Oatmeal, Jeans, and Captain America

So I don't have it in me to actually post anything serious but here's some random stuff from this week:

-Bought ridiculously healthy/fancy instant oatmeal yesterday (organic with blueberries and flax seed) in the vain hope that I might actually eat it for breakfast - this morning I did, and it actually tasted pretty decent.  Surprisingly the flax seed's crunch made me like the texture a lot better.

-Broke down and ordered some clothes online (after looking for jeans in three separate stores, seriously plus size skinny jeans - who thinks this is a good idea?) and I actually liked all three things I ordered when they got here.  And the really good news, the jeans are a little big, I'll have to go down a size if I order them again.

-Tracy and I went and saw the new Captain America movie on Friday night and I LOVED it.  I sort of feel like Captain America and Superman have a similar vibe, so this is not surprising.  There were so many things I liked - but especially the fact that they actually had a female character in a superhero movie who didn't have to be "the girl."  Black Widow is kind of awesome. 

-Oh, and HAPPY EASTER everybody!

Grateful

This has been one of those spots in my life where things have just been happier.   Even with having two weird flare ups of not feeling well, it's still been a amazing couple of weeks.   On the serious real-life side of things I have an internship with the Church Archives starting in January.  Still only part-time, but it's really interesting work that's going to pay decently.  That combined with teaching for the U and for SLCC actually makes me feel downright employable.  It's an extremely good feeling.

I've also watched three good movies in the last week.  First, Thor 2 last Saturday, then the epic Doctor Who special screening on Monday, and today Catching Fire.  All three of them were respectably clean and thoroughly entertaining.  It was a great run at the movies.  It also reminds me of how grateful I am to be married to the world's best movie buddy.  Tracy isn't nearly as in to Doctor Who as I am, yet he still went with me and we had a really fantastic time. 

There's also been a bunch of other things, both serious and silly that have gone on in the last few weeks.  I got to babysit my friend Pam's little boy this week for a couple of hours, and in spite of going through the terrible two's he was a total angel for me.  My long standing favorite show  (Castle) and my new favorite show (Arrow) had great episodes that were again respectably clean and also mushy.   I had a great chats on the phone with my Mom and my cousin Jennie.  Thanksgiving dinner turned out really yummy.  I got the "Jayne's Cunning Hat" card while playing the Firefly board game with Chris, Stacia and Tracy.  Tracy's Mom and Aunt came for a visit last weekend.   It's almost December and I went outside without a coat today. I got an amazingly sweet note from my friend Becky.  In fact, it's been so awesome, I feel like I'm forgetting things.

And can I just say again that I'm married to the most amazing-perfect-fit husband on the planet!

Like I said it's been a lovely few weeks.  I definitely have a lot to be grateful for. 

Changing My World

So since our last visit to Boise in October, Tracy and I have made a pact to give up drinking soda.  For three weeks now we've been successful.  There were honestly times when I really hated it,  but it is finally getting easier.    The next mountain I'm trying to climb is giving up deep fried foods, including chips.   A few years ago I managed to swear off both for a couple of months and it actually started doing some good, so I'm hoping that will be true now and that I can keep it up.

I still haven't figured out exercise, and I know that's the next piece.  My anxiety and depression issues get a bit worse when my brain isn't active, and I don't want to spend any money or look like an idiot.  So someone really needs to invent a way for reading to burn calories :-) Still, Tracy and I have talked about parking farther out in parking lots, and little things like that, so hopefully that's a start.

I know I'm never going to be thin - seriously, in junior high school I was in drill team and track and basically ate the same foods as my size 6 friends and was still a size 13, so I'm not expecting miracles here.  But I would like to lose enough weight to be happy with myself in pictures and to be able to do all of the things I want to do.  

Even writing this on my blog is a little terrifying.  However, I'm comforted by the fact that not very many people read it, and those that do already like me, chubbiness and all.  At least I hope :-)

Dangerous Ice Cream

So we had the missionaries over for dinner last night, which turned out pretty fun.  They had picked some walnuts earlier in the day and they and Tracy got some enjoyment out of trying to get the things out of the shell, we have walnut shrapnel in our dining room, but it was pretty entertaining. 

The funny, though quite embarrassing moment of the night came when Tracy offered them some ice cream.  I had bought what I thought was Rocky Road ice cream, but when Tracy went to dish it up I'd bought something else that was coffee flavored.  Luckily he caught it before he'd served it.  I couldn't believe that not only had I not noticed it was the wrong flavor, but that we'd managed not to look at it until we had missionaries there. They gave me a good-natured hard time about it, and it lead to us sharing stories about our other near misses (or not quite misses) with things we didn't want to eat or drink.  And now I've given them a new story to tell (sigh).

Pickles!

