My Soulmate

I have been known to say in the past that chocolate is my soulmate. When these little puppies arrived at my door, compliments of one Ms. Alison Krepp, I certainly was convinced. I mean really - you can get these things DELIVERED TO YOUR DOORSTEP!!!! I am so glad my friends know me so well :)

Strawberry Shortcake

Day 20: a photo of something you ate today

Strawberry shortcake either Walker or Wolgamuth style - not sure which, but it was my mom's style. Bisquick biscuits, strawberries, milk and sugar...and you serve it for dinner :)

I Scream for Ice Cream

Day 8: a photo of something you enjoy doing

Eating gelati's from Rita's...or snowballs from Bonkey's in New Freedom...or Frosty's from Wendy's...or milkshakes from Chick-Fil-A...or sherbert from Ye Old Fashioned...or chocolate ice cream with two scoops of raspberries from Cold Stone...are you catching my theme??? If it's a frozen dessert with tons of sugar and excessive calories I more than likely love eating it. And hence the picture of Nikole and I eating gelatis while sitting in the car with the heat on because it was so cold outside is today's winning picture...you have to sacrifice for deliciousness people.

C is for Chocolate

Anyone who knows much about me knows I am pretty much obsessed with chocolate. And thus, my friend Nicole sent me this picture which indicates to me that there is an amazing item in the world that I need to own...and then eat...the 5 pound Hershey's chocolate bar...

I also wouldn't mind owning a chocolate diamond, which I didn't know existed until 2 months ago!
How have I not known about so many chocolate items?

A Good Way to Start a Morning

Today is my intern, Lauton's birthday. Not only is he a spectacular intern in that he's really good at his job, but he is a spectacular intern because he thinks of things like BRINGING ME CAKE ON HIS BIRTHDAY! You read that right, for HIS birthday, I got a piece of his crepe birthday cake. It's from the Charleston Crepe Company, which is one of my favorite reasons for going to the farmer's market on Saturday mornings. Except that instead of just one crepe, there are 30, and every layer has chocolate in between it. This day is off to a REALLY good start!

Cupcake Mania

Tonight Abbi and I made the most amazing cupcakes, I personally have ever made. In fact they were so great, that I have a new category for posts - food. It seems to be my new favorite past time. But back to the cupcakes. We stole the idea from Our Best Bites. While we were looking through their site we also saw these owl lollipops, so we decided to do a little improvising and make some of our own. We've decided you can determine if ours are cuter...

So, first we made our own icing so we could squeeze it out of a bag onto the cupcakes...by the way, this is crazy easy, I may never buy icing again.

Then of course cupcakes were necessary...
We put down some base coloring for our cupcake animals. Abbi was testing who was cuter - her or the cupcakes...
The cupcakes didn't win without their animal form, however, soon they started looking a bit more adorable...
Abbi came up with the idea to use marshmallows for eyes on the owls, and they began to take shape as well...
UNTIL...we had our two perfect models...
I know, seriously! How cute are these?!?!
So...who wins?

our best bites...

or ours...

We SO WIN! Oh, and in case you were wondering, they are as delicious as they look!

All Things Pumpkin

I would like to write an ode to FoodNetwork.com, however I'm not really a poet, so instead I'll write a blog post. This weekend Allison and I took on not one, or two but FOUR brand new recipies - two of them which required roasting a pumpkin...which of course neither of us had ever done. Most of them came from the spectacular search function offered on FoodNetwork.com. Just put in what you've got in the house and VOILA, you have yourself a list of things you can make - and ratings too! While Monday's squash pasta cassarole was pretty spectacular...

...Sunday's All-Things-Pumpkin really took the cake. We roasted the pumpkin in order to make Pumpkin Soup. You may scoff, but you shouldn't knock it until you try it, it was awesome! Then we roasted the pumpkin seeds...because, well we had them, and roasted pumpkin seeds are delicious! And to finish it off (and becuase we had another half a pumpkin we didn't know what to do with) we made Pumpkin Cookies with Cream Cheese Icing!!! In case you are wondering they were good...and as it turns out it's really easy to use fresh pumpkin. Now if the Charleston weather would just figure out that it's actually fall and not summer we would be all set!

