We're moving

To the Biltmore Estate.  I think with that many rooms they won't even notice us there.  Well, maybe they'll notice Zelda, but I can be real quiet when I need to.  Matt gave me my Christmas present early this year and took me to see the Biltmore Estate all done up for Christmas.  It was a lovely little trip.  We had lunch at Sheetz and then we got to Asheville a little too early to check into our hotel so we browsed a local pet store.  They had this nylabone rib toy that I was thinking of getting Zelda.  I didn't end up getting it but I still want to, I'm pretty sure she would have loved it.  We stayed at the cutest little hotel and the lady who checked us in was nice as could be.  We didn't have time to stay and admire our spacious room though, our reservations for the Biltmore were at 5:30pm.  A couple of years ago Chris and I were watching a program on the Travel Channel about "The most" McDonalds.  The one that they showed at the fanciest McDonalds was located in Asheville.  I promised Chris ahead of time that we would go and take pictures.  The place is pretty ridiculous.  It has a two sided fireplace, a vaulted ceiling, player piano, and wrought iron dividers.  Even the employees were fancier than normal.  It was pretty amazing.  Did I mention how cold it was?  It was freezing outside, literally.  It was snowing when we got into Milo to drive down to Biltmore Village, nothing major, just a few flurries.  Still, it was super cold and windy.  Luckily Matt and I had planned ahead and packed lots of warm accessories to help us through.  I can't possibly describe the Biltmore Estate so I'm not even going to try.  But it is beautiful and if you ever get a chance to, I would go.

43 days till Christmas, not that I'm counting

SoI went ahead and decorated the whole spare room for Christmas. Yes, I know that its not even Thanksgiving yet but Christmas decorations are so beautiful. I think its a shame that we only get to see them for a month. Plus, they are helping to encourage me as I dig my heels in and make my Christmas presents. The tight budget this year means everyone is getting lovingly hand made presents. My poor little sewing machine is ready to give up. I've also been playing with paint and yarn and pretty soon I'm going to be drilling holes. Sorry to be cryptic but since my readers are most likely those people who would get a present from me, I don't want to ruin it for y'all. Zelda isn't too happy about my crafting. She wants me to pay more attention to her. When she realizes that I'll be at the machine a while she lays down in her little bed and naps. Like many adolescents, Zelda does a whole lot of sleeping these days.
On the cooking front, Matt and I are working on cutting our budget. This means that we must have less fancy dinners. Not that many extravagant ingredients. I feel like beans are going to become a oft seen dinner companion. Speaking of which, I made beans today. They not only have the benefit of being cheap to make but making them from scratch makes them taste so much better than getting them out of the can. Because we had fresh made beans I made Mexican food for dinner. It has been years and years since I made chile rellenos but I think they came out pretty darn good. Oh! I almost forgot. I made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies this weekend. They were super tasty. I made the pumpkin puree myself with a cute little pumpkin that Matt bought me. I still have more left and he has requested some pumpkin bread.
After a long day of crafting, cooking, and cleaning I need to relax. Thanks to my mother, I cannot sit and watch tv without feeling antsy so I generally have something to do in the evenings. I am currently spending my evening tv moments doing this pattern. I don't know what it is yet but its fun to see it take shape, bit by bit.

We're sending out, a major love, and this is our message to you

Oh Michael.  Last week was a long one.  Matt was gone to a conference in Boone, NC, I finished up my thesis, and one of my childhood heroes died.  I know for people who weren't big Michael fans think its kind of weird that some of us are so upset by his death.  Matt doesn't understand it either.  I know he was weird but I still love the MJ I knew growing up.  His music was a huge part of my childhood.  I still remember when the music video for Thriller came out and I was not allowed to watch it but I hid behind the door and saw part of it and got freaked out.  (sometimes parents do know what they're talking about)  I had a red leather jacket when I was five or six that had all the zippers on it, I thought it was so cool.  I had a sweatshirt that had him on it in a yellow sweater vest and had matching clip on earrings.  I can't even tell you how many time I've seen Captain Eo.  I was incredibly upset when they decided to replace it at Disneyland.  It just feels like a part of my childhood died.  I always had this hope that Michael would make a comeback and be who he was when I was a kid.  Thats the Michael I'm going to remember anyways. 

Like I said, Matt is back which is wonderful.  I hate it when he's gone.  Its so boring and lonely.  We did a lot of cleaning/tidying yesterday.  I washed all of his clothes that he brought back from the conference while he went to do the grocery shopping.  I finally got around to vacuuming the living room.  I also put all of Zelda's things away in her very own drawer, hung up her clothes and set out her bed.  I think the closer it gets to her coming home the more nervous Matt and I get.  I'm sure there will be lots of pictures on Sunday of her first day at home.  I don't know how I'm going to make it through the week until then.

