Hooraaaaaaaaaay Cheesecake!

If you've never seen the Red Stripe beer commercial, you totally won't get the title reference, so don't worry about it. Anyway, check out this cool cheesecake recipe I invented online!



Of course, it might not be as yummy as it sounds to me, because I just made it up online and haven't actually cooked it yet, but with that disclaimer in mind: check it out! :)

I'm excited! Can you tell I'm excited? I love food and I love new recipes!

Ready, Aim... FIRE!

So this morning I was lying in bed trying to convince myself that I really did want to get up and go to work early although neither Dan nor I had any official obligaitons until after noon today, when I heard a strange noise. My hairdryer. Why was that strange? Because, as I said, I was lying in bed. Both cats were with me, and Dan was at the other end of the house. It was also strange because I heard it escalate through five speeds, although mine only has two: low and high. So I jump up out of bed to see what's going on, and there on the counter in my still-dark bathroom, the handle of my hairdryer is glowing. I dove toward the sink and ripped the plug from the wall (this is not an exaggeration, I was moving surprisingly fast!). I turned on the light to find bits of ash all over my counter, black residue around the plug, and a growing smell of electrical fire (OK, so I didn't need the light on to detect that last one).

I yelled for Dan, who came, looked at what had happened, said, "Huh. Well that's odd. Bummer." and casually went back to shaving in the guest bathroom. His nonchalance, coupled with my wild imagination, left me freaking out that we were going to leave for work and come home to ashes of a house because of a fire in the wall. So I called my dad and got the complete scoop on what causes electrical outlet fires and what we should do. We checked the outlet's current and the heater that was plugged in to the same outlet, which was still functioning normally. Once it was determined that our house was not, in fact, going to burn down while we were gone, we left for work and life went back to normal. Except that there's a burned-out hairdryer on the floor in my garage (I was too afraid to throw it in the trash until I was sure it was good and done burning), ashes blown all over my sink, and I'm mystified as to how it all happened at all.

And now I need to go buy a new hairdryer. And I'm really bummed. I really liked that one.

Happy Halloween!

Well, despite a few mishaps (including candle wax all over my favorite shoes and forgetting to take pictures of the whole evening!) our Halloween party tonight was a huge success. As of this morning, I figured that only about 5 people were going to show up, which was particularly disappointing because I had worked so hard to prep for this party! Equally disappointing was our lack of decorations. We have some indoor dec's for fall, but that's it. Then I decided to invite some more people from lab, and some people from church were suddenly able to come too. Total we ended up with 14 people, 12 of whom dressed up in costume!

The ambiance ended up very nice as well: some girls decorated our lab this morning, and said I could take home some of the decorations to use tonight. Then two girls from lab came over early to decorate so I could finish preparing food. We had spider lights and spiderwebs over the porch, and a comedic talking skull on a spear by the doorbell (which included such phrases as, "does this stick make me look fat?", "Oh come on, it's not like I'm going to chase you!", and, "The last thing I remember saying is,'Honey, put down that machete'"). Inside, there were spiderwebs and candles everywhere, and very low lighting. On the table was a candle centerpiece: a hand whose "flesh" and "blood" melt off when you light the fingers, revealing a bone skeleton. Very creepy and entertaining.

The food was on the counter, illuminated by our lovely under-the-counter lighting system (courtesy of my Dad) without distracting from the ambiance. We had bloody finger and eyeball cookies, pumpkin cobbler, cheddar apple pie dip, a meat and cheese tray, chips and salsa, etc. The punch was a spooky neon green Hawaiian Punch with Sprite, complete with ice in the shape of a human hand (a la my nitrile gloves from lab), served in our crystal punch bowl. The glasses were our wine glasses with black spider ring charms. The punch bowl was surrounded by spider webs and candles. Perfect.

We even got lots of super cute trick-or-treaters, who loved the talking skull! We got to hang out with many of our closest friends and meet some new ones! and we got to watch The Corpse Bride, which was very funny. I wish we had more pictures and less mess (especially wax!) to clean up, but all in all it was one of our most successful parties yet!

Another Quote of the Day!

This one is also from one of my yoga friends. It reminds me of Tim Slade even more than myself, but I'm all about it:

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness....... Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

~Mark Twain

Amen.

And on that note, we're going home this weekend. Not really adventurous travel, but I'm excited none the less. :)

Hooray for Long Weekends!

Tonight marks the end of our long-awaited October break. This four-day weekend actually cost me two vacation days, but because I had no classes and Dan had the time off, I thought it would be worth it.

The list of things we wanted to accomplish during the last few days was far longer than what we knew would be realistic: paint the guest room, have a new patio door installed, finish fixing up the old fish tank and get it running, get ahead on homework, fix my laptop, finish landscaping the front yard, clean the office, spend lots of fun time with friends, go to the gym, etc. In my mind, if I had this big long list of things to do, hopefully a few of them might actually get done. Guess what? None of them did... except for spending time with friends.

