In other news, I play this game with myself where I set a budget for myself that I know will be challenging to meet partially because I’m cheap and like to not spend that much money on things, but partially also so then I can have the challenge of trying to stay under it.  That’s not weird or anything, right?  Along those lines, I hit my food budget for April last Monday.  I’ve got to make it until Tuesday.  We’ll get to how I’m totally working this in a moment.

There are moments in my life when present Jenny is so completely thankful for the choices made by past Jenny.  Like when I get back from a trip, and my room is clean, and my laundry is done.  Present Jenny totally loves past Jenny then.  There are other times when present Jenny is thinking to herself, “Future Jenny is going to love me for this!”  And of course, there are times when past Jenny has totally screwed over present Jenny.  It’s just real life, folks.

Last night, I swore my undying love for past Jenny, because that beautiful thing decided to put a pound or so of ground beef, unused from a Kroger super-pack, into the freezer.  And when last night’s Jenny found out that it didn’t belong to her roommate, she was positively ecstatic.

And so I made this absolutely divine pasta with meat sauce for dinner tonight.  I added the slightest bit of agave syrup.  SO GOOD.  But because nobody else seems to be saying it to me, “good job, me!”

P.S.  I’m getting into the habit of congratulating myself on the totally awesome things that I do.  This week, I straight owned a project at work.  Nobody seemed to notice, so I decided I didn’t care and congratulated myself.  The next day, my coworker thanked me for my good work on that.  And then he stuck his gluteny hands in my bag of tortilla chips without asking.  I still like him.  They were almost gone and not that good to begin with.  But if it were a full bag, and they had been baked scoops…

I’ve been trying to figure out why my friends and I played Mother, May I? in elementary school.  It seems like a colossally uninteresting game now that I look back on it, but we played it enthusiastically.  If you’re unfamiliar, check it out here.  In my mind, I think we should have played the game kind of like this.  Imagine that the father/mother had a particular rule in mind when accepting and denying requests from the children.  In that case, a level of strategy could be employed in order to figure out the rule and then more easily win.  That is a game I would be willing to play, I think.

All of that to say, I’ve kind of forgotten what gluten-ful bread tastes like.  Sometimes, I make something, and I wait anxiously for the boyfriend and the roommate to try things and give me their approval.  I went to dinner the other night and got a burger (with a gluten free bun).  I had to give the boyfriend a taste of my bun to make sure it was really gluten free.  It was so good!  Bull City Burger and Brewery has gluten free buns, gluten free meats (including their hot dogs), and my favorite phrase ever written on their chalkboard inside: “Yes, we made that”.  With the exception of the gluten free buns, everything is made in house, which gives me an added level of comfort when ordering bbq on my burger.  While they have a sign when you’re ordering that emphasizes the fact that they can’t guarantee zero gluten contact with your food, I ask them to change their gloves, and I’ve never had a problem.

I strongly urge you to try it out, or a negative ballot.   Whichever, really.  Debate nerd?  What?

P.S.  When are Charlie and Amita ever going to get together?  No spoilers, I’m only in season 2!

The Wicklow Mountains

I’ve been dying to tell you about it.  Except not really.  Which is why I haven’t.  Because big trips are a lot for me to process.  And my new philosophy in life is “When in doubt, just don’t say anything.”  So here I’ve been.  Not saying anything.

But I’m not in doubt anymore.  Not at all.  I have these mad cool photos to show you.  Photos of Wicklow (above) and Glendalough (below) and Kilkenny (further below).  But we’ll get there…  all in due time…

A rock in Glendalough

When I went to Glendalough, I found a rock.  So I sat on it, duh.  You can do more than just sit on rocks, of course.  But this rock.  It was made for sitting.

Glendalough means glen by two lakes.  And sure enough, it totes was.

Lake One

But wait!  There’s more:

Lake Two

Apparently, there’s a wedding scene in Braveheart that was filmed in Glendalough.  Apparently…

Glendalough is also home to the ruins of a monastic city.  So that was pretty cool.

Wow... Right?

I have a bizarre obsession with graveyards in general.  This one is hard not to be obsessed with.

I can't get over it, really.

I can’t figure out why, but I totally dig the half cross left in this.

le sigh

After Glendalough, we went and saw a really big rock.  Because that’s what you do in Ireland.  Everyone knows that.  And this rock was made for picking up.  It’s really big.  It set some record for being really big, but I didn’t really remember what record or when, to be honest.  I was a little distracted holding it up.  But it’s ok.  I’ve been working out lately.

