Post Move Update

It’s been about forever since I updated this blog. It’s hard to keep up on it when you don’t have a kitchen of your own, and baking and cooking both kind of got pushed to side. However, we just moved into our own apartment and can use our kitchen whenever and however we want.

The downside…it’s extremely small. In fact, I hesitate to call it a kitchen at all. It’s more like a sink, a counter, and an oven in a hallway (not so strategically placed next to the bathroom, I might add). But it’s great because it’s mine (for the time being).

How much have we cooked in it? Well actually quite a bit, though nothing worth getting excited over. Money’s tight so we haven’t really had the funds to buy things to experiment with new recipes. Mostly it’s been hot dogs, since we got a bunch of them on sale and they’re easy to make. One of our first meals consisted of a crockpot steak, salad with balsamic vinegar, and some “gourmet” bread:

Another one was white cheddar mac and cheese with hot dogs. Not gourmet, but definitely tasty:


One of my new “interests” is Bento boxes done with the food I like (which doesn’t include sushi or most vegetables) in cheap plastic containers (not the $30 traditional boxes you buy online). In reality, it’s nothing more than a packed lunch, but it’s so much more swanky to call it a bento…not to mention the fact that it makes it okay to get artsy with it. My first foray into this was a breakfast bento.


Mine is really messy looking compared to the one my fiancé made me this morning, but we didn’t get a picture of his work of art. This is a banana wrapped in a tortilla shell spread with peanut butter, then chopped to resemble a sushi roll. The colorful things are gummi worms (they were on hand and colorful) and the green stuff is pistachio pudding. I don’t know if it’s Kroger pudding or the fact that I use skim milk to make it, but the pudding always looks strange…not that creamy color but a glassy color. It freaked me out for the butterscotch pudding but it looks neat with pistachio.

Next time I’ll try to have some pictures of my itty bitty kitchen and who knows? Maybe I’ll have made some brilliant baked good by then too!

The 30s List

I finished my list a few weeks ago, but hadn't gotten around to posting it. I haven't been posting much in general due to the fact that life is freakin' crazy right now. Not in a bad way, per se, though there have been a few rough moments. Today, my future brother-in-law reminded me that he wanted to read my list. Since I've actually already accomplished one of the things, I thought I'd better go ahead and post so I have more blogging material in the follow-ups.

In no particular order, here are the 100 things I want to do in my 30s:

1. See Tori Amos in concert again
2. Reach weight goal #1
3. Walk a 10K
4. Walk a half marathon
5. Walk a marathon
6. Walk the Relay for Life
7. Send a book in for publication
8. Apply to The Amazing Race
9. Weight goal #2
10. Run a 2-Mile event
11. Run a 5K
12. Run a 10K
13. Run a half marathon
14. Run a marathon
15. Do a triathalon
16. Go snorkeling
17. Take bellydancing lessons
18. Go to Las Vegas
19. Get married
20. Go to an amusement park...and ride the roller coasters
21. Knit or crochet a hat
22. Knit or crochet a top
23. Knit or crochet a purse
24. Crochet a set of washrags
25. Open up an etsy store
26. Spend a weekend at a Bed-n-Breakfast
27. Master Dance Dance Revolution
28. Make three layer cookies
29. Adopt a puppy
30. Go dancing at a club
31. Read the Anita Blake series (no matter how bad people say it is)
32. Visit New York
33. Ride in a limousine
34. Highlight my hair
35. Plant and grow something without killing it.
36. Spend the day at a waterpark
37. Go parasailing
38. Visit Europe
39. Take a cruise
40. Learn to bike
41. Visit the Grand Canyon
42. Meet someone famous
43. See a musical
44. Spend a week at a nudist resort
45. Take a spinning class
46. Buy something at an auction
47. Throw a dinner party
48. Throw a “Repo!” party (with costumes and everything)
49. Start or join a crafting group.
50. Bake homemade bread from scratch
51. Learn sign language
52. Grow an herb garden
53. Hike the Konza Prairie
54. Get a deep tissue massage
55. Color every page in a coloring book
56. Visit the Chicago Museum of Art
57. Eat at an expensive restaurant
58. Splurge on a purse
59. Have a day at the spa
60. Walk in the Breast cancer walk
61. Make my own laundry detergent
62. Walk 1000 miles (not all at once)
63. Get past level 20 on SpongeBob Collapse
64. Kiss the Blarny Stone
65. Attend a music festival
66. Enter a karaoke contest
67. Do my own online radio show
68. Get 1000 Twitter followers
69. Go horseback riding
70. Visit Seattle
71. Take a "fitness" getaway
72. Run a D&D Campaign
73. Ride a jetski
74. Ask for a raise
75. Spend the night somewhere haunted
76. Take a yoga class7
7. Take an art class
78. Make a set of friendship bracelets
79. Learn to make jewelry
80. Try decoupage
81. Take a trip by train
82. Make a homemade headband
83. Go antiquing
84. Try geocaching
85. Spend a week on a houseboat
86. Play on an organized sports team
87. Send a postcard to Postsecret
88. Take an unplanned flight somewhere for a weekend
89. Make "hoodie" chairs
90. Get a pedicure
91. Get another tattoo
92. Get my ears permanently pierced
93. Climb a rock wall
94. Take a wine tour in California
95. Visit Washington Dc
96. Go to a sci-fi or webcomic convention
97. Buy something off a late night infomercial
98. Go to a Detroit Red Wings game
99. Visit Yellowstone National Park
100. Make it to 40.

