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Friday Fun! (Visit to VT, Gal Pals, Wii)
Although the reason for my visit home last weekend was sad, I had a wonderful time getting to see my dad’s side of the family mostly together for a change. My aunts, uncles, and cousins were all wonderful, although it’d been so many years that I did shock a few by having beer at the wake. Hah! Apparently, me being 23 snuck up on them. I also got to see my nephew, who is now talking in complete sentences. I was shocked at how well he remembers me, as well as at how much time he wanted to spend with me. It was fun! Apparently, I like toddlers. Who knew. I also got to meet my niece for the first time. She’s got her daddy’s red hair, so she’s bound to be a bundle of trouble. ;-) Really, though, she’s looking quite good for all the time she had to spend in intensive care at first.
Back in Boston, I hung out with my ever-lovely gal pals, Nina and E. I, shockingly, got to introduce them to the infamous Telephone music video, which they naturally fell in love with. Bonding occurred over Thai food, and Nina sent me off with a bottle of vodka. The gal knows me so well. :-) Meanwhile, all three of my herb plants came up and seem to be doing relatively well. *fingers crossed* Also making an appearance is the seedlings from the mystery seeds I got from Old Navy. I have no idea what flower it’s going to be. We shall see. I’ve been playing my way through wii’s Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess. It’s the furthest I’ve ever made it in that type of game. I will say, getting to swipe the wiimote in the air and having it kill troll things on the screen is AWESOME. I think if I ever actually manage to defeat this, I’ll have to try another game where I get to wave my arms around and kill things.
Happy weekends, everyone! Here’s hoping the gorgeous weather holds out!
Friday Fun! (Rain, Gardening, and Cooking)
In spite of the torrential downpour that Boston experienced last weekend (check out pics of the sinkhole that erupted under a line of the T here), I still managed to have a very nice weekend. I got to flex my Beirut playing muscles Friday night and got to spend most of the rest of the storm holed up inside, except of course for Monday when I had to commute to work. Also, inside didn’t exactly mean no rain as both my library and my apartment sprung leaks in the roof. They thought they had fixed the library ones. They were wrong. The hospital didn’t even bother wet vacing the carpet this time around. As for my apartment, it held strong for most of the storm, but on Monday morning, I woke up to water running down one of the walls. It appears some of that wind finally took its toll on the roof tiles. Almost everyone I talked to though said there was at least some water damage to their homes, so it has been proven yet again that I am not a unique snowflake (thank you, Fight Club).
The weather the rest of the week almost totally makes up for it though. It’s been in the high 60s to low 70s. I haven’t had to have my heat on in days! I took this as a sign of spring and started my herb and flower seeds last night. I’m planning on ordering my veggie and strawberry seeds today and hopefully will get them planted soon as well. I’m honestly pretty darn stoked for all the food aspects of summer–plants in my kitchen, farmer’s market on the way home, possibly taking a whack at canning by myself for the first time, berry picking, etc… So much yumminess and new skills to learn!
I tried out two new recipes this week. The first was a low-calorie, low-dairy mac and cheese bake (I printed it from some random website, which I can’t remember off the top of my head). It used pureed butternut squash to replace most of the cheese. The only cheese used was 1 cup of mozzarella and 2 tablespoons of cream cheese. Naturally, the pasta was whole wheat. I enjoyed this, and I think it will be a good recipe with time. A little something was missing from it, though. A wee bit bland. My dad suggested nutmeg. Any other thoughts?
The other recipe was for stuffed eggplants from my cookbook The Vegetarian Bible. Basically you halve the eggplant, scoop out the insides, then mix the insides with tomatoes, onions, garlic, and al dente pasta. Then you stick it back in plus mozzarella and bread crumbs then into the oven. This wasn’t a bad recipe. It was nutritious, filling, and tasted fine. I just didn’t love it or really like it enough to warrant the labor intensity of it. I doubt I’ll make it again unless I randomly have lots of eggplants I need to use up. The other recipe I’ve tried from the cookbook was really good though, so I think this might be a personal taste thing.
What did you guys get up to this week? Any new things tried? Happy weekends!
