Oh hai. Here's a little update on my life:

1. I baked a pumpkin pie and burned the crust. but the inside is delicious. Also it started as an actual pumpkin in my kitchen. I did it.
2. Koalas.
3. I'm still on a list making sprint.
4. I have tons of work to do and I'm trying to squish it all in the next 3 weeks so I can actually enjoy my bacon covered turkey.
5. The Giants won the world series, and my excitement was stunted because of my refusal to give up my Southern California identity. Also, from Giants fans not wanting to share, which is fine.

6. I decided that I like some of my classes. Mostly.
7. This morning I found a hair in my oatmeal, because I put it in my mouth. I almost died. Life has been better. It's also been worse.

8. I can run a whole mile without dying. Which is exciting. Here is what my running shoes sort of look like: 

9. I started a blog about being a millennial 20-something with my favorite girl, Allison.
 Check it out here. 

A Walk in the Woods

The MAYBE Soup

Today we are making a different kind of sausage soup. Now really, there is nothing like the original sausage soup that spurred my kitchen adventures over a year ago. That recipe is spicy sausage, diced potato, and kale in chicken broth. Nothing better. So I was, of course, skeptical to hear about this recipe, but it looked different enough. Also I already messed up the ingredients so it will truly be my own creation, as inspired by THIS.

WARNING: I've had better. read all the way through before you get inspired.Also, no disrespect to the link provided, I did things a bit differently than she. (was that correct grammar? differently? is that a word?)

I’ll call this:

The MAYBE Soup

Ingredients:

-carton of chicken broth

-1 big thing of sausage, chopped up

-2 cans white beans

-1 can full of fresh chopped tomatoes

-4 sprigs thyme (my new favorite ingredient as of recently)

-1 white Onion, chopped

- 4 small cloves Garlic, chopped

So before I read the recipe, I started with olive oil and garlic, and then I added chopped onion, but then the garlic burned, and then I read the original recipe, and it said to start with sauté-ing sausage, then adding garlic and onion. This is why I will never have my own cooking show.  Here are the directions as I did it, In red I’ll put what I should have done.

To Do:

.)    Chop 4 small cloves of garlic and add to olive oil at bottom of soup pot.

.)    Chop small onion and add to pot. Cover and cook until translucent. Maybe also don’t cover it, and just stand there and mix it around until the onions are cooked enough.

.)    Add sausage, turn heat to low and cover, stirring occasionally. After the sausage looks good enough…

.)    Add 1 Can worth of chopped tomatoes (the original recipe said one can diced tomatoes, but I was feeling like we hadn’t done the fresh food thing in a while, and I’ve been missing vegetables, so I thought, what the hay. Let’s just buy some tomatoes, it will take me 2 minutes to cut them, and I’ll feel way better about whatever I’m making.

.)    Add 1 cans of beans (these are a pain to cook from scratch. Hence, the cans.)

.)    Add 4 sprigs of thyme

.)    Add 1 carton (32 oz, 4 C, 1 Qt) of chicken broth.

.)    The recipe that I started from says to cook for 30 minutes, but I’m going to cook it all day because this morning was when I had time to make it and tonight is when I will have time to eat it. May add some water later as well.

.)    At the very end, I will add 6 oz. of fresh spinach, and probably some fresh basil. We also bought fresh-ish Parmesan so we’ll try that too. Wish me luck. 

Survey says:

This was super salty- use less chicken broth, more water, we also simmered it basically all day which probably made the broth more concentrated. Spinach was good, but truly do use recommended 10 oz. We only used 5-ish oz. and it was lacking. Also, I would just as well make my old stand by and swap spinach for kale, beans for potatoes, and sausage with spicy sausage, leave out the tomatoes and call it a day. David seemed more excited about this one. My stomach respectfully disagreed. 

#tbt unsure...eating healthy

4/24/2014: I'm pretty sure that this was a GRE practice prompt. Haven't read it, just cleaning house so leaving it here. 

Eating healthy is becoming an increasing challenge in today's society. Aside from going to backyard markets, it is almost impossible to find even the purest food: vegetables, that have not been enhanced as GMOs. Although we necessarily go to restaurants expecting the healthiest food, as a population, we should continue to make ourselves aware of what we are putting into our bodies. Restaurants can help to educate the public by including nutritional information on their menus. This will not only help the food corporations keep themselves in check, but it will help us to make good nutritional choices for ourselves on a daily basis.

