Angel Hair Pasta with Tomatoes

I made this recipe for the first time when I lived in Jamaica for a summer. I spent a couple of weeks right outside of Ocho Rios with two Peace Corps Volunteers ("PCVs") , and volunteered at an environmental day camp. It was a lot of fun, and I'm glad that I got to spend some time away from Kingston. Anyway, Jackie (a PCV who was "stationed" in Kingston) and I stayed with one of her friends (also a PCV), and we took turns making dinner. I was not a very good cook back then. I think that my main "specialties" were black beans (from a can) and rice, homemade pico de gallo salsa, and scrambled eggs. I am pretty sure that I didn't know how to cook meat of any sort. When it was my night to make dinner, I was scared. Then I thought of a pasta dish that I once ate at a "fancy" restaurant, and decided that I would attempt to recreate it. Miraculously, I didn't start the PCV's house on fire, and my dinner actually turned out to be pretty good.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 package of angel hair pasta (cooked and drained)
• 2-3 cloves of garlic (chopped or crushed)
• 4 hot house tomatoes or 8-10 roma tomatoes (diced)
• 1-2 TBSP of chopped fresh basil
• salt and pepper (to taste)
• olive oil
• freshly grated parmesan

Directions:

1) Heat olive oil in a large pan on medium heat.

2) Saute garlic for about 1 minute

3) Add tomatoes, basil, salt, & pepper to the pan. Saute for about 5 - 10 minutes.

4) Toss the tomato mixture with the angel hair pasta.

5) Serve with parmesan.

Lots of Recipes

One of the best parts about the bar exam being over is that I get to cook again. It feels good to be back into a routine. I have been craving a lot of Italian and Greek ingredients lately, and the recipes that we have made definitely reflect that.

Penne Alla Vodka

• Absolutely delicious!
• We substituted crushed tomatoes for whole tomatoes; I thought that it would make the sauce have a better consistency.
• I highly recommend this recipe.

Light Alfredo with Spinach Ravioli

• We made this for our first wedding anniversary.
• It was really good. The only thing that I might change next time is that I would use a little less chicken broth.

Pasta with Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto and Feta Cheese

• Another great recipe.
• Fairly easy to make (although E made this; but it seemed like it didn't take him too long)
• It was a nice Sunday night dinner.

Phyllo Pizza with Feta, Basil, and Tomatoes

• We used cherry tomatoes from our "backyard" garden for this recipe... and fresh basil from our deck garden.
• I liked it, but dealing with the phyllo dough was kind of frustrating, and it wasn't that filling. It seemed like something that I would order at a restaurant, but it was a lot cheaper to make it myself.

Slow Cooker Stuffed Greek Peppers

• This was a good way to use up some of the feta from the phyllo pizza.
• It was easy to make and pretty good; I didn't really like the way that the peppers tasted after being cooked for so long, but the filling was really good :)

Lemon Thyme Chicken

• Chicken is E's favorite meat, and this recipe seemed like an interesting way to prepare it.
• It wasn't mind-blowingly amazing, but it was good.
• We ate this with broccoli.

Teriyaki Vegetable Noodles

• Another recipe that wasn't amazing, but it was good.
• The bright side: we had most of the ingredients at home, so it didn't cost too much to make. AND the recipe made A LOT of servings of noodles, so we froze some of the leftovers into individual containers for when E has night classes this fall.

Baked Potato Skins

• I really like bar food. Potato skins are a favorite for me.
• This is a good recipe :)

Monkey Bread

• When I asked E to make monkey bread, I figured that he wouldn't like it very much. Usually I'm the one with a sweet tooth. I was wrong; E loves it!
• The only thing that we changed about this recipe is that we didn't add raisins.

Hello Neglected Blog

I survived the bar exam. I won't find out whether I passed until October 8, so I am trying my best to forget about it. So far, I'm doing a pretty good job. I've only had 2 nightmares about it; way better than all of the nightmares that I had after 1L exams.

Without going into too much detail, a certain part of my life isn't working out very well right now. Luckily, I have time to straighten that out. Plenty of "down" time, in fact. As an ENFJ, I like things to be decided and I like to have things planned out. I was so happy in April when I thought that I had things planned out with that aspect of my life. Right now I am sacrificing a little bit of my sanity (the part that likes to have a clear path to follow) in order to do what is right for myself.

This weekend, my Man of Honor (MOH) came up and helped E and I fix our house. Our house had an insulation problem and it was causing one of the walls in our master bedroom to freeze during the winter. It was so good to see my MOH. We went out for dinner and then to a drag show. Not much has changed, drag-show-wise, during the last five years. But a lot has changed in my life. Five years ago, I was getting ready to move to the DR for a second time. Back then, I had no idea that five years later I would be married, have a dog and a house, and be finished with my law degree. Life is full of surprises. Although one aspect of my life is very much in limbo right now, I take comfort in realizing that five years from now I will find myself sitting at a drag show with my MOH and my husband and be able to look back on how much my life has changed for the better during that time. I keep reminding myself that this period of limbo is just a part of the journey.

"Game Day" is Almost Here

I may or may not be counting down the hours until Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. I also may or may not have decided on my first post-bar-exam beverage :) I had a mini panic session about the bar exam today, but luckily a DQ treat fixed that.

Studying has really taken its toll on me this week. I woke up a couple of days ago with some major upper shoulder pain; definitely a product of spending too much time reading. I did two things to cure this pain: (1) I got a 3-month membership to a therapeutic massage place by our house; and (2) I have been using Icy Hot and I feel (and smell) like an arthritic grandmother.

