End of Semester Obsessions

So, of course, at the end of every semester, I end up with some new obsession that keeps me from doing homework. Typically to do with the internet. For example, last semester was Pintrest (follow me here), and that obsession has only gotten worse..

This year, it is a combination of two sites:

Texts From Last Night 
(BEWARE, NOT SAFE FOR WORK!)

Dog Shaming
(Only safe for work if you can get away with laughing loudly and hysterically)

Congratulations. I have now passed the obsession on to you. Maybe it will leave me alone now.. Hmm, that's doubtful, but enjoy them anyway!

2012 UCO International Festival

As part of our Blogging for Journalists class, Dr. Clark asked us to attend the 2012 University of Central Oklahoma International Festival.

When I first walked in, I was very surprised to be overwhelmed with a since of minority. Not in a negative way in any regards, but as a seemingly-white person (I am actually a fourth Lebanese), I could have definitely been categorized as a minority in that ballroom. It was almost exhilarating really. It was like the ballroom doors were actually a portal to completely foreign land. There were a handful of different languages flying around the lavishly decorated ballroom. It was definitely a cool experience.

The Iranian Student Association, Pakistani Student Association, and the Saudi Arabian Student Association combined into one booth with the theme, "Alice in Arabland."As you can see in the pictures above, students served several dishes from their collective cultures (pictured left) while they were dressed up as characters from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (pictured right).

Members of the Indian Student Association served food brought in food from Gopuram Taste of India, a local Indian restaurant (pictured above).


On a more personal level, I was very excited about this because one of my dearest friends, Joshua Shaun Wu Lim, plays a huge role in anything and everything to do with the international community on our campus. So, I knew he would be there. And as usual, I was right. (haha).

UCO students that were involved in putting on this year's festival pose for a group picture. From L to R: Brandon Lehman, Sahil Patel, Joshua Shaun Wu Lim, Nela Mrchkovska, Ines Manojlovska, Victor Silva, Mani Inayat, Ashley SueLyn, Mayu Yasuda, Jime Sechinbaatar, Alvin Teh & Tracy Tindle. Courtesy of UCO International Services Facebook page.

Josh is an international student from Klang, Malaysia, who came to study Public Relations at UCO in 2009. Since then, he has continued to be involved on campus in numerous organizations, such as UCO's Asian American Student Association (AASA), Broncho Buddies, and UCO International Services. Josh now holds the position of International Programming Assistant at UCO Centre for Global Competency.

He was also recently featured on the front page of The Oklahoman in an article about the state seeing an increase in foreign students.

I met Josh within the first few months of him moving here, and I am honored to call him one of the most special people in my life. We have been through ups and downs and loops and whatever else you can imagine.

As we have started creating our adult lives over the past three (almost four) years, we don't really get to see each other much, an awful symptom of "growing up." Despite the distance, I love this man so very much. He has been my rock through thick and thin. Although I have tried to describe how much Josh means to be, I cannot even scratch the surface.

I didn't really mean to take this post to a mushy, gushy place, but it ended up there. Oh, well. All that to say, I don't have a lot of friends, but the ones I do have, I cherish dearly. I LOVE YOU, JOSH!

funkadelic man

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Dr. Kurt Hochenauer, an English professor at the University of Central Oklahoma, spoke to Dr. Terry Clark’s class, Blogging for Journalists, last Thursday. Hochenauer is the creator/author of the political blog Okie Funk: Notes from the Outback and creator/operator of the liberal open blog Blue Oklahoma.

He began Okie Funk in 2004 because of “a deep need for liberal political commentary in Oklahoma.” His blog has had over one million hits and over 1000 posts. However, Hochenauer will not accept advertising of any kind. He believes in more of “a separation of opinions and journalism.”

His typical audience is made of Oklahomans and people who previously lived in Oklahoma. He has positions at the Kansas City Star, The Oklahoman, Tulsa Tribute, and UCO (for 21 years). His political credentials are mainly based on experience as a journalist for 30+ years in the political spectrum of Oklahoma.

Hochenauer admits that it is difficult to find new material. “I mean, how many times can you write about the same thing over and over? This is a problem in the blog world.”

Hochenauer has some great advice for novice bloggers. His first tip is the most important: be a good writer. He also notes, that to become a good writer, one must practice the craft. Even though it seems inconvenient, I try to practice as much as possible. Practice, practice, practice. Write about anything, anywhere, all the time! Write about everything, everywhere, every day! The more you write, the more comfortable you will be in doing so. Plain and simple.

Hochenauer admits that the blogging world has become an increasingly tough market to work your way into. However, he suggests finding a your niche in something people would actually be interested in reading.

