Chicken Pot Pie

I bought an oven! It's a tiny bit of a thing, and the whole thing shakes and hums when it's it's trying to heat itself up, but I love it so.

I don't have pie plates, so I used my Korean metal soup bowls instead. In the future I might pre-bake the bottom crust because it took a little time to get crispy on account of the bowls being quite thick.

Filling:
- Chicken (breasts or whatever) cut up into chunks and sauteed in a little bit of oil.
- Onion, celery, garlic, carrots, any other vegetables you like. Add to the chicken.
- Few tbsps of flour, stir to coat everything

- Chicken stock, add to make a thick stew-y consistency
- Bay leaf, basil, oregano- Let everything jam together in the pot a while.

Crust:
- 1 1/4 cup flour
- 1/2 cup cold butter
- 1 tsp salt
- ice water

Chop up the butter into the flour until it's pea sized chunks. You could use a blender or knives, or your hands but as a last resort because they'll melt the butter and you really want those chunks.

Add water 1 tbsp at a time until dough comes together in a ball. Cover and refrigerate for a half hour. At this point you could also freeze some and save it for another time. Look at you, thinking ahead and everything.

After it's chilled out divide the dough about 2/3 and 1/3 for the bottom and top, respectively. Sprinkle a little flour on the table and roll it flat using a rolling pin, or an empty wine bottle, or a broomstick. After every 2-3 rolls flip the dough over so it doesn't try to become one with the table.

Drape the dough inside the bowl, add filling, put on the roof. You can make some nice wavy edges, or just pinch it together roughly and say you were going for the 'rustic' look. Cut a few slits for the steam to escape then brush with a lightly beaten egg so the top comes out nice and golden. Bake at the bottom of the oven on 400f/200c (?) until the crust is nice and crispy.

Eat it already.

Plant Bebes

Here are my bebes, asleep in their egg carton beds.

Here are my little radishes, who are totally dominating the egg carton community right now.

I have lettuce, endive, rashish, bok choy, carrots, basil, tomatoes and beans! The only thing not yet sprouted is the lettuce, it's still in hiding. As soon as I finish my next carton of eggs I'll be planing my strawberries!

Aren't plants magical?! I mean, aren't they?!

I Want to be the Principal

The principal is the coolest, most popular kid in the room. Any room. The principal can tell you to do anything, and you will do it and then think it's awesome, great and wonderful all together. The principal can never do anything wrong. It's impossible! He takes the elevator in the metaphorical game of snakes and ladders because fuck ladders, he's the principal.

The principal's dance moves are the greatest dance moves ever invented. You should cheer loudly for him so he knows. When the principal walks up to you, limbo bends backwards while doing the Arsenio Hall fist pump, it's the most amazing thing you've ever seen. He doesn't even know Arsenio Hall, he just made that up right then. Even when he kneels down and shakes his head wildly, you might think it's not even dancing, but you're wrong. That is dancing and he is dancing and you should be too.

The principal says the funniest things you've ever heard, and you should laugh accordingly. The principal invented comedy, and laughing, because he is a kind man. When the principal goes up to every woman in the room and does the double finger gun shoot, it's funny every time. Every single time!

The phys ed teacher follows closely in the principal's example. When he wraps toilet paper around his head it's amazing. When he shoves more strips of toilet paper in both ears and nostrils, it's double, even triple amazing. Add a bottle cap in the eye and it's like awesome is a tangible thing and if your eyes could reach out and touch it it'd feel like a bald head wrapped in toilet paper with a bottle cap for an eye.

When I grow up I want to be the principal. Or God. In that order.

Exerpts from a week

I went to the doctor twice this week. Once for a cold of which allowing my body to heal itself seemed far too strenuous. Conversation with the doctor:

Dr 1: Medications...hmm...have you drank the cold water?

Me: I believe the correct answer is....no?

Dr 1: Ahh, okay okay, medications yes okay.

The next day....

