ooooOOOOOooooo!!!!

So, thanks to a lovely Christmas present (Borders gift card), I now have 4 new cookbooks (all on sale). I will become so adept at cooking from scratch that I will never need to buy processed foods ever again!

The first is Baking: A Commonsense Guide, which I didn't realize until I got home is Australian, which means all the dry ingredients are measured in grams. Not to worry! They seem to have foreseen this issue and have included regular old cup measurements, as well. The book is split into sections on cakes, cookies, muffins, breads, etc, and each section has a pictoral guide on what the ideal result should be, how mistakes look, and why they occur. Homemade bread, here I come!

Next, I got 400 Best-Ever Budget Recipes, which has some unusual, but adaptable ideas. I need to look at it more closely, but I think I will be inventing up a storm with this book. For cheap!

I also picked up a book called Soup Bowl. All soup, all the time. Some of these look great. I'm particularly excited about the summer soups. Hooray vichyssoise!

Finally, I grabbed one simply titled Lowfat. It wasn't what I expected at all (diet and lite ingredients) but instead has some of the best-looking recipes I've ever seen, including Pasta Puttanesca, Roasted Pumpkin, Onion, and Rocket Salad, and Braised Lamb Shanks. Actually, there are a ton of lamb recipes in the book, period. Anyway, lots of veggies, reasonable amounts of meat, light on the dairy, and an entire section of vegetarian meals!

So anyway, I'm getting ready to experiment. Look for some new recipies soon!

In which I am grateful for what I have, pt 2

I forgot to post a recipe. Whoops!

Here we go, with Recession Raspberry Brownies

The jam doesn't have to be raspberry. It can be strawberry, apricot (for that Sacher Torte flair), marmalade, or you can just leave it out. Whatever. Also, get ready to mix by hand!

Makes however many brownies you feel like cutting an 8x8 pan into.

Items you need:

a fork
a mixing bowl
8x8 pan

Ingredients you need:

1 c sugar
1/2 c butter
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
6 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa
2 Tbsp canola oil
3/4 c flour
1/3 c raspberry jam

Mix butter and sugar in bowl until light and fluffy. Add eggs, vanilla, oil, and cocoa, stirring until color is fairly consistent and there are no big lumps. Mix in flour. Grease baking pan and pour in half the brownie batter. Microwave jam for 30 seconds until it is more liquid than gel. Pour melted jam on top of first batter layer and spread evenly. Cover jam with the remaining batter. Bake ate 425 F for 30 minutes.

You may not have money, but you have brownies! Enjoy!

In which I am grateful for what I have

As I said in my last post, I have a job. Actually, I am fortunate enough to have two jobs, one 8.30-5.00, M-F, and one 8.00-12.00 (ish) on Saturday mornings. I enjoy these, more or less, and am pretty willing to get up in the morning and get there on time. Many of my friends, however, are facing graduation in May, and are worried. Several have opted to attend grad school in the hopes that by the time they're finished with another degree, the market may have opened up a bit.

It took me a month to find my first job. That's not a bad time frame, but I was terribly overqualified and it was the only interview I got. I couldn't even get an interview as a waitress. My current job I got because I was lucky enough to know someone and ran into her on the street at the right time. It could have been a much longer search.

Sometimes we get portrayed as an uncaring, spoiled generation, and to an extent, I suppose that's correct. My friends and I are privileged enough to have not only attended college, but to have attended one of the top 50 colleges in the United States. We are also, however, pretty inventive and hardworking. We are confident in our competence and our capabilities. Most of us earned either full or partial scholarships, and maintained the GPA needed to keep them. My friends are going to be research scientists, doctors, engineers, judges, writers, astronauts. We are going to have a significant impact on the world.

If we don't end up working at McDonald's.

A new post! For really real and not pretend!!

I have a Masters degree now.

I also have a job that I really love. I get to do a fair amount of graphic deign for it, which means I get to be creative. That makes me happy, because it's a break from paperwork. I'm also going to be doing a significant amount of web design in the next two weeks. It's a little daunting, but I think it'll be a good challenge, and I'll be able to show off what I can do. I also ordered QuarkXPress 8 for the department yesterday, so I need to learn how to use that by the time it comes in. That's going to be a great program to play around with.

Since I get a waiver, I may use it to get a post-baccalaureate certificate in Media Arts, Marketing, or Public Relations. I need to research it a bit more, but I think it'd be both fun and a worthwhile investment of my time.

In the food department, I've got another recipe for you. It's very simple, but tastes delicious.

Macho Meaty Spaghetti Sauce

Don't let the name fool you- this sauce can be used on any sort of pasta you like, and would probably make a delicious lasagna.

