Tomato Basil Pasta

Yummy, yummy, yummy dinner recipe tonight from the Rachael Ray cookbook that Dy gave me a couple of Christmases ago. I couldn't wait to share it. Easy? check. Delicious? check. Leftovers for the rest of the week? check.

I had a RR recipe that didn't work for me earlier in the week. This one totally made up for it. So much so that I couldn't wait to post it.

adapted from 365: No Repeats. A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners by Rachael Ray

coarse salt
1 pound angel hair pasta
2 Tbsp EVOO
5 garlic cloves, minced
1 28-oz can crushed tomatoes (I got the ones with the Italian seasoning. . . yum!)
20 fresh basil leaves, shredded or torn
3 rounded Tbsp prepared pesto sauce
1 C grated Parmesan cheese

Cook pasta al dente.

While for the pasta is boiling, begin the sauce by heating a large, deep skillet over medium heat (make sure you use a big one). Add EVOO and garlic. Saute until garlic is browned.

Stir in tomatoes and heat through. Season with salt and pepper. Wilt the basil and turn off the heat. Stir in pesto sauce.

Drain pasta and add to the sauce. Toss in the pan to distribute. Sprinkle in cheese, tossing to combine. Rachael Ray recommends shaping the final product from this into nests, but I promise it is delicious even if you don't!

public transit & the windy city

walking back from dinner in downtown Chicago

thanks to UW, my free bus pass means i don't actually drive my car every day now. i recognize how wonderful this is - especially when i go to the gas pumps to fill up (typically for a longer, out-of-town-ish trip). so, as i planned a trip to chicago a couple of weeks ago, imagine my delight when i found that i could avoid the pumps all together (along with ridiculous parking fees) and get myself a ride on the megabus for $16 each way. factor in another $7 for a weekend pass on the trains and *bingo,* i've taken a trip from madison to downtown chicago to elmhurst back to downtown and back to madison for less than $50. bonuses: i lose less work time and i feel like an amazingly smart shopper. i find all of this to be incredibly rewarding.

jimmy hendrix floor of the hard rock

why a chicago trip, you ask? well, because matt and i are in different areas of psychology, a lot of the work we do, people we know, and conferences that we attend don't actually cross paths.  moreover, because we were only in graduate school together for that single year, i've never actually seen matt give a talk about his work. not only that, but i'm not sure when i would actually get to do so. it may not surprise you, then, that when matt got invited to give a talk at the MPA conference this year in Chicago, my mental math told me that this might be a good opportunity to take advantage of. better yet, when the conference hotel was all booked up, matt got us a room at the hard rock hotel. this made things really feel 50% work and 50% vacation.

matt gave his talk friday morning. and it won't surprise you that by the time that talk was over (he was wonderful, by the way), matt already had a restaurant selected and reservations made for a date night friday evening. he did quite a good job, too. i keep wanting to describe carnivale as a latin fusion place, but it is actually even more eclectic than that. the atmosphere, the service, and the food were all incredible. i would definitely go back and i would totally recommend it to anyone who plans on being in the area.

millenium park

and because i'm a good kid, i even got up and did my run on saturday morning. it didn't hurt that we were just down the block from millenium park, an inviting running opportunity. then we took the train out to elmhurst to spend derby day/cinco de mayo with dj and laura. sunday i took the train back in, hopped the megabus, and was home by dinner. if i had it in me to sleep on busses, the tip would've round it out as perfectly as it went down.

honestly, though, given all of our opportunities to get lost or miss our relative buss/plane/train rides, i'd say that things went down pretty seamlessly. we must be getting good at this traveling stuff. it had to happen eventually.

this week has been the last week of classes as UW. as a part of that, the undergraduate that i've been supervising this semester presented a poster of the findings of her independent project. she did wonderfully. i wanted to snap a picture, but there were about a million people in a teeny, tiny room, so i'm not even sure if i could have fit her and her poster in the same frame. bummer. you know what i did get, though? these amazing chocolate covered blueberries at trader joe's, which was just down the street. i also got some yummy trail mix (the possibly perfect blend of dried fruit and nuts) - but that didn't make it into a photo.

i'm getting antsy for summer. i'm itching to be outside - either running or by the lake with a good book. i have visions that i'll both be able to do this and also get a whole bunch of work done. and after kassi's graduation, nick and sarah's wedding, the dam to dam 5k, the icis conference, submitting my grant, and stats camp, i'm sure that will totally happen. . . right?

we're starting long and longer runs for during practices for our running program. i find myself getting a little anxious for the runs that seem like they might be daunting, but then eventually finding myself easing into things. it's pretty uplifting, actually, to find yourself going from thinking, "i don't know if i can do this" to "i think i've got this under control." it's kind of a weird time and place to have a moment of gratification, but welcomed nonetheless.

happy day before mother's day, everyone. and have a wonderful week!

mud run, anyone?