Corporations rely on advertising to reach consumers. By advertising food in a way that makes it seem fresh and appealing, corporations are able to attract a group of consumers that might otherwise never reach out and try their products. In the '90s, McDonalds presented McDonalds Salad Shakers. Salad in a cup, covered in dressing seemed like a refreshing and healthy snack on the go. Compared to their other products like frozen chemically enhanced meat and starch products, Salad Shakers were presented as the healthy choice. While this may have been true, the dressing and croutons made this seemingly fresh and healthy choice worse than other non-McDonald's options however, it's convenience and presentation in advertising made it the perfect excuse for a salad. Had consumers been aware of the nutritional information of the dressing, and the types of vegetables in Salad Shakers, they might have realized that it was not only not half as healthy as they may have believed at first, but that it was also not worth the money they were paying compared to a potentially healthier snack from a different restaurant. If restaurants are forced to list nutritional information, it will help to educate the public and eliminate the impact of questionable and false advertising.

Being educated about our food choices is the best thing that we can do for ourselves nutritionally. Knowledge is power and it is vital that we take the power of food back from large corporations such as Kraft and Nestle. If we are able to visually observe the nutritional value of what we are putting into our bodies, we will also eventually learn positive and negative correlations with the outcomes of healthier and less healthy foods. Although it may take time, eventually, we will be able to see the physical manifestation of positive eating habits versus negative eating habits. By making ourselves aware of what we are putting in our bodies, it will give us the opportunity to make our own choices and decide our own fate.

It is imperative to our bodies that we are made aware of what we are eating on a daily basis. Although some may say that people don't go to restaurants to eat healthy, every meal counts and we should at least be given the option to be aware of what we are eating. Several food chains have successfully begun to advertise the calorie counts of their products and it has created an empowered new generation of eaters and consumers. People are beginning to return to the basics of food, shopping solely at healthy food markets and using less processed products. The struggle between corporations and those who wish to eat healthy will continue until the consumer can decide to take the power back into his own hands and demanding nutritional information is a step in the right direction to take back our food and our bodies.

1. Advertising is law in our society. If nutritional information is not present, and heavy advertising is, then there becomes a fine line between false advertising and bending the truth. Corporations have already taken over most food production in America and the least that we can do as consumers is be aware of this fact. Consumerism and corporate success depends on the trust of the consumer. If we can be aware of our choices, this begins to give the power back to the consumer.
2. knowledge is power- if people know what they are eating, they might think twice about ordering it, specifically in fast food and mass produced food settings such as subway or Pizza Hut.

#ThrowBackThursday - Thanksgiving 2012 Blog

Cleaning off my desktop on my computer. Apparently this blog has been sitting there for a year and a half. Let's see what young Charlotte has to say about her first rodeo...

So we had thanksgiving, and then right after I went away for 2 weeks to train for my NEW JOB! Which meant that I took zero time to write about anything. So 1 month later, I am FINALLY getting around to blogging about Thanksgiving dinner. My overall review of myself on Thanksgiving was that I tried way too hard. Next year, Trader Joes boxed stuffing, definitely, may do something interesting with the turkey, but other than that, I'm hoping to stick to the absolute basics. (Although, I will never give up on my own home made gravy. NEVEEERRRRR!!!)

Appetizers (Completely unneccessary, btw.)

Spinach Artichoke Dip

-spinach

-2 cans artichoke hearts

-1/2 C mayonnaise

-1/2 C sour cream

-1 C jack cheese

-1 C pepperjack cheese

ok Directions: mix all of these ingredients and bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Review: This was seriously like the grossest thing I ever ate. I was so mad because Tina spent a TON of time on the artichoke hearts. It was super spicy, and NOT SPINACHY. I may work off of this recipe in the future, but it just did not have enough jack cheese and had way too much artichoke. It was GROSS.

