In love with the song "Jungle Fever" by Los Chakachas. I first heard it in the movie Boogie Nights, which is (shamefully) one of my favorite movies. It's awful, but I love it. The movie, I mean. The song is pretty excellent.
Jenny gave me one of her free one month passes for California Family Fitness for xmas, and the deal expires tomorrow, so I redeemed it a few days ago. It includes 3 free personal training sessions, the first of which I had today. I actually really enjoyed it, and the whole gym membership experience has been great so far. Who knew?
Classes start next week. Even if I can't get into Food Prep and Theory (which would suck), I'm going to try to convince the Baking & Pastries instructor to let me take the class without Food Prep concurrently... assuming they're letting anyone in from the waitlists.
I turn 23 in two days. A new decade. Contemplating this, I had a rather disturbing thought... at the end of this decade, I will be older than my mom was when she had me. I will be in my 30s. Holy crap. I don't think I'm doing anything for my bday, mostly because I'm too lazy to plan anything that's going to fall through regardless, partly because I have no money, and somewhat because who cares anyway? Yay middle class poverty and apathy!
I think I'm going to make chili today. Off to the store I go, then.
I would have posted this earlier, but my host's servers were down for a while. Anyway... NEW CHILI RECIPE! I just felt like switching it up, so I starting throwing things in that sounded like they'd taste good together. Turns out, it's the best batch of chili yet, and my dear guinea pig boyfriend agrees.
Ingredients: 28oz diced tomatoes, 28oz kidney beans, 15oz garbanzo beans, 15oz black beans, 2 zucchini (sliced), 1 carrot (sliced), 1 yellow onion (chopped), 2 bell peppers (seeded and chopped), 1 poblano pepper (seeded and chopped), 2 serrano peppers (seeded and minced), 11oz can or a cup or so of corn niblets, 5 cloves of garlic (minced), 1/3 cup of chili powder, 1 tbsp oregano, 2.5 tsp cumin, salt and pepper to taste, 1 lb of ground beef.
Drain and rinse the beans and corn, brown the beef, toss everything into a crockpot and cook on high for 4 hours. This makes a double batch for my crock pot, so I only cook half of the beef, mix all of the other ingredients together, and freeze half of the veggie mix and the uncooked half of the beef (separately, of course). I mix the cooked beef and the other half of the veggies, and hit the crockpot. I also made a box of Jiffy corn muffin mix... except I added more milk to make a thinner consistency and cooked 'em like pancakes. Toss the pancakes in the bottom of your serving bowls and dump some chili on them.
I'm sitting here, trying to watch The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but it's a weird movie. I'd rather be making Pilaf with Lentils and Chili Garlic Shrimp Garnish along with a side of Saudi Herbed Salsa, but Amy called in sick to work so I'm going in to cover for her on my day off. Oh well. I need the money, I suppose, but I was looking forward to this day off. Actually, I "worked" this morning, too. I got up at 3:40am or so and got to work around 4:40am only to find that there was nothing to deliver. Whoever was supposed to prepare the goods last night had forgotten, and all we had were croissant and frozen loaves. We only had croissants because they were baked at a different bakery. So they sent me home, but gave me 3 hours on the timesheet for my trouble. I also got to pick up my most recent paycheck and my xmas bonus, which was not expected. My boss gave me a movie theatre gift card for an amount I have yet to learn, and a bottle of tequila, hidden in a box shaped like Santa Claus.
The Kurdish stew (not a cassoulet at all) that Kelly and I made turned out pretty tasty. Not as good as I had hoped it would be, but still really good. I ended up going to bed on New Year's Eve around 11pm because I'm lame and I was super tired, and I still managed to not get a good night's sleep. I think I'm doomed to be poorly rested for eternity.