Shopping With Niecey

Back in August my mom had foot surgery to remove a weird growth, she found out shortly before she was going to come visit me that she needed the surgery. The vacation time was already submitted and she basically had no choice but to cancel her plans to come see me and use that time instead to have and recover from the surgery (she is still recovering but definitely on the mend at this point). During the time that was supposed to be spent with me fell her birthday, I had planned to take her out to eat as her present, the last minute change in plans left me without a present for her nor time to get one so I told her that we would celebrate her birthday next time I visited her, this came over the Thanksgiving holiday. She was working insane hours at work and did not get a whole lot of time to see me so there was no time to go out to eat so I decided to do the next best thing, make her dinner at home. I picked Niecey up from kindergarten that afternoon and told her we were going to make Grah a birthday dinner, she definitely liked this idea. I took her by Grah's work to say hi and inform her that dinner would be awaiting her when she got home, then we went over to a local and cheap grocery store. I did not know ahead of time that they had these incredibly adorable kid-sized carts, Niecey informed me as we walked in, I thought to myself, "Score, I can make Niecey do all the work, she'll have a blast, and I will get an awesome blog post out of it!" And so our shopping adventure began!


1. We got some fresh bread, salad, broccoli and squash for Pa (his favorite, Mom loves it too though). Oh and some of my favorite vegetable in the white fanny may box (mmmm mint meltaways, chocolate being from a bean and mint being a leaf it counts double as a veggie!).

2. Off to the meat department, Niecey decided we should eat cow, I helped her pick a reasonably priced cut (aka cheap), I can't remember what it was only that it is technically used in roasts or something, I cooked it like a steak as I do most cuts of beef. As long as it tastes good I do not mind having to chew my food, good exercise, hehe. I got tired of carrying her coat and discovered the second use of the cart's flag. (Faces blanked out to preserve innocent bystanders' privacy.)

3. Cutting through the frozen stuff section.

4. Niecey was ready for her closeup! We got the fixings for cupcakes since it was a birthday celebration and Auntie Kee is an awesome cupcake maker but a not so good cake maker (unless she buys it from the bakery).

5. We also picked up some fruit and milk. And of course mushrooms for Auntie Kee's signature mushroom gravy (which damn near killed her last night when Grah helped her make it, note: make sure Grah is not going to add greasy "drippings" to gravy after it already has olive oil and a touch of butter in it, GI nightmare!).

6. Niecey had to load the groceries on the conveyor belt. The clerk warned me not to let the managers see me taking pictures, she was really nice, I told her I would throw a fit and write a really mean blog post about the store if they tried to stop me from taking pics of my adorable cart slave! Guess they made a no cameras policy after some idiot teenagers had recently gone in the store with one in a gorilla suit videoing him rampaging through the store and scaring the crap out of young kiddies, jerks!

7. Another cute pic of her loading the groceries on the belt.

8. Of course she had to bag them too, I did help, didn't want everything all squished!

9. I was too busy cooking and keeping my assistant cook busy and safe to take pics while cooking and then we all descended on it like rabid dogs when I was done so the only food pic is of the cupcakes. We got 50 candles and had them all stuck in the cupcakes and lit, I wanted a pic but the heat of all those cheap and small candles had them last maybe 30 seconds after they were all lit! I had no idea how much light and heat would be put off by that many candles, it was really neat! I took this pathetic pic of them after we pulled the candles out, imagine them looking like they are all on fire and you've got what it looked like, hehe.

All in all it was a lot of fun shopping and cooking with Niecey. She can be a pain in the butt to get to eat but I have noticed that the more she helps make the meal the more she is willing to eat it. Too bad that small helpers can make the job take a lot longer than it normally would! When I am not in a hurry though it is definitely amusing to let the kiddo help out, she is soooo proud of herself when she does and it is nice to encourage her to develop new skills and it is generally good quality time spent together.

Tasty Tuesday Two: Taste the Rainbow

OK so I procrastinated and it is not technically Tuesday anymore but I am going to pretend it is and it is my blog so I can, hehe. It has come to my attention that at least one of my readers struggles to eat veggies and so this post is dedicated to Nonna, hopefully it will help her get her 5 a day of fruits and veggies as is recommended. The little icon on my raisins (above) says that one should eat all kinds of different colors and so I went through my apartment and found examples of fruits and veggies for each color of the rainbow, and here they are:

Red:










Apples













Pomegranates

Orange:










Clementines











Carrots (accidentally frozen)

Yellow:











Yukon Gold Potatoes

(Bananas not pictured since I peel and freeze them and they look weird that way)

Green:












Broccoli












Peas

Blue:








Blueberries
Purple:












Grapes

and bonus:
Brown:







Chocolate (it comes from a bean, beans are vegetables)

I hope that was informative and shows just how easy it can be to get your 5 a day!

And here is a spotlight on nutrition vid and the introduction of a very special guest who is hanging out with me for awhile:



Special thanks to my BFF Pasha who told me about Windows Movie Maker, the end got messed up and his recommendation saved the vid!

Doc Disclaimer: In case you read this I am not living on donuts and sadly both times I have eaten them recently they have made me sick, you should refer me to Dr. Kevorkian since I am not sure if life is worth living without donuts (kidding, don't refer me, cursor away from the psych referral button!). Oh and I am so not kidding about chocolate, it is a vegetable! And it is milk chocolate so counts as dairy too, see I totally do NOT need to see the dietitian. Am I your best patient or what!

