I’m going to do most of my Christmas shopping from handmade, or used items.  I say most because I’ve already bought two items for my parents over the summer that were new.  But I have several ideas that are handmade or used for other people.

I’m doing a lot of shopping on Etsy, which is an amazing hand made shop.  I think the best part about Etsy is the reasonably priced (or free) shipping costs.  I just had something delivered that was shipped for free, and last year, I’ve had to pay 75 cents for other items.  It’s not like eBay where you purchase something for $3, and they make you pay $9 in shipping!!

I also have the good news that I ordered our local turkey for Thanksgiving yesterday.  $3 a pound, but it’s from Bob’s Turkey Farm in Lancaster, MA (two towns over).  It’s raised right on a farm there, and I go to the farm to pick it up.  I’m supporting a local farmer, and will have a delicious bird for Thanksgiving, and not a cheap 49 cent frozen bird from Market Basket. To get birds to cost that little money, I don’t even want to think about how they are raised, and how they can get them so mass produced that they are practically given away.  No thank you!

Of course, I just watched Food, Inc. It’s the movie version (almost) of Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I highly suggest you watch it.

I’ve also decided to eat less meat, as I did back in the Spring.

Everyone in my family loves when I make my Veggie Pot Pie.  Last time I made it, my mom complained that it wasn’t filling enough, and she was still hungry after dinner.  When I made it yesterday, I thought about what she said.  She thought it needed meat, but I disagreed.

While making it last night, I added 4 cups of frozen vegetables.  The original meat-filled version only called for 2-3 cups.  I made the regular sauce, and to the sauce, I cooked up 1/2 cup TVP (textured vegetable protein) with 1/2  cup water, and then added it to the sauce.  I thought it looked kinda weak, so I added more vegetables (getting up to 5 cups!).  I mixed in all the TVP, the vegetables and the sauce, and added it to the pie.

As we were eating (where I also had sweet potatoes, a salad, AND I set the table and cleaned the pots I had used), I asked my parents what they thought of the pie.  “It’s really good.  A lot better than last time.  Did you add more vegetables?  It seems more filling.”    I told her that yes, I did add more vegetables, but then I added “Do you know what eeeeeeeeeelse I added?”   My mom slowly looked over at me, and she said “Did you add that weird stuff?”

Yeeeeeeeees, I did!  The TVP was great, and everyone liked it.  It definitely made it more filling, and a lot less watery which was good.  I thought about the “rules” for TVP, “Add it to anything in which you would normally add meat.”  There’s meat in a chicken pot pie, so why not TVP in a veggie pot pie?

Why not, indeed!  It was fabulous!  I’ll be adding it to every pie I make in the future.

I want to know what they put on apples to make them turn my cloth napkins white. That freaks me out.

Did it stop me from eating it? Sadly, no.

Friday morning I went to my practicum, but my supervisor had regular patients all morning and the patient I was going to see didn’t show up, so I didn’t really get to do anything.  I read Watchmen pretty much all morning, and I was able to finish it before we saw the movie.

Rob had decided it would be best if we saw it Saturday afternoon rather than Friday night.  It’s a two hour drive down to where he lives, and a 30 minute drive to the theater, so he figured I’d be sick of driving by the time I got there.  He was right, I was also pretty tired and hungry.

I got there a bit after 5, and soon after I got there we headed out to the supermarket.  We decided to make chicken tenders and sweet potato fries (which I had never had before, but loved).  We got home, made dinner, and watched tons of episodes of Scrubs.

I hadn’t been caught up with this season, but Rob had all of them on his Play Station 3.  For dessert, I had yogurt with strawberries, and read Watchmen while Rob played videogames.

Saturday morning, we made wonderful egg sandwiches and had more strawberries.

Then we watched Unbreakable to get into the superhero mood.  At noon I went out for a three mile run, but I got lost and didn’t follow the route Rob had mapped out for me.  It was a three mile loop, but I missed my turn, and just ended up going three miles straight out.  I realized I’d have to then run 3 miles back when I realized my mistake, but because we were in a hurry to shower up, eat lunch, and head out to the movie, I called Rob, and he had to come rescue me.  It was awful!  But I did make it a bit over 3 miles, so it was good in that way.  On the way home, we realized that the street sign where I was suppose to turn was covered up by another sign.  There was no way for me to have seen it coming from the way that I was running from.

For lunch, we had leftovers.  I made my chicken tenders into chicken parmesan by adding tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese and baking it.  I also made more sweet potato fries.  Then we headed out to the movie!  It was great, and we were both pleasantly surprised at how well it followed the graphic novel.

