Episode Twelve: Cooking at Night
Welcome back everybody! Lady Jupiter Podcast is the audio accompaniment to LadyJupiter.com a lifestyle blog where I write about my family’s military life, also travel, home stuff, and my low maintenance beauty and fashion. I’m happy that you’re here with me.
Today I’ll share an update on our life as affected by the military, follow on with a blog update, then wrap up with my most recent domestic diversion.
Today in our military affected lives I have nothing significant to update.
Mister Jupiter works from home when he can, and always offers to pick things up from the BX when he needs to buy lunch…but I always forget to ask him to bring home dog stuff.
Oh - I do have a related sidebar. Last week a cooked a meal for a military family, and it helped me nail down my meal delivery preference. Lets say that I cooked Monday night, then delivered the food cold and ready to reheat on Tuesday afternoon. This was perfect because all of the cooking is done while Kid Jupiter is sleeping. Since I also cook our dinner too, I made an Instant Pot chili with beef and lentils - that is easy because I toss everything in the pressure cooker and start cooking during nap time. Then after dinner, and after bed time I take my time to cook for others. Without the pressure to have a hot meal at 5pm, I can enjoy cooking and I have the energy to cook late because I let the electric pressure cooker do the work earlier that same day. Conversely we could just order take out - but I have been working the kinks out of my Hands Off Instant Pot Chili recipe and need to cook it about once a month to nail down those preferences. Note to self - assemble ready-to-cook chili kits to one or two local Instant Pot friends because I need taste testers.
For today’s LadyJupiter.com blog talk…
I want to jump into a popular blog post. Last time I talked about one it was What I Wish I Knew About The Second Trimester. Lately though my most popular blog post is titled How to Break In New Tieks. Tieks (spelled t-i-e-k-s) are a brand of handmade Italian leather ballet slipper-style shoes, and they are notorious for having a long painful break-in period.
I bought my first pair years ago because they had everything I was looking for; leather uppers, ballet flat structure, no obnoxious logos, and most importantly - stitched down insoles. I don’t know about you, but when I take my foot out of a shoe and the insole sticks to my foot - ugh. It’s pains my senses more than nails on a chalkboard. So I bought a pair and experienced first hand that the break-in period sucks, but once it’s done, the shoes fit perfectly from that point forward. I have five pairs now (Cream, Cobalt, Black, Kelly Green, and Leopard) so I got a lot of experience breaking them in, and like any good blogger I realized that my preferred method was unique, so I wrote about it. I could stand to update the photos, but the method is the same. I place corks in the toes and bend the shoe backwards to stretch the uppers. I try to wear during the day, and stretch at night for a few days in a row. How long it takes depends on too many little things, but it’s a lot faster than only using your feet during the day.
If you’ve been looking for plain colored leather ballet flats - I do recommend them to most people. Be advised that besides averaging about $200 per pair, they also have no arch support and are great for narrow feet. Those are positive points for me, but if you need wide sizes or require orthotic inserts - you may want to look for a different shoe.
And now for my most recent domestic diversion
My combination gift arrived today! This year for my birthday, Mothers Day, and Military Spouse Appreciation Day - Mister Jupiter bought us e-bikes. We bought from RadPowerBikes.com, and helped contribute to their huge quarterly sales. He assembled my bike this afternoon, and I rode a brief maiden voyage this afternoon to test out the seat height and general handling. It’s a hefty thing, and tomorrow I’ll take it for another spin so I can calibrate the battery. We still need to install the child seat, and the front rack.
Our neighborhood is hilly, so the battery will help me hike the hills with Kid Jupiter. Now I really need to multitask when driving because our town isn’t very bike friendly, and I need to plot out some routes for us to ride. There are some bike lanes, but they’re not everywhere, and most drivers don’t look for bikers. So we’ll likely mostly ride around our subdivision because the sidewalks end outside of our neighborhood, and I don’t want to ride with a toddler on any road that I don’t feel safe walking. Hopefully in the future I will be able to bike to coffee shops, or even run tiny errands. I super love driving and will happily drive for hours, but I am just as excited to do normal things without a gas tank. Well, at least part of the year. Summer humidity is oppressive, and while my eczema-prone skin loves the humidity, I don’t like being drenched with sweat after 10 minutes outside. I’m looking forward to cooler days though, not just for pleasant bike rides with Kid Jupiter, but also so I can air out all of my leather jackets on said bike rides.
And that’s it for today’s show!
Show notes and transcript will be available in a few days on LadyJupiter.com/podcast - scroll down to the link for Episode Twelve. I hope you all have a great weekend! We’ll stay home with our dogs (who petition each year for no fireworks), and probably grill some hamburgers and watch Independence Day because Kid Jupiter needs to understand the power of well delivered speeches…obviously.