100 calories

My friend Lisa clued me into this glorious little thing Nabisco started selling called '100 calorie packs'. It's the same snacks and cookies Nabisco sells regularly, just pre-divided into 100 calorie packages. I recognize that it's absurd that I need to buy prepacked items to keep myself from eating an entire bag of cookies, but it's true, so I've just accepted it. I've been a huge fan of the 100 calorie packs, but this week I found the Holy Grail of 100 calories...OREO Cakesters...
Gloria a Dios! (working on the Panama blog, so Spanish is on the brain)

Cinnamon Snot Ball

Today we conducted an experiment - please see report below for details.

Background Information (via Brandy):
Over the past two weeks I have been attempting to create my delicious breakfast coffee in a more "natural" manner...a.k.a. cut out the SUGAR! I remembered one time my mom putting cinnamon in her Starbucks coffee and it made it sweeter than mine. So, I decided cinnamon it is. Everything was going well. Coffee was sweet. I added more cinnamon every day until I started dumping about 2 tablespoons of cinnamon into the bottom of my coffee cup...but I was loving the outcome.

One day I came home from work and went to clean out my coffee cup only to find a GINORMOUS cinnamon snot ball in the bottom of the cup. I'm not joking here people. I am going to detail the scene for you - unscrew the white top of the travel mug; grasp the pink handle and tip it to the side thinking there is nothing in it (why would there be? I had drank all the coffee that morning); one hard shake (it's just my routine); suddenly a dark blob slowly creeps out and drops into the drain; wide eyes, blink multiple times to make sure I'm not seeing things, look between the cup and the sink multiple times, then set the cup down; gingerly pick up the drain stopper by the edge because the thing in the middle is covered by cinnamon slime; THE SLIME BALL DOES NOT SLIDE THROUGH THE DRAIN HOLES!!!; drop the stopper and turn on water...clogged sink from a cinnamon slime ball; dump cinnamon slime ball onto a paper towel and inspect it; throw out cinnamon slime ball.

After immediately deciding to not sweeten with cinnamon until this mystery was solved, sugar made a repeat appearance in my coffee. We (Brandy and I) decided to investigate the cinnamon snot ball phenomenon through the scientific process this weekend.

Hypotheses:
Dad's hypothesis: when large amounts of cinnamon are added to any hot drink, a cinnamon snot ball will occur.

John's hypothesis: when large amounts of cinnamon are added to any hot, acidic drink, such as coffee, a cinnamon snot ball will occur.

Other possible variables could be consistent drinking motion, sealed container, presence of milk and amount of cinnamon.

Materials:
Keurig (star performer in this experiment)
2 K-cups
milk
5 mugs
cinnamon
water
cups
ice

Methods:
1 - after 4 mile run prepare 2 pumpkin spice coffees with the Keurig and sprinkle a dash of cinnamon on the top of each
2 - place 2 tablespoons of cinnamon in the bottom of 3 cups
3 - use Keurig and one K-cup to put hot coffee in cup 1; use Keurig and no K-cup to put hot water in cup 2; use microwave to heat milk and add to cup 3

4 - allow all cups sit for a minimum of 2 hours and observe
5 - place 2 tablespoons of cinnamon in the bottom of 2 new cups
6 - use Keurig to make a coffee and cool with ice to match room temperature water
7 - put room temperature coffee in cup 4; put room temperature water in cup 5
8 - allow both cups to sit for a minimum of 2 hours and observe


Results:
Original morning pumpkin spice coffees did not result in a cinnamon snot ball, and thus the variable of amount of cinnamon was kept constant in all further experiments as it was a factor. Sprinkles of cinnamon do not seem to create snot balls.


Cup 1 (hot, coffee) resulted in a HUGE cinnamon snot ball. Cup 2 (hot water) resulted in HUGE cinnamon snot ball. Cup 3 (hot milk) did not result in snot ball. It was still clumped, but powder when broken apart.
Please note the drain clogging ability of the hot water cinnamon snot ball. This was not an action shot - this was being held there for an extended period of time (my cell phone is VERY slow at taking pictures, believe me)

Cup 4 (room temperature coffee) resulted in smaller snot ball. It was not as stretchy or viscous as warmer counterpart. Cup 5 (room temperature water) resulted in smaller snot ball. Same as room temperature coffee. Milk was not tested in the cold temperature experiment as it did not create a snot ball in the previous test.