Makes 6-8 servings, or (probably) 1 9x11 Lasagna

Items you need:

Cutting board
Straight-edged knife
Wooden spoon or spatula
Large skillet
Large sieve or colander
Hand blender or food processor

Ingredients you need:

1 lb ground beef
1 can plain tomato sauce
1 can "Italian-style" stewed tomatoes
1/2 medium yellow onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
Worcestershire sauce
Italian seasonings to taste

What to do:

Brown the meat over med-high heat until it is thoroughly cooked. Drain the meat in the colander and set aside.

Put the tomatoes, tomato sauce, onion, garlic, and seasonings into a food processor and blend to desired consistency. Pour your blended tomato mixture into the skillet and mix in the ground beef. Add Worcestershire to taste. Bring to a simmer and let bubble for 5-10 minutes on low heat.

Serve with pasta! Or don't!

There you have it! Cheap, easy, and tasty.

Feel like babbling

Things I've noticed about myself lately:

1) I really don't like mess and disorganization, but I have no idea how to go about cleaning my room in order to get it done in a timely manner.
Corollary: I have too much stuff that people have given me as gifts that I feel bad about getting rid of.

2) The older I get, the less I actually like being around people.

3) I care way too much what other people think of me, and am way too worried about pleasing them all the time.

4) Things I work on are never finished because I am never satisfied with how they are.

5) There is very little I actually want, beyond the ability to pay my bills and eventually put some money away.

6) I like early mornings better than late nights.

7) I am so afraid of failure sometimes, I let it keep me from doing things I want to do.

meh... just random thoughts

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (I've only read half of the trilogy)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - These people deserve their misery
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22- Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca- Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby- F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 The Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland- Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (nurr)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (stupid)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (In French no less)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (Which presumably is in the Complete Works of Shakespeare #14)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Internet memes

Stole this from Allison. And I refuse to give it back.

You know how sometimes people on your friend's list post about stuff going on in their life, and all of a sudden you think "Wait a minute? Since when are they working THERE? Since when are they dating HIM/HER? since when???" And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow you feel too ashamed to ask for clarification because it seems like info you *should* already know? It happens to all of us sometimes.

Please copy mine below, erase my answers putting yours in their place then post it in your journal! Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration! One-Word-Answers seldom help anyone out :)

1. First Name: Arynne

2. Age 23.

3. Location: NOLA

4. Occupation: Student..... and then who knows

5. Partner: Incorrect terminology for what I've got at the moment. Interesting possibility is better phrasing.

6. Kids: I would like some eventually

7. Brothers/Sisters: Oliver is my brother. He is two years younger than me, and most of the time he's all right. For a brother.

8. Pets: My Cavalier King Charles, Lady (short for Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility), 2 parakeets, Persephone and Orpheus, and 1 sad beta fish, Morty (his name is Muerte! It means death!)

9. List the 3-5 biggest things going on in your life: My life is actually pretty boring. I suppose the major things occupying my mind are:

a. Stage Managing for my masters project/graduating. It is hard and unforgiving, and few people notice when you're doing a good job. Do a bad job, however, and they will all be on top of you. I'm ready to be done with school.
b. Real life (dun dun duuuuuuunnnnnn). I need to find a job here in town that will pay me a decent amount and not make me miserable.
c. For the next few weeks, those are the only things I'm thinking of.

10. Parents: My parents are pretty cool. I think.

11. Who are some of your closest friends: Okay, kinda complicated... I have ties for boys and girls. I am an equal opportunity friend.


Allison and Chris: These two people probably know me better than most of my other friends combined, which is a scary thought. They could rig up an Arynne robot and control it and no one would be the wiser. Maybe they already have.... oooooEEEEEEEEEooooo... Allison fights Nazis and Communists for a living while having wicked sword fights with Cate Blanchett on the back of speeding jeeps in the wild jungles of the American South. Chris is a Russian spy and is currently in law school.

Travis and Jenae: I normally spend a fair amount of time with these two, but now that i'm living in Dixon, I don't see anyone. They are the ice in my glass of milk.

Amanda and Daniel: She kills things. With science. He is my roommate, so I guess it's good we get along, huh?

Addendum (other things you should know about me):
I tend to consider introverts a personal challenge. I hate mushrooms and tomatoes. I am a gastro-intestinal responder to stress... and excitement.... and pretty much everything else.

Halloween, Part the Second

Halloween went well, I suppose. I had an awesome costume and got a ton of compliments on the lanterns o' jack. Not many trick-or-treaters, though, so anyone who wants candy come get it. It's not staying here.

This fellow wasn't carved when I did the last post. He is Tiny Lantern, made from a decorative mini-pumpkin.



And now for the costumes. Firstly, there was my lovely roommate, Jenae.



Secondly, my good friend Travis. He was... something...



Finally, there was the master of all costumery, the Lon Chaney of her age... me. Sorry a couple of the pics are a little blurry. That's what happens when you don't have a tripod and your photographer/roommate is laughing at you.







Truly, I am so cool.

Stay tuned the next couple days for some restaurant reviews that are long overdue!