As I’ve mentioned before, there’s a Greek restaurant near my parents’ house that had the best chickpeas. They were marinated in olive oil with onions and spices. I’ve long wanted to get the recipe or duplicate it, but one ingredient always eluded me. The last time we were there, though, the chickpeas tasted off. We suddenly realized the missing ingredient: lemon.
During a Pampered Chef party at CutestKidEver’s house, we found a Greek rub that seemed to contain just the spices we needed. Score!
So here’s my recreation attempt. First, the ingredients:
That would be chickpeas (2 cans), a small onion, the Greek rub and some olive oil. Now, we we chop up the onion.
Drain the chickpeas and pour them into a container.
Now add the chopped onions.
And the Greek rub and the olive oil.
Now mix and marinate for a day or so.
In the end, this was good, but there’s still more to go before I’ve perfected it. First of all, refrigerating it only leads to the oil congealing. Also, the onion taste was way too strong. I might try a milder onion next time or perhaps sautéing it slightly to soften it up and remove some of the strong flavor. I might also make smaller batches so that we don’t have a huge container of a slightly off version. All in all, though, this was a decent first try.
(By the way, this was my first post composed using Windows Live Writer. I’m just getting used to it, but so far I love it!)
This Sunday will be October 10th, 2010, or 10/10/10. (That’s 42 in binary. Random geeky fact.) I figured I had to do something special for 101010. I had the idea to both describe my life 10 years ago today and imagine my life 10 years from now. So let’s step into Doc Brown’s Delorian, power up the flux capacitor, set the time coordinates and travel back 10 years.
My Life Circa October 10th, 2000:
Ten years ago, I wasn’t blogging as TechyDad. I wasn’t a father. I wasn’t even married at the time, though I was engaged. October of 2000 saw me embarking on the second biggest step of my life at the time: moving out of my parents’ house to be closer to B. (The first biggest step at that point was proposing to B.) Up until then, I had always lived with my parents. Even in college, when I lived on campus, "home" was at my parents’ house. But now, home would be a long ways away from there in a new place surrounded by streets I didn’t know and a whole new life.
As I wasn’t bringing any furniture up with me (we were buying all new stuff), I decided to do the move myself. I would drive up with a car load of items, move them in during the week and drive back on Friday. This also meant that I was able to spend the Jewish holidays at my parents’ temple instead of the new one I would be attending. (Unnecessary, in hindsight, but it allowed me to feel like this was more transition than abrupt change.)
The company that I worked for at the time was great when I told them that I was moving. They agreed to let me work from home (though one trip in per month would be required). So in addition to setting up my new apartment, I was setting up a home office.
As I got settled in, B would come to visit my new living space more and more. She would stay overnight often so we decided that she should move some of her stuff in. (After all, she was going to live there in about 8 months anyway.) Some stuff turned into more stuff until we were living together completely.
Unfortunately, and here is where I prepare to issue a decades-long-overdue apology, I was afraid of how my parents would percieve this. While I was in college, my father would visit and urge me to "just walk up to that girl and ask her to sleep with you." (No I didn’t do this. My response was "Even if the girl says yes, that’s just proof that I don’t want to sleep with her!") When B and I began dating though, my father’s conservative side came out. An innocent night of us falling asleep in the same bed (nothing happened, seriously!) earned me quite the talking-to. I was afraid of how he would react to us living together prior to marriage.
When my parents came to visit, I would make B hide her stuff in the closet. It was seriously unfair of me to ask her to do this, but she complied. I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to B for doing this. I shouldn’t have let my fear of my parents’ opinions guide me. If they had a problem with us living together while engaged to be married, that should have been their problem, not ours.
(Ok, getting back on topic now.)
Besides the move, the biggest event in my life at this time was planning our wedding. We were visiting florists, deciding on catering and making decisions left and right. Of course, this planning can be stressful anyway. Toss in moving and having to leave each other every weekend, and October 2000 was both a very happy time (more time with B! Yay!) and a sad time.
Now back in our Delorian we go. This time, we’re off to the year 2020. October 2020 to be exact.
