Attempt No. 2 at Cooking Healthy Food

These are jalapeno poppers, baked, not fried. Because I haven't quite figured out my oven yet, they are a little overcooked. Fortunately, they still turned out to be quite delicious--though very, very hot, some bites. You should have seen me separating yolks from whites (enough to make anyone laugh out loud), but I think I've got a better handle on it now. And it was my first time using panko, which was fun. It made the poppers crispy and tasty.

It is, of course, intended to be an appetizer, but appetizers should be fairly quick to prepare, right? These took--baking time included--around an hour and a half, though I admit that I was working pretty slowly. And when you take into account a few oops-moments (e.g. separating out egg whites), it's no wonder I couldn't get them done sooner. In any case, it became my dinner and left my mouth on fire, as a good popper does.

How are these healthy, you ask? Well, using fat free or reduced fat everything sure helps, as well as the baking. The recipe claims that, when all is said and done, one serving is about 220 calories. I'm willing to bet it was a bit more.

This, my friends, is a ficus bonsai tree I bought to make my home a little more . . . happy. At least, it makes me happy when I look at it. I've set it atop Bookshelf No. 3, which totally changes the ambiance on that wall for the better.

Mom tells me that her mother used to name the plants in her house. That's a little silly, in my opinion. I mean, it's a tree. But then again, I also think that the practice of talking to one's plant is silly. According to some people, however, doing so may actually affect it's growth. I guess that makes sense, on some level. I mean, if plants have spirits, just like animals and people do, who's to say that they don't have spiritual needs, like good music and, erm, good conversation?

So maybe, in addition to blaring Queen, I'll let my little bonsai know how pretty it is, how my day went, my thoughts on human-plant relations, etc. I haven't named it yet; I just call it (lacking originality) "Bonsai." But I'm open to suggestions.

I forgot

Is it terrible that I had forgotten all about this blog until Holly mentioned it to me last night? Too bad I don't have anything really exciting to write at the moment, or enough time to write about the exciting things that I could write about.

The Circle of Life

Do you ever find yourself wondering, "Hey, where are all the dead animals?" I mean, the world is full of animals, and given that the majority don't end up in our freezers and are subject to mortality, it follows that the world must be filled with dead animals, too. Right? I mean, the decomposition process is good, but it's not that good. Dead creatures don't just disappear a la Yoda or a goomba.

The most I've seen of actual dead wild animals--exempting anything killed by a car or a shotgun or flying into a window--are dead birds (okay, this one might have flown head-on into a window) and dead squirrels. I actually saw one squirrel drop dead from a branch when I was still living in Ohio. Squirrel heart attack? Acorn poisoning? Squirrelicide? I'll never know.

I'm sure wild life conservationists know. And probably Wikipedia. But I'm just musing here, and a preliminary search of Yahoo answers yielding unsatisfying results .

Attempt No, 1 at Cooking Healthy Food

Over the summer I bought a cookbook for healthy eating. "This is it!" I told myself. "You're finally going to trim that waist!" Thus, I set myself a goal, that I would prepare EVERY SINGLE RECIPE IN THE BOOK, at least once a week.

Behold my first creation! This is salmon with mustard crust and a side salad of spinach mess (basically spinach, red onion, blueberries, sunflower seeds, orange slices, tomato, and raspberry vinaigrette). It tasted superb.

And I've never prepared any kind of fish before, so this was something of a victory for me. It's a cut of salmon glazed with honey mustard, topped with red onion and a slice of orange, broiled for about 8 minutes. Turned out to taste rather superb, if I do say so myself. Although, I wonder if you can really screw it up?

Bike and Lock

So I'm already struggling on the daily photo blog thing. Not that I don't have the photos--I just forget I have the blog. I'll endeavor to do better.

I present to you my new favorite toy: Bike. That's what I call it, usually with the first-person singular possessive pronoun preceding it. I remember a time when I used to name my bike; I think I named it after a horse. Majarose, I think it was. Or Tisha. I would pretend I was riding a horse and call "Giddy up!" and slap its rear end. I guess I've grown out of that phase.

That was probably twenty years ago, and I was six. The bike, I remember, was purple with a pink seat and pink handles. I think it had different colored beads on the spokes that tinkled as the wheels turned. I never took it far, just around the neighborhood and maybe a couple of times to Plymouth Elementary. It was the bike I was riding when Kelli suggested I ride with my eyes closed and I crashed and skinned my knees. It was the bike that I used to roll over sluggish potato bugs on the pavement. It was the bike I never thought to lock because in those days you didn't worry about someone stealing it.

Eventually, I graduated to a "big girl" bike, which I now realize was still not exactly full size. This one was white and splotched purple, black, and pink. Kelli's was green and purple, and I envied her that bike. No real reason why, just that it belonged to Kelli, and as every little sister knows, whatever the big sister has is unquestionably superior. This bike took me to school every day, but I don't know whatever happened to it. It probably got lost, or trashed, or sold, in one of the many moves our family passed through over the years. And I never got another bike.

Until now. I am an adult about to embark on a PhD track. And again, I have a bike.

And I love it.

(I bought a lock.)

The Geek Revealed

For anyone familiar with ABC's compelling and mysterious series Lost, even if you never made it past season 2, you can still appreciate why an uber-fan might get excited about moving into a new apartment, number 108, not long after the series finale aired. Yes, that's me, uber-fan. Or, if you'd prefer, uber-geek. Basically, I hail the series as my favorite television drama of all time, beating out my 1990's infatuation with The X-Files hand over foot. It will be the first television show of which I own the entire collection on DVD.

I feel like I have a distinct inclination toward "geekhood" (if I may coin a phrase) without actually crossing that line, that point of no return, into full-blown geekiness. When I get into a movie or TV show, I really, really get into it. That's why I have to be so selective. Might I have liked the highly popular Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Probably. Would I have embraced Battlestar Galactica and spent Saturday nights swapping favorite quotes with friends of shared interest? Most likely. Can I tell you the name of every star system and Rebel spacecraft that exist in the Star Wars universe? Well no, actually, though I really enjoyed that first trilogy.

Am I in danger of falling victim to multi-day basement Dungeons and Dragons role playing with the members of a locally organized medieval club? Highly doubtful.

And yet, I don't think I'm far removed from understanding their interest and passion. Every now and then, I get . . . twinges.

I have recently moved to the small college town of Vermillion, South Dakota. If you had told me a year ago that this is where I'd be spending the next 2 to 4 years (4 being the most likely), a shudder well might have tickled up my spine, ending in a grimace contorting my normally composed expression.

But, I think, this is why our futures are so wisely hidden from us. How many of us would rail against them, not knowing how wonderfully they might turn out? South Dakota? Tucked between the dreaded never-ending Nebraska (containing the longest, dullest stretch of I-80 to cut through the country) and No-Man's Land (read: North Dakota)? Why would anyone in their right temperate-weather-loving mind choose it?

And yet, here I am. Already, I am charmed. To me, there is nothing more beautiful and serene than a river. Not far from my very modest apartment, a slice of the long stretch of Missouri River laps noiselessly its banks, carving out the border between South Dakota and Nebraska.

The South Dakota side is prettier.

I can make this home.

The 365-Day Photo-a-Day Project

Last Christmas, my Aunt Linda bought my mother a photo-a-day album project. The name is the description: take at least one photo every day, put it in an album, write a sentence about it.

It's not a new idea. But it's an idea.

So I think I'll undertake it. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to put both my camera and this blog to actual use, in which I shall dally about the dillies of my visual world. Or dilly about the dallies. I'm still not sure what either of those words really means.