Finals week cleaning marathon and more food

This is an incredibly stressful and busy time for me and for most students. Like many others, when I have absolutely no time to do anything but study and do homework... I start housecleaning.

It's a defense mechanism, okay? I am just following Rule 408.

Rule 408: You should always waste time when you don't have any. Time is not the boss of you.

Anyway, my house is looking pretty good. I've even gone so far as to organize some of my drawers. I did every single bit of my laundry. My to-do list is terrifying and yet awesome, with a color-coding system and even some level of spatial organization according to when the finals are. I have all the finals and deadlines up on the wall where I can see them.

Studying is not going as well.

The internet was down all day yesterday, which should have been an incitement to study better and perhaps it was a little bit, but I think my moping about it took up some study time too. I did read Cicero letters until my eyes were crossing and I could no longer read Latin, so there's that.

On the other hand, food! I haven't been so good about food lately, mostly sticking with chicken nuggets after the whole thing where I got ill and wasn't able to eat anything but bread and crackers and broth for a few days. But yesterday I cooked some navy beans in my crockpot with half an onion, some pepper, and the remaining slice and a half of the Thanksgiving ham. (I had thawed it and chopped up half a slice the preceding day to put it on a baked potato, so I needed to use it up fast.) The smell was unbelievably awesome. Sooo good. But the ham... did not really appreciate being cooked for five hours, being that it was pre-cooked. Oops. So that's sort of tough, which is sad. The upside is, the beans taste absolutely wonderful, and I've frozen the resultant broth - which was sort of thick and very yummy - to use for future cooking endeavors. Speaking of frozen broth, I'm using my frozen homemade veggie stock to make some brown rice today, and I'll probably see about picking up an avocado to chop up in there because it tasted really good last time.

Fuyu persimmon update: Sorta lovely. I picked four of them off the tree and they've been hanging out in my fridge, progressing toward mushy gorgeousness. These ones have big huge seeds. The flesh is dark red and orange with some hints of brown. They taste WAY better like this.

Pictures of clean house, to-do list, and gorgeous Fuyu persimmon below the fold.

YES GOOD

Brief update today, since I have decided that I need to do ALL OF MY SCHOOLWORK before I'm allowed to go to sleep tonight. (Which, as those of you who are aware of what is going on this week already know, is absolutely not going to happen -- I probably won't finish it this weekend, even, but I decided that setting this wildly irrational goal was a good idea for some reason.)

BUT! The good things: Another baked potato for lunch, brown rice and onions cooked in my veggie stock for dinner. This rice? Is AWESOME. The stock adds a lot of flavor - the bitterness I mentioned is completely gone, and it's all just delicious vegetable flavors. I'm going to add beans tomorrow, since I didn't think far enough in advance to soak them, but for now this is great.

Picked up the onion, four big potatoes, an avocado, and some peppermint white chocolate coffee creamer (I'm not out yet, I just like to try to have at least two in my fridge at all times because running out makes me so unbearably cranky) for a total of $8.05. The potatoes and the avocado were both on sale, so that was nice. And I'd like to point out that I am always super happy when I notice how much produce I'm buying with full intention of eating it immediately. Yay! I win at healthy food!

Addendum: If you can afford a sieve, buy a sieve. Don't pull this "I'll improvise and make do without one" nonsense. It saves like *all* of the time for rinsing things.

Making stock, making stock, la la la.

I decided last night, when I looked around at my heaps of half-unpacked clothing and pieces of paper strewn across the world and sink full of dishes, that today would be housecleaning day, barring weird joint behavior. This is a strangely-timed housecleaning day, because I have EVERYTHING EVER due next week, but I was getting really frustrated with the difficulty of accessing things I need in my house, so I figured it was best to get everything done.

Before I got started on the cleaning, I started making vegetable stock! (I put off eating for somewhat too long as a result of this, by the way. I felt like I was done with the kitchen.) I had lots of ends and skins and unused bits in my freezer, and I picked up some spices on sale a while ago with this in mind, so it wasn't too difficult and was not costly at all (the only thing I bought specifically to make this stock with was two carrots, which cost me 39 cents total). One thing that was shocking: how absurdly limp celery goes when you've had it in the freezer. Celery, stop being a big baby.

