interesting article: "that daily shower can be a killer"

easy meals i created

i want to tell you about some easy meals i have concocted in my shared kitchen that are quick to make and very delicious.

easy meal #1: duh.
bean, corn, cheese, and salsa burrito (i add guacamole if i am awesome enough to have an avocado on hand) + side of rice (leftover from another meal) + baked (ahem: microwaved) sweet potato with parmesan cheese and a little butter.

i am calling this meal "duh," because a burrito is not rocket science, but adding the baked sweet potato on the side makes it so much more filling and more interesting and very satisfying.

easy meal #2: what i had in my refrigerator that one night.
combine: ravioli (i like the trader joe's butternut squash ravioli) + defrosted frozen peas + steamed broccolini + parmesan cheese + feta + a little bit of olive oil = a warm pasta salad that is chock full of vegetables and SO tasty.  also very filling: i can't do too much damage here.

i recommend you give these a try.

love,
miss claire

what i'm listening to right now

"vegetable car," by joshua radin:


nora introduced me to this song several years ago, and it still makes me happy every time i listen to it.  seriously: hard not to dance a little in your chair while you listen.

I'm on the bus back to New York after a really fun weekend in DC, and not only is is at least 85 degrees on my bus, but we are driving below the speed limit. Belowwww. Ugh! Not the way I wanted to end a great weekend.

50 miles to go...

a photo a day

It's snowing at Baltimore's Penn Station as I head to DC for the weekend after an amazing day shadowing a Head of School here in Baltimore. The generosity she showed me with her time and knowledge was incredible. Now on to a weekend with friends. Hooray!

okay, well THIS was a fun way to waste some time.

celebrities tell us about their celebrity crushes

(thanks to veronica for sending this to me!)

a screenshot a day

yeah, that's right: this group of friends lives in 4 different cities now, so veronica started an online book club.  our first "meeting" was last night to discuss the fault in our stars, and after we figured out the technological issues, it was awesome.  baby vivianne even contributed (by being cute)!  i can't wait until i get to hangout (online) with these girls again next month!

a screenshot a day

i'm going to write a book about new york city in january.  i'm going to title it

it's cold and you have to walk everywhere: new york isn't for sissies

or maybe:

it's cold and you have to walk everywhere: scarves aren't just a fashion accessory any more

or better yet:

it's cold and you have to walk everywhere: wear two pairs of pants

“Sometimes there is nothing you can do, and in those times, you must do something anyway.”
--Garrison Keillor

the history nerd in me came out today, and i've watched most of the inauguration and festivities.  the MLK day symbolism is so strong and so powerful.  i'm proud to be a part of a country that has overcome racism enough to elect a black president to a second term - and a president whose policies, as a whole, i support.

we are lucky to live in a country with free and fair elections, with bloodless transitions of power, a country where i have been given so many opportunities.  being an american is pretty awesome.

what i'm listening to right now

"girl from the north country," by bob dylan with johnny cash:

 

this song plays during silver linings playbook and i obviously fell immediately in love.  nora, do you know this song?  it sounds right up your alley, too!

(internet research shows that everyone and their mother has covered this song.  even my girl joni!  how did i not know this song until today?)

annual post wherein i talk about the academy awards

movies i have seen that were nominated for stuff:
lincoln - great movie - daniel day-lewis was amazing - should have ended 30 minutes before it actually did.
beasts of the southern wild - i have a really hard time watching movies where kids are sad/scared/in danger, so this one was hard to watch but beautifully done.
les miserables - the best-worst movie i saw this year.  loved the stage musical and it was fun to see it on the movie screen, but seriously: it needed HUGE help with the editing.
brave - all pixar movies are well made, but this wasn't my favorite - the plot was pretty ridiculous...not that other animated movies aren't, but this was less entertaining for me.

movies i want to see that were nominated for stuff:
argo - wins best drama at the golden globes AND best director?  i obviously need to see this movie, which i was only moderately interested in beforehand.  love ben affleck and think he's a GREAT director - the town was brilliant.
silver linings playbook - seeing this tomorrow with andrea!

