Happy Earth Day! Get your Sangria here!

Thanks for letting me have my little fit yesterday. Remember my theory about men having the same 28-day cycles as women? Well, I looked at my calendar and on March 26th I marked on my calendar "Matt Mensies" which means my 28 days is here tomorrow so I am totally PMS'ing...(Pre-Mattstrual Syndrome). Look out for Hurricane Matt tomorrow.

If we start a neighborhood watch I've got dibs on the 3:00 AM shift.

Yesterday consisted of lots of laundry, grocery shopping twice (once by bicycle - no french bread loaf though), going to get the unemployment straightened out (never confident), dishes and kitchen cleaning like every day... Incidentally, towels feel like sandpaper when you dry them on the line. I tried both with and without fabric softener and it didn't make a difference. Line drying is great for the sheets though.

I also made Sangria yesterday to honor Earth's goodness (truthfully so I could get lit). I am not a wine drinker because most wines are too dry in my opinion and I am not a big fan of cotton-mouth. I liked the movie "Sideways" though so I want to like wine. I was watching Planet Green a couple of days ago while I was cleaning the kitchen and folding laundry like a real man and Emeril Lagasse was making paella on "Emeril Green". He also threw in, as an after-thought, Sangria so I hit the record button. Well he did it very fast and didn't say measurements or anything but he gave the basics so I came up with my own recipe and I think it turned out well though I made A LOT! Sugar Momma says I am a man of excess - isn't that what "man" means? Anyway, here's my Sangria recipe but I suggest you might want to cut the volume down unless you are having a small country over for dinner:
ingredients (I would suggest cutting the liquids in half)

3 liters of inexpensive Shiraz (Frontera Mendoza 2009)
1 cup of Grand Marnier
1 cup of brandy
1 cup of lime juice
3 limes
3 lemons
2 granny smith apples
2 large oranges
12 oz. sugar
33.8 oz sparkling water (Pellegrino)
64 oz. orange juice
ice

In a HUGE bowl slice the fruit and cover with sugar, mix. Add Shiraz and stir. Add ice to hold the fruit under while it drowns in the wine. Add Grand Marnier and brandy and stir. Add lime juice, orange juice and sparkling water and stir. Let sit for awhile so the tastes blend. Taste and add ingredients to taste (I added a little more lime juice and sugar). Find the biggest vessel you own for storage (mine is a pot like they used in those headhunter movies to cook people which is now sitting on our stove). Sweet and fruity just like me. Share with your friends/neighbors and your boss at review time.

I grilled burgers and made my house-famous cilantro corn-on-the-cob to go with the sangria. I used to make corn-on-the-cob and mix cilantro with the butter but now I don't use the butter (I still make it for my kids because they don't have to worry about their MIDDLES yet). Now I boil the water for the corn with the fresh cilantro in the water, add the corn, and cook as usual and when I drain the corn the cilantro hangs on for the ride - Cilantro Corn. Maybe Emeril will learn a thing or two about cooking from me too now! I experiment with cooking all the time and a lot of times it doesn't work but when it does it's worth all the times it didn't. Sometimes you get CILANTRO CORN!!

Sugar Momma came home from work yesterday and said everything she tried to talk about with her friends they already knew. They read it on my blog. She said that I "scooped her."

Tonight is the best night of coaching baseball - giving the boys their uniforms. That's all they ask about from the very first practice. No practice tonight - just meeting up for uniforms.

Yesterday's and today's blogs look longer than they are because of the poem and recipe. I don't know why I feel I have to keep apologizing for it being too long as we now know I am a man of excess. I just don't want "peeps" to think it's too long and be discouraged to read it. No recipes or poems tomorrow. (so many jokes in me noggin' I avoided in this paragraph. I don't have to always work blue...Earth is blue)

Have a great Earth Day today and do something that makes a difference to the life of our planet/home!

(laundry photo stolen from treehugger.com, sangria logo borrowed from mochau.com, sangria photo hijacked from trekearth.com)