Feelin' Good :)

Things I've learned this week:

Fat-free cottage cheese is a delicious snack.

Individually wrapped healthy snacks are awesome. (ie string cheese and prunes)

Applesauce is a surprisingly satisfying dessert.

Soup is great. Make a big batch at the beginning of the week and I always know what's for dinner.

I'm starting p90 next week. Gonna get fit!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

It's time for a lifestyle change.

I love baking. I love sweets. I love eating. But unfortunately, I can't continue to ignore my body's hatred for all things dairy and gluten. This doesn't mean I'm going to cut them from my diet completely, but I can't eat madeleines and ice cream all the time.

It's time to get healthy. And I'm going to try my best to stick with it. That means I need to find ways to make this an easy change that I can get used to. I've spent the past few days looking at blogs and recipes (and eating pasta and fried chicken to have my last hurrah) and I think I've found some stuff to use.

The thing is, I really do love fruits and vegetables. I have no problem eating all that good stuff. But cookies will always trump them. So I really just need to stick with the good stuff, and also find a way to make those sweet delicious treats in a healthy way.

Wish me luck.

I hate the cold.

It happens every year. I always know it's coming. And I always dread it. Winter.

I love Halloween, and Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day, St. Patty's Day. I looove the holidays. And I'm thoroughly convinced that all of these wonderful fun times are in the cold part of the year to help people get through it without packing up and moving to a warm island in the Caribbean. Because that's what I'm about to do.

This morning, the wind chill was 6°. That's in Fahrenheit. Not Celsius. That's not okay. Yesterday, I was scraping snow and ice off my car at 5:30 in the morning before I left for work. There's a reason I live in the South. It's not supposed to be cold. I'm sure all of my friends up north are laughing at me while they're trekking through a foot of snow. You know what? Joke's on you guys. I'll complain my way through winter, but it will end. I'll be able to enjoy my 100° sunshiny weather again. You can keep your cold. Until then, I'm changing my backgrounds to pictures of the beach and desert and drinking 30 cups of hot tea everyday until I feel warm enough to pretend it's not grey and miserable outside.

This is my cousin and her friends, at Appalachian State University.

Pretty much the textbook definition of insane.

Back to Reality

I went from sleeping in and spending my days walking on the beach and baking to waking up at 5:15 in the morning to drive a school bus full of brats. Reality check, eh? Children were almost dropkicked.

The holiday break was wonderful. I spent a week doing nothing at home, and then a week in a condo with my family, doing nothing. We went to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina with my uncle and his family. There was a lot of eating, drinking, more drinking, upsetting waiters, irritating other vacationers, shopping, and hanging out on the beach. We went to Savannah for a day and found an amazing candy shop, and then had lunch at Paula Deen's restaurant. Afterward, I was full of butter and remorse, but it was a delicious trip.

My arteries are retreating in fear

It was a long drive each way, but the week with the family was worth it. And I got a lot of wonderful cooking and baking goodies for Christmas. My most-used gifts so far have been my KitchenAid stand mixer (YES!!!) and a madeleine pan from my dearest Hannah. When you combine the two, you get...

Madeleines!

This will be my new thing for as long as it takes for my boyfriend to start hating them, and then I'll continue to make them by myself until I too am tired of them. Since there are so many ways you can change them up (I've made plain, lemon poppyseed, and orange cardamom so far) and they're French (like my boyfriend wishes he was), I don't think that will happen anytime soon.

My new toys have made the transition from lazy vacationer to stressed-out bus driver a little easier. I'll have to go back to work later today, but not without a few treats to pass out to the dispatchers and mechanics. Make them happy, so when my bus is broken or I need a day off, they remember the delicious glazed cakes that I so kindly gave to them.

Also, last night's dinner. Thai pineapple curry, spinach with tzatziki, feta mashed potatoes.

We like to keep things multicultural.

The most wonderful time of the year!

I love Christmastime. Have I mentioned that? I work at a college and a public school district, so I don't have to work during the winter break. That means I've been spending all my free time engaging in my favorite activity, shopping! For other people, of course. I did buy myself a new black coat and a red purse, but the coat was only $23 (and it's so pretty...) and I had $70 in gift cards to DSW (best store EVER in so many ways, especially the rewards programs and the FB page, not to mention the pretty stuff!)

Tis the season for engagements as well, it seems. My Facebook newsfeed showed 4 engagements last week.  I will, of course, not be getting engaged anytime soon. And by soon, I mean not within the next 5-7 years if it happens at all. However, I do have a great boyfriend that I've been with for !? months! And by that I don't actually remember how long it's been. Since last spring. It's been more than 2 months, which is something to be said. My friends are astounded.

Probably the biggest reason I'm still with this guy is our shared interests. Sci-fi, bookstores, baking, cooking, getting drunk and being obnoxious, etc. When I got to his place yesterday for our Christmas stuff, he gave me a tart pan. With an apple pie in it.