So a couple of weeks ago in an effort to expand my homemaking skills (and because we had A LOT of cucumbers that day) I tried my hand at making refrigerator pickles.  Everything I had read said they preserve for a couple of months without all of the drama of normal canning.  So I made three jars of them using a recipe I found online.  When I first tasted them they were pretty tart and spicy, so after doing some reading, I thinned out the liquid with a bit more water.  While I would tweak the recipe (more dill, less garlic, less vinegar, no red pepper flake) they are pretty good.  We've been eating them instead of our jar of store bought ones, so I think that's a good sign.  The other day, after eating about half a jar, Tracy said something like, "I don't think you'll have to worry about these going bad before they get eaten."   It made me pretty happy.

Graduation

Friday was graduation day for me.  I might not have even done the whole ceremony and party thing if it weren't for the encouragement of my family.  My Mom and John, Dad and Jill, and Tracy's Mom Tricia all came down for the day and came with me to graduation.  I got a little teary eyed at one point during the ceremony, still surprised that the day had finally come and so grateful to be sharing it with my family. 

 

 If you're interested Tracy caught a video of my part of the ceremony and posted it on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moND1lfQqJk&feature=youtu.be

The party was also a lot of fun.  The theme of the decorations was of course Red.  When you graduate from the University of Utah and your favorite color is red it seems like the obvious choice.   Tracy brought me the gorgeous flowers below and I did some DIY to create the sparkly red letters.  The adorable little cap and tassel candy pops were my mom's brainstorm and they were really fun.  I really appreciated everyone who took the time to come to the party.  It was an amazing day!

The Interesting Consequences of Being A Decent Cook

Ok, so I'm not claiming to be a chef or anything, but I'm finally to a place in my life where I can admit I'm a pretty good cook.  I can experiment and things come out well and I've gotten to the point that 80 percent of the time (unless I'm baking) I don't even use recipes anymore. 

However, there are some interesting consequences to being a decent cook.  For example, a couple of weeks ago some decent brand frozen dinners were on sale at the grocery store and so I bought a couple thinking they'd be good for lunches when I'm home.  Well, I had one today, and it wasn't awful by any means, but it wasn't really good either, and I unfortunately could picture what it would taste like if I'd made that dish myself.  Now granted it's a more complicated dish than I would make for lunch - ever - but still I couldn't help but make the comparison.  So, probably won't be buying those again.  

It also changes what I order at restaurants.  I never order pork chops, because Tracy's grilled ones are so amazing why would I bother, and I'm ordering steak less and less for the same reason.  (He made AMAZING steaks for Valentines Day.  I'm very lucky.) I do like ordering salads, because while I could make them, it's a lot of work to not only chop all that stuff, but also to buy it and keep it fresh enough that it's there when you actually want one.

I suppose it's good that I'm more inclined to eat stuff I've made myself, but I also think back to being a single girl and eating lots of frozen easy stuff, because, honestly it wasn't really that much worse than what I generally cooked.  Not as tasty, but occasionally easier :-)

Muffins

So apparently I'm going to feel the need to post every time I bake something.  I made apple-cinnamon muffins tonight from scratch and they are at least as good as the ones from a mix.  Yippee!!

Garden Update

So along with an almost daily supply of tomatoes (YUM!) tonight we picked our first cucumber, which is also pretty good and a couple of carrots that were small but respectable.  Our little celery plants are growing like mad and we have two green peppers that are slowly getting bigger everyday.  All in all we're feeling pretty happy about our little garden.

I was a little worried about having six tomato plants, but the thing is, we LOVE tomatoes.  For us it's no hardship to eat them everyday.  I'm beginning to wonder if I'm even going to have to worry about preserving any.  Either way, hurray for tomatoes.

The Adventurers Return

Ten Great Things About Our Vacation
1. Road trips always remind me that I married the right guy. (He's that cute one at the end of the beach there)
2. Whidbey Island really is as beautiful and charming as we hoped it would be.  Deception Pass Park (it's North Beach is the picture above) is especially lovely
3. Surprises.   For example, when our second campground was less than exciting we pulled out our brochures and learned about Double Bluff Beach, which turned out to be amazing and lead to...
4.  The single best haul of sea shells in terms of variety ever,  if you want to collect shells, Double Bluff is the place to go.
5. That I got to spend time with my awesome family at my Grandma's 80th birthday party.
6. That I got to visit my friend Becky K., see her great kids, and visit with her for a nice long chunk of hours.
7. Camp fires.  Really, just staring at the flames and talking is the best part of camping.
8. The trees.  Holy cow does that island have amazing trees.
9.  Langley, WA.  It's like the Gilmore Girl's Stars Hollow only in the Pacific Northwest.  Yeah, I pretty much want to live there someday :-)
10. My mom, who, even when she wasn't home, managed to make me smile after a long road trip by leaving me cookies.