*woot woot* 

although i'm going to whine if my run tonight is in the rain, i just added this to my august schedule:

food for thought. lots of food.

i have a backlog of things that i've tried from my pinterest board that i haven't yet reported on. i also had a couple of things that, upon seeing them a second time, looked absolutely disgusting. i won't be reporting on those here. i actually don't even completely remember them, as they've now been deleted from my board. but i do have a few things to report on. some good. some not so good.

a few side notes first.  one is that i had matt try this quinoa, almond, berry salad the last time that i was in athens and he agreed that it is delicious. i suspect that we'll be bringing this fresh little salad to many a barbecue over the summer.

the second is that i briefly became obsessed with bringing this sandwich with me to work. what is it, you ask? well, it is multi-grain bread, garden veggie cream cheese, lettuce, tomato, and cucumber. and it's delicious. and i don't even like cream cheese. i just remembered that bagel street deli uses it to hold together the toppings for some of the sandwiches that i've gotten there. and i've not had anything there that i don't like, so i thought i might give it a try. (i also bought some hummus, which i KNOW that i like in place of the cream cheese on this one). thank you, BSD. are you ready for the real kicker on this one? knowing that she sometimes enjoys putting together new lunches for herself with the ingredients on hand at the coffee shop, i texted kara to let her know about my newest lunch obsession, she informed me that she had JUST decided to add that exact delight to her lunch menu! not impressed? the other sandwich that she decided to add was the hummus version. that's got to count as some sort of creepy-cool combination, right?

okay, on to the pinterest recipes.

first, mushrooms, quinoa, and egg (plus toast, because i like bread). this one looked so easy that i couldn't help but give it a try. i'm not going to lie, i was a little disappointed that mine didn't look that much like the picture posted with the recipe, but it still tasted really good. two eggs would work better than one (and it turns out that the recipe actually calls for two eggs, which i might have noticed if i would have read it more carefully). i'm not entirely sure that i trust that this would make for a lunch that i can actually heat up, but i would be willing to make it again for dinner.

and i did.

twice.

the verdict on this next one is less favorable. in theory, this one seemed like a good idea. chickpeas? love. basil? love. cherry tomatoes? love. i'm not generally big on feta, but hey. . . i'm adventurous.

but when you get a recipe that seems to be really easy because you get to use canned chickpeas, do you know what your recipe tastes like?

yup. canned chickpeas.

even with the dressing that you make to go on it, things are no better. i ate about two bites of this before i decided that i was going to eat something that i liked instead. lesson learned.

my favorite out of the new recipe bunch was this concoction of polenta, kale, mushroom, and provolone.  if - or more likely when - i make it again, i'll make a few adjustments, but i'm 99% sure that this is an artifact of my necessarily using a pie pan as my primary baking dish these days. i also used normal, cheap mushrooms instead of springing for portabellos. but i doubt that that was too big of a deal.

i think what i would do is use less kale next time. i forgot that kale had such a strong flavor, and when i use a smaller baking dish than is called for, i end up stacking it up and making it even worse. so, possibly more mushrooms and less kale next time. but that's about it.

thumbs up on that one, too.

one more thumbs up, but not for a recipe. for con agra foods. in all honesty, i just bought this healthy choice meal because i had a coupon for it (thanks, mom) and it's always handy to have a few of these around for the days that i have no leftovers but still need to bring lunch to work (this one was delicious, by the way). but look at that little cartoon pushpin on the box. i didn't even notice that until my pasta was in the microwave. but it turns out that if you just take time to enter the 8-digit code on the back of the box, you donate one meal to someone who needs it. or, actually, a monetary donation to a local food bank, but still. . . you get the picture.

and actually, they kind of make it seem like the money comes back to a local food bank. i'm not sure if that's actually true or not. i hope so. that would be cool

so that's it for the food summary as of late. 2 out of 3/3 out of 4 isn't too bad. i'm cool with that. more later on pinterest/coupon-related things.