My Life Circa October 10th, 2020:
I’ll begin with myself and radiate outwards. At this point, I’m 45 years old. I’m likely having trouble accepting that I’m not a young man anymore. I’ll probably have a midlife crisis. How this will manifest itself, I’m not sure. I’m definitely not the "have an affair" type. (I only have eyes for B.) I wouldn’t want a sports car. (Even when in my 20’s, I always considered a car by its practical merits.) I’ll probably be the type to get a giant computer system/home theater/network setup of some sort.
B and I will have been married 19 years. We’ll be looking forward to our 20th wedding anniversary and will likely be planning on what special thing we should do. Considering how old our kids will be at that time – more on this later – our 20th wedding anniversary trip might be a Disney World trip sans kids. (Our honeymoon was in Disney World and this would be a nice reliving of that wonderful experience.)
NHL will be 17. He will be a junior in high school and will be considering college. He’ll probably begin planning which schools to go visit and studying for his SATs. Dating might likely be an issue at this point. (Either he will have dated or he will want to date.) As my dating life (pre-B) was none-too-happy, this might dredge up bad memories (worsening my mid-life crisis…. I think I need a new smartphone!) and fumbling attempts to give dating advice while remaining hands-off.
JSL will be 13 at this point and will have been Bar Mitzvohed. He will now join me in Temple and will count towards the minyan (grouping of 10 men that is required for some prayers to be said). He’ll be in middle school and might be looking toward his big brother leaving for school with mixed emotions. (On one hand, more room in the house for him… on the other hand, he will be missed.) He’ll likely be starting to notice girls and B and I will have to handle two young boys looking to seek out some female counterparts.
TechyDad.com will have just turned 12 and, along with TheAngelForever.com, will have been bought out by Disney-Google, Inc. netting us fifty million. Hey, it’s my future fantasy and I can sell out for millions of dollars if I want to!
And now, it is time to bid the future farewell. Avoiding the temptation to take a souvenir of the future back with me (ok, Doc Brown tossed out the sports almanac… something about "being done before" and "ending badly"), I now return to my life in 2010 with a new appreciation of where I’ve been and where I’m headed.
And now it’s your turn. Hop in your own time travel device and describe your life both 10 years ago and 10 years from now. (If you don’t have a time travel device, I’m sure Doc Brown will lend you his Delorian. Just stay clear of lightning.) Submit your blog posts in the linky below:
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On Friday, October 1st, I woke up and went to get NHL breakfast. I was off of work for the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah. This is a fun holiday where you get to dance around in temple. I was looking forward to going with JSL, but it wasn’t to be. As I walked into the kitchen, I saw some water on the floor. “Rats,” I thought, “the dishwasher is broken.” Then I remembered that I hadn’t ran the dishwasher. I looked up and saw it.
A leak. Great. We called T, the guy who fixed our roof and burst water pipe, and he came over quickly. He checked, but couldn’t find any water in the attic directly above the kitchen. He crawled around on his hands and knees but no water. The best we were able to tell, it was coming from the area around a vent pipe. He went outside (in the pouring rain), tossed a bucket of water on the roof and then looked in the attic again. Bingo! A small trickle of water going down the pipe.
T left to get some parts. When he returned, he fixed the seal around the vent pipe. Turns out it had worn away allowing some water to flow through.
After a day like that, you can understand how we were in no mood to cook dinner. Pizza and falafels were ordered and boy were they good!
Today is the last in a long line of Jewish holidays. While I’m not Orthodox, I do stay offline during these holidays just like I do for Shabbat every Saturday. Of course, this year, the holidays fell on Thursdays and Fridays leaving me offline for 3 days straight for 3 out of the past 4 weeks. By the time it was over, I was itching to get back online.
Still, I actually like being offline every now and then. It’s nice to forget about whether this person has a new blog post, whether that person has tweeted something new or whether there’s a new and interesting e-mail in my inbox. Instead, I focus on whether my sons have a new game to play, whether my wife has something new to talk about and what new and interesting things we can do as a family.
My Aloha Friday question for today is: Do you take regular Internet/Social Media breaks?
Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the Linky there if you are participating.
