Shopping!

Today's photo challenge tag should really be "ALL OF THINGS I BOUGHT!!"

So, I had an early morning drive to take my grandparents to the airport :(

BUT, I decided to take advantage of being in the city and go on a massive shopping trip, mostly to buy teacher clothes and fill some closet holes. I might've gone slightly overboard; there were at least three more bags added after that picture was taken. But now I get to play dress up with my closet!

Still no more Moosewood recipes to blog about. We're just eating up leftovers at the house right now and I am not complaining!

Blue and Orange!

These two pictures pretty much sum up my entire day. The morning was spent at the pool reading and relaxing. I got a little color and my shoulders are only slightly burned; nothing too serious. And then after lunch I marathoned through the first half of the new season of OITNB, which was fantastic, as always! No Moosewood recipes done, but still all in all, a great day!

First Day of Summer!!

Soundtrack to this post!

My summer classes are finally over! I have two weeks of funemployment ahead of me and I can't wait! Last night to celebrate, my roommate and I went out to dinner and I got a sweet tea vodka and lemonade martini which was the most delicious thing ever. (Earlier in the day I had celebrated with a mint julep and my friends from class, but I forgot to take a picture.)

But now I am back home and not unpacking my car...

Today marks another exciting event because it is the start of a new project I am undertaking called, "75 Days of Summer, 2014" in which I will take one photo a day for the next 74 days! Check out the tab above to read more about this endeavor and to see the categories that will loosely guide my photos! 

The first day is, appropriately, a selfie. I took this on the bus this morning as I came back to my roommate's apartment after getting coffee. It's gonna be a great summer! 

Rabbit Rabbit!

Happy June, again! Keeping with the tradition of saying "rabbit rabbit" to start each month with good luck, I made "White Rabbit" salad. Which is really just cottage cheese and apples. I also stirred in some honey. You're supposed to add some other stuff like nuts (I added sunflower seeds), raisins (nope), and poppy seeds (also nope). But this simple dish is actually pretty good, if a little plain! It's a really good light lunch that's filling and tastes really good. Can you believe that I'm willingly eating cottage cheese?? It might actually even be a new favorite of mine!

I'm ready for these summer classes to be over and to be poolside, reading or kitchen-side, cooking!

Eggplant Mozzarella

I have now cooked 100 recipes from The New Moosewood Cookbook!!! It’s kind of hard to believe that I’ve made it this far, and I am so proud of myself for sticking with the project for this long. I initially thought I would be at the 100-recipe mark several months sooner, but this is not the time to dwell on “should of”s. The important part is that I’m here now!

Fancy...

            To celebrate my accomplishment, I decided to make eggplant mozzarella, which is what you get when you forget to buy Parmesan cheese at the grocery store. Turns out it’s just as good. I also whipped up some spaghetti to eat alongside the eggplant. 

Basically, eggplant parm (mozz) is lasagna but instead of layering noodles you layer giant pieces of eggplant. Technically Moosewood’s recipe called for using one of their recipes for the marinara sauce, but I was too lazy and just bought a jar of Classico at Kroger. But I did splurge and get the fancy “Italian Style” breadcrumbs, whatever that means.

            The dish was absolutely wonderful! Since eggplant is basically flavorless, the dish really just tasted like cheesy pasta sauce, which I am totally fine with. And it’s quite filling because of the eggplant. My only wish was that I had some crusty garlic bread to mop up the excess sauce. I might have to make a grocery store run before eating the leftovers as my lunch this week!

            A couple days ago, I decided to repurpose the blueberry pie fiasco I made for Memorial Day. I made it into blueberry crisp using Moosewood’s topping recipe from its apple crisp recipe. It is perfect this way; much better than the pie. With vanilla bean ice cream on the top, it’s pretty much the quintessential summer dessert.

            I have one more week of summer classes remaining and then about 2 weeks back with my family. I have already sketched out a plan that involves me cooking a LOT because I really really want to finish this project. And after those two weeks at home, I’ll be spending the next 7 weeks without a kitchen! So the cooking will be on a major hiatus and I’ll be setting myself back quite a bit. The pressure of the deadline is really there!

           

 If you want to read a bit more about my last 100 recipes, be sure to check out my new “Greatest Hits” tab on the top of the blog. I’ve included my 10 favorite recipes there along with links to the posts. Thanks for the encouragement! 141 recipes to go!