Happy Earth Day!

~ Highlight of the Day: Coming home from a run and being given pizza for dinner :) ~

 

Happy Earth Day!

 

I would just like to formally thank Google for so graciously notifying me of the fact that today was Earth Day. I spent a good ten minutes this morning playing with the rain clouds, flowery 'G', and the cycle of the sun and the moon.

 

To celebrate today I:

 

1. Planted a whole lot of persimmon seeds that have been patiently

stratifying in our fridge for the last 4 months

(and needed to be cleaned out for cleaning checks today. . . :)

 

2. Watched Phineas and Ferb save the world from an

alternate dimension Dufensmaurf 

(this included two tree house giants - very earth day-ish )

 

3. Nurtured a general appreciation for trees and green

things by running along the Provo river.

 

I may be busy surviving finals week,

 but I will always find time to celebrate Earth Day.

 Always.

 

Oh! And I watched the latest Tinkerbell movie yesterday. It is by far the best one yet - and it definitely served as a good earth-day-eve celebration.

 

 

 I hope you were all able to enjoy this fabulous Earth Day as much as I did :)

 

Only one final left!

so close. . .

 

Emily's Going On A Mission

~ Highlight of the Day: Watching Emily open her mission call ~

 

Emily (my roommate) has been called to Tokyo Japan! She leaves August 28th!

Of course, we didn't get to know this until waiting through ages and ages of her cutting open the envelope. Really. I got more pictures of her with the scissors than of anything else.

 

But she did eventually read it and all, and we are SO excited for her!

 

 

Yeah, I Do Stuff

~ Highlight of the Day: Reading Calvin and Hobbes instead of studying. Like a straight A student :) ~

Well I have just been so productive these past few postless weeks.

 

So productive I can't even remember it. . . oh, wait. I did become the proud owner of five Calvin and Hobbes books! I'm pretty pleased with myself for that. And I drove from Arizona to Utah! Yeah. . . I remember now, that's what I did last weekend. . .  :)

 

So now I have a cute little blue car that doesn't like shifting from 1st to 2nd and from 2nd to 3rd. Lets just say that made all the hills in between here and Arizona really exciting :) But we made it, and that's what counts.

 

Also I made falafel. Well, Madison and Mitch made falafel, and I cut up stuff to go on top of it. But I made pitas! Sort of. I made the dough and then Virginia's friend (who's name totally escapes me *hides face in shame*) rolled it out perfectly and Madison and Mitch baked them :)

 

They were pretty good for falafel from a mix.

 

 

 

But next time we make it it'll be from scratch. Yep. You should all be really excited.

 

And I got dirt from the good ol' Home Depot! I'm not quite sure what I'm going to grow yet, but it'll be way cool, I assure you.

 

I even spent hours and hours in the library on Saturday, I was just that productive. There was this fascinating exhibit of illustrations done from Indian legends:

 

Marina and I spent a good 45 minutes reading the stories. . .

someday I will be able to illustrate like this.

 

 

 

 And I'll write/illustrate all sorts of children's books about umbrellas and prince-winning cookies, and probably a few ducks and camels too :)

 



 

 

 

 

I Want To Ride My Bicycle. . .

~ Highlight of the Yesterday: Annie driving me and Marina home :) ~

 

Confidence is a great thing. And most of the time it benefits me.

And then sometimes it gets me into interesting situations. . .
Like the biking-all-the-way-to-the-theater-cause-we-don't-need-cars kind of confidence.
That one can be troublesome.
It tends to result in being-stranded-cause-we-were-too-sore-to-bike-back humility.

The movie was great though. It was a documentary called Girl Rising,
way worth being way sore for :)
 

 

Things I am really thankful for: Huge trucks that can transport bikes.

Annie's pity. Good weather. An education.  

Lots of Really Black Stuff. . . and He-man

~ Highlight of the Day: Getting new [neon] socks ~

It's finally Friday! And Friday is finally over! This has been a busier week than I anticipated. Not bad, just busy.

