Oh, and if you would like to know what film I saw, here's the movie poster....
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Movie Preview
Guess who just came back of a free movie preview? That's right, I did! I must saw, being able to see a film in advance is a very cool experience and it's not the first time I have gotten to. However, this preview is a little different from previous previews I have seen. For one, I really enjoyed the film and am going to be writing up a FULL critique. Another HUGE way this preview is different from previous ones is that the film that I saw does not get released to theatres for THREE MORE WEEKS. Now, while I am not technically legally bound to keep my mouth shut, I also want to keep getting to see previews for free as well as write up a good review and not spoil it for everyone. Also, I sadly do not get paid for critiques or well, anything much these days and so I am going to keep my opinions to myself for now. But, I will let y'all know when I post my review because it will be a good one and you will want to read it, although it will contain spoilers because well, they are too good to not tell you about.
Oh, and if you would like to know what film I saw, here's the movie poster....
Get alive! Or excited, whichever works for you. ;)
Oh, and if you would like to know what film I saw, here's the movie poster....
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Pinterest Dinners: The Food Part 1
I am going to preface all of these with the fact that I lost my 9 by 13 pan so I only have a 8 by 8 pan. I had two but one was silicone and we used a very sharp knife when cutting and well, we are trying to fix that up if possible before we use it to bake/cook anymore right now. So Dinners 1 & 2 were done using a 8 by 8 pan and a circular pan that is 9 inches in diameter. Sadly, these are the only three dinners we have gotten to make because of the holidays, finals, travel and my birthday. BUT, we have made the roll-ups twice already and I found a recipe to make them but with chicken and white sauce so I will upload that as well. Since the semester starts on Monday we will get back to this challenge and I will have more dinners for you!
Dinner 1: Caprese Lasagna Roll-Ups Recipe: http://cookingclassy.blogspot.com/2012/10/caprese-lasagna-roll-ups.html
We followed this almost 100%. Except we forgot to buy Ricotta Cheese. Oops. But, that little mistake worked well for us because both boyfriend and I do NOT like Ricotta in Lasagna. Both of us have weird texture issues when it comes to food. The only thing I would have changed is the tomatoes, just chop them up instead of slice them. I'll admit it - I stink at slicing anything thin unless I have a cutter that has those lines for me. But even besides that, it is REALLY hard to roll these up with slices. Also, the amount of sauce you need is probably closer to 16 oz. than 12, unless you put a super thin layer on the bottom. Another note is to have two greased cookie sheets ready to prepare the rolls otherwise you will run out of space and things may get messy. This is one of my favourite recipes ever - I loved it so much! If you reheat any portions (two people can only eat so much!), do it in two segments of two minutes each. Enjoy!
Dinner 2: Doritos Taco Bake Recipe: http://twomaidsamilking.blogspot.com/2011/04/hunk-of-meat-monday-taco-bake.html
So, I am suggesting a few changes to this after having made it. First off, if you use crescent rolls, make them ridiculously super thin and use the original ones. The only ones i had on hand were the sweet honey flaky ones - bad idea. We ended up flipping our portions upside down on our plates to pull the rolls off. They did not bake all the way through, either. Next time, we will be trying crushed tortilla chips on the bottom since we know we both would enjoy that. Once I do it, I will post my version of the recipe for y'all. Besides that, I accidentally forgot to mix in the taco seasoning while cooking the meat. Another oops. But it tastes fine without it. This recipe totally works in two pans, by the way and in fact if anything you can take it out sooner unless you like it to be more cooked, although there really isn't a difference because anything that needs to be cooked is cooked before the oven time. Note: The funnest part of making this dish is liking all the Doritos dust off of your hands at the end. It probably should not be my favourite part but it is. Enjoy!
