Dinner Mish Mosh

Remember how I said my parents were making dinner and that I was going to make my own taco salad? Well, neither thing happened. My stepdad was too tired to cook, so they wanted to go to Outback Steakhouse. The husband wasn't going to be home in time (working late) so I told them to go without us. Then the husband emailed and said that he was going to be even later than he thought. So I was on my own for dinner.

Technically, I was on my own for dinner to begin with. But for some reason I decided not to make the taco salad (gee, maybe it's because I ate it like 30 times this week?!). I got a strange urge to make lentils. I don't know why. I've never made lentils or even tried them before. I only bought the bag of lentils because they were next to the split peas and I said "why not?".

So, I threw them into the pot, and poured in some water and an undrained can of diced tomatoes. And a ton of spices: salt, pepper, garlic, minced onion, cumin, paprika, curry powder, and chili powder. Turned out pretty good. Although I don't actually have anything to compare them to...

I also made some random package of taco rice that I needed to get eaten. And then I stuffed some celery with blue cheese. Yeah. None of those flavors go together.

But each one tastes good on its own. :) Eaten with multigrain bread + butter, all by myself in the kitchen while watching the news.

Wazzup chickens?

I'm having a very lazy day. I had planned to get up and whittle down my to do list. But I couldn't wake up today and slept in. It was nice. I'm going to set an alarm for tomorrow morning though. And maybe try to get in bed by 10 tonight.

I slept through breakfast hours, but I ate right away anyways. I had a cinnamon sugar mini bagel, 2 Morningstar sausage patties, 1 cup watermelon, 1 large orange, and 5 strawberries.



Later I snacked on carrot sticks and the end of the hummus, with a little olive oil.



Now I'm just being lazy (hey I *did* do 2 loads of laundry today, that's something, right?). I was talking to some peeps on the message board about cheese. And so I got thinking that I wanted some. I had a tiny bit of Kerrygold Ivernia cheese. It's an Irish cheddar. I really, really like it. It's pretty sharp and reminds me of parmesan. What are your favorite cheeses, and what do you pair them with? I see this Sticky Toffee cheese at the store a lot, and I've tasted it a couple of times. I really like it, too. I think I may buy some next time, as well as goat cheese, which Nancy-Pants recommended to me.

The parents are cooking dinner tonight. They want steaks. I'm not going to eat steak with them. Instead, I'm going to make another taco salad. I swear, that's all I ever want these days! I'm seriously obsessed. When I make it for just myself, I use a cup of Amy's Black Bean Chili for the "meat" instead of the meatless crumbles. Actually, I'm thinking of doing it next time (or maybe tonight?) with a black bean and corn salsa. Anyone have a good recipe?. I just realized that I'm out of salsa though, so I'm probably going to use the Amy's chili since it's got a kick to it.

What are your plans for dinner tonight?

(PS - I realized while tagging this post that this is the first post in a long time that isn't about school. YAY!)

Hi chickens!

Long time no see...

I've been busy with these papers. I'm feeling like I'm not getting anywhere though. It'll get better as I get down to the wire. I'm pretty disappointed in one of the books I'm reading for two of my papers. I've found a "fact" that is incorrect. It's a fact that is pretty easy to check on your own, so it makes me think the author of the book didn't do much fact checking. Now I don't trust the book, which sucks because I *thought* it was a good source for two of the papers. Bummer. I've got plenty of other sources and that one was a secondary source anyway, so it's not a huge problem. Just annoying is all.

I have some pics of stuff to share, but it seems that I've left the camera in a place that is not in my immediate vicinity and I'm pulling the lazy and tired card and I'll upload them later. You're not really missing anything amazing though. Just some doggy pics, some pics of the blondies I made for Erin's bake sale, and other random stuff.