I am woman; hear me roar!

After that, we went to Kilkenny.  And even though fictional Jenny would never go near Kilkenny, this Jenny found it a darling little town.

If anyone can aid me, it’s my brother in the army,
If I can find his station down in Cork or in Killarney.
And if he’ll come and save me, we’ll go roving near Kilkenny,
And I swear he’ll treat me better than me darling sportling Jenny

The town of Kilkenny was an absolutely magical blend of old and new.  The alleyways looked just like this:

An Alleyway in Kilkenny

And the streets looked just like this:

A Street in Kilkenny

I stood on the steps of a “proper Irish castle” as all my new Irish friends told me.

A Proper Irish Castle

When we went to Kilkenny, we met up with our good friend Willie.  He’s my buddy.

See? We like each other.

Dublin City wasn’t too shabby either.  I’ll tell you about it another time.  But here’s a bit of a spoiler: I went to jail.

Gasp!

WHAT?!

You know what they say: “What happens in Dublin stays in Dublin.”  Actually, they don’t say that.  What they do say is “Dublin does Fridays like Michael D does poems.”  And just in case you don’t know who Michael D is, let me tell you.

Yea, you heard me.  Jam.  Because sometimes, after you fly across the Atlantic to see the Emerald Isle, you just want to spend your Saturday morning making green jam.  Wait, you don’t?

This weekend has been a whole lot of nothing.  It’s been full of 2 year old birthday parties, board games, trips to the library, silly text messages, and reading John Green novels.  And jam making.  Duh.

Jam making doesn’t have to be this super intimidating task.  It can just be this thing you do on a Saturday morning because you don’t feel like working.  It can be this super rewarding time where you stir a pot of boiling kiwi pulp and dance around to your favorite Lenka song.  You know you want to…

Kiwi Jam

Adapted from Food.com

• 3 cups kiwi pulp
• 1 package dry pectin
• 1 cup pineapple juice/crushed pineapple combo
• 4 cups sugar

Peel and roughly chop about 10 kiwi fruits.  Then put them through a food mill.  If you don’t have a food mill, I’m sure a food processor or blender could do the trick.  Mix that pulp with the pectin and pineapple.  For the pineapple, I took a can of crushed pineapple and drained the juice.  Then I added whatever crushed pineapple I needed to get to a cup.

Bring the kiwi mixture to a boil.  Add sugar, bring back up to a boil.  Boil hard for a minute.  Then can according to directions that came with the pectin.

All of that said, eating in large groups is tough, and I think your odds of being able to eat a gluten free meal go down dramatically when you’re at a table for more than 6 people.  I’ll post in detail about food later.  Since I’m going to be eating in larger groups over the next couple days, I’m going to try to be more conscious of this.  We’ll see how things go.  Hopefully tonight was a fluke.

I can’t compete with that. Probably because absolutely no one is hotter than my boyfriend. But all of that said, I still had a pretty crumby week. So what do you do? A couple things:

1. Make this soup. It’s divine.

2. Make chocolate ice cream with peanut butter chips.

3. Take your computer breaking as a sign that you need to sit on your butt tonight.

4. Watch How I Met Your Mother while sitting on aforementioned butt.

5. Listen to Lenka while dancing in your kitchen.

6. Mostly, though, you’ve got to roll with the punches.

To put it simply, there’s a lot going on.  A lot.  All of it is positively amazing.  But whoa baby!  When I get busy, I get stressed.  Which means I stress eat.  Just kidding, I don’t do that.  Except I do.  I like to make homemade french fries that aren’t really fried, and then dip them in agave nectar.  Because I’m out of honey, duh.

And that’s the most exciting thing happening on the food front here.  But even if I don’t have much time to experiment with new recipes, I’m still collecting things I’ll be making once I’m in my new kitchen.  I wanted to share with you what’s been inspiring me lately.  Here goes.

These cupcakes need to go gluten free in a bad way.

I don’t know why it never occurred to me to do this before, but it’s happening.  Tonight.

Finally, I’m dying to make these, but I’m having a little trouble convincing the boyfriend that he doesn’t actually hate brussel sprouts.

What’s been inspiring you lately?  I’m dying to know.