Alot of these are pretty easy, some are a littel crazier. I figure if I can do 10 things per year, I'll accomplish everything on the list.

Follow ups may be on different blogs depending on which category they fall into, so if you want to keep up, make sure to follow or subscribe to my other blogs.

Craigslist Kitchen Finds

In preparing for our move in a couple of months, I'm in excitement mode over getting things we need for our kitchen...the kitchen we will no longer have to share with anyone else! So when I browse Craigslist, I tend to go almost straight to the household items (after "Free Stuff" of course). This week, I found an electric griddle for sale for $5.

And this knife set...again for $5:

I also scored one of those little carousels filled with random kitchen utensils, measuring spoons and cups, etc., and a dishtowel/potholder set. Most of these things get to wait for the new apartment, but I think we'll be using the griddle soon to make some pancakes.

Baked Apple Oatmeal

Up until a few months ago, I never bothered with breakfast. But in the interest of losing weight and getting healthy, I've been trying to make it a part of my day. Most mornings consist of a granola bar, a piece of fruit, and some chocolate soy milk. It's good and keeps me going until lunch, but on weekends I like to experiment with different things. I've also been on a quest to find things that will keep well and give me variety for the coming week.

I decided to try Baked Apple Oatmeal from the Betty Crocker website.

Apples were on sale this week and the rest of the stuff we either had or was really cheap, so already, I can consider this to be a value meal.

It was also extremely easy. The only part I didn't so much like was chopping the apples. We do have a small chopper, but with everyone else in the house still sleeping, I thought it would be rude to try to run any kitchen gadgets (I'll be so glad when we have our own place...just a couple more months).

Everything mixed well in the dish. Two medium granny smith apples yielded alot of chunks, but they were tasty so it was okay. Here's the before pic:

And the after pic with some chunks already taken out:

The recipe calls for whatever toppings you prefer. The taste of the oatmeal without any toppings was a little bland and could have probably used more of something in the cooking process. I think I might like to try it with vanilla soy milk and a different fruit. To add some flavor to this batch, I just mixed some extra raisins into some brown sugar.

It's amazing the difference it made. This ended up being really tasty and pretty filling (go fiber!). After the bf and I finished ours, I packed the rest of it in tupperware. He's not a big breakfast eater, so I know have at least four breakfasts to get me through the rest of the week.

It'll be interesting to see if it makes good leftovers!

Chicken Quesadilla and Fiesta Rice

Because he had the afternoon off, Jon decided to do the cooking tonight. He always seems to get the more complicated recipes, but hopefully that'll start being more even the more we cook.

The recipe we used can be found here: at AllRecipes.

We tweaked it just a little bit by adding taco seasoning to the quesadilla. I don't even like fiesta rice but this was delicious. The plan for the next go round with this recipe is to use medium salsa instead of mild and a little more seasoning.

Definitely an A rated meal!

Two Nights of Simplicity

Things have been crazy around here lately, so we decided to play it low key for a couple days with two really simple meals. Last night was sloppy joes, straight out of the can. I've found all kinds of sloppy joe recipes on the 'net, but I'm pretty sure that for me, sloppy joes will always taste the best from Manwich.

This first picture is my version of the sloppy joe dinner, complete with frozen french fries and ketchup. See how neat and tidy I am?

My boyfriend, on the other hand, really likes to do it up sloppy:

What we have here is two open faced sloppy joes, topped with mustard and french fries. Right behind it is a mustard/Frank's Hot Sauce mixture for fry dippage.

Tonight's fare was even simpler. We went with the fries again and I drew on one of my childhood favorites: hot roast beef and cheddar sandwiches.

This used to be one of my favorite meals and is very simple. The sandwices consist of deli roast beef and cheedar cheese from the dairy department. After baking the fries, I lowered the temp from 450 to 350 degrees and put the sandwiches open faced into the oven for about 5 minutes, until the cheese was melted. It looks a little plastic in this pic but it was delicous. Jon ate his with some generic Miracle Whip and I ate mine topped with zesty italian dressing.

Tomorrow we're getting experimental in the kitchen again, and hopefully I'll be back with something good.

Teriyaki Ranch Chicken Tenders

First of all, big apologies for the picture. Every Sunday night we got to our friends' house to play DnD (yeah, total nerds, right?) and usually we order fast food or pick something up on the way. Tonight though, we had thawed chicken tenderloins we needed to use and to save money, we made a quick dinner and took it over there to heat up when we got hungry. I forgot my camera, so I had to use my camera phone. The camera takes pretty crap pics but the camera on my phone is worse.

My boyfriend, Jon, made these tonight and they turned out really well. I call them Teriyaki Ranch Chicken Tenders but he'll probably call them Felber's Famous Fingers or something crazy like that.

This was a quick makeshift dinner he threw together, so I don't have measurements. However, it's extremely simple:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix some teriyaki sauce and ranch dressing together. Drag thawed chicken threw the mixture, then coat with breadcrumbs. Bake for about 30 minutes.

The yellow "sauce" is honey mustard that we made ourselves...just mixed some regular mustard with a generous squirt of honey and voila! The other was some leftover spaghetti sauce we had. The tenders tasted delicious in both sauces. We didn't have fries so we served with chex mix and used our friends paper plates so we wouldn't have to wash their dishes.