Sunday, February 15, 2015

One of My Favorite Meals to Cook

I have to credit Elizabeth for this post as well.

Between watching The Food Network and Gordon Ramsey's shows and collecting recipes on Pinterest, I've kind of become a wannabe foodie. But while I enjoy experimenting with recipes, when it comes to cooking regular meals, I usually stick to a few basic, tried-and-true things. It just makes things easier and helps me not waste food. Overall, some of my favorite types of food are Italian and Mexican, so I cook a lot of pastas, quesadillas, etc.

One of my favorite things to cook is pasta with chicken and spinach in a tomato cream sauce. It's become a go-to-meal for me because it's so easy and adaptable, and it covers all the basic food groups.



The above is fettuccine with a Vodka sauce from a can. I find that fettuccine works best with this dish, but what's great about it is that you can use whatever pasta you want, make it whole-grain or gluten free, the list goes on.

I used a canned Vodka sauce that I had, but usually I just mix marinara and Alfredo sauces. Again, this is pretty customizable, and someone feeling really ambitious could make sauces from scratch.

Even the veggies and the protein are custumizable. This is my favorite combination, but I think that it could work equally well with shrimp in place of chicken.

So there you have it - what I cook for a quick, easy, cheap and versatile meal.

Friday, February 6, 2015

Survey/Interview...Haven't Done One of These in Quite Awhile


Since my Livejournal days, in fact when I used to take them a lot from Elizabeth, who tagged me to do this one! Memories.

I started filling this out a few days ago but never got around to completing it until now...


Four names that people call me:
  1. Emily
  2. Em
  3. Emmy Sue (nickname a coworker gave me; although no my middle name is not Sue)
  4. Pinky (high school nickname)
Four jobs I have had:
  1. sales associate/cashier
  2. editor
  3. admin. assistant
  4. pet sitter
Four movies I have seen more than once:
  1. Finding Nemo 
  2. Titanic
  3. Moulin Rouge
  4. Forrest Gump
Four books I’d recommend:
     1. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

     2. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
     3. Carry on Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton
     4. Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott 


 Four places I’ve lived:

  1. Lanham, MD
  2. surburban Baltimore, MD
  3. Ellicott City, MD
  4. N/A
Four places I have been:
  1. Bermuda
  2. the Bahamas
  3. Montreal, Canada
  4. France (Provence and Paris)
Four places I would rather be right now:
This question is hard because I'd rather be anywhere warm right now...but most of my family and friends are in places that are not so warm, and I don't know where specifically I'd really want to be. So...warm or near loved ones? Hmmm....

  1. family friend's outside of Orlando
  2. friends in Denver
  3. but a nice tropical island would be nice
  4. or on a cruise ship in warm waters (Hawaii??)
Four things I don’t eat:
  1. raw fish
  2. sardines
  3. liver
  4. cottage cheese
Four of my favorite foods:
  1. Ice cream or frozen yogurt of any kind
  2. avocados/guacamole
  3. Coconut
  4. chocolate
Four things I’m looking forward to this year:
  1. a couple of hopeful trips (possibly Florida and Vegas)
  2. meeting a friend's newborn baby, and seeing the newborns of several acquaintances on facebook after they are born
  3. winter being over with...
  4. and the start of spring
Four things I say:
This is a hard one..."say" in what context? "Say" or "write"? Clearly my overthinking is not helping me here. Many of the things that I do say make me sound like a teenager; I have way to many "like's" and "ummms" in my speech along with things like "awesome" when I can't think of anything else to say. Buuuut....

  1. "But yeah.../so yeah..." It's not so much that I say this one, but that I write it. All the time. But yeah...
  2. "I know, right."
  3. "tuckus" My favorite non-curse word for the rear end. 
  4. One day at a time. 
Four people I’m tagging:   Naaah, not tagging, but anyone who feels like it should fill this out; I miss the fun diversion that is these survey/quiz/interview things. :)

    Tuesday, February 3, 2015

    Let's Talk the Interesting Part of the Super Bowl...

    That is, the ads. :P. 

    Yeah, what was up with some of those ads??

    The somber tone was not what I was expecting for a football game. First there was the much-talked about Nationwide Dead Kid Ad. I get what they claim to have been going for here (a "conversation" about household safety hazards) but the execution was majorly lacking, and viewers didn't so much see a public child safety message as a manipulative grasp for profit through dead children. 

    With all the talk of the Nationwide ad, I feel like few people noticed the domestic violence PSA. This definitely threw me for a loop for a second (a woman calls the police and asks for a pizza), but unlike the Nationwide...thing, it was clearly a public service announcement rather than a commerical-with-a-message. And it's certainly a message the NFL needs to address. But, yeah, not the usual tone for a football game...

    And somewhere in there there was a Scientology ad. 

    Even the car commercials dealt with more serious themes (fatherhood, the wisdom of the elderly) than your typical car/truck/SUV ad. Among those, the standout was Dodge's "Wisdom." 





     "Keep your eyes open and sometimes your mouth shut."

    Always (the Maxi-pad company) didn't quite reach the heights of girl power that Goldie Box did last year, but they tried.



    "[Running like a girl] means you run as fast as you can."


    Turbo Tax's spot seemed fitting for a Super Bowl played (and won) by the New England Patriots, and surprisingly for a commercial for tax prep services, it wasn't boring!




    But the major OMG Squeee Awww 111!!!111 moment of the night was of course brought to us by Budweiser. I  mean, these commercials just get better and better each year.



    So yeah, it was a really strange year for Super Bowl ads, but at least there were Clydesdales and puppies!