Trashy sushi

It's been kind of a slow start on the trash-pickin' scene so far this semester. It's harder to find stuff when you're not living in the dorms.  But every once in a while...

There I was, 12:45pm in the fishbowl at the Davis Center.  I had just scarfed a hummus-on-gluten-free-bread sandwich and was still feeling kinda hungry.  I got up to throw my trash away and go grab an apple or something, when all of a sudden, some girl scooted right in front of me to get to the trash can first.  I was momentarily pissed off, but then noticed the glory that is a half-full box of California sushi rolls heading straight for the abyss.  I casually dropped my trash and scooped up hers all in one fell swoop.  Luckily, it was almost full, so I didn't have to climb in.  It was a beautiful, beautiful thing with very convenient timing.

The sushi at school is notoriously pretty good.  And it's kind of a treat-- it's over 6 points per box and with a (very) limited amount of points, sushi is a luxury.  Finding a relatively untouched box was a MIRACLE.  Ya know that little chunk of pickled ginger they always toss in next to the wasabi?  Nobody ever seems to eat that... and it's my FAVORITE part.  Looks I'll I'll have to go trash diving just to find all that wasted ginger.

Microwavable cake. Mmm, college.

Heyyy, bloggy blog friends!  It's been about 16 years since I last wrote a blogpost, even though there have been PLENTY of blog-worthy experiences... For example, last week I went to get my teeth cleaned and my hygienist and I really hit it off.  She ended up sneaking me out with 5 toothbrushes, 6 boxes of floss, 4 boxes of toothpaste, a handful of stickers, and her email address.  SCORE.  Another blog-worthy find that I didn't end up posting about was a lime green garbage can Tucker and I found in a dumpster.  Trash can in a dumpster, how ironic.  ANYway.  Back to the real subject.

Today was my dear friend Mackenzie's birthday, so we decided to do some cake experimentation... A few days ago, I was spelunking around on the interwebz and found a bunch of single serving cake recipes.  I was like, "DAYUMMM, I'MMA MAKE DIS SUMDAY."  And that day was today.  Taylor, Karen, Myria, and I scrounged up an impressive amount of mugs, made a quick grocery trip, and then proceeded to spend 2 hours making microwave cake.  Mmm, the sweet taste of college.  Here's a shot of my dining room table in the throes of dessert-making.  It was a mess.  A delicious, peanutbuttery mess.

Here's the end result.  10 mugs are chocolate cake with homemade reeses frosting and the 2 mugs in the middle are peanut butter chocolate chip cake.  It doesn't look very appetizing in this picture... actually, it looks like dog poop in a cup, but I assure you they tasted better than they look.  In retrospect, we probably should've mixed the ingredients in a separate bowl so the sides of the mugs wouldn't look all drippy.  Whatever.  It's cake.

I made one that was gluten free fo' meeee  :)

Then for Mackenzie's birthday dinner we got a huge group together to go downtown to the Asiana Noodle Shop.  I'd never been and was nervous about finding gluten-free options, but HEY whaddaya know-- the place was full of crap I could eat.  Pictured below is avocado maki, something with seitan and mysterious goop, and salad.  

The menu was a little bit scary.  It was like 15 pages long and had a lot of words that are not in my vocabulary (I'd never even heard of a sushi boat.  I basically live under a rock).  So I decided to play it safe-ish and get the avocado tofu salad.  It also had seaweed salad in it!!!!! Do you guys remember all my posts about seeweed salad?!?!?! Well guess what!  Still obsessed!!!!!!!!!!

Here we are... humongo, obnoxious group.  It took us at least 20 minutes to divvy up the bill.  There is a reason I'm not a math major. 

Want to make your own single-serving cake-in-a-mug?  Go HERE.  My next conquest will be the carrot cake, I think.  

Banana stuff with stuff in it!!!!!!!!!

I can't remember whether or not I've already written a post about this, but WHATEVA DOIN' IT ANYWAY.  Today, as I was driving my friend Haleigh home, she wanted to stop at Scumberland Farms and pick up some Ben and Jerry's.  That got me hankerin' for ice cream, but since I'm still all dairy free and stuff, me and Ben and Jerry can't hang out.