We went to dinner at Panera, cause we got out of the movie and we were both starving.  Then we went back to the grocery store where we bought ice cream to make sundaes, and I bought strawberries to bring home.

Now we’re watching Ratatouille because last time we hung out, we tried to watch it, but it just skipped and skipped and we had to abandon it after only about 20 minutes.  I decided I needed to blog, so I went and grabbed my computer.

The reason we ate so many strawberries was because they were on sale for $1.67 a POUND.  So we bought two pounds yesterday (we’ve finished a whole one already), and then I bought two more pounds today to bring home.  They’re so delicious, and they’re American, not from a foreign country.

Tomorrow I’m going to run before breakfast (and I’ll run the correct route), have breakfast, then I’m going to stop at the Wrentham Outlets, the Trader Joe’s in Framingham, and then I’ll go out to lunch with Dylan.  Very eventful weekend!

My alarm went off at 6:10 for my morning run, but I was soooo tired, and my legs were pretty sore, so I decided to just stay in bed.  It was a good decision, especially because it was so cold outside, and so warm in my bed.

I had my practicum again this morning, and I sat in and counseled a client on my own!  It was pretty crazy.  For my first time, I think I did pretty well.  It was very exciting, and I actually had a lot of fun.  After I was done, I sat in with my supervisor as he ate lunch.  We were both starving, but I didn’t have my lunch.  I had brought an apple, and I ran to my car to grab a cereal bar so I could eat a little something too.  While we ate, we talked about how I did, and what I could have done better, and also what I need to feel better prepared for next time.

When he saw that I was eating only an apple and a cereal bar, he asked if that was my usual lunch.  I laughed and said “Oh, no.  I usually eat soup and a spinach salad. I’m going to go home and eat my real lunch.”

And boy did I!  I like to spruce up my soups, I added frozen peas and frozen cut up shrimp to this clam chowder.  I always add frozen vegetables because I think all my soups could just use more vegetables.  I saw the shrimp in the freezer, and decided it could also use more protein.

And I ate the whole thing!

My supervisor said that on Friday, I should bring my own lunch, so we can eat and chat together.  I usually eat soup every day, but I always have a hard time bringing it places.  Usually, I’ll just bring a can of soup and a bowl with me, and then rinse them out before taking them home.  I absolutely refuse to microwave it in a plastic container.  I needed something glass that had a cover, so I went on a search.  I found one in record time, and it is absolutely perfect.  It holds 4 cups, and it’s glass, and has a BPA free lid.  It can seal and can be transported easily.  It was only $5, and I know that I’ll use it many times.  They also had a 7 cup size one that was only $6, but I decided I’d get the smaller one for now, and if I need a larger one, I can always go back.  It’s the clear bowl I ate my soup in.  I wanted to test it out!

You know what else is BPA free?

This girl!

I’m digesting my lunch while watching Medium and Heroes.  I think after I’m going to run errands to get my exercise in (I’ve only done 3341 steps so far), and also get some food for Niles’ tonight.  I’ve decided I’m going to use the term “run errands” when I physically run to get errands completed, and I’ll use the term “drive errands”  when I drive to get them done.

I’ve mapped out my run/walk to the grocery store (I’m also going to make a pit stop at the library), so now I just need to finish Heroes, digest a bit more, and get ready to set out in the cold for a 3.31 mile run.  The last mile will be a walk because I’ll be carrying groceries.  I’m worried I’ll get a bit chilly, because it’s only 27 degrees out, but it’s windy, so it “feels like” it’s 15.  That’s coooooold!

This post is for Megan.  Back when I was cleaning house, I talked about getting rid of tons of magazines, books, and probably some other stuff too.  well, I had been keeping all of my discarded clothes in Megan’s room, because that’s where I keep all of the stuff that won’t fit in my room.  Her room now smells nicely of feet because I keep two big boxes of shoes in there.  There are been many times where I go in and I go “Ugh!” and I open a window.  I even brought one of those reed diffusers in there the other day, and it seems to have helped.  But perhaps because it is my feet that stink up these shoes; maybe I’m kind of immune to the smell.  If anyone wants to come over and smell her room, you’re more than welcome.  Megan, did you notice your room smelled like feet when you were home in December?

