Perfect Friday Night

Yes, I understand that the perfect Friday night for someone in their mid-20s should not be how I am currently spending mine, but I can't imagine a better evening than the one I am currently having. It's been raining for three days here in DC, its pretty chilly outside right now, and I've worked a lot of hours this week. I left work at 7:20 tonight, came home, and curled up on the couch in front of postseason baseball with a bowl of homemade black bean soup and a piece of leftover cornbread. Perfect.

Later on I might watch the season premiere of Psych from Wednesday, but we'll see if I'm awake.

Some exciting news from the weight front: I lost my 5 percent! One of the things Weight Watchers has people focus on when they're starting out is losing a percentage of their starting body weight. I lost my five percent as of this past Tuesday, which feels awesome. It's possible I might be at 10% by Christmas, which is pretty exciting. It was even better because last week was a pretty rough week food-wise. I was starving pretty much all the time and I ate WAY more points than I was supposed to every day. Luckily I got a lot of extra workout points to help balance it out, but I was a little worried when I stepped on the scale. And, as it turned out, it was better than it usually was. Imagine that! Well, I won't question it too much, I'm just glad it is what it is.

Speaking of food, I promise that the pumpkin cupcakes will be posted about. In the meantime, I made more cupcakes that I took into work today: mummy and spiderweb cupcakes. The initial plan was to make all mummy cupcakes, similar to the ones found on the Better Homes & Gardens Halloween site. But when I decided that those weren't turning out very well, I decided to do a little bit of ad-libbing with the leftover orange icing from the pumpkin cupcakes, the white icing for the mummy cupcakes, and the black decorating gel I had bought. It worked out pretty well. They were really popular at work, which is good. One of the problems with bringing in baked goods like cupcakes to work is that I don't eat them, so I don't know if they're any good before I feed them to people.

Anyway, the finished results were made with Duncan Hines dark chocolate fudge cake, Betty Crocker cupcake icing, Pillsbury Supreme vanilla frosting dyed orange, and red and black decorating gels.

 I didn't want to take any home, so I decided to add a note to encourage people to take some.

Finally, because I managed to take my camera into the office, I took some pictures of the decorations. It's nothing groundbreaking. Things are pretty straight laced in the school where I work, but people definitely feel in the spirit when they walk into our suite.

Jade's desk, when you first walk in the door. It's got the jack-o-lantern orange garland that I bought at Michael's. One of the professors walked in the other day and thought we were a little ahead of ourselves on the Christmas decorations and then realized it was for Halloween.






Vanessa's desk, to the left when you first walk in the door. The pumpkin on the left came from Wal-Mart or Target a few years ago when we hadn't had time to carve anything, and the one on the right is from Giant a few weeks ago. They both light up. Vanessa thinks the one on the left is scary, but said it was counterbalanced by the less scary one on the right.

The GA desk, opposite Vanessa's desk. I picked up these foam signs and decorations at Michael's for $1 each. You can see on the bottom jack-o-lantern that they sparkle. The black parts on the skull sparkle and the spiderwebs shines all over.

The door to my office, with the ghost and two pipe-cleaner jack-o-lanterns, from Michael's and HomeGoods respectively. I added on the rest of the foam decorations from the GA desk to my door later in the day after I took this picture.

And now picture spam of my office.

Well, that's the office. I'll hope to have more posts soon. I'm off to a corn maze this weekend, so that should be worth a few laughs on Sunday. And tomorrow is my last PT session, which is kind of sad because I really like my trainer, but I don't have the money to keep going to these sessions. What I've learned, however, I can take with me as I keep working out at the gym at work. And I have nail polish reviews. I currently am wearing a gorgeous purple glitter, but I haven't been able to take pictures because it's been so dark and gloomy every day and I haven't had the natural light necessary to make it look anything but black. Sad. But I'll get them. I promise!

Paula Deen's Banana Nut Muffins

It's been pretty chilly here in the DC area the last few days, as I've mentioned. It should warm up in the next few days and get closer to where the temperature should be, but in the meantime, I want something warm that requires the oven to be on hot and warm up the kitchen, rather than crank up the heat in the middle of September.

 I've been at home by myself for almost two weeks, with a brief visit from my dad, and in that time, I haven't really been home very much. As such, I'm not usually around to "snack" during the day, and much of the fruit that we have hasn't been eaten. I hate to waste food, so the extra ripe bananas that are sitting on the counter will now be turned into Paula Deen's delicious banana nut muffins, from her magazine.

These are seriously some of the best muffins I've ever had, and shockingly, they don't contain ANY butter. Right?! Incidentally, these muffins were featured in a fall/winter edition of Paula's magazine, as a warm reminder of tropical flavors (also included: pineapple/ham omelette and a smoothie). So, to begin...

 We start with ripe (brown/very dark spotted) bananas:

Then, you preheat the oven to 400° (kind of the whole point of baking today) and gather your ingredients. For this recipe, we'll need:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup mashed ripe banana
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• Garnish: confectioners' sugar, fresh raspberries

I substitute Splenda Blend for the sugar (follow the instructions on the package for the conversion rate, which, in this case is 1/2 cup of Splenda for 1 cup of sugar). You can also substitute the more traditional walnuts for these muffins, but I like pecans in them. I don't put on the powdered sugar, either, but that's because I'm not much for presentation.

I also go VERY heavy on the cinnamon, because I find that the original recipe doesn't have enough of it to even taste in the finished product. I generally put in somewhere closer to 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, so four times as much as the recipe calls for. I also add more banana if I have it. I've found that about three bananas is a cup, and in this case I have four.

Dry ingredients unblended.