Dinner 3: Chicken Parm Meatballs Recipe: http://www.dinneralovestory.com/chicken-parm-meatballs/
I am one lucky girl! The boyfriend made this dinner while I was at work one night! I love him - he's so fantastic. Anywhos, as far as ingredients, we were missing the fennel, we had used all the mozz with dinner 1 so we just used shredded parm. He also left out onion, I'm not sure why but he did. I asked boyfriend to give his comments and this is what he had to say: "Meat is squishy, less garlic and a more biter spice like basil or something (or more pepper). More cheese!!!!" The more cheese is his way of expressing his love for cheese. He loves cheese and lots of it, no matter what the entree is. We actually only had 1 pound of ground chicken so maybe that's why the garlic was too much for him. Personally, I would have said more but it does have plenty of garlic the way he made them so I'm happy. Maybe a little bit of a warning, the parsley makes it have a sweet little surprise in the taste so if that's not your thing, like boyfriend said, substitute it out for basil or maybe the addition of fennel seeds will help. This is yet another recipe that I absolutely LOVE! We somehow ended up with only 8 meatballs though, so maybe it was that extra 1/4 pound of meat but well, we were gluttonous and ate it all in one night so no reheating instructions for you this time. Enjoy!
Dinner 1: Caprese Lasagna Roll-Ups Recipe: http://cookingclassy.blogspot.com/2012/10/caprese-lasagna-roll-ups.html
We followed this almost 100%. Except we forgot to buy Ricotta Cheese. Oops. But, that little mistake worked well for us because both boyfriend and I do NOT like Ricotta in Lasagna. Both of us have weird texture issues when it comes to food. The only thing I would have changed is the tomatoes, just chop them up instead of slice them. I'll admit it - I stink at slicing anything thin unless I have a cutter that has those lines for me. But even besides that, it is REALLY hard to roll these up with slices. Also, the amount of sauce you need is probably closer to 16 oz. than 12, unless you put a super thin layer on the bottom. Another note is to have two greased cookie sheets ready to prepare the rolls otherwise you will run out of space and things may get messy. This is one of my favourite recipes ever - I loved it so much! If you reheat any portions (two people can only eat so much!), do it in two segments of two minutes each. Enjoy!
Dinner 2: Doritos Taco Bake Recipe: http://twomaidsamilking.blogspot.com/2011/04/hunk-of-meat-monday-taco-bake.html
So, I am suggesting a few changes to this after having made it. First off, if you use crescent rolls, make them ridiculously super thin and use the original ones. The only ones i had on hand were the sweet honey flaky ones - bad idea. We ended up flipping our portions upside down on our plates to pull the rolls off. They did not bake all the way through, either. Next time, we will be trying crushed tortilla chips on the bottom since we know we both would enjoy that. Once I do it, I will post my version of the recipe for y'all. Besides that, I accidentally forgot to mix in the taco seasoning while cooking the meat. Another oops. But it tastes fine without it. This recipe totally works in two pans, by the way and in fact if anything you can take it out sooner unless you like it to be more cooked, although there really isn't a difference because anything that needs to be cooked is cooked before the oven time. Note: The funnest part of making this dish is liking all the Doritos dust off of your hands at the end. It probably should not be my favourite part but it is. Enjoy!
Dinner 3: Chicken Parm Meatballs Recipe: http://www.dinneralovestory.com/chicken-parm-meatballs/
I am one lucky girl! The boyfriend made this dinner while I was at work one night! I love him - he's so fantastic. Anywhos, as far as ingredients, we were missing the fennel, we had used all the mozz with dinner 1 so we just used shredded parm. He also left out onion, I'm not sure why but he did. I asked boyfriend to give his comments and this is what he had to say: "Meat is squishy, less garlic and a more biter spice like basil or something (or more pepper). More cheese!!!!" The more cheese is his way of expressing his love for cheese. He loves cheese and lots of it, no matter what the entree is. We actually only had 1 pound of ground chicken so maybe that's why the garlic was too much for him. Personally, I would have said more but it does have plenty of garlic the way he made them so I'm happy. Maybe a little bit of a warning, the parsley makes it have a sweet little surprise in the taste so if that's not your thing, like boyfriend said, substitute it out for basil or maybe the addition of fennel seeds will help. This is yet another recipe that I absolutely LOVE! We somehow ended up with only 8 meatballs though, so maybe it was that extra 1/4 pound of meat but well, we were gluttonous and ate it all in one night so no reheating instructions for you this time. Enjoy!