Meatballs

-ground beef (Whatever size, like 1 lb is usually good)

-bread crumbs (1/3 C)

-Parmesan Cheese (1/3 C)

-1 egg

-spices

Directions: mix everything together, add some garlic powder or minced garlic, salt, pepper, basil, marjoram, if you don't add all these random little things, they just taste like big dried out balls of ground beef. And Meatballs can simply be so much more than that!!! Roll into a little smaller than a golf ball and bake on a tin foil lined baking sheet for 15 ish minutes. Since it's beef, you can really cook it as much or as little as you like (At least that's what hear). Once you're comfortable combining these ingredients and knowing that it will come out to be at least a 7 out of 10 meal, then you also know how to make meatloaf. Just do the same thing but with twice the amount of meat (any two kinds, works best, you're choice) and throw it in the crock pot and add a can of seasoned tomato sauce. 8 hours. Bam. Meatloaf. Reveiw: For thanksgiving, these were actually really good before actual dinner since we usually eat around 3 and it's such a weird time. The once change I would make is to make these a day or two before and just heat them up on the actual day because there is so much going on in the kitchen.

Main Course

Bacon covered/stuffed turkey aka Larry the Bird

-carrots

-celery

-rosemary

-bacon

-a turkey

Directions: Take out the innards of the turkey, if yours is like ours was, the neck and the rest will be in two separate bags/sections, so make sure you get both out. David named out turkey Larry. So take your Larry, and put him belly down (There is lots of recent discussion about putting the bird top down, I have no idea. We did it the old school way. Sue us. I'll probably do it breast down next year just to see what happens but I mean, how exciting is it really going to be. Its a dead bird.) . Stuff Larry with some cut up carrot, celery, and rosemary. Because of this recipe, we also put some bacon in him for good luck. Then we took the rest of our bacon (probably one and a half packs total) and wove it across the top of Larry. We started to just lay it across, but David knows how to do a lattice, and we thought that would look all Woman's Day and fancy so we went with that. If we had had the right backdrop, it would totes have been magazine worthy. We also put a cheese cloth over the whole thing to tuck him in for the warmest nap he ever had. We put him in one of those tin, crummy potluck dishes from the grocery store that you take buffet food to church in. It was great because we didn't have to clean it after. It was not so great because we had to make sure that it didn't crumple when we were putting Larry in and taking him out of the oven. We also had to buy a baster (thank god I remembered when we were at the grocery store) and we basted him every 30 minutes. It was great because both the turkey and bacon drippings covered the bottom of the pan. I don't remember how long we cooked it. Like 3 or 4 hours or something like that.

Sides

Cranberry Apple Sausage Stuffing

-4C cubed bread

-4 turkey sausages

-1/2 Chopped onion

-3 stalks of chopped celery

-1 ½ tbsp sage

-3 small stalks of de-leaved rosemary (the leaf part)

-1/4 tsp thyme

-1 small golden delicious apple

-½ C dried cranberries

-1 tbsp minced parsley

-Turkey liver finely chopped

-2 C turkey stock

-¼ C melted butter

Directions: I won't bother with the directions because I didn't actually read them, which I think is why it was such a mega fail. So whatever. If you already know how to make stuffing, this is a delicious mix of ingredients.

Trader Joes Corn Bread stuffing

-boxed stuffing

Directions: I'm actually in the air over Ohio on my way to my parents house right now for Christmas and when I get there, I am going to BEG my family to get this stuffing for Christmas dinner (which is the exact same thing as Thanksgiving dinner at my parents house ever since my dad won the turkey> ham debacle back in 2010.) David and I tried a sample of this stuffing at Trader Joe's, bless their samples, and we were h-o-o-k-e-d.

Home Made Regular Stuffing

-fresh baked bread 3 1/4 C

-celary 4 stalks celery

-mushrooms ½ C

-onions1 small onion

-chicken broth ½ C chicken

Directions: Standard, whatever that means, read them from online somewhere but if you're just going to have plain stuffing then in my opinion, you may as well just get it from a box at the grocery store.

Green Bean Casserole Dish

-cream (like maybe a quart, enough to cover the amount of green beans that you are making)

-butter (Paula Dean says as much butter as you want, but you're making a rue with it and the cream, so just guess)

-mushrooms ¾ C

-Green Beans

-breadcrumbs

Directions: Combine cream , butter and minced mushrooms in a small sauce pan and let simmer on low for 10-15 minutes (pay attention to it! It will burn faster than you can say “I was busy with the turkey because it's more important” because if you don't burn this, you will find that it will be just as important, I swear. Butter the casserole dish and put green beans in it. I would chop them up to make serving easier. Cover the beans in the mushroom cream sauce (Guess what, I tricked you into making cream of mushroom so that you didn't have to use that canned concentrate stuff. Now don't you feel super healthy?). Cover everything in bread crumbs to keep it from drying out on the oven. Bake at a happy 350 degrees for 35 minutes. Instead of breadcrumbs, I might also add a little water to the bottom and cover with tin foil so that the beans can steam. But what do I know. Review: The mushroom sauce was in my opinion, amazing.