Last but not least, read other blogs! See what is going on in the world (the blogging world or otherwise). Hochenauer says he subscribes to liberal and democratic blogs, but also regularly reads right-wing, conservative blogs to “see what’s going on on the other side.”

Overall, it was great to hear from a real successful blogger in the flesh. It was nice to listen to Hochenauer tell his story about seeing a need for something in his community, and actually doing something about it. The world, the blogosphere in particular, needs more people like him!

Cookie Monster Cupcakes

an awesome close up, courtesy of Rachel

 During our shopping trip with Rachel and Jacob, the kids were inspired to make Cookie Monster cupcakes after seeing an awesome Cookie Monster cake in the bakery.

To make life a little bit easier, we went with simple ingredients: a box of white cake mix, a tub of cream cheese frosting, semi-sweet chocolate chips, a variety pack of food coloring, and foil cupcake liners. 

First, we prepared the cake mix according to the instructions on the box. Then, we added about three drops of blue food coloring until we found the right shade of blue we wanted for the inside of the cakes.






While Rachel and I worked on the batter, Jacob greased the pan and put in the liners. After having him grease and put in the liners, he asked why we did both. At first, I didn't realize that I asked him to do both. However, I am glad we did it this way because the cakes that came over the top of the liners didn't stick to the pan, making for easier clean up. Brilliant! 

Next, I filled each liner with a (soup) spoon full of batter and had the kids plop about five chocolate chips into each one. We waited to add the chips until after we divided up the batter for two reasons:

1. Since we were winging this recipe, we weren't sure how many chips to add;
2. Adding heavy ingredients to batter before separating it out makes the portions uneven because all of the heavy stuff will fall to the bottom of the batter bowl. (This is also true with chocolate chip pancakes!) 

We followed the directions on the cake mix box to bake the cakes. After they were done, we pulled them out and placed them on a cooling rack. To speed up the process, I pulled each cupcake out of the pan so they would stop cooking and begin cooling faster.

If you are going to frost any sort of baked goods, you should ALWAYS let them cool completely before attempting to decorate. The residual heat will warm the frosting and make it much more difficult.

Jacob icing a few cakes.

So, while we were waiting (semi-patiently), we tackled the frosting. We saved about half a cup of white frosting for the eyes, and colored the rest blue. Once we reached the desired shade of blue, we put a small frosting tip into one of the bottom corners of a large ziploc bag, making sure it was snug. Then, we filled the bag with the desired color of frosting, made sure that the bag was zipped closed, and pushed all of the frosting toward the corner with the tip.  It is important to wait to snip the corner because the frosting will squirt out everywhere when you are moving it to the corner.

Once the cakes were cool, we started applying a thin layer of blue icing over the tops of the cakes. Then, we used other icing tips and toothpicks to create the "hair."

Rachel working on the "mouths"

Next, we put chocolate chips for the eyes and used the white icing to ring them. For Cookie Monster's mouth, we used small cookies cut in half and put them in his "mouth" like he was eating them.

Our awesome taste tester, Reagan!

Viola! Cookie Monster cupcakes!

The Third is NOT Always the Charm..

This week went awry very quickly. I guess the third week is not the charm.. I was quite disappointed in myself for not continuing my disciplined ways, but what can I say, I'm not the best example for consistency.

Despite my laziness, I did realize two positive things:

1. Doing most (hopefully) all of your prep work for ingredients (mainly for dinners) and preparing/package "to-go" meals (mainly for that week's breakfast item) over the weekend is ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE to success.
2. Even though a few of my fresh ingredients have gone bad, I still have many of the ingredients I will need to "recycle" the meals I did not use this week for next week's menu.

Anyway, here is my receipt from Sunday's shopping trip and my menu for this past week:

	Sat. 9/29	Sun. 9/30	Mon. 10/1	Tues. 10/2	Wed. 10/3	Thurs. 10/4	Fri. 10/5
B	Eggs & Breakfast Potatoes	French Toast with Bacon	Muffin Melts, piece of fruit, & yogurt	Muffin Melts, piece of fruit, & yogurt	Muffin Melts, piece of fruit, & yogurt	Muffin Melts, piece of fruit, & yogurt	Muffin Melts, piece of fruit, & yogurt
L	Leftovers:  Beef & Black Bean Burritos with Mex Rice	Out to Eat: Uptown Grocery  (4 meals = >$30)	Leftovers: White Chicken Cheese Lasagna	Leftovers: Crockpot Chicken & Noodles	Leftovers: White Chicken Cheese Lasagna	Leftovers: Dixie Pork Chops with Garlic Mashed Potatoes	Out to Lunch with Work Friends (>$10)
D	Out to Eat & Concert (>$50)	White Chicken Cheese Lasagna	Crockpot Chicken & Noodles	Weekly Dinner with Friends (>$10)	Dixie Pork Chops with Garlic Mashed Potatoes	Asian Beef with Veggies & Brown Rice	Empty Wallet Casserole

So, you are probably thinking, "okay, so she wasn't as crazy this week as she normally is.. so what did she do all week?" Well, I will admit that this week was rough at work and school, which reflected (too much) stress on my home life. Thus, I usually came home and plopped my butt on the couch and cruised Netflix till I fell asleep. (Wow, I'm spoiled!)

