"we can't call ourselves college kids with the way we eat"

...super long post because I have been a major slacker.

That's a pretty accurate statement after the past few weeks. I've been a slacker, one, school our social life is starting to consume my life, two, I've needed inspiration to write. Yes, I love, love, love to write and if I could make millions off it, I would, but I definitely need to be in the mood.

Let's see..Rewind back to January 22nd..a sad sad day in the basketball world. Despite an upset, we still made the most of it. Friday night we decided we'd play it safe, not go over board since we had to wake up bright and early for our guests arrival at 9:30. Do we ever follow rules? That'd be a negative. 9 am came quite quickly. Mariah was in bed until after our guests arrived. Good thing Jared got her moving or she would of stayed in bed all day. Jared, Koji, Mike, Taylor and Kerry are shuffled over for some breakfast and drinks before we headed to the game. On the menu: omelets in a bag! (sadly, the bagels never got made..but we're determined to tackle bread of some sort this semester)

 Jared, decked out, hard at work making his omelet

 Into boiling water for 12 minutes...

...and wa-la a perfect omelet!

 Although the basketball team let us down, we still made the most of it and had a wonderful time. Our friends are great, we had such a good time, despite the loss and basically being able to touch the ceiling of the dome. After the game we came back, hoping to nap the day away in preparation for the evening, pretty sure none of us napped, but don't worry we still made it out that night. Conveniently our girl neighbors we're having a party so we didn't even have to go far and before we went out we even did some school work..chemistry to be exact..

 Amelia hard at work with that chemistry..

 Our wonderful neighbors, Taylor and Teresa

Now onto the week..a little background info as to how the menu comes about..

It all starts on Sundays when I sit down and scower the internet for just what concoctions I will be preparing for the week. Tess showed me this awesome awesome website, my roommates and I may or may not spend hours book marking thousands of recipes..Once I've weighed my options, gotten the girls opinion this is created and hung on the fridge so I don't get, "Mom what's for dinner tonight?" asked every night. (It still does despite the fact that this is hanging front and center on the fridge each week.

Sunday: Chicken Tortilla Pie

I know, I know I deviated from Sunday Soup Day but we saw this and decided to give it a whirl.

 Cheese sprinkling courtesy of Mariah

 chicken, bean, cheese goodness. We topped it with some avocado slices because we looooove avocados. 

Monday: probably one of the best meals I've made thus far if I do say so myself and where the name of this post originated from.

Pan seared salmon with spicy avocado puree..um, YUM.

My mother sent me back to school with some salmon so I searched for the perfect recipe and found this and since it had avocado in it, it was an easy yes. 

What college kids do you know that eat salmon on a Monday, just because? (thanks momma for the salmon!)

 The puree consisted of avocados, a shallot, garlic, evoo, lemon juice, a serrano pepper, dijon mustard, parsley and basil

 The final product:

 

The salmon was cooked perfectly, good thing because last semester when we had salmon I cooked it too long, and dry salmon is not very tasty. This was delish.

 

Wednesday we had crunch honey chicken, I failed to take pictures but basically in a nut shell it was like stir fry. The only bad thing about this was coating the chicken in corn starch. After dipping the chicken into the egg whites you put it in corn starch and it was the most awful feeling. It was like 10x worse than sticking your hand into flour and made a yucky noise, ah just thinking about it gives me the chills. Despite that, it was definitely a winner.

Thursday we had baked ziti courtesy of Mariah and my mother's sauce. To be completely honest I do not know if I have ever had baked ziti (except for that so called baked ziti served at banquets). Our weekly dinner with Willy and Jonny started back up that week and Mariah offered to take over the wheel. Again, failed to take pictures but thanks to my mother we had homemade sauce which obviously no other way to eat sauce. It was deeeeelish, but then again anything involving my mother's sauce is deeeelish. Mariah did a fabulous job, it was cooked to perfection! Maybe one day you'll be taking over my job in the kitchen, Maria :)

I lied..this was what the lonely picture I took..

The boys bring the alcohol and dessert and we make dinner, perfect combo. This week they brought Andre, our personal favorite.

