Whirlwind

So in my old life, I fell in love (somewhat inappropriately) with Trader Joe's brand Sunflower seed butter. To be fair, I thought the Sunbutter was a good idea at the time, and unfortunately, sampled it before checking the ingredients. Isn't that always the way? Because of course, I discovered it to be even more glorious than the now verboten peanut butter (OUT, damned legumes!) and it wasn't until I read the label that I realized why: it was chock full of sugar. Some hippie sugar: evaporated cane juice or agave or something similar. Crap.

So, I used up the two jars in my pantry, using it as an ingredient in recipes. As opposed to what I would have liked to do, which is eat it by the spoonful out of the container. And when the stash finally ran out, I bought raw sunflower seeds. And they have been sitting for awhile.

I don't know why, but I have been in a "nut buttery" mood today, and I ended up throwing unsweetened coconut in the blender, and the aforementioned sunflower seeds in the food processor, and basically beating the heck out of them. In both cases, I think the key is adding enough liquified coconut oil to make the fine particles pasty enough to stick together. The coconut butter was simple: just unsweetened coconut shreds and some coconut oil whirled into coconut butter before too long. The Sunbutter required more oil, as well as flavoring as I went with sea salt and some stevia. It's not the delicious nectar that the TJ's stuff was, but it's still lovely. And I suspect it will be a lot more obvious, since I will continue using it as an ingredient, as opposed to spooning it out of the jar and calling it "lunch."


I am guessing the reason that I am nesting is because it is pouring down rain over here. It's been a dry winter so far, and this is the first major rain we have had. So going outside isn't appealing. Also, the roof in our bedroom started leaking last night (NOOOOO at around 1AM, which led to a lot of cursing and throwing pillows around and husbandly leak detecting. We went back to bed around 2. And then, a neighbor went to work at 6 AM and locked her wretched dogs outside in the pouring rain. I know this because I woke up after dreams of fox hunting because those dogs we baying, barking, and pretty much furious at their predicament. I can't really blame them.

Luckily, I am still briefly in the position to sleep in, because when the alarm went off at 8, I hit snooze. I finally crawled out of bed at 11. And I didn't have a particularly productive day house-wise because....I had a job interview yesterday, and had a classroom observation today, and they asked me to come in for training on Monday. I start a new job next week! Holy smokes!!! And it is basically the BEST. JOB. EVER. 

Before we moved to the Bay Area, I left the Fresno branch of this business, and there was no branch up here, and I was devastated. So I did my best to find something similar, but nothing was ever quiiiite the same. I actually looked into buying the area franchise, but it included San Francisco, which was a major dealbreaker for me: this is a kid-activity/teaching franchise, so you go into schools and teach about science. S.F. has a lot of rules and regulations, and unless you are a nonprofit, you can't get into over half the schools there. In addition to parking and bridge tolls and other potential nightmares, I abandoned the idea.

Sometimes, fate just intervenes. I randomly did a search for the name of the company, and got a hit on a franchise in my area. I called, they were hiring, I sent in my resume, and got an immediate email, saying, "Can you come in tomorrow?" And two days later, I am once again among the ranks of the employed. Doing what I know I love. Hooray!!!!