A List of 6

6 Thoughts Upon the End of My Food Challenge:

1. I really enjoyed having healthy and filling food! (Go figure, right?)

2. Cooking takes a lot of time. That I simply do not have between school, work, internships, homework, and trying to find a job…So we’ll see if I regress to my regular eating habits after this, or if I attempt semi-healthy, semi-filling meals.

3. I didn’t think I could cook, so the whole turning-out-to-not-be-that-bad-of-a-chef-thing was pretty exciting

4. I’m very goal oriented, so when I had a plan of action and was trying to accomplish something, I did much better than I normally do! Normally I come home hungry, open the fridge, moan about how hungry I am and how I don’t have any food, and then make myself a quesdilla. Which wouldn’t be too bad except for the part where it’s a daily occurrence.

5. Note to self: It’s a lot easier to cook when you have ingredients to work with in the fridge. Practically speaking, this means I should buy more than just bread and eggs next time I go to the grocery store.

6. Moral of the story: I can cook something filling and it will taste good.  (Most likely) 

Yes, those all may seem like fairly obvious lessons. And yes, I probably should have figured out 2 years ago that I can cook yummy things. But I didn’t. Just for future reference, living on eggs and bread is a great weight loss plan though! (I kid, I kid). Mostly this food challenge just made me want to give myself some more goals that I can achieve! I like feeling like I accomplished something

Anyone have any good ideas for another (cost-efficient) challenge? I’m so ready.

Mulan and Chocolate

Today was the last day of my challenge. Next week I’m going to be having withdrawals from lack of healthy, nutritious, and tasty food! I guess there are sacrifices to be made in the name of school work .

The final meal? Tangy Ranch Chicken. I actually didn’t have very high hopes for this – it looked kind of weird but I chose it because it looked fairly easy to make! I only needed four ingredients: mustard, ranch dressing, brown sugar, and chicken. Random? Yes.

I mixed together the sauce, which took no time at all. Defrosting the chicken took about 197758 times longer.

As I was cooking the chicken, I realized I would probably want more than just chicken with a mustard/ranch/brown sugar mix, so I sautéed some spinach, pepper and broccoli together. I can only buy spinach in family size packs, so I’ve desperately been using it in everything! I force my roommate to eat it too

As the chicken was cooking, I added the sauce. The brown sugar made a fantastic coating on the outside of the chicken – it was almost a candy coating, but not too sweet! (And thank you to those of you who gave me tips on keeping the chicken juicy – it turned out much better this time!!)

Final verdict: Delicious! And not at all as weird as I thought it would be! It reminded me of chicken I would buy at a chinese restaurant, so that counts for something, right?

I felt slightly directionless after I’d finished, so I decided to make some chocolate chip cookies for me and my roommate. (She’s happy she’s here during my experimental week of cooking!)

I could just eat the dough uncooked, but I restrained myself and pretty soon we had a wonderful chocolatey aroma in our apartment!

It’s getting late, and I’m doing laundry and watching Mulan (is there any other better Disney movie?? I didn’t think so!) so tomorrow I’ll post on what I’ve learned from this whole food challenge, so don’t stop checking back! It’ll be worth your time, I promise!

And as an added bonus, here I am, enjoying the fruits of my labor

A Slight Bump in the Road

Out of 5 days, 1 thing was bound to not work out perfectly, right?

Not that today was a disaster….it was just, well, interesting .

On the menu for today was alfredo. The directions seemed simple enough. Get ingredients, boil pasta, make sauce and you’re done! So, I got my ingredients:

Shredded parmesan, butter, pasta, salt/pepper, and half n half. Ok, so maybe this isn’t the HEALTHIEST recipe out there, but it still counts as real food! I started boiling my pasta and putting the sauce together.

Melt butter – Check.
Add half n half – Check.
Add Parmesan – Check.
Heat until Parmesan melts – Uhhh…..
The parmesan wouldn’t melt. It very stubbornly stayed as little clumps chilling in the bottom of the bowl. And then the cream and butter wouldn’t stay mixed - instead all the butter would rise to the top while the cream settled in the middle over the layer of parmesan at the bottom.

