foods and cars

I've been in the kitchen more this last week since I just started a new semester and have either had the quiet before the storm, or the feeling of total overwhelmedness, that I just walk away and make dinner.

Made my favorite salmon recipe for Doug and I one night

I also made a big batch of banana flax oatmeal chocolate chip walnut muffins for work/school snacks, I just used a recipe I googled and they turned out pretty good

One perk of a dog in the home is help with accidental spills. The other day I was filling my oats jar and spilled a pile on the floor, and as I stood mustering up the energy to get out the vacuum, little Becks trotted over and took care of it for me. Thank you!

I gave girl whose blog recipes I'm on the fence about lately another try, and made her Chili Garlic Beef Stir Fry.

You know, cutting up beef is not nearly as gross as cutting up chicken to me for some reason

I didn't realize but it said to marinate for 2 hours or overnight.... how about 5 minutes and then fry in the marinade sauce?

(that pile of peppers? $1. Thank you poor-old-little bit-wrinkly rack!)

It was tasty. Not life changing, but good.

The real highlight of meals this week were these croutons I made tonight. Oh. My. Gosh. Heaven's streets will be lined with these. (My thighs) curse my friend Rachel for introducing them to me in their oily, garlic-salty goodness.

Warning, do not make these when you're home alone or you will eat the whole pan. And your poor little dog will risk 3rd degree roof-of-his-mouth burns when lunging four times at a spilled crouton.

So that's it for meals this week. I received that Oh She Glows (my favorite food blog girl's) cookbook as a gift, and I promptly bought one for my friend Liz for her bday. She suggested we do a Julie & Julia and take turns making all the recipes in the book. I suggested she cooks and I eat and blog about it.... she didn't go for it. Haha, but we will probably start doing some of those soon. Yay!

And in car news, on the 1 week anniversary of having my car....

Flat tire.

I was actually driving to school and hearing a strange fwaap fwaaap fwap sound coming from the back and thinking "what's wrong now?!" and get to school and see it's flat. Good thing I have the roadside assistance, the guy came and put on my spare for me. And also good thing I had 3 tires from my last focus, so the next day I just had one of my old tires put on.

And when Dad called me to ask how my tire situation was coming, I commented that I hadn't done a great job of checking out the car in the lot. There is so much stuff to think about and questions to ask, it didn't really sink in that the radio station wasn't really coming in. I just chalked it up to being in a different city and not knowing what their stations were. Turns out my antenna was broken! How does that even happen!? So I was telling Dad and the next day I get a call and he said he made a bunch of calls and had one on order from Ford. Then the next day he calls and says it came in and can he come over and install it. Yes please! What service! So today he came and installed the new base. (I still have to buy the actually antenna part)

Bonus: getting rid of that old crumpled up spider carcass from behind the light :)

Dad explaining where the things screw in to

There it is all ready for a new antenna and to start picking up some tunes!