If I had thought to take a picture of the sad celery, it would be right here, with the caption "Stahhhp."

My recipe so far is: put a whole bunch of random stuff into a crockpot full of water, make sure there's carrots, celery, and onion in it, and simmer forever, opening it to sniff it anxiously and stir it around far too often.

I legitimately don't remember precisely how much of each veggie is going to be in this stock. I do know that after the veggie bits, I put some rosemary, the stems of my fresh-then-frozen basil, a bay leaf, salt, pepper, and the remains of my bulb of roasted garlic in the pot. Then I started randomly throwing in cloves of garlic as I half-used them for my lunch (which was lovely, by the way, and consisted of microwaved quesadillas with cheddar, little tiny fresh garlic, and avocado, plus two clementines on the side). So it might be really garlicky. Not that that's a problem!

Back to the cleaning: so far, I've cleared my "done wall" of old post-it notes, cleaned/sanitized most of my bathroom again (the shower remains, but I'm not going to do that til right before I shower), washed my dishes, and made a sadly futile attempt to organize my kitchen counter (although I did wash and sanitize it before I cluttered it all up again, so that's a plus). I have also picked up some of my clothes and put them in the hamper, but that whole project still needs a lot of work. Aaaand now I'm blogging instead of cleaning, primarily because I am way too excited about my stock and can't leave it alone, despite the fact that it won't actually constitute food even when it's finished in like six more hours. So I'm trying to leave it alone by blogging about it.

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Update: Sooo! My friend let me know that actually, my stock was probably done after four hours. I went and tasted it. Here's how it looked:

White bowl with honey-colored liquid and a spoon.

It tasted, at first try, really really sweet (from the carrots and onions, my friends tell me), with a slight bitter undertone (possibly from the garlic or onion skins, or from the celery leaves, as the internet claims) and the other vegetables being sort of subtle. So, having thought about it for a few seconds, I went and dumped more pepper in, in a pretty large quantity. My friend told me to turn it to high for about 30 minutes and then take it out, and I did twenty minutes because I was too excited. The result was good! It tastes really... vegetably, in a balanced sort of way -- neither too sweet nor too savory, and the bitterness is not enough to overwhelm the other flavors. I ended up trying to get every last bit out of the bowl with my spoon, which was silly.

I tried to dump a bunch of it into a bowl with a strainer, before realizing that I needed to use something like a ladle rather than just trying to turn my crockpot stoneware upside down. I then pressed down on the vegetables to try to get the last of the goodness out of them, before throwing them away. (That felt bad until I realized that most of those vegetables except the carrots would have been wasted if I hadn't made the stock, just that they would have been thrown away more gradually.) I did manage to spill what felt like a lot on my counter, my floor, my pants, and my socks, so that was a little bit sad, and I used a really terrible number of dishes in the finishing process, but it's okay because now I've got the process sort of figured out. I put some of it in a tupperware in the fridge to use when cooking my next batch of rice, and I put the rest in zippered bags in the freezer.

Potatoes and other assorted good things

I had a giant baked potato for lunch yesterday! (Note: By the time I posted this, it was the day before yesterday.) Russet potatoes are super cheap, and I was really impressed at how well it turned out. I just washed it, poked it a few times with a fork, then put it on a plate, microwaved it for 5 minutes, turned it over, and microwaved it for 5 more minutes.
Then I cut it in half, with every intention -- sadly foiled (not, please note, tinfoiled -- no tinfoil in the microwave, unless you miss thunderstorms so much you'll resort to creating lightning in your microwave) -- of digging a little hole in each half to stick some butter in. But like I said, that didn't work out. The potato just fell into quarters. But eh, it worked. I just put the butter in between the quarters, dumped a little handful of cheese on and the last of my bacon crumbles, and microwaved it for another minute to melt the butter and cheese.
It was great! The skin actually tasted really good? I didn't see that coming. And that's nice, because potato skins have a lot of nutrients in them.

In other news, I roasted a head of garlic!

