I may have just given us Hypertension

Saying that my cooking skills are lacking is an understatement. A large one at that.

I had one amazing food day in my life. It was this years Thanksgiving with the boy and roommate. I made some pretty tasty yams. The boy actually likened them to his Grandmother's. Nice.

*I thought now would be a good place for a cooking picture of me, however, there are no pictures of me cooking that I could find, except one. And this isn't even a legit cooking picture. I'm just stabbing the knife into the meat to look like I'm doing something.*
Beyond that, I cannot cook. Well, I can maybe make a pizza (home-made actually), or even rice with teriyaki veggies (this got me through finals week). Still though, food is not my forte.

Tonight I decided I was going to cook Parmesan Crusted Tilapia with buttered noodles. Sounds good right? I thought so too.

I began by finding a recipe online. I settled with one of Rachael Ray's recipes. She seemed legit. Next I pulled out the frozen tilapia fillets from the freezer. I wasn't even sure you could bake frozen fish, so to Google I went. 'Can you bake frozen tilapia'. Enter. This was a good start. Next, I covered the frozen tilapia in "paprika", (That is in quotations for a reason, you'll see why soon enough) and parmesan. Just sticking with the recipe. Then I preheated the oven to 400 degrees, and waited.

After about five minutes, I decided I could probably start the noodles while I was waiting for the oven to preheat, so I put some water in the pan, and put the burner on high. Waiting some more. The oven finally beeps, and in go the tilapia fillets. I got sick of waiting for the water to boil, so I dumped the noodles into the pot, and swirled them around once.

Five minutes passes. I decide to flip the fillets and season the other side. As I'm coating the other side with "paprika", boy walks in and says "that's not paprika". "Yes it is." To my surprise, it was actually not paprika, it was seasoning salt. Main ingredient being...you guessed it..salt. Why it's the exact same red color as paprika is dumb, but I thought it would be okay because it also had paprika in its list of ingredients. Oh well. No harm done. Maybe...

I swirled the noodles again, this time they stuck to the bottom of the pan because I didn't originally add enough water. The boy grabs the pan and fills up the pot a little bit more so that it can actually cook all of the noodles. I also flipped the fillets to the other side again (at least I can flip). They seemed to be doing well. Five minutes left on those.

After a while the noodles were done, and I strained them. I put them back into the pot and lost a lot in the process. You see, the strainer was larger than the pot, so they just fell out of the strainer into the sink, missing the pot completely. Still okay I think. A 90% average is really good in some things.

Tilapia looked done, I plated both fillets. It smelled really good, so I was expecting the best.

Boy takes the first bite, and he makes all of these weird faces because it's really hot. Or so I thought. I laughed because, duh, hot food will be hot straight from the oven, but no...it was really just exceedingly salty. Oops. Here's where that "seasoning salt" comes back to haunt me. The fish was overall cooked very well, but the taste was almost nonexistent.

Here's a picture of the delectable dish.
To express how great the meal really was, the boy had a few choice words to say. "You would make any professional chef cringe because you have a complete disregard for technique." Compliments.

Food rating was split into three parts as to prevent an averaging down curve.
Noodles: 7
Fish tenderness: 8
Taste: no taste score because his tongue went into a salt coma, so there was no taste.

It was so bad, that he's even saying he'll be cooking tomorrow.

I never really thought I was a bad cook, or had a problem with cooking...until today. I guess I really do spend too much time studying, and therefore I've really never learned to cook. I didn't think it was something you needed to be taught, but I thought wrong. The boy's getting the short end of the stick when it comes to my wifely cooking duties.

Positive end note: "Noodles were top notch, I'm eating them tomorrow." Success.

Sentimental Sweets

Anyone that knows me knows that I am crazy for sugar.

Yesterday I came upon a most wonderful website called Candy Crate. Anything that mentions candy, sugar, chocolate, or sweets in general gets my attention, and this store, even more so, because they sell "nostalgic" candy. I'm probably not old enough to have a sense of nostalgia for anything, but when it comes to candy, anything goes.

I figured I'd check it out because I have a few favorites that you can't find anywhere around PA, and I was confident we weren't going to have school today (I was wrong..incidentally, and the two hours it took to clean off our cars this morning was a reminder that I should have done optics last night).