Thoughts on College and My Future Career
Maybe I'm crazy, maybe I'm sane - either way, I think I just changed my mind again about what exactly I want to do once I graduate from college. One thing is for certain, though - I HAVE finally secured that I will graduate at the end of this new semester with my Art History Degree. At the point that I will graduate, I will have been enrolled in college for 4 1/2 years, but it will have been 5 years since I graduated high school. Most people I know now don't actually know what happened once I graduated from high school - that's because most of them I did not even meet until after I had graduated or even a year later. It's not a problem, just that there is a huge thing that has caused me to take so long to get a single degree.
Right after I graduated high school, I had a job. Not even a month after graduating, I had a full time job working with people that I went to high school at a computer company. We worked for the school board imaging computers so they could be "school appropriate". You know all those proxies and firewalls and blocks and very specific programs and applications on every single computer in the school? Well, that's what I did - we would hook up the computers with external drives and literally put an image of what the computer could/should be allowed to do and have on each computer. By August, I had made a few thousand dollars, had worked all over the county, worked in two other counties and got my first car. (Which I am still paying for, but I couldn't love another car more than mine and I'm already well over 80,000 miles.) As the new school year got started, I saw no reason to give up my job and so I asked for an extension for my admission to Drexel University in Philadelphia, the only college I had bothered to apply to. They granted me a year extension - I wanted to keep working also because $50,0000 a year for my degree was so not cool and needed to be funded because I was not getting a bunch of scholarships like my friends were.
Unfortunately, the recession was starting to hit really hard and we started to get less and less contracts with the school boards in the companies' repertoire. I decided it was time to quit, I did not want to be let go and I still had a whole 6-7 months in which I had to find something to do before I moved to Philly. Well, I enrolled in my local community college and took on a full course load and found a part-time job at a lawyers office. Needless to say, that was the WEIRDEST job experience I have ever had, but it was also very awesome because I got to learn about law. Well, because I took some courses, I had to reapply to Drexel and got reaccepted but by the end of the summer semester and I left the law office because of medical problems, I decided that I would just finish out and get my associates degree because that would make transferring so much easier. Or so I thought. I then spent another 2 whole years in community college, not always with a job before I finally said enough, they clearly don't want to help me graduate and I moved to Tampa.
I am very glad that it will have only taken 2 years at the university I am at now because seriously - it gets aggravating when you are told oh, you only have a few more classes or one more class or that you are almost done but when you go do a check-up a little later, just kidding, not at all.
Having spent 4 1/2 years now on getting a single degree, not having it until 5 years after having graduating from high school is a blow to ego even if it's not that big of a deal and I am half-way to a second degree as well. Besides that though, having spent so much time working towards school, when I think that I will still need to do another year for a second degree is daunting. I would LOVE to have a degree in Art History and Anthropology - I would love to be an archaeologist and museum curator - but the thought of having the spend 5 1/2 years in undergraduate schooling, and then anywhere from 1 1/2 to 7 more years getting the other degrees I want so that I can get the positions that I want makes me want to not even bother. The problem is that in order to be a museum curator, one has to have at least a Masters of Fine Arts degree. AT LEAST! Well, that is just a little messed up, don't you think? Even if I had done the 4 years for my undergraduate degree and then the minimum of 1 1/2 years for graduate degree - that's a lot of money, student debt and school. I would have to pick the degrees and career that take a minimum of 6 1/2 years and a maximum of 12 years (or more!).
