Woohoo!

My cookbook got delivered this morning and I'm stoked! I used looking through it as a reward for studying. A few weeks ago I submitted my last lesson for the Independent Study course I've been taking for the last 10 months and now I'm really starting to study for the final, which I hope to request either tomorrow or Tuesday. I told myself that I could open the package when it came but that I couldn't really flip through it until I had reviewed two lessons worth of material. I pretty much spent the rest of the afternoon thumbing through the cookbook, looking at all the pictures and thinking about which recipes to try first. This coming week we'll be trying Beef with Snow Peas (which isn't from Our Best Bites, but still should be delicious) and we are super excited for it. I think we also may try Thai Peanut Noodles which I found in the cookbook! I'm way excited to go grocery shopping this weekend to buy some tasty things. I think I'll also buy the ingredients that I need for Strawberry Chocolate Nachos. I also think I'm going to try to remember to take pictures of some of the tasty food that I make. I feel like I've been blogging about food a lot, and not able to put pictures up that I've taken myself. So sorry if you don't like reading about food... that's kind of the fun/exciting thing going on here right now. That and my toe, but I'm not posting pictures of it (the bruising looks kinda cool though, I'll tell you that much).

Exciting!

A few days ago I blogged about the bajillion book review blogs that I found and the giveaways they were all doing. I just got an email telling me I won a $15 Amazon gift card and I am so super duper excited!  The giveaways are super easy to enter and now totally worth the time since I will end up only have to pay $1.30 out of my own pocket to get the Our Best Bites cookbook. I'm just a little excited right now and had to tell someone but Chris is driving home from work right now so he isn't really available to talk. Woohoo!

Clothes

When I was in school I didn't buy a ton of clothes, and now the ones that I did buy are starting to get pretty worn out. I moved to Texas owning one pair of shorts that weren't basketball shorts. I have since acquired 2 new pairs of shorts, but haven't added too many shirts to my wardrobe. I realized I should've stocked up on shirts when I was still in Provo and had really easy access to tons of cute, modest clothes. I was smart and bought a couple of skirts, which is excellent since I haven't seen too many skirts down here that I liked and that weren't either disgustingly long (like, dragging on the floor long) or super short.

Right now I am obsessed with about half of the tops, most of the skirts and a few of the dresses from Down East and this is one of those times that I wish I lived in Provo still so that I could just go to the mall and try a bunch of things on and then buy them without having to wait for it to get shipped. I can look at their website and say "oh, I like that and that and that and that, and oh man this top is great!" With them the problem is more along the line of "do I like it better in taupe or aqua?"Compare this to shopping just about anywhere else. First I have to wade through all the strapless/sleeveless tops (which is hard during the summer in San Antonio where it is currently 99 degrees)

And that is my rant on needing to buy new clothes. Also, it is really disappointing when you find something you LOVE and they only have it left in an xxsmall. In case you were wondering, I don't wear an xx-small.

Messes

Recently we've been on a "try lots of new recipes" kick. Which is awesome, btw. I am falling in love with Our Best Bites for sure. They are where I got my Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe, our new favorite stuffed pepper recipe, and the delicious mango quinoa salad recipe. Today they posted a recipe for strawberries & chocolate nachos that I REALLY want to try. I have loved everything that I have ever tried from them and really really want to get their cookbook that came out earlier this year (or was it late last year, I don't remember).

I stumbled upon something called a blog-hop giveaway from a bunch of blogs that write book reviews. The whole deal is that there are like 276 blogs that partnered up and each blog is doing a giveaway- either a book (or a few books) or amazon/borders/barnes & noble gift cards. I went through a TON of the websites and entered probably 70 or 80 (or maybe it was closer to 120, I don't know...) of the giveaways and really hope that tomorrow morning I get an email or several saying that I won something! I would absolutely love to win a few of the Amazon gift cards--I would definitely start using them to buy the Our Best Bites cookbook.

I just remembered that the whole reason I sat down to blog wasn't to blog about the giveaways I've entered or how much I love Our Best Bites and want their cookbook. The point was that as we've been trying new recipes I find myself making more of a mess in the kitchen. Turns out that a lot of our recipes before this new part of my life were one pot dinners or maybe two pots and a cutting board... but now it seems like I've always got a cutting board, a knife or two, several pots, mixing bowls, serving bowls (used to just serve things straight out of the pans, but now that the food looks prettier I want to serve it prettier), and then the dishes that we eat out of/with. Not to mention the overwhelming amount of either brownies or ice cream or brownies AND ice cream that we've been eating recently that just adds more dishes. Then.. I find myself not doing the dishes until the next morning. This morning I woke up to find my 12" skillet, my large and medium saucepans, the colander, my huge cutting board and about a bajillion other dishes just sitting on my counter, exactly where I left them last night.

I think I have to start forcing myself to clean up before I go to sleep, it makes me really tired just looking at the mess that I get to clean up today. But it helps knowing that Chris has to work all night and I'm eating leftovers for dinner, so I don't need anything to be cleaned up right away and I also won't make a big mess making my dinner tonight. It's always nice when the kitchen can stay clean for a while.

And those are my feelings about Our Best Bites (which in case you can't tell, I LOVE!), trying new recipes, eating tastier food, and my hatred of doing the dishes.

Toes

This is a not so exciting post because it won't have any pictures, but maybe you'll appreciate that after you read the story I'm going to tell in the post. Toes are definitely something I've taken for granted. Toe nails, even more so. Do you know how much more sensitive your toe is when there is no nail covering it up? This week I have learned that.

I lost a little over half of my big toe nail on my left foot this week. We had just bought a new bookcase and were bringing the box into our apartment when the box landed right on my big toe. It cracked my nail in half, but the nail was still holding on a little. It didn't take much effort to get it detached (although I didn't do the dirty work, I made Chris because I was super nervous and scared and didn't want to see my toe) but it sure hurt when he cleaned it and then we bandaided it up. Princess bandaids are cool, let me tell you! Now it doesn't hurt AS much but it doesn't look very pretty. I definitely understand now that toe nails are awesome and they do serve a purpose, and I hope that once my nail grows back I'll be able to go get a pedicure to celebrate!

Meatless Meals

A couple months ago (okay, several months ago) we had a Relief Society Activity where people gave tips for meal planning,, freezer meals, couponing, and cooking for 2. It was a pretty fabulous activity where I heard several great tips. My friend Marissa was one of the people who shared tips about meal planning and cooking for 2. One of the things that she mentioned was that at their house they eat meatless meals 3-4 times a week. It can be a great way to save some money (meat is expensive!), but it also works with the Word of Wisdom which teaches to eat meat sparingly. Ever since then I've wanted to try to incorporate more meatless dishes into our repertoire of dishes. Since then I think I have added 1- homemade tomato soup. Before that I think we really only had one to begin with and that was my manicotti. This week I was browsing food blogs (which I am kind of obsessed with) and I found two more recipes. I showed the recipes and the accompanying pictures to Chris and he thought they both sounded excellent, so next week we will be trying Southwest Stuffed Bell Peppers and Mango Quinoa Salad. We are both especially excited for the Mango Quinoa Salad. We've had some stuffed bell peppers before but they insisted that you use green peppers (and this recipe specifically tells you not to use green ones) and they used meat. We're excited to try these two dishes.

My question for you my friends in blogger land: do you have a good meatless dish that we need to give a shot? If so, recipes or links to them if they are online would be much appreciated!

Harry Potter!

A few months ago it was almost time for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 to be released in the theaters. We started watching one Harry Potter each Sunday leading up to it. Well my friends, it's that time again. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is coming July 15th so last Sunday was the beginning of our Harry Potter marathon!