Rochelle's Blog ::: Subtitles Included

The weekend, the weekend! Oh, how I have waited for it.

We’re ten days into the new year and I’m still hoping that energy and motivation will kick me in the ass and get me cleaning, organizing, and purging.

I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself to make this weekend awesome and productive, and so far it’s been all right.

I finally went to the grocery store and stocked up on relatively wholesome foods. I got all the Christmas stuff taken down. I even scrubbed the stove to a sparkling state…a deep overdue scrub.

When at the store, I bought some healthier items with this notion that I may try to ligthen up (probably a good idea since some of my jeans aren’t fitting like I want them too), and one thing I got was Oatmeal to have for breakfast.

There hasn’t been a day in my life that I’ve enjoyed oatmeal, ever. Even with all the bells and whistles like honey, syrup, fruit, you name it. It actually makes me gag. I was always more of a malt-o-meal kind of gal if I was even venturing into the warm cereal-esque waters.

So when I woke up yesterday, and I pondered that box of oatmeal with pure dread, I had a way better (and not nearly as healthy) idea.

Oatmeal cookies of course!

With some left over chocolate chips for good measure.

They turned out pretty yummy, although the recipe I followed guaranteed softness, and well they aren’t quite as soft as I would like. I probably didn’t adjust it enough for altitude.

While at the grocery store, I also bought a whole chicken for $3. Why did I do this? Because I read something earlier this year (ha ha) that was called “America: Too Stupid to Cook.”

It popped up in the “What’s Hot in Google Reader” RSS feed one day and I checked it out and thought the writer had some great points. To summarize and then I’ll link ya to it, Americans are being taught that they are too stupid to cook, basically to sell books and television programming about really “easy” recipes that are supposedly fast as well, because we have no time to cook! No time at all!! Only time to watch television for three hours after dinner.

At the end of the article he describes how actually easy it is to roast a whole chicken, even though there’s a stigma about a meal like that being too hard and too time consuming.

He made some good points, and you should check it out.

Anyway, while at the store on Friday night, I saw the whole chickens, just sitting there, only a couple of bucks and thought…why not. So I went with it. Along with a few other cheap ingredients, that I mostly had on hand…

…it turned out pretty good!

And I had more than one very happy customer.

Christmas was wonderful this year. Everything went as smoothly as possible, minus a little bit of a cold that tried to keep my down. I really celebrated the season this year with Christmas baking and buying my loved ones lots of excellent presents. In return, I got some wonderful things as well, which include a Kindle (my absolute favorite thing) and a Tassimo coffee maker.

Anyway, here are some photos from the holiday.

The Christmas Baking

I made my usual fudge, chocolate chip cookies, and tea cakes. I haven’t made tea cakes in years, and I’m so glad that I did. They were by far the highlight of all the goodies.

My Christmas Tree

The tree with all the presents that gave.

Pueblo for Christmas

I went to Pueblo, as usual, and had a wonderful time.

Here’s my mom’s tree.

And here are some portraits I took of Marissa and Johnny.

We made a Mexican feast (another family tradition), and even made our own tamales! It was quite a feat!

Dinner was awesome!

And then I caught my cold! I went to bed that night with the shivers and I couldn’t get warm. I had a sheet right out of the dryer, an electric blanket, a comforter, and a quilt. Yet, I couldn’t get warm. That night was not so good, but I refused to let it deter me from a wonderful Christmas morning.

We woke up and had French Toast and coffee and then got to the business of opening presents.

Later, I went to my dad’s house to celebrate. We had more Mexican food (which is sort of hilarious that we’re all a bunch of white people…well, not hispanic so to speak). We had a fun time! Although, I must admit that my illness was trying to get the better of me.

It was another great Christmas! And the break from work was wonderful.

I also got a snuggie, some movies, some new pajamas, and some other heart felt gifts.

So my friend Amanda has been doing some menu planning for her and her husband, and I’ve been so tempted to give it a try. Trouble is, I’ve found in the past that it’s sort of overkill for a single person. I mean, most nights I can just eat a bowl of cereal and call it good. Why bother?

But I’m going to try it this week so I can create some leftover scenarios for lunches. I love leftovers for lunch. I almost always want to eat it, unlike sandwiches and way more than frozen dinners.

So here’s my plan:

I already had the meatloaf and it was really good. I’ve been craving meatloaf for some reason, and yet I’ve never made it before and I eat it rarely. So I scoured the Internet for meatloaf recipes and decided on one. Well when I got to the store last night, I was looking at breadcrumbs and found a McCormick’s spice mix for meatloaf with a recipe. I ditched all the other ingredients I was going to buy and just went with that, and let me tell you, I’m so glad I did. It was cheap, easy, and delicious.

