it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then

Quick and Dirty Margarita in a Mason Jar

One of my favorite indulgences.  Quick and dirty recipe below.

Get a mason jar with a lid and fill it with ice.  Add about a shot and a half of tequila.

I like to infuse the tequila with peppers.  The recipe for that is very simple.  Slice peppers, add to tequila, let sit for a few weeks.  Jalapenos, green chiles- whatever you like will work!  The amount of seeds left intact is directly proportional to the heat generated in the tequila.
Back to our quick and dirty margarita, next I squeeze about 3 - 4 limes into the jar, depending on how juicy they are and how limey I want it to taste.  If I have an orange I squeeze one of those in also. If not, a splash of oj will do just fine.
 Orange liqueur such as triple sec or cointreau is welcome, of course, but this is my quick and dirty recipe- so I am not including it as a requirement.
Then I fill the jar to about two centimeters below the lip with water.  Now, I add about a tablespoon (or two depending on your taste) of sugar.  A nice dash of sea salt and cayenne pepper.  If you have olive juice, a dash of that is magic also.  Then put the lid on and shake vigorously until the sugar is dissolved and the margarita is cold, cold, cold!

Taste.  Adjust is needed.  Taste again.  Enjoy !      :)

Cold!

Does everyone else have a harder time being productive when it is colder than normal outside?

I do, I just wanna cuddle up and be warm!

But, no time, no time!  I have to work out and do homework!

I will save up the lazy for May after finals.

Gifts of five am.

I have a crazy schedule this semester.  If you counted the Calculus class I am studying to test out of and my internship, I would be taking 25 hours!  Luckily for my sanity, the internship is simply me working twenty hours a week, which is time consuming, but requires no outside effort on my part.

Anyway after the first week of classes, I realized I would never make it to the gym at the end of the day.  After over ten hours away from home, all I ever wanna do is go snuggle with the dogs.  Realistically every night I also have some school work that I must accomplish for the next day, so after doing that- the gym idea is pretty much out the window.  Add in the fact that I must be somewhere Monday through Friday at 8 am, and you end up with no time for the gym.  This realization hit me the Thursday of my second week of classes.

Faced with this new knowledge, I saw it was either find a way to work in working out, become anorexic or go invest in a wardrobe of elastic waist band pants and loose shirts.  Looking at a color coded print out of my schedule, because that is the sort of anal retentive woman I am, I saw an area of free time and an area of squandered time.  Normally after school, I come home and drink a glass of wine whilst becoming comatose and/or doing homework.   I also normally sleep until 6:45 or so, and barely make it to class by 8 am.  Deciding to choose the path of NO elastic waisted pants, I make a new schedule and a new decision to improve my health, sanity and poor neglected body.  I decide I will wake up at 5 am and work out for roughly two hours everyday, no questions.

It has been one week and one day of attempting to accomplish this.  Have I gotten up at 5 on the dot everyday?  No, but I have gotten in some exercise everyday.  I have also waked or jogged the dogs twice everyday.  They seem perkier and happier.  I feel hopeful I will be able to complete my undergraduate degree without gaining any more weight.  I think I will be able to recover a semblance of the toned body I used to have when free time existed.   I think I will not graduate looking like Jabba the Hutt.

The bad side of this schedule change is that you will find me getting into bed around nine thirty most nights.  The nights when I stay up "late", like midnight, I am a piece of junk the whole nest day.  I think it is a fair trade-off though.  I love knowing at 8 am that I have worked out my body and my dogs already, and that I don't have to worry about trying to squeeze in exercise later on.  This change will be good!  I can't wait to feel strong again soon!  Hooray for 5 am!!!

Teenager issues.

Have you ever tried talking to a teenager?

It is like pulling teeth out of a crocodile.  My sister is about a month shy of fifteen and it also takes about fifteen minutes of one word answers from her to get her to warm up to having an actual conversation.  In her defense, I have a hard time remembering that she is not a little girl, and how she probably feels like a grown up.  I know what I thought I knew when I was fifteen, and it was everything.

After a while, she did warm up.  We had a pretty nice talk.  Being a teenager is hard.  I wouldn't do it again, unless I could retain my wisdom.  As a teen, everything seems so urgent, so crucial and so unfair.  Life is hard.  I empathize with her completely.  I just want her to turn out ok.  I worry for her because I know how teens think, and boy does that scare me.

Here's a little plea to the universe, please let my baby girl make it out of the hellish years of "-teen" unscathed.