I have been having a hard time focusing on studying these past few days; my mind keeps wandering to how great it will be to put this exam behind me. I know that I really couldn't have studied more, so if I don't pass, I will have no regrets about my lack of effort. There is way too much information to know, and I have accepted the fact that I will not know all of it; hopefully I know enough to pass.

I have lots of fun things to look forward to after the bar exam; this is what I have planned for my first week and a half of freedom:

• having breakfast with a friend before he moves to California (I will miss him!)
• a massage to make my shoulder feel better
• my friend's bachelorette party (we are having a spa day; I can't wait for a pedicure!)
• getting a haircut
• our first wedding anniversary :)
• E taking a few days off of work so we can relax at the cabin with RatDog
• starting my job on a full-time basis
• reading for fun (I ordered a bunch of cheap, used books off of Amazon and have been getting them in the mail over the last few days)

We won't know whether we passed until October 8, so hopefully I will be able to push any anxiety that I may have out of my mind between now and then.

8.5 days of studying to go

I'm finally in the home stretch of this evil bar exam. I don't feel like I'll ever be ready, but I'm just ready for it to be over already. I can't wait to enjoy the rest of the summer, and to find out what it is like to live a life free from law school and standardized tests. Well, mostly free from standardized tests... I have another one coming up in a few months, but I'm not going to go into great detail about it, because I'm not sure that my blog is anonymous enough for that. Let's just say that I am full of surprises, and am glad that E is always up for an adventure (or at least the possibility of an adventure) :)

I feel like my renewed sense of adventure is a product of my surgery. In the last few months, I feel like I've returned to "normal"... well, the "normal" that I was before my cyst became symptomatic. Maybe this sense of "renewal" is all psychological, but I am willing to bet that at least part of it is not. My brain was pretty squished before I had surgery.

I plan on doing a blog series about my cyst and surgery after the bar exam, mostly because there is a lot of scary/bizarre anecdotal information on the internet about arachnoid cysts, and I want to provide recently diagnosed people with a more optimistic (and probably a more correct) source of information.

Yesterday I took the day off from studying. I realized that I hadn't taken a full day off from studying and class in about a month (yes, I even studied for a few hours on the 4th of July - lame!). My brain and my body didn't want to study yesterday, and I didn't feel like pushing myself. I think I made the right decision. I feel about a million times more focused today (except for this blog-writing study break, of course).

Anyway, wish me luck :) I don't know if I'll post again before the bar exam, but I will definitely update when I'm on the "other side" of this exam. Can't wait!!!

Busy Times

It's been a busy week or two since I've updated this blog. I'm pretty worried about the bar exam, and I'm really glad that E is here to take care of me and RatDog :) He's been making dinner every night, making us chocolate malts almost every night as a bedtime snack, cleaning the house, going grocery shopping, meal-planning, doing laundry, walking RatDog twice a day (I only have to take him out once a day - woohoo!). Plus, he is putting up with my bar exam induced mood swings, and still manages to tell me that he loves me several times a day (barf! I know...sorry blog-readers). Needless to say, I'm very very lucky.

Our neighbors really like lighting off fireworks. This is bad news for RatDog. Yesterday we had a thunderstorm AND people were lighting off fireworks like crazy. RatDog definitely was in panic mode. Poor guy :( Last night we took him for a walk, and while we were on the walking path, one of our lovely neighbors launched a firework ON to the walking path. I ran away, screaming. RatDog ran as fast as his little dog legs could run (faster than me). E wanted to go have a talk with the neighbor who launched the firework and tell him/her that you should launch them UP and not onto the walking path. I thought that it might be too dangerous to talk to someone who was doing that; drunk people + fireworks.... I'll stay away, thank you very much. On our walk back into the house we saw a family with little kids heading onto the same walking path that we were just on. People (our neighbors) really need to be more careful.

Anyway, our meal plan from a couple of weeks ago turned out well. The corn and potato chowder was a favorite in our house. Instead of buying the seasoning mix that the recipe calls for, we googled it and just made our own from the spices in our cupboard. It turned out great.

Last week we also tried out:

Miami Black Bean and Corn Salad

Delicious; I really liked the citrusy flavors.

Wagon Wheel Taco Pasta Salad

Yummy! But this recipe makes A LOT of pasta salad, so I would recommend making it for a potluck ... or maybe cutting the recipe in half.

Tonight we had:

Lentil Barley Skillet

We had a lot of lentils and barley in our cupboard; this was a good way to use them up. E liked it better than the lentil soup I made in January :)

Here are some recipes that E will be trying out this week:

Herbed Greek Chicken Salad

Creamy Bean Soup with Taquito Dippers

Crockpot Salsa Chicken

Crockpot Burrito Soup

Have a great week! Happy 4th of July, a day late :)

Pesto

This recipe is courtesy of my stepmom. It's a great recipe :) Pretty easy to make, too.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups (packed) of fresh basil (do not chop)
• 1/2 cup of EVOO
• 2-4 cloves of crushed and peeled garlic (we used 2 cloves, and that was plenty; just ask the people who sit by me in class...haha!)
• 1 tsp. of salt
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup of toasted pine nuts
• Fresh shredded parmesan cheese
• Hot cooked & drained pasta

Directions:

1. Place basil, EVOO, garlic cloves, and salt into food processor and process. (We also added the pine nuts to the food processor; just our personal preference).

2. Pour pesto over the pasta.

3. Top with lots of parmesan cheese and pine nuts (if you didn't add them to the food processor).