Obviously, you can see that I had mashed potatoes on the side, Bob Evans microwavable. Very good and easy. And then for dessert, I popped some Pepperidge Farm apple turnovers in the oven. Those are great. My mom used to make those for us all the time when I was a kid. I highly recommend them. You can find them in the frozen food dessert section. You could go through the effort of making your own, from scratch, but it’s seriously not worth it.

So I feel like I had a very Sandra Lee semi-homemade day.

My guests really liked it all too, so I guess you could say it was quite successful.

I’m loving my new system of doing one Project 365 post a week. It’s really freed me up and makes me love my blog so much more! Hope you guys like it too.

Nov 01 2009: Lazy Sunday

Today was great. I watched lots of football, made delicious calzones, and started working on my NaNoWriMo. I also enjoyed the nice weather. Only in Colorado could there be a huge snowy blizzard and then lovely sunny weather soon afterwards. The cats have been loving the extra sunshine of course. Here’s Penny, stretching out in the sunshine:

Nov 02 2009: Pure Evil

So Halloween was two days ago, and once again, no trick-or-treaters came by. So I’m stuck with a bowl full of my absolute favorite candy. How good–or should I say how bad? It calls to me every time I walk by. I’ve been doing ok with only sticking to two pieces a day, but I’m afraid I’ll just give in one day and make myself sick on it. Definitely time to put it away or take it to the office to give away.

Nov 03 3009: Mystery Writer

NaNoWriMo is going pretty slow and since this is my first time writing a mystery story, it’s kind of hard for me. I’ve been watching lots of mysteries on TV and reading a lot. I love my plot so much, it’s just kind of hard to execute so far.

Nov 04 2009: Anniversary

Today is the anniversary of the 2008 election. I’m still excited and happy. Those feelings last year are still so much a part of me. I will never forget it. And even though I still feel upset and somehow the minority in my belief system when you see these rowdy loons, I remind myself of what happened last year and how a strong majority of this country came together to vote for change.

Nov 05 2009: Jinx?

I have a long and complicated history with the Denver Broncos. For the past few years, it’s been impossible for me to be a Broncos fan because I hated Jay Cutler and Mike Shanahan so much. Then a great thing happened. Shanahan was fired and Jay Cutler became a whiney bitch that got the trade he was hoping for. Good riddance a-hole. No one thought the Broncos could go anywhere and that’s how I liked it! I love an underdog. All expectations were out the window and so I embraced the Broncos once again. I saved up some money to get a new Broncos sweatshirt, and when it finally arrived, I wore it for the first time on Sunday. Well it was the first game they lost of the season. So now I’m wondering, is it a jinx? I doubt I have that much control over the universe, so I think I’ll keep wearing it anyway.

Nov 06 2009: Behind

Today I called in sick today, feeling rather lousy. I thought though that I’d get some work done on my NaNoWriMo novel, but even that seemed too hard. So I pretty much sat around and didn’t get too many words in. I did however find the most stressful desktop background. It’s a calendar that shows where my word count should be at each day. Let’s just say I’m already thousands of words behind

Nov 07 2009: Happy Acorn

Today I felt worlds better. I still didn’t do much though, but I had to get out of the house. So I got dressed and went over to Panera to work on my NaNoWriMo novel. That was a great time and I did get some words in and did some important research. But what I missed was my cute happy acorn that sits on my desk back at home. I don’t know why, but this little thing just makes me happy, which somehow inspires me to write. I mean, seriously, how could you not smile when you see it’s happy face?

Ever since my friend Amanda posted this week’s meal plan, which included a delicious looking calzone, I was like…I MUST MAKE THOSE.

Truth is, I’ve been calzone depraved. My favorite calzone shop in Boulder had a bit of a rodent problem, and I haven’t been able to order from them again. So yeah, I needed some calzone goodness. It’s been too long.

So I cooked some tonight for me and a friend. We went over the recipe that Amanda had linked to and he wasn’t so keen on some of the calzone fillings, so we just went with mozzarella, parmesan, and pepperoni.

They turned out delicious!

Basically…

• I took two cans of refrigerated pizza dough.
• Rolled out the dough best I could (8″ rounds) on a non-stick surface covered lightly with flour.
• Lined the pepperoni on one side of the round.
• Put a handful of mozzarella and a few big pinches of parmesan on top. Then sprinkled some black pepper on it and covered with more pepperonis.
• I folded it over and placed on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper.
• I coated the calzones with olive oil.
• Baked at 425 (my oven runs low, so you may want to do 400) for 15 minutes.
• Served with heated up marinara.
• I was able to make five, but probably could have made six. Some were way big.

