What I'm Missing Right Now

Momma G's nachos! I was reading a fellow AU graduate's blog and came
across her recipe for nachos. Mmm mmm! I used monteray pepper jack
cheese over doritos and topped with jalepenos!

A New Obsession

  As I was reading some blogs on Sunday afternoon as a break from studying for ACLS and heart rhythms, I discovered that there is a new design magazine that has arrived on the scene! Allow me to introduce Rue.
Oh my goodness, I am obsessed! Now I wouldn't let myself read the whole thing word for word, but I did "flip" through the entire magazine (is that what you call a magazine that's online?). It is amazing! I already cannot wait to see what they put out in the next issue! I really wish that I had a better eye for decorating because I do love it so, but I guess I don't have that artistic eye. I do have a piece that my mom bought for me that I need to refinish and I thought that was going to be my summer project, but it didn't happen. I want to change so much about our house but I need to have my changes be budget friendly. I'll try to take a picture of the piece soon and maybe get it finished! I would definitely encourage you to check out the new magazine! You won't regret it!

Weekend Recap

  So last night was a crazy game for Auburn, but thankfully, we were able to pull it out against Clemson on that lucky shank by their kicker (poor thing). Whew! Pat didn't have too wonderful of a weekend as Ole Miss lost and his soccer team lost. But we did enjoy the company of not only Kat and Dave, but also Kate, Stephen and Erin! We chowed down on hamburgers, baked beans, potato salad, and chocolate chip cake. Yum! Even though my cake didn't really have the perfect mold of the bundt pan half of it stayed in the pan, it at least tasted good. The game lasted forever and we were sad to see State lose to LSU and enjoyed some classic videos on you tube that Kate showed us.
  Today, we ate brunch at The 57th Fighter Group with Stephen and Erin and it was delicious! The restaurant is a very neat place and we had great seats right next to the Dekalb Airport runway. It was overwhelming at first because there was a huge spread of food and I wasn't sure if I wanted breakfast or lunch. I started with breakfast then worked my way through lunch and polished off the meal with two desserts! My favorites were the cheese grits, eggs benedict, beef tips, and key lime pie. Needless to say, I was stuffed to the brim afterwards! The best part of it though was being able to use my first Scoutmob deal on my phone! How exciting!! I can't wait for my parents to come so we can chow down there again!
  After brunch, Stephen and Erin asked if we wanted to accompany them to the Atlanta Humane Society to buy look at puppies. We walked into the puppy room and saw several cute pups right off the bat. Stephen made his rounds and suddenly, he is signed a "preliminary adoption" paper so he can hold one of the puppies in the cages. He got his heart set on a 3 month old shepherd/labrador mix, but Erin just wasn't sure. We put Rocco back up and moved to the second dog room where the pups are older and are in the bigger runs. We walk around the entire area and Patrick sees him: a beautiful, calm 7 month old German shepherd/labrador mix named Duke. Well, Duke is now Baylor and has moved into his new house down the street from us. Of course, P is trying to convince Stephen and Erin that they need to buy Rocco because he wants Duke/Baylor, but Stephen and Erin are sold by the fact that all of the big dogs are TWENTY BUCKS!!! Yes, twenty bucks for a dog! Yeah, yeah, I know that all the "free" dogs aren't really free, but still, it's a great deal that is a good cause if you can give a dog a good home and it is going on until the end of September. I am so excited that our friends now have a dog and I can't wait to see his personality shine! I will just have to keep Patrick from trying to steal him though I don't think that Wrigley would like to have another brother right now. He enjoys being an only child.

Football Saturday

  Today is a lovely day for football! While the hubs is coaching soccer (this being a very good thing as his team is losing with 2 minutes to go in the 4th), the Wrigster and I are doing a little cleaning and hanging out on the couch. I'm enjoying my new camera and cannot wait to try out my mega zoom lens (EFS 55-250mm) for some close-ups! I'm about to start baking my chocolate chip cake and getting the potato salad and burgers ready for tonight's dinner with Kat and Dave. Yum!
  I hope you enjoy your weekend and War Eagle! We sure will!

5K-ed

Last night, I ran the Kaiser Permanente 5K. Patrick had signed us both up in June or July to run this thing and since I am not a runner, I have been trying to work out/run a couple of times a week to prepare for it. Unfortunately, P has some torn cartilage and muscle betweeen his ribs that we just got the "official" diagnosis this week and the doc told him not to run/limit his exercise for the next couple of weeks so we had a little problem with the run being this week.
 There was no way I was going to run it by myself and even if Patrick and I decided to walk it, he had a soccer practice he is coaching for the YMCA at the same time as the run. Thankfully, my best friend is a crazy, avid runner, so I called her up Wednesday night and she said she would definitely run it with me.
  Well, we did it! My first 5K ever and while my time was probably not wonderful (32:30), I'm okay with that because I just wanted to finish. I did make Kat walk with me for a bit as I got an annoying cramp, but I finished it. The next 5k I run, I will definitely know where the finish line actually is because I probably could have sped up had I known where we were ending. Whoops.
  Kat, thanks for running my slow pace with me!!

"Awesomeness"

For some reason I couldn't get the photo to load on the previous post,
but this is the picture I received while at work last weekend.