To my surprise they had everything I wanted, and more! It even awakened memories of some amazing confections that I didn't realize I missed until now.

Let's begin my journey down *sweet* memory lane.

Fruit stripe gum. The flavor was so-so-so good (for about 20 minutes), but I remember when I was younger, it was the only gum I'd actually request be purchased (I'm not a big gum chewer).Keeping with the theme, my Grandma would consistently have Adams clove chewing gum in her odds and ends drawer every single time I would visit. I would have never known how much I truly love this gum if she didn't introduce me to it. Now, just the smell of it reminds me of all of the summers at Grandmas. Lovely.
Licorice rope. I don't think I really need to explain, but there are certain brands out there that create strawberry instead of cherry, and it makes all the difference in the world. The Nut Goodie. Whatever sweet, gooey, creamy, caramel-y stuff they add to the interior of this treat is to die for. I wish they made it as a frosting; I'd frost every cake I make with it for the rest of my life. It's that good. Brach's strawberries. Once again, a treat that is really hard to find (except for in 60 pound bags that would take a year to devour). Candy Crate has them in five pound bags, that is more manageable. Might last a week around here.

And we've made it to the end. My all time favorite sweet treat ever. The Twin Bing. Oh heavenly! This baby is the best of the best, and to make it even better, they manufacture this brilliant piece of amazing in my hometown in Iowa. This has the best chewy, cherry interior, covered by the most delectable chocolate, peanut exterior. It might not look/sound amazing, but the combo of the two make it divine.

{photo source}
CandyCrate

Always sunny with a chance of flurries

Snow storms on the east coast. Not fun.

The people of Philadelphia have either never experienced snow or they had forgotten they get the same white fluffy stuff every winter. It's like summer recess in school. You learn things all year long, and then over the summer you forget it all.

They knew how to drive in it last year, but this year they all short-circuited.

This morning I was the driver in our "carpool", and I'll admit, it's acceptable to go slow when it's snowing. It's actually probably encouraged by most; however, five..maybe ten miles an hour is a teeny tiny bit too slow. The citizens of Philly were going so slow that they actually stalled going up hills. Of course they would then spin out trying to start moving again.

To say the least, it was a mess.

Snow has been steadily accumulating all day, and tonight the boy and I went to the gym at our complex (because my school's gym closed early). I generally dislike our complex gym because of the amount of equipment they have, but tonight I actually snagged a treadmill.

Walking to the gym from our tower isn't that far, and on the way there it wasn't that bad. On the way back though, it was terrible.

Icy, sleety, spiky (yes, snow can be spiky, or at least feel like it), all around terrible snow was coming down. Actually, it was attacking us. We just wanted to get inside asap. Good idea!
Wrong.

We walk out into the parking lot, and here lies Mr. East Coast Driver. I swear everyone here is afraid of snow. They can't even walk to the gym. They have to drive there.

Rear wheel drive, big boat of a car. Spinning his tires until it smelled so strongly of rubber I was choking. The boy, being as nice as he is, decides it's time to be Macho Man. He tries to push him out of what "rut" he was in. I honestly have no idea how this guy got stuck in three inches of snow, but regardless.

For the boy's heroic efforts he, and some other kind gentleman, get face-washed with all of the slushy slop shooting out from underneath Mr. East Coast Driver's back tires as a "thank you". They still couldn't move him after quite a few tries, and I was pretty sure he broke the car. We were getting soaked and attacked with snow, and kind gentleman had already decided it was time to leave, so I was proverbially tugging on the boy's sleeve to go.

We made it inside after doing our good deed for the day.

Here's the consequence of standing in Blitzkrieg Blizzard forever.



And here's a view from our window. Notice all of the lousy park jobs. Told you, snow changes everything.

