What Happened tonight...

Two fellow community members were in charge of cooking tonight.

They are fabulous cooks and were creating a wonderful Mexican Fiesta

Then all of a sudden I was given a huge surprise as the fire alarm began to go off....

Very Very Loudly

Our alarm is connected to the fire department....so look who showed up

Unfortunately this is the only picture that I could get of the firemen/truck because I had to be sneaky about it. I felt if I was to obvious the firemen might accuse me of not taking fires seriously.

It turns out it was forgotten about taco shells to blame.

Oops 

But don't worry....dinner was still awesome

**This is a tofu dish for the recipe and other great vegan recipes check out my roomate's blog: http://veganinvermont.blogspot.com/ 

another food post

okay I love food.

Have you ever had an asian pear? aka a "pearapple" Well you should have one

Vacation?

On Sunday Caitlin, Rebecca, and I decided to drive 45 minutes to the town of Annapolis. There was a festival there and it is a really neat port town. As we walked around the festival, shops, and restaurants we felt like we were on vacation.

No hablo espanol

I taught ESL tonight at the center were my roommate Kelly works. My student was extremely eager to learn English and a great student. My teaching skills; however, may not have been so great. I think I learned tonight that I don't speak the best English, or Spanish for that matter. It was amazing though how much effort my student was putting in to learning English and how thankful he was that someone was taking the time to teach him. I hope to go back again to help with the one on one ESL offered here, although I usually am dead tired after being at the school all day so we will see.

So we have some friends...

We had a potluck in our house this weekend and invited a lot of very random people because we don't know many people here in Baltimore.

We cooked a lot of yummy food

And eagerly waited for our guests to arrive

I think it was a successful party

We are up to our ears in Basil

Due to an overflow of Basil at the workplace of one of my roommates we found ourselves with an enormous amount of basil. We had to pick all the leaves off and than we bagged some and made a whole lot of pesto. Our kitchen now smells strongly of basil....but we have yet to decide if this is a good or bad thing.

As a ginger...

This is the funniest thing I have EVER seen. You have to watch it. Just so you know this is an improve troupe so these people are not serious. But it is hilarious. Watch please. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoPmd_wc7s8&feature=channel

Dragon Boat Races

We worked a huge fundraiser for Catholic Charities this weekend. The dragon boat races partner corporations with organizations in Catholic Charities. They raise money for the organization and race dragon boats. Its actually kind of complicated and confusing.

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Our job was to carry around signs that had a number to text to donate money. Here I am

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During the event people kept coming up to ask me questions. They had really important things that they thought I would know the answer to or be able to fix their problems. I was like, "really? I am carrying a sign that says text to donate, how high on the catholic charities totem pole do you think I am?" 

Paula Deen = awesome

Paula Dean has a recipe called deep fried butter balls. Could she get any more awesome? She is frying butter! French fries are at least a fried vegetable.... Paula is taking one of the worst foods for you and frying it.

I am not bashing Paula...on the contrary I am totally in awe of her. How does she think of things like this? How does she have the guts? I want to be her.

If you want to do something awesome make these and tell me how they turn out...I myself do not yet have the guts to fry butter. I have copied and pasted the recipe here in case you wanted to see it.

Oh yeah and Paula Deen has sons. I would so marry one of them. Just to meet Paula of course.

Ingredients

• 2 sticks butter
• 2 ounces cream cheese
• Salt and pepper
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 cup seasoned bread crumbs
• Peanut oil, for frying

Directions

Cream the butter, cream cheese, salt and pepper together with an electric mixer until smooth. Using a very small ice cream scoop, or melon baller, form 1-inch balls of butter mixture and arrange them on a parchment or waxed paper lined sheet pan. Freeze until solid. Coat the frozen balls in flour, egg, and then bread crumbs and freeze again until solid.

When ready to fry, preheat oil in a deep-fryer to 350 degrees F.

Fry balls for 10 to 15 seconds until just light golden. Drain on paper towels before serving.

work this week

I started my job this week. Since I will be working at a school there are privacy issues involved in anything I would write about my work. So in order to not accidently say something that goes against these issues I have chosen not to really say anything at all.

What I will say:

I work at Villa Maria/St.Vincent (the name thing is actually very confusing)
It is run through Catholic Charities
Its really not a typical school
But I love it
You can google it if you want to know more

Does anyone actually read my blog?

Okay so I have 12 followers which is awesome. I am enjoying writing this blog for my own memories and for my parental units to stalk me anyway so 12 is actually above what I thought I would get.

But do these 12 people actually read my blog? Or are you just following this blog to get me to stop bugging you to FOLLOW MY BLOG.

But really who is actually reading this? You can leave a comment if you do. I will probably assume more people are reading this than comment on it because that will help my ego.

Also I feel like I should somehow like sign off with a cool signature or witty remark. Any ideas?

A note on food

In Baltimore I am living in community with 5 other volunteers. We are learning that money is tight so we try to save on food. This means we pool our money together and take turns shopping. We have more buying power this way. Each person contributes $15 a week and so we have $90 to spend on 6 people for one week. We each also have about $30 a month for "personal food". We have found that food can be quite an adventure.

Thankfully we have Rebecca aka domestic goddess in our house. Last night she was like oh we have everything for barley soup lets make it. And in a short amount of time we had barley soup and vegan molasses biscuits ready.

We have also found that we have to be creative with snacks, as things like going out for ice cream can become expensive. Last night we were all in the mood for a snack and found that non-microwavable popcorn is really cheap (read $1.50 for a pretty big bag). When we arrived home we quickly realized that all of the random spices, sauces, and toppings found in our house that have been left from previous volunteers can all go with popcorn. (Actually butterless popcorn has no flavor so really anything goes with it). So a popcorn bar was set up. It was fun and delicious, I fully expect popcorn bars to become the next big thing. 

We have also learned a valuable lesson. While 2 for 1 giant bags of potatoes and melons are great for your budget, they are not so great when you walk to the grocery store. 

I am becoming an artist

Okay not really. But we did make a mural in our family room. I helped paint, but my artistic skills are not  really up to par with the artistic skills of the other members of my house.

First Rebecca drew it:

Next we all painted it:

We had a lot of fun in the process...

Ready to see the finished product?

Rebecca you are awesome!

Some nuns have pools.....

We went to the pool...
It was at the home of some nuns
They were awesome
And they made us limeade

We went on a picnic

I am feeling like a very cool person right now.....
We listened to music in the park and brought dinner....

And drank out of jars which I thought was fun...

My room....

I thought I would show my room in Baltimore.....

It is a great room on the third floor of the house (there are 4 + a basement). It is an awesome room and right now it is actually clean....we shall see how long that lasts

Notice the lovely T-shirt quilt I made....

So thats my room.....