Friday Fun! (Nina’s Back, Refunds, and Gardening)
This was a busy, but overall fun week for me. One of my closest friends, Nina, was on a two month trip to Israel, and this week she returned home! (She kept a blog of her trip, check it out!) She and one of my other good friends came over Wednesday night, and we all cooked together. Well, Nina and I did. E was the cheering squad. Also, she brought the chocolate. Nina made tehini the way they do in Israel, and we had that with whole wheat bread for an appetizer. It’s a lot like hummus, only more bitter. For dinner we had whole wheat crust pizza topped with vodka sauce, marinated tempeh, shredded carrots, avocado, onions, spinach, and cheese. You guys, vodka sauce lends such a nice sweetness to a pizza. Swoon. Also, Nina brought me a lovely tapestry from Israel. I believe she said it was made by the tent dwelling Arabs, but I was also tipsy when she gave it to me, so I could totally be wrong about that. Although it is many colors, it is predominantly a vibrant shade of red with hints of black, so it will go really well with my living room. I’m so happy Nina is back, and she and E are going to be roommates, so I’ll be seeing much more of both of them.
In tidbits of news, my state refund came in, so there’ll be a bit of shopping this weekend. I was going to get a Wii, but I think I’ll wait for my federal refund for that. Instead, I’ll probably get a new tv, mostly so I can finally hitch up my mac to it and stream Netflix. Also, what’s the point of having a Wii if you’re playing on an old tv? (Don’t worry, budgeting types, some of the money will be going into savings and some into the terrifying undergrad debt).
I’ve decided (partly spurred on by my librarian friend, Kristi, check her blog out), that come hell or high water I will get some gardening done this year in spite of the fact that I have neither yard nor balcony and a kitty who is very determined not to share windowsills. I found a windowbox that is a bit sturdier and fits on the windowsill better, so hopefully she won’t knock it off. I’ve also got some other ideas up my sleeve (such as the topsy/turvy planting thing). I’m planning on growing tomatoes, herbs, peppers, and strawberries. I’m also considering potatoes via an indoor method Nina learned about in Israel. I am, however, known to have a brown thumb, so hopefully this pursuit won’t be in vain.
Happy weekend everyone!
Friday Fun! (Grad School Returns)
Grad school is fully back in swing. While I still wish I could miraculously have the copious amount of time I had over winter break when I was just working full-time, instead of working full-time and attending grad school part-time, I don’t totally hate my classes this semester. Yet.
One of my classes is on being an academic librarian in science and technology. The professor is an adjunct, which means he works in the field and knows what he’s talking about. Miraculously, I have yet to loathe any of my fellow students in that class. In fact, I even like some of them. A couple of them were in my medical librarianship class last spring, and I enjoy hanging out with them while they smoke on our break. They don’t have this false sense of being superheroes a lot of students in the program do. They just want a good, stable career, like me.
My other class is an online one on academic libraries. I’ve found I learn more in online classes, not sure why. I pretty much can’t stand any of my fellow students in it, but that’s ok. It’s easy to just roll your eyes at the statements made when you’re not trapped in a classroom with them. I like the professor though, and the assignments seem like I’ll actually learn something from them.
I’ve reached the climax in the novella that I’m writing. I’m excited to get to edit it and send it off to a friend for critique. I seem to actually be following through on my, totally not officially made but thought about a lot, resolution to write my novellas/books more. I really feel like the time I’m spending working on improving my writing is well spent, which is a pretty darn good feel good pill. Maybe someday you guys will get to review my books! Lol.
Happy weekend!
Friday Fun! (Unathletic Me)
I have always wanted to be athletic. The version of me that tends to populate fantasy land is essentially the female version of 007. This is so not realistic though, and I’m not just saying that I can’t do backflips. My lack of athleticism is so strong that one of my most frequent memories of schoolyard sports is getting hit in the face by basketballs. This pretty much happened any time I was anywhere near a basketball court. I didn’t even have to be playing. I also have asthma and have this tendency to have to stop running to wheeze. God help me if there’s ever a zombie uprising.
In spite of all this, I still, inexplicably, delude myself into thinking that this time it will be different and sublimely attempt various athletic to semi-athletic endeavor. Last weekend this endeavor was ice skating. I remembered ice skating when I was a kid on the beaver ponds near our house. I was definitely good at it. I’d play hockey with my brother and his friends. Why did it take me so long to remember my awesomeness? I wondered. I discovered a free skating rink in the North End with $5 skate rentals. I asked a friend to meet me there, and it was on like Donkey Kong.
