Yesterday was so lovely...

The weather yesterday was the perfect autumn day weather--sun, just enough warmth, and the delightful smell of leaves (nevermind that it's the decaying leaves!). Today is just a blah fall day--gray skies, chilly, blah. And it seems to be threatening rain.

I'm feeling a cooking urge of late. There are three dinners I've planned out in my head, but due to the "rotation" of cooking at our places, I have to wait three weeks to make them all! Monday I'll be making a mini-Thanksgiving feast--turkey (either a roasted breast or a Jennie-O oven ready turkey, depending on the cost), taters, stuffing (maybe), green bean casserole, and gravy. Sadly, the gravy will not be homemade due to the lack of really cooking a turkey (no pan drippings!). I might throw in a store-bought pumpkin pie to spoil my roommates silly (like I'm not already). The week after I'm going to make charred chile rellenos ala Rachael Ray. They're a healthier version of the fried and stuffed with cheese chile rellenos popular at Mexican restaurants. That should be tasty and a hit (we like the Mexican food in our apartment, along with spicy, though there is a limit on that...). Lastly, I've mentally planned a mini-Christmas type dinner with ham, my heart-attack potatoes, and some green veggie (green beans are a forerunner right now, though I do love me some asparagus!).

In addition to cooking, I'm feeling the baking urge. I want to make checkerboard cookies, shortbread cutout cookies with buttercream frosting, snowballs, spritz cookies, and pumpkin oatmeal raisin cookies. I want to make sugar cookie cutouts, but I'm at a loss for a good tasting sugar cookie recipe. Anyone have a good sugar cookie recipe? Or any other cookie recipes I should try?

That's all for now, I've made myself hungry :-)

Party Fun! (and rude guests)

We had our first party this weekend and it was a success barring a few incidents. There was lots of food to be had (buffalo chicken dip, beer cheese, the regular assortment of chips, cupcakes, and the best chicken tenders ever). We ordered 50 chicken fingers and when we picked them up they were still "working on the order", so they gave them to us for the price of 25. Half off! Super excellent way to start the party. One of my good friends from home was able to come down, which was very awesome indeed. And one of my favorite people in Columbus (that I don't live with) was also able to come, and brought her specialty Jell-O Cake.

The sour note to the party was the rudeness of one guest. He's actually a friend of at least 3 of the roommates (I'm not sure he likes me, and I sure don't think I like him now) and has come over to our place once or twice since we moved in. Each time, he talks about how our place is "shitty", "like a hotel", and "like a dorm". He doesn't understand why anyone would be happy living where we do. Fine. Feel that way. Mention it once. DON'T TALK ABOUT IT EVERYTIME YOU'RE OVER. More than that was the way he treated our place. You know how people in bars sometimes open beer bottles by bracing the lip against the counter and hit the bottle? Yeah. He did that TWICE. On our counters which are not bar counters and not meant to be destroyed. When my female roommate (a good friend of his!) asked him not to do that he said "But it's already damaged". Yes. The counter did have a chip in it. Now it has more. Not to mention the beer on the floor and wall because of it. Another point--dropping food on the floor, laughing, and NOT picking it up? On carpet, no less. I just can't understand that. It's not like our apartment is dingy and unkempt (I'd post pictures, but I'm on campus without them). AGH. The next time, I won't be too timid to say anything. I'll kick him out, for good.

Seriously though, other than that it was a good time! We won the game, which is always a good thing. The food was most excellent and for the most part our apartment didn't look that bad once everyone left (not so bad that an hour of cleaning the next day couldn't fix right up). I liked it a lot and can't wait to plan a Halloween get together (I already have the costume!) It's a good way to meet my roommate's friends and to hang out with the few of my own :-)

Almost moving time!

So is it weird and wrong that I'm ENJOYING packing? Because I love it. I'm also doing an obligatory "get rid of the crap I haven't used since I moved in" so that I don't carry useless shit to the new apartment (which also means clothes, though I could certainly afford to get rid of more clothes--I refuse). As far as packing, my closet is nearly empty, 2/4 cabinets are empty, my medicine cabinet is empty, 7/8 drawers are empty, and my cookbook shelf is all packed up.

I've learned that I need to keep track of the food I buy (I had 3 packages of Hormel pepperoni chilling out in my cabinet) and I need to plan to use what I buy instead of buying just "because". I'm hoping that with a group food bill with my new roommates, food will get eaten up. Such as--I buy a bag of chips and they last me FOREVER. Same with cookies, oatmeal, granola bars, 100 calorie packs, crackers, and candy. Hopefully my roommates will eat the stuff I never seem to finish (one of my roommates is a huge eater and claims he has multiple stomachs, ha!).

