So before I start I just wanted to announce that my parents are coming this weekend which means I am about to have alot of good meals. I was also thinking about birthdays and food. It is my roommate's birthday tomorrow and so my other roommates and I were brainstorming on what we should do for her and every idea, every idea had to do with food. make her breakfast, take her to dinner, invite people over for cake, get her candy with a card. I just though that was really funny and I just remember being little and it was more about the toys...do we get more food obsessed as we get older?

If I had to compare myself to a Disney character I would have to choose Mulan. Although I have never pretended to be a man for any reason (noble or weird), I guess I would consider myself more of a tomboy than most. She is also very bold and clumsy which are two traits I seem to see in myself. She has trouble finding men...ironically until she becomes a man but Im not going to take that idea too seriously. Also, if I were able to learn the art of Chinese war highkicks, I would want mine to look like hers.

coldstone

so it was waffle wednesday and you only get this if you buy a love it...so going in for a kid size and coming out with a love it ended up making my stomach ache. I think its funny that they get you all excited for free stuff but then end up paying more than you though. that's the whole point of SWAG...its not really free cuz you pay more for it

breakfast burrito split

So i am a little late on the blog. my apologies. rough day yesterday. But yesterday me and my roomate got up at 7 in the morning (which is a huge deal since neither of us have class on wednesdays) and we made breakfast burritos. I am not talking whimpy, these things were mondo! First we made 8 eggs and scrambled them, then we made 6 strips of bacon, then hashbrowns (crisply cooked), then we set out the cheese, salsa, onions and the pack of tortillas that is so big it wouldn't fit on the big plates we have. A lot of work went into these. So We put everything in ours and were very excited to bite into it when at the same time both of our tortillas cracked and the contents poured out the side onto our fingers. Don't you hate that? well despite this, they were absolutely delicious and we had so many left over materials that our other roomates were able to get in on the action.

questions

I thought i'd answer the questions on Professor Larsen's blog...they seemed fun:
TEN YEARS AGO
...I wasn't tall enough to reach the top cupboards of the kitchen. My best surprise of the day was whether or not my mom packed me a lunchable in my lunchbox. Tetherball and Skip-it ruled all. (I was only 9 but being 19 now, tetherball still rules all)

THINGS I WOULD DO IF I WERE A MILLIONAIRE
-set up recycling stations in Utah
-travel to one new country every year

3 BAD HABITS
1. the classic one: biting nails
2. not using a straw when drinking soda
3. shaking my leg when I'm thinking hard

SOMETHING PEOPLE DON'T KNOW ABOUT ME
...is that i pretty much put barbeque sauce on everything. kind of gross i know, but im starting to grow out of it. I used to be so bad that I would put it on my salads

that time of the semester

It's about that time in the semester when each day you feel as though you have about five things due in class and about three tests. Whether this just feels like the case or whether it is actually true is irrelevant, no matter what you will stay up until about three AM trying to finish everything up, maybe watching an episode of the office in between. And during these assignments it has been my habit to also get a snack or two. It's weird that food really does help you stay up to finish homework or study. I have to thank food for that.

Food for the Weekend

So I went home this past weekend and I didn't realize the vast difference between the food I eat here as a poor college student doing my own shopping and home where my mom buys all the food. Its a huge difference, not only in the amount of food I eat but what types of food. I go for the cheap stuff here but my parents can afford the high end stuff: basically not top ramen. White vs. Wheat, Beans vs. Meat, PB&J vs. Turkey and Provolone. I got spoiled and now I am back to eating soup and saltines. It seems like going home almost everything had to do with food: meeting up with friends for dinner, road trip snacks, out to eat with the parents, s'mores over the fire, etc. I felt like the activities were revolving around food, which isn't a bad thing at all. We had 6 friends come with me and my sister so our refrigerator was PACKED full of food! My mom took every precaution she could so that we wouldn't go hungry.

Chinese Food?

The best part of a Chinese food is the fortune cookie! I love them so much. When my group went to a chinese food place for our restaurant review we received chocolate covered fortune cookies which were so good. For valentines day my roomate's mom bought us dark chocolate covered fortune cookies which were absolutely to die for! I just ate one so that I could share with you guys my fortune:

"Seek friends that know when to offer advice, and when to sit in quiet support"

..so true.

