dinner

Luke’s 23rd Birthday

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Life has been weird again and I don’t know how ready I am to talk about it all, so I’m going to talk about last weekend instead.

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Friday, September 22, 2017 was Luke’s 23rd birthday. Thankfully, Ulta did not have me working that night so when I got home from my temp job, I was able to make dinner and a cake for him. You’re probably looking at this cake and wondering what in the heck happened to it. 1) The candles melted more than anticipated because he took longer than expected to blow them out, 2) it’s not a normal cake!

Luke isn’t a huge fan of cake. He likes brownies, cookies, pie, ice cream, and basically any other dessert over cake. Funfetti however, is a cake that he likes and will eat happily. Because of this, the Monday before his birthday, I went to H-E-B after I got out of the office (the only other day Ulta didn’t have me), and stood in the baking aisle much longer than I thought I would, trying to pick out what to buy. The idea I had going in was to buy Funfetti cake mix, a tub of frosting- which I would choose quickly when I got there, and then go back home to relax the rest of the night. Instead, I stood there grabbing different boxes, debating how he would feel about them, and then putting them back.

Green is his favorite color so I thought green cake would be fun. It used only egg whites. I put it back.

He likes brownies better so maybe brownies. You don’t typically frost brownies so that fun gets missed out on. I put it back.

He really likes cookies and they’re easier to eat than cake. He would be upset with me if I made cookies without him. I put it back.

I stood there for a good 15 minutes talking to myself about what birthday treat he would like the best, just to pick out the regular Funfetti cake and white marshmallow fluff Funfetti frosting. The rest of the week I thought about how I would bake the cake. We have a few different Pyrex baking wares thanks to both of our mothers, but none of them are the fun round cake shapes. I could have made a rectangular cake in the 9×13 pan, but that didn’t seem good enough and I could have just made brownies if I was going to use that.

I had the rest of the week to figure it out but eventually ended up settling for the 9×13 and a whole lot of frosting. That is, however, until I saw a video on Facebook.

This video was from Tasty? Tastemade? Delish? One of the food accounts. They put cake batter into a waffle iron. I’d seen this before but never had the inspiration to do it before this. Luke LOVES waffles. So that is what is pictured above, a Funfetti waffle cake with white marshmallow fluff Funfetti frosting and almost totally melted candles. It came out really well and then we had leftover cake waffles for a few days because there was much more batter than just for four waffles.

He was surprised by the idea and was thankful, yet again, that I was the spontaneous (read: actually meticulous planner) and cute one because he just hasn’t learned how to be that yet.

For dinner, before we ate the waffle cake, we had boneless beef ribs that I tried to cook like steak- sear then bake- and came out almost perfectly but that I thought I’d messed up royally, rice, and broccoli.

The next night we went to Red Lobster and I got them to bring Luke a birthday sundae and sing to him. Then after that we walked around a mall before going to the 10pm IMAX screening of Kingsman: The Golden Circle, getting interrupted and evacuated from the theater about 15 minutes before the movie was supposed to start for the fire alarm, and eventually getting home around 1 am. The movie wasn’t super, but it was about as much fun as the first one with a few scenes that I could have very much done without.

The next morning I worked and we hung out around the house. It was a good weekend. I was content.

I’ve Been Busy

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My last post was over a week ago. I’d been meaning to post in this time, but life has been rather busy.  Because of that, this is going to be a rather long post, but it’s going to be pretty all-encompassing. And I’ll break it down into the different categories and keep them short-ish. To start:

Beauty

I got my August GlamBag around the middle of the month. This one had three different bags that you could have received and I got the one I wanted. In the bag I received two CLIV Max Hyalruonic Masks, theBalm Cosmetics theBalm Voyage Vol. 2 Eyeshadow in Willkommen, MAKE UP FOR EVER EXCESSIVE LASH Aressting Volume Mascara, Hikari Cosmetics Shimmer Bronzer in Flush, and Hey Honey Come Clean: Propolis & Minerals Face Scrub.

So far I have used one of the masks and don’t have a lot to say about it. I like these masks, they are refreshing and for at least the next day after using them, my skin feels softer and looks brighter. Since I don’t use them regularly though, I can’t really say anything more than that. I know that these having hyaluronic acid in them is supposed to be a good thing too, but honestly, the word “acid” used in the same sentence as the word “face” makes me uncomfortable. I’ll probably stick to the green tea masks.