Three Things I Learned on Vacation
1.  I like camping and I like long road trips.  I don't necessarily love them in combination.
2. When a campground map shows that your campsite is close to the beach, that means nothing.  Our South Whidbey State Park site looked about 500 ft from the beach, and it was, if you dropped a rock off the edge and it went straight down.  The actually walking distance, however, was about a half a mile hike down the side of the hill.
3. The type of wood you use really does determine how easy it is to start and maintain a fire.  The stuff we bought from the State Park stores was a bit of a challenge, the stuff from their hardware store worked awesome.

Five Things I Love About Home
1. The floor is not made of dirt.
2. Going to the bathroom does not require planning, nor a hike up the hill.
3. PRIVACY
4. Knowing where things are.
5. Coming home to this (see photo below) in the garden.

Tiny Tomatoes

We already have tiny tomatoes on the "Early Girl" plant.   I am extremely excited about this.  Tomatoes are at least 80 percent of why I wanted to plant a garden in the first place.

Spinach and Walnut Pesto

A few years ago I tried to make traditional basil and pine nut pesto and we didn't really like it that much so I sort of just gave up on pesto.  However, this week we got a big bunch of spinach from our Bountiful Basket and I was feeling adventurous so I made Spinach and Walnut Pesto with Pasta and Bacon.  I figured the bacon was a good idea because adding bacon to any recipe immediately ups the chances of it being delicious.  This time it was definitely a success.  So if the spinach in our garden goes to town I now have something I can do with it. 

Hmm..I realized their is no super hero reference in this.  Umm...it was green like the Hulk?  Or the Green Arrow?  There, that should cover it. 

We Have a Garden

Today Tracy got the dirt filled into our raised beds and this evening we planted them.  We have two 4 by 8 raised beds along the back of our house and we've planted:

-6 Tomatoes (Yeah, that's a lot. But I bought a cherry and three regular ones and then found two other varieties I wanted and Tracy MADE me by them :-)
-3 Peppers (red, yellow, green) 
-2 Cucumbers
-Celery
-Carrots
-Green Onions
-Spinach
-Basil
-Rosemary
-Dill

We will also be planting green beans when it gets a little warmer, and I planted some mint in pots because if you plant it in your garden it will apparently take over the world.   We had to cover them because tonight might get too cold, but after that we should be good to go.  

Honestly I was worried we wouldn't know what to plant, but if anything our beds are a bit crowded and we didn't even use all of our seeds.  We are really excited about it, here's hoping we stay excited and have lots of fresh veggies.

Dark Chocolate and a Laptop

So supposedly dark chocolate is supposed to be healthy, and given that I've been trying to learn to like it.  My first experiment with Ghiradelli Intense Dark Sea Salt Soiree was a pretty good experience, yummy enough to be a treat but not so much that I wanted to eat a ton of it.  Then yesterday I bought something else because it was on sale...yeah, bad idea, all I taste is the bitterness and the stuff doesn't melt at all.  I will finish eating it but I don't think it serves the purpose I'm looking for, especially when, in solidarity with Tracy's new goal, I officially quit drinking soda this week.

Also, I got a new laptop last week.  It's about the same size, measurement wise as my old laptop but is much lighter.  I'm definitely enjoying the better sound and video quality and it's nice to constantly be worried about if the computer I'm using is on it's last legs.  My old laptop lasted us six years, so I feel pretty lucky about that and hope this one does as well.

All Sorts of Things

Sorry about being such a slacker on the blogging, it's been an ups and downs couple of weeks, but I think I'll focus on the positives:

-I conquered one of my cooking demons last week by successfully making chocolate chip cookies that were good.  My mom, the queen of all cookie making gave me some of her secrets and I think that really helped.  They still weren't quite as good as hers, but they were good enough that Tracy was disappointed when they were all gone.

-My writing buddy Pam started a book club and we had our first book club meeting tonight.  It was great fun.  I'm really glad I've made such good friends here, and it's great to get to know new people as well.

-We're got this fairly amazing deal on a new dryer and it's being delivered Tuesday.  (See how I made that into a positive?  Good work, huh?)

-I met with my dissertation adviser and she agreed with the plan to turn my dissertation from five chapters to four.  It means a bit more revising but it definitely will be less work overall.

And it's almost the end of February...which means winter is drawing to a close, and so far (cross fingers, knock on wood) it's been a mild winter here.   I'm definitely looking forward to spring!

Another Extension and Brussels Sprouts

Just wanted to let everyone know that while we don't have any long term news, Tracy's contract was extended again until mid-March.  So that, at least, keeps us going another month.