Finally, I finished writing my thesis.  Mark has okay'd it and I'm going to pass it out to my committee today.  Scarey!  Which means that I need to put together my talk this week.  I have my defense a week from Thursday, which is July 8th at 2pm.  Thats a scarey thought too.  I just want it to be over.  Its going to be a stressful week and a half.  Matt has to give joint lab meeting the day before my defense and he always gets stressed out before he has to do that.  Hopefully we won't start throwing things at each other before the end, lol. 

Food

Yes I'm sitting here in the dark, again. While I would like to be writing, it is really too dark in here to do it without straining my eyes. Believe me, I've tried. I was trying to think about things I could do but there are only so many recipes I can look at so now I'm still here so I thought of something else. I have recently had a lot of conversations with my friends about things that I love to do. I realized that as much as I love to cook, I don't talk about my creations that much on here. So I'm going to tell you about some of my recent culinary attempts.
Lets see...
Last week I made his awesome chicken/tofu dinner. I dipped each of them in egg and then a "breading" made of things I had in the house. It was matzo meal, crushed French's fried onions, garlic salt, lemon pepper, and freshly shredded Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. I fried the tofu and chicken (separately) in a little bit of olive oil. When those were almost done, I boiled some soba noodles and then put them in a pan with more cheese, garlic salt, and a little more olive oil. We served it with the chicken or tofu on top of the noodles. It was fantastic. I didn't have any of the chicken but it smelled good and Matt assured me that it was very tasty.
When I first moved to Chapel Hill I bought myself some spring form pans with the intention of learning how to make cheesecake.  Well its nearly three years later and they hadn't been used yet.  This month in Bon Appétit had a bunch of delicious looking desserts, including a lemon cheesecake with brownie bottom.  I learned many things Easter weekend:  sometimes Alton Brown knows what he's talking about because to date none of my cheesecakes have cracked, my spring form pans are cheap and leak when following Mr. Browns directions, I'm really good at making cheesecake, sour cream mixed with sugar and baked is actually tasty. Don't worry about the leakage though, Matt saved the day by getting oven bags for the next cheesecake attempt.  At some point, I will get a nice pan from Williams Sonoma that won't leak when put in a water bath.  Since then I also made an Oreo cheesecake for Steph's wine party because I had a ton of Oreos left over from Catarina's going away party.  For that I made these Oreo truffles.  You grind up Oreos, mixed them with cream cheese, then dip them in chocolate.  MMMM, very good. This time I made three different kinds: regular Oreo, mint Oreo, and ones that were half regular Oreo half Nutter Butters.
Matt bought me an ice cream maker for my birthday, which I have been wanting for a long time.  I've made three batches of dark chocolate ice cream.  The most recent batch also had bits of reeses peanut butter cups.  I haven't really played around with it yet but I did make a mango lime sorbet that was pretty good.  I have plans to make Mexican chocolate ice cream next.  I think it'll be really good.  I have the base recipe down so now its just up to my imagination and Matt, Steph, and Linda's stomaches to come up with new ones.
I know I never talk about it, but I love cheese.  I made these really good bread thingys that were small slices of baguette topped with either goat's cheese and sauteed mushrooms or a mixture of fresh basil, blue cheese, and cream cheese.  This is bad, now I want cheese.  Well, I leave you with something that I learned yesterday while reading wikipedia entries about various cheeses that I like.  Yes I realize that is a pathetic sentence.  Apparently Spain and several Latin American countries like to put small chunks of white cheese in their hot chocolate and then when the cocoa is gone they eat the cheese.  I'm really excited to try this.  Spain generally uses manchego which is great because I love it.

A bit dusty around here

Its been quite some time since I last posted.  So much has happened since then.  I'll post all the fun pictures from my birthday bowling, Steph and Linda's wine party, and our lovely picnic at Duke gardens.  Once again I am sitting in the dark taking pictures of fly embryos.  They look really nice though.  The arm stripes are nearly perfect.  Mark has ok'ed the Roc1b wing discs and almost signed off on the brains too.  If I could just finish up the embryos I can begin to forget about them.  Of course I need to finish up the Roc2 pictures too but that is a story for another day. 
Matt and I celebrated our 30 monthaversary yesterday.  We had a lovely dinner at Maggiano's where we had a sort of uncomfortable conversation about the future.  Don't misunderstand, it was a good conversation.  Its hard to be an adult and figure out what you want to be when you grow up.  The whole grown up thing is pressing in on us with me graduating and Matt graduating in another year and a half or two.  He's not sure what he wants to do next, I don't blame him, I don't really know what I want to do either.  But it was very good to talk about.  Matt has a couple of ideas on what he likes and some people that he can talk to about future possibilities and ideas.  I had gnocchi and it was divine!  Matt had a chicken spaghetti with a pesto alfredo sauce.  We both decided on the larger portion since its only few dollars more and now we both have dinner for a couple of nights.  As a poor graduate students making a meal stretch is always an awesome thing.  Plus, now we don't have to think about what to make to dinner tonight, double bonus!  It was a really lovely evening. 

