That Time I Was Sent a Message On YouTube...

I love YouTube messages...

Alex is a sexy girl, who is actually a dude named Charlie. Yup, almost got me!

That Time I Made Fettucine Alfredo...

It's time for another 20sb Cooking Challenge! This round is "Homemade Fettuccine Alfredo with Italian Breadsticks"

Okay so, cards on the table, I don't have anyone at home to eat the food I make, nor does my schedule easily allow to organize friends to come over to do the eating. Since I was already going to have a bunch of pasta to eat [so. many. carbs.], I opted out of making bread sticks. I know I lose a lot of points for that, but my waistline won't like it so that's how its gonna be. The Chicken and Mushroom Fettuccine Alfredo did, however, come out amazing. It was the first time I made an Alfredo sauce, and it was delicious, so that makes doing the challenge worth it!...

That Time It Was Instagram Day...

I've decided to start a new series. Strike that. I decided months ago to start a new series and I am just now actually doing so. It's a monthly Instagram Day for me to post all of my Instagrams that month. I frequently forget that it is a thing which is a) why it took me so long to start this (have to have them to post them!) and 2) there will not be a million for me to post which is why I'm not doing this weekly....

That Time I Made Pepperoni Pesto Mini Pizzas...

You guessed right! It's 20sb Cooking Challenge time again!

Today's challenge:


Chopped Appetizer Round
1) Enlist a significant other/roommate/sibling/parents/grumpy cat lady from across the street to put together a “mystery basket” with four ingredients that you MUST use — if they want to shop all ingredients cannot exceed $20 TOTAL (or £10 or €15 depending on your country). They must include a protein and a fruit/veggie...

What Show From My Childhood Would I Bring Back?

So, I didn't have cable until high school. I think my parents thought they were helping but I just watched non-age appropriate sitcoms at an early age because there was nothing in between those and PBS kid shows. Which makes my answer Mad About You because that was my favorite show as a child. But I'd want them to go back to before Paul and Jamie had a baby. The show was more fun in the beginning.

Enjoy.

That Time I Had A Plastic-Dilemma Bag...

What? You thought that because it's no longer July that I was going to stop saving the world? Ahahahaha. Okay, so with July over I will stop collecting the plastic I do get forced upon me in a bag. But during Plastic Free July, I collected all the plastic that was unavoidable in a "dilemma bag" that I could then go through at the end of the month. I'm gonna be honest. I think I did pretty damn good. And I included stuff that I bought in June. Though to be more honest, some of it I bought on June 30th in anticipation of July. So I included it and felt bad and will no longer buy tortillas and pita bread. 

So there's all the food packaging scrunched together on the left, packaging from online purchases on the right. At the bottom is some more packaging, a candy wrapper from a Flake bar that I didn't know it was possible to get in the US but I found at Wegman's, and then all the yellow stuff is the caps and seals from my milk bottles, a plastic fork and if I'd thought of it, there would be several straws that I either failed-to-ask-to-not-have or were failed-to-not-be-given-to-me. Yes, that was a sentence. It looks like a lot of milk for a month, but half was used to make yogurt, so one little cap replaces a quart-sized plastic tub. That's something right?...

That Time That Plastic Free July Was Over...

So I missed a lot of posts this week. So much for Blogging Every Day in July. To make up for it I'm going to start August strong by mostly wrapping up Plastic Free July...

That Time I Made a Simple Summertime Supper...

It's time for another 20SB Cooking Challenge! This week's assignment:

Simple Summertime Supper

I've chosen to participate in even though I exclusively use the word "dinner."

The rules:

1. Meal must include a protein and a vegetable.
2. No Pasta Dishes. No Sandwiches. *womp womp*
4. Use of the oven is not allowed! Any other kitchen appliance -Foreman grill, toaster oven, etc- is fair game.
3. Limit active time in the kitchen to 30 minutes. “Active time” means any time you are chopping, stirring, or otherwise handling food; this leaves wiggle room for simmering and poaching: ie you can leave for 20 minutes and cool off in front of the fan while a sauce cooks down and it doesn’t count towards the half hour.
4. Post your recipe & pictures by Thursday, July 31. 