Unexpected twists and turns.

Sorry to be consumed by graduate school, but it is my next step in life- and I don't know where I am stepping yet!

I mentioned recently that a prospective advisor at a big, fancy school had asked me during a phone interview what I wanted to do.  And I kind of stammered out a lame response.  So, of course, I thought it through.  I have thought this through before, but in the midst of everything one must do to apply and be competitive for a graduate program, I think I lost my initial focus.  At least, I forgot to think about it.

So, I thought about it again.  I want to work with pelagic fish, if at all possible.  These are fish that live offshore.

Remembering this I search again for prospective mentors doing pelagic research.  I find a few.  I email them.  I wait.

...

Lo and behold, I get a response today, a good one.  About as good of one as can be imagined.  The school is not a big, fancy school, but it is in the South.  And, I see myself there.  I feel myself there.  I kind of feel a weight off my shoulders, as if I am going to go there.

Now, I have no factual evidence to back this feeling up.  No reason or anything else tangible, just a feeling of *sigh*, and shoulders drop, and smile.  And maybe a small tear in an eye, or two.

It might be the one I want, even over the other big, fancy schools.  I see and feel myself there, surely that means something?  We shall see. Choosing this is comfortable, and that makes me feel like a cop out.  No grand adventure, besides the grand adventure of life.  No new place.  No out of comfort zone.  I would be so comfortable here- it's almost home already.  It is a bit over an hour from my heart's home (New Orleans).

So, this is my new dilemma.  New vs. comfort.  Unobtainable & fancy vs. within grasp & within reason.

Ultimately, one must go with their gut.  My gut currently wants to be in the South, but I am going to give equal consideration to all my options.

Or, I will try to anyway.  :)

Celery magic

Attention world: all you need to add to soup/stew like concoctions to make it smell (and presumably taste) heavenly is celery.

I save the middle and tops of celery food cooking, but since I wasn't planning on preparing any beans or soups this week, I went ahead and added them to the dogs food.  As this pot of dog food began to simmer, the smell of delicious homemade soup heaven started to emerge.  It smells like I want to taste it, even though I know I don't.

So celery, the magic seasoning for soup.  Save your leaves for cooking!

:)

"So, what kind of research do you want to do?"

This may not be word for word, but this is the question to which I felt I floundered the most during my phone interview for graduate school yesterday.  I joked later that I sputtered out something akin to, "I like fish."

It's funny though, I have been consumed for the last six months with the task of getting into a graduate program that I had become distanced from what my personal statement of curriculum vitae actually say and mean.  I wrote these words, but after so much modification for each program- they started to mean nothing to me.  So early this morning when I could not sleep, I started thinking about the question posed to be by my interviewer.

I do like fish, so I am sure whatever  I said was accurate.  Delve deeper.  I want the ocean to maintain its biodiversity.  Probably not gonna happen, but a noble task to labor for.  Think harder.  Pelagics.  Oh yeah, that is what I am really passionate about.  My blue whale, white elephant, unicorn what have you.

Pelagic fish are basically open water fish.  This makes them hard to govern with fishing laws and thus many species are terribly overharvested.  This is what I want to work on.  The problem with no solution.  How do you protect something which cannot be contained?  Something which may not be able to be bred in captivity. Something grand and wild!  And something that is sadly harvested like wheat- the world seems to think these fish are there for their consumption alone.  Something endangered that needs me.  That is the answer to the question.

I want to help the fish with no real hope for the future.  I have always been a sucker for seemingly lost causes or orphan types.  Hello bluefin tuna, sardine, snapper- let's be friends.

Tongue Tied

This morning I had a phone call interview with a potential advisor at a very good school.  First of all, I had kind of forgotten to email him back earlier in the week.  I wasn't really being absentminded, I have been close to but not quite overwhelmed all week long.  I went out of town last weekend and have been playing catch up all week.  However, I did find a way to alter my work schedule which will make future weeks less hectic.  So, I emailed him this morning, and then was reading up on him and his research, refreshing my memory... and my phone rings. Yep, it was from the right state.

And it was indeed him.  I was a bit caught off guard.  Here I was looking at his papers thinking how much I would like to work with him and then he is on my phone.  And he was very nice and his work sounds very interesting and just like what I want to do.

How was I?  Verbally incompetent.  Stammering.  Unable to really answer simple questions.  I feel like I sounded very unprepared and a very unknowledgeable about my field.  