One night this week, or maybe the week after, I don't know, all my weeks get jumbled together..I had a super productive day, went to class, gym, homework and everything done by like 3 so after dinner when Mariah and Emily headed off to the gym I decided I wanted to make cookies. Oh! Actually It was last week because when they got home we made more cookies for our party last Friday (more about that later..) I decided, I really do not like making cookies, or baking for that matter. We really never bake a lot at home, mainly Christmas time when it is time to crank out mass quantities of cookies but besides that, the occasional pumpkin bread. I don't like it because you have to be so precise and measure things out so nicely unlike cooking, where you can be a little bit more messy. But, I was bored so I decided oatmeal chocolate chip cookies it was.

 Obviously I added more chocolate chips than you're supposed too. There is no such thing as too much chocolate.

I had a mini panic attack and texted Maria saying I am a failure at baking because I thought they got too much of a sun tan..but she reassured me they were okay. They ended up tasting great so all in all it turned out okay.


Friday the 28th we had a party, we LOVE to have parties. They are definitely a lot of work but so worth it. The theme of this party was Mariah and my one year anniversary. Surprise, Mariah and I are dating. Just kidding. But we definitely tried fooling some people into thinking it was our coming out party. It was really out one year anniversary of being at Syracuse, aka making the best decision of our lives.


All our friends know us for our baked goods, we never go any where with out them. Naturally our party was going to be stocked full of baked goods and non alcoholic drinks. Again (for the third time) failure to take pictures but we made cookie dough truffles which can be found here. So easy and so good. We also made golden graham treats which are a made up recipe from the creative minds of MEM (aka Mel, Mariah and Emily). We made them once for dinner with the boys and they loved them so we decided, why not? They are golden graham cereal, marshmallows and chocolate chips..basically a rice krispy treat but rice krispys swapped for golden grahams and the addition of chocolate chips. They went so quickly at the party you would of never guessed we even had them! Also, chef Mariah whipped up some of her famous jell-o shots, 62 to be exact and they were probably gone in 62 seconds, they are a hot commodity! 

 hi pretty :) 
ps, loving your skirt..wonder whose it is!

 Remember those awesome shoes?! I finally got to wear them! It's great not having to leave the house in this snow globe we live in.

Oh you know, just being fierce. (btws, Amelia, loving the shirt..again wonder whose it is!)












































The party was a huge success, at one point the apartment was jam packed, we were like sardines. A good time was had by all, thank goodness..we always worry when it comes to throwing a party but it was great, can't wait for the next one!


This past week was a little mumble-jumbley and we had to rearrange the schedule a little bit due to a house full of sicklings (E and M, mainly M)..


Monday: Feta, Sundried Tomato and Spinach Turkey Burgers which we've had before but they are Mariah's fav so we had them again and they are super easy to make.


Tuesday: Eat on your own day..little sickling stayed in bed all day.


Wednesday: Lemon Poppyseed Waffles with blueberry-lemon sauce. YUM. My dear cousin and I have this thing for lemons. We just do, not sure how it came about but our best work always consists of lemon as a main ingredient (minus our white chocolate raspberry cheesecake).  We swapped the white flour for whole wheat so we had to add some more buttermilk and they were a bit more dense but they were so good. A little bit summer-y but with this awful weather we needed a little pizazz and these did not let us down.

In our apartment we have this thing for peas,if you look closely you can see them on the plate in the back. Naturally we thought peas would be a nice side with our waffles..









 Thursday: We, well Emily, had a dinner guest on, which was kind of last minute but thankfully we were having grilled balsamic bruschetta chicken  which worked out nicely because we had enough for one more (especially it being a boy that had 3 helpings!) Mariana told me the balsamic vinegar smelled like feet, so I was a bit nervy making it but it turned out really good! It was also super simple and we love simplicity. Derek told us it was the best meal he's had since we've been back, granted he eats in the dining halls daily, but still.