The kitten that got away

I love cats. I especially love my Lily cat.
As all of my fellow students know, we've been getting bombarded with furniture emails from third year students who are about to go on their rotations. It seems like every day there are five to ten more emails from students selling furniture. I usually just delete them, unless they mention "free", but Tuesday one stood out. It was entitled "kitten". I knew I should probably just delete it, but the animal lover in me didn't allow that to happen. Reluctantly, I opened up the email, and discovered that a third year was giving away her just found, stray kitten. She couldn't take it with her on her rotations, so before she gave it to a humane society, she was checking in with the student body for interest. Humane societies are great, however, in huge cities like Philly, they euthanize over 12,000 cats/kittens a year. That's 33 a day. I sure didn't want to be the reason this kitten was euthanized.

I contacted the student, and we made arrangements to meet the kitten. She sounded incredibly sweet. She was calico, and very little. I made appointments to get her spayed, vaccinated, and tested for feline leukemia (the waiting lists for these things are ridiculous, so I figured I'd set it up now because I could always cancel) at a local low cost vet clinic.

**Which, side note, are amazing things in large cities. Low cost vet clinics. $25 to spay/neuter, pain meds included. $20 distemper and rabies vaccines. $20 Feline leukemia testing. Yes, please. In Wisconsin this was easily over $200.

Back on track. I was set to see this little girl on Thursday. Later that day, the "seller" texted me and told me that she found a friend to take care of her until she got back from rotations. That way she could keep her. I admit, I'd much rather have someone take care of Lily instead of give her away, but I was still a bit bummed.

To be fair, it was probably not the smartest choice for us because it would cause even more problems with transportation over the holidays, but I was willing to deal with it.

I'm happy that the little girl will get to stay with her owner, and I wish them all the best.

Now I just have to get this idea of a second kitten out of my head. Good thing I have school to distract me.

WINTER

Most people can't say that winter is their favorite season, but I have come to ♥ it. Mostly
because I took up snowboarding three years ago, and fell in love with it.

This past weekend about 20 friends from school and I went on our first Class of 2014 Ski/Board trip. We went to the Poconos mountain range, and I was so pumped to finally see and board down real mountains!

This is what I was dreaming about. These are mountains.

This however, was what the reality of the Poconos Mountains really are.
Beautiful, yes. Breathtaking...no. 12,000 feet of fresh powder...no.

Regardless of the reality of what Pennsylvania considers to be "mountains", I couldn't have been more excited to finally get some boarding time in this winter.

We went to Blue Mountain Resort. It was a blast. The trails were 100% better than the trails in Wisconsin, and despite the fact that the "mountain" was similar to the bluff sizes in Wisconsin, each trail seemed to last quite a bit longer.

I couldn't have asked for a better day, and even though some bro rammed into me while he was trying to get some sick air off of a little cream puff of snow; it was still a ton of fun. I agree that we need to take advantage of our spring break, and go back.

Photos thanks to Baby Tiggah a.k.a. Vitto

{Source}
1/2

♥

I'm in love. With a lot of things.

This city I live in. The wonderful school I'm attending. Winter. This certain boy in my life. My Lily cat. Family, Friends (from Wisconsin and Pennsylvania), and even our concierge desk workers.

There are, however, a few things I'm not too fond of. One big one being homework.

Last semester was great. I got amazing grades, studied hard, and even studied on weekends (I know..). This semester is starting off... a little bit slower, however. I'm assuming it's because I just had a 3.5 week break, and it definitely wasn't long enough. What am I going to do when there is no winter break...? I can't think about it.

Lately, I've been getting distracted by all things wedding and fashion. It might have something to do with the fact that the boy and I just got our engagement pictures done when we were home for break, but regardless, there are some amazing distractions out there.

Here are some of my favorites.

Even though I never thought I'd be a Martha Stewart fan, I absolutely love her wedding site. She has everything from rings to dresses to decorations, and since I'm a very DIY bride, she has a DIY section that makes me melt. It pays to be artistic and crafty.

Also, if you've never heard of or checked out Etsy, you have to. It's amazing. Everything there is my style. Simplistic, fresh, and very me. That's the best part about it. I find things on Etsy that I can't, and won't find anywhere else. In fact, a few items have already been purchased regarding the wedding from there. However, I can't post much because the boy can't find out. ;)

I have also been daydreaming of when school is done for the summer, and I get my last....yes, last summer break, ever. I know it's only been a week, but this stack of notes is already getting to me.


She makes it all better though.