If admission to graduate school is dependent upon me talking intelligently when under pressure, then I am in trouble.  I need to plan my words before I say them or they come across like a jumble of catchphrases and silly observations.  I guess I now know something I need to work on- being able to speak like a scientist at any given time, not just when I am sure of the answers.

Bell pepper dilemma

I bought a container of pre-cut multicolor (red, yellow and green) (as opposed to purple or blue) bell peppers at the grocery store this week because they were on super clearance (99cents!).

However, now I am faced with the dilemma, what do I do with them?  My brain keeps thinking fish tacos, but I am up for anything?  There is a lot of them!

Any good chopped bell pepper recipes out there?

Test of character

That is what this, my last semester as an undergraduate, will be.  I am behind already, however I believe I can catch up this weekend and get back in the black.  As of now, in the red.  I scored a 20, yes that is out of 100, on my first Physics quiz.  That is sooo bad, but my book hadn't arrived yet, so I was unprepared.  This,obviously, cannot happen again.

Today, I start to play the catch up game, and hopefully by Sunday evening, things will be smooth sailing until November.  My to do list isn't really so bad, but it doesn't leave much time this semester for working out.  This means I am going to have to watch my diet very carefully!  So, there will be much less beer, wine and cocktails involved!  I really eat very healthy most of the time, so besides alcohol, I just need to watch portions and cheese.  Cheese being as big of a weakness as a nice drink.

What I have to do before May:
-write a 15 page thesis like paper summarizing 2 years of research (due early March)
-pass all my classes, really only worried about Physics
-not gain any weight in absence of daily exercise
-pick a graduate program

and most dauntingly,
-teach myself calculus and pass a calculus CLEP test to get a required math credit!!!




-

Literal loss of speech

A couple weeks ago,  I suddenly found myself inspired and quickly hammered out what I imagined to be a very touching, heartfelt toast for my father's upcoming birthday celebration (tomorrow).  As I begin to pack my weekend bag, the darn thing is absolutely no where to be found!

Now I love my dad, so an off the cuff toast would not exactly be hard to throw together on the spot, but what I wrote before says all of the things we always mean to tell people we love, but sometimes forget.  Like how they have changed our lives by being themselves.  Or how we hope we can be the same kind of giving, loving person they are.  Or how their words have guided us down the right path in life.

I better get back to looking, I have to get on the road in a few short hours!

Woah-

I had to add on some extra classes last minute- looks like this semester is gonna be a doozy.

sigh.

I can't wait for May!!!!

A Few Quick Thoughts

Today disappeared so fast!!  Where did it go?  Heck, where did the break go?  I have class tomorrow!

Trying really hard to learn calculus, I have to pass a test on the 26th, or maybe not graduate.  Since not graduating is absolutely not an option, I must pass this test!  A bit intimidating to be sure.

I want to be fit again!  I want to be pretty muscles without yucky fat hanging on to by poor body.  I really miss trails.... In Austin, if I ever packed on a few pounds, I would just hike more- but there are no trails here!  No hiking, no biking, so few options.... Tomorrow, I start counting calories again in a serious way.  I will be the fit version of myself again, BEFORE MY BIRTHDAY!  Which gives me about three months.  I have ten inches I want to lose off my booty/hip area- how is that even possible?  Ten inches seems like a lotta inches!  Holy cow!

It is now pilates time.  I will trudge through the next hour of ab hell for the greater good!  For all mankind.

Ok, here we go!

Karma: A Saturday morning bitchfest


You know what they say about karma, she's a bitch.  Or maybe I am- I dunno, but somebody's definitely a bitch.

When I was younger, I used to be a lot more moody than I am these days.  I certainly had times when I ran hot and cold with people I dated. And now its my turn to get taken for a ride.  Up and down, up and down- I think I am getting motion sickness.

The problem is that I am not nearly as patient and understanding as people who may have put up with me in the past.   I am pretty much the opposite of patient and understanding.  Now that I have myself all figured out and understood, I want to be with a person who is one the same page.  No pouting, no yelling, no endless apologies- just a smooth, easy ride.  That's all, and I don't think that is too much to ask.

And since that isn't too much to ask, how about a person who doesn't break plans with you to drink with their friends because they told you they would stop drinking excessively.  I would think the realization
that drinking makes you act like a giant asshole to the person you are supposed to care about would be reason enough to not ever want to drink.

But, it is not for some people.  And I think that is ridiculous.

I also think that people who cancel dinner plans with someone they haven't seen all week to go drinking don't deserve the opportunity to ruin another evening.

