Pop pop!

No, that is not a reference to Community...;)


I made scones last night! I was a little creative with them, and I just love it when I can do that. I'm usually too nervous to make up dishes on my own, so even just fudging things a little makes me excited. I started with this:

I wish I could take credit for the fluffy nature of these scones, but I'm sure it was all the mix. One of my goals is to learn how to work with dough so as to create light and fluffy things - cookies, scones, brownies, etc.

Then I looked at this:

I've never made anything out of this cookbook but that is another goal. Looking at this recipe, I discovered I had both lemons and blueberries. Yay!  So I mostly followed the recipe on the back of the mix box and just added the lemon zest and blueberries from this recipe, as well as the sugar I sprinkled on top. It's from this cookbook, if you're curious:

If you're interested, let me know and I can send you the full recipe, I know you can't see it in that first picture. And here is the finished result! (I know it's not the prettiest picture)

And the best part is that since the blueberries were fresh, they just pop in your mouth. :)

Moments

I've had a couple of lovely moments (and one amusing one) this weekend and I want to record them.


First, on Friday, I attempted to take a nap and ended up laying on the bed sort of half-dozing for about an hour and a half.  Animal and traffic noise kept me awake, I think.  Eventually I shut the window but by then it was too late.  When I finally ended up bringing myself out of my half-slumber and listening with more intent to the whining dog and meowing cat outside my bedroom door, I found myself thinking, "I should go out there.  They're lonely.  I should get up and do something."  But I couldn't think of anything I'd rather do than lie there and look at the sky out my window.  There was something about that sky.  The moment (which ended up lasting about 15 minutes, which was lovely) reminded me of when I used to sit in my bedroom window seat in high school and look out over my mom's garden and our neighbor's backyard.  I would sit there for half an hour or an hour at a time sometimes, just thinking.  It was so peaceful and it was a space that was all mine.  A while ago I mentioned to Mark that I'd like to turn a corner of his dresser (which sits directly underneath our bedroom window) into a space like that for me again.  I haven't actually taken myself up on that suggestion yet, though.  And on Friday our bed turned into my 15-minute window seat.  There was just something...surreal? about the sky and all I wanted to do was lie there and look at it.

view from my bed

 Then, last night, after a shopping trip to Trader Joe's where the sample of the day was creamy tomato soup, I made this for dinner:

 Mmmm, just looking at it makes me want to make it again...it was very simple yet very good.  Trader Joe's Creamy Tomato Soup with basil on top, their Three Seed Sourdough Bread with white cheddar cheese, fried in butter.  

Yum.

Then tonight I had my amusing moment.  Grad school = cooking on top of homework:

I wish you could see better all the papers that are hidden under that foil, but you get the picture.  *sigh*  :)  

Salad

Thank god for cell phone cameras, right??  I'm sure there are many blog posts that never would have existed if not for them.  However, I know this is bad quality, but I just wanted to share with you guys!  I was pretty excited about the lunch I had today:

Hmmm, it looks better when it's small like that than it did when I opened it from my email.

Anyway, it's a:

tuna

chickpea

spinach

feta cheese

lemon juice

fat free Italian dressing

salad, in that order.  I felt so inspired!!  This is all just from stuff that was sitting in my fridge.  Well, I can't take total credit.  I saw a classmate eating tuna with chickpeas on Saturday and said, "whoa that looks so interesting!  I never would've thought of that!"  It was the first time she had made it as well, and she  seemed to like it.  I just happened to have some leftover chickpeas in my fridge and could not for the life of me figure out what I wanted to eat for lunch today, and I remembered her snack.  Yay!  I couldn't finish it though.  It actually was quite filling.