On a related note I don’t have anything to post right now because I didn’t actually have any food until today. Surviving on hot dogs and peanut butter for three days is not fun. Anyway, this quarter is going to be very busy. I am working out my schedule, so once again I have not forgotten you. I am just bogged down. More to come.

I’m going to just wait it out until after finals week is over. That means no update today or Friday. However, by the end of Spring Break I will have the site completely fixed up, including the food tab.

Updates lined up:

• Latkes (potato pancakes).
• Pudding injected, glazed banana muffins.
• Biscuits.

I promise I haven’t forgotten you Internet, it’s just that I accidentally broke the site during maybe the worst possible week.

Smoked sausage and spaghetti

For the last several days I have been making some modifications to the site. A few one them are obvious, like the random gallery and the little ad block on the right. A few changes have more to do with streamlining and formatting and are less obvious. Well, because I have spent more time on the site than cooking I don’t have any gallery or recipe today. Instead I have a simple meal suggestion.

Pasta is almost as easy as it gets when it comes to feeding yourself in college. It’s fairly filling and about as easy as boiling water. The problem is that it gets monotonous. Unless you happen to be Josh. It’s easy enough to add some variety to spaghetti and pasta sauce. Meat is probably the most obvious route. Whatever you happen to have in the freezer, 1lb of smoked sausage or a few chicken breasts, will go well with pasta.

Assuming that your meat of choice is not frozen, cut it into bite-size pieces and cook them however you see fit. I usually put either chicken or sausage with some spices in a skillet with some oil. In fact, this chicken will work just fine. Be sure that the meat is cooked through to your satisfaction before you go eating it though. While the meat is cooking get the water for the pasta boiling and the sauce warming in a saucepan. Once the meat is done just drain the oil and put the meat in the sauce with anything else you might want over spaghetti. Maybe some finely chopped onions or shredded cheese.

Different meats or vegetables added to pasta changes the flavor and provided some variety, which is apparently the spice of life. It’s also a good way to use up leftovers.

My reasoning is actually pretty simple; I want to put recipes in the news posts. Problem is…they’re pretty long. It occured to me when talking to my dad a week or so ago that the recipes are not exactly visible. He actually had never clicked on the food tab, so he missed the galleries and recipes. I feel like I need to get the galleries and recipes in the news posts, but I certainly can’t do that with the whole story being displayed on the front page. Too busy.

I also need to do something with the Food page. The placeholder page that is there right now is simply not going to cut it. I need something cleaner. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know. There will be an update tomorrow. Probably corndogs.

On a mostly unrelated note, I’m in the process of applying for internships for Online Journalism. I’m going to be sending a few applications toward the East Coast around the D.C. area. If you have any suggestions I’m all ears eyes.

Pocketmod

I like the Internet. A lot. Technology and I get along well most of the time. I built my current computer, I get all of my news through RSS feeds, and synchronization gets me excited. It seems obvious then that I would use some sort of digital planner. Not anymore.

At the beginning of Fall quarter I tried a number of different daily planning methods. I used the recently-shutdown iwantsandy.com for a while as well as Remember the Milk. They were both services that I enjoyed, but in the end they just fell short.

It took me a few weeks, but the problem finally dawned on me. I don’t consider my phone an organization device. Shocking, I know. When I had to remember something I was more likely to jot it down in the corner of a notebook than send off a text message. Once I got the revelations out of the way the next logical step was to find something pen and paper based that would work as my external short term memory.

Daily planners at the bookstores were not so much expensive as they were clunky. The benefit of using my phone was that it is small. If fits in my pocket and leaves room for whatever else I’m carrying. Don’t get me wrong; a nice moleskin notebook would be wonderful, but smaller is better.

I eventually stumbled upon PocketMod. The idea is fairly simple. A single piece of paper is cut and folded in such as way that is creates an eight page booklet, front and back included. The entire folded PocketMod is about the size of my wallet and thinner than a credit card. I can slip it into my back pocket and not notice it.

I print out a new one every two weeks and use almost no ink and only one page of paper.

The best feature of the PocketMod — the feature that led me to actually try it out — is the Web site. It presents a wonderful, flash based page that allows you to drap and drop pages to be printed. The whole thing, front page included, is customizable. I flirted with a few layouts, but settled on a two week planner face to face, a month calender, a finance and shopping list, two lined sheets and the cover.

Since I started using my PocketMod on a regular basis I have been extremely pleased. I am a big fan of technology, don’t get my wrong, but sometimes a pen and paper just does it better.

Sometimes a full meal takes too long

Four days a week, Monday through Thursday, Jake and I go to the gym at 9 a.m. to lift weights. We have been doing it long enough now that it has become habit. The day doesn’t quite feel right if I miss a day. When I get back at 10 a.m. I generally check the news and some other RSS feeds while eating breakfast and then take a shower.

The past few weeks I have been eating instant oatmeal almost every morning. It’s fairly quick and tasty, but no matter what you add to something like oatmeal it’s going to get boring after a while. Today instead of a bowl of cereal or some oatmeal I had a single large orange. Citrus fruits are some of my personal favorites. I have a bag of maybe 8 oranges in my refrigerator right now, and I am certain that I will eat all of them before they go bad. The bananas, however, will be going to some banana bread later tonight.

