On Cooking:

Banana Muffins, for our muffin brunch.  Delicious

Pineapple Upside-down Cake, Based on Psych

The other day, my friend Dan pointed out that my blog was quickly becoming a cooking blog, which is somewhat true.  I don't share my recipes* though, so it's really more of a "showing off what I do" Blog, or maybe an Eating Blog.  I find it's interesting when people tell me that I'm good at cooking, because most of what I call cooking (especially baking) is just following simple instruction carefully.  I guess that's a skill, but I don't find it all that impressive.  Really it just requires some desire to do it and willingness to spend a little bit of money on having the right ingredients.  I think one of these days I'll figure out how much money I spend making food for other people.   This week I'm planning on making lasagna, and that was not the cheapest thing I've ever shopped for, hopefully it'll turn out well.

I think actually being good at cooking requires more skill and creativity than instruction following.  A while ago I planned on buying a new vegetable every week and cooking something good with it in order to become more versatile in my cooking ability.  Due to financial and time constraints, this hasn't quite happened, and most time I end up eating sandwiches and cereal every day but sunday.  It's going though, I bought carrots this week and I'm planning on doing fun stuff with that.  I know carrots aren't all that exotic, but i've never really cooked with them, so that makes it fun.

*It's worth mentioning that these two and almost all my recipes end up coming from this book, by Cook's Illustrated.  I got it last Christmas and I've used it extensively.  It's the only cook book I've ever owned, and probably the only one I will ever own, so when I say it's the best cook book you could buy, it comes from extensive personal experience.

Further Adventures in Cooking

Apple Pancakes

I've done a lot of cooking so far this week, and it's only wednesday.  I think I'm making up for the disappointing lack of both brunch and my typical extravagant dinner.  For Fhe on monday we had a sort of cooking challenge. Each team got 3 dollars and 45 minutes to go shopping and make food.  In addition to what they bought, we said flour, sugar, milk, eggs, and half a stick of butter were all fair game.  Our group made pancakes, with sort of caramelized apples on top.  They were really good, but could have been a lot better.  Definitely something to try in the future when I have more than 10 minutes to make something for pancakes.

Fries Quatro Queso Dos Fritos

Cheese Fries

Today in celebration of Psych's fantastic return, we made the Fries Quatro Queso dos Fritos.  They were really good, but the recipe we found was not very practical.  We have a lot of ideas for how to make it better, but it is a ton of work for what is basically just a deep fried baked potato with cheese, so it'll probably be a while before we try it again.  Actually, half way in we decided to just turn out potatoes into cheesy fries.  And those were really really good.  So that's how it went.  Now I feel all greasy, i need to take a shower and eat some yogurt.

Octo-bernation

 I love the fall, it's wonderful, but recently Provo decided to skip fall and go on to winter, and I've found myself very lethargic.  Yesterday i just ended up in bed till noon.  That probably also had a bit to do with the fact that I was out till 1:30 playing games and then stayed up another little while doing nothing in particular.  It's just tough feel motivated to go outside on cold rainy days when I'm going to be biking all over.  But life's been fine.  I made keylime pie this week, and that was more or less spectacular. I don't know if I like the work to eating ratio on pie though.  It takes quite a long time, and I only ended up with a few pieces.  But giving people pie gets you crazy brownie points.  Ironically, more than making brownies.

 I happened to run into my last district from the mtc at conference.  And they were all grown up, still waiting on their visas in salt lake city.  It was pretty cool to see them as missionaries in the field. In other news, life shuffles on.  I discovered that bike polo is one of the funnest and hardest things I've ever tried.  I'm finding that bikes are taking up more and more of my life.  I just spent around 75 dollars on a bunch of bike stuff that i've needed to buy for a long time, and admittedly some stuff I don't need per se, like two jerseys, one for warm and one for cold, but most of the other stuff (a small bike pump, a little saddle bag, a front light) are necessary.   I'm planning on doing a 100 miler with cami this weekend around utah lake.  Basically all that's left for me to buy is clipless pedals, but I'm putting that off for a little bit, I want to buy another little bike first to ride around campus this winter without getting my road bike all torn up and/or stolen.
Other than bike stuff, cooking is becoming a legitimate hobby.  I realize that popcorn making doesn't really count as cooking, but I definitely bought a popcorn popper from DI for 3 dollars.  Best purchase ever.  I actually bought two, but the first one smelled horrible.  You should always smell DI purchases before committing to them.  I also bought beaters (which made keylime pie possible) and a waffle/pancake iron.  DI appliances are wonderful.

