece of tin that someone painted off-white was pretty bad ass, but for $49 I'll let it sit there until it rusts. I could do the same thing with supplies from Home Depot for less than $20. (Hmm, a business idea in the making?)
At any rate, I couldn't find anything I was even remotely interested in--minus that piece of tin and a $300 painting of the Oxford Square--but David was really interested in finding a cool, old toy that none of his other friends would have. As we were looking around we saw a really cool Lightning McQueen bedside lamp, an "antique" train (I use the term antique sarcastically here because that train wasn't made before 1990, I'm sure of it), and a couple of other things that interested him. But what FINALLY caught his attention was a bucket. A very large bucket. A TWO GALLON bucket. And this bucket was FILLED with old Happy Meal toys. I was not enthusiastic about bringing home a gigantic bucket of toys since there isn't room in our house for the toys he has now, but it was only $5 so I gave in and we bought it.
On the way home, David opens the bucket, and like a kid on Christmas morning, begins to hoot and holler about every single thing he sees. After a few minutes of "Mommy, look! It's Alvin!" and "Mommy! A race car!" he says to me, "Mommy, what's THIS?" He hands me the toy and I almost wreck the van from sheer joy. There in my hand was evidence that I, too, was once a carefree child. The object in question was a tiny car with a white haired man sticking his head out the window. And this was not just any car, or any man. It was the Delorean, driven by Doc from Back to the Future. And for one moment, I was so glad I bought my sweet angel baby that gigantic bucket of crap.