Me: After I landed on my butt doing a 9 meter cliff jump my back feels out of place. Also, I was in a bike accident a couple years ago and landed on my shoulder and now sometimes it feels like it pops out of its socket.

Dr 2: Uhuh, uhuh...you habeh bery bad posture. Causeh back pain.

Me: .....really? Posture? Not the 9m bum drop? Okay, how about my shoulder?

Dr 2: Back is apffect shoulder.

Me: My shoulder problems started first.

Dr 2: Pleasuh, do leg stretching exercisee and lie down on this heatuh pad 15 minutes.

Me: Swell.

Also, I planted a garden and I have little radish sprout bebes! Photos to follow...

The extent of my accomplishments today...

Kleenex box monster ftw! Inside are little styrafoam balls marked with the students attendance numbers so I can randomly call on kids, much to their dismay I'm sure.

This is kind of like that short story The Lottery. My grade 11 English teacher made us reacreate it, using little scraps of paper, and one was marked with a hand drawn circle. I was so surprised when I opened my hand and saw the big lead mark, but perhaps more surprised when our teacher, Q, looked around the classroom and grabbed a handful of orange peels off her desk. She dealt them out in small pieces to everyone in the room and they got to whip them at me while I sang the national anthem at the front of the class. I'd like to have a look at that lesson plan, but you know what? I never forgot what that story was about. Wait, wasn't that story about someone being killed?

I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking, "B-tang, what were you going to do with the ladyfriend juice-box doll? What clever feats of wit were up your sleeve?"

Ask, and ye shall be answered. Behold a ms-paint rendering of what I would have done if there weren't people in my office now who would look at me strangly if I were setting up a puppet diorama.Was it worth spending most of an afternoon on a joke about circumcision? Depends, was circumcised spelled correctly?

I'm a waste of space.

Minor Overreaction...

As it turns out, my juice-box couple were actually just hiding in my garbage drawer. I might have put them in there myself, in fact I definitely did, because I keep that drawer locked lest my co-workers see what's in the drawer and think I'm more insane than they already do. Allow me to explain.

My office doesn't recycle. I mean a system by which one could recycle simply does not exist. As a decent human being I find this repulsive and uncomfortable andI am physically incapable of putting perfectly good recyclable paper into the garbage can. I used to work at an office where I convinced a conservative politician to put scrap paper back into the printer so we could use the other side. I belonged to a compost club at university (it was really less of a club and more of smelly people carrying their rotting food garbage to school in buckets). I really can't throw out paper.

My solution was to save all my recyclables and take them home and put them into my own recycling bag. I don't actually mean my own, becuase my school didn't get one for me, so I steal my neighbour's from time to time. Anyway, the problem here is twofold: first I'm both lazy and forgetful so I have a drawer in my desk that's full to the brim with recyclables, aka garbage. Secondly, the drawer was actually intended for my purse so I could lock it away safely from the children's sticky fingers, but apparently I think used paper is more important than my wallet.

I work in an office with three other people. I assume they catch me from time to time shoving fistfuls of paper into the drawer, and I imagine I must look like a crazy badger to them. It's even worse when I have to empty the drawer and shove all the paper into a reuseable bag and then carry it out the door with me. "Why is the foreigner hoarding garbage?" "It is probably to cure her aids."

Welcome Back...

Remember this guy? Well in the days leading up to vacation I made him a fabulous girlfriend. She had green underpants and long pink hair and together they kept me company during the long, lonely deskwarming days. We laughed when the admin forgot to turn the heat on for me...everyday. When I ate ramen noodles everyday they told me how good they smelled and they were sure that the seasoning packets contained at least half the daily recommended intake of vitamin C and E. I left them perched atop my computer monitor (foul language speech bubbles removed) so that they'd be there to welcome me back. Instead, someone has taken the liberty of chucking them in the garbage while I was gone. Now all I have left to remember them by is one tiny hand that was hiding behing the keyboard when the slaughter happened.

This is elementary school. There'll be no silly puppets or crafts around here boy. We've got a reputation to uphold. Now go sing the 'wah do warry warry' song 17 times.