"Love is in Air...

... Everywhere I look around
Love is in the air every sight and every sound"

To the happy couple,
Congratulations!
ご結婚おめでとうございます!
Félicitations en ce jour de votre mariage!
You two looked great and we send you our love.

Speaking of love, our dear SailorStudMan has had a good bit of love from the Steal Mistress. She brought him home a little over two weeks ago, let'im enjoy 36hr at home and then like a true high-maintenance bitch, she demanded the rest of the seven days he had in port with her, only letting him go five hours at a time--relinquishing him late into the night only to reclaim him within the early hours of dawn. My poor SailorMan's shame and plight was known all across the waterfront and beyond. He was known as, "oh, that guy."
At the moment I am trying to gracefully tamp down the giggle that wants to follow my grin, 'cause truly, it really did suck to be SailorMan. His CO rode him hard and just as I said when I first began this blog, the gods of SW (Surface Warfare) truly hold SailorMan dear to their hearts. After very intense labor, with specialists brought in, the Steal Mistress was able to sail again. I tell ya, the man lives for pain. If his job was simple and a 9-5 he wouldn't appreciate the act of working at all, and would once again drive me to my whit's end, with thoughts of putting him out of his misery and me manically laughing with insanity at the sweet prospect of peace in a lovely padded cell all to myself.
Back to the heart of the matter... since life was loving our SailorStudMan a bit too much, and we were once again going to be parted; 22hr before the Steal Mistress took him again, me and the girls decided to make a comfort food that is somewhat healthy for him to take away on his deployment. We call it: Daddy CHENG's Love Mix.
It is all the snacks he loves:
Toffee,
Chocolate,
Banana Chips,
Pecans,
Coconut.

The only toffee to be found was a package of milk chocolate and toffee bits. That is the Eldest picking out the toffee from the chocolate... we wasted half the bag and the penny pinching side of me nearly kept silent with only occasionally grumbling once in while the idiocy of putting chocolate and toffee together; if you want chocolate, wouldn't you just add it yourself?! The coconut was already sweetened and complemented the semi-sweet chocolate bits we put in. The banana chips were plain and the pecans were plain too. The Unfortunates discovered banana chips quite tasty, toffee is up there with chocolate; coconut is just as gross as before while pecans aren't all that, and Mommy only likes the pecans (sort-of) and the chocolate. We had fun covering up the bananas and pecans with parchment paper and breaking them up with the smooth side of the meat tenderizer and later by hand. I didn't measure out anything, I did everything by looks, however since the coconut--as its nature--was quite potent, I think there are only about 3 tablespoons worth of the stuff in the entire mix, which by the way was housed in a plastic container that is suppose to house a bag of coffee for freshness. It was fun to make, easy and somewhat expensive due to the pecans and organic banana chips. Yes, the Commissary constantly surprises me with what it continually adds to the shelves in regards to organic and environmentally friendly products. It was well worth every penny and more when SailorMan came through the door at 21:30, before the Unfortunates were put to bed (nice thing with homeschooling, we can change our schedule to fit life at large). I had to threaten with violence and the promise of a good crock-pot dinner to keep him from eating the mix. I know, the violence part is very un-aiki, but I haven't professed perfection.