30. Surprise a coworker with a drink from Starbucks

Because sometimes Pumpkin Spice Lattes do make the day a little easier. Was glad I got to encourage a colleague with a little seasonal pick-me-up.

27. Cook my way through Paula Deen’s cookbook, “The Lady and Sons Cookbook”

Another multiple update ---

I just finished a large helping of Paula's pot roast recipe...how is something so simple so delicious? Pot roast is just a great thing to cook. Easy, makes your place of dwelling smell amazing, and can feed one single female for almost an entire week's lunches and suppers (with the help of some side dishes).

Alright, so here is what the fallapartjuicydeliciousness looks like after cooking in the crock pot for over 8 hours:



Plus you get this amazing gravy or au jus or whatever you'd like to call it, that went well over the brown rice I fixed, and also would be AMAZING on mashed potatoes. I'll have to make some of those later this week.
Recipe here---by the way check out the picture of her pot roast -- this is not the prettiest meal you'll eat by any means.

Other recipes I've made: Sweet potato chips

Different, tasty. I give them a yes.
(I also had some fun with my phone camera)

Can't figure out how to rotate pictures on Blogger...but don't these look sort of like pralines? But...not. Yeah, not. Anyway, they tasted good. That's about all that matters.

Recipe here

Sesame Chicken Strips
I used panko since Trader Joe's didn't have "normal" bread crumbs. The panko and sesame seeds were a great combo if I do say so myself.

Mix it up.

Coat the chicken. (maybe this is why I'd never make it as a food blogger...)

Recipe here

5. Go see a live music show of a local band that I don’t know much about

Alright, so this was a one-man band, but it still counts. He was opening for a non-local. And honestly, this is a difficult post to write.

Christian musician. Terrible songwriter. Awkward performer.

I tried to crop the photo so that you'll never be able to know who it is. I don't want to be mean or discouraging, but, honestly, it was really awful.

I thought about expounding at length upon why arts are critical and what I get out of good live music shows, but I'm going to keep this brief instead.

Can we all just agree to help each other out here?

Let's all take a pledge together:
I, (your name here), promise to encourage friends of mine that are pursuing the arts by pushing them to create good art, not rewarding and applauding bad art. I acknowledge that flattery and empty praise only hurts them in the long-run and that the last thing we need in the art world is people who are told they are good when they aren't, and then they end up humiliating themselves during American Idol auditions.


And if you are a Christian, please continue the pledge with this addendum:

I also promise to not settle for bad Christian music just because it contains true words. I will not feel guilty for not liking a Christian artist's work and I will push my fellow Christians who are artists to keep striving for good art, not just easy art.


Thank you~

27. Cook my way through Paula Deen’s cookbook, “The Lady and Sons Cookbook”

This one is a two-fer because, well, I made two recipes this week and only feel like writing one blog entry about it.

First up - Spicy Shrimp Casserole.

My goal was to cook a large dish so that I could have a little something to take for lunch every day to work (I'm trying to work on number 32 over there). I also knew I needed to get started on these main dish recipes or I'll never make it through this cookbook. Paula Deen, being right there on the water in Savannah, loves her seafood, so this one seemed pretty simple for my first seafood dish.

Now, once I got started, I realized that "casserole" is a very generous, all-encompassing kind of word. And I've eaten a lot of casseroles in my life. Some people don't like them -- everything for your meal kinda lumped together in one dish, but they really are very efficient and practical meals, and I have no aversion to them.

This one, however.....not a winner. It's basically like you're making a shrimp pasta dish with a cheese sauce....and calling it a casserole. And honestly, it didn't have a ton of flavor. By Friday at lunch I was glad to be eating the last of it. Five days in a row of anything can be a little much, but when you aren't crazy about it, it makes it that much more difficult.

Without further ado, I present the before:


and after:



Eh. Wouldn't recommend it.

To redeem this disappointment, I also made Broccoli Salad to take to my Community Group's potluck dinner on Tuesday. It's very very similar to the recipe my mom uses for hers, and is my MOST preferred way to eat broccoli. Let's just say the leftovers I brought home went fast:



I highly recommend this recipe, although I did omit the tomatoes. Mainly because I was rushing to get this ready for CG, but also because they didn't sound good to me in this salad.

Nobody makes broccoli kind of unhealthy like we Southerners do. Recipe here.

70. Ask 5 friends for book rec’s, then read read 5 of the suggestions

My friend Anna, the English major, is always reading something (more like several somethings) so I knew she would have some good suggestions for me when I asked her for book recommendations.

So, the first book I picked up was "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society" -- how's that for a mouthful when someone asks "So, what are you reading these days?"

Anna gave me brief descriptors for each of the books she suggested. For this one:

-1940's England, written in letter format. SO GOOD.

Worked for me. World War II era is this elusive yet still salient time in the world's history for my generation, so I am always intrigued by stories and books about that time.

In sum, this book is just delightful. Although it deals with some heavy topics about survivors of WWII, including a concentration camp survivor, the story is primarily uplifting, humorous, and a really fun read. It is, as Anna said, written in letter form. The main character, Juliet, is an author who has been tasked with writing a story to help the people of England transition/cope/remember/process in the immediate post-WWII years. A troupe of diverse and entertaining characters, most of them from an island called Guernsey, make up this novel that seems fairly realistic.

And it definitely made me want to visit Guernsey. Confession: I didn't even realize these small islands off the coast of France in the English Channel existed until I read this book.

1 book down, 4 to go -