You can do that in the crockpot, which is weird. The taste was really good and really interesting, but it turns out that after I mixed it with butter and tried to put it on bread, the texture and I didn't get along very well. I can't quite place the problem -- it might also have been the bread, which was made from dough that had maybe been in the fridge too long and had definitely been overwatered/oiled by me and therefore had its own texture issues. Anyway I may try the garlic again sometime, and then maybe cook it into something so I don't have to deal with the texture and can still get the taste.

And probably best of all, I have now completely cleaned my bathroom for the first time. I swept and mopped the floor, sprayed down the toilet with a bleach dilution and wiped it down, and did the same to the sink and shower. I washed the floor rug and hand towels, and I bought new hand soap and a little candle, and the whole space just looks all nice -- with the academic mess of books and notebooks and pieces of paper strewn about the rest of my house, it's really the nicest space I've got. I am a little concerned that I will come back from my break to find the ant infestation raging again, in which case I will have to have another war with them involving huge quantities of Comet, because I was all focused on packing and failed to properly consider my gramma's recommendation to put Comet out before I left. But I will keep my fingers crossed that they don't keep ignoring the traps, or just stay away.

Gramma and Papa and I took my vacuum, which we're hoping to fix. The belt seems to be missing, and I've been using the hose attachment to vacuum the entire floor, which is somewhat less than ideal.

Rainy days are good for making bread.

Well, the plan, when I woke up enough to have one, was to start bread dough, then go to the laundromat and grocery store while it rose, then have a very productive day. That didn't work out - I started the dough, got dressed, gathered up my laundry, went to the door, and discovered that it was pouring. (I also had a fight with my flour, but that's neither here nor there, and I cleaned it up now.) But yeah, rain... Not exactly conducive to carrying back fluffy, freshly dried, lovely-smelling clothing. So I decided to stay in.

Pictured: FABULOUSNESS.

Seriously, though, this bread is pretty much perfect. Sweet, soft, fluffy, chewy. Even the crust is right - crunchy enough to be yummy on the sides, soft enough to cut easily on the top. The one thing I am slightly disappointed about is that I thought I used way too much garlic and rosemary, and it turns out I didn't use nearly enough - I can barely taste it.

I wish I had measured - I know I added some more sugar and olive oil this time, and used a bit less yeast, plus two cloves of minced garlic and some rosemary, but the rest of the recipe is pretty much gone. But omg, anyway, yum. And I have some more of the dough waiting in the fridge, since I made a bigger batch this time.

Downside of today: I discovered that my soupy vegetably rice thing does not do so well in the fridge. Bleh. But it's still edible, so I'll still eat it.

Crockpot chaos!

I have decided that the more ingredients I use, the more I win at cooking.
...Okay, I haven't actually decided that.
But look at this!

Okay, so this time I used brown rice, navy beans, carrots, onions, celery, garlic, salt, pepper, and a bit of rosemary in two cans of Swanson chicken broth (which I got on sale for 88 cents a can), then added frozen peas at the end (since apparently those get kinda yucky if you try to slow cook them). I presoaked the navy beans last night so that they would be nice and soft. They've been in there for almost three hours, and they are now ready to eat.
My house smells awesome, btw.
So here's how it turned out: It tastes really good. But unfortunately, I just didn't use enough rice. There's too much liquid - which I'm trying to remedy right now by letting it cook on high with the lid off for a while - and the proportion is too much on the vegetable side. And furthermore, some of the beans are not as soft as I want them to be. But okay, so, honestly I think this still counts as a win, because yum, and healthy, and protein, and making use of really inexpensive vegetables. Next time I'll try and err on the side of too much rice.

NOM

Three pieces of bread with melted Parmesan and a basil leaf on a white plate.

This is the One True Way to eat the herb and cheese bread I made.
I cut up some butter and cut wedges of the Parmesan cheese I had in the fridge, melted them on top of my bread in the microwave, and added fresh basil. This is fantastic and I want to eat nothing but it forever. (Sadly, the bread is gone now, as I was unable to restrain myself from eating absolutely all of it...)

Homemade bread!

I made bread!

A pale round speckled bread, cut in two pieces.

