First I had to drive up back up to the Northeast in order to get the last of my stuff out of my old office. Bittersweet to leave the people at my office, but sometimes when things within a company get shaken up you don't always want to be there to see how things actually settle. Maybe the stack of cards will be pulled into a neat, orderly pile, or maybe it's a game of Boston Janitor (52 pick-up) that no one decides to play after the first move. Despite my unhappiness at the end, it is still hard to go from working and having enough money to pay the bills, go out a little, and put the rest aside, to feeling like you're on a slowly sinking ship. I vacillate between wondering if getting a PhD will ultimately be worth it after the 3 years I have to take classes (I am just assuming I will have to go back to work after that, although who knows, maybe I'll be able to get some big grant that just lets me do dissertation work for awhile), and being determined to work my butt off and get involved so that I make sure this time will have been worth it. I can say for sure that it's taking a little while to get my passion back for being in the classroom, especially without any sort of specific project to relate things to.
Anyways, back from that tangent. Since I was already up in the Northeast, I decided to visit my friend in Syracuse for a couple days. We did our own cooking, went out for lunch, and in general just had a good time hanging out. One of the meals we made was Pasta with Escarole,White Beans, and Chicken Sausage. I'm not someone who normally likes wilted greens, but this is one of my favorite dishes - it's super easy and chock full of way more flavor than you would expect. I think the reason I can do the wilted greens in this case is because the escarole actually stays internally crunchy. No picture of that one, but I did buy all the ingredients to make it this week, so I should be able to get something up in the near future. My friend also made some Nutella Cookies which also came out fabulous. Those I have some pics of:
Wow, talk about delicious. And oh, here's the recipe for that: Chocolate Nutella Cookies
The week or so after that, I had a friend come down to visit, which involved lots of me cooking (got to try and impress, right?) and hosting. Things learned - quinoa flour is picky, and one thing it doesn't work well in is pancakes. I think part of it is just having that quintessential pancake taste in your head, which quinoa cannot and will not ever have. Also though, I think there's clearly something about the way pancakes cook that require gluten, and quinoa does not have gluten in it, period. While experimenting can sometimes go awry, it can also go well. This Sausage and Cheese Frittata turned out really delicious, even though I ended up with no pepper (mine went bad on the inside). Although anything with sausage sprinkled throughout should taste pretty good. Sticking to the classics is another good strategy, however, as with Peter's Pasta Caprese. The visit did actually give me a chance to get out a little bit, as one day was spent hiking at Eno River State Park.
I wasn't sure what to expect from this little place. It definitely wasn't that hard of hiking (although we might have inadvertently missed the more challenging trails), but we did hike for something like 4 or 5 hours. Definitely a good way to purge late night alcohol residue from your system.
I'm looking forward to finding some more places to go hiking, as well as checking out the Botanical Gardens, some of which is set up more like a reserve.
Other than those few things, it's just been getting reacquainted with taking classes again. Definitely need to structure my time better - I can skim and get the general idea of something really well, but it leaves me at a loss when people start bringing up specifics.
So there you go, my time off from blogging in a nutshell. I certainly don't have as much time as I did earlier in the summer, so I am going to make a goal of putting up one to two new blogs each week, sound good? Off to the weekend...
