Lots of updates!

It has been a few weeks of craziness here! Last week was a whole mess of stuff going on. I had a big test last week that I thought I was going to fail for sure! But, instead, I got in the 90s 🙂 I had dinner Thursday night in Chapel Hill (about 30 minutes away) with one of my best friends, Kaitlin. DELISH dinner and great company as always! I didn’t end up getting home until late that night so I wasn’t able to get much done around the house.

Friday, I was supposed to go see my favorite author, Nicholas Sparks, to get his latest book Safe Haven signed but wasn’t able to with so much going on. Later that night, JZ and I went with some of his friends to SPARKcon in downtown Raleigh. We caught the tail end of the fashion show, which was amazing, and then walked around and watched the circusSPARK fire dancers. That was pretty crazy. I took these photos of a few street painters. Can’t believe how talented these people are!

Saturday, I worked early because JZ and I were supposed to go to more SPARKcon stuff that day but he had to work. Earlier that morning, I went to the Midtown Farmers’ Market in North Hills where I work. I picked up some muscadine grapes while I was there so I could make Muscadine and Plum pie and cobbler filling recipe I got out of this great new book I just picked up called Canning for a New Generation. There were no plums available at Midtown’s market so after work, I headed down to the NC State Farmers’s Market to search. I was actually told plums in NC were in season in early spring. Unfortunately, since I really wanted to make this recipe, I picked up some CA plums instead. I had a pretty bad day on Saturday so I decided to pick up some beautiful flowers to brighten my day!

I also got some raspberries to make raspberry preserves and potatoes to make Potato Leek Soup! I did a lot of cleaning and rearranging Saturday. Our desk has been stuck in the extra bedroom with unpacked boxes and yard sale boxes so I decided to move it out into the dining room to get some office stuff unpacked and actually have a place for me to do my school work and JZ to do his work work! I am very excited about it. In fact, that’s where I am sitting right now 🙂 Saturday night was spent at Walmart picking up a sieve and searching for a kitchen scale that was no where to be found, both for my canning.

Sunday involved football and more work. Later, Sunday night, I started on my muscadine and plum filling. Here’s what ensued:

Monday morning, I had my wisdom teeth out. I slept most of the day until about 7p then got up for some food, more meds, and ice, then back to sleep. Today was much better. JZ left for GA this afternoon for work but I was able to get some stuff done today, dishes, homework, etc. Tomorrow should be better. I’m hoping to actually get out of the house and run a few errands and make the raspberry preserves and Potato and Leek soup! I’m not sure how well I will do though since I have to be on these meds for the rest of the week. I have to work on Saturday but I’m sure I’ll be fine by then.

Goodnight!

New Breakfast Obsession

About 1/4 cup of Trader Joe’s Steel Cut Oats cooked to perfection, a good tablespoon of Smucker’s Simply Fruit Black Raspberry, and one packet of Splenda. YUM!!!

The Container Store is coming to Raleigh!

Just thought I would share my excitement about the Grand Opening of The Container Store in Raleigh! During their opening weekend on October 16th and 17th, they are donating 10% of all sales to the Junior League of Raleigh! How great is that?!

Hellcats, Homework, and Homemade Salsa

Let me start off by saying I’m obsessed with good TV, or at least what I think is good. I’m super excited that new seasons of my favorite shows are starting. I watched a new series on The CW called Hellcats. It’s about a girl whose scholarship was denied and has to find a different way to get a scholarship so she can stay in pre-law. She’s a bit of a tough girl but her only “good” option is to try out for the cheerleading squad. There’s drama between a few girls mostly but it isn’t bad so far. I was pretty entertained throughout. That’s always a good sign that the show might be sticking around on my DVR for a while. Last season a few shows started off pretty entertaining, like Melrose Place, but got to be boring after about four or five episodes. One thing that does bother me about the show is that it seems to have a lot of similarities to One Tree Hill. Blonde, curly-haired bad girl, semi-stuck up brunette cheerleader, plus the two main male characters are from OTH. Either way, I’ll be watching the next episode.

Jason left today for Georgia for work. Yesterday, he started working on a homemade salsa recipe for canning that he got from his mom. It takes two days to finish because you let some of the mixed ingredients set overnight. So, when I got home tonight he had finished and some was left over in the fridge. I had to pull myself away from it. It is amazing. I’m excited to have so much left over for storage. This is our first adventure in canning and it’s got me quite motivated to do more, especially  healthy, ready-to-eat foods that are nice to have around all the time. Take a look at the goods! Yummmm!

I guess all this talk about food leads me to my homework, or discussion in my Safety and Sanitation class this morning. I have to learn about foodborne illnesses and the diseases that cause them. As some of you may know, I’m in school to become a pastry chef and want to open my own bakery one day. I’m becoming more and more focused on local foods and food sources and I want to incorporate that into my bakery, among other ideas. This morning’s class helped to reinforce that idea in my head a bit more. A lot of diseases that people get from eating at restaurants or eating a particular type of food at a restaurant comes from very easy to manage places. Buying from reputable suppliers is a big point of this lesson. I understand that large food operations must use suppliers that sell a variety of different foods. When you’re trying to feed thousands of people a day, it’s very hard to buy locally, which is fine for them. But the national standard of how much “bad stuff” can be in our food is not fine. The FDA has something they call the “Defect Levels Handbook”, which lists foods and the potential health hazards of the contaminates each food might contain such as animal excreta, mold, and insect particles. Some of this may be hard to regulate, yes, but how important is it to you to know what’s in your food? To me, it’s important to know but there isn’t much I can do about it on the large scale level. To my future patrons, it may not be as important but my bakery will be one less place to question. I suggest you check out the list here. It really is interesting and eye opening. Oh, FDA, just another reason I’m not sure I can trust you much longer. Don’t even get me started on the standards they have for school lunches. Another time, another post.

