Tuesday, April 27, 2010

New Image

So I got my hair cut today. It's a lot shorter than I wanted it to be. The girl you cut it must have misunderstood me when I said how short I wanted it. My friends seem to like it, but I'm still in the "I don't know" stage. I've never had my hair this short and it feels weird. Kyle says I look like I'm from the 60s, haha. I guess maybe I'll grow like it. My hair grows pretty fast, so maybe it won't be too bad.


Sunday, April 25, 2010

Dinner and Dessert

I came home this weekend to get away from school and to try and be productive. I have so much work to do because the end of the semester is almost here. Most of the weekend was spent helping my parents build a ramp so that my dad could answer the front door when my mom and I aren't home. My mom gave me a cookbook to take back to school. She let me pick out a recipe for dinner and dessert while I was home to try and make. I'm slowly getting better and more comfortable cooking without her supervising, haha. I forgot my camera at school so I don't have any pictures, but I'm going to post the recipes.

For dinner I made Bacon and Sun-dried Tomato Alfredo Pasta.

Ingredients: 8 ounces uncooked multi grain penne, 1 (10 ounce) package of light Alfredo sauce, 1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes cut into strips, 4 slices precooked bacon, 1/4 cup of chopped fresh basil, and 1/4 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper.

Alright, so start by cooking pasta, without salt and fat; drain and keep warm. If you're not used to cooking mutli grain pasta it's a good idea to let it sit a bit longer, because multi grain and whole wheat pastas take a little long to soften up.

While your pasta is cooking combine the Alfredo sauce and your sun-dried tomatoes in a sauce. Cook the sauce and tomatoes over low heat for about 6 to 8 minutes or until thoroughly heated and tomatoes are juicy and plump. Stir the sauce and tomatoes occasionally. While your sauce is cooking, microwave the bacon according to package directions. Once your bacon is done, crumble it up and set it aside.

Next combine your pasta and Alfredo sauce in a large serving bowl. Top with the crumbled bacon, basil, and black pepper.

I really liked this recipe. It was simple and quick to make. This was my first time cooking and eating sun-dried tomatoes and I'll admit that I'm not a huge fan of them. The next time I make this recipe I'm going to substitute the tomatoes for broccoli. You could put chicken or shrimp, or your favorite vegetable if you'd like.

For dessert I made Fresh Berry Crunch.

Ingredients: 2 cups of raspberries, 1 cup of blueberries, 3/4 reduced-fat sour cream, 1 teaspoon of sugar, 6 reduced fat-free shortbread cookies, such as Keebler Sandies.

First start off by preheating your broiler. Combine the raspberries and blueberris into a bowl. Spoon 1/2 cup of berries into each of 6 (6 ounce) custard cups, or you could use small bowls like I did. Top each serving with 2 tablespoons of sour cream and 1 teaspoon of sugar.

Next you crumble 1 cooking over each custard cup, or bowl. Broil for 1 minute or until the cookie is golden. It took two minutes for the cookies to become golden when I did it. After they're golden you take them out of the broiler and serve. I mixed the sour cream, cookie crumbles, and berries around in my bowl. You don't have too, my parents didn't and they still liked it. It's just a personal preference.

I LOVED this dessert a lot. It's a really healthy and delicious dish. At first I was skeptical of how the sour cream would turn out with everything. I like sour cream a lot, but I never pictured that it would go well with fruit. It mixes perfectly with the fruit and helps prevent the berries from being too tart or too sweet.


On a side note -- After dessert my dad and I were talking about cars. He's going to pay for driving school when the semester ends. I can't drive our car because it's a huge van and my feet don't reach the pedals. So we have to use a car from a driving school so I can use it for the road test. I've driven the loop around school a few times in a friend's car and I really like driving. He said that if I could get about half the money for a used car that he would pay for the other half. I think we decided on getting a used Ford Focuse Sedan. He said that those run about 1,500 and he started asking my mom about how much money we have. I actually think that I'm going to be getting a car this summer and I'm super super excited about it!