CRUNCH!

What I wouldn't give for chips and salsa right now. It's 19:00 and I have been on campus since 8:00. I will continue to be on campus until approximately 20:00. Lunch was seven hours ago. The first thing to creep into my hungry thoughts is chips and salsa. This is by far my favorite snack combination. I have told many people I could drink salsa. I like it spicy and chunky. There is no other way. And I can't help but to eat a ton of it. There is always more salsa than chip when I am eating. 

I remember going to a Mexican restaurant with my friends from London one night and, following tradition of most Mexican styled restaurants, they brought bowls of chips and salsa. The table I was sitting at had gone through three bowls of salsa and one bowl of chips, while the other part of our group at the table next to us had gone through one bowl of chips and one bowl of salsa. And it wasn't because of the girls I was sitting with. We experimented and decided I take ridiculous, disproportional portions of salsa to chip. I can't help myself.

 Don't get me wrong, I love chips. The chips are a more traditional way to get the goodness into my mouth though, rather than drinking it. Plus, they add a crunch. I decided crunch is my weakness. I love crunchy food: chips, carrots, nuts, celery, cucumbers, crispy bacon, cereal, crackers, apples, etc. (Mind you, I could write an equally lengthy blog post about each of these foods, but I won't...at least not right now.) There is just something pleasing about biting into crunchy food. It makes me feel like I am really eating something. Every bite is filled with dutiful munches, and I love that the crunch is so loud that I can't hear some things (television, knocks on the door, cell phone, etc.). It feels like a vibrating massage for my skull. Crunchy food also feels good on my teeth, like I'm a dog chewing on rocks to sharpen my chompers are something of that sort. I just can't seem to find anything wrong with crunchy food. Oh, except for Cap'n Crunch cereal, particularly the peanut butter ones. As much as I would like to be "crunchitized," they are terrible for the inside of your mouth. Mess you up for days.

I am about to share a guilty pleasure of mine that relates to this post, and that is Arthur. Arthur is a great cartoon aired on PBS that I've loved since I was little. Across my Arthur days, I have encountered an episode regarding Crunch cereal. (Watch the twelve minute episode here and here.) The company is looking for a new theme song and takes suggestions from their consumers in the form of a contest. DW, Arthur's little sister, comes up with the song:

Oh I have a hunch!

Breakfast, dinner, and lunch

Would taste really great

If I had it with CRUNCH!

I must say I have internalized this song to not only mean the cereal but my personal infatuation with crunchy food. And, needless to say, DW wins the contest. I could not agree more. 

Three day escapade

As a college student, I am supposed to be focused on academic things, which I am. However, sometimes I throw more enthusiasm into my hobbies for the sake of my sanity. About a month ago I had been compiling a list of great things to bake, particularly for Halloween, but I did not have enough money or enough people to justify my yearnings. Enter "Wait Until Dark." My apartment complex was having a movie night, and I volunteered to be in charge of the goodies. My landlord gave me a budget, I researched and combined all the ingredients I would need, emailed them to my landlord, and voila! A few days later she and her husband showed up at my door with everything. (And I was well under budget.)

And what are not included on the table are 20 sticks of butter, 60 eggs, and 4 blocks of cream cheese. Yes, there was a heart attack in my fridge.

2 bags of snickers, 2 bags of m & ms, and 6 bags of chocolate chips. Note the jar with the yellow label: molasses. Never in my life had I encountered it until then. It's dark and gooey. It smells like sweet dirt. This may be an odd description, but if anyone is familiar with beets, especially sugar beets, then you'll know what I'm talking about.

Hello sugar and 6 boxes of cake mix...

I wish I had taken pictures while I was actually making all these things. Flour was all over the floor, not to mention my baking jeans (they're a size bigger than the rest of my jeans...they make it easier to move). Pictures never do the mess justice anyways; it's something that must be experienced. Moving on. I decided that I would tackle this project in phases. Wednesday night I began only making the doughs. 

