Chicken Cacciatore

Chicken cacciatore with rice

Hans and I are normally very busy with school and work, so a lot of times, we’d get home late and there wouldn’t be any food. Being ravenously hungry, we’d opt to go out for food and end up spending more money and eating unhealthier food that we really wanted to. I started thinking about getting a slow cooker, day dreaming about how great it would be to dump some ingredients into a pot, turn it on, and return home 8 hours later to a cooked meal without having to do anything more. I’ve never cooked with a slow cooker before, so I was hesitant to get one, but for Christmas, our good friend Casey very sweetly got us a Crock Pot as gift! We were ecstatic.

Zinburger – Wine and Burger Bar

Zinburger - Wine & Burger Bar

There have been plethora of burger joints popping up all over the place. From Five Guys to Smashburger to the newer Bobby’s Burger Palace, it seems that these little hunks of sizzling ground beef are all the rage now that they’re wrapped up in the casual dining restaurant package instead of a greasy drive-thrus Happy Meal box. Zinburger is no exception to this commonality, but from what I’ve seen it certainly stands apart from the rest in quality, class, and ambiance.

Zinburger New Jersey
Promenade Shops at Clifton
850 State Route 3, #105
Clifton, NJ 07012

http://www.zinburgernj.com/

Chicken Breast with Ricotta and Spinach

Chicken Breast with Ricotta and Spinach

So while I went grocery shopping the other night, I was struck by the idea of stuffed chicken breast, so I picked up some ricotta and decided to throw together a recipe. An idea I’ve really been trying to focus on lately is taking the time to truly enjoy my food – to slow down and cook things that I like and can savor instead of just throwing stuff together really quick and having everything totally fly over my head. Last night, I treated the process of cooking as a sort of meditation, focusing and calming my mind. Afterward, I plated my dish on the nicest plates I had, poured two glasses of wine for me and Hans, and turned on Michael Buble for a nice quiet evening at home.

New Year’s Eve – Bread Pudding and “Mini Weenies”

Bread Pudding!

Mini Weenies!

Hello all! I know it’s been just about four months since I’ve posted anything. I was SUPER busy this semester with work and classes, but in particular two things ate up most of my blogging time – applying to veterinary school and working on a project called Comfort Foods Dessert-ation.

So I’m graduating in May, and hopefully by then I’ll know what I’m going to do with my life. Applying to veterinary school has been highly stressful. My grades aren’t as great as they should be, which was really discouraging me from applying at first, but I figured I should at least give it a shot. Luckily, I had a few people to write awesome recommendations for me, and hopefully the essays I wrote were pretty good. I spent a lot of time writing them, and I really tried to think out of the box..

Turkey Chili Soup

Phew. I’ve been really busy. Been putting off this post for a couple of weeks already, but I suppose it was worth it! My fifth draft of my personal statement for vet school is actually readable, though I still have a long way to go.. And I still have to write all the mini-essays for all my supplementary apps.. Sigh.

Work at the computer lab has been busy, too, since school is just starting this week, and so the management staff and I have been busy putting all the finishing touches on things that we’ll need for this semester.. Stats sheets, bulletin boards, updating tickets and documentation, and so many things! I’m glad to say that I was promoted just today, from Supervisor-in-Training to Assistant Lab Supervisor! Hoorah! Going to iHop later tonight to celebrate and catch up with some friends. =)

Anywho, here is the recipe for Turkey Chili. It’s modified from Gina’s Skinny Recipes’ Turkey Chili Taco Soup, and I added a little BBQ flavor to it by using some ingredients from my BBQ Tukery Sloppy Joes recipe. I also didn’t add the chicken broth so that the chili would be thicker instead of soupier. Hans and I have been trying to be healthier lately, so we started on Weight Watchers a few weeks ago, and Gina’s Skinny Recipes has been the greatest resource! I’ve already tried her Low Fat Creamy Mushroom soup and her Tomato Bisque soup, though the tomato bisque came out chunky since I didn’t have a blender.. Oh well, I’ll try it again sometime, but in any case, all three soups were delicious!

Lime Butter Salmon

Life! It has been so busy between work, class, and vet school applications. Yep, that’s right. I’m filling out my vet school applications. So nerve-wracking! I’m applying to 8 schools in all. I know that sounds a bit excessive, but I figure it’s better to be safe than sorry. I just finished asking my professors and my old boss for recommendations, and now I’m working on my personal statements. I’m hoping to get done early, by September, if possible, so I don’t have to worry about anything being late. Simply applying is gonna cost me money up the wazoo, but my heart is all in this, and I’m hoping for the best.

I haven’t had time to breathe let alone write up a post, so here’s something Hans whipped up about two weeks ago. He’s a lot better at experimenting than I am, thus there is no need for a recipe link. We had a bunch of limes left over from a party we had (we did the tequila shots without them!) so Hans decided to use those.

What do dogs dream about?

I was doing my physics homework last night alongside Hans, who was playing some Battlefield: Bad Company 2. All was quiet, aside from the scrawling of my pencil on my paper, and the muffled sounds of simulated war coming from Hans’ headphones. I looked over to the couch at my dog, Rory, who was fast asleep.

Numi Organic Tea – Rooibos Red Mellow Bush

Today, I completely forgot to eat breakfast on the way to class, and so I stopped by the campus center for a bagel and some tea. They had a large selection of Numi Organic Teas, and so I picked the Rooibos Red Mellow Bush from their list. I had never had rooibos tea before, and so I figured I’d give it a try instead of my usual black, green, or chai teas.

I looked up rooibos tea later on in the day and found these neat tidbits. Rooibos tea is made from the rooibos bush that grows in South Africa. The tea is made of the rooibos’ little needle-like leaves. Other names include redbush tea, South African red tea, or simply red tea. In South Africa it is common to drink rooibos tea without milk, but instead with a slice of lemon and sugar or honey.

River Thai Cuisine

Hans and I got home from work last Tuesday and didn’t feel like cooking, so we decided to use one of our Restaurant.com coupons and go out to eat. I got the coupons for a great deal – the website was having a promo at the time and was offering $2 for a $25 gift certificate! The only requirements were that you spend at least $35 minimum and that you tip 18% on the entire bill. So yeah, you should definitely check that out sometime. They have deals like that all the time.

We drove half an hour from home to get to Thai Shangri-La, a restaurant in Old Bridge, only to find out, to our horrifying dismay, that it was closed! What a coincidence, open every day EXCEPT for Tuesday. We were devastated (and incredibly hungry). We had our hearts set on Thai food, so a quick Google search on our phones revealed to us that there was a Thai restaurant with great reviews about 12 minutes away.

River Thai Cuisine
50 Main St.
South River, NJ 08882-1225
Telephone Number: (732) 698-2225

Chicken with Garlic Sauce

So Hans has recently gotten into this show called “The Big Bang Theory.” The show mainly revolves around physicists and roommates Leonard (the most normal one) and Sheldon (the arrogant/unbearable one) and their uber-geeky adventures. Alongside them are their friends and fellow geeks Raj (the pathologically shy one) and Howard (the pervy gross one). Pretty girl and Cheesecake Factory waitress Penny moves in across the hall from Leonard and Sheldon and hangs out with them on a daily basis, despite the inability to understand any of their geeky references, and Leonard falls hopelessly in love.

The show is so laugh out loud funny (especially to nerds like Hans and I), though it’s annoyingly male dominated for the first couple of seasons. Things perk up when they add Bernadette (the book-smart, but slightly ditzy girlfriend to Howard) and Amy (the female version of Sheldon) to the cast. Then at least after that its not a sausage fest, and television can finally admit that the diverse community of girl geeks exists.