I’ve been hanging out with Christian, a little 9 year old  boy that I pick up after school.  I walk there, and then we walk back together.  Yesterday, we made brownies from scratch!  I have a book called Small Batch Baking, and all of the recipes are for very small portions to serve between 2-3 people. They were pretty good, but I kind of screwed them up.  They called for unsweetened chocolate, but I used unsweetened cocoa baking powder instead.  I added a little milk to make them more chocolate-like, and Christian and I both liked the way they turned out.

Before Christian came over, I rearranged my entire room!  Megan is right that I have too much furniture in my room.  I have a large desk for my old PC, but I don’t have it anymore.  My dad took the tower, and I don’t know where it went.  My monitor and keyboard are still in my room.  I’m going to go up today and clean more, and I’ll move the computer stuff into the basement.  That way I’ll remove some of the clutter.  Also, because my bedside table won’t fit next to my bed anymore, I had to bring in more furniture in the way of a tiny table to hold my cell phone, glass of water, and pills.  Do’h!  However, there is a LOT more open space in the middle of my room now, because all my furniture is so cramped together against the walls.  It’s actually very nice and feels more open.  I can actually sit on my floor and do a craft now, or do sit ups or push ups.   My  dressar is also in plain view of everything now, so it will motivate me to keep all of my drawers closed (Megan says this helps make the room look tidy).  I also finally hung up my Harry Potter calendar.  It took me just two full months to get it off the floor!

Walked to Niles’ for Lost, and we had the largest crowd yet.  I helped Niles make asparagus and some kind of delicious spreadable cheese wrapped in prosciutto, and Niles made meatballs with a pesto cream dipping sauce.  It was very gourmet.  There were people sitting on the floor because we didn’t have enough space.  There were eight of us, including Chris who told me to check out his online portfolio that he did for school. All the seniors are getting ready to present their final work, and that makes me feel old because I graduated three years ago.  (Eek!)

Then for dinner last night, I made another batch of pasta fagioli, but this time I added a can of red kidney beans instead of an additional can of cannellini beans.  I left it on the stove, and then walked down to the library for the New England Youth Ensemble concert.  It was excellent!  So many young talented children, and they were all string instruments.  I LOVE string instruments.  I always though the violin was my favorite, but it is definitely the viola.   The violin is too high pitched.  Once I got home to my soup (it had been on the stove for 2 hours!)  ALL the water had been absorbed by the beans and the pasta.  Oops!  I turned the heat back on, and added 1.5 cups of hot water, and it was still really hot, so we were able to eat immediately.  It was delicious!  My mom had requested the soup because it was just going to be the two of us, so she wanted something simple.  Today she came home after eating it for lunch and exclaimed how much she loved the recipe.  I tasted the red kidney beans and the cannellini beans straight out of the can before cooking them, and the red ones are my favorite so far.  I think they would make a good addition to my salad.  If I were to cook beans that are dry, will they keep for a bit in the fridge?  It seems like such a process to cook them (it takes hours), I would like to be able to do it in advance.

Now for today, I’m going to make homemade pizza and dough!  I’m pretty psyched.  It will be a little cheese and lots of veggies.  I also might add a tad TVP to a slice or two for me.   I also found a dessert in the Small Batch Baking book that I might make called “Apple Walnut Crostata.”  I have to make the crust by hand, and it has nine steps (which might take a while)… but it sounds delicious and I have all the ingredients.

I will post pictures tomorrow, because I am too tired (it is now 11pm), and I’m off to bed.