I'm a little annoyed that I have to wait till mid-September to move to the new place because by the time we move in, I won't remember what's in each box. I'm trying to combat that by Sharpie-ing the major contents of each one on the outside. It's nice that we have a storage unit, I can pack stuff and move it out so that I have room to pack the next round of boxes.

Basically, moving is thrilling the crap out of me. I can't wait to arrange my stuff in the new place. WHY AM I SO WEIRD?!

(For the first time in a really long time, my comforter and sheets will MATCH. That hasn't happened since I was little!)

List.

~The cruise has morphed into a vacation house in the Keys over Christmas. Which is still very awesome, other than actually spending Christmas day away from my family.

~I realized that recently I've been getting food/stains on my clothes more and more. It's like I'm morphing back into a little kid. Before I know it, the knees and butts of all my pants are going to be worn out!

~I believe that there are little flies residing in my drain. Not "drain flies", but more like tiny gnats. Yuck. At least I've only got 2 more weeks here. 2 weeks!

~We found an indian restaurant with a dinner buffet. SCORE. And it was pretty tasty.

~We also went to the fun pet store again. Birds are growing on me. I will totally get a little cockatoo/cockatiel if I can find one with a good personality that likes being held.

~I've decided that if I can make the room/convince my roommates that it's a good idea, I want a 10-gallon fish tank in the new apartment. It would be aesthetically pleasing! Especially with fun colorful fish!

~I'm making dinner for a bunch of friends tomorrow. I'm pretty excited because it's a meal that's usually a winner.

~My boyfriend bought a Wii recently and it's my new favorite thing to do when hanging out with people.

Chipotle

It never fails. Chipotle (the Mexican Grill, not the smoked jalapeños in adobo sauce) enters my mind and I am compelled to go get a burrito. It's just so danged good! My ideal burrito is rice, pinto beans, black beans, chicken, mild salsa (pico de gallo), corn salsa, lettuce, cheese, and sour cream.

So...what food cravings are you powerless to resist?

And speaking of chipotle (the jalapeño), I once made a very very delicious chipotle glaze that went over chicken breasts. It was like a barbecue sauce with spice. I should make that again sometime. Come September my culinary prowess will exert itself more strongly as I will have a REAL kitchen at my disposal. September 16th just can't get here soon enough!

I think perhaps thinking about food takes up too much of my time. Crap. And I don't even watch Food Network that much anymore!

Satisfied.

I think the most satisfying quick dinner for me is pasta with a little butter, freshly grated parmesan cheese, and freshly ground black pepper. Delish.

I have nothing else to post these days. Classes are good but monotonous. Summer is winding down (oh dear...).

French Onion Soup

French onion soup has been one of my favorite soups for a very long time. I try to order it at every restaurant that has it, and it's one of those soups that can taste vastly different from one place to another. I think my favorite is at Red Robin.

Today I was craving some, and instead of driving all the way to RR, I decided I'd give it another try making it at home. I used this recipe from Rachel Ray since she usually promises to be pretty easy. I've made french onion soup before for my family (with a different recipe), and while it turned out good, it was very sweet. And the batch I made tonight is good, but sweet. I need to try it again with a different onion--I used Vidalia this time which I know are sweet. I made a substitution of white wine (Chardonnay) for the dry Sherry, so that may be a way to improve it as well.

Anyone have a good recipe for french onion soup? Or any idea how to make it less...sweet?

How was your 4th of July?

I saw real fireworks for the first time in ages this year, albeit July 3rd. I was a little sad because Columbus' fireworks were not as...spectacular as I would have expected for a big city's fireworks. We were going to go another set of firework last night, but since there were tornado watches in the area, I wasn't too keen on it. Instead a group of us went to see Transformers. I was pleasantly surprised because I liked it! The graphics were pretty awesome. Of course, now I'm going to name my first child Optimus Prime. Haha!

Classes are going well. I actually enjoy my microbiology lab, perhaps because we usually work in groups of 4 and my group of 4 gets along pretty well. Psychology is pretty awesome too; tomorrow is our first quiz. Next week I have 2 midterms, which of course I'm not looking forward to.

This weekend is Sam's graduation party so I'm heading home for that. It'll be nice to be home, I hope. And well, I like eating party food :-)

It's a Self-Tanning Accident.