Anyway, there is a benefit to keeping breakfast simple. When I make oatmeal I have to keep an eye on how much of anything I’m using and how long it goes in the microwave. Considering I bake bread and make dishes that have to stew for hours, you would think that a few minutes of work every day would not bother me. I think it’s the repetition. I just wanted something different. Something easier. Fruit is perfect.

Now, I am certain that there are plenty of people out there who do not believe that oranges are easy. They are probably the same people who scape off all of the pith. (The white stuff.) The pith is good for you, stop doing that. It has fiber. Anyway, a good sized fruit such as an apple or an orange is plenty filling. I can go until lunch easy with an orange.

Granted, there are easier fruits to deal with. Bananas and apples are about as easy as it gets when it comes to fruit. Incidentally, I am also opposed to peeling the skin off of apples, pesticides be damned. Wash them. If I had remembered to buy any, this post would probably be about grapefruit. Another of my personal favorite breakfast fruits.

I will still be eating oatmeal and cereal most days, but sometimes a good piece of fruit is plenty.

Pineapple, orange, banana, strawberry, blueberry, raspberry, blackberry.

After the Goetta Hobo sandwich and a solid week of midterms I really just wanted to make something simple. My brother was down here for the weekend, Devin and Jake were hanging around, and all of my meats were frozen. I had picked up some fat-free, vanilla yogurt and frozen mixed berries for this specific purpose, so smoothies seemed like a pretty good idea.

The smoothie made enough for four people to have a decent 3/4 a glass. Smoothies are, thankfully, extremely simple. So simple in fact that I did not bother to take down measurements, so the recipe over at the gallery has estimations for measurements. It is possible to just add more frozen things, juice or yogurt to the mix as well, so it’s really just a matter of trial and error.

I know that my mom will add protein powder and things to her smoothies, and they seem to still be pretty darn good. Just something to keep in mind.

Expect a Valentine’s Day update and maybe one more during the week here.

Edit: Thank you, Devin. There is orange juice in the smoothie. In fact, it’s the base.

Edit: Outlaw is an internet hate machine.

I was rushed, so this is a picture of the last pot of stew.

Last night I decided to make a double batch of the spicy chicken stew that I made about two weeks ago. The stew came out wonderful and was once again more or less completely gone by the time the night was over. I had about enough leftover for two good sized bowls.

One very important change to the recipe: chicken breasts instead of thighs. The meat was softer and considerably better tasting. Absolutely worth the extra cost.

As I expected, the stew is, in fact, better the next day. The flavors had more time to mingle and the stew thickened up considerably. The same is true of the Red Beans and Rice and Gumbo (which is not up yet). The problem is of course that no one really wants to wait an entire day to eat something that smells so good.

In addition to the stew I made what amounts to one of the easiest warm party dishes I have ever made. I bought two packs of cocktail wienies and two bottles of BBQ sauce when picking up the chicken for the stew.

All I had to do was warm the BBQ sauce and toss it in a crock pot on high with the hot dogs, a shot of Jack Daniels and some ground chipotle.  The alcohol will cook out as the heat rises leaving the flavor behind, so don’t worry about that. Once it was warm enough I turned it back down to low, but it really just takes care of itself. Unfortunately there aren’t any pictures because I was a little rushed to get everything done as quickly as possible, so the picture is of the last pot.

Apple cinnamon oatmeal with maple syrup

No one in my family eats oatmeal. Not even my mother who - much to the annoyance of my younger brother - regularly eats vegetarian pitas. In fact, I am fairly certain that until very recently I have never eaten oatmeal either. As it turns out it looks pretty gross.

Well, late last quarter I decided that I was going to try and hopefully enjoy oatmeal, come hell or profound disgust. Until just today each bowl of oatmeal was a battle. I have added vanilla, bananas, apples and any number of spices. I have used different amounts of milk or water as well. In the end I would find myself sitting in front of a bowl of what appeared to be very soggy cereal. Today after going to workout with my friend Jake I decided to give my lonely box of oatmeal one more try.

I do believe that I have finally come up with a way to make oatmeal that I can enjoy. In fact, the bowl in front of me is currently empty. Were I not pressed for time, I would consider making myself another. Maybe adding banana. Instead of actually listening to the directions on the box I decided to take the manly approach. I added a shot of maple syrup and cinnamon with just a little bit of vanilla extract to the oatmeal. Instead if measuring out 2/3 c milk like the box claims I added just enough to be seen around the sides of the oatmeal and left the bowl in the microwave for 1:30. What I got, as you can see above, was more of a ball of sticky goop than a cereal like I have in the past. Instead of a thin cereal I produced a dense mash.

More importantly, it was cheaper and more filling than a bowl of sugar cereal. Add to that the fact that it took me two minutes to make and we have something here. Feeding myself on my own money in college has been an interesting experience. I have a taste for good food, but not spending money. That means that any time I can come up with a cheap, decent meal I am very pleased. I expect that my morning routine will be including oatmeal for…as long as I still have milk.

It still looks pretty gross.