The left is the bronzer and the right is the eyeshadow. This is under a light in the apartment.

The eyeshadow and bronzer I haven’t actually used. I swatched them, because that’s what you do, but I don’t use a lot of eyeshadow and bronzer. They just aren’t my jam. I thought the swatches looked pretty nice though.

I like the mascara. I use it with a primer, obviously, but it works. I think most mascaras work pretty well with a primer, but I have found a few that didn’t work super well, and this was not one of them.

As for the face scrub- I’ll be tossing this out before I finish using it. The description on the ipsy website says that every people with sensitive skin love it but I don’t see how. I have pretty normal skin- gets oily when I don’t wash it for a bit but is generally okay. THIS STUFF BURNED. I love face scrubs. I looooooove the way my skin feels after exfoliating. Unfortunately, after exfoliating, it felt like there was salt poured all over my face. This was not a good feeling. I don’t think I’ve ever given anything from ipsy one star until now.

 

Food

The only full meal from BA we could make- but it was really good.

I am a Blue Apron customer. I originally signed up because I was curious and with a Rooster Teeth promo code, I could get $30 off, making my first box half price. Because I am stingy, I didn’t finish signing up at that point. I held out and they sent me an email for $40 off. Still wasn’t enough. Then I got the email for $50 off and I finished my membership and got my first box. Since then I have had a love/hate relationship with them. I believe that $60 is too much to be dishing out monthly for these meals so most of the time, I’ve been skipping weeks and only getting the boxes when they’ve got meals that look especially tasty in them. Since my first box however, all the of the boxes I have received after were boxes that I didn’t actually want and only received because I forgot to skip them. On 9/1, I received one of these boxes.

I was upset a) because $60 that I was not expecting to spend was now going to be spent and b) because I forgot about it, I didn’t even get to pick which meals I received and I got the default meals, one of which was barbecue baked chicken breast, sweet potato salad, and sauteed green beans. I spent $20 on barbecue baked chicken breast, sweet potato salad, and sauteed green beans. You can’t see my face, but it is unamused.

Since the box came in on Friday morning, I was at work so I asked Luke to bring it in and put all of the ingredients away. He did so and didn’t say anything was wrong with any of them. That Saturday, we decided to make one of the meals that turned out pretty well. On Sunday morning, I decided to go through all of the ingredients, just to see what we had. I pulled the sweet potatoes out of the pantry to find that one of them had turned completely to mush. What’s worse, somehow there was liquid in the bag that proceeded to leak all over the kitchen floor. I was livid. Luke then informed me that the sweet peppers in the fridge had also looked a little funky. I pulled them out and surely enough, they were moldy. I immediately took photos of it all and sent Blue Apron an angry email stating that for $60 I should not be getting bad produce (this wasn’t the first time) and would be cancelling my account. They responded the next day saying that they credited $10 to my account and how to cancel my account should I choose to proceed that way.  This confused me as I have never seen a company actively tell people how to stop being customers. I guess they have so many that they figured they didn’t need me anymore.

I have yet to cancel because I don’t want that $10 to go to waste, but I will after I use it up.

Life

My job hunt is still active. I am still working part-time at Ulta, though not many hours. I am still working temp in the same office I have been since August and today, I had an interview for the permanent position. In about a weekI also have an interview for a different position at a different company. I don’t want to jinx any of it so that’s all the information I am currently putting out there, but I’m nervous and pretty scared. A lot of what’s currently scaring me is the potential to have to choose which job I want because I don’t know right now. I’ve been talking to many people about this and I haven’t come up with a clearer decision. I suppose that is a bridge to cross when I get there however, because I could only get offered one or neither and then all of this anxiety was for nothing. We’re hoping for a much better outcome than that though.

Besides that, I’ve been dealing with needing to get a TX driver’s license and that has been a whole process that I can’t wait to be over.

Luke and I also bought season passes to Six Flags Fiesta Texas which is in San Antonio. The passes we bought will get us into any Six Flags though, so whenever we’re home, if anyone wants to go to Great America, we are there. The passes were supposed to be a birthday gift to Luke, but I just didn’t have the money to cover it so the surprise was ruined. So I still have to find a gift for him. If nothing else, I’ll bake him a cake. I can do that.