And karma may be a bitch, but this girl is not about to be somebody's bitch.

Adventures in ham hocks

I cook beans frequently- cheap, healthy and delicious protein.  And I cook all sorts of beans: navy, black, black eyed, purple hull, lima... you get the picture.  My favorite beans to cook, perhaps because they were the object of my first bean love, are red beans.  As in red beans in rice, as in heavenly comfort food.

I have used many pork products over the years in the flavoring of my red beans: sausage, smoked ham, bacon.  Once I tried salt pork, which to me was so gross.  It smelled like soap.  Ugh, it was not smoky tasting, it was just a smelly,  blubbery, big hunk of fat.  This bummed me out because salt pork is a pretty traditional cut of meat for beans.  It is in my "To Try Again" box in my brain, but no time too soon!

One form of the pig which has not made its red beans and rice debut is the ham hock.  Ah, the ham hock, this is noble peasant food, and poor college students are modern peasants for sure.  Wikipedia says it is the joint between the tibia/fibula and metatarsals of the foot.  Which doesn't exactly scream delicious to me, but I purchase it anyway with hesitation.


I brace myself for the worst, upon opening the package this morning, but it isn't really bad at all.  It smells smoky, tasty, like a big hunk of bacon.  Ok, I am game- let's play ham hock.

(Am starting to think store sold me just chunks of smoked ham as ham hock- hmm... )

Seattle.

I wanna get in to school here so badly!!!!

There I said it.

And we wait.

Until March....

Keep your fingers crossed!

I wanna live in a big city!  Rachel in the City!  Yes!!! :)

Dog food

I like to make the ladies homemade dog food whenever I can because I have read some truly horrible things about manufactured dog food.  This biggest problem for me in regards to commercial dog food is a lack of regulations and accountability as to the quality of ingredients.  I have read some disgusting stories.  You can read a breakdown of pet food labels and common ingredients herehere or here.  

It is really sad to read and makes you wonder, what exactly are you feeding you beloved companion?

To quit wondering, I started making my girls food some years ago.  It really isn't a big pain or expense.  They get excited when they smell food cooking, and they love their dinner!

I try to mix up what I feed them to get them a healthy mix of nutrients and there are tons of recipes available online.  I also buy food from companies with good a reputation and clean ingredients, such as Flint River Ranch.  The ladies love their Fish and Chips formula- sweet potatoes and trout, sign me up too!

I have a default, no brainer recipe that I use when I am busy.

Dog Food:
a big tube of ground beef (5 or 10 lbs)
3 - 5 big sweet potatoes
1 pound brown rice
oatmeal
olive oil

I fill the biggest pot I have a bit less than half-way with water and turn the burner to med-high.  I add about a quarter cup of olive oil, the brown rice and the tube of meat.  While it starts to boil I dice the sweet potatoes and add them as I finish them.  Stir and bring to a boil.  Once boiling, I turn the pot down, stir (it will stick to the bottom) and cover.  I simmer until the sweet potatoes and rice are soft, if they are not cooked well, your pup may experience slight digestive troubles.  Once everything is soft, I remove from the burner and add as much oatmeal as it needs to soak up the extra water- two cups or so.  Stir in.  Then, I just cover and let the hot food and oatmeal amalgamate together.  You may need to add more water throughout the process. depending on how hot it gets.  It should stay slightly soupy until the oatmeal is added.  It takes a while to cool, so I leave it on the stove for a few hours and then I store it in the fridge in large tupperware.

I feed the girls about a cup a meal (2x/day).  If you switch foods, I always find tapering the switch works best to avoid too much doggy tummy problems.

The food usually lasts a week to a week and a half.  I am trying to use less grains in their food and switch to more protein and vegetable, but protein can be a bit pricey.

One word of advice I have is, don't add broccoli.  That really made the girls tummies rumble!  It was a long week...

Happy tails!

Sissy- *creepy post*

I am the biggest sissy in the whole world.  I feel like I got about an hour of sleep last night because I kept waking up every half-hour or so thinking I heard a suspicious noise.  It is as though I am six years old!  The house I live in right now is particularly bad for a few reasons.

First of all, we did get broken into while we had evacuated for hurricane Ike, and that feeling of violation lingers. It is not hard to imagine whoever took a gardening tool  out of the garage and then used it to break though my bedroom window, doing it again.