Mashed Jersey Sweet Potatoes

-2 large Jersey white sweet potatoes

-butter

-flour

-nuts

-brown sugar

Mashed Potatoes

-potatoes

-butter

-cream

-salt

Directions: I hardly think that mashed potatoes need directions seeing as someone once named this dish very wisely, but there seem to be a million and one opinions on how to make this the “best mashed potatoes ever.” So obviously I need to give my own input. Cut potatoes into small cubes if you're paying attention and have a good knife, and large pieces if you're busy with other things or have a crappy knife. Potatoes can over cook easily and my dad thinks that it makes them watery and that they lose their rich-ness. Cut into size accordingly. Once they are cooked, grab the mixer, this allows them to get extra air for fluffiness, but it also causes them to cool down very quickly so this should be the very last thing you do before you sit down to eat (unless you bake them after, then you're on your own). Add butter (like at least 3 to 4 tablespoons if not more), and add a little salt and pepper. Also add whole milk or cream, whatever is closest (save a little cream from the mushroom sauce maybe?). EAT.

Home Made Gravy

-drippings from turkey and bacon

-pepper

-big ol' scoop of minced garlic

-1/2 C white wine

-flour to thicken

-innards

-carrots, celery

-rosemary

-1/2 C turkey stock

Home made gravy directions: So for the homemade gravy that I made, I talked with my dad, stole parts of his recipe, and we both decided that our gravy was way too intense. But I don't know how to water down liquid fat, so just read this recipe maybe and take something away from it and make your own. Boil innards with carrots, celery, and rosemary with water as the day goes on. After you take out the turkey, add the drippings to a new pan, and strain the juice from the innards and veggies into the drippings pan. Season with minced garlic, pepper and other spices (DO NOT ADD SALT AT THIS POINT). Add ½ C turkey stock and white wine. Let the mixture boil out for a while. This is mostly it. I added flour to thicken but I think if you just let it cool a little, then it will thicken up seeing as ours was a solid block of turkey jello the next morning when we took it out of the refrigerator.

Crescent Rolls

For dessert we had oreo ice cream and pumpkin pie (super duper tasty, Tina made it!) The apples that I was going to make pie out of are still sitting in our refrigerator so that's awesome. Good thing we eat healthy around our house.

Tips:

1. Plan out the dishes you will use to bake with for each recipe so that you have enough. David had to run out half way through the day and spent like $10 on a baking dish because that was what was available on Thanksgiving, the rest we got for a DOLLAR at the Dollar Tree.
2. pay attention to the baking temps for each dish. If some dishes need to be hotter, but the turkey is already in, I put them towards the top of our oven because it's hotter up there.
3. DON'T micro manage like I did. Sorry guys! John and Tina played video games all day and chopped stuff for me. In my defense, we have the second tiniest kitchen known to man, but still. I did this poorly.
4. Make breakfast. And coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.
5. Once you are done with coffee, switch to wine.

NEW CHALLENGE!: Since David and I have gotten into the same habits of food choices so I thought to mix it up, we would take on the 30 Dates around the World challenge that I made up. So we are going to take food and maybe movies from 40 different countries and have theme nights for the next 12 months!! We kicked it off with America on Thanksgiving, but then I was gone, and now David is gone, so we are basically starting in January. If you have any suggestions for us for recipes or movies to watch, send 'em over!

Charlotte's First (Second) 5K

Today I walked a 5K. The last time I ran a 5K I was in high school. This all started about 2 months ago when I …well I don’t really remember what motivated me, but I ended up in a running shoe store with an incredibly enthusiastic running shoe store owner.  This nice gentleman told me lots of things about running, and slowly building up a pace, and all kinds of wonderful easy doable things I could do to turn myself into a runner. One of the things he told me about was the Sue Paterno 5K for Special Olympics. Now, I don’t know how to explain a State College person, but it’s a thing. You think you know an obnoxious USC fan, or an overzealous Oregon fan. That’s adorable. Penn State is CRAAAAYYYYYYY. This is how much people love Penn State: there’s a “State College Vortex” that people ARE HAPPY ABOUT; it’s only warm (but still deathly humid) three months out of the year, and people not only tolerate the cold, BUT THEY’RE STILL OVER THE MOON ABOUT BEING HERE (so basically the weather is solid about 1 month a year) ; people wait in line for over 2 hours to get ONE TINY BOWL OF ICE CREAM from the Penn State Creamery; 80,000 people go to football SCRIMMAGES<- 5="" a="" driving="" each="" hours="" make="" nbsp="" of="" out="" p="" this.="" to="" way="" weekend="">

