23 September 2008

Homesickness comes in many flavors including...

National Coney Island's entire menu
Olga's Kitchen's spinach pie and snackers
The Original Pancake House's corned beef hash
Vernors
My Grandma's chili
Ferlito's lasagna
Menna's Joint (what I wouldn't do for a dub right now...)
Charlie Kang's dolsot bibimbahp
Omi's ginger miso salad
Zingermann's...

I've been really good about not being homesick thus far, but it's creeping up on me lately. I think that my profound lack of sleep is starting to bring out my inner child in a not good way... i.e. the tantrum thrower in me is starting to come out and um, she wants a tuna melt from National Coney Island on Mack (but not the one on Harper), now.

In other news, I'm amazing at making chocolate chip cookies and Israeli couscous. Nom nom nom.

19 September 2008

Stuffed, as in schedule and tomatoes

So I haven't updated with a meaningful post in awhile. At one point, I actually thought that people read this, but I think I sort of lost all of that steam. Also, I think that commenting on someone else's blog helped. Oh well. Maybe this will devolve back to my dumping ground for recipes to Kyle. Anywho.

Grad school is harder and easier at the same time. The classes are more difficult, but they cover things that are closer to what I'm interested in, as opposed to all of my horrible undergrad physics classes. Right now I'm taking Radiative Processes and Gaseous Nebulae (aka "gasbags"). Gasbags is an awesome class; radiative... not so much, but I'm getting by with a little help from my fellow grad students. In addition to classes, I'm doing research, TAing an intro astronomy class, and running the observatory open house on Friday and Saturday nights for the Painter Hall telescope. Needless to say, I'm busy. This, unfortunately, leaves me little time to cook; however, I have come up with some tasty concoctions in the past month or so.

Stuffed Cherry Tomatoes + Mushrooms

7ish oz ricotta
1/3 c grated Parmesan cheese
2 tbs minced basil
s+p to taste
some amount of cherry tomatoes
some amount of whole button mushrooms, stemmed
EVOO
handful of shredded mozzarella

combine the ricotta,parm,basil,s+p. cut a small hole at the top of the cherry tomato and squeeze to get the rest of the innards out. take out the entire stem from the mushrooms. toss the tomatoes and the mushrooms in the EVOO. stuff them with the mixture. sprinkle with mozzarella. bake in a 350 deg oven for 25-30 minutes. yay.

I think that I want to have a tapas party. Except that's not really Spanish, so we could really call it an appetizer party. Except that's not a catchy name. Anywho, I'd make those and maybe put a piece of pasta in the tomato one and call it a "bite sized lasagna". Except that this requires me to have time. That's probably the worst bit of all.