Another bad thing about this house is the lot it sits on. It is a huge yard with lots of bamboo and bushes, good hiding places.  In fact, some neighborhood kids have a 'clubhouse' in the bamboo.  The bamboo, with its secret passages, is the 'fence' separating my yard from at least three other yards!  Yep three, I told you it was big.  I also am bordered on two sides by a road, so all day and night I hear people walking, driving, talking... it never stops.

The last, and silliest, thing about my rental house that makes it hard to sleep is the house itself.  It is kinda creepy sometimes.  It is old, probably 1940's or so, and creaky.  It is really easy to imagine things here, and if I were the type of person inclined to give into such visions, I would probably be convinced the house was haunted.  I do not, and will not cave to these imaginations, but sometimes I get the freakiest visions in my head.  The garage and the bathroom are the places here I would name as haunted, if I were playing along.  I get this creepy feeling in  both places, its like I expect to see dead people in those rooms.  Very strange, I don't normally anticipate finding a body!  

What I imagine is strange because it is always the same.  Someone, a woman, dead in the bathtub- murdered, I think.  (Which is silly anyway because the owners installed a new bathtub right before we moved in!)  And a body hanging from the rafters in the garage.  You should see the garage, you would understand.  It is creepy in and of itself!  Old wooden walls, not actually secure from the outside world, the aforementioned rafters....

I am not a crazy woman, so why do I let myself literally lose sleep over imagined creepy crawlies?  Am I the only one who still wishes she could crawl into the safety of her parents bed some nights?  Metaphorically, of course.

Meatballs and bread pudding

I guess meatball sandwiches has been in the air lately because I cooked some up last night.  I usually just use meat and herbs, but inspired by Tyly's post here, I decided to make a more traditional meatball.  I did, of course, make some changes.  If you should know anything about me, it is that I cannot follow a recipe to save my life.  I did borrow a few ideas which I normally ignore; such as the eggs and breadcrumbs, which worked out wonderfully (Thanks Tyly)!  I also added in about a cup of chopped bell pepper, a cup of chopped white onion, a quarter cup of chopped garlic, a dash of cayenne pepper and a sprinkle of red pepper flakes.

This my friends, is not a recipe for practicing the restraint I recently mentioned wanting to develop in my cooking.  No this was not that, this was a spicy  meatball!  As you can see below, it was flavor country!


I did borrow the cooking strategy laid out in the recipe and it worked like a charm!  Baking the meatballs first and then simmering them in the sauce was brilliant!  It was a great way to soften up all the veggies in the meat balls and they held together amazingly!  No crumbles here!

I served the meatballs on whole wheat, hot dogs buns with melted fat-free mozzerella and topped with a sprinkle of parmigiana cheese.  It was kinda messy, but delish!  And healthy- we had a big salad on the side.




Then for desert, I took some homemade bread which was leftover from the holidays, cubed it and then covered it with a mixture of 1 c. milk, 1 c. sugar, some molasses, some cinnamon, 3 eggs, some spiced whiskey, some vanilla and some chocolate liquor.  Then I let it sit for twenty minutes like this in a baking pan. After twenty minutes had passed I covered this mixture with a topping of 2/3 a stick of melted butter, mixed with brown sugar, vanilla, and some chocolate pieces.  This sat for another twenty minutes and then I baked it for forty at 350.  It is supposed to get some sort of icing, but I simply served it warm with vanilla ice cream (Low fat, no sugar added!).  It is waaay to tasty- I may have had a couple of bites already this evening.  I think all you really need is cubed bread, milk and eggs.  The rest is up to you!




Bad wine = opportunity!

It is always such a big disappointment for me to open up a bottle of wine to find that it tastes funny, or just outright bad.  I hate returning open bottles of wine to the grocery store because generally the clerk is a kid, who doesn't drink wine, and therefore doesn't understand the legitimacy of a bad bottle.  Now assuming the wine is not actually spoiled,  another course of action  is to use the wine to make sangria.

Pour the wine, white or red, over a glass of ice. Now add juice and/or liquor until it tastes better.  That is all.  Truly any juice will work, but some of my favorites include: orange juice, a freshly squeezed lemon and/or lime, pomegranate, cranberry, mango, etc.....

For liquors, if you have any triple sec (Cointreau, Grand Marnier), flavored schnapps (Peach!!!, blueberry, passion fruit, Guava)- I add about half a shot or less (a capful) of any flavor.  You can always add more, but a little Scnhapps  goes a long way!