"To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is to live forever." - H. Drummond

I'm still finding it shocking every day that other people could have possibly had a "normal" week last week. I was thinking this morning how the last time(s) that I remember feeling this way was after my family would take long trips together. we would have these long days spent driving across the country, spending every night in a different city, taking photos with both big sites and local landmarks, working together to make sure that we were almost always near a swimming pool. since we were all together, there weren't any "check-in" calls to make or things back home to think about - especially for someone under 10 years of age. i remember getting back and hearing about things that people did: softball games, afternoons at the swimming pool, birthday treats at sunday school, sometimes even trips of their own. it was so hard to reconcile with my own reality. how could life have continued to exist, presumably just as it would have if i had been there, when my life had been so different?

The last week has been no vacation, but the sentiment is much the same. A whole week of April passed, presumably unnoticed, and people continued on in their usual ways. I found myself starting a new week, feeling very much different, while everyone else appeared to feel the same monotony as they did in the first half of the month. I can't blame them, I suppose. It's hard not to be deceived by the surroundings: same people, same offices, same appointments, same bus routes. Some people are still eating the same things every day for lunch. But I feel it so strongly that I need to keep reminding myself that they cannot.

When I cope at all (which I typically do, assuming I am not having to make any decisions about big life changes), I am an internal coper. And I think that love and loss is so intensely personal that I could not imagine sharing it with too many others. So this is not an introduction to a larger essay about my thoughts and feelings and experiences over the last week. But I do owe many, many thanks to many, many people. I have been told on more than one occasion that I am a difficult person to reach out to. I am fairly private about personal matters, I am fiercely independent, I am wildly sensitive about feeling overly vulnerable. I imagine that this is largely expounded by the fact that so many of my relationships are maintained via the internet these days. So lest my other actions not adequately convey it, I just wanted to say that I am incredibly grateful to everyone who has reached out to my family and to me over the last week. Believe it or not, I am still receiving cards and e-mails. Whatever luck I had that placed me amidst such a caring group of hearts, I am intensely grateful.

Thank you.

blogging the sequel

the second half of the last few weeks of traveling happened, as most of you know, in ohio.

you brought a dog. . .to a bar

by far, the weirdest event happened almost right away. as i've learned typically occurs in athens, several young members of the psychology department headed to a local brewery on friday afternoon for dinner (pizza. . . yum!) and drinks on the outdoor patio. afterward, the same crowd found themselves next door to check out the live band lineup. what's weird about that? well, the fact that an extremely overzealous patron stole the show for almost the entire evening with his dog.

wait, a dog in a bar?

yep. and despite being willing to smile for a pic when our new little buddy made his way around the table to my lap, i was only slightly less amused than the band that was trying to perform for the handful of patrons that were present. or matt when the owner pulled a knife out of his bag and tried to show us how the dog hated weapons and would just swat it away (with a table full of potential petters, i have to say that the dog did not care at all about much else).

the bright side was that this changed a few of our attitudes about american pit bulls. despite the reputation, this might have been one of the sweetest dogs i've ever met.

snail friend

i know, i know. what can possibly follow that up? i can't say that i have a lot of good stories about our work days. and it turns out that it's really difficult to take photos of yourself (or even other things) when you're on a run. though i must give props to the hockhocking adena bikeway that runs right in front of matt's place and was perfect for keeping up with my running program while i was away. and, when i went to grab lunch one day (that path literally leads right to subway. . .), i did manage to snap a pic of this little guy. he's cute, right? he was just inching his way across the path. it was the translucence of the shell, i think, that caught my eye.

cool cave!

i did not get matt to run with me while i was in ohio, but he was an extremely good sport about doing the sunday walks with me. in fact, the first sunday hosted an all-afternoon hike, planned by matthew himself. we started at sells park, which many people (not me) had never heard of, and walked toward a rock house (which we never made it to, as a 10-mile round trip hike didn't sound that appealing to either one of us. it didn't really matter, though, as there were enough things to discover on the trails to hold our attention. aside from the *awesome* pseudo wind chime that i posted on dad's facebook, i think we totaled having seen a giant turtle, a crawfish, lots of birds, tadpoles, and frogs, several squirrels, some pretty awesome rock formations, and a few hippies out on their own afternoon hikes. quite a productive afternoon for a sunday.

the second sunday, of course, was Easter sunday. we had a small run in with a swallow in the morning (although i am still thankful it turned out not to be a mouse/rat/anything rodent-like) and then headed over to whipple. i can't really claim any credit for the cooking, so i'll say that matt and peggy put together a pretty wonderful meal. chicken, potatoes, noodles, beans, and then a piece of this adorable easter bunny cake. seriously, how cute is that? it had a little icing tail on the back and everything.

