A November Food Recap + Black Friday

Well we set a new record for time elapsed between posts: 20 days. Our last post was about Thanksgiving, so you may be wondering what we did (besides law schooling) during the rest of November. We have some pictures and other fun tidbits to share with you that should help fill in some of those gaps! Obviously, it mostly involved food.

Danielle and I wanted, a few weeks back, to make pumpkin rolls. We were skeptical that it would work, but we wondered if we could basically take pumpkin filling and cake mix (the recipe for our pumpkin muffins), semi-bake it, then roll it around some cream cheese frosting. It didn't work, but the resulting "layer bar cake" was delicious. I can't remember the dates of any of these food stories, but they must've taken place between November 5 and Thanksgiving.

That being said, our next culinary adventure (which may have actually been before the pumpkin cake, I'm not sure) was a stir fry and homemade egg rolls! We don't have any kind of fryer, but we had a pan and some oil. The pictures might not show it well, but they thusly turned out pretty flat...more like egg squares than egg rolls. Apparently we just don't have much luck with rolling things around here. Everything turned out deliciously, though, for real. We love making stir fry; I particularly like it because it is so easy! Just throw a bunch of stuff in a pan and turn up the heat!  


Lastly, Danielle and I hit up one of the local
Ethiopian restaurants nearby on Baltimore Ave. The name now escapes me (of both the restaurant and the food), but the takeaway was that for me it was like Indian food: fine, but I don't expect I will ever crave it. In case you have never had or seen Ethiopian food, the gist is that you basically eat it using this spongy, super-thin bread. The food is generally pretty saucy, though, so it sometimes ends up being like eating with your bare hands. The meal was chicken, mashed chickpeas, spinach, and stewed cabbage and carrots. The tables were about 18 inches tall, but it was all part of the experience! We had a lot of fun.

So that about covers our adventures in food for the month. Beyond that,...

Today we had some fun shopping at Target and Ikea, and fixing up the apartment a little bit! It has been a challenge to do homework at home this semester without having desks (e.g., see Danielle's pictures of me writing my memo all over the living room a few weeks back). So today we got one more book shelf, some desks, and some homy Christmas decorations, all on the cheap. Black Friday is definitely good for some things! Afterwards we got some mediocre Vietnamese food (I really enjoyed the spring rolls, but the entrees were meh), and watched about three movies while assembling the Ikea furniture, cleaning the apartment, and feng shui-ing the place. With our desks and proper shelving now in place (not to mention a little Christmas in the air!), we are ready to face our first law school final exams with clear heads and bright eyes! Hope you enjoy the photos:

All our best,
Rory and Danielle

November: More Frightening Than October

October makes me think of Halloween (the movie franchise), Halloween (the holiday), Hocus Pocus, ghost stories, kids running around committing mischief, and the like. I love it. This year, however, November has been all like: "Move over, October, there's a new scariest month in town!" As November roars on, Danielle and I are mere days from our dreaded final exams and other assorted law school terrors. I wake up at night shouting obscenities no longer because I was dreaming about kids stomping on my pumpkins, but because I was dreaming that it was time for my Contracts final!!! As if that isn't enough, it is Thanksgiving weekend, which is the new scariest holiday for me after having seen Thankskilling last year. It chills me.

We have been doing our best to prepare for the impending Apocalypse, though, by studying, keeping up with our readings, and purging ourselves of social lives (not that difficult in the first place). Something else I would also like to address is that we have not had Tastykakes in like...weeks. Maybe months. BUT yesterday was Thanksgiving, so we certainly had our fill of tasty-other-foods. Yesterday morning we went to beautiful Fort Washington, PA, north of Philly to enjoy some delicious desserts with the family and friends of one of our law school colleagues. There were awesome pies, cakes, chocolate-dipped pretzels, and all that jazz. Danielle and I contributed some caramel/chocolate bars, the best Minnesota dessert we could make!

After Fort Washington we headed down and over to New Jersey, where we had a full Thanksgiving meal at another student's home. He, his wife, and their families prepared an awesome afternoon of conversation and traditional Thanksgiving fare. We were so blessed to have the hospitality of so many kind people this Thanksgiving! After the meal we headed back to our place for some video chatting with our families, and then we tried something a little...non-traditional: Wawa hot turkey sandwiches. Stuffing, turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, and cheese all in a delicious hoagie. It topped off the day's food pretty nicely, except for one more "cherry" to fill our bellies: MOVIE POPCORN!!!!

You guessed it (or maybe you didn't): we went to The Muppets last night, where we were given what Kermit calls the Third Greatest Gift: LAUGHTER!!! Go see The Muppets, it's magical. So that was our first married Thanksgiving, aptly celebrated much closer to the site of the original Thanksgiving than we are used to. We hope everyone's holiday was filled with turkey and joy, just like ours!  

Lots of love,
Rory and Sweet D

Experiment: Microwave-Free Living

So, we don't have a microwave. Partly because we didn't move one out here with us and we're too cheap to buy one now. Partly because we don't have the counter space for a microwave. Some people I've told about this have said, "How can you live without a microwave?!" But, we figure since they somehow did it before the 1950s, we probably could too. So, we've decided that it will be a fun experiment to see all the ways we don't actually need a microwave.

The first test came with leftovers. When you cook for two people, there are often left overs that need to be re-heated before you eat them again. We found two solutions to this problem- both very easy. 1) We bring the leftovers to school for lunch and use the microwave there to re-heat. 2) Simply throw the food back in a pot or pan or baking dish and re-heat it on the stove or in the oven. It has been no problem at all! It does take a little longer than in the microwave- but this works out well because we can set the table or do dishes while we re-heat, getting two things done at once!