Simple white yeast bread recipe (yeast, sugar, water, bread flour, a bit of oil, and salt), with my friend Tyler helping me remember how to put it together, with some oregano, fresh basil, and garlic added in with the flour. The first batch I ate with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, which oddly enough didn't work as well as I expected. For the next one, softened some butter and mixed in one of those parmesan cheese packets you get when you order delivery pizza - I figured, since I had it, I might as well use it on something, and this was a good candidate. That was pretty much amazing. I'm thinking next time I'll try making a garlic butter properly, and see how that works.
The crust is not ideal - as you can see, the color is wrong, and the crust is very soft - but for people who, like me, aren't terribly fussy about Artisanal Breads, don't have an oven, and just want some soft, warm homemade bread, it works fine in the crockpot. Takes 1-2 hours on High. (The internet says that it would help to place the bread under a broiler for a few minutes, for what it's worth.) One thing: the yeast I got was REALLY active, so next time I have to remember to check earlier so the dough isn't four times its previous size when I get around to punching it.

Navy beans

In more trying-new-things news, I picked up a can of navy beans on sale at the grocery store yesterday, in hopes that they would go well with my rice. (The serving suggestion on the can said to make white bean and turkey chili, which A. sounded gross to me but B. tipped me off that these beans work okay with poultry.) So I rinsed them in my strainer, then just tasted one, and when it seemed all right I microwaved a handful of them with my brown rice. They do work well together! I think it would be better if I'd slow-cooked them along with the rice, so they would pick up more of the flavors, but they work just fine as is. I might try dried navy beans next, since I honestly don't mind the whole soaking beforehand thing. The beans are waaaaaaaaaaay less costly than the chicken I was considering adding, and they are healthier too, as far as I know. In combination with the brown rice, they provide low-fat protein, and I get to reduce my meat consumption without changing much else. A win for everybody! Yay!

Persimmons aren't scary!

I was afraid of the persimmon, because people's reactions had been pretty mixed - one friend, Kassiane, absolutely adores them, but a lot of people's reactions had been more wary than anything. But today, I got brave and picked a persimmon off my landpeople's tree. (They don't mind, so I figured, hey, it's free fruit...)

I brought it in and washed it, then consulted the internets. My friends confirmed that it was indeed a persimmon, and cautioned against eating it before squishy. (And then we started talking about pomegranates, which made me want pomegranates.) I looked around, and I found out that persimmons were pretty scary. Apparently, the astringent varieties are so bitter that they will "drawe a mans mouth awrie with much torment" if unripe, which doesn't sound like a fun time to me. Checking around a bit, I reassured myself that this appeared to be a Fuyu persimmon, which is okay at any stage of ripeness. Fortunately, Kassiane was online! I sent her a link to this picture, asking what she thought.

A bright orange, shiny, tomato-shaped fruit sitting in front of my laptop

.

She thought I should eat it immediately.

A Fuyu persimmon cut in half. The flesh is firm and golden orange, and there is an 8-pointed star shape in the middle.

I gave it a shot. The taste was fairly sweet, mild, a little bit odd, and the texture was somewhat apple-y. Kassiane identified the odd flavor as somewhat like cinnamon, and the rest of the internet concurred. I didn't love it - it seemed like the sort of thing I could mix into a salad or another dish, but alone, it wasn't heavenly. (It might not have been fully ripe yet.)

So I did what I do every night, Pinky:  try to take over the world! ...Ahem. I cut it up, mixed it with brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter, and stuck it in the microwave for a minute and a half.

Translucent chunks of orange fruit with some butter and brown sugar in a bowl with a fork.

It was way better cooked. The texture was soft but not mushy in an icky sort of way, and I really liked the way the flavor worked with the brown sugar. Now it is gone.

And that was the end of my very first persimmon.

Good job, rice!

Yay, rice!

Brown rice, in the crockpot, with chicken broth, a clove of garlic, half an onion, a carrot, salt, and pepper. Worked out okay. Was really concerned about the proportion of vegetable to rice, but the veggies cooked down and the rice cooked up and it was all okay in the end. Next time, I'll probably try different broth. This time, the store brand was very very on sale, so I gave that a shot. It was pretty good, but not wonderful. I'm not sure how I feel about the cooked carrot; it's not my favorite, but it's not bad, so for now I'm going to keep including it because it's inexpensive and a vegetable and I'll get used to it. Not sure what other vegetables work with this. I don't like mushrooms, so that's out. I wonder if some sort of legumes would go well with it. Peas probably would. Hmm...