This is just some of the explanation. You really have to personally witness a tailgate to understand the insanity of this. This nice shoe sales man is more State College-y than any other person I have ever met since we moved here.

This wonderful man informed me of this annual fundraiser for Special Olympics, lead by Sue Paterno, a preserved local hero in this town. He told me that two months probably wasn't enough time to be able to train to run a 5K. This particular gentleman really likes his running.

Long story short, here I was, standing in a big group of people at the foot of Beaver Stadium, getting ready to walk a 5K.

The walk itself, yeah, it was a thing. I might have enjoyed more of a stroll than a power walk. My favorite supporters were two people holding up a sign that said “Embrace your pace!” Although we weren’t the last people across, some people could have run three 5Ks in the amount of time it took us to walk this one.

As we approached the stadium (the finish line is the 50 yard line on the football field), Pharell’s “Happy” came on. I was sandwiched between two of my favorite people (David and Pat, one of the sorority advisors) and I was feeling great! We ran to the finish line. It was an amazing experience running down the corridor of people screaming and cheering for us as we finished!! 

The feeling I got after crossing the finish line was…well it was embarrassing. We walked a 5K for peet's sake. But HOLY CRAP WAS I ONE HAPPY CAMPER!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Going forward, the plan is to get general health and well being checked up from my doctor, and then to keep going for it! (Slowly.)

Dear Clam Chowder, I Own You Now. Love, Charlotte

**I will update this with pictures alter, but it's basically just pictures of stuff in a pot, and a picture of the ingredients.***

 I have a really important announcement to make:

I FOUND THE SECRET TO HOMEMADE CLAM CHOWDER. Here is the story:

            About a week ago, David’s aunt asked for my clam chowder recipe. For as much as I love to cook, I haven’t quite mastered this one yet. So I did some research, I’ve started using food.com and not so much with the AllRecipes after seeing so many recipes get 5 stars with 10,000 comments below about adjustments. These are NRBs. As in, it’s Nice Recipe BUT… I don’t want NRBs. I want good recipes.                  
 So, after some hunting, I found a unique recipe with comments WITHOUT CHANGES. I, of course, changed it a lot. I made it less potato heavy, and substituted the extra taters with some vegetables to give the impression of healthy homemade food. If only my scale could speak to me, I would tell it how healthy I’m being. THEN it would have a different opinion of me, I’m sure of it.

           
So, with some hesitation, we went for it. Sometimes when I make soups, I like to chop everything up for extra easy eating, other times I leave it chunky because I’m lazy or because I want more STUFF in my soup. This one we did somewhere in between because both David and I were working on it. I swear, a little wine and a good country Pandora station makes the food so much better at the end.

Without further ado, here it is:

Charlotte’s Now Famous Clam Chowder

Prep/Cook time: 70-90 minutes ish (but don't be scared!)

Servings: 6-ish…probly

Ingredients:

4 pieces of bacon-cut up into little pieces

1 small-ish onion chopped

3 stalks of celery chopped

2 carrots (or ¾ C of baby carrots cut up) chopped

2C cubed potatoes (We used tiny red potatoes, use whatever kind you want though. This usually measures out to 2 regular sized potatoes. Just keep the cubes small.)

1/2C white wine

1/2C heavy cream

1C milk

2 cans of clams in clam juice (they were kinda big, maybe get minced clams if big clams freak you out or bother you)

½ tsp dill

ARE YOU READY FOR THIS??????

1 CAN CONDENSED CREAM OF CELERY SOUP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. I know. I didn’t even know that was a thing. P.S. when you open the can, it’s going to look NAAAAYASSSSSSTY. I almost didn’t add it, but then I decided to just GO FOR IT. WORTH. IT. BRO.

Salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Chop everything up. Usually I’m a proponent of preparing ingredients as you go, but you almost dump everything into this at once so just chop ahead of time.
2. In your favorite large soup pot, cook bacon until it’s sizzley and done and has attracted all the noses in your house to the kitchen.
3. Add in the onions, carrots, and celery. Mix around so that it’s all covered in bacon fat (add a little butter if it doesn’t feel like enough) and cook until the onions are transclucent.(I also added a good amount of salt and pepper here)
4. Add in Potatoes, clam JUICE and wine. Cover and let cook for 15-20 minutes until the potatoes are fork-able (or whatever consistency you are comfortable eating them at).
5. Add in the milk, cream, condensed soup, and clams. (I added more salt and pepper here because it felt bland.) Mix and let cook 30-40 minutes.
6. THAT IS IT. FOR REALS RIGHT NOW.

I can't even believe this. No extra ingredients laying around after, like 3 dishes to wash. a-mazing. I could die. So great. My next adventure will be figuring out how to make cream of celery so that we aren't using canned soup that bothers our stomachs for the rest of the night. (I mean, it was obviously 400% worth it, but I'm just saying.)

SHA-BAAAAAAMMM. CLAM CHOWDER. 

BJC February 2014

This past February, we spent 200% more time at the BJC than ever before (I guess David went there for a career fair....doesn't count for this math lesson).

THON

For those of you who are not familiar with the cult of THON, it is a Penn State thing. I could potentially get tackled for saying this, BUT, in a nutshell, 3,000-ish students plan for a year to raise millions of dollars to support around 700 dancers who "dance" for 46 hours straight in the BJC. They raise money for the Four Diamonds Fund which helps support children with cancer (and their families). There is MUCH more to this, they have a dance, they have followers, they have alumni who are more dedicated to THON than to Penn State. See THIS LINK for more information, or to donate, contact me and I will forward you to my sorority. it's a competition and my chapter always owns. (MY chapter. HAH- the chapter I advise.)

 

This particular moment was one of the emptier moments- 8am on Saturday (the event is Friday night to Sunday afternoon)when we squeezed in to take a looksy-poo.

Me interviewing The Man about what's happening at THON.

After THON, I was put into a group for a group project in my LAW class with one of the Grad assistants of the Basketball team, who also used to be ON the team. he got us free tickets to the second to last game -AGAINST OHIO STATE. spoiler: We won.  I love beating Ohio State, at anything. Much like all other humans on the planet in 'murica who aren't ohio state or bama fans. (#rolldamntide)

Oh, did I mention our new football coach was sitting 3 seats in front of us? David saw him outside before the game and I MISSED him. If any of you know anything about my relationship with basketball, it will come as no surprise that my goal in going to the game was to solely to hunt down Franklin (I had a hunch he would be there...it's recruitment season and it's a sport to show off. Good thing we won lolz). 

After David saw him outside and told me, I was basically devastated because David doesn't care about celebrities and almost never gets starstruck.  Celebrity-ism is wasted on him because he doesn't think he should care about someone just because TMZ and People and Teen People and USAToday and E! and the Today Show and Perez Hilton and SNL and the government and every living human in America tells him he should care about them. I mean, I respect that; it just gives me an excuse to be extra crazy, you know, to make up for his lack of crazy.

That being said, he was pretty excited to see Franklin, and he didn't even expect to see him, which made me frown extra big. As we're sitting in our seats having a conversation about all of this, (sandwiched between two sets of incognito Ohio State fans who actually CARED about the game, I might add), I said, "I wonder where Franklin is now, in this big giant stadium...thingy. he could be anywhere." And dear old David responds with, "Uhm...I think he's right there," and points three rows down and ten seats over from us. WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!! We then spent the next two quarters (is basketball in quarters? I forget) watching people come up and take pictures with him. The poor guy across the aisle from Franklin kept being asked to take pictures or getting someone else's butt shoved in his face while they basically stood on top of the kid to take the picture. We were going to go up to Franklin and ask him to take a picture of us with the other guy (you know, to be witty), but then he moved and we literally chased him down to the floor of the arena (OH YEAH! THAAAAT'S WHAT IT'S CALLED!!! Arena.), tapping his shoulder,angering his assistant lady, begging for a picture like the fools we are. We never got to use our cool line and at that moment, we were literally the last people he wanted to take a picture with. Some poor soul undergraduate kid took our picture, expecting to get the next one, and then Franklin walked away.

