Halloween Party

Morty (bf pseudonym) and I threw together a really fun Halloween party that included great games and great food... if I do say so myself.

I got some fun ideas off the internet to make some whimsical treats.

Spider Deviled Eggs

Apple Bites

Witch finger carrots

We also had a costume contest, with many worthwhile contenders

1st place: Zombie Steve Jobs

2nd place: Charlie Chaplin

and Spice the Cat even got a few votes... she maybe wore this for a full 5 minutes

 If you would like to see what I wore: click here!

Bacon Ranch Deviled Eggs

 It's a bit of a running joke in my family, and perhaps extending to my friends that I can be counted on to bring the deviled eggs.  I like them because they are fun, suitable to a lot of occasions and cheap to make.  I estimate a batch of a dozen deviled eggs doesn't quite exceed $2.00 in ingredient costs.  Although each batch is it's own, I usually make some version of the classic recipe.  Mayo, mustard, salt, pepper and paprika.  Sometimes adding a unique flavor to mix it up. 

I decided to mix it up a bit and try something completely different.  Given that we actually had bacon in the house, and given that apparently "everyone loves bacon" I used that as my inspiration. 

Bacon Ranch Deviled Eggs
Ingredients:
6 eggs - hard boiled
1/4 - 1/2 cup ranch dressing (enough to make a smooth consistency)
2 to 3 tsp - Frank's hot sauce
1 strip bacon

After peeling, slice hard-boiled eggs in half and separate yolk from white.  Try your best to keep egg white in tact.  Add ranch dressing and hot sauce to yolk material and mix together.  I usually use a hand mixer with the whisk attachment to make sure it gets extra creamy.  I've experimented with food processors and blenders and it's too much extra effort for no real added value.  To put the mixture back inside the eggs, you can use a cake decorator bag or a simple Ziploc with a slit cut out at the bottom.  I use the Pamper Chef Food Press which works great, but isn't a necessary purchase.  Garnish with bacon.

I brought this tray to a party I recently attended and they were a big hit. 

Operation "How do I look?"

My blog, Foodalyst, is about many things really, but I like to think that one of those things is frugality.  While the advice varies, an oft cited method for saving money is disconnecting yourself from any concern about "keeping up with the Jones."  This applies to many aspects of life, but a natural inclusion is the cost of maintaining a closet of fashionable articles of clothing. 

Frugality or not - Keeping up with fashion trends and putting together an outfit, have never been items on my list of strengths.  People generally describe me with words like low maintainence, T-shirt and Jeans kind of girl, or has a natural look...true as this may be, I think I still manage to have "pretty good" style, even if I'm a little hazy on what that might mean.  When it comes to dressing myself I tend to wear comfortable favorites. And sometimes a little make-up and a little jewelry.  I repeat outfits frequently and have a tendency to stick to "what works", as opposed to try new things.  

In other news I have a closet chuck full of clothes, most of which I never wear. I really need to trim down because it's getting to the point of flat out unmanageable. 

So here's my "plan" in order to maximize my fashion sense and minimize my closet consumption- For the next 30 days, I'm going to post myself wearing a different outfit everyday and subject it to the harsh criticism of the internet.  And let me assure you I easily have 30 different outfits in my closet.  If I get a lot of nays the outfit goes, if yays the outfit stays,  if it's a bit of tie - then I make the final call.    

For those of you who might be concerned, No!, I don't give a bleep about keeping up with fleeting fashion trends I'll never understand anyway, but I do want to look my best (and I wouldn't mind freeing up some closet space). 

The mechanics - I'll post these to twitter with the simple phrase "How do I look?", and if you like it: reply, if you don't like it reply.  If you are not on twitter and you want to "vote" they will also be at my other largely stupid, largely dormant blog.

So thoughts?


Is this project inherently narcissistic?


Probably, but isn't that just the nature of a blog?  I'll assure you I am less vain in real life. (I think)


What if the world ends tomorrow?

Whelp, we will all have bigger things to worry about then. 

Goal #1 Complete - Marathon Race Recap

If your confused about my title here, I'm referring to my 27 for 27 goals. 

RACE RECAP

The morning of the race my stomach was doing flip-flops, and I was wondering if I had trained enough or correctly, but for the most part I felt steady.  Basically, I realized that there wasn't much worry was going to do a this point anyway.  While I was shivering in the corral, I randomly ran into a couple of my coworkers, and we gave each other mini-pep talks.

The whole marathon training thing has felt incredibly surreal, and somewhat crazy to the point that I haven't fully realized what I've been doing.  10 miles is the farthest race I've done previously, so more than doubly that distance is pretty significant.  For some reason, it wasn't until I reached the 5K mark of this race, that I realized - I'm really doing this.  I've really trained, I'm really going along on this marathon course.  And the first tears were shed.       

I started the race out feeling strong, and for the first 10 miles I felt hardly any fatigue and very little discernible pain.  Between mile 10 and 15 I started to slow down some, but only lost a little off my overall pace.  It really helped that I saw a lot of friendly faces at that interval so to keep strong.  Here's a picture of me captured by the boyfriend at mile 11:

Smiling!