the end.

i'm back in new york!

if i can offer one piece of advice to people flying into la guardia from the south, it is this: sit on the left side of the airplane.  i had another GORGEOUS view of the new york skyline as we landed.  amazing.  how is it that i'm lucky enough to live here?!

today i'm planning to go grocery shopping, do reading for my first class (homework already?  ugh), and spend the evening with friends.  hooray!

it's 25 degrees outside.  i need to get used to this again...

cooking extravaganza

i know i have lamented to many of you how little real cooking i've done in new york, since my kitchen is small and shared with five other girls and i don't have all my cooking supplies up there with me.  i make pasta or tacos or big salads or heat up frozen trader joe's indian food, but rarely go further than that.  so when i was in north carolina this week i knew i wanted to do lots of cooking before i went back to new york, including trying four new recipes from my "recipes to try" file.  here's what i made!

saturday: ben's mushroom soup

(ben is a friend in my grad school program and he made this soup for a group of us once - and we fell in love with it.  he has been forced to make it for us several times since.)

how to make it:
saute 4 cups mushrooms (the fancier the mushrooms, the better) with one onion until the mushrooms are pretty well cooked.
add 2 Tbs flour and make a rue
stir in 14 ounces vegetable broth and cook 5 minutes until thickened
stir in one cup half and half.  heat but do not boil.

my family is kind of crazy for mushrooms, so this soup was a huge hit.

sunday: blueberry cornmeal butter cake from the smitten kitchen cookbook.  i love this woman.  we had a cup of blackberries mom picked over the summer in the freezer, so i modified it to be half blueberries and half blackberries, and we took it over to some family friends' house for dinner.  we are trying to eat healthily, but dinner with friends is the perfect excuse to make dessert, so i jumped on it.  it was delish!  moist cake with a sweet crunchy top.

monday: it poured down rain all day - the perfect day to make lasagna soup!  (we didn't put in the sausage, obviously.)  willis made this for us a couple months ago and it's delish; it's exactly what it sounds like - all the ingredients you would use to make lasagna, but in a thick tomato-vegetable broth.  it's better than lasagna, i tell you.  quote from dad: "i could eat 5 gallons of this!"  i call that a success!

tuesday: leek, chard, and corn flatbread, another smitten kitchen recipe.  if you like cooking and aren't reading her blog, you are missing out!  great, easy, interesting recipes with beautiful photographs and encouraging commentary about how you, too, can make yummy food.  making pizza dough is one of my newest tricks, and this one turned out well - good crust, great toppings, and an easy way to eat lots of vegetables even in the winter.  (we substituted fresh spinach for the chard.)  mom and i decided there were enough vegetables on top of this pizza that we didn't have to have a salad on the side.  victory!

wednesday: more mushrooms! tacos with mushrooms and cabbage, which was fine...but i don't think i'll be rushing to make this again - black bean and corn burritos are better, in my book.  maybe a nice change of pace, if you're in the mood for that.

and now, back to NYC!  i fly up tonight and should be back in my dorm room in time for the duke basketball game.  let's go duke!

christmas presents!

i meant to post this a while ago, but obviously never got my act together.  i wanted to show you my two favorite christmas presents this year!

1. my dad made me and becky each a cutting board.  MY DAD MADE THIS!  it's so beautiful and i love it - the wood is all from our farm which, of course, makes it even more special.  i'm sad i won't have a real kitchen until this summer because it means this cutting board has to stay in storage at my parents' house.  frowny face.  i could stare at this all day long.

2. my sister and her boyfriend got me a kitchenaid stand mixer!!  it has been my dream to own one of these since...well, since i discovered they existed.  i'm SO excited to move into a real apartment and make delicious stuff constantly.  becky really knew what the perfect present was for me, and i feel like such a grown up lady by owning this.  again, it will stay at home until i move into an apartment.  frowny face again.

commonality?  am i really this transparent?  answer: yes.

storming the court = unclassy, but you have to hate nc state a little less when you hear about something like this.

