Pasta Carbonara!

Last night I made pasta carbonara for dinner. That's Italian for: bacon-butter-onion-egg-pasta. It's really really rich, and very tasty. It's also pretty quick too! I love this meal because...well, I think that's fairly obvious, I love bacon and I love butter. So how can I not like this?! Sorry, vegetarians, you're gonna have to skip this one. But those of you who are also in the bacon fan-club, why haven't you made this yet? Eat it for dinner tonight. You really should.

PS. There's a new poll in the side bar for what I should make next weekend! Click the link after the pic for the recipe!

Ahhhhh College

Last night for dinner....well...when I say dinner I mean the general eating time between 7 and midnight. We (being me and my roomies) went grocery shopping last night and since we don't have a car, we have this neat system that is basically rent-a-car. It's called zipcar, and we can reserve a car for a couple hours and go grocery shopping. Trust me. You do not want to do any major shopping when you need to take two buses and walk up and down an enormous hill, even when you do have five people to help carry.

Anyway! We went shopping and since we had the car, we figured we might as well stop and get a nice healthy dinner all together. NOT. Sorry, I totally lied there. We went to mcdonalds. Then we went home and ate a very....confusing...dinner. I had a box of safeway veggie sushi, one order of medium mcdonalds fries, a sierra mist, and a gogurt. I would argue that my meal was at least a little healthy. VEGGIE sushi. goGURT. (like yogurt, but better?)

Don't hate. It was good.

But then it got even more intense! We also had some steak in the freezer and it was decided that we couldn't let that poor steak go to waste. So the boys fried up some of those as well.

Here's Andy ripping apart the frozen steaks.

They seasoned their steaks with garlic powder, onion powder, pappy spice, and cinnamon. (I was a bit skeptical about the cinnamon, but it was pretty good!)

This is Andy explaining how to cook steak. What he's motioning to is the level of tasty meat or flavor or something like that.

While they were cooking I made Dan pose for the camera

Look at Andy enjoying that steak!

And I made mashed potatoes and gravy to go along with it.

That's how I know I'm a housewife. My boyfriend asks for mashed potatoes and gravy and I make it.

Overall....we ate a friggen lot. And it was amazing. Also it put Dan and Andy in "fat-ass-video-game-mode" and they played brawl for a good long time after that.

That was my story and now I have an announcement!

The vote is over! And the winner is....(drum roll please)

....

Cinnamon Roll Muffins!

I am making those today and I will make a post for them within the next two days or so. So come on back and check it out!

XOXO

Natalie

Evil TAs and roasted carrots

Ughhhhh, you know what sucks? homework. I've got a ton of it and I feel like it's never ending. But that's college I guess. And if I'm gonna be a history major, I better get used to it. Also had to deal with sections today. For those of you who don't know what those are, they are basically extra class that you don't get credit for. You go and listen to a TA talk for an hour. FUN! Doubly fun when you didn't bring notes with you and the TA calls on you to analyze two feminist essays. And then when you try to BS some random answer, she stares at you and you just finish up your sentence with "...um....yea.....that's...what I was thinking...." Next week I'll be sure to have my notes handy. And I'll write my name really small on the attendance sheet so she won't call on me. Also I had to laugh because the person that gave the right answer was a dude....in my feminism class. Maybe the proper response should be shame that my oppresor knows more about liberation than I do. But it's all good, because my breaks from work are fun enough to balance it out. Last night I made dinner for my roomies and watched the hangover with them. And if you haven't seen that movie, you really have to. It's fantastic.

Oh also: If you aren't a follower already, go click follow in the side bar! Actually, I don't know if it sends you notifications or emails or anything... Anybody know?

And dinner was pretty tasty too! I made pasta with meat sauce and roasted carrots. I know, strange combination, but we had carrots and I wanted to use them. So there. The pasta was really basic and I kind of made it up. ground beef, onion, seasonings and a jar of Prego sauce. Not particularly exciting, but delicious! What I want to tell you all about is the roasted carrots. I found this recipe on Pioneer Woman's website and I don't really know how I feel about it. I mean, it was good, but I don't really like carrots. I kind of burned them too, but I personally liked the burned ones better. They were sweeter and had a nice texture. It's probably the easiest vegetable thing I've ever made in my life besides salad. Which doesn't really count cause I only eat iceberg lettuce and that's pretty much water. Anyway! Here's how to make them!

preheat your oven to 400F and then go get your carrots. You can peel them, or just wash them really well. Whatever you prefer, but I personally like to peel them. Then cut them up so that they're all about the same size. (I cut them in half so I had two long strips, then cut the wider on in half again. That way I ended up with three long strips about the same width) Put them on a baking sheet and pour some olive oil on them. Then move them around so the olive oil coats them thoroughly.