I got the skates in the biggest size they had, because I have inexplicably large feet for my short stature. I laced myself up and fought my way through the 2 foot tall terrors to get onto the ice. I stepped on and almost fell flat on my face. Hmm, this is not the me on ice that I remember. I desperately grabbed for the wall and glared at the children flying around using stacked up plastic crates to keep from falling down. That is so cheating, and no wonder kids are growing up to be such wimps these days, but I digress. Whilst holding onto the wall and taking tentative skating steps, I realized there was growing pain in my feet. The skates were way way too narrow. I also suddenly remembered that I used hockey skates, not figure skates growing up which explained why I couldn’t seem to handle the ice. You use movements more like roller blading for hockey skates, whereas figure skates are more like roller skates. I am not a roller skating girl. I got halfway around the rink, thinking my feet would go numb or something, but they suddenly were in excruciating agony, and I am not exaggerating. Realizing that I would probably be that woman crying on the rink if I didn’t get off the ice asap, I changed my course and headed down the middle of the rink, abandoning the wall and hoping I wouldn’t land on my ass. I managed to make it to the door safe and sound and hastily ripped off the skates. Every step I took still hurt. It turns out I somehow pulled most of the muscles and tendons on top of my right foot, and I’ve been limping most of the week.
I’d say in the future I won’t attempt athletic things again, but I know myself. I can just see me taking skiing lessons at some point in the near future. I’m bound to tell myself If you can snowshoe, you can totally ski, Amanda. I guess it’s just lucky for me that I don’t live in a climate with more dangerous recreational sports.
Happy weekend everyone!
Friday Fun! (Me vs. Turnip Greens)
Upon the realization that my budget went flying out the window in the last six months of 2009, I decided it was high time to get frugal again. This of course was spurred on when I got my annual free credit report and saw my student debt all summarized in one place. Anyway, to this budgeting end, I got two apps for my iTouch–Budget and SpendLite. I used Budget to outline my monthly budget. This left me with a set amount for food/necessities and one for fun. I added those two numbers together, divided by four, and there you have my weekly fun/food/necessities allowance which I plugged into SpendLite. I can add new expenses right on it as I go without having to save receipts and it automatically subtracts it for me. A world where I have to do less math is a world I like.
Anyway, so to this end, I realized I need to go back to the creative cooking that I established in my super-poor student days. I’m also attempting to eat more seasonally, as you guys know, because it’s cheaper and it exposes me to new foods. This week when I was grocery shopping, I came armed with a list of seasonal veggies–sweet potatoes, turnips, butternut squash, and kale. I quickly found the sweet potatoes and decided against butternut squash since I still had a backpile of frozen butternut squash ravivolis made last week. The turnips were disturbingly pre-cut and individually shrink-wrapped. WTF?! They looked like little deformed heads in shrinkwrap. Kinda like the heads in Futurama only without all that fun water to bounce around in.
Defeated in the turnip arena, I decided to brave the leafy green land of kale. One of my best friends loves kale and insists it’s easy enough to stir-fry up, so I approached the leafy green portion of the produce aisle that I usually give the evil eye to as I walk by. The problem with my grocery store is that it sticks labels of what the leafy greens are on the top in a manner that seems to have zero bearing on the leafy greens down below. You’d think that the lables would be in the same order as the leafy greens, but apparently not. After much searching, I decided that I’d probably found the kale. It was leafy. It was green. It looked fresh. It had a produce number on it, which the signs unfortunately didn’t have, but this meant I could type in the produce number at the self-checkout and be sure.
Upon arrival at the self-checkout, I typed in the produce number, and it informs me that I just bought around $1.50 worth of turnip greens.
Turnip greens?! What the fuck is a turnip green?!
However, the practical and very cheap portion of my mind reminded me that turnips are in season so probably the greens are too, and did I notice that this was only costing me $1.50? So I bought it. Plus removing things you’ve already keyed in at self-checkout is just annoying.
