Mediterranean food

What do you do for fun?
At my house we eat.
We love to try new restaurants, but my hubby loves to cook, so we also try making a lot of different stuff. Last week my youngest daughter was involved in a world's fair at her school and she did a display about Greece. I think this got us thinking about our favorite Greek foods, so we decided to cook a feast of Mediterranean/ Middle Eastern foods. Here is a list of what we had for dinner today.
Hummus -Lebanese national dish made from garbanzo beans, tahini, garlic, olive oil, and lemon juice.
Ful - an Egyptian breakfast food made from fava beans, onions, garlic, olive oil and lemon juice.
(both of these are pureed and eaten with pita bread)
Pilafi- Greek lemon rice
Couscous- a tiny round pasta eaten in several Mediterranean countries.
Dolmathes- Greek- grape leaves stuffed with a mixture of meat and rice.
Pastitsio- a Greek baked pasta dish with layers (like lasagna) topped with a bechamel sauce and cheese.
Spanakopita- Greek spinach pie.
Tabouleh- a middle eastern salad made mainly of parsley
Tzatziki sauce- made from yogurt and cucumber- this can be eaten on pita bread or as a sauce for other foods.
Calamata olives and feta cheese.

Pets (part 2)

Meet our cat Maui. Most of the time I would swear that there is absolutely nothing going on in his head, but he has some rather strange behaviors that I don't understand.
He likes to lick photographs.
He loves to eat honeydew and cantaloupe, and he goes nuts trying to get my make-up remover. If I sit the jar down without the lid on he will lick it.
He also tries very hard to get the lids off of prescription bottles. He once chewed his way into a pill container and we had to take a take a pill away from him. (Is he a druggy?)
He seems to have this innate ability to know who doesn't want him, and he will desperately try to sit on their lap.
He prefers to drink from a running faucet and will sit in the bathroom sink and wait for someone to turn it on.
His favorite place to sleep at night in on someones head.
He is so domesticated that he doesn't know how to eat anything that is not in "kibble" form. This means that if we give him a scrap of meat, or a piece of fish or melon, and it is too big, all he does is lick it. If we want him to eat it we have to cut it into very small pieces.
Maui is my 19 year old daughter's cat and he seems to know this. She is his favorite human. My daughter lives in Herriman but usually comes home on the weekend. I think Maui knows the routine...she is home for a couple of days and then packs her suitcase and leaves again. Maui has a small green beannie frog that he used to carry around when he was younger. He has not touched it for 6 years. Last week my daughter left in the morning and I left for an hour. When I got home I found Maui sitting in the middle of my bed next to his green frog and one of her beannie cats. He had carried them both up from the basement. What was he thinking? This was obviously a deliberate act...something of his, something of hers, both placed where I would see them with him sitting there claiming responsibility. This is one of the reasons why I would like a class on pet psychology!

Pets( part 1)

I have taken lots of psychology classes over the last few years, and even though I am graduating this spring :] there are still more I wish I had the time to take. There is one class that I would like to take that just doesn't exist at USU. I would like a class on PET PSYCHOLOGY! There are many times I really wonder what in the heck(if anything) is going on in the head of my cat or dog.
I watched the movie "Up" with my daughter last weekend and laughed at the dogs on the movie that wear collars that speak what the dogs are thinking, and wished I had one of those collars for Lucy. I think it might be comical to find out what she is thinking. She still sings for us when we come home, and we have added a few more items to her bag of tricks. She now also "talks" on command. If I say "talk to me" or ask her "do you like popcorn?" She will say what sounds like "num, num, num." She will also stands up on her hind legs and turn in a circle (dancing.)
Lucy loves to play with toys. She has several small beannie animals that she carries around the house. She begs us to throw them so she can play fetch. Her favorite toy is a squeaky bear. She will play fetch with it also but she seems to have a ball carrying it around in her mouth squeaking it or rolling around on the floor with it. I think she might have a sense of humor because she can be a real tease. She will bring a toy to me and touch it to my hand and then pull it away before I can grab it. She will do this several times and then drop the toy at my feet so I can throw it for her. I would love to know what this pup is thinking!

Sundays

I love Sundays! It's the only day of the week when I don't do any homework.
When my 12 year old was little she hated to take naps, especially on Sundays because everyone else in the family was home and she wanted to do what they were doing. I used to trick her into taking a nap by saying " I am really tired and I can't fall asleep by myself. Will you please come and lay down with me just until I fall asleep. You don't have to take a nap, I just want you to snuggle with me until I fall asleep and then you can get up." Of course she would always fall asleep before I did so she would get a nap also. I still like to take naps on Sunday afternoon and I still say the same thing to her. She giggles and says "noooo, Mom you know I will fall asleep too." But even though she is onto my tricks, she still gives in and curls up on my bed to snuggle with me. There is a certain amount of giggling that goes on before we fall asleep, but we both end up with a good nap in the end. Yesterday she was waiting for me to fall asleep first so she could sneak away and she would whisper " Are you still awake?" I said "Yes, I am, but I will tell you when I fall asleep so you can leave." That started a new round of giggles. As expected, she was the first to fall asleep.

Back to work

Well one week down and fifteen to go. Although my infant lab does not start until next week, all of my other classes are well under way. I have my first short paper due on Tuesday and have already had one pop quiz. So far I really like all of my classes. I will admit that I am scared of one of my classes...Scientific Thinking and Methods in Psychology, but the instructor seems like he will be pretty good so hopefully I will make it through without completely bombing it. I was also nervous about my Abuse and Neglect class. I was afraid that it would be very upsetting and I would just want to cry through every class. So far so good, but we have mainly just covered historical info and theories so far and we haven't really got into it yet, so I'll let you know how it goes later. I am loving my infancy and early childhood class the instructor is very energetic and enthusiastic and quite entertaining to listen to.
One downside to this semester is that all of my classes are so short! I am used to taking classes at a regional campus where a class will meet once a week for 2 1/2 hours. I miss that. I have classes this semester that meet three times a week for less than an hour each time. It always feels to me like we just got started and the class is over. I feel like I spend as much time hiking across campus as I do sitting in classes.

Ready?

The new semester is just around the corner and although I don't feel ready to dive into it I know it won't wait for me. I did do a few things to get ready. I have my text books and I submitted my application for grad school. I am not looking forward to driving to Logan 5 days a week in the winter, or walking around in freezing cold weather and maybe snow and slush but I am excited about some of my new classes.
This is what my schedule looks like for spring semester:

M-W-F:
Infancy and early childhood
Health Psychology
Scientific Thinking and Methods in psychology
Abuse and neglect in family context

T-Th:
Infant lab
Psychology of Gender

Happy New Year

Well, as you can see, I took a break from blogging for a little while. Actually I took a break from everything while I was between semesters, that is everything except working on my house. No, it is still not done, but we have made progress. It all seems to go a lot slower than I would like. My kitchen has a new wall. The electrical in the kitchen is also finished and we have been designing our cabinets. We have also finished the mud in the living room and textured the walls and ceiling and primed them. Someday I will have furniture instead of sawdust in my living room!