However, this week started off on a really fun note! Paul and I took his niece, Rachel, and one of his nephews, Jacob, to our favorite grocery store on Sunday. We had an awesome lunch there and looked around the store for an hour or so.

Jacob finally got it! EGGPLANT!

The kids, Paul, and I had a blast, especially in the produce section. Uptown carries a huge variety of produce, including some pretty exotic stuff. Out of nowhere, we started grabbing whatever weird fruits and veggies, and then tried to get the others to guess what we picked out. It was pretty random, but it was super fun!

While we were there, we noticed that the store offers a cooking class for kids in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned for another foodie fun post!

Homemade Weekend, part 2

Per the usual, this past weekend was a whirlwind! So, let's get right to it!

Friday is our "out to eat" day, and since we had not been already, we decided to hit up the Oklahoma State Fair.

credit: stephen moore, moorefoto.com

I mean who really goes to the fair for free pens and to buy random junk? No one! We all tolerate the taunting carnies and foul smelling people for the FOOD. Fried *insert random food item* on a stick! Turkey legs! Roasted corn! Cotton candy! Carmel-covered & candied apples! And, of course, beer!

Even though the fair is something every Okie should experience at least once a year, I always end up regretting the amount of calories I take in and the lack of money in my pocket. That being said, three hours and $80 later, I was ready to go home.
 
Since my work's annual "Employee Appreciation Day" at a local theme park would take up most of our Sunday, I declared Saturday my "crazy-all-day-food-planning-shopping-and-prepping" day.

For this week (Sept. 22 - 28), I planned out a little more complicated dishes than last week, just to see if I could pull it off, and so far so good! Here's this week's menu:
 

	Sat. 9/22	Sun. 9/23	Mon. 9/24	Tues.  9/25	Wed. 9/26	Thurs. 9/27	Fri.  9/28
B	Cereal	Cereal	Breakfast Burrito	Breakfast Burrito	Breakfast Burrito	Breakfast Burrito	Breakfast Burrito
L	Sandwich & Chips	Free Lunch @ Theme Park	Leftovers: Peach Whiskey Chicken & Potatoes	Leftovers: Pork Loin, Veggies & Corn Cakes	Leftovers: Pork Loin, Veggies & Corn Cakes	Leftovers: Tomato Cream Pasta & Bread	Leftovers: Shepard’s Pie
D	- Peach Whiskey Chicken - Whiskey Glazed Carrots -Twice Baked Potatoes (PW)	- Herb Roasted Pork Loin - Roasted Veggies -Corn Cakes (PW)	- Beef Beer Stew (PW) - French Bread	Weekly Dinner with Friends:         -Mushroom Cheddar Sliders (PW) -Baked French & Sweet Potato Fries	-Tomato Cream Pasta (PW) + chicken  + artichoke hearts -Garlic Bread	-Shepard’s Pie, using leftover Beef Beer Stew (PW) -Pint Night (>$20)	-Beef & Bean Burritos - Mexican Rice

After comparing what I needed for this week's meals to what was in my fridge and pantry, I made a list of everything else that we would need. Again, I organized my list by where each item was in the store (produce, meats, dairy, dry goods, frozen, etc.), and again, this made for a swift and fairly inexpensive shopping trip. We beat our last shopping trip about $10!

As you can see, we really try to implement my "$2 rule" and came out with only 20 out of 69 items that were over that limit.

This week was fairly sucessful, and every meal was WONDERFUL! I have included the recipes and pictures of some of the meals we had this week. Enjoy!

the final product.. AWESOME!!

