In case you were wondering, this is how Queen B. sings when she’s been drinking vodka fruit shooters.
In case you were wondering, this is how Queen B. sings when she’s been drinking vodka fruit shooters.
In the theme of our (newly adopted) organic living, we would like to share with you the making of real vanilla extract. Real vanilla extract is expensive, so we have been known to purchase to the cheaper version which is imitation vanilla extract, still $4 a bottle. However, the first ingredient is water, and the second is propylene glycol – what the hell is that? The eighteenth ingredient on the list, finally (after alcohol, which was the only ingredient we recognized) was ethyl vanillin.
So we decided to make our own vanilla. If Ethyl can make vanillin, so can we! And we’ll save tons of money!!
#1 – Buy vodka. As it turns out, newly-voted-member of the mission committee at church Queen B. hunkers down next to the floorboards of the truck, while Honey purchases two fifths of their best vodka. Current savings: -$34
#2 – Buy vanilla beans. Go to Good Food Store and purchase $28 of organic vanilla beans from Madagascar, along with various all-natural supplements to assist with weight-loss, and glass bottles (no doubt organic, because they’re in the Good Food Store) to put the vanilla in. Followed by lunch special of tofu egg salad made with vegan-aise, organic hokey-pokey, dried apricots from the bulk section, and a bag of raw milk cheese curds that were eaten while shopping. Current savings: -$136
#3 – drive to Queen B’s house because she has the tools – funnels, kitchen shears, and homemade brownies – in Honey’s 13 miles-to-the-gallon truck. Stop for gas on the way. Current savings: -$170
#4 – Sample the vodka for freshness. This involves closing all the blinds so that any other members of the church mission committee don’t witness it.
The church mission committee
#5 – Bottle the vodka with 4 vanilla beans in each jar until we run out of beans. What do we do with the extra vodka?
#6 – Sample a little more vodka, to celebrate our frugality and good sense to make our own vanilla. Toast the impending ruin of the propylene glycol farmers. We could probably sell our vanilla on Etsy. Toast our future success as entrepreneurs.
#7 – After some toasts, Queen B. admits that she was known for her vodka fruit shooters in college, and would like to pass down the traditional recipe for future generations.
#8 – Out comes the blender, and the perfecting of the recipe ensues. Oh Honey we really shouldn’t let this vodka go to waste, besides, we need to drink all the evidence before your father comes home.
#9 – First try at fruit shooters. This is good stuff, but we need more pineapple juice.
#10 – Second try at fruit shooters. This is seriously yum, next batch needs more orange juice
#11 – Third try at fruit shooters. OMG this stuff is frickin’ amazing, add more vodka!
#12 – After six tries, we have the recipe just the way Queen B. thinks she remembers it.
#13 – Dad (Left Brain) calls on his way home from work, Queen B. gets the giggles and hands the phone to Honey who tells him to pick up Chinese because we’re too drunk to get anywhere near the stove to cook. Current savings: -$212
Bonus Feature: Queen B’s Perfected Fruit Shooter beverage, circa 1977.
Quantities are a little fuzzy, but we’re sure this is very close:
Pour your preferred quantities of OJ, vodka, and pineapple chunks in juice into the blender. Add a couple drops of coconut extract and ice, and blend until frothy. Stab pineapple chunks and cherries with plastic swords and add to the drink – if they land on the floor just throw them in anyway, the vodka will kill all the germs. Drink with a straw for additional effect (sucking all the vodka off the bottom).
Note – Change of business plan from Queen B. and Honey’s Etsy store – scratch selling vanilla extract, we’re going to sell frozen fruit shooter kits. This stuff is awesome!
PS – We were going to take a picture of what we did, Pinterest-style, but Queen B. wouldn’t get off the floor – she had her face plastered to the sliding glass door that had snow on the other side, trying to get rid of the gin blossoms before we took a picture, where she fell asleep.
So last summer, I decided I wanted a new job. I’ve been in my current area for four years in March, and stagnation has set in! I start applying for jobs and hitting up every contact I had in my chosen area – the work paid off, and I am starting a new job tomorrow!
Its a very high-census ICU that has some majorly sick patients (hem/onc) which should be incredibly challenging. I’ve never worked intensive care – I’ve worked trauma surgery and on a step-down unit, but ICU is a whole new game for me. I’ve always said that my best days as a nurse could be described as hair-raising, but now that I think about it, I was young in those days and I drank a lot…lol
Passing the time waiting for a trauma case!
But anyway – I bought navy blue scrubs in size Tent and more of my favorite Smartwool socks, dug my white Birkenstocks out of the closet – and tomorrow is my first day! Cue the nervous diarrhea, and I’m crossing #19 off the list!
Max is our sweet Lab/Golden cross – when we adopted him five years ago, he was a spry 10 year old – but now at 16 his face has gone almost completely white, and he’s gotten arthritis in his back legs and hips. We’ve been worrying about his decline, as he’s had more trouble with the stairs and going from sitting to standing. He really liked his new memory foam bed, but he still was very stiff – so I decided that some how I would find a way for Max to get a massage.
Marmot and Max on Max's memory foam dog bed!