SHUT DOWN.

Angry Football Coach:

  

At the end of sporting events, this really cool thing happens. The Band plays what we think is the  alma matter (we're not completely sure) and all of the students put their arms around each other and sing at the tops of their lungs. It pretty much makes me cry every single time, I don't know why. It's just adorable and moving and everyone doing the same thing that has literally been being done for over 100 years (I assume, since this school does everything first before anyone else, as a general rule). After they stormed the field, I mean court, they all got together in haphazzard lines and sang that wonderful old (sometimes silly) song. wait, so i just watched a video and apparently it's a new post-game tradition...whatever...it's the best tradition. 

WATCH THE ADORABLE VIDEO HERE.  

There may or may not be adorable swaying. Minute 3:01 is my personal favorite. 

Not that anyone but us cares, but my favorite part of this whole madness is all the people who, right before the swaying begins, scream (and i mean SCREAM): LEFT!!!!!! (as in, sway to the left first). it never really works out (mostly because of the average BAC of the student section), but it's so great that they're always so determined.

 

here is the actual alma mater and INFORMATION ABOUT IT HERE. 

I like it, but I'm a little biased. 

This picture is of before we won- IT WAS ACTUALLY A CLOSE GAME. 

My one artistic picture.

They didn't have a kiss cam, so not all my dreams came true that night, but it was close. 

 Add 5 lbs of chocolate and 4 boxes of overpriced girl scout cookies, and that's basically it for February!

The Big Plan

So, I fully intend to blog about healthy food more, but until I can actually write things up, here is the website that David found that we've been experimenting from:

http://www.whfoods.com/recipestoc.php?#recipes

Delish. As I've told many of you (ok like 3 people), all we added to our grocery list was fresh ginger root, white rice vinegar...and...I think that's it. OH, we bought napa cabbage and pot sticker wrappers. Those were new. AND THAT'S IT! You can make almost everything from this website using ingredients you already have! and it repeats ingredients a lot too,

WHICH IS GREAT BECAUUUUUUUUSEEE... New recipes always call for the most random crap and then it just sits in the back of my cupboard for months. I can't be the only one this happens to.

Peanut hates extra ingredients lying around. He is not impressed. 

Tasty Tomato Pot

Tasty Tomato Pot

This dish is best when you’ve been feeling negligent food-wise. We recently went away for a weekend and I don’t know about you, but eating at restaurants gets very old very fast. I can never find solid veggies, and when I do, they feel like they’ve been soaking in butter and salt for weeks before they finally get to my plate.

Ingredients:

Basically any veggies that you love. Here’s what we did with ours tonight:

2tbsp. olive oil

3 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped

1 small onion diced-ish

10 quartered baby carrots

4 asparagus, chopped

1 small zucchini, sliced

½ a bell pepper sliced

1 28oz can diced tomatoes (I meant to get whole and then chop them up, but this worked out okay too, just make sure you get the ones without extra salt

1 tbsp. honey (to balance out the acidity of the tomatoes)

½ a lemon

1 chicken breast

½ lb. shrimp

1/2C chopped parsley (don’t know if this actually made a difference or not, but it looked healthy)

1-2 tbsp. Cajun seasoning (or mixed salt and pepper always works great too)

1.       Preheat the oven to 350.

2.       Slowly add the bolded ingredients, giving them time to simmer between each ingredient (I chopped as I added as opposed to chopping all ahead of time and then adding at the same time).add most of the seasoning too.

3.       After you get a tasty smell going, pour in the can of tomatoes, mix and cover.

4.       Cut the chicken to your preferred size, add to a bowl, add parsley, little seasoning and squeeze the ½ lemon over the chicken. Mix with a little olive oil, spread on a baking sheet and bake until done (usually 15-20 minutes).

5.       As soon as you put the chicken in, put the rice on (if you’re eating this with rice)

6.       After you put the rice on, you have the perfect amount of time to shell the shrimp and add them to your tomato pot. Stand there and stir JUST until the shrimp turn pink. Also, I added the rest of the lemon to the pot, but that’s just because I was feeling fancy.

7.       Take the chicken out of the oven, drain the pan, and add to the tomato pot.

8.       What? Did you say that took you exactly the amount of time for the rice to be done at this exact moment? Check that baby!

9.       Pour over rice, or next to rice, and eat! 

Don’t you feel healthy? Me too.