So even though I have a toaster oven that I love using in place of my oven because it's faster to pre-heat and more energy efficient than using a full-size oven when just cooking for one or two people, I wanted to do this challenge on the grill to keep most of the heating outside. So I took a recipe for salmon that prescribes being baked and tried adjusting the process to achieve the same outcome on the grill. Result: came out perfect!

Balsamic-Glazed Salmon with Corn on the Cob

(Full recipe)

You will need one 5-oz salmon fillet and one ear of corn per serving and one piece of foil for each of those.

Preheat outdoor grill for high heat and spray grate with cooking spray.

Corn:

Peel back corn husks and remove silk. 

Place or spread one Tbsp butter, salt and pepper on each piece, close husks.

Wrap each tightly with aluminum foil and set on grill. 

Glaze:

Combine 1/2 c balsamic vinegar, 1 Tbsp maple syrup, 1/2 Tbsp Dijon mustard, and a minced 1/2 garlic clove in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Reduce heat and simmer until thick, about 12 minutes.

Salmon:

While glaze is reducing, spray one piece of foil for each piece of salmon with cooking spray, set salmon in center of the foil, brush both sides of salmon with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

Wrap foil tightly around salmon, place on grill, and also turn the corn.

Remove salmon and corn after 10 minutes. Unwrap after glaze has had 5 minutes to cool.

Place corn and salmon on a plate and drizzle glaze on salmon.

 Rinse and recycle the foil, and enjoy!

That Time I Made Sour Cream...

What's on your mind right now?
Plastic Free July of course! And today it's sour cream. I believe I already posted that I was going to try making sour cream from coconut milk. Well I think it's my fault, but it was a big fail, and due to how pricy it is I decided to move on rather than try again.

So I did, and instead made regular sour cream! And much more success. The hardest thing is first waiting 24 hours for it to do its thing and then to wait for it to chill in the fridge to further do its thing before using it.

Other than that, it is very easy and very plastic free (if you don't buy the milk for it in a plastic carton and buy vinegar in a glass jar)! It is more expensive than store bought, but I don't use sour cream lot so it's worth it to be plastic free, and also it's less processed.

Also, from other recipes I've found, you can use the last tablespoon or so of your last batch to make the next one. This means you don't have to worry about getting milk and vinegar in paper and glass containers after the first batch and you could alternatively start your first batch with store bought sour cream.

That leaves me with just a couple of things on my plastic-free to do list which are ketchup, pita bread, and graham crackers. I may also try to find a way to make marshmallows without corn syrup (because it comes in a plastic bottle) so that I can make s'mores! Stay tuned, just one week left!

 #blogeverydayinjuly link-up

That Time The Doctor Did The Drunk Giraffe...

Today's prompt is "What's the last thing that made you cry?" And I don't cry much. And the last thing that made me cry is a bit too personal for me to blog about here. So instead:

That Time I Had 10 Favorite Instagram Feeds...

Today's Blog Everyday in July prompt:
Ten Instagrams you stalk or your ten favorite Instagram feeds.
Let's go to the app!

I chose 9 because 10 would make for not as nice formatting. And I didn't want to choose anyone I know from real life because of reasons. So as you can tell I'm really nerdy. Yes I follow Diet Coke. Yes, I follow Starbucks. It's Instagram. I don't use Instagram that much so my choices were actually pretty limited but I am nonetheless happy with all of them. Greg Behrendt, Kathy Griffin, Grace Helbig, Mary Lynn Rajskub (aka Chloe on 24), Rhett & Link, Felicia Day (aka Penny from Dr. Horrible), and Team Coco.
 #blogeverydayinjuly link-up

That Time I Had to Be Plastic Free in a Restaurant...

