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.  

Yay BIRTHDAY!!!

I'm so happy. I love birthdays. So far it has been a fantastic day! I have had lots of texts and calls and FB messages. As much as I joke and "celebrate" early the best part of my birthday is knowing that I have so many people that I love in my life. Ok, enough of the sappy stuff. I haven't posted in a while but I thought I'd let y'all know what we're doing today. Matt made reservations for us to go to dinner at Kanki, a hibachi-style Japanese restaurant. We *might* stop by the book store for a minute to pick up a new book. Then on Saturday Steph, Linda, Matt and I are going to a fabric sale at The Scrap Exchange in the morning. Saturday night the four of us are going bowling and then back to our place to play some Guitar Hero. Yay! Mira made this picture for me as a birthday present. I think its kinda hilariously adorable.

The yo-yo of weather

The weather here has been incredibly unpredictable lately. Well, actually weather.com predicted it but if you didn't have the tubes you would never guess what was coming next. The day we were at Steph's it rained cats and dogs the whole day. It had really started the day before. Then when we woke up on Monday morning, SNOW!!!! It was so beautiful. That was a week ago Monday. On the following Saturday it was 80F outside. WTF? I don't know how that makes sense. Today its 80F again and tomorrow its supposed to be 50F. It makes me wish that Matt's parents could have visited last weekend instead. Especially since its supposed to be in the low 50s, high 40s and rainy-- only a little bit higher than what they would have had at home. *sigh* Oh well, I just have to make sure that my food is really good when they all come over and eat. I'm still not sure about the menu. I'm going to consult Steph since she's had all of the meals I'm thinking about. Matt thinks anything I make will be good, but I want it to be great. I'll let you guys know how it turns out.

I almost forgot, Matt and I think these are bunny tracks leading away from our stairs.  I wanted to go find the bunny but we had to catch the bus instead.

 

Sometimes ethinic food is better in groups

A couple of Sundays ago, March 1st to be exact, Matt and I went over to Steph and Linda's for a pierogi party. Steph's mom was in town and Doug has been dying to learn how to make them. Its one of those things, much like tamales, that is only good to make when you have a large group of people and you make a ton of them. Steph said that the last time they made them it took all day and they were ready to kill each other by the end of it. After having done it, I can imagine that. I was on rolling duty for most of the time and Matt was putting the filling in the pieces of dough that I rolled out. Doug, Steph, and Steph's mom took turns joining me rolling or filling. Linda had the unenviable job of boiling the pierogis. She said she liked it the best. Most of the ones we made were traditional mashed potatoes but there was also a small subset of saurkraut ones as well. I hadn't realized before but I love saurkraut. I guess that shouldn't have been surprising since I love just about everything that is made in brine. Steph sauteed the saurkraut with a little bit of onion and those went into the dough too. I know some of you are thinking, how could they do all that work on empty stomaches? Not too fear! I made a delicious cheddar jalepeno bread that I brought with us and they had made soft pretzels right before we arrived. The pretzels were divine. There was also this lovely dipping sauce from Southern Season that I'm going to have to get. To round it all out they had also made a key lime coconut pie.  All that food talk makes me hungry.  We left in good spirits, lots of pierogis and full tummies.  I think we made somewhere around 225 pierogies

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.

Lab meeting, again?

I just realized this morning that I have to give lab meeting on Wednesday.  Its not a huge deal but it just means I have to rearrange my day to set everything up.  Bleh.  Also, while I have gotten a lot of stuff done lately, it doesn't feel like enough.  It never does. 
The university had a bomb threat last night.  They have it set up so that we get text messeges in case of emergency.  I looked this morning and they have decided that it was a hoax, which is good. 
Matt and I don't really do anything big for Valentine's day.  Like last year we "celebrated" by going to Red Robin.  Its fun because all the high school kids are there too.  They're all dressed up and its just so cute.  We decided yesterday that we're going to step up our workout routine to everyday instead of every other day.  I think it should go well.  I am now able to run for half an hour without dying.  When we started about a month ago it was twenty minutes and then I was ready to pass out.  Yay exercise!