Discussion:
Neither hypothesis was correct. As it turned out neither the heat, nor the acidity can completely explain the cinnamon snot ball phenomenon. Pure milk did not create a snot ball, indicating the extreme basic nature of milk did not allow it to form. Water, which should be neutral, did. One possible uncontrolled variable is the pH of the water. In the future an experiment should be run using both well and bottled water, preferable testing all water and other liquids with a pH test. Another uncontrolled variable is the actual cinnamon used. It is possible that Aldi's cinnamon needs to returned for it's promised refund. In the future an experiment should be run using different brands of cinnamon.

Throughout the experiment we kept questioning how Starbucks could create a cinnamon dulce latte without a cinnamon snot ball. To finalize our experiment we headed to Starbucks and engaged in a detailed conversation with a brand new employee as to the ingredients in a cinnamon dulce latte. No employee in the store was aware of the cinnamon snot ball phenomenon because Starbucks uses LIQUID cinnamon flavor. However, we believe that if the CEO of Starbucks was aware of this the cinnamon phenomenon the cinnamon shaker would be removed from the counter as a sweetening option. Do you know what's looming at the bottom of your Starbucks cup?

I tried...

Really, I did. I forced myself to go to the grocery store to get creamer to put in the Keurig coffee at work rather than paying $5 for a coffee at Starbucks. I kept walking right past the Starbucks that is at the front of the Piggly Wiggly by work and went to the creamer aisle. And I even bought creamer. What did me in was that it is Pumpkin Spice Latte season...can you really blame me?

Sea is for Caramel

Today at 1:53pm I received possibly the coolest gift ever...chocolate delivered to my office. My sweet, sweet CTP friends, Tina, Lisa, Whitney, Steve and Nicole, sent me the most delicious stack of sugary goodness imaginable. As you can see I promptly ate the first of two chocolate bars called 'Seas is for Caramel' which is made from 62% dark chocolate, sugar, heavy cream, glucose, butter, vanilla bean, and sea salt...can you think of one awesomely delicious item that this tasty little treat doesn't have in it? I for one cannot.

Oh and did I mention the apple pie Andrea got me last week to compliment the spaghetti and garlic bread Dave brought to my house? Oh and Rachel fixing my blog...again. And Maia taking many (many) chai tea latte breaks to talk me back off the edge of the emotion cliff. And Allison dropping everything on her Labor Day to come to my house and help me rearrange furniture. And Leslie and Craig (and one of their med school friends who doesn't even know me) going out of their way to get me a new bedroom set so my bedroom feels like a grown up. And that was just in the past week, it's not even counting all the friends who sent me cards and flowers and called to say hello and they love me. My friends are amazing!

I Scream for Ice Cream

It may have taken us 5 hours, 3 computers, a trip to Walgreens to refill the printer cartridge, a printer driver CD, an online printer driver download, 3 facebook accounts (one of them breaking into Nikole's account by answering 7 tagged friends, of which we actually only knew two), and one phone call made to a trusted friend who also tried to help us...but WE WERE SUCCESSFUL. And tonight we will dine at the Cold Stone Creamery as we enjoy two like it size create your own ice creams for 5 (yes count them, 5) dollars.

And we will dine there tomorrow as well. Thank you very much.

Lunch at Ft. Johnson

So, I was going through my posts for this year and labeling them...I know good bloggers do this from the beginning, but I never did and then once I realized that maybe I should have I forgot, and then when I realized maybe I should have reminded myself I had posted so many blogs I thought that maybe it wasn't worth it, and then yesterday I realized that people who don't really follow my blog but come on for one specific post may actually want to see posts about that topic...oh for instance like when I was posting all the stuff about the bone marrow transplant...right. So, I finally decided to bite the bullet and do it. Granted I only got through one year worth, but hey, it's one year that was not labeled before. Right now you can find the labels at the bottom, but eventually I'll have them on the sidebar. Still a work in progress...

All of that is to say that as I was going through my posts to label them I noticed that this was listed as draft. Apparently I loaded the pictures of Maia and my lunch one day but never actually wrote the text and posted them. It made me laugh, so I figured, hey, why not? So, here from 9/23/09 is Maia and my lunch, with my guess as to what in the world I was going to say...