Friday: oh Friday, how I never thought you would come. Last week was a verrrry long week. Thursday night I whipped up some snicker doodles, we had cookies in a jar I stole from home before I came back, because I was meet my bestest friend Friday for lunch and thought she'd like a treat :) Friday I took a mini road trip to Hobart, much needed Al-Mel time..even though it will be 2 years in may (can't believe that in a few short months my sophomore year of college will be over!) that we have been apart for more than 1 consecutive day (unlike all our years of growing up where it was weird to not see each other for 1+ day) it's still weird not seeing her and I miss her oh so much! Since I was gone for the day Friday we had a free for all for dinner..but we did whip up a killer batch of brownies after seeing these and we promised a friend we would bake for him so I came across this recipe which was virtually same as the picture so we decided those would be fitting to show off our baking skills. Due to an impromptu party at our apartment (aka got a text saying we're coming over tonight!) around 9ish, in a panic we started getting ready/ cleaning/ baking..and drinking..probably not the best combination but heyyy that's okay..we had fun.

 Semi-frightening..

 It calls for pb pretzels but obvi we forgo anything with pb.


When we bake, my job is always the chopper..they don't really trust me with anything else..

 quality control, obviously.

 Cream cheese and cocoa powder

 before..

 finished product! they were supposed to cool for two hours before serving but the boys' patience levels did not exist so we popped it into the fridge for a little then served it like pie. Now, they were giving us a hard time about the pretzels but they were just being facetious since they ate almost the whole thing!

















Sunday, we made goodies but nothing too exciting..just some guac, cheese and crackers and mini hot dogs in crescent rolls and the boys made chicken wing dip. Oh! We also made golden graham treats which I mentioned earlier which are always a hit and so simple.

Side note not related to food..

I made more glitter flats! My mom found them on sale and sent them my way so Friday night before our guests arrived I went to work..(bad quality from my phone but they are super cute!) I even got to wear them Saturday night because, yet again we had an impromptu party which was fine by me because it was a blizzard outside so not having to leave was nice.

another side note..


My father has volunteered to stay home for the week with the devil we call a dog so my wonderful mother and I can jet set across the country in March to visit my aunt and uncle in California for the week (!!!) and I've already started planning all that we're going to do and obviously top on my list is going to Sprinkles Cupcakes because 1. cupcakes are great 2. Cupcake Wars is one of my favorite shows 3. they look AMAZING!

















 

back in action!

After being on hiatus while at home where instead of cooking the majority of meals, I got to sit back and relax and be catered to by my wonderful, wonderful parents. Who not only cooked delicious meals, they let me pick out all my favorites I had been missing at school that I'm daring enough to make or just taste that much better when they are made my them.

Being an anal retentive planner (thank you mother) I dove right back into playing mom here at the apartment and planned the whole weeks menu and hung it on the fridge so there is no questions as to what we are having and to reassure my lovely roommates they will in fact be eating a real meal each night and not cereal (which is usually the case when I do not make dinner, they have cereal and any one who knows me knows breakfast is not my ideal meal and cereal is definitely not a meal of choice.)

The menu for this week:
Sunday: Chicken Mac and Cheese

Monday: Beef Barley Stew

Tuesday: Chicken sausage with roasted red peppers and sun dried tomatoes with peppers and onions and a salad

Wednesday: Slow- cooker spicy buffalo chicken sandwiches from Everyday Food

Thursday: Greens and Beans (Maria's personal fav)

Fridays in our house are usually take out nights just because we made it through the week and deserve a treat!

Sunday:
I'm not a huge fan of mac and cheese but I came across this recipe and thought it looked delicious, and that it was, it exceeded expectations. Emily helped make dinner and although it was a bit chaotic it was full of laughter and hoovering from Miss Mariah.

 
Taking a little break for some left over Chinese.

 

 

You simply layer the cooked shells, chicken and bacon then peppers and onions and finally add the cheese sauce which is a mixture of Gruyere, Parmesan and Cheddar and repeat and bake for 20 minutes and you are ready to eat!

Monday: Before I left my mom cleaned house on the pantry at home to stock up the pantry here and gave us one of those jars with all the contents to make beef barley stew which I had planned for Monday because it was our first day before school so it seemed like a Sunday and Sunday is soup day. Good thing I planned on that because I had acquired a rather unsightly rash on tops both my arms over Christmas break and I figured it was from using a new soap, which wouldn't surprise me since I am allergic to everything under the sun. I woke up Monday to see that it had spread so I sent my mother pictures and she scheduled my an appointment to see the Doctor at 1:30, so I had to leave at noon, it was 11 at this point so I hopped in the shower and figured I could make the stew quick since it had to cook for a few hours. It was so simple, just had to brown the stew, add the contents of the jar and water and let it simmer for a few hours. I didn't know what time I would be back either so if I wasn't home for dinner they could eat without me, all they had to do was serve themselves.