Using my mad librarian skizzillz, I discovered that most greens are cooked pretty similarly and that on the bitterness scale (what kind of veggie *needs* a bitterness scale?!) it is more bitter than spinach. Erm, ok. The next night, I had already determined to make pizza for dinner. The only veggies I had to put on it were sweet potatoes, black beans, turnip greens, and red potatoes. I learned from Vegan with a Vengeance that you can put potato on pizza if you thinly slice it and place give it enough oil to soak up to keep from being crunchy. I’d done that before, and it was amazing. Sweet potato, black beans, and cheese does not a filling pizza make, imho, so I pulled up info on cooking turnip greens on the interweb. Apparently you can make greens less bitter by quickly boiling them for a few minutes prior to cooking them in whatever you want to cook them in. Using copious amounts of garlic was also recommended. The number one recommendation though was to add pork grease. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen, and I couldn’t help but wonder how bad these greens taste if you have to soak them in what essentially equals bacon grease. But I soldiered on.
I took the huge leaves, ripped two in half, and put them to boiling. Guys, turnip greens do not have a pleasant aroma when cooking. It was like smelling armpits. I drained them, stuck them on a cutting board, and soaked them with lemon juice. I read somewhere that putting lemon juice on spinach draws out the iron, and I figured it wouldn’t hurt the turnip greens. I then stood staring at them trying to determine the best method for the pizza.
Since the sweet potato slices have to be on the bottom of the white pizza to soak up the oil, I decided to do the herbs, garlic, and oil, then sweet potato, then ripped up bits of turnip greens topped with more garlic, followed by black beans and three kinds of cheese. One thing the interwebs didn’t tell me is that turnip greens are kinda stringy. I tossed the stems that extend up into the leaves ad infinitum and placed the pieces on the pizza. I crossed my fingers after assembling and stuck the whole thing in the oven.
Surprise, surprise, the pizza was a success! It was yummy and garlicky and the greens cooked to perfection sandwiched between sweet potatoes and garlic. I’m still not sure how I feel about a veggie that smells like armpits when you cook it and that needs to be soaked in other things, like garlic, to taste good. In any case, I still have about 10 leaves to use up somehow over the next week.
Happy weekend guys!
Friday Fun! (Featuring My Niece and Swaptree)
My lovely loyal readers and friends, so sorry there’s been no book reviews this week! The book I’m currently reading is really long, and I’m not enjoying it that much so the pace of my reading is a bit below average. I definitely should ring in next week with a review though, as it’s almost done!
This week I played pub trivia for the first time and discovered that I am not good at trivia. This is funny and ironic cause I know lots of random facts, but apparently I don’t know trivia type facts. I mean, really, who’s a tall athletic actor who guest starred in 1970s tv shows? Jeez, I dunno. I also didn’t enjoy that the music to keep teams from overhearing each other meant that I had to yell all night. That’s only worth it for a concert. Ah well. Lesson learned. I guess I should stick to arcade games, pool tables, and dart boards when we go out.
Some of you are aware that I welcomed my first niece into the world on December 23rd. My brother and my sister-in-law made the choice to have her, even though she has Down Syndrome. I know they have plenty of love in their hearts for a special baby, and they are just wonderful with her. Unfortunately, one of the elements of Down Syndrome is that the babies almost all have heart problems. They usually operate on the babies at 6 months (I have no idea why at that particular point, but I’m sure there’s a reason). Anyway, due to the heart condition, my niece is not very strong. She struggled to learn how to eat. I guess that takes a lot of energy she didn’t have at first. Finally she gained enough weight and was eating well enough to come home. I was going to go meet her and visit my brother and father this weekend, but unfortunately she had to get readmitted to the hospital. She wasn’t gaining weight, which babies are supposed to do. This is of course difficult for my brother and sister-in-law who also have an almost 3 year old little boy to take care of and a small farm to run. Thankfully, most of my family lives near them so they have lots of help. I wish there was something I could do from a distance to help my brother, but there’s not much beyond being an ear to listen when he needs to talk.