I had heard a rumor that there was someone in town who did canine massage, so I Googled it and found her, and she came out to the house a week later. She spent over an hour with him and the next day, he obviously felt fabulous because he was running in the yard again! We’re thinking that with how great he seemed to feel afterwards, we might do regular visits with her!
So for #68, I wanted to go out to a nice restaurant with Marmot, and have the server take a picture. We went out for an anniversary dinner to a really nice seafood restaurant (oysters on the half shell, ooh la la!) and had an amazing dinner. And as a total romantic bonus, the couple one table over got engaged while we were having dessert. Totally adorable. 
I don’t know about you all- but for Queen B. and I, it is now that time of year again. The moment when we wake up from our Christmas-sugar-cookie-induced comas and realize that we’re fat asses. It usually comes up in a discussion a few days after Christmas, sitting at Mom’s kitchen table, eating the remains of the Christmas baking frenzy. We start the discussion with a review of past diet disasters, ending with a decision on which way to go this year.
We realized this year that between the two of us, we’ve been on every diet known to man. So as a public service, we are going to share our vast knowledge in order to help you decide which diet to do for 2012.
Atkins
HB: Well that is the diet of cheese, and I love cheese.
QB: Except that cheese binds you up, and you only lose weight when you poop.
HB: Yeah, and its a doozy when you do. Like make sure you’re at home, its going to be a three-flush incident.
QB: Oh no, you can’t poop at a friend’s house when you’re on Atkins. If you’re going to clog a toilet, you want to do that at home. In fact you should just carry the plunger with you every time you go to the bathroom, just to be safe.
HB: But on the plus side, its all-you-can-eat bacon.
QB: But after a couple tries on Atkins, you can burn out on bacon. Heed my warning, because I’m off bacon until at least 2014.
HB: And don’t forget the carb withdrawals, I wanted bread so bad that I would have eaten cardboard if it was dipped in sugar.
QB: But remember the sugar-free gum? I ate three packs of it in a day and had a bowel malfunction.
Weight Watchers
QB: Oh yes, this is my personal favorite.
HB: Until you go to the meeting, and someone gets a lifetime award for losing 12lbs.
QB: Anybody can lose 12lbs. I had a 12lb bowel movement on Atkins once.
HB: Well I’m still paying the monthly fee that I signed up for last year if you want to go again this year.
QB: Why do you have to pay even if you don’t lose weight? There should be a money-back guarantee. If you gain weight, they give you the judge-y face.
HB: Oh yeah, that time you gained 8lbs in a week. Judgmental bitches.
QB: It was fruit! They did NOT say that fruit in syrup is not actually fruit. I had 14 cans of peaches in heavy syrup, and drank the syrup. I was being healthy!
HB: Well I can’t afford to go anymore unless they start giving credit for buying crap. I have the measuring cups, scales, cookbooks, granola bars the size of postage stamps, water jugs. I have an entire Weight Watchers room in the basement.
Grapefruit and Cabbage Diet
HB: Did you know if you eat too much grapefruit, that the acid will burn your bum hole when you poop?
QB: That’s if you poop. When I tried it the gas got so bad from the cabbage, I was afraid to bend over and risk shooting grapefruit seeds out my ass like a machine gun.
HB: And the canker sores from the acid, its no joke. I had canker face.
QB: I didn’t want to say it then Honey, but you looked like a walking herpes outbreak.
Nutrisystem
HB: I looked at the food online once, and have been psycho called by their customer service department for a year and a half.
QB: That food isn’t even real. I had one of their ho-ho’s, which I think was actually plastic.
HB: Oh Mother, that’s because you were binge-eating next weeks food in the middle of the night and ate the ho-ho with the wrapper still on it.
QB: Is that what that was?
Alli
QB: I can’t afford Alli, unless we’re going to cover all the furniture with plastic. Last time you did Alli, I had to buy a new office chair.
HB: Ohhhhh, the office chair. Well my thinking was, if taking one Alli pill was good, taking two is better right? And I had gas….. But it wasn’t gas.
QB: Yeah think again. You ruined my office chair! You were popping Alli like candy, ripped one, and next thing you know we were dropping the office chair off in a midnight Goodwill stealth donation.
HB: The best part about Alli is going off of it, you can once again fart confidently.
HCG Diet
HB: The only good thing about that diet is the loading days where you eat yourself sick, on purpose.
QB: Five hundred calories a day is insanity! I can pick that many calories out of my teeth after a meal.
HB: That was the diet that you called me crying from the couch because you couldn’t eat anything and all the joy had been sucked out of your life.
QB: Speaking of sucking, we should do liposuction.
HB: Remember that liposuction cream that I had an allergic reaction to?
QB: That was Preparation H.
So this years decision is……..drumroll please……..we’re going all-organic. Stay tuned.
I am honestly shocked that Marmot and I have been married for four years. Not because I didn’t think we would last this long (although there have been moments- hah!) but because it seems like we just got married. But I look back at these pictures and it just cracks me up! Don’t you ever wish you could go back and clue yourself in?? Actually now that I think about it, nahh. That blissful face is just too cute, and really, the realities of cleaning whiskers out of the sink will come soon enough.
follow the b.