Shortly before mile twelve - I saw my friend Lauren, and not too much longer down the line I saw an old friend from high-school who had shown up to see someone else run but recognized me on the course.  One of the best things about this course is the amount of crowd support.  This is my first marathon, but others have reiterated that Twin Cities really does have good crowd support.  There was loud music, live bands, great cheers and signs everywhere.  I was almost always within ear-shot of music, or a rousing round of "Go Runners!"

Must be something about my personality I really enjoyed the signs that incorporated a little bit of humor such as "Worst Parade Ever", "Running 26.2 miles, because 26.3 would just be crazy", "Great Job! Totally Random Stranger!" and "If this were easy, we'd do it!".  I saw that last one around mile 22ish, and it still got me to chuckle.  

At mile 15 I had maintained a 12:15 pace (approx), which is better than I've ever done for that distance.  After that I slowed down considerably, but I kept moving.  It helped that at mile 19 or so, I made a running friend, we'll call her Lena (not real name).  Here's a picture of me and Lena running:

Lena and me both had significant ankle pain at this point and time, so we used each other to keep pace, keep running when we could and finish with a medal.  Lena and I kept each other positive and strong and we stayed running much more than I might of alone.

Less than 1 mile to the finish, my sister and brother-in-law showed up and started running with me! which was the second big tear-jerker moment of the race.  Not too much later I saw my Dad and he started running with me too for a bit, but I could not hold his pace at almost 26 miles in.  I tried and was starting to get out of breath.  My dad is an annoyingly fast 50 yr old. 

What it means to finish
 
Not all, but almost all marathons have some sort of course time limit.  Twin Cities limit is 6 hours, technically the finish line stays open until 2:15pm, which 6 hours and 15 minutes after the gun time, but not everyone crosses the start line right away.  I was in the 3rd corral and crossed the finish line at about 11 minutes post gun time.  If you don't cross the finish line by the designated time, you do not get to be declared an "official" finisher, and you don't get a medal or a T-shirt. 

Now, while going a distance of 26.2 miles is phenomenal in and of itself, and something that anyone should be proud of no matter the pace, but believe you me - I wanted that medal and T-shirt!  

So - I did it 5:42:22, it wasn't exactly fast, and it wasn't necessarily pretty, but I became a marathon finisher!

 And I got a medal

Water never tasted so good...

Can you tell these meals a part?

 

In our new effort to become less fervent carnivores, Tony (the bf) and I set off to the Saint Paul Farmer's Market.  The first thing we spotted was some beautiful looking eggplants, then Tony mentioned something about parmesan and pretty soon we were plopping a ginormous and beautiful eggplant into our reusable grocery bag.  We set off with high hopes of vegetarian delights.

We basically conjured up Eggplant Parmesan the same way you might approach chicken Parmesan.  Battered, Fried and then cooked.   

For some reason, it wasn't until we tried putting it into our mouths that we realized... umm... we don't really like eggplant that much.  Or at least we knew it wasn't the cheese, sauce or noddlely part we had a problem with. True truth, we reverted to our omnivore roots and we made the same thing with chicken a couple weeks later and saw it to be a (huge) improvement.  Can you tell which one is which in the pictures above? 

To my knowledge, I've had eggplant three times total in life.  The first, I thought it was revolting, and the second I thought it was so-so, and the third in this parmesean was probably the best, but still not really that great. (Apparently those first two times escaped my memory when I saw the pretty eggplants at the Farmer's market.)


So, my one thought is: I still don't know if I'm just not an eggplant person, or if I just am consistently eating it wrong.  So here's the recipe (if you dare)... and let me know if you have any tips for improving my eggplant consumption

Eggplant Parmesan 

Ingredients:
-Whole Eggplant
-2 eggs
-bread crumbs
-spagetti noodles
-Any brand Pasta Sauce, or make your own. 
-mozarella cheese

Directions:
Slice eggplant about 1/2 inch thick width wise.  Batter with eggs, then bread crumbs.  Fry in pan with olive oil.

Prepare noodles and sauce.  Combine in baking dish.  Place Fried eggplants on top, and cover with cheese.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 20 to 30 mins or until cheese is golden brown.

Small Changes... are enough

"Less is Enough" is a blog that I read and even though it's received national fame, probably still isn't getting enough credit.  I recently read this article:  "Cause and Effect".  It addresses a very important topic, that of finances and health. 

In it, she states:

"The cause of the problem is not that food is too expensive, it’s that people don’t know how to shop for and cook healthy food."

So true.

The original title of this blog was "Five Dollar Day Blog"  The goal was to feed my then husband and I for less than $5 per day (and I mostly succeeded).   I wanted to do it by still eating largely healthy foods, and without extreme couponing (not that coupons are always a bad thing).  For the most part I succeeded, these days I keep a keep a grocery budget of around $160 per month for two people.  That's about $5.33 per day.  This however does not include eating out, but amazingly (and honestly) I've kept that somewhat minimal too.  

