Baby Shower

On Sunday my mom and I co-hosted a baby shower for two of my cousins. It was nice to have the girls over, because some of my aunts and cousins hadn't been to our house before.

Here are some of the recipes that we used:

Rotisserie Chicken and Chicken Stock

• I bought a rotisserie chicken on Saturday. I took it home, and E and I removed the skin and shredded the rest of the chicken. I put half of it aside for the buffalo chicken dip. I used about 1/4 of it in the enchilada roll-ups, and I saved 1/4 of it to use later.
• When we shredded the chicken, we saved any pieces that were too fatty to use. We also saved the chicken carcass and the rest of the chicken bones. Then we put those pieces into the crockpot, filled it up with water, and added an onion (I just cut it into quarters) and some leftover carrot scraps. We cooked it on low for about 18 hours (most websites said to cook it for 12-18 hours), and then strained it and cooled it in a cold water bath in my sink. We ended up with about 12 cups of chicken stock. Yummy.

Buffalo Chicken Dip (based on this recipe)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 of the meat from a rotisserie chicken, shredded
• 2 - 8 oz. packages of cream cheese (softened)
• 1/2 cup bleu cheese dressing
• 1/2 cup ranch dressing
• 3/4 cup of hot sauce (I used about 1/2 cup of Frank's Wings Buffalo Sauce, and 1/4 cup of Frank's Red Hot Original Cayenne Pepper Sauce)
• 1/2 - 1 cup of shredded cheddar cheese
• French bread and tortilla chips - or whatever else you want to use.

Directions:

1) In a 1.5 quart (or larger) oven-safe dish, combine the chicken, cream cheese, dressing, and hot sauce.

2) Stir until well mixed. Then let it sit in the refrigerator for an hour or two.

3) Bake for about 30 minutes in a 350 degree oven. When 10 minutes remain, add the shredded cheddar cheese to the top of the dip.

*** Note: You may have to experiment a bit with the oven temperature and cooking time.

Chicken Enchilada Roll-Ups

• I used this recipe - I followed it pretty closely.
• Instead of using canned chicken, I used 1/4 of a rotisserie chicken.
• I also used a tiny pinch of cayenne pepper, because I didn't want the roll-ups to be too spicy.
• I used a 6-pack of jalapeno cheddar tortillas (they were actually called "wraps" at our grocery store, but they were located by the tortillas). It was almost enough. I had to use 1 regular white flour tortilla in order to use up the chicken enchilada filling.
• I mixed up the filling the day before the shower. I think it allowed the flavors to blend together nicely.
• It is easier to spread the filling onto the tortillas if you take the filling out of the fridge and let it sit for a while before you try to work with it.
• I also barely used any salt. Maybe between 1/8 and 1/4 tsp.

Baby Shower Menu

• Besides the buffalo chicken dip and the enchilada roll-ups, we also served: mini croissant sandwiches (different variations of ham, turkey, and cheese), a veggie tray with ranch and dill dip, a fruit bowl (grapes and strawberries), punch, pickles and olives, and water with lemon.
• We also bought two 7" cakes from Target's bakery - a red velvet cake and a chocolate indulgence cake. They were delicious.
• For the 12 guests, we had plenty of food. We have a lot of leftovers, so I will be eating leftover baby shower food for the rest of the week. I'm not complaining about that :)

Baby Shower Games and Other Details

• We bought a baby shower word search game at a local party store. It was trickier than we thought it was going to be.
• We also played this Baby Shower Bingo game. It took a lot longer than we thought it would. My grandma won the Bingo game, though, so that made the wait worth it.
• All in all, it was really fun to co-host a baby shower. I'm really glad that my mom was there to help me and co-host it with me; we wouldn't have been able to have the shower without her help. E was also a big help. Thank you Mom and E :)

66 and 55

I have applied for 66 jobs since the bar exam, and have now received 11 rejections. That means that I still have a chance at 55 jobs :) Luckily, I started a new part-time contract position in my field to help pay the bills until I find a full-time job. I am learning a lot there, so that's good. I am toying with the idea of opening up my own law practice, but I feel like I need a few more months (like until February or March) to make a well-informed decision. Of course, if I find a good, full-time job before then, that would be ideal.

It is a little frustrating for me because I tend to be "Type A". I am trying to keep a positive attitude. It's easier to keep a positive attitude on the days that I go into the office. It's a little more difficult when I am spending my days off at home. I know that once I find my real full-time job, I am going to miss the freedom that I currently have during the day, though.

This past spring, I attempted to run a 5K. I didn't train for it at all. I couldn't run most of it. On Sunday I decided to start the C25K program. Today was my second day of Week 1. There are a lot of C25K podcasts that you can download and listen to while you run, so you don't have to keep track of the time. I have really enjoyed it (all 2 days) so far.

Since my surgery, I have been worried about using headphones. Apparently headphones have magnets in them, and my neurosurgeon uses a giant magnet when he wants to adjust the setting on my shunt. Magnets in headphones can reset a person's shunt. If that happened to me, I would have to go into the doctor and have him set it back to the correct setting. Because our health insurance doesn't have the best coverage ever, it is really expensive for me to go to the neurosurgeon and have him readjust my shunt. I try to go in as little as possible (especially considering my current employment situation). My shunt is located really close to my left ear, so I have just been avoiding the use of headphones.

