Adventures in cooking

I love trying different recipes...here are some I made yesterday:

Homemade Applesauce This recipe came out great! It's not as sweet as what I'm used to from the grocery store, but that's a good thing in my opinion. My aunt sent me home with tons of leftover apples from her son's (my cousin's) wedding and since I don't like apple pie and eating plain apples upsets my stomach, I decided to try making applesauce. It was super easy and made the house smell so yummy! I recommend blending the cooked apple mixture in a food processor rather than with a mixer--that way you don't get apples all over your kitchen.

I also made Honey Banana Bread. Again, just to get rid of my stash of bananas in the freezer. If your bananas get to the point of no return, just freeze them and use them for banana bread or the like later. There's no point in throwing bananas out when they can still be used. It's a "healthy" recipe, so it's not the best banana bread I've ever had, but it's still pretty good.

For dinner I made Thai Noodle Salad. If the boyfriend going back for seconds is any indicator, I'd say this recipe was a success! Very easy and took no time at all to make...I wish now that I had timed it. I had my boyfriend chop the green onions and bell pepper (from my garden!), so that cut down on the time. Using canned chicken knocked the ease factor up some more. I might actually make this recipe again...hopefully the grocery store has cilantro next time.

Happy cooking!

WCU is definitely NOT a green campus

I may get in trouble for this post, but that's a chance I'm willing to take.

I attended Western's homecoming game today. I haven't been to a game in a while so I was shocked and appalled to see that they (who "they" are I don't know--the athletic gods I suppose) are now requiring everyone, including students, to have paper tickets to get into home football games. They are no longer scanning students' cat cards.

Apparently the students are to visit a website in which they'll find their student ticket that they can then print.

What?! Wait, wait. WHAT?!?!?! Ridiculous! Absolutely ridiculous! The amount of paper is ridiculous. BECAUSE since they're printing them places other than the ticket office, they're on whole sheets of paper.

Was there a recycle bin there to recycle these? Of course not. How many can we safely say were recycled by eco-conscious students??

Because I had trouble getting in (for I didn't know this ridiculous new policy had taken place) there was a woman with a little clout helping me to get in. I don't know her name, nor her position, but I did get some insight as to why this new paper ticket thing was put into place. According to her, some cat cards weren't able to be scanned for some reason and those students couldn't get into games. Two, by using this ticket system, there are now incentives for students to attend more games and a variety of sports. Apparently you can win different prizes for going to WCU games.

First, rectify the scanning problem by getting a new scanning system or something. Or by just sending those few students whose card won't scan to the "Cat Card Validation" line like I went through today.

As far as incentives to go to sports games...it's a sad sad world when a student needs an incentive to go support their school.

I don't know how Western expects to be competitive with other NC system schools when they continue to pull stunts like this.

As far as a quick fix goes: how about put out some recycle bins and encourage ticket recycling next time?

The Garden of a Novice Gardener

In honor of the many excellent gardening blogs that I peruse, I thought I'd post a few pictures of my feeble attempts at a garden.

First, the summer squash. I am floored that I'm having such problems with these plants. Perhaps I was under the incorrect assumption that these things were like tomato plants in that they grow well with very little problems. I was very excited when I saw the first two squash the other day. I just checked on them...one is completely shrived with egg masses(?) nearby while the other is not quite shriveled yet, but obviously parasitized by the same thing as the previous one. If anyone has any guesses as to what's going on, please let me know!

The tomatoes are still going, but have slowed in their ripening. I think I'll pick some of the greener tomatoes off so the others can ripen.

The pepper plant is doing well. Here are two I picked today:

And finally, the bell pepper plant is thriving as evidenced by this baby:

R.I.P. Finny

My last surviving fish died yesterday. I've decided this owning fish thing is not for me. It's a good thing I didn't go get more fish on Saturday like I had originally planned. I think I'll put the tank in storage for now...at least until I can trust myself to be a responsible fish owner.

Fall cleaning?

When I bought my house, one of the selling points on the MLS listing was a "wintertime view of the river". Well, the guys from the power company went to work today clearing the vegetation from under the powerlines in front of my house and I now have...a year-round view of my neighbor's backyard. Think that will be a selling point when I go to resell??

Grizzly Bears & Wolf

Check out this incredible video from the USGS.