Next, combine your dry ingredients (but not the nuts) into a smallish-medium bowl (if you've baked before, you know how big the bowl should be for two cups of flour). When you mix in the cinnamon, the whole kitchen starts to smell like fall and/or Christmas. It's great.

Dry ingredients blended.

See why I go overboard on the cinnamon? Once blended together, you can barely see it and this is with four times the cinnamon. If you're not a cinnamon fan, just add the amount called-for until you've made them once and then play it by ear.




One note: Never measure salt over your bowl. If it overflows the measuring spoon, you could end up with very salty muffins. On the other hand, I always measure vanilla over the bowl, and let it overflow a little bit. It's a tip from Debbi "Mrs." Fields herself. But there's no vanilla in this recipe, so that's a moot point this time.

(Sidebar: I have the last night's Nationals game on TV right now, and there's a commercial for Nissan about how they have so many more vehicles available than Honda or Toyota. It's the second commercial I've seen played on this theme, and I have to say that I find them completely tasteless. Because why are Toyota and Honda having inventory issues? Because their plants were washed away in a horrific earthquake/tsunami. Nissan is counting on you not to understand that they're trying to make money by exploiting a tragedy. It really pisses me off. Unfortunately I can't seem to find the commercial online anywhere to share. Ok, sidebar over, back to muffins.)

Next, put your dry ingredients to the side and combine your wet ingredients into a large bowl.

Now to mix them together. I know that the recipe calls for you to add wet to dry, but I generally add dry to wet. If you want to follow the recipe, just reverse the size of the bowls. I've done it both ways and it doesn't seem to make a difference in how the muffins look or taste.

Once you have your delicious muffin mix batter, it's time to add the nuts. I happen to have pecan pieces left over from... something (likely last year's pecan pie at Thanksgiving), so I'll use those, but you can chop your own just as easily with a large knife and a cutting board. Also, I will be using a cup of nuts, but that's a lot of nuts. If you're not a nut fan, you might want to start with 1/4 cup and work your way up as you make this recipe.

Go ahead and grease your muffin tray. Mine is for a dozen muffins, not 15, like the recipe calls for, so I just make big muffins. I always grease with Pam, never with butter, because it saves you calories. Don't forget to grease the tops of the tin and not just the cups. You don't want your muffins to stick if the end up baking up over the edge of the tins.

I generally use an ice cream scoop to fill my muffin tins (an Ina Garten tip) because it makes consistently sized muffins.







Once you're done, put them in the oven for 12-15 minutes. For my larger muffins, I did 14 minutes and they were perfect.

 
Use the baking time to finish cleaning up the kitchen. When they appear to be cooked on the top, they're done. (Be aware that with all the banana in them, they may appear to be not done, but that might just be a chunk of banana you're looking at. Make sure you look at all the muffins when judging doneness.)

Once you have your delicious muffins you can keep them for several days. I recommend popping them in the microwave for about 10-15 seconds on high to give them that fresh-from-the-oven heat when you have them later on. 

Now you can cozy up with your banana nut muffins in your warm kitchen (the whole point if you recall) and enjoy!

What a day...

Today was a stressful day at work. It wasn't necessarily a bad day, but there was a lot going on and I felt pretty drained the entire day (probably because I worked all day on Saturday and then had to be in on Monday morning... not my favorite thing). My boss is an asshole, but that's nothing new. He thinks the entire universe revolves around him, he refuses to be reasonable about anything, and doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself. He screwed over my coworker this afternoon, too, and while it benefits me, it sucks for her and I'm really pissed off about the way that he did it. I'm also pissed off because basically, I ended up screwing her, too. I said I didn't like working on Saturdays (does anyone?) and he said I didn't have to work them anymore, which I thought meant something else was in place. But instead, he just made Vanessa work on Saturdays, which wasn't exactly the solution I thought we had in place.

On top of that, students kept coming in left and right, none of them had appointments, and I couldn't get anything done. And we're likely to have fewer students come to the program than the boss hoped, but he doesn't understand, you know, reality, so he thinks this is somehow our fault and is freaking out because now he won't get to go throw his weight around the dean's office like he feels is his god-given right. What an asshole.

I just need to tell myself that I won't be here for more than a year after this, because I'm going to graduate next August, and if I'm not trying to get my degree from this place, then I no longer care to work for them.

On a lighter note, I saw my ex when I was standing near his office today and he has gotten faaaaaaaat. I know I shouldn't relish in that, but he really looks like he's gained 30 pounds, and that is just awesome. Especially because there I was in a form-fitting navy blue dress (made more flattering by the generic-brand Spanx I was rocking), having lost 20 pounds since my weight went up after he dumped me. Basically, he now has a double chin and a spare tire, and I looked awesome. Love it.

Yet, I somehow managed to sacrifice that awesomeness with my evening dinner. I think my weigh in tomorrow is going to be rough, but that's ok, because I can get right back on it this week.  Because I may or may not have had a calzone and wings for dinner tonight. I'm still having my PMS-style cravings, which will hopefully be gone tomorrow or Wednesday and I can get back to being a functioning human being.

Anyway, I feel absolutely unproductive over the last week or so, even though I know I've been working really hard recently. I need a break. Maybe a vacation of some kind, even though I just went on vacation in June, though that wasn't really a relax and lay around kind of vacation, but an eight flights in 14 days vacation. And when I was supposed to be relaxing on a beach, I got sick in Bali. Of course I did. Maybe something relaxing is in order, even if it's just a staycation. Of course, now that I'm on hourly pay at work, we'll see if I'm willing to give up my days.

Side note: first day on hourly at work, first extra 45 minutes worked. I figured out that if I got a half hour of overtime a week, I'll end up with an extra 600/year, which is saying something. So if I get myself an extra 5 hours a week, maybe I can make adult money. That'd be nice.