Chubby Girl Brigade

Pumpkin Cheese Tortellini

Saute in 1 tablespoon butter:
1 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic
1 cup chopped red pepper

Add:
1 16 oz can of pumpkin
1 14 1/2 oz can of diced tomatoes
1 and 1/4 cup of vegetable broth (or chicken broth)
1 teaspooon basil
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper

Stir together and heat through. Toss with 18 ounces of cooked cheese tortellini (from the freezer section of the grocery store). Serve with lots of parmesan cheese.

I want candy!

A generic adult female spends a lot of time in the candy aisle.

Various theories exist surrounding the purchase of Halloween candy. I’ve long been a student of a few of these guidelines; over the years I’ve switched back and forth, trying most of them to see which particular practice suits me, my wallet, my family, and the surrounding neighborhood the best. I hasten to add that YOUR needs might be different from mine and my views should in no way be taken to mean we must all do it the same way. No, ladies, you must decide for yourself which method (or combination of methods) of buying candy suits you and those affected by said purchases. It is a difficult decision, and one that carries many repercussions. So choose carefully!

Method #1 Buy early.
Pro: This method ensures that I will have plenty of candy on hand for desperate situations—spending an hour trying to figure out eldest daughter’s math homework, getting in a huge fight with my brother, burning the rice, picking up children from school, trying to get husband to clean up his side of the room, etc etc etc. The sales are better early on, and so is the selection.
Con: It in no way assures that there will be candy for trick-or-treaters. If I have a particularly desperate October, I will have gone through the stash in days. Plus I’ll have to shell out more bucks for more candy as I run out. Another con is that I will have to put in a new bathroom shower because I won’t fit in the current one anymore.

What are you wearing for Halloween?

A Generic Adult Female dresses up again—she LOVES to dress up.

Yes I love dressing up, especially on Halloween. I love pretending that I’m something other than an introverted fatty who doesn’t know how to make small talk and feels very awkward when she didn’t get the joke, or when other people don’t get her jokes (which is quite often. GAF wonders sometimes if she is existing on a slightly different plane of reality as the rest of humanity because her idea of what goes on around her doesn’t seem to jive with other people’s reality).

ANYWAY…this is not about psychoanalyzing my neuroses (and I want to refer to myself in third person more often—GAF GAF GAF—because I saw this past week that we got a hit from someone who googled “GAF” and the CGB came up only on the 4th page. We gotta change that. Hello world, this is me, GAF, Chubby Girl Ordinaire). This is about HALLOWEEN COSTUMES! YES! GAH and I were invited to Clark and Sparkle Farqenbarker’s annual Halloween party on Saturday night. Whoo-ee! Someone likes me! Or someone likes my husband enough to put up with my presence—but I kid me!

Now, the generic husband does not like to dress up. At all. So I thought of a couple’s costume that would require of GAH nothing more out of the ordinary than wearing a T-shirt with “NV” on it (yes, he would be wearing pants, socks, etc). I would be dressed from head to toe in shades of emerald. Can you guess what we are? We’re “green with envy.” Get it? HAHAHAHA! Oh, I do make myself laugh sometimes. I love thinking of costumes that are out of the ordinary. I particularly like going as a rebus or an abstract thought.

So if you are desperate for a costume idea, here are some of mine that are geared towards us chubby girls who wouldn’t fit into a typical French Maid costume or feel comfortable going as a Spandex (only without the “pand”) Kitten. Most are of the embellished sweat suit variety. Sweats are cheap and comfy and come in an assortment of suitable colors. Or if you have clothes in the suggested colors all ready, then you don’t even have to buy the sweats!

October Scary Stories--Continued

A generic adult female gets scared out of her last remaining wits.

Did you sleep well, my pretties? How many spiders did we dispatch of since I told you the truth about them?

But I promised I would tell one more scary story, a recollection of an event so terrifying that I almost can’t handle the retelling.

Scarier than the three times I got lost at the Minnesota State Fair as a young lady.

October--Time for Scary Stories

October—Time for Scary Stories

A generic adult female embraces her inner fraidy-cat.

Ah, fall! I love autumn! I love the color orange, although I would never wear orange (it clashes with my freckles) nor would I paint any room in my house orange: mostly because I want orange to maintain its feeling of Halloweenness and if I use orange willy-nilly, whenever and wherever I please, the connection will lose its meaning.

I love pumpkins, because they are orange and shaped like me. When the 1st of October rolls around, I dig out the Halloween decorations and my house becomes a cheesy tribute to the many cumulative days I have spent at the craft store during the fall season. I have no scheme for my decorating, I just put my junk out on any uncluttered surface and hope that the kids and cats don’t wreck it.