P.s. - It's been one year (and two days) since I started this blog.  Hooray!

He prefers to be called Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All.

Tofu!

I've been having this recurring half-dream where I wake up panicked because I feel like I've overslept and forgotten to turn in some math homework, or chem report, or take a test, or go to the MTC, or wear clothes to the MTC.  It's getting a little tiresome.   This morning I woke up early (panicked, as explained) and went for a bike ride with my snazzy bike shorts and gloves.  It was a good way to start the day, I should have brought my camera, it's totally fall.  


My goal to maintain a social life and get A's and have a job is all sort of happening, although right now I think I have more like A-'s and a social life on sunday and sometimes saturday. 
This last monday, we did marshmallow freeze tag for fhe, which was outstanding.  The next day I got an email from the housing manager person asking who was responsible for all the marshmallows she'd had to clean up.  Apparently there is a $25/hour fee on cleaning up after people, so today on my bill there was a nice little invoice next to rent and utilities that read "Marshmallow clean up......$5.00"  (it was split up between everyone involved)  Still worth it.  Plus utilities here are less than a quarter of what they were in my old place.    


I'm at the year mark since being home from my mission (the exact date is a little hazy), and that's ridiculous.  I was reading through some of the last journal entires I made from portugal, the mission life was so much more eventful and inspiring.  My journal these days just can't really compete.  

: Occupied

Sorry to all my loyal blogger fans, life's been busy, and not incredibly news worthy.  School is getting going in full force, but so far I'm keeping my head above water.  Actually it hasn't been bad at all, I like all my classes a lot (except occasionally chem 107, which frustrates me).  I'm doing science!  Dissecting stuff, doing chemistry experiences, learning all about all sorts of things, and doing a little calculus and religion on the side, to keep things interesting.  

Other than that, sunday meals continue to get more and more ambitious.  We're now doing brunch and dinner.  This week we made really good buttermilk pancakes, and then one of the girls who comes made chicken pasta stuff, that was delicious.  Not having to make dinner this week, I took another stab at cinnamon rolls.  Previous stabs went poorly, but in my defense both were made on my mission, in portugal, which never was very conducive to good baking.  Anyway, these ones turned out really well.  Possibly the most delicious, and least nutritious, things i've ever made.  I got the recipe from Alton Brown, and considering my conspicuous lack of a kitchen aid (or a real whisk, or a sifter, or a rolling pin, or plastic wrap) I think I did pretty well for myself.  It also made me want to go DI and buy some cooking stuff, so that I don't have to improvise so much (like using jam jars for rolling pins, and cheese graters for sifters).  Cooking is way fun, by the way, it's one of the three things I always enjoy spending my money on, the other two being bikes and t-shirts.

Jimmy

So speaking of bikes and t-shirts, I finally jimmied a stand for my bike, broke out the youtube, and figured out how to adjust my derailleurs.  It turned out to be substantially easier than i'd thought, and definitely worth not paying $20 to a bike shop to have them do it for me, and now my bike rides like a dream, I have to find some mountain to ride over to take advantage of it. I also fixed my roommate's rear derailleur, and my other roommate's brakes.  Bike maintenance is great but Macbooks are not made for bike grease, and after having finally cleaned all the grime off my keyboard I had to do a lot of maneuvering with my elbow to make sure I was doing it right without turning my macbook into a dalmatian

Rounding off my life, we have the MTC, which also consumes a lot of my time.  A couple weeks ago, I picked up a whole new district headed for Brazil.  They're pretty great, and since I only speak portuguese to them, it's starting to get more fun as they're starting to be able to understand me and talk, so that's cool.  So yeah, business has ensued, I don't get to spend as much time having fun with people as I wish I did, but I can't complain, even if I sometimes do.

