more (food) adventures!

What a great week and weekend so far! This week was my second week on the floor at work, on dayshift, and it was a week thats for sure! There's soo much to learn when you start a new job- where things are, the equipment used, different policies and procedures, doctors and nurses names, phone numbers, who to call for what, the general flow of things, and the general feel of working there! It's so overwhelming! Things I normally could do so quickly and easily take so much longer and so much more effort! It's overwhelming, and stressful, and really makes me feel inadequate at times! But I know eventually it will get better once I am there more and feel more comfortable about how the floor works!

With that said, what a week! We went out last night for Tim's last night in Austin, and I got to experience a tiny bit of 6th street fun! We headed to Union Park, and had a great time! Here's a pic of Chris, Tim, and myself


Last weekend, Chris had some friends come over for drinks and card games, which was a blast! It felt good to kick back, relax, and enjoy some of the games from college! As well as staying up really late, trying to get back into a more nighht-shift oriented schedule! Kaylee decided that she wanted in on some of the action.....

Today Chris had the high school band camp final concerts, and all the bands did so well! Chris had to fill in some parts during his group's concert, but he got to come sit with me during the final Honor's Band (which was an exclusive by invite only all-state group of kids) and they were AMAZING! completely blew me away! I felt like we were listening to a professional symphony orchestra! After the concerts we got to eat some Pok-e-jos BBQ (which is traditional game day food for the UT Longhorn Marching band...) After BBQ, Chris and I headed home to change into swimsuits where we then headed to Deep Eddy Pool (a spring-fed pool thats a consistant 67-72*!!!!!) it was sooooo nice there! it will definitely be a saving grace this summer when the temps hit 100*+... After pool time, we made some miniburgers with a fabulous new miniburger grilling basket, and some homecooked buffalo chips! It felt like we were in Bdubs, but at home!

Annnndd, last but cdertainly not least, for a quick dinner after I got out of work late, Chris and I make a homemade pizza, yummm! My next food adventure is going to be attempting real homemade pizza dough I think... but the next best thing is buying real pizza dough from an Italian market/restaurant called Mandola's!

It's still very interesting to me how much of our togetherness revolves around food- thinking about it, planning meals, shopping for meals, cooking, eating, etc... Is this something that happens to every couple when they first start living together? I think we're just so excited to finally be able to cook for more than one person, and be able to cook some of the things we love to eat, that it's exhilarating when we prepare a meal that is not only healthy, but tastes good and turns out good too! It's just exciting to see what we can accomplish together! =)

A Catch All Dinner

Now that Chris and I are totally responsible for buying groceries and making sure food doesn't go bad, I've found some creative ways to use leftovers.... one ingenious idea was combining a iceburg lettuce and cabbage for a salad- you could barely tell the cabbage was in there, except the salad had more flavor and more crunch! a good change to me! A few nights ago we had a rotisserie chicken, and then I ate some leftovers for lunch, and Chris has a container of leftovers for lunch, but there was still some leftover! Soooo, tonight for dinner we have a very catch-all dinner, and a keeper catch-all at that! We combined leftover spaghetti sauce with leftover fresh basil, fresh mushrooms, and the remaining chicken for a chicken mushroom spaghetti sauce! It was amazing! Lighter than a normal beef meat sauce, but chunkier than a normal marinara sauce. yum!

In addition to our catch-all spaghetti sauce, we also had catch-all pasta with the remains of 3 different types of pasta, and catch-all lettuce with a cabbage/lettuce mix! Top that off with some good 'ole Texas toast and we had ourselves a quick, delicious catch-all dinner!

Chris also surprised me with some funky green and pink roses just because!

Home Foodie

After some inspiration from other daily bloggers about food and what not, I decided to try to keep up with my own blog more!

I always knew Chris and I both shared a love of food and cooking, but it have become much more apparent since moving to Texas and living together, planning shopping and cooking meals! Wow- planning meals was harder than I thought it was going to be! When Chris and I sat down to plan our first week of meals, we had a hard time thinking of things to make! Growing up, my mom always asked if there was anything particular I wanted for dinner that week because she always tried to plan the week out for grocery shopping. Well, Chris and I tried to do that after we arrived here, and found it difficult! Not that we didnt have things we wanted to cook, but just that we couldnt think of anything to cook! I guess we both wanted dinners to be special that first week! So we had a great first few weeks of dinner with some old favorites and some new recipes!

Here I am cooking an old favorite side dish- parsley potatoes!
Chris cooked filet mignon perfectly!
it was sooo good!
BBQ ribs and corn on the cob for Memorial Day!
Dinner #1 garlic italian style shrimp with basil and spaghetti compliments of Rachel Ray!

We also had oven fry chicken (one of my favorites), orange roughy (a new dish for Chris- he liked it!), chicken and pork lo mein (also a Rachel Ray recipe and a new one for both of us- was not so good...), and rotisserie chicken!

After 2 weeks of excellent dinners, we have found ourselves in a lull, eating pizza, leftovers, sandwiches, etc! It's exhausting, timeconsuming, and expensive to cook! But so much fun, and I love eating!

This evening to entertain myself while Chris was at a rehearsal I decided to start a second batch of cake balls and make some banana blueberry almond pancakes! Bakerella has some amazing ideas! Check her out at http://www.bakerella.com/

Here's the final result of the cake balls! I still need to work on getting the chocolate thinner and tapping more excess chocolate off the balls, as well as finding a device to dip the balls with so fork marks aren't left in the balls! But they taste fabulous regardless of how they look!

So here's to a great past 2 weeks of meals!