“What I’ve experienced is that I can’t know the future. I can’t know if anything that I do will change what happens tomorrow. I can’t know with certainty, but what I do know is if I do nothing, nothing will change.”
--James Orbinski, Former President of Doctors Without Borders

my treasure

around christmas, mom and dad and the dogs and i went for a walk on a new route along the creek near our house.  dad had seen an old house in this area on a 1960s map he saw recently, so we went in search of it.  no house, but we found walls built around two old springs that still have water - see the wet leaves - so that was pretty cool.

we also found stones built into a hill - might have been where a house was, might have just been to keep the hill from sliding down.  but i spotted a treasure leaning up against the stones!  it is an old saw blade leaning up against the wall - like the guy who owned it left it there when he moved away.  i tried to get it out, to no avail.  then dad tried - still couldn't get it to move.  about a foot and a half was visible above the ground.  we would have to come back with a shovel to dig it out.

fast forward to saturday: it was 60 degrees and dad and i brought a shovel to the spot and tried to get the blade out.  but it went REALLY far underground.  after 20 minutes of digging and not being successful, we went back for an axe to chop the roots that were in our way.  15 minutes after that, we got the blade free.  um, it is at least 4 feet long.

dad helped show me how to clean it off with a wire brush.  it is a two man crosscut saw, and the curve that you see is on purpose - to give it a better edge for cutting through a log, apparently.

i love it because the blades are irregular - i think they're really pretty.  the part that was below ground for...oh...who knows how long (50 years?) is pretty rusted and degraded, but the part that was above ground it in okay shape.  internet research by dad has informed us that this is a lance tooth felling saw ("lance tooth" refers to the pattern of the teeth; felling saws are for cutting down trees, as opposed to heavier and stiffer bucking saws which are for cutting trees when they are already on the ground).  thanks to dad + the internet.

note: i have no idea what i will do with my treasure now, but it is pretty cool.

well this was definitely worth an hour of my life - portrait of a president - hope you enjoy it as much as i did!

(thanks to jenny for sending it to me!)

today: 4 more jobs applied for, bringing the total up to 17.  ugh.  wake me up when this is over and you (the universe) have the perfect job for me.

2012 in review: books

a recap:
2010: i read 15 books
2011: i challenged myself to read 25 books and read 38.  i am out of control!
2012: i read 34 books plus survived a semester of grad school.  i feel pretty good about myself.

2012 broken down:
26 fiction books
8 nonfiction

12 books written by women
22 by men
(pretty skewed - i wouldn't have guessed this.)

reading is fun, so the 2013 book challenge continues!  and by "book challenge," i mean "i read books at whatever pace i feel like and then i tell you about them."

the first book i've read in 2013 was a DOOZY.  ugh.  it can only go up from here...

a photo a day

Landing in Atlanta! One day here, then back home to NC for the last week of my epic winter break.

to remember as we make new year's resolution:

“Well done is better than well said.”
--Benjamin Franklin

i also love this list of famous new year's resolutions.

texas school book depository

i'm in dallas visiting becky!

on sunday we went to the sixth floor museum at the texas book depository, where lee harvey oswald shot kennedy.

omg.  it was one of the best museum experiences of my life.  seriously: top 10.  (then i tried to name 10 museums i LOVED, and this is as far as i got: newseum in DC, the british museum, the national gallery in london, the getty in LA, all the national monuments in DC (but are those museums?).  these are the museums that stand out to me as powerful to me personally since, you know, it's my top 10 list.)

the museum is devoted to kennedy's presidency and to his assassination, with exhibits leading up to the assassination and then dealing with the aftermath.  being an american history teacher maybe made this museum extra powerful.  and having seen the zapruder film made it eerie - being in the exact spots where the film was shot and knowing that real life happened here.  the museum is on the sixth floor, where oswald was, and the corner where he supposedly holed up is glassed off, original floors, original walls and beams in the ceiling.  you can very easily imagine what it was like.  the audio guide was awesome.  i teared up.  i made becky look out the windows a lot so we could picture the motorcade route.  then we went outside.