And then we made Indian food for dinner. It was our first real attempt at making curries and all. So while it wasn't terrible, it wasn't great. Between our lack of ingredients and knowledge at what we could substitute, it was a learning experience.

Paneer in curry, rice, and a potato, spinach, and carrot dish.

If you mixed it all together and had low enough standards, it wasn't that bad. The pie was good.

On the joys of working with children.

Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together...
-Carl Zwanzig

I feel like duct tape should be issued out to any employees who have to work with children.
Teaching swim lessons, the kids want to wander off by themselves and drown. Not possible when they're duct taped into a lifejacket!
In a classroom, little Billy wants to throw a spit wad at poor Suzy. But  he can't with his hands duct taped to his desk!
And on the school bus, every single one of those little heathens wants to stand up and turn around and lean over the seats. Well, they can't do that when they're duct taped to their seats!

Yes. It was one of those days at work. I woke up with a swollen throat, so yelling at children was not something I wanted to be doing. In the days leading up to vacation, kids are 8 billion times more excited. Imagine how thrilled I was to drive 50 excited little brats around.

Don't get me wrong- I usually like them well enough. I'm not going to lie and say I love children, because I don't. I tolerate them. They're even cute and amusing at times. But when they're hyped up about Christmas and their teachers are pumping them full of cookies before so cruelly sending them out to my bus, I hate those little brats. And for some reason, they like to hug me. Especially when they just got back to school after spending a couple days at home sick, and they "missed Miss Jessica so MUCH!" So much that I deserve a big hug. Not a side hug. Not a fist bump (which I've attempted to make popular with these young, impressionable children in order to avoid hugs). They want to give me a giant hug *complete* with a kiss on the cheek.

No wonder I'm sick.

So, it hurt to yell, the kids were jumping all over the place, and I was dodging hugs and dealing with crazy traffic. A little duct tape would have been nice. AND, on top of all that, a few girls have decided that they'll start referring to me as "Momma." It was like I was living my worst nightmares.

My only saving grace in all of this madness that I deal with every day, the only reason I wake up at such an inhumane hour to go to work (besides the good money) is the ignorance of these children. I can tell them ANYTHING and they will believe me. Clouds are there to catch you when the Earth's gravity reverses. Santa calls me to see if you're being a good boy or girl. 8,475,902 x 331= whatever number pops into my head, as long as I say it with confidence. I could probably start a cult.
Last week as the kids were getting off the bus, I was saying my usual goodbyes, and I decided to add, "Watch out for the giraffes."
Most of the kids didn't hear me, like they don't hear me when I tell them to sit down or stop throwing that. A few of the older kids gave me a skeptical "you're a weird bus driver" look, but the next morning, one boy got on the bus looking quite disturbed. He asked me about the giraffes (which by then were completely gone from my mind), and told me that he had nightmares about them and was positive they were outside his window while he was trying to sleep. It took everything I had to look concerned and not bust out laughing.

People like me should not be allowed to work with children.

Not Quite Kosher

Welcome! I've spent many nights immersed in blogs, looking at recipes and stories of traveling and living life. I hope that my own blog will interest others like so many have engaged me.

I spent today baking, as is fairly customary these days. My boyfriend expressed interest in trying bacon chocolate chip cookies after we saw them referenced on tv. I hate bacon. I'm apparently one of the few people in the world that does. But Christmas is approaching and I'm making cookies for everybody instead of spending money and brainpower on presents for my close acquaintances and cheap friends. So I tried to make these bacon chocolate chip cookies.

I thought they were absolutely disgusting. But one of my roommates, Shaggy, didn't hesitate to try a couple. He agreed that there was room for improvement, but the concept was good. I made the chocolate chip cookie recipe on the back of the Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip bag, substituting maple syrup for some of the sugar and bacon grease for some of the butter. And of course, I added bacon.

Do you see those disgusting bits of bacon?

I also made a bacon-free batch of cookies for myself after tasting one of these. The last time I ate bacon was in March. My mom's friend made these wonderful turkey pesto sandwiches with bacon in them. That woman is a cooking angel. She could put gravel in soup and I would probably still eat it and rave about how wonderful it is. She made bacon taste good.

After the cookies, I tried my hand at latkes. I'm not Jewish, but a lot of the girls in my sorority were, so I keep seeing these Facebook updates about Hanukkah and what they're eating. My latkes weren't that great. I didn't use a recipe. I thought one could just combine grated potato and flour and eggs and fry it up into a delicious potato pancake. Again, Shaggy gobbled it up. I focused quite intently on eating my applesauce.

Isn't everything supposed to taste good if it's fried?

That, ladies and gents, has been my Sunday. Laundry and cooking, like a good woman should. I'll be heading to church soon, like a good Catholic should. And then I may do something to shake things up a bit. Go cow-tipping or join an angry mob. It's not likely. But anything could happen.