what you may not realize is that all of that purple is icing, so by the time we got in his car and followed peggy to the movie theater for an Easter matinee, both matt and i were either on a crazy sugar high or in the midst of a pretty horrendous crash in blood sugar. i don't know that my body has gone through that kind of spike-crash in quite a while. totally worth it, though. i'd eat my piece of Easter bunny cake again. . . any day of the week!

unnamed lagoon

that really just left us one more day. i flew out on tuesday rather than monday for this trip because (a) it was cheaper and i was buying my tickets later than usual and (b) chuck klosterman gave a free talk in athens on monday night. the venue asked that no photos be taken (and matt made be feel guilty when i got my phone out to sneak one), so i don't have a photo to post, but i can say that he did a very good job. as it turns out, just listening to him talk about his life in his overly-pensive and pretty humble way was pretty entertaining. and kind of similar to when i saw bob knight at penn state, the OU students asked a pretty impressive combination of insightful and semi-embarrassing (as in, "i'm embarrassed on their behalf") questions. otherwise, nothing else between hearing bob knight talk is similar to hearing chuck klosterman talk. i promise you that.

the very beginning. . .a very good place to start

i'm not entirely sure what i've done since my last post. my calendar indicates that i have, in fact, had a number of activities that have come and gone since march 23. my memory is kind of a blur, however.

so i'll just start at the beginning (or where i remember the beginning to be) and see what i can fill in from there.

world's largest, i guess

things actually start with the "world's largest culvers." in our cars, an advertisement like that almost guarnatees you a spot as the lunch place of choice. as the picture and caption suggest, it was more than a little underwhelming. but. . .i learned that culvers got its start in wisconsin AND that they have surprisingly good salads. so, i guess that all was not lost.

look at this cutie 

at the end of matt's trip to madison, we spent the weekend in chicago. we were extremely excited, as we hadn't seen dj and laura for what seems like ages. it would be an opportunity to get caught up, see their new house, and (for me) to meet little hudson. despite being sick, he was pretty adorable. very interested in all of the things happening around him and very in love with his momma. not that we can blame him.

also adorable - combined in a weird way with kind of scary - was getting to watch matt and dj, both alumns of ohio university, watch the ohio v. north carolina game of the NCAA tournament's sweet sixteen. some hearts were slightly broken, to be sure, but bobcat pride over the general excitement of the game and the milliseconds in which cooper's last second shot seemed to be heading through the hoop won out as the general tone of the weekend regarding the tourney. thank goodness, because i like me a good pair of optimists.

adorable neighborhood in bloom

aside from friendship and basketball, another theme of the weekend definitely revolved around food. i had my first "real" chicago dog (sans mustard, in case that somehow minimizes its validity), which was delicious. we had chicago's version of thin-crust pizza (obviously delicious. . . it's not like i wouldn't like pizza. . . ), and of course laura prepped something that was authentically italian, smelled like heaven, and melted in your mouth. i don't remember what it was called, but it involved thin slices of a spicy italian meat (that i also don't remember the name of. hmmm, maybe i need to start taking notes). in the grand finale of food-related tales, i found myself all kinds of sick with what we can only assume was food poisoning after i got back to madison. this was not at all fun - lasting from sunday night well well through tuesday - but i stand by the notion that i got extremely lucky in a couple of ways. (a) it would have made life much more difficult if matt had gotten sick rather than me. he had a fairly long trip (flight + drive) back home and a very busy schedule at the week's beginning. so, if i had to have taken one for the team here, i'm happy to do it. i can't imagine being that kind of sick in an airport. (b) similarly, i made the entire drive home before things really cut loose. i was not feeling terrific when i dropped matt off at the milwaukee airport, but i didn't feel nearly as bad as i did about four hours later. (c) one could think of a number of other places that this could have happened earlier in the trip that would have made the entire weekend not only a bust, but absolutely miserable. as it happened, i just stayed in bed for the majority of monday and tuesday. and (d), i felt so much better in the afternoon on wednesday that i was able to make our wednesday night running group. i similarly made my 5:30 AM flight the following day without any problems. well. . .except for that being an obscenely early flight time.

see? so things really could have been worse. that being said, black bean burgers are still not a part of my diet.

i definitely cannot make it though the details (and photos) of the subsequent ohio trip before needing to get ready for tonight's running group, so this will have to be a two-part posting.

maybe while you wait, you should go post a comment on our wedding website :) that always makes me happy.