Since beef barley stew isn't the most eye appealing thing, here's a picture of my lovely rash!

 
Have no fear, despite not only my doctor but another doctor at the office not knowing what it was (eczema was ruled out, because although I've had eczema for as long as I can remember) these bad boys do not itch or hurt one bit. They decided to treat it like eczema though and it seems to be working. I have to take Prednizone 3x a day for 6 days and lotion 2x a day. They are looking better, not as red and fading slowly but surely.

Tuesday:
First day of classes, wahh, can't believe it is starting again! Tuesdays I'm done at 3:20 which gives me enough time to go to the gym and have dinner ready by 6-6:30 which works out nicely. Ever since I introduced Maria to buffalo chicken sausage she has been a fan, so when my mother brought us regular pork sausage with mushrooms and artichokes we were broadening her pallet some more. I personally am not a huge fan of Italian sausage, I prefer chicken sausage much more so when I went to Skip's to load up on goodies I found chicken sausage with roasted red peppers and sun-dried tomatoes. We sauted up some peppers and onions and had a salad. So simple, yet so good.

Wednesday:
Mondays and Wednesdays are my dreaded 8 am days. I had an 8 am on Mondays last semester, but twice a week this semester?! Treacherous. On a positive note, we got to class today and my professor decided that from Monday on out class would begin at 8:15 instead of 8, hello and extra 20 more minutes of sleep! My second class at 10:35 got canceled so I could come back before my third class at 11:40. This worked out swell because I had already gone to class, prepared everything for the chicken, got it in the crock pot to cook for the 4 hours it needed, did the dishes, made my bed and cleaned the bathroom all before 10:30, it was glorious. 

I have a weakness for anything buffalo chicken flavored, I could eat it for every meal if I could. When I came across this recipe over break at home I was so excited to try.

 The recipe was really simple, I cut it in half because we have a little baby crock pot plus there's only us 3 and we don't really eat that much.

 All I wanted for Christmas as a garlic press, low and behold half way through my stocking I unwrapped a garlic press, Christmas could have been over and I would of been as happy as a clam!

 The sauce consisted of these guys, it looks like kind of an odd concoction, I was a little nervous at first.

You put the mixture in for 4 hours then shred up the chicken and serve on a bun, how simple!

This is our baby crock pot my mom found at Walmart for $3 and Jill picked it up on black Friday, it's perfect size for us.

 As I stirred it basically shred on its own so I didn't have to do much.

 Not very good quality it was taken from my phone, but these were great. We had them on whole wheat buns with blue cheese, sweet potato fries and broccoli, YUM!









Thursday:
I know, it hasn't happened yet but there has already been pictures of greens and beans already so need for duplicates.

 As I have been writing this throughout the day, so much free time on my hands this week (better enjoy it while it lasts!) we have been solidifying our plans for Saturday because it is the big Villanova- Syracuse game which obviously we will be attending. Given the fact that it as at noon and activities at the dome start at 9, yikes!, and our love for entertaining, we figured we would have some friends over for some breakfast and drinks orange juice before we head off to the game. Mariah was watching Paula Deen one day where she made omelets in a bag and we thought it would be a great idea for Saturday morning because everyone gets their own individual baggie and can put whatever they want inside. I was SO perplexed by this i just had to watch a video of just how this works. It's pretty darn cool, I'm excited to try! Another task I wanted to tackle is homemade bagels, my grandma used to make them all the time when we were young and they were so good, I wanted to be able to make my own. So after searching I found one so we'll see how it goes! That adventure will surely be blogged about, also with pictures of the game, they are expecting over 30,000 again. Oh Syracuse basketball, how I adore you.