 

In Drawing 101 today we learned about charcoal, and got filthy dirty. We also collaborated as a class to draw this:

 

 

Super cool, right? I've also just completed a portrait of Ned the Pie maker from Pushing Daisies in charcoal. I don't like charcoal much. It's too messy. . . but I do like Ned :)

Oh! And I finally found the episode of He-man I grew up watching. It's pretty great, just sayin':

Part one can be found here,

 

And part two is found here.

 

Enjoy :)

 

 

Sister Adams

~ Highlight of the Day: Seeing Sister Jessica Adams at the MTC today - best day ever. :) ~

 

I don't have anything else to post about. . .

I just really wanted to post the Highlight of the Day. 

 

And a little less than a year and a half from now when Sister Adams is back from Scotland and catching up on all my blog posts she'll know how her totally interrupting the lesson the poor Sister was trying to teach me by  shouting my name over and over right outside the doorway totally made my day, even though I couldn't find her afterward to talk with her :)

 

 

Cullinary Adventures with Rachel

~ Highlight of the Day: Getting my bike lock cut by BYU police - I really hope I make it into the BYU Police Beat! :) ~

 

I cooked a lot of new stuff this weekend. I must be finally getting bored of all the recipes I discovered at the beginning of the semester :)

 

Friday night I made Stuffed Peppers:

 

 

 I had been craving these like a crazy person for a good half a week, so as soon as I got home from class on Friday I started busting these out. I pretty sure these are unlike any stuffed peppers ever made before - but they turned out great :)

 

It's just ground beef (the not-lean kind, cause it's cheaper and all that jazz) , worcestershire sauce, a small can of tomato paste, a can of diced tomatoes and green chilies, and salt. (topped with liberal amounts of cheese, of course)

 

Then Saturday morning I got kind of ambitious and decided to try something other than bacon and eggs for breakfast. So I made these really cute little sausage and egg muffins:

 



 

 They taste great. Especially the ones with a sun dried tomato in them. But the pan was so hard to clean. I think I was scrubbing that muffin pan for a good hour. Not fun. Next time I'm using the little papers.

 

These are great for quick breakfasts though, which is nice when I'm supposed to be somewhere at 8 or earlier every day of the week :) 

 

And then there was the duck.

 

I first ran into this little guy in the frozen meat section of WinCo. I was looking for chicken, and got distracted by the large frozen turkeys. I thought, 'how long would a whole turkey last me? about a month? Maybe two?' And then I looked at the prices on the turkeys, and then at the five lbs of corned beef and 4 lbs of ham I already had in my cart. And then I saw the frozen ducks.

 

'How hard can that be?' I thought. I had never had duck, and the size looked so manageable! So I brought one home and stuck it in the freezer.

 

And that's where it sat for two and a half weeks, till I went shopping again and needed more room in the freezer. So it got bumped to the refrigerator to be prepared for cooking.

 

I have never dealt with meat that looked so much like the original animal. . . it was. . . new.

Fortunately for me (and unfortunately for all of you) my roommates were all busy getting ready for church, and didn't catch my reactions to preparing this duck on video :)

 

 

I know when my dad makes the Thanksgiving turkey he stuffs it full of oranges and onions, so I figured, why not?! And I had a random lemon half left over from an avocado pie I'd made Saturday morning, so I threw that in there too - just for good measure.

 

 

After two hours I had a beautifully roasted duck,

and a bunch of burnt onions and oranges.

 

 

And even though it took me a good 40 minutes to carve it (how am I supposed to know where there's meat on a duck?!) It was totally worth it, and definitely a success.

 

Oh! And Easter's coming up! We died Easter eggs with our Family Home Evening group today - gotta love Easter eggs :) 

So there you have it. One weekend full of lots of time in the kitchen, and lots of good food :)