Yesterday was pretty bad, so I'm going to have to be really academically productive for the rest of the night. Boo.

Productive morning - well, kinda?

Well, so far today, I did the laundromat thing, I picked up some groceries, I cleared the leftovers out of my refrigerator, and I took out the garbage. I still have the vacuuming and all of the dishes in the universe to do. You don't even want to know the state of my kitchen, after maybe one day of not doing dishes... Anyway, I'm soaking them now. How are there always so many dishes? Washing out my blender is so annoying that just the annoyance factor alone is making me not want to have a smoothie.

The laundromat wasn't so bad - it turns out that bringing my laptop and hanging out at Starbucks really really improves my morale and makes the time go faster, so from now on, regardless of the fact that my laptop is heavy, I'm just going to do that. I do have to take another load sometime in the next few days, and from now on I need to be more careful about washing my whites; I left two dark red pillowcases in by accident, and I'm really lucky I don't have pink everything now. Plus, this "Drag everything inside and then just leave it there" plan is really not the best plan anyone has ever had.

Haven't actually done any schoolwork or application stuff, which is... bad. Kinda why I'm here. So, first is lunch, then Pliny, then some rereading for my writing sample, then continuing the search for my index card... Gah.

Speaking of lunch, though, this Uncle Ben's microwave rice is really awesome - I didn't like some of them, but the garden vegetable is great. Way easy.

Loving Doctor Who, by the way. Fantastic.


Update: The whole reason I went to the laundromat was to wash the bathroom rug. Guess what I totally didn't bring to the laundromat at all.

Not so much good the past few days

On the bright side, I've been working on some important cleaning, and I'm getting my place back into good shape. I also turned in my rent check today, which is good because it was due today, and my photography is going really well. On the other hand, I'm missing some important things (one in particular: an index card with needed information on it), I've let one of my lists fall by the wayside, I keep falling asleep at inopportune times, and I'm having a lot of trouble focusing on my studies. Frustrating. I'm going to try to get my stuff together tonight and get plenty of sleep, so as to work more effectively tomorrow. Right now, I'm letting some dishes dry and clearing some of the mess from my desk.

I need to remember to pick up cheap rubber bands for my flashcards, and to get some envelopes for mailing things.

No adulthood today, sorry.

Last night was not a successful night of sleeping for me.

So nope, I am not going to the store today. (I did stop by and pick up a jug of water on the way home; that is waaaaaaaaaaay better than trying to lug thirty-two bottles or whatever.) Nor am I cooking. I am sitting here and eating leftovers and pudding and drawing with my markers. Good thing I made this blog, though, otherwise I wouldn't know that it was time to use up my bell peppers.

Drink ALL the coffee, finish ALL the work.

But here, though, have a picture of a butterfly I saw today. 'Cause it's cool. Why not.

Brown rice verdict: Meh.

Today I tried cooking brown rice in my slow cooker, with the intention of putting the slow-cooked chicken and sauce that I froze a couple of weeks ago over the brown rice. I just threw a cup of brown rice, two cups of water, some salt and pepper, and a clove of garlic into the crockpot and set it to high for three hours.

The slow-cooked chicken was nowhere near thawed in time. It's still a block of ice in my fridge.

As for the rice, the experiment was not a total disaster, but... well, I'll hopefully do better next time. The rice turned out way too mushy - and I like my rice mushy - but it's probably because when I looked in at it and it seemed too dry, I panicked and added a lot of water. It was not very flavorful until I added more salt than I thought seemed reasonable, but at that point the garlic and pepper flavors became more pronounced and it was very yummy. Next time I'll mince the garlic rather than just cutting it into a few big pieces and tossing them in. I'm hoping that before next time I'll pick up some onions and other veggies to chop up and add to the rice, but I just didn't have the energy for the grocery store today.



In completely unrelated news, I've had to take a very firm NO SPIDERS INSIDE stance, since I found the black widow. I feel really mean, but no, we don't play around with deadly venom in this house.