Now here's where I deviated from the recipe. It called for fresh thyme but all I had was the kind in the jar, and safeway is wayyyyyy to far to go just for a handful of herbs. So if you have it, sprinkle fresh thyme over the carrots. If you only have dried, then use that and mix the carrots around so there's some on each. Then add salt and pepper.

Toss the whole baking sheet in the oven for 35-40 minutes.

I didn't do this, but I would suggest flipping them around once or twice while they're cooking if you want to avoid burned bits. But really, they're good with the burned parts too.

Hope you like it!

XOXO

Natalie

A drawing

So I don't have much of a post today. I had a pretty busy night last night and didn't have time to cook. Had about 3 hours of class, then I went to an info meeting about being an RA next year. And the meeting was in the middle of NOWHERE towards the bottom of campus. There's this place called "The Village" and that's where the enviro-friendly major people live. There are cows. And apparently mountain lions?! Maybe it's just me, but if I'm wandering around a field at night, I do not want to be worrying about getting my face ripped off by a lion. Am I alone in that? Anyway, I decided that I will not be living there next year.

But because that one paragraph is a pathetic excuse for a post, here's a picture! I drew it in my feminism lecture--that seems to be where I do my best drawing.

Here's a closer look:

Will Franz live?! To be continued.....(at my next fem lecture)

XOXO

Natalie

Rice-plosion!

So today I would like to introduce you to something magical. "rice-plosion." That's right people it sounds ridiculous and it is. It is essentially whatever is in my fridge mixed with rice...please interpret that in the most delicious sounding way possible. Anyway! Rice-plosion is basically improvised fried rice. You can thank Dan and Andy for the name. They came up with it during one of their wild culinary adventures. Rice-plosion is fantastic because even though it's different every time, it's simple and you can literally use whatever you have.

(Click after the picture to read the rest!)

Cupcakes and Art

So yesterday was a pretty uneventful day. Had a lot of reading and a lot of class. Here's a drawing I did in my feminist theory lecture entitled "What I'd Rather Be Doing Right Now"

As you can probably guess, lecture was boring as hell today. Then after lecture I was too pooped to go back home and make dinner so I just went to the dining hall with my friends. AND I WAS ON THE MENU! well not me. But there were Pinto beans. So I guess I'm a cannibal for eating them? That's not so good...

Another important event in my life: I did not get a job. I recently applied for a job at urban outfitters and they told me that if I did inventory I would probably get hired. So I woke up at 4 AM to go downtown and count things for five hours. And guess what people? I didn't get the job anyway. And apparently they don't have the cojones to tell me in person or over the phone because I found out via...postcard. Does anyone else find that weird?

Oh also! If you haven't voted for what I should cook this weekend, go vote now!

But then life got better cause when I was doing my (boring) history reading, it occurred to me that there was a box of cupcake mix in the cabinet...and a jar of frosting.... So cupcakes it was! (I mean, I really wanted the frosting, but if I just eat frosting out of the jar I feel fat, ya know?) So I whipped out the box and tested it out! I have never made these ones before, so consider this a review with lots of pictures. Dan is letting me borrow his camera, so I'm just taking pictures of everything. And in fact, Dan's mom gave me this box of mix and frosting! So everyone say thanks to her!

Here we go, cupcake makin' time!

Cinnamon Rollllllls

Well people. It’s the morning. Well you were all probably awake way before I was. But anyway morning = breakfast! And no, I don’t mean a candy bar or a bowl of cereal or a can of soda. None of this healthy nonsense either. Why would you eat granola when you could eat CINNAMON ROLLS?! Really people. Why? For those of you on a diet: stop. Just….stop. eat these!

I made these last weekend and they were AMAZING. I made one batch gluten free, and one not gluten free. I will admit that the gf ones didn’t turn out quite as amazingly as the normal ones, but they were still really, really good. I mean honestly, how can it not be good? Butter. Sugar. Frosting.

Hello World! Here's some lasagna!

Hello world! My name is Natalie and I'm a student at UCSC studying....well, I don't know what yet. But I'll figure it out soon!
I love cooking and am a self proclaimed (unmarried) housewife. By that I mean, I love messing around in the kitchen and feeding my friends and family tasty meals. I tend to cook delicious comfort food, which may not always be the healthiest, but, hey! At least you'll be happy eating it!
I am also a celiac, so I cook gluten free and am always working towards making non gluten free dishes into yummy gluten free dishes.
Seeing as this is my first post, and this is in fact a food blog, I think that I should give you all a recipe! Here is a recipe for lasagna that I made for a dinner party with my friends last week. I found it on allrecipes.com and it's super easy, especially for lasagna, and I think you will all like it a lot. Don't be intimidated by the long ingredient list, just gooooo with it. I doubled this recipe (we are in fact hungry college students) and I served it with garlic bread and my friends brought salad. Made for a great dinner and a fun night! (Click to read more!)