I love the leaf clutter in the yards. I love the swish-swish of the leaves as I shuffle through them on my morning walks! If Heavenly Father had wanted us to keep our yards perpetually leaf-free, He would have made trees to grow their own compost bins with vacuum fans.

Diets My Husband Has Suggested We Go On

My husband (mastermind behind the "Survivor Diet") has, over the years, suggested various other diets that we should attempt in order to lose weight. Keep in mind that my husband, while in possession of one Class C (Professional Level) First Aid Card, is NOT a medical professional and his diet advice should be taken with tongue in cheek (which may very well be another diet plan he suggests in the near future).

Here is a random sampling:

"Celery and Salt"
My husband actually did lose several pounds while eating almost a whole bunch (is it a bunch? a group? a package? a murder—oh wait, that's crows) of celery every day. He did gain it back when he realized
salt was MUCH BETTER on buttered popcorn. I would rather cut the skin under my fingernails with an Exacto knife and then soak my fingers in vinegar than eat celery.

My Own Personal Alarm Clock

I am not a morning person.

As a teenager, I could literally fall asleep standing in the shower in the morning—which could last as long as there was hot water. My parents would wake me at the horrendous hour of 5:30 am so that we could eat breakfast together followed by 20 minutes of family scripture study, followed by morning chores, followed by packing a lunch, which was followed by finally getting my bum to my first class which started at 7:30 in the morning.

I actually kept a sleep deficit log for my junior year of high school and gave up count at nearly 400 hours.

My senior year, I figured out an ingenious plan to snag an extra twenty minutes a day. I would roll out of bed and kneel beside it and assume a prayer position and go back to sleep. What parent in their right mind is going to disturb a PRAYING teenager? Exactly. I could "pray" for a good thirty minutes without interruption.

I WAS A GENIUS—or I thought I was, because now I'm a SUPERGENIUS.

Boys I have loved

A generic adult female wanders through the private gardens of her memory and gets lost. Whatever that means.
Jerilyn mentioned to me that she was considering a column devoted to the boys she has dated. I loved the idea so I’m stealing it. Nyah, nyah!

Names may or may not have been changed depending on whether I can think of any suitable pseudonyms.

Boy #1—Blake. A thoroughly nice boy. We were in 7th grade and my friend called him to scope out his feelings for me. He agreed to like me and so he asked me to “go” with him. From that moment on throughout the two weeks that we were “a couple”, we didn’t speak once. We smiled shyly at each other from behind our locker doors. He was my first official boyfriend—my first foray into relationships. And we were too embarrassed to talk to each other. Finally he called my friend and told her to tell me that he thought we should break up since we never talked at all. I wasn’t too broken up, but I was 0 for 1—not a good start. Actually, he and I became pretty good friends a few years later, and when I turned 16, he took me out on my first and second official dates (his dad asked my mom to one of our dates—a double date with my mom! SICK! Fortunately for my sanity, my mom already had a boyfriend so she turned Blake’s dad down). We never clicked as a couple, but I wish no ill will to my first boyfriend—wherever you are, Blake, you have my sincerest good wishes.

Boys I Have Loved or The Article That Zippy, My Husband, Should Just SKIP RIGHT OVER To The End Where It Gets Kind Of Mushy

This is the first in a three-part series in which each of the writers for the CGB submitted an article on the same topic, which means the articles this week are going to either delight you or make you sick with all the gushy sweetness.

Please to email your own experiences on the topic to [email protected] and we'll post them on Friday. C'mon! It will be fun!

A month ago, I ran into a boy that I "went with" in sixth grade. (Aside: The term "going with" makes for some very uncomfortable verbiage when you're trying to change to past tense or some kind of participle. I even checked a grammar guide to avoid sounding like an idiot, but when you're talking about some boy that you liked in the sixth grade, nothing comes out sounding idiot-free).

I had to get new tires put on my car and he turned out to be one of the tire boys. (Second aside: hottest boys in the Pacific Northwest work at Les Schwab Tire Factory. Mr. Schwab, I don't know who does your hiring, so please pass this on: MEOW.)

This is how boys and sixth grade worked for me: a boy would say he liked you, but never to your face—only to your friend and she would have to find out if you liked him back. If you did, one day he'd send a note to you that read "Will you go with me? Check one." and the yes box would be HUGE and the no box would be tiny and sometimes there would be a maybe box.

So, you'd check whichever box (peer pressure dictated that you check the yes box). And then you'd never talk to the boy again.

You'd pretty much break up the same way.

(In retrospect, I doubt the boys even really liked girls. We probably forced them to like us.)

With the exception of TP.