Having realized how long it will take me to get my degrees and knowing that I will not like how daunting it is, it makes me wonder if it's what I really want to do, because it's just so.... UGH! It makes me want to scream. Maybe it is what I want to do and I'm just stressing out about the fact that I don't want to put off starting my life and a family just because of school. I do know that I want to do one amazing, fun thing; Study Abroad in Italy. I really don't care how I do it or if it's for college credit but the chance of spending months in Italy studying the influence of Greek and Roman art on Renaissance Art. That is what I want to do with my life, but how to make a career out of that is another thing and may not be possible.
Anyone else out there have something you are worried about when it comes to your higher education or career?
Right after I graduated high school, I had a job. Not even a month after graduating, I had a full time job working with people that I went to high school at a computer company. We worked for the school board imaging computers so they could be "school appropriate". You know all those proxies and firewalls and blocks and very specific programs and applications on every single computer in the school? Well, that's what I did - we would hook up the computers with external drives and literally put an image of what the computer could/should be allowed to do and have on each computer. By August, I had made a few thousand dollars, had worked all over the county, worked in two other counties and got my first car. (Which I am still paying for, but I couldn't love another car more than mine and I'm already well over 80,000 miles.) As the new school year got started, I saw no reason to give up my job and so I asked for an extension for my admission to Drexel University in Philadelphia, the only college I had bothered to apply to. They granted me a year extension - I wanted to keep working also because $50,0000 a year for my degree was so not cool and needed to be funded because I was not getting a bunch of scholarships like my friends were.
Unfortunately, the recession was starting to hit really hard and we started to get less and less contracts with the school boards in the companies' repertoire. I decided it was time to quit, I did not want to be let go and I still had a whole 6-7 months in which I had to find something to do before I moved to Philly. Well, I enrolled in my local community college and took on a full course load and found a part-time job at a lawyers office. Needless to say, that was the WEIRDEST job experience I have ever had, but it was also very awesome because I got to learn about law. Well, because I took some courses, I had to reapply to Drexel and got reaccepted but by the end of the summer semester and I left the law office because of medical problems, I decided that I would just finish out and get my associates degree because that would make transferring so much easier. Or so I thought. I then spent another 2 whole years in community college, not always with a job before I finally said enough, they clearly don't want to help me graduate and I moved to Tampa.
I am very glad that it will have only taken 2 years at the university I am at now because seriously - it gets aggravating when you are told oh, you only have a few more classes or one more class or that you are almost done but when you go do a check-up a little later, just kidding, not at all.
Having spent 4 1/2 years now on getting a single degree, not having it until 5 years after having graduating from high school is a blow to ego even if it's not that big of a deal and I am half-way to a second degree as well. Besides that though, having spent so much time working towards school, when I think that I will still need to do another year for a second degree is daunting. I would LOVE to have a degree in Art History and Anthropology - I would love to be an archaeologist and museum curator - but the thought of having the spend 5 1/2 years in undergraduate schooling, and then anywhere from 1 1/2 to 7 more years getting the other degrees I want so that I can get the positions that I want makes me want to not even bother. The problem is that in order to be a museum curator, one has to have at least a Masters of Fine Arts degree. AT LEAST! Well, that is just a little messed up, don't you think? Even if I had done the 4 years for my undergraduate degree and then the minimum of 1 1/2 years for graduate degree - that's a lot of money, student debt and school. I would have to pick the degrees and career that take a minimum of 6 1/2 years and a maximum of 12 years (or more!).
Having realized how long it will take me to get my degrees and knowing that I will not like how daunting it is, it makes me wonder if it's what I really want to do, because it's just so.... UGH! It makes me want to scream. Maybe it is what I want to do and I'm just stressing out about the fact that I don't want to put off starting my life and a family just because of school. I do know that I want to do one amazing, fun thing; Study Abroad in Italy. I really don't care how I do it or if it's for college credit but the chance of spending months in Italy studying the influence of Greek and Roman art on Renaissance Art. That is what I want to do with my life, but how to make a career out of that is another thing and may not be possible.
Anyone else out there have something you are worried about when it comes to your higher education or career?
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