And then I got home and went to stare into the freezer.   LO AND BEHOLD, there was a bag of frozen banana slices.  And ohhh, what you can do with banana slices!  Popped 'em in the food processor and obliterated them into infinity.  Jk, lol, I obliterated them into ice cream consistency.

And then, since plain ol' banana ice cream is meh, I tossed in some vanilla protein powder, cocoa powder, a bit of peanut butter, and some dry oats.  Banana stuff with stuff in it!!!!!!!  (Please appreciate how well my baby spoon matches the purple on my pajammies.  It's Thursday and my day off, so obviously pajammies will be worn all day).

Ya know what's great about obliterated banannies with stuff in 'em?  It's cheap and fast (literally, took less than a minute (not including clean-up time (oy))) and pretty healthy depending on what you chuck in there and dairy free and you can share with all your friends or not if you're in your pajammies and feeling antisocial like meeeee!  Mmmm, run-on sentence.

Sweet Apple Sammies

For the past couple years (and by a couple, I actually mean a few, and by a few I mean more like 7) I've had a subscription to Seventeen Magazine.  It used to be my favorite magazine.  I loved articles like, "get your crush to notice you" and "I was robbed in a parking lot and survived now listen to me preach about how life is precious." All that crap.  Needless to say, I was an avid Seventeen follower.  In the past year or two though, I chose to cancel my subscription due to all the bullshit and body image distortion, blah blah blah... also the fact that I am no longer anywhere near 17 years old.  But the magazine just keeps showing up on my doorstep anyway.

So today, because I have a stack of magazines taller than the world's second-smallest woman (that's Madge Bester, in case anyone was wondering.  She's 2'2" tall), I've been doing some collaging.  While viciously ripping through page after page searching for images that weren't skinny white girls or nail polish ads, I found a recipe or "sweet apple sammies."  And then I made one and it was delicious.

Wanna know how to make one?  Even though you can probably tell from the picture?  OKAY!

1) Take an apple, cut it down the middle, then chop off the stemmy ends.  Cut out the core, and voila, you've got yourself a coupla apple donuts.  You can just stop right there if you want.  They're so cute, it's hard not to eat them right away.

2) If you make it past step 1, smear some peanut buttery goodness on there.

3) Throw some chocolate chips into the peanut butter for the "sweet" aspect of the recipe title.

4) Smoosh the two apple donuts together and BAM you've got an adorable sandwich thing that is decently healthy.

After 7 years of receiving this magazine, I think this is the first time I've actually made one of the dumb "get fit now!" recipes they always throw in for shits and giggles.  Maybe I'll give Seventeen another chance... HA, JUST KIDDING.  So done.

Batman at the Bees Knees

My mom, brother, and I went to the Bees Knees for dinner tonight.  The Bees Knees is the "bees knees."  Har har.  But really.  The food is great, the live music is great, the local art is fantastic, and you have not truly experienced the Bees Knees until you've been in the creepy, painted bathroom and looked at all the foot-less cartoon people that watch you pee.

The one downside to the restaurant is that it takes a while to get your food.  Luckily, someone had left behind a battered Batman figurine on the table for us to play with.  This particular Batman was, ahem, a little loose in the crotch area.  Please enjoy this short video of my brother flailing Batman around.

I got the black bean burger with some potato wedges.  I didn't have time to take a picture of it because it was somehow in my mouth before I could even reach for my camera.  In the competition between my camera and my stomach, the stomach usually wins.  This is again demonstrated in the picture below where, as you can see, we bought some gluten-free cookies, but they disappeared before picture-time.  So instead, here's a picture of the empty cookie bag with loose-crotch Batman inside.  How cute.

 

The cookies are from Liz Lovely and the brand name does not lie-- they are lovely.  We got plain' ol chocolate chip (chip-eee-i-oh!) cookies.  They looked like huge, dry dog treats but actually tasted like raw Tollhouse cookie dough and happiness.  While trying to find that clip of Spongebob eating his grandma's cookies (you know the one..) in order to demonstrate the absolute joy experienced with Liz Lovely's cookies, I stumbled upon this weird little tune instead.  Then I promptly got sucked into the obscure section of youtube filled with indie Australian bands with less than 5,000 views.  Who gives a crap about Spongebob clips when you can stare at cute Aussie boys with ginger afros?