But anyway.  I’ve been collecting these clothes in Megan’s room because I wanted to take a picture of them before donating them so Megan could see all the stuff I am getting rid of.  She’s been telling me for years that I have way too much stuff, so I’m finally get rid of a lot of it!  In the top left hand corner is a pile of 6 Destare shirts.  Lance screwed up when he got the sizes, and they are all size XXL or 1X.  The t-shirts that are that size are obviously huge, but the tank tops aren’t so bad.  For instance, I usually wear a small or extra small at Old Navy, but the Destare tank that fits me is a size Large.  So someone who would wear a medium would need an Extra Large.  But anyway, he didn’t want the shirts anymore, they had been in his office for months and months.  So he said I could have them (he would have thrown them away).  Of course they ended up in my closet for months and months.  I filtered out all the huge sizes, and I figured I’d offer them up on FreeCycle first, to offer them to anyone who loves Destare.  The smaller sizes I will offer them up to the girls who still work there (Caroline, Brianna, Lindsey)  They’re very nice shirts and they’re quite sparkly.

And of course, in the spirit of not getting rid of things, I got a new bread machine on FreeCycle.

I told my brother via AIM, and the conversation went like this:

Usually he doesn’t agree with me all that quickly (if at all), but he too saw the wisdom in having another bread machine.  Now he can have one at his apartment, and we can have one here.  Or, I can move in with my cats, and someone else can have the other machine.  Plus, I saved it from the landfill.  To test it, I’m going to make my famous white loaf to see if it’s as good as the machine we have now.  Trevor picked it up for me, so it’s currently in the trunk of his car.  As soon as I test its awesomeness, I’ll report back.

It’s 3pm, and I’m suppose to be going on a hike with Niles through the one foot of snow we got.  He wants to hike up in the woods somewhere, but I’m afraid that we will die.  We could slip into a pond or river that is covered by ice, and we could freeze to death.  Niles looked at my like I was crazy when I suggested that we might die, and Megan, upon telling her my fears, told me she was pretty sure I wouldn’t die.  But I’ll take her advice to “be careful, just in case.”

I really enjoyed the pizza, but my dad thought it tasted too much like bread, and not enough like pizza dough.  He liked his homemade pizza better, but he bought his dough.   So really… his wasn’t fully homemade, and mine was.  So there!

I put everything in the bread machine under dough cycle again, and it was a lot different than the Italian bread dough.  This was a LOT stickier and I had a hard time getting it out of the container.

Then, I had to scrape out all the stuff that was still left in the container.

Then I started to cover it with flour and knead it a bit, when I felt something hard.  “Uh Oh, What’s that?”  I thought.  Oh, it was the little spinny thing that is suppose to be in the bottom of the container!  (I got my camera covered in lots of flour taking these pictures!)

After the dough sat for a bit, I rolled it out and placed it on the pizza peel (the wooden spatula thing).

Then I decorated it with sauce, cheese, peppers, scallions, mushrooms, and some deli ham we had in the fridge (for my dad).

I mixed some cooked TVP with tomato sauce and added that to a portion for me.  My mom wouldn’t try any until we looked up exactly what TVP was.  It is soy.  Now she is “not afraid of it”  and will eat it more willingly.

Here is the pizza cooked!  The second pizza was in the oven at 500°, the first one was only in at 400°.  The higher temperature was much better.  I also brushed the second pizza’s crust with olive oil.  So which of these made the crust better?  My mom thinks it was the higher temp.  So 500° it is!  I really enjoyed the pizza even though my dad said it was too “bread like.”  I like bread, so I was ok with it.

I did make a HUGE mess in the kitchen, and got flour everywhere.  This was a very messy and time consuming dinner.  That was the only down fall.  Oh, and getting the pizza off the peel and into the oven was also tricky.

Homemade Pizza

• 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 1/2 teaspoon brown sugar
• 1 1/2 cups warm water
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast and brown sugar in the water, and let sit for 10 minutes.

1. Put all ingredients in bread machine following the instructions of the bread machine.  Flour is the second to last ingredient, and then the yeast is last.
2. After dough is done, separate into how many pizza you want.  I did two small ones, which was good cause a large one wouldn’t have fit on my pizza stone.
3. Once separated, leave the dough alone, covered for 10 minutes to let it settle.
4. Roll out the dough on a floured surface, and form on the pizza peel (or a wooden cutting board, or a clean piece of thick cardboard.
5. Decorate pizza with toppings
6. Preheat oven to 500 degrees F (220 degrees C). If you are baking the dough on a pizza stone, you may place your toppings on the dough, and bake immediately. If you are baking your pizza in a pan, lightly oil the pan, and let the dough rise for 15 or 20 minutes before topping and baking it.
7. Bake pizza in preheated oven, until the cheese and crust are golden brown, about 15 to 20 minutes.

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.