On the meat eating front, I've eaten meat a couple of times this week. Mom made dinner and was really excited about it and wanted me to try it. It didn't gross me out so I went with it. But I'm definitely not craving meat. In fact, I'm making more and more meatless foods and when we go to a restaurant I don't order meat. I don't miss it. Anyhow, our meat consumption for the household is way down.

I'll likely not be around again this week. It is the last week of classes (Yeeeehaw!!) and all my papers are due. I've got two (maybe three) finals soon, too. But then I've got some time off before the summer semester starts to just RELAX.

Okay, I'm out. Gotta catch up on some blog reading!

Dear MyRecipes.com,

I thank you for your abundance of recipes, especially those from Cooking Light magazine.

However, I am wondering why most of the meatless recipes are frittatas and pasta dishes. It seems like there are a lot more possiblities for meatless meals, but maybe your publication isn't taking advantage of the abundance.

I'd also like to add that "full rack of lamb" is not a meatless dish. Neither is "pork tenderloin", or shrimp, chicken, or beef. This is something that maybe you should speak to your web team about fixing. The database search is a little "off".

My recipe browsing experience on your website would be much enhanced if these matters were taken care of.

Much love,
TSW

Weekend Shenanegans

I gave the hubs his Easter basket this morning. He was so excited! I didn't ever get around to dying any eggs though. Boo. I think Kosmo was a little jealous that he didn't get anything. Am I a bad furmom because I honestly didn't think to get the dog an Easter treat?

Friday night we did end up going out to a place called Brickhouse Tavern + Tap. It's a pretty neat place that's really "guy" oriented. Kinda like Hooters but less tacky. I wanted to try out some ciders but all they had there was the Woodchuck Pear. Boo. So I didn't get anything. We were there for a while, the boys drank from a beer bong thing and we just talked. Some other people at the table ordered food before we ever got there and didn't get it until like an hour after we got there. So I'm thinking you should not go there expecting good service. We left and everyone else was going to some other places, but we decided to call it a night. We were pretty tired.

For breakfast on Saturday:

1/2 cup granola (hiding under everything), 1 banana, 1 cup strawberries, 1 Tbsp chopped up pecans, and 1 cup skim milk (half in the bowl, half in the glass). I think this is a tie with the PB & Banana sammich for my favorite breakfast. I ate this at around 830 AM and I didn't even start getting hungry at all again until around 2 PM. So, very filling.

We went to a crawfish boil on Saturday afternoon at a place called Vintage Lounge. I really don't like that place. Not my kind of people. It's very Rice University Frat Party. I was the only girl there not wearing a long flowy dress with fancy flip flops, an it-bag, and perfectly coiffed hair. Now, that's not the bad part, because I really do appreciate fashion. The bad part is when those girls snickered at the fact that my hair was in a clip. Sorry ladies, my hair doesn't do big Jessica Simpson waves, all right? I thought we were adults and no longer in high school...but please know that if we were still in high school, I would have totally kicked your ass in the cafeteria for everyone to see. But I am a classy lady now and childishness is not my thing.

But back to the crawfish boil. I had a dilemma. I haven't been eating meat (since the beginning of April I've picked as much meat as possible out of my food, and the last meat meal I consumed at all was April 6). But I do love me some crawfish. I ended up having about 10-15 crawfish tails. I don't really feel guilty about it. On Friday, we're going to another crawfish boil that one of the husband's vendors throws for all his clients every year. It's a wonderful party with lots of great Zydeco music and the kids run around and dance and everyone sits at long tables family style and just chows down. I am planning on eating the crawfish there as well. I'm still easing into this and I think I'm doing well. I guess this is my "flexitarian" stage. I can say that I don't think I'll miss the crawfish that much, due to a crappy season with teeny tiny little baby crawfish. I was told that the water levels are too low or something and so their ecosystem is affected, leaving the crawfish with less food so they don't grow as big or reproduce as much. The crawfish this year have been very expensive and not that great, which does help me to not feel like I'll miss them next year.

