Peanuts and Cracker Jack
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Monthly Archives: April 2012
Joe Dawg!
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This is now a food blog. Making sloppy joes for dinner.
Victory.
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I impressed myself with this. So easy, and pretty healthy!
Adventures in Cooking.
Have I mentioned in this space how much I hate to cook? I can cheerfully bake all day long, but cooking is something I really prefer not to do. I find it stressful, difficult, and thoroughly unenjoyable. Yet this is the second time in a week I’ve volunteered to cook for The Mister, perhaps due to the success of Easter Brunch.
On the rare occasion I volunteer to cook, I scour the Internet looking for recipes that I think I can manage. Seeing as I have zero faith in my culinary prowess, these recipes tend to be casseroles or something with minimal difficulty. This morning, however, I asked The Mister if he wanted me to cook dinner tonight. He agreed, as long as we used ingredients that we have on hand. Since he is the actual chef of the family, he quickly ran through a mental list of things we had in the kitchen and requested pasta with chicken, lemon, and capers.
Sounds easy enough, right? I’m sure it would be if you’re the type of person who is comfortable in the kitchen, i.e. not me. I have minimal cooking confidence to begin with, so not having a recipe terrifies me. Luckily, the Internet exists. I’ve found a recipe I think I can manage to make chicken picatta. It’s a little more work than something I would normally make (pan frying! deglazing!), but I’m going to go for it.
Though the recipe isn’t *technically* gluten free, it is easy enough to modify with gluten free all-purpose flour (I’ll probably use gluten-free Bisquick) and quinoa pasta (or your favorite gluten-free pasta). I doubt my concoction will look as pretty as the meal above, but as long as it tastes good it will be considered a success, right?
If all else fails, there is always wine. Lots of it.
Taurus.
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You have the rebellious resourcefulness to be a freedom fighter without hating anyone. Go out and prove it.
Opening Day Festivities
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Hanging out around Coors Field before the game. Go Rockies! (Also? Frontier is really committed to their "Choose the New Animal" campaign. My vote is obvs for Enrique.)
Easter Brunch.
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So full. My fave was the bacon pops; The Mister's fave was the quiche. Click through for recipes.
Happy Early Easter, Everyone!
A consequence of living far away from your family is that you don’t get to go home to celebrate every holiday. At first I struggled with this, but the longer I’ve lived in Colorado the better I’ve gotten at making my own celebrations. The trick, I’ve learned, is to not try recreating your family traditions — it only ends in disappointment. Instead, you have to find your own ways to celebrate.
To celebrate Easter this year, I volunteered to make brunch for The Mister and me. In reality, I’m a terrible cook, but through the power of Pinterest I found a few recipes to make that look yummy but shouldn’t be too hard to pull off. I’ll post photos later to show off my culinary prowess.
My original thought was to make a breakfast casserole, but that would be a lot of food for just two of us, and while it would be delicious it wouldn’t be ~*~fancy~*~, and we are nothing if not fancy. So, I’m making Crustless Broccoli-Cheddar Quiche in individual ramekins.
Crustless Broccoli-Cheddar Quiche
Next on the menu: deviled eggs. The Mister’s favorite food is deviled eggs. The first time I made deviled eggs on a non-holiday I blew his mind — he didn’t realize they’re one of the easiest foods to throw together. I’ve made a few different types of deviled eggs for him in the past, and when I found a recipe for Cream Cheese and Smoked Salmon Deviled Eggs I knew I found a winner. I don’t have a pastry bag so mine won’t look this pretty, but hopefully they’ll taste delicious.
Cream Cheese and Smoked Salmon Deviled Eggs (with avocado to boot!)
The next course is going to be Bacon-Wrapped Potato Bites, with a Spicy Sour Cream Dipping Sauce. Even though these are probably more of an appetizer or dinner-type food, who doesn’t love bacon and potatoes in the morning? Bite-sized, and they look easy to make. Instead of normal hot sauce in the sour cream, I’m going to use sriracha (my fave).
Bacon-Wrapped Potato Bites
Finally, I was going to make Cheesecake-Filled Chocolate Eggs, but I was having trouble finding hollow chocolate eggs at the store, and making my own was just too involved. Since The Mister doesn’t have a sweet tooth (I’ll satisfy mine with Easter candy), we are going a different way for dessert: bacon pops. Which basically are goat cheese balls rolled in bacon. Delicious, right?
Goat Cheese Pops with Herbs, Pecans, and Bacon
So, that’s how we will be celebrating Easter! What about you? If you celebrate Easter, are you doing anything special?
Multitasking.
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Mopping + Breaking in 6" heels = Win.
Pack, Clean, Unpack, Repeat
With the Official Move Date slated for this Sunday, and my landlady showing my apartment Saturday, my evenings have been spent doing some combination of sorting, packing, cleaning, unpacking, organizing, and drinking. I know, I know; one of these things is not like the other, but cut me some slack — packing is the worst!
Though I’ve done a lot at my apartment, and it’s mostly ready for move out, what is more exciting to me is how I’ve unpacked and organized at The Mister’s our house. I was worried about finding space for my stuff, but it’s actually been going pretty well. Here’s just a few (terrible cellphone) snapshots of how I’m working my stuff in.
We hung up my DIY jewelry organizer (when I made it I couldn’t find my hammer so I got creative and used the heel of my cowboy boot!). I still need to figure out what to do with my bracelets and post earrings, but I have a couple ideas.
I also had enough room on my shoe racks (with part of my shoes in storage) to hold a good chunk of my shoes. You can’t see the rest of them stored on the bookshelf that will be doubling as my dresser for the time being, but all my shoes have a spot!
And finally, I was worried that there wouldn’t be space for the fantastic amount of bathroom stuff I own (makeup, medicine cabinet, hair stuff, etc), but with The Mister being an IKEA addict, he just happened to have this empty cabinet space just outside the bathroom. The totes I keep my stuff in luckily happened to fit, and adds a nice pop of color to the laundry room area.
It doesn’t seem like a lot of progress, but between sorting through everything and packing and moving and unpacking and reorganizing, it’s exhausting! Even though the end is in site, I am ready for this move to be over.
Tonight is the last night in my apartment, so I guess I don’t have that long to wait!