The pasta had been done for about 8 minutes, so finally I just gave up, stirred the “sauce” one last time in a futile attempt to thicken it, and poured it onto the pasta.

As you can see, the parmesan was still a bit clumpy. I let it sit for a few minutes, which helped to thicken the sauce. Tonight I was cooking for me and my roommate, which of course meant that something was bound to go wrong! It still tasted like alfredo though, so that’s a good thing

(Spinach salad courtesy of my roommate!)

To recap: Nothing burnt, nothing exploded, and everything was edible. In fact, it was quite tasty. So although my sauce didn’t turn out quite right, I’m still going to call this a success! 

The first time I’ve cooked chicken in 3 months.

I don’t like cooking raw meat. It kinda grosses me out, but mostly it just takes way too long to cook! My plan for today was to cook Tangy Ranch Chicken and then Chicken Bruschetta on Saturday. Turns out tomatoes don’t last super long in the fridge (surprise surprise) so I switched it up. Today: Chicken Bruschetta.

As always, I gathered the ingredients first. I was supposed to use a shallot, but I figured an onion was the same thing (Am I right?). The recipe came from one of my Mom magazines! I love those things.

I made an olive oil/garlic/salt/pepper mix to dip the chicken into, and then put together the bruschetta to soak. The longer it soaks the better, right? I hope so, cause it took me about five years to thaw the chicken! I realized this was going to be way more food than I needed, so I invited a friend over.

(So if I fail, I’m  not just disappointing myself. I better make some good chicken!)

The chicken took forever to cook (Note the aforementioned five years), and teased me with its yummy garlic smell the whole time. After another five years, it was time to eat! I popped some toast into the toaster, buttered it and added garlic salt to make it into garlic bread.  And boom just like that I had some chicken bruschetta.

So yummy. The chicken was a bit dry though, so if anyone has tips on how to make the chicken juicier (that sounds funny), please tell me! Chicken’s on the schedule again for Saturday and I’d rather not have super dry chicken again.

I loved the bruschetta. I could totally just make that and eat it with toast…or chips…or plain

And a final picture. Here’s how I feel about my cooking challenge so far:

Day 2: This is kinda fun!

Today’s agenda? Quiche. Slightly intimidating! I don’t know why I decided that quiche should be day 2. You’d think I’d pick something easy, like oh i don’t know, PB&J. But today was quiche, and so I was gonna cook me some quiche!

Step 1: Gather ingredients (this totally counts as a step)

Step 2: Mix all the fillings together. I added corn, spinach, green olives, ham, peppers and onion. I love me some veggies! I think I could’ve stopped at this step and just eaten this mixture.

Step 3: Mix the eggs with milk (that looked less then appetizing), salt, and pepper. Here’s everything before I put it together. And look - There’s cheese at the bottom of the pie crust!

And now, to mix it all together. This is the point at which I started getting nervous. Sure it looked right, but what if it didn’t bake properly? What if it overflowed and I had to scrape burnt eggs and veggies out of the bottom of the oven? That just didn’t sound fun at all. And then I would have no lunch! Or what if the pie crust didn’t bake properly and my cheesy crust turned into a cheesy glob of dough??

Then came the hard part. Waiting. F O R E V E R. and ever. 35 minutes is a long time when you’re hungry. Note to self: staring at the timer does not make time go faster. Unfortunately.

And then it was done! And just like that the top was all golden and poofy and wonderful! I made Quiche!! In case you missed that, I MADE QUICHE!!

The crust is lopsided because there was too much of it, not because I cooked it crooked. Just FYI. And if you noticed, yes I did put it on a baking tray just in case it did overflow! I didn’t want to have to do all that clean up work

It was delicious. I’m getting closer to being able to call myself a cook! Ok, maybe that’s streching it. I can just be someone who CAN cook

Later I got antsy and decided to make Orange Julius’ for me and my roommate. A little bit of Florida for us! The mixture of orange juice, vanilla, milk and sugar is just wonderful! We even added umbrellas to make it extra special.