I made eight cookie doughs, and you probably cannot see my labels. Ergo, I will list them in not so great detail: 

• Homemade oreos
• Pumpkin cookies
• Gingersnaps
• Checkerboard cookies
• Peanut butter cookies
• Sugar cookies
• Chocolate surprise
• Peanuts sitting pretty

I must admit I cheated a bit with the checkerboard ones. I already had them made a while ago and never got around to baking them. So, I thought this would be the perfect chance to use them. And don't worry, I'll explain what some of the other cookies are later.

Behold, the Tower of Madness.

After that was all finished on Wednesday night, I decided to paint my nails. Logical right? I just needed some down time, which is odd that I would choose to paint my nails. It used to bother me profusely. Only my toenails were acceptable to be painted, but recently fingernail painting has been growing on me. I'll never figure myself out. I promise they match my sweater so much better in real life than in the still.

This is what my kitchen sink looked like on Thursday after everything was baked minus the oreos and peanuts sitting pretty. In my defense, my roommate was making a fancy dinner for her fiancé that night. Notice the pots, pans, and plates that support my argument. 

That night I went to sleep at 2am. I got chocolate on my bed sheets that had smeared off some part of my body or clothing because, yes, I was too exhausted to worry about pajamas that night. When I woke up on Friday and put on my glasses, I couldn't figure out why I could not see very well. After closer examination I realized there was flour all over the lenses. 

So Friday was the big day. The rest of the cookies needed to be baked, and all the frosting needed to happen. Plus, they needed to be wrapped and carried down to the serving tables. This is the empty bowl of cream cheese frosting that my friends help me to clear. (I just couldn't frost all those cookies alone.)

The sugar cookies were the biggest and the baddest. I decided that since the Halloween pack came with four different cutouts, then I would make four different shaped cookies. Here are the pumpkin ones, coming in at a count of 40. Next are the ghost cookies: 39. I must say that their tails were quite annoying.

And finally we have the cats and half moons: 32 and 35 respectively. The sugar cookies gave me the most pain because they cook so quickly and I would get carried away with cutting out the next batch for the oven. Oh, and how convenient, I discovered that my oven really has no chance of cooking anything on the bottom rack without giving it a dose of fibrous charcoal. Fortunately, I caught all the cookies before they reached that point.

Oreos. 75 oreos x 2 = 150 chocolate cookies baked to make them. These were the favorites of the night. I didn't even taste one because they were gone right when I opened the plastic. Actually, thanks to an impatient roommate, they started disappearing before I officially opened them.

The checkerboard cookies (65) were adorable, but did not live up to the taste I wanted them to have. I think they could be greatly improved by covering the bottoms in chocolate. Next time I suppose.

These are the peanuts sitting pretty (61). Basically they are a kind of cookie rolled in walnuts with vanilla frosting and m & ms on top. The m & ms are supposed to be peanut, but the Halloween colors were more of a must, therefore these are plain chocolate m & ms.

These are all the cookies sitting in my living room. Unfortunately it does not look like that total it came out to. Mind you there are plates stacked on one another. I did not find it obligatory to take pictures of the pumpkin cookies, gingersnaps, or chocolate surprises because they look normal. But to explain what the chocolate surprises are is just basically a chocolate cookie with a fun size snickers smashed inside of it. They are deadly and very chocolately. 

So, I think we should add all these up:

• Pumpkin = 40
• Gingersnaps = 50
• Chocolate surprises = 57
• Peanut butter = 50
• Oh, and I made one special cookie out of the extra sugar cookie dough I had. It was Voldemort = 1.

This brings us to a grand total of approximately 620 cookies. I am now curtsying for your mental applause. The best part of the night was that everything was well received, which I was rather worried about. I was quite lucky. Nothing was too hard, burnt, or flat out disgusting.

I was left with a somewhat generous amount of leftovers. I was able to give most of them away. I was content with having a plate of pumpkin cookies and gingersnaps. They were quite addicting. They just don't taste as sugary as the other ones did and therefore made me feel that my consumption was not as gluttonous. I'm sure my body will figure out down the road that this is not the case. Until then "Bon Appétit!"

Einstein hair

I have relatively straight hair, but there is one exception to this fact. 