A Five Year Old's Perspective on Virology

When Niecey came to visit me back in August she of course spent time in every room in my apartment, this of course included the home office/plant room (and thankfully the bathroom, she was a late potty user and almost didn't get to come because I said she had to be potty using in accordance to the state law to be allowed to visit). In said home office/plant room there is a wall that has dark wood paneling. This nasty paneling is actually featured through much of the apartment. I have seen worse but either way I am not a fan of it. To make it more livable for me I decided to cover/decorate it with my GIANTmicrobes collection and some family pictures. Now I actually like the wall, and so did Niecey. There was one microbe in particular that caught her eye, it is the plush for E. coli.


Every year there is this huge student-run/organized (somewhat mostly, the university seems to have a huge hand in it) campus-wide celebration that lasts a week but the main bash is on the weekend. This occurs in April, usually the weather is starting to get better and the frozen tundra begins to thaw so the fact that the buses are totally rerouted that weekend isn't quite as upsetting to me (I am usually stupid enough to try to work that weekend). Every year I try and make a point to visit the undergrad micro club's display and will often buy a shirt from them (they also sell giantmicrobes and sometimes other stuff). Last year they had made little replicas of bacteriophage (aka phage) out of a styrofoam ball, a wood peg and pipe cleaner and were giving them to whomever bought something from them. I was going to buy something anyway but really really wanted the phage. Phage are viruses that infect bacteria. Well I decided to put this little phage on the E. coli plush and thus my tangent now connects with the original logic train.Niecey can be a very curious child, as are most children her age, and so she wanted to know what that thing was doing on that microbe. I gave her a watered down version of phage:bacteria interactions and how viruses work. I am not 100% how well she understands virology at this point, but she does have some conception of it and this is her rather good interpretation of how it works:


This picture is one of my absolute favorites and I will keep it forever! I plan to eventually frame it, she was so happy that I put it on my fridge that I have left it there for now. I love how easy it is to make a child's face light up and their little chest swell up with pride! That is why I always try to pay attention when there are little kids around instead of ignoring them. A kind word from an adult can totally make their day and not much else makes my day better than making someone else's, adult or child but children are usually easier, lol.

~~~~~
Picture 1: Picture Niecey took when she found my camera, this features some of the microbes wall and some of the plants.
Picture 2: Another Niecey pic, this one features the E. coli plush (football shaped with string coming down) and the phage (round thing on top of plush).
Picture 3: Niecey's depiction of a bent rod shaped bacterium being attacked by two phage, the one on the left appears to be injecting its genetic material into the cell while the one on the right appears to be in the attachment phase.

More Sunday Stylin': Rocking Big Bear's Old Bow

Niecey at 3 years old and Big Bear looking less loved.


When Niecey was very little I found some little teddy bears real cheap at walmart in the baby section. I tried to always get her stuff from the baby section so that she wouldn't choke to death on a button or something. I think this was her first Christmas so she was about 5 months old and of course I had to buy her a ton of presents. Well Baby Sibling didn't have the means to get her a present, both because she was a broke high school student and because she didn't drive (though I took her places when I had time). She saw the cheap teddies and figured they would work for her budget and so bought them off of me. Niecey Poo fell in love with one and it was her second lovie (her first was a beanie baby white wolf named wolfie and it got lost at some point). I am fairly certain her first word was teddy (tuh tuh) and this teddy started her teddy addiction. She lost it and bonded with a bigger fluffier teddy until it too got lost. Then about a year later I was trolling around after work and found myself in the Osco (Osco is like CVS or Walgreen's but usually in the same store/building as Jewel which is a grocery chain in IL, together they are called Jewel Osco) and what did I see but a huge teddy bear that was only like $10, score! I brought this bear home and when she saw it she was quite impressed and toddled over to me and was a little shy at first (it was about as big as she was at the time) so I had it give her a hug and they've been friends ever since. Niecey LOVES to recount this story, while she does not remember what happened I reconstructed it for her and she loves to hear it and tell it. Dad started referring to it as her big bear as I recall and that is how Big Bear got its name.















Fast forward a few years, Big Bear is an extremely loved bear and it is very obvious by looking at it. Originally it had stuffing throughout its body/arms/legs/head. Pretty much all the stuffing was compacted by the frequent cuddling and ended up in the arms, legs and head and the body is pretty much empty. I offered to restuff Big Bear but she does not like that idea at all. Another feature of Big Bear is its satin bow, that is basically her favorite part of Big Bear, she loves the feel of the silky fabric (it is not so silky now but that doesn't bother her) and will often cuddle Big Bear in such a way that she could have the bow in her hands close to her face so she could feel it with her fingers and her face. I was not there the first time the bow fell off, Cheryl reports that she made the most pitiful/traumatized scream when it happened, she had been swinging Big Bear around by the bow and it was just too much for it. Auntie Cheryl and I think Graw got Big Bear's bow back on and it eventually became a regular thing until recently Middle Sister sewed on a new yellow bow since the brown one is getting too old to keep reattaching, thus it became "Big Bear's old bow" and it is a lovie in and of itself. The problem is that she left it in my apartment and I did not see it until after they had driven off. I told her that when Graw comes to visit me that she can bring it back with her and she seemed ok with this for a bit. She is growing increasingly distraught about not having it though.















Tonight she decided that waiting is unacceptable and begged me to mail it back to her, I most likely will do so, I just have to find a box and get enough time to make a trip to the post office which closes ridiculously early here. Mom just found out she is going to need surgery to remove a growth in her foot and so she might not be coming here as planned so that is also a factor. So much for me negotiating a trade, the bow for my new unactivated cell phone she sort of accidentally swiped (it was in her pocket and I forgot to check)! The bow is way more important (seriously) than the phone, not just in Niecey's opinion but in mine as well, especially since I glued my old phone back together so it should be good for awhile longer (I am not thrilled with the new phone and like the old one). I took the following picture hoping it would amuse Niecey and get her to stop crying about wanting me and the bow but it only made her more upset, sigh. Guess I am just not cool enough to rock Big Bear's old bow.