Pioneer Woman's Peach Whiskey Chicken           
Prep: 10 min   Cook: 2 hours   Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 12 whole chicken legs (bone in, skin on)
• 2 tbs olive oil
• 2 tbs butter
• 1 whole onion (diced)
• 1 1/2 cup or 12oz whiskey (I used Wild Turkey's American Honey, YUM!)
• 1 1/2 cup or 12 oz BBQ Sauce (I used a whole med. jar of Head Country Original)
• 1 cup or 8 oz peach preserves (I used sugar-free to keep the sweetness down)
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 tbsp Worcestershire
• 4 cloves of garlic (I used 2 tbs of minced garlic from a jar)
• 3 peaches, pitted & sliced
• 3 whole green onions (I left these out)

 
Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350° F.
• In a large skillet, heat oil and butter over med.-high heat. Place 4-6 chicken legs at a time in the skillet for about 3-4 minutes on each side, until all sides are browned. Place on plate & repeat until all chicken is browned.
• Pour out the majority of the grease (NOT DOWN THE SINK! Paul taught me to drain off grease into a used metal can and throw it out once it cooled; what a smarty pants!), and return to the stove. Add diced onion and cook for 2 minutes.
• Pour in the whiskey (be EXTRA careful if you are cooking over an open flame). Stir and scrape the bottom of the pan, and allow whiskey to reduce for about 3 minutes. Pour in the BBQ sauce, preserves, garlic, water & Worcestershire. Stir until combined and let cook for about 5 minutes.
• This is where I ventured off from the original recipe since my skillet was too small: place chicken in a casserole dish, stick peach slices in open spaces between chicken pieces, and cover with sauce in skillet. Cover with foil, and place in oven.
• The Pioneer Woman suggests cooking for 1 and a half hours, but by 45 minutes my dish was boiling over and all over the oven. Be sure to check on the chicken at least every 15-20 minutes to prevent a HUGE MESS. I also put my dish on a baking sheet to catch anymore spillage.
• Pull dish out of oven and let cool for at least 5-10 minutes. The dish and its contents will be VERY hot.
• Suggestions: I served this with twice-baked new potatoes and whiskey-glazed carrots.

Pioneer Woman's Herb Roasted Pork Loin               
Prep: 5 min   Cook: 25 min  Servings: 6

Delicious dish!

Ingredients

• 2 whole pork tenderloins
• 8 tbsp Herbs De Provence (these were expensive, not going to lie.. but man, oh, man! They make pork absolutely delightful!)
• 1 cup or 8 oz preserves (I used the rest of my peach preserves from the Peach Whiskey Chicken, but you can use something like plum, fig, etc. Please avoid grape though.. ew)
• 1 cup water (my sauce was VERY watery, so I would reduce this amount to 1/4 cup and add a little more if needed; do not exceed 1/2 cup)
• 1 tbsp white vinegar

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 425° F.
• Season tenderloins liberally with salt, pepper, and Herbs De Provence, pressing them onto the pork so they stay put.
• Place the tenderloins on a baking sheet and roast in the oven for 15 - 25 minutes. After center is no longer pink, remove from the oven and allow pork to rest for at least 10 minutes.
• While it is resting, combine preserves, water and vinegar in a small pan, and bring to a simmer for a few minutes. Reduce heat and allow to thicken.
• Slice pork into pieces about 1 inch thick, and spoon sauce over the slices when serving.
• Suggestions: I served this with roasted veggies (parsnips, carrots, zucchini, yellow squash, red and yellow bell peppers and onion) and corn meal cakes (the few that turned out weren't bad, but they were not quite worth the disaster they created).

Measuring Up

Based on our class discussion of our blogs, I feel that I need to post more in general, but also make those posts more interesting and geared toward the purpose of my blog: eating (mostly) healthy on a college budget. Well, any budget really.. With the current economic status, almost all of us are trying to eat things that are good for us, that taste good, and that doesn't cost a fortune. Is that really possible? From the looks of this crazy coupon lady.. it is!

Seeing as there is hardly anything consistent in my life, I am trying very hard to post on my blog regularly, at least two to four posts a week. Also, I am attempting to make each post tieback to my overall 'foodie' theme. So for this post, go check out one of my favorite websites, foodgawker.

I honestly spent at least a couple hours working on the overall typography design of my blog, and I think so far so good. Dr. Clark did mention reverting to solid black text on my main posts to increase readability, and I think it looks much better now that I have changed it. What do you think? Comments? Criticism? Helpful hints? Come on, let me have it! (you know you want to!)


I have also spent quite a bit of time working on my layout design, ensuring that it is interesting and appealling, but not overpowering and cluttered. Even though my house may tell a different story, I tend to thrive in simple, clean environments, so I think my blog should reflect that as well. No hoarding around here!

Since I am fairly new to the Blogger platform, I am having a hard time finding myself satisfied with the overall appearance of my blog. I do think I am still low on the 'wow factor' scale, but as I learn the new platform, I am sure I will be able to rasie the bar.

Speaking of bar, McNellie's in Midtown is my favorite. They have an AMAZING selection of beers (my favorite on the right), friendly staff, cool laid back atmosphere, and of course, some of the best pub grub around! It's not on the low end of the cash scale, but it definitely isn't the most expensive either. At McNellie's, you are sure to get what you pay for.