On the cooking front, last week I made roasted brussels sprouts.  We received them in our Bountiful Basket and one time on one of my research trips I'd had roasted ones that were really good so I roasted them in the oven.  They were pretty good.  Not something I'd go out of my way to buy, but nice that I was able to make a vegetable that's often spoken about with dread in an edible fashion.

Chicken Pot Pie Meets Biscuits and Gravy

I'm trying to gently and frugally expand my recipe set and cooking skills, so yesterday when looking at a magazine I saw a post-Thanksgiving sandwich idea that suggested making a sandwich with turkey and veggies in gravy put on a biscuit to taste like chicken pot pie. 

Riffing on that idea and knowing we had a pretty good stash of canned chicken and biscuit mix I took the idea and made it into biscuits and gravy.  I sauteed onions and carrots in butter with some rosemary and sage.  Then I made some turkey gravy (started homemade but I threw in a packet to stretch it) and put the veggies and a can of chicken in it.  It tasted a little heavy so I sprinkled in some lemon juice and at the very end added some frozen peas.  Then we spooned the stuff over the biscuits.  Now I doubt it would win any cooking competitions, but it is yummy and fast and cheap.  Hurray!

Just a note to say....

    Happy Thanksgiving!!!    

Okay, so technically it's a day early, but I wanted to make sure I had a Thanksgiving post so I thought I would do it now while I'm thinking about it.  If all goes well tomorrow our relaxing Thanksgiving for two dinner menu will be:

-Grilled Rotisserie Turkey Breast with Apple Juice Glaze and Rosemary, Sage and Garlic Butter (cooked by Tracy!)

-Smashed Red Potatoes with Butter and Sour Cream

-Slightly Experimental Mostly from Scratch Stuffing

-French Bread (Store bought, I admit it) 

-Fresh Green Beans

-Homemade Pumpkin Pie (okay so Pillsbury made the crust but I still think it counts) with Real Whipped Cream 

 The nice thing about it being just the two of us, is that we're feeling more experimental.  You can make up a stuffing recipe for Thanksgiving when there are only two of you and if it fails no one is going to care.   We will miss our families, there's no doubt, but we're looking forward to our quiet Thanksgiving.

I hope everyone has an awesome day full of good food and good feelings.

Thanksgiving Prep

So my presentation turned out to be a low-key, good experience.  I received a lot of good feedback and an indication of some changes I can make when I go to rewrite the chapter.

I just got back from grocery and Thanksgiving shopping.  I was a little nervous about braving the stores the Saturday before Thanksgiving, but it was surprisingly pleasant.  I was also happy that I was able to afford a few splurges (fresh flowers, fresh herbs, pricier turkey breast, butter) and stock ups (three meals worth of pork chops, dirt cheap canned fruit and veggies) and still come in somewhat under budget.  A definite blessing to be thankful for!  I think part of the miracle comes from the fact that our produce basket this week contained not only the regular fruit I was hoping for, but three quarters of the extra stuff I knew I needed for Thanksgiving, like red potatoes and extra celery and onions.  Now if the cooking goes as well as the buying we will be in business.

The Dreaded Cooking Curse

That title has a nice "Halloween" vibe, right?

Ok, so I'm writing this blog post in lieu of swearing and throwing a baking dish across the room, and since it's a glass baking dish full of bubbling fruity goo, that's a very good thing.

I was planning on going to a Relief Society event tonight.  We're supposed to bring some sort of homemade (they specified) holiday treat or dessert.  Now I needed something low stress and that didn't take an extra trip to the grocery store so I decided to make the fruit cobbler I talked about a few posts ago.  I've made it successfully twice in a row, even with tweaking the ingredients, and both times it came out yummy.  Perfect, I thought, I'll do that.

Yeah, this is where the curse comes in.  It doesn't matter how good I am at cooking for just Tracy and I, or how many times I make a dish, if I make it for an event or for someone else 99 percent of the time it goes awry.  Okay, so I'm exaggerating, but not by much, it's more like 75 percent of the time. The first time I was determined to make Tracy an actual cute frosted birthday cake - wind smashes the plastic wrap down which then proceeds to rip off all of the icing. Taking my tried and true pasta salad to a big Fourth of July picnic --- ranch mix is too strong and runny.  Making my chicken alfredo stuff that Tracy loves for company --- white sauce turns an unappealing brown.  

Sometimes I don't even know what goes wrong, other times I make some small but crucial mistake.  Today in the midst of a sudden decision to the clean the bathroom (Why?  Why did I think that was a good idea?) and a desperate attempt to finish up my dissertation chapter (which still isn't quite there) I quickly, but I thought carefully, made the recipe --- and forgot the baking powder. (Note: this is an edit, I originally wrote baking soda which would have been an even bigger disaster, if that's possible.)

I am resisting the urge to swear.  I am resisting the urge to swear.