*Note: I do not always smile like this...it's just how pictures come out sometimes.

Notice the fro by my ear. It used to bother me, but now I hardly straighten it. I think my mom has the same trait. I feel it's part of my character, my quirkiness. It displays my devil-may-care/throw-caution-to-the-wind attitude, no? (Okay, so maybe that's the wishful thinking of my control freak subconscious.) Mind you, this curl is identical on the other side of my head. It was just easier to snap a mugshot of me on this side. This "do" is what completes my nerd outfit I wear everyday. If you haven't taken note yet, I am wearing glasses and a cardigan. I think I was definitely wearing a "go green" fitted tee then that said "keep it clean" with little fishies swimming on the front. (Ironically enough the shirt is from American Eagle.) This is pretty much what you'll see me in everyday, except I hardly wear fitted tees. I think that may be the only one I have. I usually wear something with a collar. Keeps getting worse right? But I must say I'm proud to display my nerdiness. Maybe I shouldn't be so much, but it fits for now.

I don't know Einstein very well, but I would assume that we'd get along.

The biggerest carrot I ever sawed

I think this picture states enough about what I have to say. I do have a rather large mouth, so this picture may not do justice to the actual size of this carrot. I couldn't eat all of it, not because of the size but because of the taste. The closer to the large end I got, the worse it tasted. When are Americans going to learn that bigger is not better? I doubt that carrot grew to its size naturally, and therefore had its taste tainted by veggie drugs. Yes, I did buy this carrot at the market in a bag full of many other carrots. I thought it was stuffed with normality. Wrongo bongo.

However, I cannot lie about the excitement I felt when I pulled out the orange baseball bat.

Bottomless grazer

It is true that most of the time I am hungry. It's not that I don't have any food. (I have more than enough food to feed my entire flat of girls and their significant others for days.) I am just always hungry. One of my roommates remarked the other day that she thinks it's fun to watch me when I come home for the night because I never stop eating. I'm a nocturnal grazer, and when I finish "dinner" around 10pm I proceed to make my lunch for the next day. I get really excited about it too. See this post for my enthusiasm over pb and j.

A couple of nights ago I made a rice-a-roni chicken casserole for dinner. When I was finished, I scooped the rest into a container to save for later. My roommate then came in and asked, "Did you finish the rest of that?" while pointing to the casserole dish that had recently been scraped clean by yours truly. I laughed and explained what I had done. The fact that she assumed I could eat a casserole will give you an idea of how much I eat. It's a trait I try not to reveal in public. One who appears gluttonous, particularly a female, is not someone I want to be. But I give in on occasion. For instance, after that rice-a-roni casserole dinner, I went over to a friend's place for help with French. There happened to be tortellini soup on the stove. It was offered to me, which I politely turned down, but gladly accepted when it was insisted I have some. It was a couple hours after I had eaten dinner, so naturally I was hungry. Later that night, when I was home, I was starving more than I usually am at that time of night (midnight), but I refrained from eating anything. Sleep was more important than a snack that night.

A clarification: I am a healthy eater. I bake a lot of sweets, but I give a lot of it away because I know better. I like to cook. I like to taste the goodies I make, and I enjoy creating something so many people will enjoy just by mixing a few or 15 ingredients. However, I know my self-control will only last for so long.  I just know myself too well. It is absolutely necessary that I give them away (my roommates don't like that decision...ever) so I don't accidentally eat them all.

Anyways, I'm generally a responsible eater. I love healthy food; it's usually what I crave. So when my roommates see me eating, my feasting is often healthy and consists of the large bowl of breakfast oatmeal, all the grazing I do between 6pm and 10pm, and the late night Honey Nut Cheerios. The grazing mainly consists of a main course (a generous portion with some kind of meat) and then snacks of almonds, soy beans, mixed nuts, yogurt, carrots, apples, peas, or whatever else I can get my hands on of that sort. I'm O Negative. We crave meat and vegetables, as well as exercise (cue the blog on morning runs I will write one day) and I'm okay with that. Of course, I must throw in the occasional, not so clandestine, thrill that dark chocolate gives me.