It was really good and pretty simple. I highly recommend. Here’s the original Real Simple recipe.

It’s Halloween weekend and that means there’s going to be some festivities.

First off, tonight I’m going to rush home and get ready for the annual Matthies Halloween party. Last year was a ton of fun, and I’m expecting the same this year. Like I said in an earlier post, I’m going to be Cleopatra. I’m really looking forward to this costume. Hopefully, I can get the head piece worked out.

Then on Halloween itself, I get to stick around home and relax. Since last weekend didn’t feel much like a weekend all, but instead felt like work, I look forward to just bumming around and doing whatever. Hopefully, I won’t be totally lazy.

Then, at the stroke of midnight, I can begin writing my novel for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I’ve been waiting to participate in this all year, and I’m so excited. The gist, is that you have to write a 50,000 word (150 page) fictional novel between November 1 and November 30. You would be surprised how many people participate in this. There are at least 780 people in Boulder doing it alone. So I’m super psyched!

The work itself is going to be a mystery. I’ve never written mystery before, but I’ve read plenty. It’s going to be called “The Four Mansions on Lambert Bay” and it will have a female tow historian/librarian protagonist that solves it all.

Before it’s all said and done, I’m going to make some calzones on Sunday. Thanks Amanda for the recipe tip!

Today wasn’t quite the relaxing day I hoped for, but truthfully, I was also hoping for a productive day. After a little bit of breakfast and consulting some recipes for ingredients, I went to the grocery store. Once home, I started to immediately put together a big pot of chili for the crock pot. In went all the ingredients and then it sat around for several hours to cook up and get tasty.

In the afternoon, Brian and his fiancee brought over my old desk that Brian didn’t need anymore. I was definitely nervous to meet his fiancee, but it turned out all right. She was really nice and they seemed quite happy together. We sat around for about an hour and they looked through my London photos. It was all them and not me, I promise! I am so sick of those things, that it was painful when he was clicking through them so slowly. I’m glad that we can be so friendly. It’s a relief in a way.

After they left, I went back into the kitchen and made some Rock Bottom beer bread. This stuff is super delicious and accompanies chili really well. It also makes the house smell great.

And as if that wasn’t enough, I also made up some homemade chocolate chip walnut cookies. What can I say? I was in the mood to cook! Perhaps it was after looking at some really cool food blogs like this one or this one. Or perhaps it was all the inspiration I got from my friend Amanda who made a weekly meal chart and is doing some kick ass budgeting.

So I have to say that these little cookies (little on purpose), turned out perfect. I usually don’t put nuts in, but I had some left over from some banana nut bread I made last month. These were super tasy!

So all in all, the meal turned out great! I only wished it had been a little cooler out today.

I love Mexican food so much, and I went seven whole days without it! Ok, that’s not exactly true. We did get some rather nasty nachos at The Swan. The salsa was like ketchup. So anyway, I finally got a little taste of my addiction on Wednesday when I got some take out. Delicious! But trust me, it won’t be long until I miss pub food.

Yesterday at work, I had a solid block of meetings from 9 – 2. Thankfully, at the final meeting (12-2), they served us lunch. I’m not that into sandwiches, but for whatever reason, the roast beef sandwich they provided from Paradise Bakery was like the best thing I had ever had. So it gave me the sandwich bug, and I’m making my own this weekend. Which is perfect for college football and for making plans for my trip. The Buffs actually won today, which was great by the way!

Roast beef and cheddar on sourdough

Yesterday I picked up some peaches at the farmer’s market, which I didn’t intentionally go to, but happened to be at the right place at the right time. So last evening I made a peach pie, which is my favorite of all the fruit pies. I’m not a big fruit pie person, but I do love peach pie. It turned out divine. Here’s the recipe I used:

Ingredients:

• pastry for a double-crust 9-inch pie
• 5 cups fresh peaches, sliced (six peaches for me)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons sugar

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
2. Stir together flour, 1 cup sugar, and cinnamon and set aside.
3. Wash, peel, and slice fresh peaches.
4. Mix together peaches with the combined dry ingredients.
5. Turn into pastry-lined pie pan and dot with butter.
6. Cover with top crust, cut slits in it, seal the edges.
7. Sprinkle top with 2 tablespoons of sugar.
8. Cover the edges with foil to prevent over browning; remove foil for the last 15 minutes of baking.
9. Bake 35 to 45 minutes or until crust is brown and juice begins to bubble through the slits in the crust.