So that's life: bikes, cooking, school, and missionaries.  Shabby, but not too shabby.

A friday of astronomical proportions

I've had some good days recently, and they've been good in a sort of beautifully full and symmetrical way, let's take friday for example:

Friday started off well, I got plenty of sleep and got up at 8 to go to my multivariable calculus class.  I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't start off a perfect day with calculus, but I enjoy it.  I had sometime to relax before I went of to Biology, where we talk about Darwin and all sorts of interesting things.  Then I came home for some lunch, and then back up for chemistry.  So far, there hasn't really been anything all that special about the day, but it's still only 2 o'clock, bear with me.  So after chemistry I go to my Bio lab, which is on my schedule as about 3 hours.  I wasn't sure what it actually was, but it turns out I get to dissect stuff.  How cool is that?  I've been promised dissection all my life, but haven't gotten to cut anything open since third grade when I got to "dissect" owl pellets.  Really, that hardly counts as dissection, since there were no knives or cutting.  It's more like di-pull apart a big feathery hairball to find a couple bones-ion.  So that was the first best news I had all day, and then it turns out we get out of class after half an hour, after playing around with a microscope for a bit, so I end up with a whole lot more day than I'd though.  I went home.  Oh, lest we forget, the neurology department was giving out free hotdogs, and because i got out of class so early I beat the line of hundreds of people that developed shortly afterwards.

Lets review: So far we have dissection, microscope, getting out of class early, and free lunch.  Moving on.

So about a week ago I learned that there'd be a super nova; so all through the day I'd been texting people to try to find binoculars or a telescope or something to see this supernova that was dubbed the supernova of a generation.  I was having no luck with anyone, and so when I got to come home early, I went to DI, which is basically my favorite store.  After 2 very unhelpful workers who pointed me in two very incorrect directions, I asked someone else who pointed me to the collectibles.  Why binoculars qualify as 'collectible' isn't exactly clear to me, except that being in a glass case keeps them from being ruined by greasy little kids so that a college student can find them and use them for his date of the generation.  I found this very respectable pair of binoculars for ten dollars (having been marked down from twenty some time before)  I wasn't entirely convinced that this would be enough to see something that happened 23 million light years away, but it was better than nothing.  I also found a great pair of shorts and Clue, the game, for 7 dollars total.  One of my better DI runs for sure.  So I got back, ate some food, relaxed a bit, figured out how to spot the supernova, and got ready for work, at 6:30.  Work was great.  The MTC is a good place to work, and occasionally days are really really good.  This was a really good day.  So after work, I figured out a place to go, and we rode up to big springs hollow with a blanket and my DInoculars.  The sky was beautiful.  Truly amazing, and we totally saw the supernova. It certainly wasn't the most impressive thing i've ever seen, but the fact that we were looking at an exploding star, and something that happened 23 million years ago, was sort of profound.  Plus we saw a bunch of shooting stars and just general milky-way awesomeness.  So yeah, it was a good day.

Is this corn hand chucked?

Chicken Pasta with Zucchini.  Best meal to date?

I watched what about Bob today for the first time in way too long.  Just as good as always, if not better.  So school started, that's pretty cool, right?  A lot more is happening now, I feel like for once I actually have news.  The coolest thing is that marine biologist is back on the menu for prospective careers.  After about a ten year hiatus due to finding out they don't make as much money as I hoped, I've come to terms with the idea of being poor for a little while if it means I get to play with animals, and the ocean, and get payed, all at once.  So the crux of all this is that I have the chance to go on a little 8 week marine lab research trip to oregon in the spring, which would be amazing.  I talked to my professor about it today, and he basically said I can go.  I'll have to scrounge up $1100 by then, but that shouldn't be too difficult.  Also, one of my classes is a chemistry lab, so I'm actually doing science.  It feels so bill nye.  College is fun, I highly recommend it.