The Frank Funny Farm » stuff and things

4th of July Festivities

ben — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:54:54 +0000

Editor's note: Megan is gonna die of shock from my posting, but, whatever. she wanted me to post more, so i hope you guys don't mind seeing more food.

We had some friends over last night for a little 4th of July shindig; it turned out rather awesome. As with most of our friendly gatherings it was pot-luck style. I made Ground Venison Burgers with a Coffee Spice rub that were amazing. I also used a purple cabbage and some fresh cord we got from our CSA along with some hot peppers (including some cayenne from our garden!), carrots, lime, red wine vineagar and cilantro to make a spicy southwestern slaw. Keith and Laurie brought along an amazing whole grain mustard warm potato salad. Carey & Jared brought some hot dogs and brats. It was fantastic!

For dessert Megan made the most amazing trifle! Using some peaches from the CSA along with strawberries and blueberries she layyered the fruit with poud cake and an out of this world lemon curd. it was unbelievable.

Jared put on an amazing fireworks display in our back yard that was much more enjoyable than going downtown and standing in the rain amidst all the crazies – a great night indeed.

And as an added bonus, the leftovers for both breakfast this morning (trifle) and lunch today (potato salad) were awesome!

LOOK AT MY AWESOME (early) BIRTHDAY PRESENT!!!

megan — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:02:31 +0000

i'm in a hurry, so yes i was too lazy to rotate the bottom picture and yes this will be short. it's from the 70s some time, so it's got the hi-fi action and oh my sweet lord does it sound GOOD. you can see the radio there and then all those other fancy knobs are for controlling bass, treble and mid-ranges so it can sound extra good as tailored to your personal ears. due to the aforementioned hurry, i'll leave you with this image: that cabinet up there is about 5 inches longer than the back of my rodeo with the seats down. so we wedged it in diagonally and bungy-corded the back door almost closed and the back window up. then we proceeded on the long, interstate-eschewing drive down white bride road in west nashville alllllll the way until it turned into woodmont and finally thompson and had mini-panic attacks at every pothole. and since this is nashville, those were about every 3 feet.

Frigid Fridays Or How I Learned To Stuffed A Deep Dish Pizza & Eat It All

ben — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 07:20:47 +0000

It's cold in Nashville. Before I move on, I don't wanna hear anything about "it's cold in Michigan, waaaaaah..." Bottom line is that it's 14ºF as I type this with the high temp for the last 24 hours being 19ºF and the low 4ºF. I know that's a little warmer than Nashville's record -17ºF low (which I remember), but I don't care who you are that is cold. So cold that instead of going out to have Mexican food with Dan we decided to just stay in, make sure we don't end up with dogcicles and make this awesome pizza wonderfulness.

A week or so ago Larry posted this link to a recipe for stuffed deep dish pizza and it sounded so good that I immediately told Megan that we had to have it soon. Megan got all the ingredients that I would need to make the pizza today and when I got home from work I got to prepping. Megan left to go get her hair trimmed and when she got back I was just slipping my wonderful creation into the oven. The filling that they used in the original recipe sounded alright but I wanted AWESOME. And let me tell you, AWESOMEness was achieved!

Instead of making dough from scratch Megan found whole wheat pizza dough at Trader Joe's which was awesome and a huge time saver. I started with that and filled it with fresh garlic, fresh broccoli, cremini mushrooms, artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes, bacon, fresh spinach, pesto and three layers of mozzarella, shaved Parmesan and goat cheese. The top layer was covered in tomato basil marinara, and more mozzarella and Parmesan cheese.

We enjoyed this deliciousness while watching Ed Harris' Appaloosa. I enjoyed it quite a lot. First of all it's a Western, but the cinematography was really nice and the dialog was fantastic. Viggo Mortensen and Jeremy Irons, along with Harris, delivered fine performances that more than made up for Renée Zellweger's inclusion in the film. All around a good night with my Meggo. But, seriously, the pizza was AWESOME. Just take a look:

For breakfast tomorrow morning I plan on making blueberry chocolate pancakes. Hopefully that will happen because Ive wanted to for a while.