And just because I hadn’t made enough already, I decided to make brownies. Because is there ever a time you don’t need brownies? I think not.

(Two pieces gone to make sure brownies were edible. Didn’t want to post a picture of unedible brownies!)

…Real Food??

Normally, my diet consists of eggs and bread. I get my proteins and my grains, what more do I need? Nothing, clearly. Some other one ingredient meals I eat are rice and bagels. I tell people I just don’t have time to cook, and since I’m on spring break (read an entire week with no plans) I decided to test that theory out:

If I have time and ingredients, will I actually cook? Let the adventure begin!

I created a meal plan for myself, then went out and bought all the ingredients. There’s no turning back now! Today was the first day of the plan. On the schedule? Stuffed peppers and homemade hummus.

Project 1: Stuffed Peppers. I procrastinated all morning, and around 1 PM decided there was no more putting it off. I gathered the ingredients, read through the directions, and realized it was surprisingly easy!

I cut the peppers,

Cooked the filling,

And put everything together! 12 minutes later, they came out of the oven looking delicious.

And for the final test – were they edible?? I was a little worried when I put the first bite into my mouth (by the way, I realized I don’t know how to eat stuffed peppers. Do I eat the filling first, and the pepper second? Or do I eat the pepper as I go, letting all the rice filling fall out? Tough decisions!) but it was delicious. If I may say so, I was quite proud of myself!

Project 2: Homemade Hummus. Apparently I couldn’t stop with making one thing today. No, my first day was go big or go home. So I decided to make some hummus. I was having some friends over and thought that might be a good treat for them – provided it turned out alright…The recipe didn’t look too hard.

The recipe called for Tahini sauce (aka Sesame Paste), which took me forever to find at the grocery store! I looked in the ethnic food section and didn’t see it. I sort of wandered through the Mexican section, not really expecting it to be there but not knowing where else to look! Went back to the ethnic foods – turns out it’s in the Greek/Mediterranean section. Just for future reference.

The ingredients included olive oil, garlic, tahini sauce, chick peas and a few other random things. Turns out it’s really easy to make hummus. Step 1 – collect ingredients. Step 2 – stick everything in a blender. Step 3 – blend. Step 4 – eat. Real difficult, right?

The recipe made quite a bit of hummus! I like it warm, with tortillas, crackers or pretzels. It was a hit with my friends too, so overall I’d call this a success.

Reflections after Day 1 of Real Food: I guess cooking isn’t that bad. It’s nice being full and not having to find a snack every half hour. (It’s surprising, but bagels every half hour really don’t fill you up. At all.)  But I will suspend my judgement until the final day of this week-long project!

On my mind.

Last summer, my goal was to have a list of places I wanted to apply to for a job after grad by Christmas. The semester got away from me and Christmas came and went and still no list. I didn’t panic yet though, thinking, oh May is still a long ways away.

During January, I went to Mexico. The lack of internet and the desire to engage in the Mexican culture combined to not make me think about life after grad. Then I came back. It’s February, I don’t have any strong calling of where to go, and May is not so far away. As in, 4 months until I need to have a job and a place to live! I’ve just been telling people I’ll live on the streets of Chicago (FYI, I’m not serious about this option. Please realize that.)

Basically, I was in full panic mode for about a week. Panic mode is paralyzing, you know that? Straight up paralyzing. I feel very stuck. God hasn’t been so clear on where He wants me to go, and I don’t really have any good idea of what I want to do. Then in my senior seminar my prof started talking about how our vocation is to serve God. That’s it. To serve God. That’s what he requires of us.

And God will provide a path. It’s much more freeing, this not being in a state of perpetual panic and worry. God will come through, he’s promised it over and over. He will show me the next step and I can rest in that. Yes, I still have to do work. Yes, I still need to be working towards finding something. But He will open doors, He will “make my paths straight”.

“Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?…But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6.27,33) 

So I’m trusting He will guide me. And I’m trying to dial down the panic/worry mode.

8 Days

8 days until I finish my internship at SeaWorld. Not sure how I feel about that.

It’s been a great summer. Good job, good coworkers, good friends. But I’m ready to go back to Michigan too. I’m ready for a tad bit cooler weather (not complaining! just sayin’), for my social life, and for stability. Not ready for school work again, but there’s not too much I can do about that.

8 days.

The other day I got off work early and my ride wasn’t coming for another hour and a half. It was pretty late at night, so I figured I could just go wait in the crew’s lounge until my ride got there. Except when I got there all the lights were off and it was super creepy. Another employee was standing by the drinks and I asked him whether I could just sit in there. He looked at me and was all like, “Are you new?”. I just said yes. Way less embarressing! Since that idea didn’t work out so well, I decided to go sit in the only other air-conditioned spot between work and the parking lot – the security gate. It was just me and the security guard chilling, him waiting for his shift to end and me waiting for my ride home. We talked about life - him, the retired law enforcement officer from New Jersey, and me, the college student passing through Florida this summer. We covered everything from relationships to cuckoo clocks. It seemed normal, just sitting in there. Finally, 11 o’clock came, he clocked out and went home, and I sat there thinking about how strange life is sometimes.

8 days.

In two weeks, I leave Florida, head up to Illinois and Michigan, and go back to the grindstone. Summer’s almost over, but senior year is about to start!

Another Summer Day

Summer is going by very quickly. How is it July 25 already? Not that I have a huge problem with that, just, whoa. I’ve been at SeaWorld for two months already! Only a couple more weeks to go, then it’s time to pack and head back up to MI.

Whenever I would tell people I was spending summer in FL, I invariably got the reaction “Man, you’re so lucky! I want to go to Florida!”. Let me tell y’all the truth. It’s hot here. And not in a nice, “oh I’m just going to lounge by the pool and work on my tan” hot. It’s more along the lines of” holy crap I’m probably going to have heat stroke and pass out but if that doesn’t happen I will take a bath in my own sweat due to all the humidity” hot. Although I did sit outside in my backyard today, reading my Bible and working on my tan. Then I got too hot and went into the AC. I’m a pansy.

I’m not complaining about the heat though. It provides a certain reliability. Oh what’s the temperature today? Hot. 90, 95, 100. Somewhere in there. And heat index? Around 102. I will never be cold when I walk outside. I just think of Michigan winters when I’m ready to complain about the heat. Makes me feel better

One lady told me it was “Africa Hot”. Heh. Oh tourists.

This was a pointless blog post. MY BAD.
 (At least I can check “write blog post” off my to do list)

A well-known fact.

Theme parks attract stupid people.

It’s true. I promise. I just, I don’t understand, how, HOW can people be so stupid?!?

“Umm, what does apple juice taste like? Can I try some?”

“Is that cheese or pepperoni pizza?” “Sir, the one with the pepperoni’s on it is the pepperoni”

“This is appalling! APPALLING! I had to wait in line to buy my fries!! APPALLING!! I’m reporting you!!”

(Guy gives me $12, not enough to cover his meal. I tell him it’s ok and he can go) “Umm, I gave you a 20″. “No, you didn’t.” “Yes, I did.” “Are you sure? Because I’m pretty positive you gave me 12 dollars” “No. I gave you a 20″. End result? He was wrong, but he still got money back. So now he thinks he was right. Happy guest. Not so happy me.

“The fact that it is hot out here is ridiculous.” “I’m sorry Sir. It IS Florida”. “Yeah, but this is just ridiculous. Why is it so hot?!?” “I’m sorry….”

But there are lots of nice people too. They keep the job fun A few examples:

“You’re an angel. AN ANGEL.”

10 year old boy: “Do you give a discount for my good looks??”

“Ma’am, you have BEAUTIFUL eyes.”

“Thank you for being so…nice!”