Success! This dish was divine.
Ingredients – chicken, 12 oz jar of apricot preserves, 1 onion chopped up, little bit of crushed red pepper flakes, 1 tsp soy sauce, and a little squeeze of dijon mustard. It was wonderful, flavorful and a little spicy.
Super easy to make and we heated it up the next day and it tasted just as amazing.
Chris’ Rating – 9
Lindsey’s Rating – 8
“The summer during which the new homeowner surveyed his lot with a Bushnell golf range finder and a free iPhone application called iSurveyLite, built a chicken coop near his newly marked property line, and was promptly sued by the neighbor for trespass.”
One Word. Yuck.
Ingredients – 2 lbs stew meat, 1 can whole cranberries, 1 onion chopped, 2 table spoons soy sauce.
I think I overcooked the crap out of this…10 hours on low in the crockpot. The flavor was great but the meat was chewy. It was so disappointing because the house smelled out of this world when we got home from work.
In the future I would use less soy sauce, another can of cranberries and maybe some chopped up celery.
Lindsey’s Rating – 4
Chris’ Rating – 6 (I think he was being generous).
Today marks WEEK ONE! of my latest and greatest idea (and endeavor too a. cook more, b. become a better cook, and c. eat at home 
more!) 52 WEEKS, 52 CROCKPOT RECIPES!
Today I made Applesauce Delight!
Ease of making – 9.5….basically the only thing I had to do other than get the ingredients out of the fridge and toss them in the crockpot was chop up the onions and garlic.
Ingredients – 1 and 1/2 cup applesauce, cinnamon (I just poured some in), red pepper flake (same as cinnamon), pepper (same), 1 yellow onion chopped, and 3 garlic cloves chopped up, 3 frozen chicken breasts. Put it all in the crock pot – I was kind of behind after a long hike with yogi, so instead of 8 hours on low, I cranked my baby up to HIGH! 4 hours later, the house smelled amazing, kind of sweet and I was pleasantly surprised. In all fairness, I borrowed some ingredients from last night’s meal at Terry and Robbi’s (Mashed Potatoes and Corn Bread) and served it all up on a plate.
I LOVED IT! Chris liked it until he found a little piece of paper from the frozen chicken that I had forgotten to remove, but he ate seconds. It was a little spicy and really sweet at the same time and the chicken was divine and tender…yum yum yum.
Lindsey’s Rating – 9
Chris’ Rating – 8
His eyes focused, for a moment, on the contrast of her otherwise pale skin with the flush of her cheeks as she walked towards the spot where he was leaning on a fire hydrant.
“Hello, handsome,” she said.
“Hello, gorgeous,” he said as he extended his hand, palm up, and revealed a bright yellow lemon. “I snuck this from the corner tree for you.” She looked over her shoulder, checking to see if the lonesome housewife that planted the tree last spring had seen, or was seeing, their exchange, and then she took the lemon from him and clutched it in her small hand. It was firm and cooler than the muggy Foggy Bottom air that choked the city this time of year.
“Thank you,” she said. Then she kissed him, and kept kissing him until it felt, again, like the lonely housewife was watching. There was more love in her lips than he could hold in his heart. He broke away and smiled at her – at the old row houses – at the poorly parked cars and the cracked cement sidewalks.
Written from 1:10 pm to 1:32 pm on Tuesday, February 21st, 2012 in my office in Traverse City, Michigan.
Remember to never split an infinitive.
The passive voice should never be used.
Do not put statements in the negative form.
Verbs have to agree with their subjects.
Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be by rereading and editing.
A writer must not shift your point of view.
And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)
Don’t overuse exclamation marks!!
Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
Always pick on the correct idiom.
The adverb always follows the verb.
Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives.
“We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination.” ~ David Lynch
I am not convinced that I will ever understand all of the rules by which I live. Although, it is important to remember that “understand” is not the same as “agree with” or “acknowledge.” Depending on the situation, not acknowledging the rules leads to imprisonment. Stabbing. Shooting. Driving drunk. While in many other endeavors, choosing not to acknowledge the rules is rewarded. Scientific discovery! New methods of communication! Less wrinkles! Longer drive!
Let’s look at the definitions of “imagination”:
The tension in the quote results from two false assumptions made by adults:
It is a necessary chore of life to force myself to question nearly everything, which is another way of saying that I (and you!) should always live life the way I want to live it while acknowledging the rules that need to be acknowledged, deciding for myself which rules are are worth agreeing with and following based on the consequences of not following those rules and my personal beliefs, which rules deserve further study for me to better understand them, and, in turn, lead a fuller and more purposeful life. And while slogging through the life’s muddy pool of rules, I must always actively remember to use my imagination to imagine the possibilities that fall outside life’s staid prescriptions.