a blog for sarah

megan — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:06:11 +0000

yeesh, you're so demanding. and no my family did not eat us. ok, speedy holiday recap: the friday before christmas we went to the annual white elephant/dirty santa/whatever else you may call it party with our friends, which was also a wine & cheese yumfest. twas fun, we took a giant cocktail shaker that dan ended up with, and a huge stuffed pink unicorn with a sparkly silver horn and purple mane and tale. poor heath, the unfortunate victim, er recipient of our horrible gitft from last year (a spectacular piece of "art" we found at kroger featuring a lovely 3-D tree that looked like poop) got it, but eventually keith took pity on him and stole it for sophia, who apparently loves it. we got this game thingy with $15 inside and some dust mop slippers that we later stuffed in my dad's stocking. and heath brought the poop art back as his gift this year. buy now i'm sure chuck has burned it. so anyway, we left earlyish because we were leaving saturday morning to drive forever to the parentses house and we had not yet packed.

sunday night we went to the "candlelight communion" service with my parents, which was - and i can't emphasize this point enough - THE WORST Christmas service EVER. keys and pitches had no place, singing skills were clearly foreign, and oh my, i must not forget the stellar french horn. it was so very hard for us not to bust out laughing on several occasions. i know you're reading this and thinking i sound mean and horrible and am going to hell, but no - no, no, no. okay, so i might be going to hell, but seriously, words cannot express to you the horrors.

movin on. the rest of the week we cooked and cleaned and stuff because my dad's family came to my parents' house Christmas day. ben & i took out our inner 5-year-olds and convinced mama and daddy to open presents on monday night, which ended in the sterotypical boys-playing-with-their toys in the midst of boxes and wrapping paper. ma sent ben & i money to shop for each other, so he got a couple of old video cameras n stuff i found on ebay, and we got my dad an angle grinder and a cordless screwdriver. they were very cute.

so christmas day was fun and food-filled and good lord do i not need to eat sugar for the rest of my life. we'd find ourselves hungry around 10 pm, willing to give a limb for something salty and finding nothing but sugar in the kitchen. oh look, a cookie...

the day after Christmas is mom's birthday and she wanted to go to this giant seafood buffet place that has all sorts of seafoody stuff, then to see a movie. she & my dad went to see marley & me, ben and i to see the spirit, which was kind of a letdown. we also made mom a deeelightful birthday cake, something called surprise carrot cake. it's a carrot cake recipe, but half the batter goes in a bundt pan, then a tasty cream cheese, sugar, and egg mix goes in, then the rest of the batter. then you cook it and wait for it to cool and eat at least two pieces cuz it's YUM. also, a word of advice: if someone's birthday cake is dusted with powdered sugar, it's best not to hold the cake whilst the candles are blown out, especially if you are wearing a just-washed dark-colored shirt.

saturday we had my mom's family's christmas at my aunt's apartment in greenville, minus my (other) aunt and her two kids. many more cookies were acquired. then sunday (yesterday) we embarked on our return trip to nashville, since we both had to work today. we got about an hour and a half down the road then got to sit on the interstate with the car off for 45 minutes while a wreck was cleared. argh. we got moving again and had almost made it halfway when ben decided i should drive so he could sleep in the passenger seat, not the driver's. he pulled off at an exit he thought had a gas station or somewhere i could pee, but it didn't. as we got off the interstate and turned around to get back on, the car explained to us somewhat violently that it didn't like shifting gears. hmm. we go to the next exit or so which has plenty of stopping options and again, as we're slowing down the car is really not wanting to shift. it gets more and more violent and the check engine light pops on. oh goody. we pull into a gas station, and learn there's no transmission fluid in the car, which is odd, since it wasn't leaking and we had it checked out the week before we left. we have roadside assistance through our insurance, so we called them to get us a tow truck. at 4:30 on a sunday, we figured we wouldn't find anything open. but, in proof that God doesn't completely hate us, the car crapped out in hickory, where my best good friend since i was 9 or something lives. i called her to ask where to have the car taken and see if we could perhaps stay with her and also see how long it would be before she was back in town, as she was driving back from good ol' gates county, too. she informs us we're about 5 minutes from her house. so after about an hour or so, the tow truck comes and takes us to the garage, through erin i learn we can walk to a panera, so there we go and sit for another hour until erin & sister sara come to claim us, those sweet, beautiful, delightful ladies. then they took us to the local brewery where we had glorious beers and some fish n chips. this morning we learned that we need a whole new transmission and the garage is towing our car to the honda dealer. luckily the transmissions in 2001 accords have been problematic so they extended the warranty and we don't have to pay for it. there's also a broken and a cracked motor mount which we will have to pay for, but since they have to pull all that stuff out to replace the transmission, the labor won't be quite as astronomical. anyway, we've had a nice lazy day with the erin and ate some fan-freaking-tastic thai food and shall hopefully be headed back to nashville sometime tomorrow afternoon. one our brief "driving tour" of the big city of hickory today, i spotted our lunch place for tomorrow: this lil organic sammich and coffee shop erin hears is great but hasn't been too. we figured that buying her lunches is the best way we can pay our hotel bill here. so anyway, that is the reader's digest version of the last week. real life and probably blogging to resume sort of soon.