the texas book depository is the light red brick one on the left in this photo, and the window oswald was supposedly in is below the corner one you can see clearly.  the trees would have been 50 years shorter, of course.  in the center of the road there is an "x" where kennedy's car was when he was hit.  creepy.  the road is still in use, and after our visit we drove on it (becky drove in the middle lane so we could have the full experience) to get back on the highway and go to brunch.  it was so REAL.  maybe that's why i was so affected by it.

this is across the street from where i took the previous picture: book depository on the right, grassy knoll in the center.

closer to the building: the window on the 6th floor is permanently cracked open for maximum creepiness factor.

EXCELLENT dallas-visiting experience.  overwhelming.  nerdy.  awesome.

a photo a day

I'm visiting the school where my sister works today - and they have a pig, cow, 2 goats, and lots of chickens. So fun!

Now I am sitting in the corner while my sister explains the Revolutionary War to 3rd graders. ADORABLE.

december: 31, 32, 33, & 34

christmas break gave me an opportunity to do a lot of reading - hooray!  so much sweeter since i haven't been able to just devote an afternoon to reading since...august.  NERD ALERT.

this is the longest since i started this project that i've delayed in posting the previous month's books, but early january has been full of visits with friends and not much time for blogging.  oops.

whistling vivaldi, by claude steele (this is a book that was recommended by one of my professors, and is about stereotype threat, the idea that students who are at risk of being negatively stereotyped perform worse because they know about the stereotype, not necessarily because the stereotype is true.  for example: if you tell girls before they take a math test that girls typically do worse on math tests of this kind, they will do worse than the boys.  if you don't acknowledge the stereotype - or say that the test doesn't measure math knowledge but something else - they will perform just as well as boys.  fascinating stuff, and a quick read for any teacher-types out there who are interested!)

gone girl, by gillian flynn (a quick read that's not too intellectual - and is definitely one of those books that's aimed at a female audience: the story of a woman's disappearance told from her point of view and from her husband's.  this sounds scary and bad, but is definitely not.  not the best book i've ever read, but entertaining enough.)

the fault in our stars, by john green (oh how i cried.  i've teared up when reading books before, but this was all out tears-rolling-down-my-face crying.  TIME magazine called this the best book of 2012 and they are right, as far as i'm concerned, which is even more incredible because this is a young adult book, probably aimed at a 10th or 11th grade audience.  it's the story of two teenagers with cancer, hence you can probably figure out why i cried.  i love it.  best john green book i've read.  can't wait for my book club to discuss it!  people out there: if you have any interest at all: read. this. book.)

the art of fielding, by chad harbach (a book about a college baseball team, but it's not all about baseball.    i bought it this summer when everyone was talking about it, but never got around to reading it this fall when i was so busy with school.  it was really good - i got very invested in the characters and read the book constantly in the few days right around christmas.  i'd definitely recommend it!)

um...haven't been the best blogger over the past few days.  apologies.  i'm in austin with jenny!  our drive wasn't bad at all - we stopped for the night in baton rouge.  I-10 is the most flat and boring road ever, though.  good thing there were crazy southern billboards to laugh at.

today we went to a pilates class, so now we don't have to feel badly about lying around all afternoon.  (i was not very good at pilates, but it was fun anyway.)  it's gross and rainy here, which apparently is very unusual for texas...it's perfect weather for curling up on a couch.  tonight we're going out for indian food (yum) and perhaps some live music.  then tomorrow it's off to dallas to spend some time with becky!

a photo a day

Happy New Year!

Very fun night out with Erin and other Claire...very fun day after (secret santa with friends and meeting Wendy's new baby!). Still have a headache. Oops.

Tomorrow it's on to Austin via a night in Baton Rouge!