Saturday at Last

And eighteen hours later, my ridiculous week of hours at my part-time is over. Finally. And I get to officially kick back and enjoy it at a Valentine's Day Dance tonight. Of course, I made the mistake of running four miles today, plus Darrell has to work for part of the dance, so there might not actually be very much dancing, but it'll still be fun to relax.

But did you catch that?!? Four miles!! Granted, I walked a little bit in there, but I still put in 45 minutes on the treadmill. Which is something I honestly thought I'd never be able to do. My feet were burning by the end of it, and my legs are already starting to feel a little tight, but probably nothing I can't loosen up with a little dancing tonight :-D

I have a little bit of time before we leave though, so I wanted to quickly post the recipe for Cube Steak and Rice from the other day. There's actually a little bit of a funny story behind this one--it's a family recipe from Darrell, and shortly after we started dating we got into a little tif so I decided to call his mom and get the recipe from her to cook for Darrell. Let's just say I had never seen or cooked with cube steak before (I had no idea what it even looked like! Thank goodness for Darrell's mom being very descriptive when giving me the recipe), nor had I ever made sticky rice or any kind of a gravy.... But I must have done something right with the recipe because he stuck with me!

Cube Steak and Rice
1 lb beef cube steak
1/2 cup rice (not minute)
3 cups water (for the rice)
1/4 cup milk
3 tbsp butter
Flour
Vegetable Oil

Steak
Dip the steak in flour and fry it in oil. To make the gravy, add flour to the pan after the steak is done then slowly add water while constantly mixing to obtain desired consistency.

Rice
Bring the three cups of water to a boil with 1 tbsp butter. Add rice and simmer until most of the liquid is gone. Add milk and the remaining butter; cook until most of the liquid is gone. (This whole process takes about 45 minutes, so start the rice before the meat.)

Like I said, it's a fairly "bland" recipe in terms of spices and additions, but when served with a nice colorful vegetable and a glass of red wine it's a classic!

Word to the Wise

If someone you know is working in an office or organization that is facing serious cuts and potential layoffs, asking them if they are nervous about the security of their job is never a good idea. Especially when you know that person is more than likely at the top of the line to be cut if cuts do happen due to being last hired and working in a non-crucial (or at least not the most crucial) position. Chances are that person has already thought of that possibility, but is choosing to just ignore it until anything becomes official because worrying about something that he/she can't control is just a waste of time. 


Just a little piece of friendly advice

Dragging

Day two of Hell Week is over and I'm draaaging. Yesterday ended up being even longer than I anticipated; my dinner event/meeting that was supposed to get over at eight ran until 8:30 (at least they were serving wine). And then I still had to run out to Barnes and Noble to pick up a book that Darrell and I have to read by Saturday for a book discussion. Thankfully it's only 144 pages, so it should be manageable. I've started reading a page or two whenever I get a chance and I'm already 21 pages in. Only 123 to go. By Saturday. Ugh. And I'm looking at not getting home until 8:30 again today and tomorrow. Ugh. At least my meeting for tomorrow morning got cancelled so I have a little extra time in the morning. I'll probably end up using that to get my reading done. Procrastination is a beast!


Update: Tack on four hours of work on Saturday morning. Stellar. Only one more week until our mini-vacation, only one more week until our mini-vacation, only one more week until our mini-vacation....

Ups and Downs and Doughnuts

Well, Hell Week Day One is officially over. And I was all set to sit down last night and blog about how the first of many 12-hour days had gone really well and how the week was off to a great start.... And then my phone rang. Now, I love my little brother to death, but his time management? I'm not so fond of that. He calls me at 9:30 because he has an assignment due for his online Chemistry class at midnight and he needs help with it. Which is fine, I don't mind helping him, but when it's two hours before the assignment is due and he is trying to explain charts and graphs over the phone to me to have me help him interpret them... Well, it's a little trying. Thankfully, though, while I was getting marginally frustrated with my brother, Darrell was cleaning the kitchen and then surprised me with chocolate covered strawberries. So, I guess the night still ended on a high. 


Today got off to a miserably cold start though--and I was cranky about it because I was hoping to get a late start. I'm pretty sure it's at least as cold as it was last week when all the schools in the area were closed, but there wasn't even a late start to be heard of from anybody. I think a windchill of thirty-five degrees below zero should warrant at least a little extra time under the covers (for teachers, at least. I'm fully aware that other professions have to go to work no matter what the windchill is).


As I alluded to on Sunday, I decided to start our week off by making doughnuts--healthy ones that aren't fried! Don't they just look delicious?

Of course, my intent to use them as a quick breakfast or easy mid-morning snack was pretty much defeated on Sunday, since we devoured nearly all of them that morning before church. Oh well--they're so good and totally worth it. I might have to make another batch next weekend (and then maybe show a little more self-restraint and not eat the whole batch....maybe). Here's the recipe (followed by a couple of my notes/modifications):


Doughnut Muffins
(I don't remember where I got this recipe from, sorry!)


Doughnuts:
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup margarine, melted
3/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup flour


Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease 24 mini-muffin cups. 


Mix the sugar, margarine, and nutmeg together in a large bowl. Stir in the milk, then mix in the baking powder and flour until just combined. Fill the muffin tins about half full. Bake until the tops are lightly golden, 15 to 20 minutes.


Coating:
1/4 cup margarine melted
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon


While the muffins are baking, place 1/4 cup melted margarine in a bowl. In a separate bowl, mix together the sugar and cinnamon. Remove muffins from their cups, dip in the melted margarine, and roll in the cinnamon sugar mixture. Cool and serve.