That's not to say we didn't do anything over break! I got about 12 hours of sleep a night (clearly my regular sleep schedule just isn't cutting it!), we both got quite a bit of homework done, we scheduled a "detail" (like a preliminary inspection) for the installation of our new door, and got a lot of miscellaneous little items off the to-do list. We went tailgating for the Purdue vs. Ohio State game Saturday, had a bunch of the new twenty-somethings over for brunch after church on Sunday (the last of whom didn't leave until 10pm), and went to the bar for Monday Night Football with friends.

When I show up at work tomorrow and the boss asks how fixing up the house went over break, I'll smile and tell him it went well. We didn't do what I had planned, but I don't need to explain that to everyone. Dan and I got to spend a few days together that weren't totally full of homework and stress, and that made for an awesome weekend!!

Quote of the day

I got this in an e-mail from a girl I do yoga with. I think it's a good reminder for all of us now and then.

From Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (p.177):

"There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under my jurisdiction. There are certain lottery tickets I can buy, thereby increasing my odds of finding contentment. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I eat and read and study. I can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life--whether I will see them as curses or opportunities (and on the occasions when I can't rise to the most optimistic viewpoint, because I'm feeling too damn sorry for myself, I can choose to keep trying to change my outlook). I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts."

Adventures With Pasta

Tonight, I made ravioli from scratch. Quite an undertaking, certainly more than I realized. Have I finally gone insane? Have the long hours and radioactivity finally gone to my head? Perhaps. But before you pronounce me totally loony, consider the circumstances: Dan and I have been burning the candle at both ends for quite a few weeks now. The culmination of this was Dan's three tests (Thursday, Friday, and Tuesday, and yes his upcoming tests stressed me out too) and my test Tuesday night. Now that Tuesday is over, we both needed some down time. Dan is still working on homework, but has taken numerous breaks to cruise the internet, watch TV, etc. All well-deserved breaks, I might add. I enjoy TV as well as the next gal, but often end up with a sense of guilt over an evening wasted. So what do I do to relieve stress? I cook. Particularly, I enjoy elaborate or time-consuming things that I wouldn't normally make but love to eat. It's sort of challenging to see if I can do it, and I get a great sense of satisfaction if the dish turns out well. Earlier this summer when work got particularly exhausting, I made gallons of tomato and roasted red pepper pasta sauce with the fruits of our garden (btw, I highly recommend learning to roast your own peppers on the barbecue!). Last spring around finals time it was gnocchi. And so tonight, ravioli.

For starters, I usually paruse several recipes for any given project to get an idea of the general concensus on how to make something, then choose a representative recipe or (more often) wing it on my own. I decided that following an exact recipe for the pasta dough was smartest, so the consistancy turned out right. I should have read more recipes though. The one I followed ended up in the trash. Attempt #2 (new formula) looked much better, but kneading pasta dough is a tough job! Dan had to step in for a bit. :) I did decide to wing it with the filling, and if smell is any indication, it's going to be great! The filling is asparagus, cheese, and garlic. Because it has raw egg, however, I opted out of a taste-test. Rolling out the pasta dough also proved challenging, particularly because a pasta roller is highly recommended over a rolling pin, but I only have the latter. Again Dan stepped in to help, pulling out a tape measure to ensure my top and bottom halves were equal shape and size (only an engineer...). One recipe I read recommended using egg to help seal the edges of each piece... I think I used way too much and ended up with a slimy mess which I'm not sure has sealed up well enough to withstand a boiling pot. They are freezing now to be taste-tested in the next couple days. They may prove messy, but I'm optimistic.

Three hours and 20 raviolis later (not to mention the mounds of dishes in the sink), I have reluctantly agreed NOT to make this as a main dish for the 15 people we have comming over for brunch on Sunday (as Dan reminds me this will require making probably around 100 raviolis), but to wait for a bit smaller crowd. However, I plan to try again soon and fix my mistakes, and anticipate it taking much less time on the second go-around.

You're probably thinking, "Pretty stupid to take on something like that, it obviously didn't help her relax at all!", but you would be wrong. I feel great, I learned a lot, and it was lots of fun! OK, so maybe the radioactivity is going to my head after all... :)

***Note: I realize that "raviolis" is not really the plural of ravioli, but I like the way it sounds. In fact, I wonder if ravioli is already plural, like "alveoli". If so, is one single piece a raviolus? Perhaps a raviola if the filling is feminine? After all, Italian is a romance language. Perhaps I should defer to Ryan Richards for that answer... :)

*** Post-Note: Dan wishes to point out that there are not mounds of dishes in the sink, because he cleaned them all up, as well as the counters.