I've been trying out different self-tanners to see how they work for me. I had been using a "gradual" lotion variety (from Vaseline) and it worked pretty okay as long as I made sure to rub it all over without missing spots. It smelled kind of awful though. A few nights ago I bought and tried Neutrogena's Micromist tanning spray. The results the next day were lame, it only worked on my upper legs, not my lower legs (I only did my legs as those are easy to hide in case of disaster). So I tried again last night, focusing on my legs from about midthigh down. This morning I found out that I stink at being able to spray evenly and in the right areas. Needless to say, my ankles and feet are REALLY ORANGE. So much for the promise of not looking orange and no missed spots. The tan wouldn't look so bad if my feet didn't look so goofy. Ah well, it's only temporary and it just makes me laugh. I think I'll stick with lotion application style because I've had success with that.

For dinner, I'm making spaghetti squash. I haven't had it in years, so I hope that I like it. Last night was a dinner failure. At least I made a successful dessert!

Ah, the weekend. Relaxation!

Tagged.

So far, this meme has gone through the following people...

Nicole (Sydney, Australia)
velverse (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
LB (San Giovanni in Marignano, Italy)
Selba (Jakarta, Indonesia)
Olivia (London, England)
ML (Utah, USA)
Lotus (Toronto, Canada)
tanabata (Saitama, Japan)
Andi (Dallas [ish], Texas, United States)
Todd (Louisville, Kentucky, United States)
miss kendra (los angeles, california, u.s.a)
Jiggs Casey (Berkeley, CA, USA! USA! USA!)
Tits McGee (New England, USA)
Kat (Ontario, Canada)
Cheezy (London, England)
Paula (Orange County, California, U.S.)
Jeff (Colorado, USA)
Fringes (around Houston, US)
Tera (Somewhere In KY by way of OH, USA)
Nina (Cleveland Area, OH, USA)
Induced Homomorphism (Graduate school, USA)
jenomena (Columbus, OH, USA)


List your top 5 local eating places

(Erm...mostly not local. Very sorry. I like chain restaurants. And unsophisticated ones at that!)

1. Jimmy John's. I love their vegetarian sub to death, and in the 4 years I've lived here, I think I've only ordered a different sub once. My mouth waters just thinking about it! Tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, sprouts, provolone cheese, and avocado spread on French bread. Mmm.

2. Amul India. Either lunch buffet or menu-driven dinner. I love me some Indian food, but I'm not too daring. I did make the switch from always eating chicken curry to chicken tikka masala, purely because it's the better of the two dishes there. And garlic naan. And kheer. Oh dear. YUM!

3. Pesto Creative Italian Bistro. I don't go often enough, but it's delicious. It's run by an OSU alum, and it's a "Chipotle for Italian Food" type concept. They have a list of menu choices and you choose to eat it as a salad, sandwich, pizza, or pasta. It's pretty cool. And their gelato is good.

4. Skyline. I think I'll have to live near one for the rest of my life, because homemade and frozen are not quite close enough to satisfy my hardcore Skyline desires.

5. PF Chang's. Their chicken lettuce wraps are divine and their fried rice doesn't make me feel like I'm greasing up my insides. And I can make the fried rice last for 2 meals past the initial dining out experience. PF Chang's has pretty much replaced fast food chinese takeout for me because it just feels healthier.

Hey, I managed 2 truly local places! And a "regional" type place, if you can call Skyline that, which I do. I still maintain that I'm pretty unsophisticated. Places that didn't make the cut, but that I thought about: Panera, Pochi Bubble Tea, and bd's mongolian bbq.

And I can't tag anyone. Go me.

An Update to Show That I'm Alive

This week has been a little stressful for me, I had an anatomy exam on Monday (94%), a history quiz on Tuesday, my senior design presentation on Wednesday, and a presentation for my MSE class on Thursday. So today I'm taking a bit of a breather, since this weekend I have to work on my 10-15 page senior design project report (due May 21) and a 2-4 page "letter home" based on a book we read in history. Very soon, I'll be able to breathe a lot more easily. In fact hopefully I'll be finished with my senior project report by next Friday so that I can relax next weekend. I only have 2 finals at the end of the quarter, so that's excellent.

Other events coming up include a trip to "Grandmawl's Farm" for Memorial Day (the boyfriend's grandma has a farm in KY that is the place for family gatherings), my 22nd birthday (sheesh I'm finally getting old! lol!), and my brother's high school graduation. My birthday and his graduation are both on June 4, so since I'm going home for graduation, I'll actually be HOME for my birthday for the first time since high school. I think that's neat! Granted, I'll be home for less than 24 hours, but I want to support my little brother. I just hope I can make it home for my sister's graduation in 2 years...I don't want her to feel that I like my brother more.