Christmas in September

My husband is an impulsive buyer. Period. And y'all, it's bad. I'm not really sure how to remedy it since it only comes out occasionally, but when he gets an idea in his head that he wants something new, it's over. One past example of this splurge happy husband is the time we drove all over Atlanta to buy a Wii (went to at least three different stores) at 9 o'clock at night. Another example, I come home from work one night to find P watching a movie in BLURAY since he decided he needed a new blu-ray dvd player to go along with our Christmas gift flat screen TV. You know, because the old dvd player just wouldn't go with the new TV. I also ended up with my Wrigster due to a whim from my husband when he e-mailed our breeder to see when she would have another litter and she said she had one male puppy available then.
  However, all of these examples pale in comparison (and I know I'm leaving so many more out) with the purchase the hubs made on Saturday. My best friend unfortunately told Pat that Best Buy was having a sale on TVs through the weekend since she actually needed a new TV on Thursday night and so my husband's innerworkings started concocting a plan to buy a new TV. It's not that we actually needed one, but we now are sporting a new plasma 50 inch TV. I mean, good gracious the thing is HUGE! I am quite the pushover though because instead of telling him no, he bargained and bought me a DSLR camera. He knows that cameras are always on my radar and I have been begging for one for several years now, so he was tricky and played that card. "Look honey, I'll get my TV and you can have your camera!" He is so bad!!
 But I'm a very lucky girl and he should consider himself a very lucky man! Indeed! So here's to me trying to figure out how to use my new toy, a Canon Rebel T1i and here is the current set up in our living room for football season. Yes, a little ridiculous, but a wise choice to capture all the great games this way! What an early Christmas to us!

Play dead

Leaky

You should remember this from a few posts ago:

Yup, that's our lovely tarp over our leaking skylight. Well, after crunching the numbers, the hubs and I decided on a company to come out and fix it before the rains come during this winter. Unfortunately, we decided to replace both of the skylights in the sunroom as the guy said, "Mam, I'm not going to lie; if we don't replace both of them now, you are really going to hate the way the old one looks." Smart move, Kevin, very smart to play on a woman's concern of what it's going to look like! Sold, two brand spanking new skylights! They are very nice tempered, tinted glass and I do like them!

                   Well, hello outside world!

  Kevin was nice enough to climb up on the roof with my camera and take pictures of all the areas they fixed Hooray! In addition to them fixing all the leaky issues we have had over the past year, they also put in a shiny new fan thingie that Kevin proudly stated the color matched the rest of the black pipes coming out of the house. Since I had made Patrick climb up on a ladder two weeks before they came to clean out the gutters in the back of the house, we also decided it was time to place some gutter covers. We had to buy two kinds before we found one type that would work and while you can see the white covers on the front of the house, as long as they do a better job than no covers, I don't care what they look like. It was the most disgusting thing I had seen in a long time and I'm a nurse!! 

                                 New fan

  The guys did a good job, but I guess only time will tell if all of the leaks are fixed when it starts to rain again! Here's to hoping!!

                                                                  The finished product

Tuesday's Dinner

Last night, I slaved away in the kitchen while P played one of his games of soccer. How delightful, right? I was tired of making my five easy dishes that I also make so I started thumbing through some of my cookbooks. I just couldn't seem to find one particular dish I wanted to make for my main course after I had searched through about 3 different books.
  I picked up one of my Real Simple magazines and thought, hmm, maybe I'll try to make pork chops, a feat I've never attempted, but I didn't really want pork. I picked up the August issue and skimmed through to find "Cajun skirt steak with creamed corn". Cha-ching! The beef lover is excited! Now my Kroger didn't have any skirt steak, but they did have the best looking top round steak I've seen in a while so I grabbed that up (after consulting with my mom, of course). I picked up 5 ears of corn which were on sale, fabulous!
  I already had everything I needed to make Pioneer Woman's blueberry cobbler recipe from her fantastic cookbook and just picked up some salad and grape tomatoes. Now I know it says that this is a 20 minute meal, but unfortunately, it took me a little longer to create mine. Try 2 hours. Whoops. But I did add in two more dishes (the cobbler and PW's creamy mashed potatoes), plus I had a little wine to slow me down and I was grooving to my ipod.
  Anyways, without further adieu, a pictures of our glorious meal. Yup, don't you wish you ate at my house last night? You betcha.

I must say that this meal was absolutely delicious and Patrick voted it one of the best I've made to date. The only problem I had was that the meat was a little too tough because I overcooked it by probably 2 minutes. I've never cooked meat using the broiler before, so I cooked it 3 minutes on each side, but that was way too much. So when I make it again, you're invited and I promise not to overcook the meat! I've never made creamed corn before and this recipe was super good and easy (maybe if I hadn't decided to make the cobbler and mashed potatoes, it would have been about a 30 minute meal). P asked, "Is there cheese in this?" to which I cackled, those are ONIONS! I can NEVER get the boy to eat loads of onions like I do! Another cha-ching, Real Simple, cha-ching!
  My cobbler was okay, but not as good as my apple pie is. I think I may have used too many blueberries or the wrong kind of flour because my crust still didn't rise up like it is supposed to. Alas, I will have to try PW's recipe again.

Add a little vanilla ice cream and it's a pretty tasty dessert.

Below is the recipe from Real Simple:

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 small onion, chopped
4 cups fresh corn kernels (from 8 ears--or 5 in my case)
1 cup half-and-half
Salt and pepper
1.5 pounds skirt steak cut into two pieces (I used top round)
2 teaspoons blackening or Cajun seasoning (I used Tony Chachere's)

Melt the butter in saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until beginning to soften, 4-5 minutes. Add the corn, half-and-half, salt, and pepper and simmer until corn is tender and half-and-half is slightly thickened, for 5-8 minutes.

Heat broiler. Season steak with blackening seasoning, salt, and pepper. Place on a broilerproof rimmed baking sheet and broil for 3-4 minutes per side for medium-rare. Let rest for at least 5 minutes before slicing. (I broiled the steak on high, but should have done low in hindsight and broiled for 3 minutes on each side--this was too much as the steak was not medium-well but well-done.)

Mix salad together and serve with steak and corn.

Recipes courtesy of Real Simple, August 2010 and Pioneer Woman