Arrivals

So some good news. Not only am I one week away from spring break I am 2.5 days away from seeing Mario! My boyfriend Mario arrives on Monday and we haven't seen each other since January 11. That is in fact the shortest time we have been apart since I left spain, but it still felt like forever. Hopefully we will get some much needed paperwork finished while he is here.

Above is some graffiti we did while roaming around in Tarragona.

wedgiedom..and other things

This wasnt really supposed to be all about the foods I am eating, so here are some other things going on in my life right now.
I got a job in a lab, of course, working with mice. I got to see 2 litters of baby mice on my first day and i have to say they look like aliens. I mean human babies are pretty rasin-y and gross when they pop out but mice are reallllly gross.



This is a picture of my desk. I have to say i have had 0 desks in my life and this one though it may be modest is AMAZING. and not to mention the computer is nicer than anyone i have ever owned.



So here are some potato wedgies I made. I coated them in an egg mixed with olive oil. a bunch of red pepper, salt and normal pepper.



So then after an intense workout I went to Otherlands with my friend and she got this sandwich called the "bagel sandwich thing". it was good. I had a bite. We also appropriately ended our workout with a huggee slice of carrot cake that we are now addicted to.



spinach, feta, avocado, tomatoes, pear, olive oil...thats all I need to say

tofu-1 amanda-0

So in my attempts at becoming a semi-vegeterian I have tried to dabble in tofu. I read on a few websites that you just marinate it in your favorite sauce and then fry in the skillet. Well that didnt workout so well.



here is a picture of my stove looking a complete mess because I had no idea what I was doing. The tofu turned out horrible and tasted like the bottom of a shoe. I believe it also had to do with the sweet and sour sauce I bought. That was supposed to be my saving grace. If it tastes like crap pour the sauce on it. well the sauce also tasted like crap.



So you may be wondering what in the heck is a semi-vegeterian...well if someone gives me free food and it happens to have meat in it.. I cant say no. Im in college i cant turn down free food.

anti snow day pizza

So there was more snow. This winter so far has seriously been one heck of a snow storm. The Northeast is getting pounded and here we are a little ole southern town and I have to de-ice my car before i got to school. All those global warming skeptics are probably drinking champagne and buying hummers.

Here is my front yard with the recent dusting. It wasnt enough to cancel classes but it gave everyone a scare.

In honor of the snow day i decided to try a recipe i found for eggplant pizza. basically its eggplant, cheese, pesto, crust, sauce, 8mins at 450.

Why dont they make eggplants smaller? With all the genetic engineering you would think they could make a single serving eggplant......

Here is the crust. I used prego spaghetti sauce for the base.

I added motzerella, provolone, and cheddar cheese. Today i re-made the recipe and I would suggest doubling that amount of cheese. its way better with more cheesey goodness.

Here is the final product! it is beautiful, and it tasted beautiful.

snow days are amazing but somehow i find it incredibly hard to do schoolwork with all that winterwonderland going on outside. probably i shouldnt move farther north

i need some Zzzzzzs

This is an electron micrograph of Salmonella. It is of course artifically colored, but i think the little pink lines are flagella. This little bugger cost me last night and all day today. It seems that eating "questionable" lunchmeat is not the best idea in the world. Im big on throwing things away as soon as i have the thought "now when did I buy this?" Apparently my dad trusted whatever was in his fridge and fell victim to this enterobacteria. Ouch. Its nasty stuff. So as a warning to all you fellow eaters out there (pretty much everyone) watch out. those expiration dates are there for a reason. Now if I can only get my boyfriend to believe me. He thinks there is an expiration date conspiracy where they set them really early in order to make you buy more of their product. Yea that might be true, but part of me is still-if the date says throw it out, its goin out.

I also realized that I do HORRIBLY without sleep for one night, it totally ruins your day. When I was in Barcelona we stayed out until 6am one night and I thought for sure the next day that i might have ran a marathon or something. I guess we all take for granted how important sleep is.

fun fact- if you have jet lag, for the next month after the jet lag experience, you have decreased brain function. A whole month!!! whew

picture courtesy of wiki

Kindle Vs Book

Here it is, the Amazon Kindle. It is one of the most amazing pieces of technology that i have recently been able to witness. These things that I come across make me really love technology. I have a few dilemmas with it but first let me talk about how amazing it is. I have been to a few electronics stores recently and I have played with the various new "desktop PCs." The ipad is cool, yea i dont really have a use for one, the HP version is cool, its a bit smaller, but really in this situation you have to ask yourself "how much more portable does a laptop need to be?" The one feature that makes the kindle so amazing, is the screen itself. They have made it in such a way so that there is no light behind it. This allows for an extremely detailed picture and one that is as similar to the pages of a real book as possible. There are no pixels, or loading, or lag time, because its not that type of screen. I am also pretty sure that the battery will last me a really long time.

How does this compare to reading an actual book? Well I am no stranger to books, this photo below is one of many bookshelves I own and I love having them around. I love the smell the feel, the act of going to a bookstore. All of it is amazing. I simply am not ready to give this up. Somehow the magic will be lost. If i take a step back and look at this from a global perspective it is more efficient and cost effective to have everyone using e-books like the kindle. we would be saving tons of pulp from

trees, and in reality books would be cheaper and more accessible to everyone. Sure bookstores would go out of style, but maybe the coffee shop would replace them. I firmly believe all textbooks now should be in online form and they are slowly heading that way. But every book? Its a hard idea to grasp. However, maybe our generation shouldn't make the same mistake that the one before us did. There were people who believed that computers, the space age, and technology would ruin our culture. In a way it has enhanced it. Maybe this is one of those things we will just have to get used to. As long as there is still a library around I can go sit in, I think I will be ok.