Last night, this guy (probably at least 10 years my senior) came up to me and struck up a conversation.  Where are you from… what do you do… etc.  I was telling him about my job, and he asked how long I had been working there.  ”2 1/2 years, I guess… I started the day after I graduated, actually.”  ”Oh… you’re… young.”  He didn’t talk to me after that.  Do I know how to scare off the boys or what?

That said, my boyfriend is turning 38 today (tomorrow?  I never know).  He’s a fantastic boy.  This evening (yesterday evening?  this is weird), we played board games with his friends and ate the most divine chocolate cake of my life.  This was the cake, with this as frosting.  It was intense, to say the least.

At the risk of being like one of those disgusting high school couples on facebook…

Happy birthday, you dear, sweet boy!

I did, indeed create quite tasty food during the month, and I managed to finish out the month exactly $1 under budget.  A huge accomplishment for me.  I’m usually $10-20 over.  Sometimes more than that.  I’m going to try to keep this going this month, although, not being able to mooch food off my parents for a week is going to make that difficult.  On the other hand, not feeling compelled to cook for holiday parties will help.

Now let’s talk about cream.  I managed to make 2 different types of ice cream for Christmas.  First, my classic chocolate.  Second, cheesecake ice cream.  I recommend both.  But the real success was my garlic cream sauce.  I started with this recipe but cut it in thirds, and still served it with a pound of pasta.  There was plenty of sauce, still.  I may have still used the originally 6 cloves of garlic.  <shrug />

As I made these resolutions last month, I really wanted to resolve to make a really delicious loaf of gluten free bread.  I knew that the holidays would not afford me enough time, though, and I decided to put it off until January.  Sadly, due to personal things, I’m going to put this off again.  Nothing’s worse than making a resolution you know you’re not really resolved about.  Ok, a few things are worse, but still…

Here are my January resolutions:

1. More veg.  Tons more.
2. Figure out how to use egg whites.  And actually use them.

Number 1 shouldn’t come as a surprise.  Number two: I make recipes that call for egg yolks all the time.  I usually just dump the egg whites.  That’s no good.  I need to stop.  This month.  Currently, there are egg whites in my freezer, and I’ve got a plan.  :)

On two unrelated notes:

1. For some reason, Amazon recommended this to me.
2. I totally just noticed that Google reader has some highlights on the right side of the screen.  You know, things like “recently read”, “recently starred”, and my new favorite “recently kept unread”.  As it turns out, that last category made me laugh at myself because it shows just how passive aggressive I can be.  I’m too embarrassed to tell you why.  A quart of ice cream* for the person who can guess what rss feed I’ve been not reading for months.

* For people within a 10 mile radius only.  Your pick of flavors, though.

P.S.  I just realized this is the second post titled thus.  Perhaps the third.  Considering this, I’m resolving to not repeat myself so much.  For serious.  (That was just to see if you were paying attention, duh!)

• Baked Tostitos Scoops: they’re obscenely expensive, especially when compared to any other tortilla chip.  But they’re baked.  And they’re scoops.  Yes, I’d definitely want these.
• Bananas: I’d want them delivered daily (I guess I wouldn’t complain if it were every other day).  They should be yellow, absolutely no brown, with the slightest bit of a greenish tint.
• Pebbles: Each week, I would alternate between fruity vs. cocoa.  Variety is the spice of life.
• Peanut butter:  I go through this like you wouldn’t believe.  It’s a baker’s lifeline if she’s going gluten free.
• Udi’s: All varieties.  Every week.  Yea, I’d eat that much Udi’s if I could.
• Skintimate:  This is totally stupid, but shaving gel is one of those things that’s a total luxury item to me.  It’s reserved for days when I’m feeling crummy and want to rock a totally short skirt to prove to the world that I’m awesome.  If every day I wore a short skirt and proved to the world that I was awesome, I think I’d be pretty happy with life.
• Fancy Pants Shampoo: It’s been so long since I’ve used good shampoo, I don’t even know the brand I’d choose.  But really ridiculously expensive stuff.  That makes your head feel good about itself.
• Headphones: I’m hard on headphones.  I don’t really know why, but it probably has to do with the fact that I forget that I’m wearing them and stand up from my desk while they’re still in.  Kind of a lot.  About a pair every month or two would do, I think.

If I could get someone to deliver perfect bananas to me every single day, I’d go with that one.  Otherwise, I think I’m leaning towards the scoops.  Can you blame me, really?