Mmmm!

Justin and I are headed to the woods this weekend for his first ever camping trip. A few days ago, I started talking about what supplies we needed to pick up, and he suggested making our own granola bars. I was leery of this, and what we ended up making isn't really in bar form, but it turned out to be totally awesome.

He picked out Alton Brown's recipe and showed me the episode of "Good Eats," and the rest is history.
It's super easy, good for you and pretty cheap! What more could you want, right? Well, besides the recipe...

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Ingredients

• 3 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup slivered almonds
• 1 cup cashews
• 3/4 cup shredded sweet coconut
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons maple syrup
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup raisins

Directions

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F.

In a large bowl, combine the oats, nuts, coconut, and brown sugar.

In a separate bowl, combine maple syrup, oil, and salt. Combine both mixtures and pour onto 2 sheet pans. Cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes to achieve an even color.

Remove from oven and transfer into a large bowl. Add raisins and mix until evenly distributed.

--

We used craisins instead of raisins (on purpose) and olive oil instead of vegetable (by accident), and it is amaaaaaazing. Hopefully, we'll even have some left for our trip!

How Thoughtful; How Silly

I freak out a lot lately. About school, mostly.
And I'm not really easy to deal with, but Justin always manages to do something silly to take my mind off of it. Earlier this week, I was upset about something, and he called my name to make me look up. I see this:

This little fella talked to me and told me not to be upset. It's weird what actually works to fix me sometimes.

Justin hurts himself a lot...the mouth on this guy was from an axe-i-dent a few weeks ago...

Tidbits

Man.
Time really flies by when your life consists of sleeping and stressing out about school.

I'm mostly kidding, though after a long Monday, it doesn't really feel like it. Everything bottlenecks on Mondays, lately. Today I had two psych. papers due, a pharmacology quiz to take, a three-hour class to go to (and workbook junk for it) and a test to worry about for tomorrow. Now that it's all over (except for that blasted psych. test), though, it doesn't seem so bad.

Thankfully, fun found its way into the week. I spent too much time photographing the flowers Justin got me for my birthday and trying to photograph his fish (Charlie). Never did get the Charlie pictures quite right...

 

George Clooney Cake

The other day was my twenty-fourth birthday. How strange!

My friend Mary and I once stumbled upon a recipe for something called George Clooney Cake, and lemmetellya, it is my favorite thing that has ever been in my mouth. I'm not much for chocolate desserts or even Mr. Clooney, now that I come to think of it, but this cake...oh, THIS CAKE!!! I decided several months ago that if nothing else got done today, this cake would. 

Since I like recipes and baking so very much and since I almost never get to really make food anymore, I decided to go totally overboard and do a step-by-step entry with pictures. 

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup cocoa
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 4 eggs, separated
• 1 cup cold whipping cream
• chocolate curls (optional...sort of)

Destructions

1. 
   

   1

   Heat oven to 425 F degrees Grease bottom of 8-inch springform pan.
2. 
   

   2

   In medium saucepan over low heat, melt butter. Mmmm...
   
   
   
   
3. 
   

   3

   Add cocoa and 1 cup sugar, stirring until well blended.
   
   
4. 
   

   4

   Remove from heat; cool slightly.
5. 
   

   5

   Stir in flour and vanilla.
6. 
   

   6

   Add egg yolks, one at a time, beating well after each addition. I love this part. Your mixture will thicken up really quickly after about the third yolk...don't panic.
   
   
7. 
   

   7

   In small mixer bowl, beat egg whites with remaining 1 tablespoon sugar until soft peaks form (check out my peaks!); gradually fold into chocolate mixture.
   
   
8. 
   

   8

   Spoon batter into prepared pan.
9. 
   

   9

   Bake 16 to 18 minutes or until edges are firm (center will be soft).
   
   
10. 
    

    10

    Cool completely on wire rack (cake will sink slightly in center as it cools).
11. 
    

    11

    Remove side of pan. I don't do this, because I usually take the cake somewhere and want the side for extra support. 
12. 
    

    12

    Refrigerate cake at least 6 hours. This is the hardest part. Aaaaaah! Agony!
    
    
13. 
    

    13

    In small mixer bowl, beat whipping cream until soft peaks form; spread over top of cake.
14. 
    

    14

    Cut cake while cold, but let stand at room temperature 10 to 15 minutes before serving.
15. 
    

    15

    Garnish with chocolate curls, if desired. Justin's family looked so excited to eat, that I forgot to take a picture...or even put candles in the darn thing. Oh well...it was still mighty tasty!

The Prodigal iPod

About a month ago, I thought my ipod had fallen out of my purse and been nabbed, but it turns out that one of Boyfriend's ferrets had liked the shiny parts of the earbuds and decided to drag it away. Someone at his house found it, yesterday (I guess) and left it out of ferret reach on a shelf. It still had a little bit of battery life left in it, too; way to go, apple. SO HAPPY because I thought it was gone forever. Also happy because when I saw it on the shelf, Justin said he was thinking of getting me one to replace it for my birthday...and that's an awfully big gift.

[source]

I had a dream, this morning, that I was studying at my friend Cameron's house and that Patrick Stewart had gone totally psycho and taken us hostage. He was having her do some chore outside, and he had me sitting with him in the kitchen listening to CDs from when he was in a choir. I recognized one of the pieces and somehow talked him down and into letting me use the bathroom, where I texted for help.

Crawfish Boil

This is (someone else's picture of) what I had for dinner last night:



For those, like me, who grew up in what is arguably not The South, it's a crawfish boil. You put corn, small red potatoes, cajun spices. crawfish and whatever the hell else (in our case, an onion and two heads of garlic) into a hugeass stockpot and let it boil. When it does that for a while, you strain it and dump it on some newspaper that you've already spread out on the table. Everyone stands around and eats it while drinking lots of beer.

I was totally apprehensive about this but wanted to be a good sport; it totally rocked.

I will be hosting one at the end of the summer, probably the first weekend in August. I'd like to try it with shrimp as well. Real life friends--mark your calendars, and let me know if you'd like an invite (they're going to be pretty)!
--
Currently watching Rock Band and getting ready to read for a psych. assignment.
It was a good day. 

Ahhh...

This blog exists because I need a fresh start; I'm bad at introductions.

So much has changed so rapidly, lately that--at the risk of sounding emo--I feel a definite break in who I fundamentally am between now and a couple months ago, and I am translating the fallout to another online home. I also haven't found a way to articulate anything even close to useful, but I am working on it.

In the meantime, I'll continue with business as usual.