But there's more to the meat story. After the crawfish boil (and a Jolly Rancher/Air-Soft pistol war in a friend's apartment), we went out to our usual Midtown haunts, Tipsy Clover and Shot Bar (I still despise Shot Bar, but it's a friend's favorite, so I deal). Tipsy had cider, but only Woodchuck Amber (which I really like) - I drank three. There were Malibu girls at Shot Bar and they gave us some free shots and we got to keep the cute little shot glasses:

We of course had to hit up the drunky food after the bars kicked us out. I wanted to go to Little Bigs, but the guys had that for lunch, so we took our usual booth at BB's. I wanted something without meat, but I wasn't really wanting the Captain America like I used to always get, and I wasn't wanting something sweet. So I got nachos. I must have read the menu wrong and thought it said chile con queso, but apparently it said chili and queso. Oops. But I scraped most of it off, fed it to the boys and got a side of sour cream to dip my cheese and chips in. It worked out okay because I barely ate any of it.

We went back to the friend's apartment to sober up and watched Nitro Circus and got home before 5 AM. Good times.

Grades, food, prizes, and veggie talk!

Today has been a great day! Well, so far at least. I have a few more hours of chore-y type stuff to do. But I'm in a good mood because of some things that happened today.

First, I thoroughly enjoyed my Christianity class today. It was all about Christianity and the founding of America. So the day started off well.

Then I grabbed some lunch from the UC - a garden salad (with cukes, tomatoes, mushrooms, black olives, and light italian dressing). And that was when I discovered Odwalla bars. I knew about the drinks, but I'd never seen the bars. I chose the Berry GoMega bar. It was delicious and satisfying enough that I only ate half of it after finishing my salad. It had lots of flax seeds in it to give me 1,000mg of Omega-3s! Pretty good stuff. I'm definitely going to have to try the other varieties soon! This, followed by some afternoon gossip in the hallway before class was pretty fun.

In my Addiction class, the prof returned our exams from last week.....I got an A! Well, an A- but it's still an A! I'm so excited about that because I was totally freaking out about this exam before hand. I totally thought I was just going to bomb it, but then I got in there and did my thing and made it happen.

And then to give my day a little icing, I won Erin's POM & Oikos giveaway over at I Walk In This World! I never win anything EVER. This really made my day that much more special. Thanks again, Erin!

In case you were wondering, which you probably were not, here's what my food looked like for today:

B - 1 packet Quaker instant butter grits topped with 1 fried egg, cup of Bigelow Green Tea with Mango

L - Salad, 1/2 Odwalla GoMega bar, bottle of water (I really need to start using my reusable bottle! Shame on me!)

Snack - 1/2 Odwalla GoMega bar, orange

D - leftover Garden Style Lasagna topped with a teaspoon of olive oil

I'm sure I'll snack on something else later as I didn't eat a whole lot today.

Speaking of food....I am thinking really hard about eating vegetarian. I don't like chicken or pork, and I really only like ground turkey and the occasional steak. I can do without the steak and I know I can substitute soy crumbles and such for the ground turkey. I do like seafood, but not a whole lot...and I could do without that as well. My biggest concern with this is that I do not get in enough protein as it is, and if I cut out the meat then I may be making this worse. I'm not fond of tofu, so that's out. I do like beans, but everyone knows the problem that comes with beans...(*snicker*). I like eggs, milk, cheese (except cottage cheese), and I'm learning to like yogurt. I also like protein smoothies. So, we'll see how this goes. I know it's not a test that I'm going to fail or anything, and I know that I don't have to go all or nothing right away. I already barely eat any meat just because I don't care for it, and that's mostly why I thought about being vegetarian. So really, I'm just thinking right now.

Question(s) of the Day:
What are some benefits of eating a vegetarian diet? What is hard about being vegetarian? If you are not a vegetarian, have you ever thought about it, and if so, what deterred you from it?

(Lurkers, you can come out to play in the comments! I promise not to bite, you know, because I don't care for meat....tee hee!)