More Weekend (Amanda's old blog)

Well, I went to my stepsister's bridal shower this morning. It was lovely - pink and tulle and mimosas oh my! Unfortunately, I left my camera in the car, because I'm a dunce. I shall now recite the three steps to having plenty of photos for my blog:

1. Own a decent camera (check!)
2. Keep the battery charged (working on it: probably going to buy a new one soon.)
3. Keep the camera on you.

Right. Next time I go to a super crafty, fun, blogworthy event, I vow to charge my camera and not leave it in the car. ... ... Ok, I vow to TRY.

So, my roommate Stacy is talking about centerpieces for her wedding. She's been going back and forth for a while - the most recent (and most promising) idea is lilacs. Apparently her aunt has 3 lilac bushes by her house - one white, one light purple and one deep purple. And purple happens to be Stacy's favorite color, and one of her wedding colors, AND they'll be in bloom during the month of her wedding! So we're talking about what she can do with lilacs, mason jars, and possibly LED lights. Fun stuff.


So, I think my next entry will be about my pet rats. I told you before that I built their cage and toys. And I did it all on the cheap! So I'll show you all that stuff when I have pictures. For now, let me introduce you to the rats themselves! I gave them a bath today because they were starting to get stinky.


The black one is the girl, her name is Myelin. The grey one is the boy, his name is Kashyyyk. No, that is not a typo.

I always put an egg carton in the bath for them to float around on. They hang onto it for dear life - they hate the water. But don't they look so cute all wet?

Alright. I have to go revise my paper and get to bed. It's been a long weekend.

Psychology Undergraduate Research Conference (Amanda's old blog)

Yesterday was eventful! I went to a psychology undergraduate research conference in a tiny town just south of Jackson that I've never heard of before. It was a lot of fun, I got to see some interesting research from other people at various Michigan colleges. And I got to present my research, which was fun. I was there with a few other people from Dr. Baker's lab, including Elyse - another undergrad and a friend of mine.


Tada! I'm on the right, on the left is Elyse. We are proudly displaying our research.


It was a lot of fun. There was a talk on developmental evolutionary psychology. Good stuff.

Then I came home and spent the evening hanging out with my mom. I recently inspired my mom to start collecting buttons more seriously - for crafting purposes. She has amassed a really large collection in a very short time.


Both those cardboard boxes are FULL!

She and I are brainstorming ways to use them. I want to get big mason jars and sort them by color, material or size. Or all three. Right now she's just keeping them based on how she ordered them. There are a million crafts we could do with these. It's fun, and inspiring!

So she showed me some new ones she got recently. These are all glass buttons.


Look at the colors! The patterns! The detail!

There's a lot of blue because my mom likes blue. Anyway, I just thought I'd share - my mom has a really good eye and is willing to spend the time looking for good materials.

That's all for now, I gotta run! It's a busy weekend. ^_^

Well, whaddoya know? (Amanda's old blog)

I said I would show you guys when I cooked up some dumplings. Well, guess what Brandon and I decided to have for dinner? You betchya!
We made pretty much the yummiest homemade Japanese meal I've had to date. As Brandon would say, "That sounds like a challenge!"

Anywho, we made up some of those spicy carrots I was telling you about. So I documented that, as well. First, you gotta chop the carrots matchstick style.


There's my baby, hard at work!

Then you have to toast some sesame seeds, and sautee the carrots in sesame oil along with the seeds.


I'M SO PUMPED FOR CARROTS! Those are the dumplings to my right. I'll get to those in a minute.

Then I made the sauce. My recipe is an abbreviated version of the one on JustBento, just because I used what I had in the house. It worked out nicely, though. My verison is spicy. My roommate Stacy makes a sweet version, using sugar instead of hot pepper paste. Personally, I think brown sugar goes better with soy sauce than white sugar, but that would admittedly have a totally different flavor.


I just mix in some hot pepper paste with my soy sauce and VOILA!

After the carrots have cooked for a while, I add the sauce.


OH MY GOSH it is SO nice to have a camera that works.

MMM brown and delicious. So, I just toss them in that for a while, then I drain the sauce - but don't get rid of it! It makes a great spicy salad dressing.

Ok so lets talk about the REAL stars of the show - the dumplings! These dumplings were handmade by Brandon and I. The wrappers are made from homemade dough - REALLY simple, just flour and water. The filling is ground beef (I substitute beef for pork because I don't really eat pork), green onions, soy sauce and sesame oil. I store them in the freezer in copious amounts of flour to keep them separate.


I put them in ziplock bags and make sure they lay flat when I first put them in, so they don't clump together. Once they're frozen, though, you can move them however. They're solid as rocks after that.

Then I boil about an inch of water and put them in.


You HAVE to keep them moving, they stick really easily, and once they stick they start to tear.