What I have come to notice lately is that everyone does things just because people they like or people they know are doing it. I guess because this never really mattered to me, it has been bugging me lately:

I am planning on going home for president’s day weekend and when I told one of my friends that she should come with me she replied “eh that won’t be fun…I have homework to do…” pretty much listed off roughly 8 excuses so that I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on one in which to engage in debate. She made it clear that she didn’t want to even harvest the idea so I dropped it. The next day, I mentioned this trip to three of my other friends, that they should come home with me and they got really excited so the plans were made. When my first pessimistic “I don’t want to go to California” friend heard this news(one of the peole that are now going is a boy she likes) she now made it clear that she now suddenly had no plans, no homework, and has since then dedicated her life to being excited about the trip.

I realized that people do this a lot with places to eat too. I know people that go into starbucks because of people who they hope to see there, not to order anything. Or people who go to one restaurant or the other because the guy they have a crush on loves that place and they want to tell him they’ve been there too.

I think that people should adopt the philosophy of doing what they want. This peer pressure/trendy idea is driving me nuts. This blog is probably making me hypocritical because I am sure I am guilty of the same thing now and again. Oh well no one really knows me so they can’t prove it :)

President Hinckley

Knowing of no other prophet my whole entire life I don't think it has really hit me yet about the passing of President Hinckley. I guess ignorantly I just tried not to think about when his time would come. It's one of those things like we were discussing in class that I'll always remember where I was and what I was doing when I found out. I am a quote person...I guess that is the English major in me.

"Faith in something greater than ourselves enables us to do what we have said we'll do, to press formward when we are tired or hurt or afraid, to keep going when the challenge seems overwhelming and the course is entirely uncertain."

I am reading about Freud, a brilliant analytical thinker but a complete atheist, for my psychology of religion class. I remember him calling religion just "deep-seated wishes". Having this reading assignment over the weekend it just make me laugh at this idea when all over the news there was this man (President Hinckley) who could not have been what he was with out the lord. Although I do not have a memory of meeting President Hinckley or being near him, I have learned so much from what he speaks about...this simple faith that does enable us to be more than we ever could. "Deep-seated wishes" are not what gets us through these rough patches.

making the best impression?

My mom has never been the one to make these extravagant new meals that no ones ever made before. She has always been the type to perfect what she knows. When my friends came over my house it was always the simple traditional stuff, but man does her simple stuff taste the best! I think she sticks to traditional with my friends and anyone else because her worse fear is that she will make something someone won't like. She usually sticks to rolls, ribs, mashed potatoes, pasta salad, dip, SPAGHETTI!, lasagna, stuff like that. When she does want to make a really good meal that she knows will get alot of compliments she makes her Italian food. She is 100% Italian and so it must be in her blood because she really makes the best eggplant parmisian in the world. I did't bring the recipe with me but I usually call her whenever I attempt to make it up here at school. Unfortunately I only got half her blood so it is only half as good when I make it. The other half of my blood is from an Irish cereal pourer :) so I have to learn to compensate with lots and lots of cooking practice. In class we were talking about traditions and stuff and I was thinking that aside from the famous Thanksgiving dinner my mom always makes and the Christmas breakfast, what I always remember is when our church started early we would come home around 11:30 or 12:00 and be starving. We always knew that by the time we got dressed in our PJs (another sunday tradition) my mom would have already made those turkey sandwiches on the long french bread with all the veggies. My siblings and I would just cut it up, eat it and die on the couch :)

Blog #2

So i hear that our second blog is due tomorrow...conveniently I just got back from the Olive Garden so that provides me with a topic to "blog" about (im still not quite comfortable using that word for some reason lol). Because we were talking about our food values today in class, I of course had them in mind when I was sitting there eating dinner (hard to enjoy yourself when you are thinking about school, but I guess its better than having a math problem stuck in your head). I was looking at the menu prices and realized that this place was really expensive but that was not really a value I had because I had an Olive Garden gift card (gift cards are on my list of top five favorite things). I realize when something is free, everything is just so much better! The waitress was so nice too and she actually gave my sister and I free soup! Minestrone!

Food

My one and only disappointment :) at coming to BYU is that there is no In n Out. Over break I needed to have it at least two or three times a week so that I could have enough of it in my system to last until I take a trip to Vegas. Because of the intensity of this bad news, I thought I'd share some good news. Another food chain that I love is Chipotle and I heard yesterday that there is one in Salt Lake. So that's pretty exciting.

I have come to really love the grocery store. Something about living on your own and knowing you can put whatever you want in that cart is kind of refreshing. But then there is the downside: the register. I guess you could classify me in the group of "very poor college students." This means clipping coupons and generic brands. No more Jiffy peanut butter or Cap'n Crunch...it's Kroger and Malt 'O Meal.