There was a point when I spent $20/day (or more) so it's taken me a while to figure out how to do this, and quite frankly I could still find room to improve.  The process has involved teaching myself to cook more things from scratch, learning how to shop, and most recently successful meal planning.  Also worth mentioning, I have someone who enjoys doing this with me.  As time goes on, I hope to incorporate other tactics: gardening perhaps?

Before I became budget conscious, I would regularly purchase coffee while out .  This usually rang around $2, but can be as much as $5  for a fancy latte.  When I began Five-Dollar-Days I invested in a to-go mug ($0.50 at a garage sale) and I started making coffee at home.  Because I use whole beans and flavored cream (as opposed to Folgers black) it's a little high, but I would comfortably estimate a mug (or 3 cups by volume) at home costing about $0.28.  Not only is this an economical decision, I've come to enjoy it more.  I'm often times even upset when I forget my at-home coffee and have to resort to other options (I'm an addict by the way), and not simply because of the expense, but because I truly miss the taste.  Also, because I re-use my at home mug, I am reducing my carbon footprint as well.   


I think changing our habits about food (or anything for that matter) is really about small changes.  The media gravitates to the shocking tales of 180 degree changes that make for good headlines, but rarely do the 5 degree changes along the way get discussed.  The "coffee story" illustrates a small change well, but I also like it because it was also not just a change of economical value but of taste and environmental value too. 

27 for 27

So I decided to completely steal this idea from a fellow blogger, Liz at Random thoughts of a Lutheran Geek.  Anyway, I turned 27 yesterday and figure this would be a good way to take stock in who I am now and what I want going forward.  I originally meant to turn this out on my b-day, but I guess I got carried away with birthday fun.  So here's 27 mini-goals to try to complete while 27.  Or simply stated 27 for 27.

1. Run a Marathon (yes, this was already a goal, but I think I can still include it) yes!
2. Run a 5K in less than 30 minutes (same here) so close! 31:30
3. Be so bold as to wear that little sports bra top when running (yes - the mid-drift baring one), this might require stronger adherence to the #plankaday plan.  I did run around at least once with my mid-drift exposed, but I'm pretty sure this was due to heat and not so much "pride!"
4. Do #plankaday plan  not really. *sigh* 
5. Do at least one quality recipe post per month Almost, I missed August... 
6. Post 4 times per month yes! (sometimes more!)
7. Increase blog subscribers to 100; I'm currently at (about) 54.  getting there hovers in the 80s
8. If Goal 7 is complete, create facebook fan page  getting there....
9. Not become a complete narcissist in doing 7 and 8.  I feel confident I still have my feet on the ground
10. Finally be able to play Canon in D on Piano straight through with minimal mistakes.  I'm great for about half-way, but I never put the time in to complete the piece.  ahh, no but I did bust out the music more often then the abysmal level of before.  
11. Re-Learn to listenable quality two flute pieces from the "classics" book  same as goal 10
12. Make use of my china tea set from my grandma with friends over for real tea  No tea. 
13. Make use of my other china set with friends over for "real" dinner party I had a fondue party, but I didn't use the China.. guess that makes it a "fake" dinner party.  lol
14. Fix whatever is going wrong with my disqus comment system thing  I deleted it! check!
15. Be able to solve a Rubik's Cube much much closer.  I get a full side and first couple rows consistently.
16. Finish Online math course to refresh math knowledge I "should" have learned  I completed this to my liking.  (It's a self paced course)
17. Find at least one sustainable farmer in which to purchase meat from Found several! We wish we could afford it more, but it's currently not being budgeted for on a regular basis.  
18. Research and try out a CSA Researched, but found it might be un-ideal for two people/
19. Make something with Quinoa yes, I now love quinoa!
20. Eat Kale (as I feel it's getting to be lame that I haven't yet tried this stuff to my knowledge) yes!
21. Bake a Pie with real crust nope! (I think this one failed in part to, sadly, not really liking pie that much.  
22. Host some sort of food competition (via the blog or a perhaps a casual cooking competition) No hosting, but I did attend a Chobani Recipe test kitchen party
23. Get this garage sale (round two) take care of. yes!
24. De-clutter my life (i.e. I have to much crap!) I'll put a check here, because I've gotten rid of a lot, but it's still a work in progress
25. Knit a gift yes, made coffee cozy's for Tony's mom and sister.
26. Read Two Kisses for Maddy: A Memoir of Loss & Love, and Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations. Yes
27. Obtain a more stable job/school situation yes-ish! The ish is because I didn't really switch jobs, but I'm making important changes to make my current job more viable.   

 So, that last one will be the killer, if I don't die during the marathon.  I made a pretty drastic career move almost two years ago, and it's come with some instability.  I would like to find myself in a position, in the not so distance future, where I am happy with my job, but feel comfortable with my finances too... don't we all?!  Well, at least I'm trying.

On turning 27, it feels about right.  This past year has been one of dramatic change, and renewed sanity.  I am hoping the next one is one of strength and stability.