Tonight I'm making a dinner that's totally inappropriate for hot weather: roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans. But I'm craving my favorite meal, so there you have it. And yes, I'm aware you can buy the chickens that are already roasted, but that takes most of the satisfaction out of making a meal.

I'm pretty boring right now. I'll post more excitingly soon, perhaps!

What's in your fridge?

I've been reading the archives of The Amateur Gourmet, and an entry from June 2004 inspired me. Here's what's in my fridge!
The first thing I noticed about my fridge, compared to the AG's and his readers, is that it's FULL. I don't know if you'd guess that this is a fridge for one person.

Starting at the top...there's 2% milk, the strangest looking apple juice you'll ever see (it's Kool-Aid!), club soda (hello, mixed drinks), a small container of left over angel hair (hello, part of lunch!), a bag of romaine hearts, and hiding are 4 packages of faux seafood (they were $1! and will make a great seafood salad) and a bottle of Hershey's syrup.

Moving down...there's butter, sour cream behind that (which needs to go out!), a lime, shaved parmesan, mozzarella, a block of cheddar cheese (it's hiding under the mozzarella), French onion dip (which was dissapointingly icky), a roma tomato, and colored hardboiled eggs (which are NOT from Easter, we dyed them last night). I'm particularly proud of these eggs because they are SO vibrant! Take a gander!


Moving to the bottom shelf...there's my condiment row: grape jelly, mayonnaise, regular mustard, spicy brown mustard, and honey dijon mustard, balsamic salad spritzer dressing, raspberry jam, sweet pickle relish, and more parmesan cheese (grated this time). Then there's Ready Bacon, tortillas, brown sugar, pancetta, homemade chipotle glaze (which was delish, but I need to throw it out...), pizza sauce, chicken broth and coleslaw mix.

In the veggie drawer, there's alcohol because the drawer freezes EVERYTHING. And since alcohol doesn't freeze, it's a good place for it. Thinking about that always makes me think of the line in the Crucible--"Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer". Good times.

I was going to do the fridge door and the freezer, but I'm tapped out right now. I'll save it for a different entry.

Now tell me, what's the most interesting/strangest/unique thing in YOUR fridge? (Mine are the colored eggs, because who has colored eggs when it's not Easter? And I love them.)

Culinary Delights

Occasionally I make a dinner that I think looks really pretty, and tonight's meal was one of those:


Broiled pork chop with pan roasted veggies (zucchini, yellow squash, red pepper, onion, and mushrooms). And it tasted pretty good too!

Colder than a witch's teat...

OMG. I'm so cold. I'm so annoyed because other than climbing into bed with a billion covers, I can't get warm. I'm pretty sure it's hovering around 60-65 in here. At least I was home all weekend, where we have heat. Though, I could've done without the White Easter.

While I was home, my sister made her meal for her "Creative Cuisine" class. I suggested she try a meal from India (they have to choose a country). Despite never having eaten Indian food, she did a pretty good job. Granted she had several sous chefs, but she found the recipes and made her grocery list. And helping her out with the meal, gave me a whole new appreciation for the Indian food that I love to eat--it's truly laborious! We had vegetable pakora (fritters), garlic naan (bread), chicken curry with basmati rice, and kheer (rice pudding). She hit a home run with 3 of the dishes--the curry wasn't as good as we wished it would have been.

All in all, a good weekend. Tonight is dinner and studying for my anatomy exam tomorrow. I should do fine on it!

FINALS.

Well, they haven't actually started yet. Tomorrow I have two--one comprehensive and one that focuses on the latter part of the course. Luckily, the professors probably won't throw any curve balls, so I'm feeling pretty confident in my studying. It sucks that 4 hours of my day will be taken up by testing. It doesn't leave much time to study for my Tuesday final. And it's a little overwhelming to study for 3 finals today. Whine whine.

Speaking of tests, I got my second midterm back in my "Materials in Medicine" class. I rocked the face off of it, 92/100. Especially the fill-in-the-blank page (which I was pretty confident that I did poorly on since I just threw some answers down). I think I'll end up doing well in the class. Except that I know the final will be quite the marathon. The last one from this professor was 12 problems that were "mediumish" answer type problems. Yikes, did my hand hurt!

