Mewska

Those little ordinary things

Grace — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 01:30:22 +0000

So. School.

Type type delete!

No one cares about a list of my classes and their descriptions. Here is just a list :|

Intro to geography
Women in American history
Western civilizations to 1500
Western civilizations to present day

Women in American history is a 300 level class, so that’s going to be the biggest panic inducing class this semester. I am a slow reader and we have to read 5 books plus a bunch of articles. Hopefully I won’t have to actually read all those books. Or at least not with much effort put into it.

The best news is that I have a locker right by my friend Amanda’s locker so that we can leave notes for each other. Our schedule is different this semester :(

Ahhhh! Ok I have reading to do. Look at me being responsible!

Do nothing till you hear from me

Grace — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 02:02:06 +0000

It was the first day of the semester, but it didn’t really feel like it. My only class on Monday is swimming. Tomorrow is my first real day of school for my ninth semester in college D:

But! Swimming was fun! I was really nervous about it. I had never gone in the PE building so I didn’t know where to go. That is what I was most nervous about. How dumb! But there were signs and I stopped panicking. There were only 10 or 11 people in the class. Most of them can swim at least a little. One girl is a swim instructor. Taking beginning swimming. Have fun teaching the class lady!

Everyone was super encouraging though. The teacher is also really nice. I’m pretty excited! The grade is based solely on attendance. I thought maybe it might be based on putting at least some effort into trying, but as long as I show up I’ll get an A. Hooray! We also have to take at least 2 private lessons during the semester. But that’s pretty awesome actually so I’m not complaining.

Tomorrow are my talky classes though. I’m a little nervous. But excited. Until I get overwhelmed with work and want to drop out. So, about 5 weeks into the semester.

The clouds broke

Grace — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 22:20:03 +0000

None of my YA books have been finished. I should feel lazy I guess. Mockingjay was delivered on Wednesday and I read 2 pages so far. It has either been busy bee time or I just didn’t feel like reading. Maybe the impending onslaught of required reading is subconsciously making me rest my brain.

Oh well!

My life has been consumed by freaking out about the new semester and being lazy while I still can be. How interesting right?!

My swimming class is the first class I have this semester. This is the only class I’m nervous about, and only because I’ve never been in the physical education complex so I don’t know where to go or what to do. But Danny and I went to the pool yesterday and I did a little float on my back swimmy thing so I am somewhat confidant that by the end of the semester I will hopefully not drown if I find myself in a pool unsupervised. Exciting!

Ummm…

That’s about it.

I made 2 successful vegan baking recipes. The blueberry crumb cake is posted. It was so so so so so so so good. Danny has requested that I use blackberries next time. Since it is quickly approaching apple picking season, apples are more likely to be next.

Oh god apple season O_O

Apple pie. Apple crumb cake. Apple pancakes. Apple cider. Apple apple apple apple.

In conclusion, I went to see Scott Pilgrim and it was ok. I didn’t dislike it but it was not amazing either.

Blueberry crumb cake

Grace — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 06:31:53 +0000

My mom was coming over for her first visit since my boyfriend and I moved into our apartment a year ago and her first visit after a 2 month long hospital stay earlier this year. Since my boyfriend has recently become vegan, I needed to make something that he could enjoy but that would be easy and yummy for my mom to have along with her tea. Enter blueberry crumb cake!

It’s a really easy and quick recipe. Techniques are different in the vegan baking process than traditional baking methods, so a few recipes I’ve tried haven’t turned out very well. But this one did. And was amazing.

Blueberry Crumb Cake

Adapted from Vegan Brunch by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

Ingredients

For the crumb topping:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
⅓ cup brown sugar
¼ cup canola oil

For the cake:
¾ cup soy milk (or any other milk substitute)
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar or lemon juice
⅓ cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup canola oil
1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup blueberries

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 375°F. Grease an 8-inch pan. I used an 8-inch square pan for my cake but you can use an 8-inch round pan as well.
Combine the milk and the vinegar or lemon juice. Set aside so the milk can curdle.
To make the crumb topping:
In another bowl combine the brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and the flour. I whisked mine until it was combined pretty good. Next you pour in the ¼ of oil. You can use a fork to combine, but I just used my hand. It should end up looking like this:

You can add more oil if the mix isn’t crumbing up enough for your taste. Just be careful not to add too much! You don’t want oily crumb topping. Set aside this mixture.

Next up is the cake!