Challenge me to a game of Bingo and I will WINNN.

I don't know if it's something I ate or something specific I did, but my lucky streak today is way out of control.  No one deserves to be this lucky.  That said, I'm NOT complaining; today was awesome.  The first miracle of the day came when I woke up and knew exactly what I wanted to wear.  This may seem like no big deal, but lemme tell ya, sometimes I just don't feel like wearing anything.  Those are the days I remind myself that technically, it's not illegal to go around naked in Vermont as long as you don't strip your clothes outside or some mumbo like that.  But nine times out of ten, I end up putting clothes on.  Whatever.  Anyway, so that was a big deal.

Big deal numero two: I was driving home from Burlington half-listening to the radio just trying to make it through those damn commercials when I heard "free tickets" and a phone number.  I (unsafely, whoops) whipped out my phone, tapped in the number, and voila!  I was caller #7 and won two tickets to go see Sweeney Todd in Lebanon this weekend.  THAT NEVER HAPPENS.  I've never called to win anything before because what're the odds I'd call at the exact right moment?  Also lucky thang numero 2.5: I didn't crash while using my phone to win things.

           

                                 

Big deal numero tres: BINGO, BABAAYYYY.  Every Wednesday night during the summer, Elmore hosts a community bingo as a fundraiser for the milfoil problem in the lake.  Tonight I scored so hard.  I won the first round with a straight-across bingo ("Hoooorizontal!  Vertical!  Diiiiii-agonal!") and won some fresh raspberries.  

Then I won AGAIN and picked up one of those nifty stench-spreaders.  When I brought it home and showed it off to my mother, she gasped.  Apparently she's desperately allergic to the scent "gardenia."  Rats.

Last week, I won a wiffle bat and a plate of cookies.  I am KILLA at bingo, but only in Elmore.  During finals week at UVM, my friend Shannon and I went to a bingo game hosted by the inter-residence association and things got stressful.  When you're winning raspberries and wiffle balls, it's not such a big deal, but when the prizes are a bit more appealing, it becomes a sweaty, hostile event.  I'd much rather play bingo in Elmore than with a bunch of rowdy, technology-hungry college kids.  Oops, looks like my transformation into a grandma is almost complete.  And speaking of grandmas, the theme for next weeks in Elmore is "bring your grandma to bingo!" SO EXCITED.

A bajillion macaroons, mini pumpkin muffins, and disastrous peppermint patties.

I woke up today wanting to bake anything and everything, preferably things that involve mini cupcake wrappers since I have 19 boxes.  I looked up a bunch of recipes and couldn't decide, so I ended up making 3 different things.  It's a risky business having me in the kitchen...baking things...using the oven... 

1) Coconut macaroons.

These turned out pretty darn well!  Since they're so small I had to do multiple batches, so there are a HUNDREDS of them.  And by hundreds, I mean maybe around 60.  But still.  That's a lot of macaroons.  There woulda been more, but I'm really bad about eating it before it goes in the oven... 

2) Peppermint patties.

As you can tell from this picture, these did NOT turn out well.  The main problem was that the recipe called for agave nectar and I didn't have it, so I used sugar water.  Also, the main ingredient is coconut oil which is gross and tastes like coconut-flavored crisco.  Also, I didn't melt the chocolate properly, so when it came time to dip the crisco/sugar balls, it didn't work.  Instead, we ended up pouring the chocolate onto the patties instead, which melted the oil.  Hence, there is a big sloppy mess.

Both Dad and Tucker tried a piece of the peppermint patties and both were unable to swallow it.  They're that bad.  The pan is now stashed in the freezer in hopes that someday one of us will rediscover them and magically think they're delicious.  But until that day comes, I'd steer clear of the freezer.

Tucker sharing the pot of burnt chocolate with Callie.

Tucker sharing the pot of burnt chocolate with Finn Hudson.

3) Pumpkin muffins

I cheated with this one and used a gluten-free mix.  They turned out normal, but bland.  Ah, well.  At least they're mini and adorable.

Aaaaand now I'm sick of baking.  At least it wasn't all a complete failure!  Macaroons are obviously my calling.