I would have guessed this was my lunch because I've been known to do it before, but below is my actual lunch so I have no idea what this picture is

these are the makings for my lunch...I tend to have an issue with preparing lunch BEFORE I come to work so I bring in a random assortment of items and go with it

this is Maia's lunch pre-prepared

this is Maia's lunch mid-preparation...I know we thought it looked gross too, but it doesn't taste as bad as it looks

an this was the completed package...not bad eh?

Now you see why I had to make an 'only me' label...some of my posts really couldn't be captured by 'life in general' :)

Sugar

This is what happens when I go to Brown's Orchard unsupervised to order a cake for next week's picnic...Apparently my sub conscience has decided to gain 30 pounds this week - all I crave is every single sugar item I can't get in Charleston. In my defense, if Browns didn't make such delicious items and make them superior to everyone else, I wouldn't have to buy them all!

Biscuits

One day back in May, Kim and I had extra time after a morning in the field and on our way back to work stopped to pick strawberries before the season ended. Strawberry picking tends to leave you with a million strawberries that you need to do something with so I found a handy dandy recipe for strawberry orange marmalade that I thought I would try out. Now, of course because I have so much free time on my hands I have tons of time to make jelly...right. I went ahead and froze the strawberries because while I had good intentions I figured those good intentions would result in a lot of spoiled berries, and a few weeks later when a state holiday was upon me I pulled them back out of the freezer and went ahead and made my marmalade.

I ran out of jars and had to put the last few jars of marmalade into tupperware which now resides in my fridge. Up until this point, however, I had not actually tasted it. Which brings us to last night. Brandy and I were trying to decide at 9:00 if it was worth making something for dinner. I said something about her needing to try the marmalade, at which point we got a brilliant idea - biscuits from Bojangles and marmalade for dinner. Perfect! So we drove down the road and as I'm ordering I start realizing what a ridiculous order I'm making:

BoJ person: "Can I help you?"
me: "I'd like 4 biscuits"
person: "any butter or jelly"
me: "no, and then I'd also like...(start laughing because I realize how ridiculous this is sounding) a ham and biscuit sandwich (for John)...(try to keep composure and not laugh out loud)...and a sausage and biscuit sandwich"
person: "is that everything?"
me: "yes...(again, forcing myself to stop laughing...while Brandy is laughing and not helping matters)"

we pull around to the window and the conversation goes something like this

me: "sorry I'm laughing I just realized as I was saying it how ridiculous my order sounded"
person: "that's ok, who am I to judge?" (indicating he obviously agrees it is a ridiculous order)
Brandy: "do people order biscuits usually?"
person: "yes, it's not that strange...well, I guess at 9:30 at night it is, but...(trailing off as to not continue talking about how odd our order is)"
Brandy: "well we just have some homemade jelly that we want to eat with biscuits and we don't have any biscuits"
person: "so you have homemade jelly but you are buying the biscuits instead of making them?"
me: "yeah, I guess we are kinda lazy about the biscuits, we just don't feel like making them"
person: "like I said, who am I to judge"
us: laughing

Needless to say, Bojangles possibly thinks we are total idiots, but whatever. We had delicious biscuits and jelly - and it motivated me to actually get up this morning and run with Brandy since I ate such an absurd dinner!

Brandy very excited about the biscuits and jelly:

Keurig

It's actually possibly a good thing that the Keurig lives at work because it's one reason on Monday mornings to actually get myself to the office...

Last Supper

the last supper, as it were. My Aunt Dona and mom call themselves 'fat head, skinny head', we decided the mask accented her skinny head.

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Delicious

lunch at hopkins, getting ready for radiation. I need this cafeteria at my work ~ it's awesome

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My Two Favorite Appliances

I am using my two favorite new appliances at this moment...a big enormous room heater that Louie purchased yesterday for our office, and the Keurig machine John used to have in his classroom and has graciously given to me for my office. I'm assuming you know what a heater is. This heater, however, is presently saving me from needing to bundle up under 3 blankets after work today, so it makes it a much greater heater than any other heater I've found. The Keurig, you may not be familiar with. And if you are not, I suggest you become familiar with it. You push a button, it makes you a coffee. It's GLORIOUS!