Blah. I hate that my life is all consumed by silly tests. Friday I made dinner for the boyfriend, his roommates, and our future roommates. Rachael Ray provided the inspiration--Spicy Shrimp and Bok Choy Noodle Bowl. It was delish. I only wish I could whip up something as delicious tonight. Or tomorrow. Or any other day this week. Maybe I'll put some effort forth on Wednesday? At any rate, I'm going to cook up a storm for my family when I get home. I usually do. My nanny loves when I come home because I take over making dinner (which is a thankless task in my family). I'm thinking that I'll make them the goulash that I made for Jeri and I (yum-o) and my orange roughy foil oven packets. Perhaps a chicken casserole. And of course, I'm going to demand my favorite-New England Boiled Dinner (better known as corned beef and cabbage with carrots and potatoes).

Enough talk of food. Back to the grindstone.

Home stretch...

I've finally reached the home stretch of the quarter. Tomorrow is the last day of classes, Monday through Wednesday are finals, and Thursday officially starts SPRING BREAK. I cannot wait. I had an awful dream that I didn't take my sewing home over break, so now I'm going to remember that for SURE. I have a quilt top that I'd love to finish into a quilt, and I've got fabric to make at least 2 more quilt tops. I haven't had any time to sit down with my machine over the quarter. In fact, I'm pretty sure I haven't used it since...summer. Bah!

In other news, I desperately need to do laundry. Not because I'm wearing dirty clothes, mind you. I've got more clothes that you can imagine. And plenty of underwear to avoid doing laundry for a month! However, there's no more room in my laundry basket, so there's a secondary laundry pile near my bathroom. That is no good. So I think this weekend will be laundry and studying for finals. Oh joy!

Last night the boyfriend and I went to see Wild Hogs. I did not have very high expectations for the movie, but dang, it was funny! It was a good way to unwind on a Wednesday night.

Tonight...I'm cheating and eating take out for dinner. Speaking of dinner, I also need to do dishes pretty badly. Yeah, I'm living in a hovel.

Feeling listy

I suppose this is the list I had mentioned earlier in the week. I've been compiling in my head ALL WEEK! If only my brain could be downloaded onto here...

1. I negatively reviewed a professor for the first time in my college career. It was weird. Luckily (or unluckily) a lot of other people were saying the same thing.

2. Physiology is over forever. Or until I perhaps take another physiology class. I'm sad to be done with a class...another first! We ended with reproduction, which must be a highlight of the course. At any rate, I think I'd like to take a class about the development of a fetus. Clearly that would be something that could take up a whole 10 weeks.

3. I have a presentation in about an hour. Unfortunately for me, I don't know if my group members pulled through finishing it and printing it. At least it's not for a grade? Meh. I'm sure it'll be fine.

4. I'm glad I don't typically have a car on campus. I spend a lot of time thinking about going somewhere purely because I have a car. I suppose if I always had a car it wouldn't be that big of a deal.

5. This computer lab is loud. The heating/cooling system squeals and thumps. And it scares me everytime.

6. I haven't worn makeup in FOREVER. (Okay, so I wore some Tuesday, but I looked nice, I had to!) Strangely, it doesn't bother me. And I don't think anyone notices.

7. In 18 days, I will likely be getting a new cell phone. I'm leaning toward a pink Razr, despite not liking them. Oh, the whore that I am for pink. We'll see what happens though. At any rate, I'll have a phone that vibrates again--a true novelty!! And a camera phone, because I can!

8. I have an eye doctor's appointment over break. Maybe I'll try to get new glasses. Or I'll see if they've improved the permeability of colored contacts. My old colored ones were awful for letting my eyes breathe. As a consequence, I looked like I was stoned without the uh...stoned-ness.

9. I have a bump on my head, like I hit it at some point. A point that I don't remember. Fabulous. I'm wondering if this is a warning not to get heinously drunk like I did last year for Autumn Finals. Hey, bump on my head, I get it! I won't get heinously drunk! Stop your hurting!

10. I taped Dr. Phil today. I think that means I'm L-A-M-E. But it was intriguing--a spoiled teen and her mother who was ... working men for money (they didn't just say she was being a WHORE). The girl was amazing. "Well, mom, I just want you to say no to me." Yeah, right, baby.

11. I rocked my Polymer Science midterm from last week. Which was surprising--I felt like crap walking out of it. I'm convinced that I'm doomed to be good at life forever...so much pressure! Haha.

12. My foot has fallen asleep a lot this week. The hardcore type of falling asleep where your appendage feels enormouse because you can't feel it. (Does that even make sense?)

13. I'm having steak for dinner. And probably PastaRoni because I've got 5465713 boxes of it. I can't help that I love it and buy it every time I'm at the store!

♥ ♥