My Notes:
For starters, it's very important to watch the muffins closely while they are baking. I had a hard time telling if the tops where getting darker (I'm still convinced they didn't really darken at all), but when I finally pulled them out the bottoms were definitely overdone. So pay attention to the sides of the muffins as well as the tops to determine when to remove them from the oven. I also modified the toppings (as you can see from my picture). I didn't see the need to coat them in an additional 1/4 cup of margarine, so I only melted a tablespoon, and lightly brushed it onto the muffins I was going to top with cinnamon sugar. It allowed the coating to stick just fine. I also used more than 1 tsp cinnamon, but I'd say mix the two until you find a flavor/combination that you like (I prefer mine to be more on the cinnamon side than not). I coated them by putting the cinnamon sugar mixture into a bag with the muffins and shaking. I did the same for the muffins I coated in powdered sugar (no margarine coating necessary with these!), although Darrell and I agreed that the cinnamon sugar doughnuts were much better than the powdered sugar ones. 


Here's to Hell Week Day Two--two hours down, only ten more to go until I'm home again!

I Heart Weekends

Actually, I love relaxing weekends. Weekends where we don't have any major obligations, where we have the ability to control our own schedule, and especially where I can take naps in the middle of the day. Soooo nice. And after a brief work obligation Saturday morning, that's what this weekend was. We got home early Saturday afternoon and had a leisurely lunch, which consisted in part of this for me:

Grilled peanut butter and jelly. Soooo good. And gooey. The key is making sure to put plenty of butter on the outsides of the bread so it flips easily (I never said it was healthy....)

Then after a nap for me followed by a quick run to the gym and grocery store (two actually, whoops! Sort of forgot a pretty key ingredient), we fixed a little bit of this for dinner:

Cube steak and rice. Yum yum. Although we realized last night as we were eating this that it is probably one of the most "bland" meals we cook, but it's a recipe Darrell has been eating since he was a kid, so altering it just really isn't an option. Which is perfectly fine, because the flavor it does have is oh so good. We just won't talk about the fact that it's smoothered in gravy. I'll have to post the recipe sometime, but not right now because I'm making doughnuts for breakfast and they'll be done soon!

Then, to top of our gloriously relaxing Saturday, we had a movie night!

I'll admit that this isn't exactly my favorite movie, but I definitely think I understood it better than I did the first time we watched it. Plus we enjoyed the movie with some popcorn that we popped on our stovetop (super fun--thanks for the supplies Kristen and Ben!), so that made it even better.

If only this weekend didn't have to end..... I've got three twelve-hour days next week, plus a thirteen-hour day thrown in there just for fun, so I'm kind of dreading it. But hopefully I'll stay so busy that it'll fly by. Hopefully.

Oh, and by the way, GO PACK GO!!

Eat, Pray, Love

http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/eatpraylove.htm

Have you read this book yet? No? Well why not?!?! It is quite delightful. And don't go telling me that you've seen the movie, because I have to believe it is no where near the same. But, since I don't plan on seeing the movie myself, I probably can't knock it too much--I've just been sorely disappointed as of late by books made into movies (The Time Traveler's Wife and Dear John, to name a few disappointments) and I don't have any desire to taint another great book with a mediocre movie. 


What I enjoyed most about this book was how honestly it was written. It's a memoir, and it follows the author's journey to "find" herself. But the narration style of the author isn't all sugar-coated and self-protecting; she's honest about her mistakes, honest about the way she dislikes some of the things she's done, and often altogether snarky when having an inner dialogue. Who out there doesn't ridicule themselves in their head? Who hasn't, at times, called themselves a failure or looked for the easy way out? This is real life people. Granted, not everyone has the luxury of being able to afford a year-long trip to three different countries (as much as most of us would probably looooove to be able to do that), but that's a minor detail. I felt like the author took her "worldly" experiences and described them in a way that made you feel like you could recreate some of the same emotions in your own home. Or maybe I just feel that way because I have a tendency to get sucked into books. Who knows. 


In all seriousness though, I really do feel like there is something in this book for everyone--whether you are looking for a little more pleasure in your life, a little more divine intervention, or just a little more balance. It's definitely one I'm going to hang on to and read again.

Snow Day (Take Two!)

That's right! Two snow days in a row! Although "snow day" is a little bit of a misnomer--we really haven't gotten any snow since the early release on Monday, but temperatures have been plummeting and winds have picked up, such that wind chills are currently at 30 degrees BELOW zero. Way ridiculous. So really, it's more like a "cold day"--but snow day just sounds much more pleasant.

Yesterday (as you can see from my lack of posting) was a total waste though. I majorly slept in, which I think was really beneficial for getting rid of this cold I have, but it just left me feeling lazy the rest of the day. I'm pretty sure I spent the majority of the morning on the computer (and most of that time on Facebook....whoops). I did have to go into work at my part-time job, so I decided to make something of my day and go to the gym beforehand. Where, I'm pretty convinced, my body is picking a fight with me about training for this 5K. First it was the cold, and then at the gym yesterday the toenail on my pinkie gouged a hole in the toe next to it. Not enjoyable. I'm contemplating going to the gym again today, but I might do something a little lower impact than the treadmill because my toe still hurts (lame excuse, right? I still got over a month to train though....that's my story and I'm sticking to it).

Today, though, I intend to be much more productive. By baking cookies. And then subsequently eating way too much cookie dough. Which will make me feel like I have to go the gym. And then, since I'm getting bundled up to go to the gym, I'll probably decide that there are things I "need" at Target just so I can go shopping. Although for any of this leaving-the-house business to happen I'm going to have to go blow the driveway. Maybe I'll just stay inside all day and keep baking cookies. Considering it feels 90 degrees colder outside than it does in our house, that might not be a terrible option. Minus the fact that Darrell and I don't need multiple batches of cookies to snack on.

Here's to hoping the temperatures make it above zero today!