10 Years

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In mid-to-late August 2007, I was in an interesting place in my life. I was 12-years-old, going on 13 come November, and I was what one could call an emo preteen. I felt that the world was against me and like I didn’t have many friends or anyone to lean on or look to. One of my older brothers, Kaz, was away in Colorado attending the United States Air Force Academy and the other, Toby, was going into his senior year of high school. Knowing that he wouldn’t be around in a year to help me through the difficult time I was going through, he decided to bring me to youth group at a church that was not ours and not even Catholic.

I’d fought going for a few weeks, also believing that God had turned his back on me, but eventually caved. Since it was still summer, the “class” part of youth group hadn’t started yet so the activities for that night were to play soccer in the big field behind the church. This was a great way to ease me in because I didn’t know anyone and would have felt awkward in the class if I had just been thrown in.

I don’t remember much else from that night except that I had fun and I’d met a boy. That boy was Luke.

Fast forward through the next ten years and here we are, celebrating ten years of knowing each other and me putting up with him through all of that time. It is not ten years of friendship and definitely not ten years of being together. We have not even hit one year yet there.

I’m not going to go into the all of the details of those ten years because I think he and I would both agree that there were some times that we’d like to leave in the past. It’s all gotten us to where we are now though- living together in Austin, happy as clams… most of the time.

To go into the details would also be to invade the privacy of someone else and put her on blast, something I do not want to do. The past is the past and I am looking to the future.

What I can say about where we are now is that it is partially thanks to Rooster Teeth and RTX, and we are happy. We’ve both learned from our past experiences and are willing to continue learning. To paraphrase something Luke has expressed to me before, if we’d started this relationship back when we were so young, one of us probably would have messed it up by now and we’d be lacking our best friend, something that we’d already been through a few times and don’t want to do again.

To celebrate the past ten years, on Saturday, the first day we’d been together for dinner since we started working, Luke decided we’d have ribeyes, my favorite steak. Yes, steak is expensive. No, we didn’t buy it just for this. Steak is surprisingly cheap in Austin and as of yesterday, we’d gotten four meals out of the two steaks we made on Saturday night.

To accompany the steak, we also made garlic parmesan mashed potatoes, kale chips, and fried plantains. It was a good dinner and a good night watching Descendants 2 for the second time.

Below is a bit of a photo representation of how far we’ve come. We were babies. Now, we are toddlers.

2008 30-Hour Famine at Our Saviour’s United Methodist Church in Schaumburg

August 2013, we hung out for the last time before I went away to Tampa for school

They have to go together because they are the embodiment of our relationship then and now

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the most recent photos of us from RTX 2017, cosplaying as Gwen and David from Camp Camp

Homemade Sweet & Sour Chicken

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Everyone loves Chinese take-out. I am no exception to this, but I don’t have the money for Chinese take-out right now. Thankfully, most recipes are rather easy, especially fried rice. All you have to do is throw some leftover rice in a pan with some oil, add whatever frozen veggies you like, soy sauce, and an egg and you’re done! If you wanna get even fancier, you can also add meat. In the past, we’ve added meats like char-siu pork and different Chinese sausages. Tonight we were going to add chicken since Luke had started defrosting chicken thighs, but I wanted to mix it up a little so I looked up a recipe for sweet and sour chicken. We also had a pineapple, so that aided in the idea.

This was the first recipe that came up on Google when I searched “sweet and sour chicken”: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/sweet-and-sour-chicken-recipe-1957986.

I can post it this time because this time, I basically followed it. The things we changed were that we had no bell peppers, we used chicken thighs instead of breasts, we used fresh pineapple, and because it was fresh pineapple, we had no pineapple juice so we subbed in limeade that we had in the fridge. We also floured the chicken before frying it because it added a bit more depth to the dish.

It came out spectacularly. The only thing that we probably could have improved upon was that I think I didn’t cook the cornstarch long enough because I left the heat up too high so it reduced too quickly. However, the pineapple was super warm and tender, the sauce was sweet and sour, and the chicken was crispy and delicious. It all went really well with the rice too, which had corn and green beans in it.