Also, wonderful to add to your sangria is fresh or frozen fruit!  Blackberries or frozen strawberries are good.  I personally love adding frozen peaches or mango!

I use roughly 2/3 wine to 1/3 juice if the wine is ok tasting. If the taste is pretty bad, I will do half and half or more.  The flavor combination is up to you, and the possibilities are endless!  If it tastes not quite right, I have found the fresh lemon or lime does wonders!

So, next time your wine tastes bad- pour it over some ice (or in a pitcher over ice) and add... anything!  It can turn a sad wine event into a sangria Sunday... or whatever day it is!

P.S.
Adding sprite is not a bad thing- bubbles are yummy!

Cheers!

Hello Old Friend!

I got an new I-pod last year because my old one was only partially functional.  You see, the directional keys to either skip or repeat a song were inoperable, which can be quite annoying on a day to day basis.

A few days ago, I found my old I-pod tucked away in a bin of electronic cords and extra ear buds.  I have been listening to it almost non-stop since.  I don't have any of this music on the new one because my lap top died about the time I replaced the I-pod, so I lost all my old music!

It feels like an old friend has come to visit me, and it has been so lovely!  Such great memories!

Pizza of my dreams!

Oh my, oh my, oh my!  That pizza I cooked last night was everything I dreamed it would be!  I even managed to stick to the simple ingredients!  Heaven, it was pizza heaven!  Cheesy, saucy, delicious pizza heaven!

I think the simple sauce was a key component,  it was a can of tomato sauce, a can of tomato paste, a can of diced tomatoes and about a cup of red wine simmered together until the alcohol cooked out and it thickened slightly.  Then at the last minute I added about a cup (measure was pre-chopping) of chopped fresh basil from the garden.  It was simple, but perfect on the pizza!  Very bold tomato flavor and hey, tons of beta-carotene and lycopene for your health!

Now the pics:

I know here you may think it looks soggy, but so not!  The crust is crispy and not effected at all by the loads and loads of sauce on the pizza.


The pizza in its entirety, minus four pieces already eaten.  You can see the steam rising off of it, now if only this was in Smell-O-Vision because, oh man, did it smell amazing!  And these pics do not do it justice!

The pizza was pretty healthy, whole wheat crust, no meat, not greasy at all.  You might be able to substitute the fresh mozzarella for shredded low fat mozzarella, but I don't know for sure if it would keep the crust from getting soggy.  Maybe next time I will do half and half with the cheese and see if there is any difference.

Now, I have some doggies waiting to go for a walk in the park, a ballet workout to complete, a bathroom to clean and then ... the garage to clean.  Better get moving, fueled by leftover pizza, I can accomplish anything!

Culinary delights!

This has been a yummy week at the Brewton household.

Began the week with potato stew, made from leftover Christmas ham and tons of veggies!  Creamy and healthy delicious potato heaven.

Followed by a pot of spicy, Southern black eyed peas for New Year's Day.

And now a Saturday night of homemade pizza.  I am trying a to make a Sicilian pizza I saw on the travel channel.  The crust is a rolled out into a big rectangle, then you spread olive oil on it.  Directly on top of the crust, you place slices of fresh mozzarella.  The cheese is topped by a simple sauce of tomatoes and basil, which is finished with a sprinkling of parmigiana cheese.  Apparently, the crust and the cheese form a cheesy bread-type vessel to deliver the sauce, soggy crust free.

For me, the hardest part of this pizza is maintaining the simplicity.  I am prone to season food heavily, at times, excessively.  So, I am working on appreciating the simplicity of beautiful flavor combinations, such as tomato, basil, and mozzarella.

Confession: I have already added red wine to the tomato sauce and some chopped fresh garlic to the crust- but I am doing my best not to add any crushed red pepper, cayenne, oregano... etc.

P.S.
I think the best part of the cooking this evening is that I am wearing 3 inch heels and my leopard print apron.  I don't know why I like playing dress up to cook dinner? It's just good fun!

Organizing machine.

I can't stop. it feels so great to get things in order!  I feel like I can breathe easier when I look around and find my surroundings to be pleasing.

My bedroom is almost done and it looks so nice.  I can just go in there and relax now.  :)

Next is bathroom and all my beauty products, which are far more numerous than necessary.  I use about four products a day, so what the heck is all this other junk?

Last, and most daunting, is the garage.  This needs the most work.  It is where I have been hiding my messes.

The final stage of Operation Clean the House before January 13 (school starts) is the big haul to Goodwill.

Back to work!