I ran errands today.  Literally.  I RAN.  It was awesome.  First stop the post office box to mail a letter to the place where I applied to be a substitute teacher (they needed me to sign a sheet for a criminal background check).  Then I ran to the bank, CVS, and Walgreens (I bought a total of 4 boxes of cereal!), then I walked home (because I was carrying a lot of stuff).  It was about a two mile run, but then another one mile or so walk back (because I got hungry and wanted to get home the quickest way possible).  I needed to exercise and do errands, and be back home and showered by 2pm, so I decided to do them at the same time!  I thought it was a great idea until I checked the weather.  25 degrees.  Oooh that’s cold!

I have heard that when going for a run, you should dress like it is 20 degrees warmer.  Ok, so 45 degrees.  But should I dress to run in 45 degrees? Or walk in 45 degrees?  I have no idea.  I wore a sweatshirt and my winter jacket, and a hat, and both hoods.  The hat came off quickly because I got too hot, and then by the time I got to CVS I was way too sweaty and hot and it was awful.  But then I got outside and was freezing again, and I put on my coat that I had just taken off!  Stupid weather.

Dad isn’t going to be home for dinner tonight, so my mom wanted to do something simple.  Spaghetti!  My mom loves spaghetti.  But I didn’t want to do something too simple, so I am making my own Italian bread (using the dough setting on the bread machine).  I also want to make my own tomato sauce, but I think that it is too complicated.  I want to try to take some canned spaghetti sauce and add some stuff to it to make it taste better.  I also want to add some textured vegetable protein (TVP) to it, to make it like a “meat” sauce.  I read that I just add equal parts TVP to equal parts boiling water, and the TVP absorbs the water, and then I will just use it like meat.

And so, on to the process.  Lots of pictures!!!

Italian Bread using a bread machine

• 4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon light brown sugar
• 1 1/3 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil
• 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast (1.5 teaspoons)

Take all the wet ingredients, and put them in the canister first. Then, added the flour.

After the flour is added, hollow out a little hole, and add the yeast.

Put it in the bread machine and choose the “dough” setting.  An hour and twenty minutes for dough ??  That’s bull crap!

I used up four cups of flour so I looked through the cupboards to see if we had more.  While sifting through, I found a small Crystal Light packet, and I thought “Oohhh… I’ll be making that.”  Then, I found TWO boxes of generic Jell-O!  And I said “Ooohhh… I’ll be making that, too!!”   (and I had some peach jasmine tea, too)

The Crystal light is still on the counter, but I mixed the two flavors of Jello (Strawberry Banana and Raspberry), and made them right away!  I made the “quick” version with ice cubes because I wanted Jell-O right now!  (I even added some bananas to part of it).

After the machine dinged to tell me it was done, I took it out and placed it on a cutting board with flour.  It was a lot more dough that I expected!

Then I separated it into two loaves, let them rise for 40 minutes under a damp towel, and then put them on a cookie sheet.  I brushed them with egg, and put them in the oven for 35 minutes.

The final product!!!

Look at how beautiful and golden it is. (Oh, but I’ve just realized that I forgot to add the slices to the top to give it that characteristically Italian bread look. D’oh!)

1. Place flour, brown sugar, warm water, salt, olive oil and yeast in the pan of the bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select dough cycle; press Start.
2. Deflate the dough and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Form dough into two loaves. Place the loaves seam side down on a cutting board generously sprinkled with cornmeal. Cover the loaves with a damp cloth and let rise, until doubled in volume about 40 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
3. In a small bowl, beat together 1 egg and 1 tablespoon water. Brush the risen loaves with egg mixture. Make a single long, quick cut down the center of the loaves with a sharp knife. Gently shake the cutting board to make sure that the loaves are not sticking. If they stick, use a spatula or pastry knife to loosen. Slide the loaves onto a baking sheet with one quick but careful motion.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 30 to 35 minutes, or until loaves sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.

Spaghetti was made as usual, but I did make some TVP to add.  I did 1/2 cup TVP and 1/2 cup water.  Then, I microwaved it until all the water had been absorbed.

I fluffed it with a fork to make sure the water was all gone.

Then, I just mixed it in with tomato sauce before adding it to my spaghetti.

It tasted pretty good, it wasn’t bad at all, but I agree with my mom that she said it didn’t have much of a taste.  But it tasted fine with the sauce.  I made my mom try it, even though she said “It doesn’t look very appetizing.”  And I said “Come on mom, that’s where Dylan gets it.  Just try it.“  (Dylan is terrible about trying new foods.)

And here is the final product.  It looks just like ground up meat.

The TVP would make excellent Sloppy Joes!

And now I am too full to eat my Jell-O.  I’m waiting for my stomach to empty out some.