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Tips from my cousin Katie and my friend Llewelly: Use broth next time for the rice, and don't add the garlic until much closer to the end of cooking, because garlic loses its flavor when slow-cooked.

Um... Well... That went well.

Once upon a time, there was a young woman who wanted some delicious baked apples.
She couldn't remember which apples she wanted to get, so she just bought some that looked nice, including two Granny Smith because she knew those were good for baking.

A photograph of two reddish apples and two smaller green ones sitting on a counter in front of a crockpot.

She tried to core them and peel just the tops, as the internet had instructed.

 She failed at coring them, resulting in a giant mess on her counter and holes all the way through the apples, but seeds still inside. She dug out the seeds messily and then she thought things would be okay, but then it turned out that the apples didn't even fit in her crockpot.

Sadly, no picture of this stage is available.

Then, the young woman got VERY ANGRY at her apples. She cut them all in half and threw them into the crockpot all willy-nilly, then moved on to the butter.

By this stage, the young woman was so frustrated that she no longer cared about recipes. She cut up a huge quantity of butter, threw it into the crockpot on top of the apples, dumped in a ton of brown sugar and a handful of raisins, and sprinkled a random quantity of cinnamon on top of everything. She mixed it up with a wooden spoon.

A picture of a mess, including pieces of red and green apples, brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter in a black crockpot.

Then she turned the crockpot on High, covered it, and stomped off.

The end.

 This is how I cook, y'all.

Animated gif of Moriarty from BBC's Sherlock smiling mischievously and shrugging.

...Fingers crossed that it actually turns out to be food.

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Update:

Apples inside a black crockpot are visible. The peels show a little bit of color, and the apple flesh is lightly golden; the apples still mostly hold their shape. A plump raisin sits on top of one of the apples.

Here's it after one and a half hours on high. The raisins are getting all plump, which is weird. I had to open it and stir it because the water was trying to boil over...

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You all cannot even imagine how fantastic this smells.

The apples are now a darker gold and soft, and the liquid surrounding the pieces of apple is bubbling and caramel-colored. Several raisins are visible, and the peels still show a slight bit of color.

Being an adult is not always awesome.

Blurry picture of a black widow spider, shiny and black with long sharp legs, inside a screen door.

It's really, really not.

I like spiders, I do, but when I see something that looks like this, I'm not going to mess around. I had to put on my high boots, open the door, and quick spray down the whole area with large quantities of bleach. It was not a fun time.

To Do

18 pink and white post-it notes shaped like hearts, stuck to a wall, with assignments written on them and cute little pictures drawn on each one in marker.

This is the best possible way to make a to-do list.

In crappier news....

There's a spider living in my screen door. I'm pretty sure it's a black widow. (I did not see the red bits, so I'm holding out hope.) I tried to chase it outside yesterday, but when I went to open the door I scared it and it disappeared.

Also, I absolutely have to do laundry today or tomorrow. And y'all, srsly, I DON'T WANNA.

Being an adult sucks sometimes :(

So. Much. Better.

12 successful pinwheels on a plate on my lap.

Y'all seriously don't even know.
This time I used twice as much cream cheese, and I twisted the ends of the tortilla tight, and I used the plastic wrap lengthwise instead of using two pieces of plastic wrap... *ahem.*
I also sprinkled bacon crumbles into the cream cheese and pressed those and the shredded cheese down gently into it before putting the ham on.
Sooooo good.

In other news, I figured out how to solve my problem with bananas. See, I love bananas, and they are very healthy for me, but the texture is such that I can only get through about half of one before I start gagging. But after you've exposed them to air, they get all gross! So it's hard to save them. Solution: Eat half of banana, freeze other half for smoothies. Win!

Going to bed tips, 1/1

Make sure your stuff is cleared off your bed well before you intend to go to sleep.

In a pinch, your brain will absolutely resort to "But you can't go to bed now, it's full of flashcards" when it wants to mess with you.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU

Also it's my mommy's birthday.
I called and sent flowers. She's doing great.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOMMY!