Impromtu Bake Sesh:
I have wanted to make homemade granola for the longest time because most granola has some sort of nuts in it, making myself incapable of consuming, lame. I came across a few recipes and we decided that since we only had quick oats we'd make granola bars that i found here.

 
It called for 3/4 cups of craisins but we substituted 1/4 cup with chocolate chips to add a sweet treat! These were also a winner.

all that glitters is gold

Warning: This post is not about food, rather a crafting adventure (another favorite hobby of mine). This is also a very long post!

Any girl loves glitter, right? Well minus a few exceptions, ahem our neighbor who was not particularly fond of the glitter sprinkled in the walkway...but that's another story, I, on the other hand am no exception and re-kindled my love for glitter around Halloween time. Emily had the brilliant idea that we would be Josie and the Pussycats, because one: we watched the movie last semester and re-lived our childhood and two: who doesn't want to be a rock star? So we headed to the mall, found all the glitz and glam we could and off we went back home for me to make a sign, signature to the movie, with what other than glitter? I mean what's a rock star with out the glam? Upon making the sign, glitter and I fell back in love, we took a break from each other for a few years while I took up new hobbies like going to elementary school (where I feel as though glitter would be frowned upon due to its stick-ability to everything and lack of an appropriate method of clean up) and then as  I continued to grow my crafting became solely based around puffy paint, why you may ask? Ask any Fairport Cheerleader how much puffy paint they have and you would soon see it is a staple, whether its team shirts, stunt group gifts, pillow cases, you name it, it can be puffy painted. (Or if you are my mother, your specialty is puffy painted holiday socks!) Any who, back to glitter and my re-kindled love. After the sign making, I wanted to glitter everything and I wanted to buy anything glitter-y. I needed heels for a formal that I was wearing a black dress to, so off went Mariah and I, hoping to find heels in any solid color, just to add some pizazz to my outfit, after much frustration we found nada, and we searched, Mariah is a shoe connoisseur so went from store to store, still no luck, until we were on our way out and she said, oh let's stop in here. I was so over shopping at this point and being let down she had to drag me in, and oh am I glad she did. Low and behold we found the perfect shoes. Not only did they have my size, I could walk in them (a true test, being such a clumsy child- hence why mother calls me grace..for my lack of..) but the best part...they were glitter-y. Oh man was I in heaven.

Seeing as though I am not one to wear heels out on your typical night (Halloween really did me in) I wish I had glitter-y shoes of some sort that I could wear out and did not need a special occasion because they really jazz up an outfit. I got a picture frame from my best friend Tess that says something along the lines of whatever you do in life, make sure you do it in cute shoes. So, one day I was looking around online, probably at recipes to make because well, that is what I do in my spare time, I came across this and almost died. DIY glitter flats? Hello, glitter and a craft project combined in one, how much better could it get? I enlisted Mariah, she probably rolled her eyes and thought to herself, yet another one of her crazy ideas? But I simply bribed her with some guacamole and she quickly obliged. 

 Being a poor college kid with no income for the time being, spending $40 on a pair of flats is just not in my forecast (another reason why I liked this project). I began researching flats and found some at Target, convenient because Jo-Ann's is right next door.

 I found these bad boys for $12.99, not bad.

 After Target, I beep bopped over to Jo-Ann's and picked up the rest of the supplied which were all super cheap, each glitter container was .99 and the brushes were .39 a piece. The killer was definitely the clear spray which was $5.99 BUT the lady in front of me in the check out line had a 40% off coupon and gave it to me so everything came to be $7.39 with tax. So, thank you lady in front of me for buying all your items on sale and giving me that coupon!!








We had no idea what to expect slash what to do, the instructions were kind of vague so we kind of just went with it and the actually turned out really well!

Figuring out the ratio of mod podge to glitter took a while but finally we figured out that you had to use double the glitter than mod podge and it worked out.

 The first couple coats looked funny and while we waited for the mod podge to try it looked really silly with the white all over but once it dried you could see where you needed more glitter.

 Obviously we had to break into the wine to get our creative juices flowing.

 The final product!

They turned out really well I'm excited to wear them and I want to make more! I'm thinking all gold or all silver, hmm the possibilities are endless maybe I should just take up making glitter flats for a living!