today 1 plus 1 equals 4

ben — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 17:32:30 +0000

so, today is our 4th anniversary. it's kind of amazing that it's been 4 years both because it feels like it's been shorter and longer. 4 years ago right now i was at hermitage café with most of my groom's men eating pancakes. mmm...pancakes...

our wedding day was the only day for 2 weeks on either side that it was not sunny and beautiful. in fact, it was a torrential down-pour. but that made it better. instead of being married on the lake we were all under a pavilion and everyone huddled in to stay dry. we could all hear the rain falling on the pavilion's roof all night and megan and i both love the sound of rain. it was intimate and beautiful. here's my favourite photo from the day:

anyway, i love you megan. thanks for putting up with me for these few years and i look forward to many more.

Fall! or, when a class assignment is to imitate art, which then imitates life

megan — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:53:53 +0000

I spent a Sunday afternoon in a dress, in a tree. If you don’t like to have your picture taken, a photographer is perhaps not the best husband. Alas. It was cool, the setting sun casting its perfect quiet glow, a calm, knowing warmth against the brisk blue air. Brown and orange are sneaking into green, a chill creeps into the breezes, and the sun hides its face from mine much earlier now. I can feel, hear, see, smell and taste it: gin giving way to whiskey; martinis and sometimes even beer concede to red wine; summer squash become pumpkins, butternuts, acorns. Everything smells like apple pie. Or wood burning in the distance or the back yard. The squirrels on the tree are always running down, nut in mouth as the time to gather them runs out. My skin cool and pale, the wind lifting the hair on the back of my neck as the sun sinks just below the tree line. The tall green bits of grass towering above the brown are swaying and fluttering, dancing with the playful autumn wind.

orange beams bear warmth
while green still dominates brown
death looms; autumn lawn

hello, bloggy

megan — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:16:30 +0000

hey look, it's my first blog here. isn't that exciting? i may just wet my pants, which wouldn't even have to be gross, given the current downpour. i could just walk outside into the gray, wet world, which i have to do in a bit more than an hour anyway, so i guess i'll just hold on to my joy and wet my pants then. anyhoo, it's probably evident that i don't really have a purpose for this particular post other than i'm tired of school-working and we set this thing up yesterday so it seemed like a worthy method of procrastination. and yes, i have been reading proust, why do you ask? here is a short sentence. i think we all feel better now, we being the people in my head because i'm doubtful that anyone is reading this anyway. but that's ok, i'll be honest, this whole blog thing is mostly for me, for procrastination and brain-dumping and whatnot. and perhaps a bit of practice for my final paper in my "life-writing, or writing and the self or whatever the hell it is" class, in which i must, you guessed, it produce a piece of autobiographical nonfiction. uh huh. but i think this lil blog is also a bit for the scattered friends and relations, so they can feel a bit more in the know perhaps than whatever tiny bits i can remember enough to relay in an email or phone call. 'cause, you know, stuff happens here at the funny farm, but my lil brain is so fried from various things that when someone asks what we've been up to i can usually only manage, "uhh, work, school, occasional alcohol." while that may be true, it isn't always as boring and uneventful as it sounds. like right now, it's storming, so buckley is trying his best to get into my lap from across the room, but in tiny increments, so i won't notice. perhaps if he gave up the whining and looking around and obvious shuffling of his parts he'd be a bit more stealthy. a ninja, he is not. he sheds way too much to be a ninja anyway. not only could he never keep the black outfit clean, he'd leave a hair trail everywhere he went. easily trackable = terrible ninja.

anyway, i should probably leave off babbling about nothing (welcome to the seinfeld of blogs!) and go do something useful, like taking more bloody notes, or unload the dishwasher, or take a shower. or point out to buckley that it is now barely raining and certainly not storming and i do believe i see a bit of sun even, so he can stop with the stress shedding and un-ninja moves. maybe i'll start with that.

And so, it begins

ben — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:19:31 +0000

so, megan and i have decided to start a blog together. no idea where it will go or what it will entail, but it should, if nothing else, be mildly amusing every now and then. and, we're off...