Ratatouille

Kam's Quick and Easy Ratatouille
1 medium eggplant cut in 1 inch cubes
1 small white onion sliced in large 1 inch squares
1 can of tomatoes with herbs (Italian Style will do)
1 zucchini cut into quarter moons about 3/4" inch thick
1 pepper (can be omitted)
3 cloves of garlic chopped finely
Salt and pepper to taste.
1 tsp herbes de provence
1 Tbs Olive Oil

Cut the ingredients
Heat a large sauce pan or dutch oven on medium-high, when pan is hot put the oil in. It should dance and shimmer. Add the garlic and onions and stir until they soften slightly. Add the rest of the ingredients except for the salt. Bring to a soft boil then drop to a simmer and cover. Cook 30-45 minutes until everything is soften. 20 minutes into cooking test the sauce add salt and pepper as needed and more herbes de provence. It is a matter of taste. Also canned tomatoes can be salty and you need to give it time to release the salt. When done, you can let it cool or serve it warm.

I like to serve it over pasta with some roasted or baked plain chicken. It makes quite a bit and freezes nicely. The measurements are rough measurements, I tend to cook without a recipe using what is in my fridge and on hand. You want to add enough veggies to even out the tomatoes. Towards the end you might have to remove the cover to cook off some of the liquid look at the 20 minute mark.

Calendars and Daily Planners

In the past, they really never worked for me. I took classes online so it was just as easy to keep the information on my Outlook. Same for work, mainly because I only had a few meetings a month and the others were ad hoc with moments notice. Then I got a new job on a project team- most of my day is spend on the phone in meetings with some team or a sales officer or talking to clients for my group. I tried to use my school calendar, since I have been doing face to face classes this spring. 3 nights a week no big planner needed and using outlook. But then outlook started acting screwy and my planner I was using with one week on two pages became a tad to over crowded...okay very over crowded.

I decided to do a DIY Planner rather than go to purchased planners. This gives me control on what I need and how much to have in there. I print 2 monthly calendars at a time and 1 page daily calendars 2 weeks at a time. This is working so far. I have a monthly ToDo page for the rest of the year, so I can put appts on that. I have contact lists because after a power outage I realized I needed the numbers for the sales officers I handle. Hard to cancel when you don't have their number.

All this goes into an old Circa notebook I bought when Levenger's actually had good sales.



Beyond BLAH no?
Yeah very blah. I think it was meant to go into one of their circa sleeve things- which I do have (Like I said when Levenger's use to have good sales- The notebook was like 4 bucks, the binder I bought for it was like 20). But the binder is bulky and I wanted something I could toss to the side. So I found some sheets of decopatch I had and the wonderful decopatch adhesive they no longer sell (SIGH). Finding Decopatch paper is hard only one online store in the US still sells it and they never have the papers I want in stock (I love the blues and I am still looking for the shoe paper they had). Their adhesives are THE BEST- they are like a varnish which makes the paper a lot more sturdy for day to day use and glossy. I used gel medium to put the paper on the notebook after roughing up the surface with a sanding block. I didn't tear the paper into little patches but used sheet pretty much whole. I wanted a more uniform appearance.

The Front:

The Back:


Totally reversible but I like having the pink on the front. I would have had blue but finding someone with the blue papers is hard to do. Would have really loved the shoe paper but can't find that at all. Maybe when I go to France in the Fall I will look.