Did all the things

Today, I successfully registered to vote (!!!) and took care of business at the financial aid office. I also made a new draft of my personal statement and CV which I, personally, find to be passable and which is the perfect length. Coolest of all, though, I walked to a brand new place, a Halloween store that I've only ever passed in the bus. I was confident that I would be able to find the bus stop that I knew must be nearby, and in fact I did so, just as the bus was pulling up.
I've also almost finished my work for the evening and will get to bed early.
Hurray!

P.S. A followup to my post about pinwheels: When I wrote that post, I had forgotten that I had also sprinkled some bacon crumbles into one of the three roll-ups I made. It was a wonderful surprise! ALWAYS do that.

P.P.S. I did not, however, succeed in eating my salad. Better luck tomorrow.

Facebook status, Sunday, 1:08am

"I know it's one in the morning, but I'm just too wired to sleep now!" is an excellent argument for watching Firefly or doing some more flashcards or trying to get through the easy parts of my Latin assignment. It is a less good argument for learning a new skill involving sharp objects and dexterity. Life lessons.

On the bright side, I have lovely shredded carrots and sliced up red bell peppers for my salad tomorrow. Woo!

A little thing

Picture of my bed, made with a white sheet and my red comforter and red pillows.

My bed looks nice when I've made it.

Guacamole...ish

With the rest of the cream cheese, I tried to make guacamole. It did not work out for me.

Ingredients
One avocado
Pepper to taste
Salt to taste
One clove of garlic, minced
Half a block of cream cheese
Chips for eating

Stuff
Microwave
Microwavable bowl
Fork

Preparation
Warm up cream cheese in the microwave in the bowl, get the avocado out of the avocado, put all the stuff in the bowl, and mash it with a fork til there aren't any avocado chunks left. Should be a lovely seafoam color and a good consistency for dipping. Eat with chips.

Now, when I say "salt to taste," I don't mean "slip and dump in like a teaspoon of salt all at once and then shrug wearily and mix it in like nothing happened." I mean like put a little bit in there and then taste it and then add more if you want more. I know it's confusing, but really, it's for the best.

Pinwheels

Nothing too exciting here today, just a recipe for the ham and cheese pinwheels I made yesterday, with a little help from my mom via text.

Ingredients
Thin-sliced Virginia ham from the deli
Lucerne medium cheddar shredded cheese
Mission tortillas (I got the big ones, but I recommend using medium instead)
Philadelphia cream cheese (on sale!)
Hidden Valley ranch packet

Stuff
Knife, fork, spoon
Cutting board
Microwave
Microwaveable bowl
Paper towels or microwavable plate
Plastic wrap

Cream cheese spread
I used only one half of a block of cream cheese for three big tortillas, which was not enough. (The fate of the rest of the cream cheese will be revealed in my next post.) I microwaved the cream cheese for about thirty seconds. I mixed in a small quantity of ranch mix, probably half a teaspoon or a little less, into the cream cheese. It was all soft and creamy, and that was good.

Assembly
Then I nuked the tortillas for about fifteen seconds between paper towels, which is how I roll (<- that's a pun, please note it) and spread the cream cheese mix on them, apparently too thin. I recommend using enough cream cheese that the shredded cheese can sink all the way down into it - so a thickness of cream cheese greater than or equivalent to the thickness of the shredded cheese. I placed thin slices of ham over the top, then rolled the tortillas up tightly, then wrapped them tightly in plastic wrap.

Finishing
I placed the roll-ups in the fridge and left them overnight. Then the next morning I took them out, unwrapped them, and cut them up into pieces about 3/4 of an inch thick. I still have one full roll-up left, which is nice.

Picture of 7 pinwheels, some of which are coming unwound, on a messy plate with cheese and pieces of tortilla scattered around.

 

And they all lived happily ever after. The end.

What even is this blog?

I'm going to use this blog to document my attempts to take care of adult responsibilities... Hopefully in order to learn from experience, but more probably to entertain people with my stunning ability to find unique and exciting new ways to fail at things. :P

The address of this blog is owed to two people, namely my mother for naming me Amanda, and my friend Kassiane for teaching me the word "adulting." The title is an old internet meme, from the very ancient days of the internet. Don't make fun.