How to be plastic free in a restaurant:

After carefully insisting on no straw in my water and to have my salad dressing come on the salad instead of in the little plastic cup, I didn't think anything of using the little half & half thingies for my coffee. At first. I was about to open a second one for my refill and realized what I was doing! I asked if I could get creamer in another container and I was successfully brought some in a small glass. However, I'm not sure how well all of this would go if the restaurant was busy and I wasn't friends with my server.

That Time I Had a Favorite Local Restaurant...

Today's prompt:
Blog about your favorite local restaurant. 

My real answer is my kitchen. For diet and monetary reasons I don't eat out much. But since my kitchen isn't really the answer we were looking for, I'm going to choose the locally owned Greek restaurant. 

I don't want to name it here on the interwebs but we just have the one and the food is great. The first time I went I was worried I wouldn't like anything on the menu because I'm kind of picky but I found a couple of things I thought I could handle and I really liked everything I as willing to try.

#blogeverydayinjuly link-up

That Time I Was Bean Boozled...

Today's prompt:
Among these weird flavors of Jellybeans, what five flavors are you willing to taste?

Wow. Well. Um... I'll have to go with Pencil Shavings (even though I don't like banana anyway), Toothpaste, and Moldy Cheese. The other ones are too disgusting and I already saw Rhett and Link try them which did not make them at all appealing.
#blogeverydayinjuly link-up

That Time I Did Some Online 'Window' Shopping...

Today's prompt:
Share five websites you like to go online 'window shopping' to.

1. Amazon. And anything I might want to get sometime in the future I put in my cart and then "save for later" to either buy when I have money or if I need to get my total up to 35$ for the free shipping.
2. ThinkGeek. ALL the Doctor Who merch!
3. Old Navy. There may come a day when I no longer have any non-Old Navy clothes in my closet.
4.  eBay. Whenever I feel it's time to increase the amount of sundresses I own.
5. Autotrader. One day I will own a Jeep Grand Cherokee. One day.

 #blogeverydayinjuly link-up

That Time When There Were 5 Books That Should Be Movies...

Today's Blog Everyday in July prompt:
What are the five books you want to see in movies?

I don't read a lot of books, which is limiting, but here goes:

1) 'Tis... aka Angela's Ashes 2.

2) Hyperbole and a Half... Would love to see the stories animated into one movie.

3) Waiter Rant... Although it would probably be a lot like "Waiting..."

4) MWF Seeking BFF... A book I read because I prefer non-fiction and one of my friends told me about reading it after she moved to a new city. I think it would be a great premise for a movie.

5) Something Blue... The follow up to Something Borrowed which is a movie already. Something Blue features the character played by John Krashinski in Something Borrowed the movie, so if they made the sequel, I'd get to see him the amount that I wanted to in the first one.

 

 

 

That Time I Made More Homemade Plastic Free Stuff...

I'm skipping the blog prompt again today for a Plastic Free July post.

Today: More Adventures in Homemade Things!

I went through my list of things I want to make to have plastic free versions and picked a couple that are also fast to make. I chose coconut sour cream (also dairy free if that matters to anyone) and flour tortillas. The coconut sour cream didn't happen because I didn't plan ahead and put my can of coconut milk in the fridge the night before. But flour tortillas did!

Flour Tortillas

I saved all the almond gook from when I made almond milk and ground it into flour.  So since the recipe said it only makes two tortillas, I made two batches. One with all flour and one with half almond flour which, I believe, is lower calorie. 

Outcome:

• I think that the recipe I used had halved the ingredients but kept the directions because the amount of dough it made would be two very small tortillas or one normal sized one. 
• The almond flour did not work great. The result was a very brittle tortilla which would be fine to use with a dip but won't fold well.
• Also instead of rolling them out I used my fingers to smoosh them into circles which made them too thick. I also might have used too much flour. 
• They were tasty with some of my homemade ranch dip!