In much happier news, allow me to tell you guys about Swaptree. Swaptree allows you to list books you have but don’t want and books you want, and then it sets up 1:1 trades for you (or you can browse and request trades yourself). This works extra well since they set up 3 way trades, which helps you find a lot more books. The matches they make are in no particular order on your want list, so it’s a bit of a surprise what you get, particularly if your want list is as long as mine. Since part of ringing in the new year was weeding my personal library, I excitedly decided to try this out. It’s so awesome! So far I’ve gotten rid of 8 books for books on my tbr list. For those wondering, my weeded books were mainly textbooks I will never ever read again, some romance novels that came to my library for free that my boss gave me, and books from a point in my deconversion when I was wondering if maybe I should be pagan. For the record, I’m not pagan. I guess I’m deist. Anywho, so the books I’ve received in exchange so far are:
- Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford
Do not mock me. I have a thing for memoirs. - Living the Simple Life by Elaine St. James
I’m a big fan of minimalism, and this was highly recommended on minimalist blogs. - The Accidental Demon Slayer by Angie Fox
Yes, another paranormal romance. However, it’s supposed to be a comical one which will change things up a bit. - Life, The Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams
I’ve already read this, but I love love LOVE the Hitchhiker series, and didn’t (still don’t actually) own them all, so I’m fleshing out the “trilogy.” - Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres
This memoir is by a woman whose fundamentalist Christian parents sent her to the same reform school in the Dominican Republic that my cousin’s parents sent her to, so I was intrigued. - Wild Swans by Jung Chang
I realized I haven’t read much non-western lit lately, and I enjoyed the nonwestern lit I read in college. This memoir is about three generations of Chinese women, and I think it looks really good! - Neuromancer by William Gibson
A classic scifi book that my nerdy friends have been berating me for not having read. ;-) - Feed by M. T. Anderson
A dystopian book about our heads being plugged into computers. Right up my alley.
All those books and my personal library size hasn’t increased at all! I encourage you guys to check Swaptree out. The only costs associated are shipping, and you can print labels directly from the website for extra ease. Each book costs around $2.46 to ship.
Have a nice long weekend, everyone! Rock on Martin Luther King Jr!
Friday Fun! (Happy 2010!)
Sorry for the hiatus last week, guys. I was recovering from my New Year’s Eve fun. For New Year’s Eve I acquired First Night buttons so I could go see the Kaiju Big Battel (sic) taking place in Boston. (Side-note: I cannot for the life of me understand why it’s called First Night and not Last Night. It’s the last night of 2009, not the first night of 2010! Ideas?!) I happened to catch some crazy Middle Eastern dancing that was occurring on a stage nearby while I was waiting. I have no idea what kind of dancing it was. It wasn’t bellydancing, and they hopped around waving their arms and fake swords a lot. Anyway, so Kaiju Big Battel is essentially WWE only the wrestlers are wearing monster costumes ala Godzilla and the stage has miniature buildings set up that they also smash. Two of my favorite characters of the night were Plantain and Dusto Bunny. Dusto Bunny was actually dusty! (Sorry I have no pictures of Kaiju to show you. I have yet to upload them from my camera). Anyway, then I met up with friends in the Common to see the ice sculptures and rang in the new decade on the Esplanade. It was definitely a fun night!
This week has been busy busy busy at work. They’re renovating my library (again). Currently all of us are crammed in one room while they work on the rest of it, but the exciting part, you guys, is I’m going to go from having a cubicle to an almost office! It’s pretty much an office minus a door, but I’ll have a divider up in lieu of a door. Plus they’re building me bookshelves, and I’m getting a brand new wood desk! I’m excited to move into my new office. It’s going to make me feel much more part of the team, since currently I’m the only one without an office.
In cooking this week, I tried out making gnocchi from scratch for the first time using sweet potatoes. It’s pretty simple, actually. You just cook the potatoes, pass them through a sieve, then combine it with spices, egg, and flour. The tricky part, I discovered, is adding just the right amount of flour. The consensus upon eating it was that it was neither good nor bad. A bit too floury. However, on reheating the leftovers, it went to good. I’m thinking maybe I just didn’t cook them long enough? I’ll definitely try it again. I think it’s one of those recipes you improve with over time. Kind of like pizza dough.
Oh, also, I’m all caught up in Lost now, so I’m totally ready for the new season. Bring. It. On!
Have a great weekend everyone!
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This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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