I just wanted to send a big hug and kiss to all my super supportive parents and brother and Moe.  You guys have been really great lately and it means a lot to me.  

There is an update around here somewhere

I know I've been bad about the updates recently.  I apologize.  I'll try and be better, probably.  I'll update a little at a time since for somethings I have pictures.  So I'll update until that point and then I'll track down Matt and steal his sd card so I can upload the pictures.
Let me think back, way back.  Hmmm, interesting things that have happened.  Well, recruitment time is almost over with and we've participated in exactly nothing this year.  Last year it was a group effort and this year the Biology Department was left out of the whole thing.  We weren't allowed to help plan or organize and subsequently most of us didn't participate.  I don't want any of you to think that we were all being petty but we actually didn't get invited to help with almost anything and the few times we were they said something to the affect of "if you volunteer to clean or drive we're more likely to choose you to come to the event".  I thought that was kind of rude because we probably would have done it either way.  Oh well, Matt and I have been pretty busy lately anyway so I guess its ok.  Actually we volunteered to present posters on the first weekend and they never had the decency to respond and let us know if we were or weren't presenting.  Maybe next year we can do more. 
Speaking of being busy, I think I mentioned before that Matt and I have going to the gym.  I don't remembered if I said that we were going to step up our routine and start going even more often (read daily).  That didn't work out so well.  Not because we didn't have the resolve but I was feeling really run down and just sore all the time.  At the same time, meat on tv was looking pretty tasty.  It took a while but we finally put one and one together and realized that I needed to ramp up my protein intake.  I think normally the amount I eat is fine but when I'm working out and trying to build some muscle I need more.  Which makes sense.  So now that I'm eating lots more protein I feel awesome and we can now go daily without wanting to die.  I'm going to have Michelle Obama arms in no time. 
The Oscars were a couple of weeks ago.  I always love to watch them, although it was a ton easier when they started at five and ended nine.  This was the first year that we got to watch it in HD.  It doesn't help a lot of people.  The dresses looked lovely but the faces, yikes.  I made fondue for dinner.  We did a Guinness and Irish cheese fondue with this awesome dense twelve grain bread, apples, and peppers.  Yummy!  I love cheese.  Matt really liked it too, which is good.  He made us a tasty salad so that we didn't only have cheese for dinner.  It was a terrific evening, even though the Oscars website kept going down. Ok, I need to get back to reality.

Tune in next time to hear about snow and perogies.

Merry Christmas from the Fort!

Since Matt and I aren't spending Christmas together we decided to have Christmas come to the Fort a little early. So yesterday we cleaned up the downstairs, got a little dressed up and had a wonderful Christmas dinner. I made the most delicious penne a la vodka with garlic bread and Matt chose a fantastic bottle of wine and made us a fire. We had such a lovely evening that culminated in our little present exchange. I got Matt Spore and the first expansion pack that I didn't even know existed until Saturday. I didn't give him both right away though, I gave him the game and then later when he had begun to install it the box gave birth to the second all of a sudden. Matt did such a great job of presents, he's really good at it. He gave me the most beautiful pair of silver dangle-y earrings that are in the shape of pine cones which I have worn today and make me feel all winter like. He also got me THE cutest bag. It looks like a mini bowling ball bag, its even made by Brunswick, and it holds my ds. Or rather it would if I had a dslite. I can still get my older ds in there if I try but I just love it soooo much. Finally he got me one of the greatest games ever made! Dragon Quest IV has been on the top of my list of favorite games since my childhood. Now I have something to play on the very long plane rides to LA on Friday. Thank you Sweetie!

I am trying to keep up with last year and so I have dubbed this week Christmas baking week. The lab simultaneously loves and curses it. This morning I made dark chocolate peppermint brownies. mmmmmmm, I love peppermint! I'm really excited too because Matt and I are having Dan and Caroline over for dessert on Wednesday. I haven't completely decided what I'm making but it will include Mexican hot chocolate.