In another bowl you will mix together the curdled milk, oil, sugar and vanilla. The milk should have little lumps in it before you combine everything. If it doesn’t, wait a little longer until it does.
Next, mix in the dry ingrediants. You can sift these all together, but I never do and my baked goods always turn out pretty yummy. So, mix in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix this until it forms a smooth batter. Mine had some still had some lumps, so yours can too!
If you are going to add the blueberries, you’ll want to only pour half of the batter into the pan. Then you get to top that with some blueberries. Yum!
Then you’ll add the rest of the batter over these. I used the spatula to drop dollops of batter across the top, then carefully spread it out all across. This ensured the berries didn’t get smashed, were still in a layer over the bottom and didn’t get mixed around too much.
Next up is the crumb topping. What I ended up doing was taking a handful of topping and compacting it in my hand like this:

I then broke off bigger chunks to scatter around the top. Then filled in with smaller pieces.
Put it in the over for 35-40 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Mine took a little over 40 minutes.
Make an attempt to let this cool down a bit before you gobble it up. I managed to wait about 20 minutes. It held together well and was still a little warm. Great to have with some soy milk! It will serve 8 if baked in the cake pan or 9 if you used a square pan.

I used blueberries but you could easily use any other fruits and even some jam. Blackberries or apples would be especially delicious I think.

Hop hop hop

Grace — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 03:27:03 +0000

Flying off to bird land

Grace — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 01:55:00 +0000

Today:

I woke up feeling a bit fuzzy head sick.
Fell back asleep, then woke up when my boyfriend brought me a smoothie to help my throat. Frozen blueberries ^_^
Figured I should figure out dinner around 2pm.
Made vegan biscuits.

I took pictures during the biscuit process, but they didn’t turn out very well. The photos or the biscuits. I didn’t research beforehand and it seems that milk is the essential ingredient in biscuits. I had no idea! Instead of milk I just used water. They didn’t turn out awful, they were nice crumbly simple biscuits, but they weren’t keepers either.

Now that my boyfriend has decided to go vegan, I’ve been obsessively scouring the internet for recipes. This is requiring me to reorganize my bookmarks and google reader. Extra effort >:[

On the plus side, there are about a million blogs for vegan cooking and baking! So far it hasn’t been that difficult. We ate mostly vegan, which I didn’t realize until our only change in usual foods was our (weekly, shut up) pizza. Anything else, the cheese has been easily left out or added to for me. We’ve stuck to salads mostly over the spring and summer. The true test will be winter, when the weather calls for more hearty meals. Potatoes! Squash! Ummm! Chili! Oh god, the chili. The best chili. Fresh baked bread perhaps?

This all kind of comes at a very good time. I’m starting school in 13 days (eep!) so meals need to be planned ahead of time. At least once a week we’ll be making dinners alone, which is when I get to go crazy and eat cheesy eggs with… shortbread cookies and a glass of milk. That’s the grossest thing I could think of that has butter, cheese, eggs and milk.

Hopefully an additional upside to this is losing the 20 lbs I’ve gained since I was at my lowest weight 2 years ago. I’d settle for the 10 lbs I’ve gained and lost over and over. I feel like a stuffed sausage in these jeans. Oof.

And then and then and then!

Grace — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 05:56:01 +0000

It all started with a trip to Penny’s, a walk around, and then a push into Molly’s. All part of a secretive date night plan apparently. They didn’t have a regular sized carrot cake cupcake, but two mini cakes were even better.

Our first fully seasonal meal. Mushroom, onion, zucchini, peppers, cilantro, lettuce, grapes! And some tortillas and plums!

And then we did this to them. Chop chop!

Later on I made my first loaf of bread. It started as a disaster. I only have one loaf pan so I tried to halve the recipe. At first it seemed too wet so added some flour and it was too dry. Take two! And it ended up too dry. But I went with it anyway and this came out of the oven. It was a little dense and a little doughy in the middle because I had to take it out so the top wouldn’t burn. It was pretty yummy anyway and when I get another loaf pan I’m going to try again with the original recipe.

The next day Danny made tofu scramble with some homemade seitan on the side for breakfast. Best breakfast!

And then I went on a boat! On Lake Michigan! To watch airplanes! It was good and then I started to feel sick. And then I ate pretzels and felt ok and fell asleep on the deck. Most of the planes were boring? But the Blue Angels were pretty rad.

Seasonal eating foods of yum

Grace — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 05:41:42 +0000

A few months ago Danny and I had said we wanted to start eating seasonally. Only buying things that were, well, in season. We didn’t really follow through. I guess technically we did? But since it’s the middle of summer everything is basically seasonal right now.

Sometime last week we ended up watching No Impact Man which is about a rich dude and his family deciding to try to make zero net impact on the environment. It was interesting to watch and was more real life than most documentaries about people wanting to change their lives so they don’t screw up the environment.

Within the first 10 minutes I was extremely annoyed because these people are rich. They can afford to go to the farmers market and spend probably $20 on a chunk of farm fresh cheese each week, go to Whole Foods and buy grains and such in bulk (which is still expensive because hello! whole foods!), etc etc blah!

But whatever. The ideas behind it were good which I guess is the point.

So anyway!