E came to my rescue so that I could listen to a podcast while running on the C25K program. He cut the left earbud off of a set of headphones for me. Now I can listen to my headphone in my right ear while I am running. This is a little thing, but it really made all the difference for me. It's so much easier to want to exercise when I can listen to music.

Recipe Reviews

Oven-dried tomatoes

• Even after forgetting to water it for 5 or more days, the cherry tomato plant is still producing tomatoes like crazy. We found ourselves with a "problem": what should we do with all of those tomatoes?
• I found a few different blogs that showed how to make oven-dried tomatoes. We love sun-dried tomatoes, but hate how expensive they are. This is a great alternative, and I read that people freeze these too. We haven't done any freezing yet, because we used up all of our oven-dried tomatoes, but I'm sure we will be freezing a batch soon.
• This is how I did it (copy-pasted from an email that I sent to my mom):

1) Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil

2) Cut the cherry tomatoes in half

3) Put the tomatoes in a bowl and drizzle them with a little (very little - if you put too much they won't dry/cook right) olive oil. Add a little pepper and sea salt. Then mix them up a little.

4) Put them on the cookie sheet with the cut side up (skin side touching the sheet/foil)

5) Put them in the oven at 325 degrees for about an hour. Some recipes say to cook them for 2 or more hours at 200 degrees. That will probably work too. After an hour at 325 degrees, most of the tomatoes were perfect. A couple of the smaller ones were burned... so maybe turning down the temp is a good idea? You just need to keep an eye on them.

Cottage Cheese Chicken Enchiladas

• This recipe was a 3-stepper. Here is a link to the enchilada recipe.
• The night before we had these for dinner, I made the chicken in the crockpot. I put a small chopped onion on the bottom of the crockpot, then added the can of diced green chiles (the enchilada recipe calls for a 7 oz. can). I used the equivalent of half of a package of taco seasoning mix (but I didn't use store bought taco mix - too much salt). Then I added 1/2 of a bottle of beer, and 2 frozen chicken breasts. I cooked it on low for 5 hours. When they were done cooking, it was super easy to shred them. Then I used a slotted spoon to remove the onions and chiles from the crockpot, and added them and a little bit of the cooking liquid to the shredded chicken.
• While the chicken was cooking in the crockpot, I made enchilada sauce. I was trying to avoid all of the salt in the store-bought canned enchilada sauce. I used this recipe. It made more than the 10 oz. can that the enchilada recipe called for, but I ended up using all of it in the enchiladas.
• The next day, I put all of the ingredients together and made the enchiladas. They were really good. They tasted even better as leftovers, and we had a lot of leftovers.

Polenta with Spinach, Black Beans, and Goat Cheese

• We have made this recipe since I was a 1L, and we both still really like it.
• It calls for 1/4 cup of sun-dried tomatoes, so we were able to save ourselves some money by using our oven-dried cherry tomatoes. Yummy!

Tomato-Cream Sauce for Pasta

• I was extremely underwhelmed by this recipe.
• E really liked it, but I didn't even want the leftovers. I wouldn't recommend it.

Chicken Parmesan Burgers

• We had these for dinner tonight. We made them on the grill.
• We used ground turkey instead of ground chicken (probably because of our previous bad experience with ground chicken).
• These were really good. Definitely an "E-style" meal, too :) He likes pretty much anything with a marinara sauce.
• Baby bellas were on sale this week, so we sauteed them and put them on our burgers. They were good, but probably weren't necessary if you are looking to save a few bucks :)

Cherry Tomatoes and Mac and Cheese

Well, our cherry tomato plant has been producing tomatoes like crazy. And despite my lack of gardening skills, it is still alive :)

We found a couple of good recipes for using up cherry tomatoes... and we also tried out a new Mac and Cheese recipe.

Chicken Pesto Pizza

• This was amazing! I loved the way the cherry tomatoes tasted on this pizza.
• We did things a little differently than the recipe.
• First, we grilled the chicken the day before.
• Also, when I made the pesto, I toasted the pine nuts and the garlic in the oven instead of on the stovetop. I knew I would be heating up the oven anyway (to bake the pizza), so it just made things easier. I set the oven to 325 degrees, and then toasted the pine nuts for 5 minutes and the garlic for 7 or 8 minutes. It worked out well.
• I would also recommend cutting the salt for the pesto in half. I would use 1/4 tsp instead of the 1/2 tsp that the recipe calls for.
• Finally, we cheated and didn't make our own pizza dough. Maybe we will learn how to make our own this winter... but we had to draw the line somewhere. We typically use the "Thin Crust" (not the "Classic") version of this. Then we just follow the directions on the tube for baking it. Someday we will use our mixer or food processor to make pizza dough, though.

Warm Tortellini and Cherry Tomato Salad

• Another great recipe, and a great use of our cherry tomatoes.
• It made A LOT, so we had enough for 4 servings of leftovers.
• I would consider cutting the asparagus into halves before cooking it, because it was difficult to get it to cook all the way through (especially closer to the ends of the asparagus) in 2 minutes.
• Here's a link to the recipe.

Mac and Cheese

• We have a favorite mac and cheese recipe already (if you make this recipe, be sure to not use as much salt as the recipe calls for), but I thought that it would be good to try out a new one.
• There's not much to say about our new recipe, except that it is really really good, and I will definitely make it again :) I highly recommend trying it out.