A good meal with friends- that was practically free!

Last night I made a free dinner!  Scrumptious split pea soup (it said scrumptious on the soup mix!) with a loaf of Parmesan peppercorn bread.  You may be wondering to yourself, "How was this delightful sounding meal free?"  Well I'll tell you.  The soup mix had been kicking around in our cupboard for, well, forever.  The ham we added to the soup was leftover from Thanksgiving- we had frozen it almost immediately (and, coincidentally, was free to begin with because it was from Andrew's work).  The bread was made with ingredients we either had on hand or (like the bread flour and yeast) were going to buy anyway to fuel my bread maker habit.

We invited the Ramseys and the Siders over to share in the feast since a) we like them all a lot and b) this was clearly going to be far too much food for two people to eat.

Let's start with the amazing bread.  And yes, it WAS amazing.

All the ingredients in the order I have to put them in the machine (water first, yeast last)

Here they all are!  You can't see half of them because they are layered carefully under the flour.

Here she is!  The machine herself!  ...the cats don't trust it...

Now let's look at how pretty the soup looks!  ...okay...it actually doesn't look that pretty.  Look beyond the fact that it is a hunk of meat sticking out of some murky looking water, and realize that it is a huge ham oozing non-stop flavor into the already flavorful broth of a split pea soup mix and understand that our house smelled amazing.

Not pretty to look at, but VERY pretty to eat.  In fact, there were no leftovers.

 Let's go back to the best part now: the bread.  Because I made it.  And that is pretty awesome.

Getting all puffy and sprinkled lovingly with asiago (which ended up smelling very odd as it cooked)

Even more puffy!

All golden-brown and delicious!  

Kinda sunk down in the middle...ah well

I won't lie, it was pretty popular.  Those last pieces were gone mere seconds after I took this picture.

Obligatory New Year's Post

New years.  That magical time of year where millions of people around the world vow to lose weight, work out more, work less, and make tons of money.

Last year, my goals were as follows:

• Don't be such a fatty-fat
• Be a better wife
• Continue to get through vet school without going crazy and running pedestrians down on campus.

I can safely say that I accomplished two of those goals.  Over the course of the past year I managed to lose almost 20 lbs (of course, thanks to the holidays and the orgy of over-eating I just engaged in, I am back to the "need to lose 5 lbs" point).  I also most certainly did NOT go crazy and run people over.  I have had some fairly spectacular breakdowns over the past year, but those happen.  Especially in the final year of vet school. Was I a better wife though?  I sort of think it is unlikely.  Sorry Andrew.  :(

Onto slightly less moody subjects, how about I think about some goals for THIS year?  This new year of 2011.  My year.  Here it goes...

Shiny new goals:

• Become a doctor (ZING!)
• Find a job in Kitsap County and have an income such that I can pay off my gargantuan student loans AND buy groceries with enough money left over to occasionally buy books without going into guilt seizures.
• Re-lose 5 lbs
• Never buy bread again.

Wiki-WHAT?  Never buy bread again???  That's right people.  I got a bread maker for Christmas.  Christmas afternoon while Andrew was cleaning the entire kitchen and house and talking loudly about how we needed to clean things, I nodded gravely and then proceeded to make a huge mess carefully measuring ingredients out for my first loaf of bread.  (Did I mention that I should try to be a better wife?)

I wish I could say that my first loaf was the pinnacle of human achievement in bready goodness, but it was actually pretty dumpy looking and quite dense.  I suspect that this was due to the fact that my yeast has been kicking around in the freezer for a year and may have finally given up the ghost (although up till this point it was doing fine in pizza and bao dough).  It may also be that I didn't use bread flour- just all purpose since that is what I had on hand.  

The bread tasted okay though.  I have had it as a grilled cheese sandwich as well as a pbj sandwich and they were both fine.  My next loaves will be better though.  Provided I remember to get some fresh yeast and bread flour!

**Edit: additional goal is to be more proactively involved with the household budget.  Also to agree with Andrew's goal: To not suck.

Huge Nerds

I am not afraid to admit that I am a huge nerd.  I married a huge nerd, my family is a family of nerds, and most of my friends are afflicted with nerdiness in one way or another.

And so it should come as no surprise that tonight we engaged in that most nerdly of pursuits: Dungeons and Dragons.  Er...technically, we played Pathfinder (a new system that is essentially an improvement on D&D 3.5...some just call it 3.75).  Not sure if that makes it less nerdy, or more so.

In any case, Andrew was our fearless leader and managed to whip up a quick adventure for us in very short order while we spent waaayy too long updating our characters from the last adventure (or making a new one in my case- I wanted to try a ranger).

I won't do a play by play, but I WILL say that we somehow managed to avoid some hurdles set up by Andrew almost entirely, and that we kicked the crap out of some monsters far more easily than a party of our size and level should have managed.  Mostly through blind luck.  We even killed one of the most dangerous, evil, and ancient beings on the planet through judicious use of fire, dolphins, and gravity.

But let's face it, this entire blog post is merely an excuse to post a picture of one of the monsters from tonight. Who we walloped in good order.  Keep in mind that he may LOOK cute and cuddly, but he reduced my Badger (Booger) to 0 hit points in one blow.

(Actually an Earth Elemental.  Big and scary.)