We are going to actually start eating seasonally. Over the last few days I’ve been compiling a list of foods for each month here in Illinois. We’re still trying to figure out our food limitations. What do we include and exclude? Right now, obviously things in Illinois are included. There is little to no difference in availability of foods from Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana, states we could potentially get produce from within a 100 mile radius. Do we include seasonal foods such as cranberries? They aren’t local, but are definitely a seasonal food.

We have already decided that it is pretty impossible to completely eat 100% seasonally all the time. Oranges are never seasonal in Chicago. Bananas. Avocado. Mangos. Lemons. OH GOD WHAT ARE WE DOING.

The solution is to allow ourselves to have these things on special occasions (guests, special dinners, holidays?) or just rarely in general. I can survive a bit longer than Danny not eating fresh fruits. We will always have raisins! Another guide will be things we could have in our root cellar or things we could have canned. Potatoes, squash, onions, garlic, canned or frozen beans and such.

We will always have eggs. We are lucky enough to live in Illinois where Phil’s Fresh Eggs farms are located. While I would feel a lot better being able to buy eggs at the farmers market, they are really expensive and not something we can do consistently. We don’t drink dairy milk, but we do eat cheese. Cheese at the farmers market will likely be expensive, so we will have to either buy that in very small quantities or buy market cheese in extremely small quantities. We shouldn’t be eating as much cheese as we do anyway. I love cheese :( The big sticking point is the fact that we are vegetarians. We rely on soy products for a large portion of our diet, so even though soy isn’t in season all year there is no way around that one.

I am going to be attempting my first loaf of bread soon. I keep forgetting to buy bread flour :\ We don’t eat too much bread, but it would be great to have some homemade when we do. Egg sandwiches on homemade english muffins. Could it get any better?

Also! Freezer jam. I need to buy some berries before they go out of season so we can have jam until next summer. I need strawberry jam in my life or I will die.

I guess this makes it sound really strict and crazy rule oriented. But we’re just going to do the best we can. Stay tuned for seasonal recipes!

Huh

Grace — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:43:40 +0000

So wow!

I am done with class until August 30th. Hooray!

I’m pretty sure I did pretty well in my English class, unless I totally bombed the final paper. Which I might have. Probably not. I just always think that I wrote long papers Really Wrong at about the 2000 word mark. Enough that it would be really awful to start over. So I don’t. I just hope for the best and take chances. Risking my future. Oh god.

Future! I looked into grad programs. There is one that is pretty perfect. Exactly what I need/want. Except. It is at Loyola. Whoops!

It’s somewhere I never though I’d want to go to. So I kind of don’t think I’d get in. My school isn’t particularly known for its top notch education. I hadn’t really “prepared” myself for the possibility of going to a school like Loyola. UIC maybe. Some other less selective school. Some other less expensive school. So I don’t know. The program is exactly what I need to get into what I want to do. I have a 3 semesters left to try and make myself a bit more selectable.

Anyway.

Last week was my two year anniversary with my boyfriend. I’m happy he is still cute. And loves me and all that. We went to the Museum of Science and Industry. That was pretty fun and neat and great and awesome. And then we went home. And then we went out to dinner and ate delicious foods. And then we went and walked around. And then we went to the busiest noisiest bar ever and gulped two drinks each because there was a $10 minimum for using cards. And then we went home and watched TV cause we’re that awesome. It was pretty perfect!

And then we had a family party to go to that was held outside. It was really nice until I woke up the next day and realized I had a million bug bites. It’s probably more like 40 or 50. Seriously. And it was awful horrible the worst for two days, but now I’m feeling less like I want to cry scratch my skin off. I win!

Hatchet

Grace — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:04:42 +0000

Book: Hatchet
Author: Gary Paulsen

Brian Robeson goes to visit his dad in some mysterious northern Canada place with the intention of ratting out his mom with her “secret” (does he really think his father doesn’t know his mom was cheating on his dad?!). He, of course, crashes during his first airplane trip ever. The pilot dies (surprise!) and Brian is left to fend for himself. It’s pretty funny. Because he’s so bad at it.

Hatchet was pretty disappointing. It is supposed to be a classic book, kids read it in school, it’s still being printed 20+ years later. I struggled through this 195 page book because the writing is, literally, repetitive. It was really distracting and I didn’t enjoy it at all. If this were not a YA book I would have given up, but I couldn’t justify it on a 195 page large text book.

I felt there should have been a lot more effort put into a timeline. There were only a few mentions of how long Brian had been on his own. It seemed to go from his crash to 3 days to 2-3 weeks to 47 days to ??? Even that was easy to miss. I can understand the intention of not putting emphasis on time, giving the reader the same sense of this seemingly never ending despair Brian felt, but it was more annoying than empathy inducing.

And of course the ending was ridiculous, even for a YA book. Once again a timeline would have helped put this into perspective. Oh well!

Should I give my book “reviews” star ratings? This thing will get 2/5 stars eventually.