The best part of it all, we have leftovers. I love leftovers. Who has Chinese take-out and doesn’t have leftovers?

I Burn Things

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Last night was yet another night that Luke and I sat around thinking “what can we eat for dinner?” The answer, as it turned out, was not a lot. We had a plantain sitting around because we decided, the last time we went grocery shopping, that we wanted to try to fry plantains, as well as frozen pork chops and raw carrots. Those all turned into our dinner.

When we cook together, I am usually on anything-but-meat duty because I am just not a fan of cooking meat. It feels weird to the touch, I don’t ever know when it’s done, and I was a vegetarian for a few years some time ago, so it still gets to me sometimes. This meant it was my job to fry the plantains. I mostly used a recipe for this as I had never fried plantains before and the recipe basically said to slice and deep fry it. Easy enough, but I did not want to use the oil to deep fry them because I felt it would be a waste and we’re still trying to diet (even though we had Culver’s for dinner tonight). Pan frying them mostly worked, but, as you can probably guess from the title of this blog post and the photo accompanying it, they got a little burnt. The pork chops and carrots came out alright though the pork was overcooked and we both agreed that next time, a little brown sugar on the carrots and plantains would probably do them some good.

Usually this is where my escapades stop. We eat, sit around for a bit, and then will eat dessert later- ice cream or some fruit depending on how we’re feeling. I started eating peanut butter on saltines (do I still sound like a broke college student?) when I suddenly wanted to make rice pudding. I’d never made rice pudding before but I knew it took milk and rice, two things we had. Luke told me to go for it so I looked up recipes and I found an easy one that didn’t take too much work, put the stuff in the pot and let it cook. Lazy foodie for the win! I also decided to make a bit of a peach compote to go with it since we had some peaches in the fridge that were getting a bit soft. The whole dessert turned out really well and we ate the leftovers for a snack this afternoon. The process of getting to the wonderfully delicious pudding you see on the left however, was more of a mess than I wanted. The milk boiled over and since we have a glass flat-top stove, it ended up burning onto it and the kitchen smelled like burnt marshmallows for about ten minutes. It still isn’t totally clean and I still hate myself.

Neither of us were happy but the pudding helped.

 

Budget-and-Lazy-but-Still-Delicious Chicken Parmesan with Angel Hair.

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Last night both Luke and I didn’t know what to eat for dinner. We’d been making meals in the Crock-Pot the past few nights but wanted something different. I looked around the kitchen and found the large container of fresh basil that his mom bought us and immediately thought to do pasta. Not having any pine nuts, we couldn’t do a pesto (which is my favorite), but I then saw a can of tomato paste in the pantry and decided to do a red sauce with basil in it instead. This would have been all well and good to do a vegetarian meal for the day but the only other vegetable we had to go into the sauce was onions, not even mushrooms, so I had to start thinking again. This is when I pulled the last two chicken thighs out of the freezer and threw them into the sink to defrost.

Here I present to you: Budget-and-Lazy-but-Still-Delicious Chicken Parmesan with Angel Hair. 

Red sauces are one of the easiest things to make from scratch (especially if you’re not picky about flavor) and pasta is always an easy go-to as well. The part of it that we didn’t think of until the last minute was to flour and sear the chicken before putting it in the sauce.

We don’t have a bag of flour in the apartment right now. This is not just because we forgot to get one from the store, it is because if we have flour, we will bake bread and other yummy baked good that we are trying to cut out of our diet. I did, however, have a small bag of whole wheat flour that was left over from a Blue Apron box that didn’t make it to me on time (the meat went bad but all of the dry ingredients and veggies were still good). It was just enough flour to coat both thighs. Those were then seared in a hot pan and removed once they had a nice golden color and then we threw the onions and garlic straight in after them and cooked everything else on top of that. One-pot/pan recipes are always great because you a) don’t have to clean a million dishes and b) all of the flavors stay together- perfect for the lazy foodie.

In the interest of being a lazy foodie that I am, I’m not going to post a whole recipe/step-by-step because a) lazy and b) I really don’t have a recipe. So many dishes that I cook are not fully thought out until they have to be. I fly by the seat of my pants and just go with what I’ve got. It’s much more fun that way.