My roommate Eric added soy sauce to the water when he cooked them. They were golden brown on the outside and super yummy. But I like to keep my soy sauce to a minimum, so I don't do that (I'm being a total hippocrit here and you'll find out why in a second).

When they're done boiling, I just put them in a bowl by themselves becuase they tend to bring starchy water with them, which can gunk up your rice. Here's our dinner:


White rice with spicy carrot sesame salad, Beef dumplings and homemade iced green tea. All of this was made from scratch, can you believe it? I'm so proud of myself!

So, I'm a hippocrit because I said I wasn't going to make dipping sauce for the dumplings, since there's soy sauce on the carrots as well, but the carrots were so spicy and they stained the rice so I couldn't cool off my mouth that way. So I went ahead and made some dipping sauce for the dumplings. I want you to know that this amount of soy sauce in one meal is NOT normal for me. I keep my salt intake to a minimum. I rarely add salt to anything, and I'm very careful about soy sauce. But tonight was a special treat. So here's my recipe for the dipping sauce: equal parts soy sauce and sesame oil, then just a dash of red wine vinegar.

It was such a yummy dinner - totally japanese, completely homemade and really yummy. Lots of comfort food. Definitely too much soy sauce for my taste, but It was definitely a treat to indulge a little.

Now I'm going to sit back and finish my lovely iced tea. Two blog posts in one day, I'm exhausted!
Oh wait... Now I have to do dishes.........

Finally (Amanda's old blog)

I got my camera fixed! My wonderful boyfriend Brandon fixed it. Lookit the cutie!


Yowzah. Well, anyway. Let me show you what I've been up to! I think this is going to be a food entry, because that's what I have the most available photos of at the moment.

So, a while back I made some ADORABLE onigiri. For those of you who don't know, onigiri are Japanese rice balls. Sometimes they have filling, sometimes they're just seasoned on the outside with a light flavoring. The Onigiri FAQ on Justbento.com has a lot of great information.
So, when I make mine, I use a bit of an unconventional filling. I sautee chicken, carrot and onion in soy sauce with a bit of brown sugar and just a dash of lemon juice. When it's all cooked, I put it through the food processor so it's chopped fine and I can spoon it into the center of the onigiri while I'm making them.


I make them by hand, because I'm hard core like that. You have to keep your hands wet with salt water, otherwise the rice will stick. These are the traditionally-shaped ones, and some egg-shaped ones:


The black-looking stuff on the outside is nori. It's toasted seaweed. I have a bad habit of adding mine after I make them instead of waiting until I'm going to eat them... so the nori gets soggy. It's way better when it's crisp. But they look so cute with their little nori wrappers! Onigiri are so delicious. They're a comfort food - a really basic staple in Japan, and they're surprisingly filling! 3 of these puppies is plenty for a meal.

They also make great bento box foods. I didn't put any in this one, but this was one of my favorite recent bento boxes:


Let's see if I can remember everything that's in it. On the bottom left we have a spicy soy sauce carrot salad. I just sautee the carrots in sesame oil and soy sauce with a bit of hot pepper paste melted in (got the recipe off of Justbento!), they're sitting on a bed of lettuce, though you can't see. They're surrounded by raw green beans, cut to fit. Bottom right has vanilla yogurt with frozen raspberries and blackberries. It's covered in saran wrap so it doesn't spill. Top has sticky Japanese rice with wavy-cut red peppers, sesame seeds, and a hardboiled egg molded into a flower and cut width-wise. The little fishy has plain soy sauce - I didn't end up using it. The carrots were plenty flavorful enough.


Here's the whole setup. I apologize for blurry pix.
I have my lid with my favorite chopsticks taped to it, and a Kashi granola bar that I crumbled over the yogurt. That was a very, very good lunch. Extremely filling, and super healthy! I love my bento boxes.

Ok so this one isn't terribly exciting, but I made homemade iced tea! I was at the drug store and I saw some Arizona Iced tea, which is a big weakpoint for me. It's full of sugar and high fructose corn syrup but it's SO YUMMY. Brandon talked me out of it, and when we got home, I set out to make my own. I put it in these lovely oversized mason jars and chilled it in the fridge. So heavenly:


So, I just took about 4 or 5 green tea bags and 1 lemon tea bag, and boiled them in a pot on the stove. I added some white sugar, palm sugar and honey. Not much, really. Just a bit of each. It was perfect.


Alright, that's a lot for now. I'll try to remember to get some photos if I fry up any of those potstickers. I really wish I'd had a working camera when we were making them - the setup I use to make them is sort of elaborate. They're a big project.

I'm pretty proud of myself for cooking more, eating at home more, and just eating healthier overall. I think food is a great project - it's good to be in control of what you put in your body.

Ta ta fa na!