With all that said, I’m off to cuddle up in bed with The Help and hopefully get a good night’s rest before working early tomorrow. Yay for an unexpected early day! Maybe tomorrow night I can finally take care of a few major headaches around the house and, of course, get some more studying in.

Goodnight.

Channeling happy thoughts.

This morning was super rough. Getting my times at work mixed up, forgetting my keys in a friend’s car for a few days, and, on top of all that, leaving my coffee at home! As my day comes to an end, I’m thinking about things that make me happy and I thought I’d share some of those.

I did end up finishing Body Surfing by Anita Shreve the other night. It wasn’t my favorite book but it was a decent read. I wanted to keep turning the page so that’s a good sign. I’m excited to read the other two books written by her, Light on Snow and A Wedding in December, that I bought during an amazing clearance sale from Barnes and Noble. Last week I picked up The Help by Kathryn Stockett at the library. The size is a bit intimidating but I’m hoping it is well worth it. And from the reviews I’ve read and heard, I think it will be.

So I’ve been wanting to check out Trader Joe’s for a while now and just haven’t had the time. Monday was the only day off Jason and I have had together in a few weeks since he’s been traveling for work so I decided Monday was the day we would go. We wanted to go to the NC State Farmers Market so we decided to head to Trader Joe’s afterward. I wasn’t as impressed as I thought I’d be after I’ve heard people rave about it but I would like to go more often. We looked at prices and what they offer. Quality-wise, I’m sure it’s much better. It might just be something where we have to decide which foods we want to spend more on for a better quality and which we can get away with buying at the grocery store.

Their website is pretty cool. I’m trying to eat healthier and their website helps with that. At the bottom of their Products page, they have “Trader Joe’s Handy Products List”, which include low sodium, fat free, and vegetarian lists. Eating healthier, to me, means venturing out with foods I currently don’t eat. That mindset worked wonders on my feelings toward red and green peppers. I was seriously missing out from not eating those! I’m looking forward to trying out some of their recipes.

We bought the magazine Whole Living tonight, which used to be Body+Soul magazine. It is a Martha Steward publication but I appreciate that WL is not overly saturated with Martha. I love Martha Stewart Living but WL is more up my alley focusing on natural and healthy choices in life. Their website also is a great source of information. They have a lot of information on recipes and fitness, and ways to better your life. They have a “28-Day Mind and Body Challenge” that sounds pretty interesting. I might have to give it a try starting next week. I’m always intrigued by websites that not only have a lot of useful information but ones that give new ways to look at the process of bettering your life.

One of my favorite things to do is to read and research on my favorite websites or blogs, like the Whole Foods blog, and get some inspiration and motivation. There is a lot of information out there about being healthy and sustainable that is over-the-top or useless but I’m hoping I’m finding the best of all these to use in my life.

Starting over.

After a few months hiatus from blogging of any sort, I hopped back on my WordPress account and was reminded of all my past… unchased opportunities.

I want to start a blog. A good blog. A blog that will be successful, and by successful I mean seeing it though till the end. It doesn’t have to be successful by anyone else’s standards but my own.

I’ve been blogging since I was much younger, since blogs first became popular on LiveJournal.com. Back then I would write anything and everything I felt, said, and did. Well, not everything I did. It helped to have an outlet, some place where I felt like I was being heard. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve shaped my blog writing to be more about sharing “useful” information with others. Up until now those “useful” tidbits have been where to find a great pair of shoes or maybe a cute little kitchen gadget. They were more for me, though, since my memory is spotty and I really needed a place to write down those things I didn’t want to forget. I thought blogging about it would be a great way to remember and tell everyone so I didn’t have to tell them twice! It was really fun for a while, but then I started to feel the need to update often, even if I didn’t have any new information. It became stale, the blog and the act of blogging.

Now, I’m trying to find that balance between sharing the important stuff and over-sharing, like I used to do. I love blogging, well writing in general, but it is so hard for me to keep the separation between writing for myself and writing for the masses.

I decided to delete all of the previous posts I had on this particular blog of mine. I love the platform so I wanted to build on but the rest just didn’t fit. Hopefully this blog will become a bit like me, a little piece of who I am to share with whomever is listening. And, if I don’t give much thought to the content, such as  posting primarily about one subject like books or daily life or my baking adventures or my feelings, maybe this will turn out to be a bit like me: often silly, very passionate, sometimes spastic, and hopefully always happy.

I hope you all have a wonderful night. I just spent mine hanging out with my dad, watching Julie and Julia (yes, blog there, blog here), and having Crock Pot pork ribs YUM! Hopefully now I will finish the last two chapters I have of Body Surfing by Anita Shreve. Maybe that will be a topic of conversation tomorrow.

Goodnight.