The second test came with baking. I love to bake, but haven't had a lot of time to do so with law school. As a previous post mentioned, I made Rory some Oreo Ball Cupcakes to celebrate his return from Chicago (they were delicious by the way).  This required making the oreo balls, cream cheese frosting, and chocolate coating.  Normally, I would melt the cream cheese and butter and chocolate all in the microwave so that it was easy to mix them with the other ingredients. When you put it in the microwave, it gets melty and smooth without burning or taking much time. But, I thought, "I can do this with the stove top." The first attempt to melt the cream cheese left me a burned up, messy glob. Eventually, though, I was able to get everything melted like it needed to be and, as I said, the final result was absolutely delicious.

The third test was actually something we were most concerned about with the lack of the microwave. Popcorn. We love popcorn and have grown up in this age where when you want some, you simply put the little paper bag in the microwave for a couple minutes and are rewarded almost immediately with freshly popped kernels of fluffy deliciousness. Multiple times in the last few months, we have been at the store and thought- popcorn would be nice, but wait, we don't have a way to make it. We've considered getting a Whirley Pop, and probably will at some point. I've also told Rory that we can just get the kernels and make it in a pan over the stove, but he feels that would be a mess.   Last night, after dinner and a movie, Rory really wanted to get some popcorn to snack on. There is a grocery store right across the street from the movie theater so we went in and found that they have Jiffy Pop. For those of you who don't know, Jiffy Pop is a little contraption for people who are in our exact situation. It looks almost like a little tinfoil frying pan with a wire handle. You put it on the stove top and then move it constantly over the heat until the kernels start popping and expanding the tinfoil. Eventually after about 5 minutes or so, all of the kernels are popped and you tear open the tin foil to unveil the fluffy goodness inside.  This is exactly what we did.  Here is the proof that it works (I was a bit skeptical):

 I guess that means that so far we are challenges-0, Rory and Danielle-3. It is actually pretty fun trying to take on modern conveniences and fight them. Plus we feel that we eat healthier because we can't just buy microwaveable dinners and junk food all the time.

Love,
Danielle

Photo Recap

Hello Everyone!

We'll be writing another full blog post soon. But, I wanted to take a moment to put some pictures up here since there were pictures to go with the last post- but they somehow didn't make it on there (I think Rory wasn't feeling up to the creativeness of organizing photos :).  So, here are some pictures from the last week- hope you enjoy!

JetBoo wings and name tags

Rory's Pilot ID

The Pilot and Flight Attendant

The apartment of a law student writing a memo.

The memo situation is even worse because we both have to do it. Paper everywhere!

This was the snow accumulating on the neighbors' roofs. What a sight to see when you are about to go out for a Halloween party!

The Eggplant Dish! We decided to grill it. So, this is grilled eggplant with an olive oil and balsamic vinegar  marinade over a bed of brown rice, atop a bed of spinach, with a side of fruit salad. I'd say that was a very healthy meal- we did so well with our diet this week!

That's all of them folks!  Hope you enjoyed and talk to you again soon. Love, Danielle

Recapping the last 10 days or so

SO what is new everyone? It's already past Halloween (crazy), but hopefully everyone had a great weekend! We had such a good time it was scary. On Saturday we went to a sweet party with some classmates, and had lots of fun getting to know our future colleagues better! We went as a pilot and flight attendant. On Sunday we hit up a haunted house in South Philly, where we subjected our tortured minds to strobe lights, smoke, and screaming. What else were we supposed to do, though? It was Halloween. Honestly, nothing could be scarier to me at this point in my life than our fast-approaching final exams, so I found it relaxing to go and browse the blood-stained psychos and creepy ghouls at the Fright Factory to take the edge off!

Other than the Halloween festivities, life has been pretty law-school-filled. The weekend before Halloween I was able to attend the national conference for the Christian Legal Society in Chicagoland with a fellow law student. We are considering starting a chapter here at Drexel, but may instead maintain our independence rather than affiliate...that is neither here nor there (but it explains why I was in Illinois). That same weekend Danielle had the great opportunity (which she took) to attend the International Law Weekend at Fordham Law School in Manhattan (with the Drexel International Law Student Association). We both had great trips, but it was sadly a weekend that we then did not get to use to sleep in or study. Last week was consequently crazy, but it's law school, so why wouldn't it be? I should say, though, that I realize that other people have busy lives, too, and there are definitely other law students and grad students (and undergrad and high school students, etc.) busier at least than me. I usually have enough time to read the news, check out Facebook numerous times per day, and surf the web...and sometimes blog. For example, I did get to watch the gamecasts online as both the Gophers and Vikings won last weekend! Plus it snowed in Philly, so obviously the world is ending.

In other news, Danielle and I have recently been involved in the newly-formed Labor and Employment Law Society, and Danielle in particular has been busy making posters, helping with other stuff, and BEING ELECTED VICE PRESIDENT! I am so proud! Also last week, we ate wayyy too much dessert after Danielle baked me some Oreo Ball Cupcakes to celebrate my return from Chicago. We also tried out a new Chinese place ('Beijing,' I guess) which was our first Chinese since moving to Philly. So now this week we are going on a bit of a diet: fruit and veggie smoothies for breakfast (some days), lightish lunches (also some days), and vegetable soup for supper (when we feel like it)...and some seasonal squash that we scored at the grocery store. We also bought our firstest ever eggplant! So we need to learn how to cook it now, and it sounds like tonight is the big night! Wish us luck!

In other news, Danielle completed Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4, and is looking forward to the upcoming release of Year 5-7 later this month. We are also looking forward to reuniting soon with Mario Kart! Don't forget to drop us a line and let us know how you are doing, you know, if you think of it! Lots of love.

-Rory