Recipe for Spaghetti Squash

I got this from cooks.com.

1 spaghetti squash
2 tbsp. butter
Pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cut squash in half lengthwise. Remove seeds. Spread butter over each half. Place flesh side down on cookie sheet. Bake 1 hour. Using spoon, loosen flesh into spaghetti-like strands. Serve with pepper and butter.


I served this with spaghetti sauce over it after pulling the squash onto a plate.

We first tried eating it without the spaghetti sauce, but it was pretty tasteless with just the butter and pepper. After adding the sauce, it tasted just the pasta. The texture is similar to angel hair. This is a dish I would make again in a heartbeat, though it was too much food for the two of us. Next time I'm going to only cook half of it and try wrapping the other half for cooking the next day or two days later. I imagine cooking it all and then reheating wouldn't be very good.

Toilet Paper

Lately I've read a few articles discussing how old growth forests are being felled for Americans' obsession with soft toilet paper. In the past, I hadn't thought about where my toilet paper comes from, but I am usually conscious to reuse my paper, ever increasing my pile of scratch paper before finally calling a piece completely used (think loose leaf paper).

The first time I read about the old growth forests being used for super-soft toilet paper, I pushed the thought out of my mind. Soft toilet paper makes my day a little brighter...

But I keep reading about these old growth forests being felled. Canada is one of the places this is happening, which I think is a little too close to home. I'm not saying that chopping down the rain forest is a good thing, but it's easier to push the reality behind (yes I do mean behind) my own actions when the trees are so far away.

Social and environmental responsibility aren't always easy. I have to rethink my shopping habits.

Screenplays

When I attended Killer Nashville (www.killernashville.com) last weekend, I learned many things. One of the shockers to me was the length of screen plays. I attended a panel on tricks novelists can learn from screen plays. Screen plays are much shorter than novels. I heard over and over again that they average around 100 pages, but many times less. No wonder so many times the book is better than the movie! I hadn't realized how much less room there was in a screen play to get plot across.

A typical novel runs around 100,000 words, or around 400 typed Microsoft Word pages when double spaced and size 12 font.

Grapefruit

Eating lots of grapefruit can make certain medications not work properly or may actually interact with medicine.

This is a good reason for me to never go onto the grapefruit diet.

Egg Beaters

I tried Egg Beaters recently. They aren't half bad. As far as scrambled eggs go, I couldn't tell a difference between them and real eggs. When preparing the scrambled eggs, I used olive oil, and other times I used vegetable oil. In both cases, the scrambled eggs were pretty good.

Then I tried the store brand. I couldn't tell a difference between the store brand and the Egg Beaters brand except that they're colored a slightly different shade of yellow. Both were yummy. Bye bye bad fats and cholesterol!

I've not tried baking with Egg Beaters yet. If any of you have used them in recipes, please comment on your success or lack thereof. I'm not sure I want to invest my time and other ingredients until I know about a few easy baking recipes in which the Egg Beaters worked well.

Pennsylvania Dutch

According to the Book Crossing Over: One Woman's Exodus from Amish Life by Ruth Irene Garrett with Rick Farrant, there is no word in Pennsylvania Dutch for love. I'm referencing page 28 of that book. Crossing over is Ruth Irene Garrett's true story about leaving the Old Order Amish Community in Kalona, Iowa. She says (and I'm paraphrasing) that when the "English" concept of love is referred to by the Amish that they use the German word for it, "liebe."

Twinkies, Paint, and Toothpaste

When I was at Mammoth Cave in Kentucky last week, the tour guide was talking about the various minerals on the walls of the cave. There is a mineral there that is in Twinkies, Paint, and Toothpaste, though I can't remember for the life of me which mineral it is. The tour guide said that they asked the Twinkie people why it's in there and that the Twinkie people said it's what gives the cream filling the fluffiness.

I'll never think about Twinkies the same way again, though I do love them :)

Audio Books

The Nashville Public Library has downloadable audio books! They use two different services, Overdrive and Netlibrary. So far I've only used Netlibrary. This service doesn't allow the listener to burn CDS but does allow for downloading to a computer, MP3, etc. At first I wondered how they could restrict the burning of CDs, but then I realized that the book is one giant file. It doesn't fit onto a CD. The reader has to agree to delete the file after the 3 week checkout period. Overdrive does allow CDs to be burned but the file stops working after the checkout period.

I'm already halfway through my second book. I recently bought a treadmill with built-in speakers, so I've been taking my computer downstairs and just running a chord between my laptop and the treadmill so that the book plays directly off the nice speakers. I like the added motivation to exercise.

I love libraries :)

Website Design

After several unsuccessful attempts to design jenbluekissed.com using a few different software products, free trial downloads, and basically ripping some of my hair from my head, I was about ready to throw in the towel a few weeks ago. Do I really need a website?

My frustration wasn't with html code or anything as advanced as that. No, I don't understand html code and probably never will. I couldn't get my pages to link up to each other using graphic based software.

Thank the stars I found www.wix.com. I'm almost finished with my website design. After a few hours I had accomplished more using Wix than I had in several months using Web Easy. My website should be up soon, I'm already thinking of ways I can make it even better. Now that I know I won't need a daily dose of banging my head against the wall to line up my pictures or insert text, I'm a whole lot happier. :)