what we've been eating

First of all...holy thunderstorm flash flood deluge! Northeastern Illinois just got hit with an enormous two day storm system. The Chicago suburbs apparently got hit the worst, and if you live out there, I hope your basement and car are safe and dry! The city was pretty flooded too. On the way to work this morning I drove through some ponds so deep that my power steering wonked out for a scary minute. We've definitely made up for last year's drought by now!

I thought I'd share the recipes Ben and I have tried (and liked) this week. After years of striving, I've finally mastered the weekly meal plan so that all our meals are scheduled in advance and we can usually get all the groceries we need in one trip. This routine saves a lot of time and hassle, especially now that I'm working full time and can't run to the store on a random weekday morning anymore! 

On Saturday or Sunday (aka whichever day we run out of food), I'll go through my latest cooking magazines (Cooking Light and Rachael Ray are my favorites), blogs, my extensive cookbook collection, and Pinterest to find some yummy looking recipes to try. I rarely make the same thing more than once!

Here's what we ate this week:

Chicken Parmesan...

 ...that we paired with Greek Salad

Slowcooker Beer and Brown Sugar Kielbasa and Sauerkraut  

(delicious but your entire house will smell like sauerkraut, be warned)

Zucchini Mini Muffins 

(the batter was quite dry, I'd recommend adding some more milk or applesauce)

Have you tried any good recipes lately?

april showers and new beginnings

(I WISH the magnolias were blooming already...but they're not. This picture is old but isn't it pretty?)

First of all, I just heard about the Boston Marathon bombing and am shocked. Tens of thousands of people worked so hard to make today one of the best days of their lives, a crowning achievement, and instead an incomprehensibly sick person/group turned it into their worst nightmare. My dad is heavily involved in the running community, so I grew up spectating at races and now casually participate in them as well...what an unbelievable attack on such a positive, happy, driven, and integrity-filled community of people. My thoughts and prayers are with everyone involved.

On an opposite note, how is it already mid-April? I knew that this spring was going to pass before my eyes and it sure is, even though it is slowwwwwly starting to feel more spring-like outside. AKA 60* rainy days instead of 40* rainy days. This weekend Ben and I laid low, cleaned the apartment, and watched 180 Degrees South (which was bad-ass but reinforced my certainty that I will NEVER be a rock climber) and Life of Pi. We had listened to the Life of Pi audiobook on one of our cross country road trips, and I think that the movie did an excellent job in bringing the story to life. The special effects and ocean scenes were spectacular, although the graphic visuals made the movie more sad for me than the book, and was probably not the best thing to watch the night before I started a new job at a zoo.

Yup, you read it. I am SUPER excited to say that I've landed a full time job in the Education Department at Lincoln Park Zoo!!!!!!! Today was my first day! (All the papers I just signed require me to state that the opinions and views I express on this blog are mine alone, not necessarily held by my employer). 

You know your job is going to be fun when the first day orientation includes a comprehensive zoo tour and collecting behavioral data on gibbons. And no, I doubt that I will ever get to handle the animals (sorry), but that's actually ok with me, although I would love to hug a fluffy lion (maybe someday in heaven??). I feel incredibly lucky and blessed to have found this opportunity, since I haven't had full time work in SIXTEEN MONTHS. Finding and landing a conservation science job in the city is a dream come true.

This week also marks "birthday season." Three of my best friends and I were all born a little over a week apart. It's my golden birthday this year, so I'm going to have to quickly come up with some way to celebrate!

I hope the sun is shining where you are this week!

(if you live in the Midwest, I sympathize)

book review roundup

I've been doing pretty good lately on the reading front (taking a week long vacation without internet access or TV helped a lot with that). I gave up on Anna Karenina a while ago, but all the books I've picked up since then have been really good. Here are brief reviews of the two fiction novels I've just finished. I recommend them both!

1. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

I read this for my book club, and really enjoyed it. In one sentence: it's a well written coming of age story about a baseball prodigy and the people connected to him during his time at a small liberal arts college on the shore of Lake Michigan. The character development is good and there are multiple protagonists, although it's one of those books where it's kind of hard to really like any of the characters in particular. There is only one main female character and I don't think that Harbach wrote her in a completely convincing manner...it's like he was really trying to get inside the female psyche but ended up creating just an object to be used by the male characters. My only other criticisms are that the names of the characters are borderline cheesy and unbelievable, and that although the book is not really a happy book at all, it still comes off with a brightly colored/saccharine/bubble feel. Other than that it really pulled me in and taught me about baseball. It kind of reminds me of a masculine version of The Flamenco Academy.

2. Nightwoods by Charles Frazier

I checked this book out from the library to bring on our trip to Arizona. Charles Frazier also wrote Cold Mountain (the Civil War book which was turned into a movie with Nicole Kidman) and I've been wanting to read that for a long time but I chose Nightwoods instead because it was shorter and lighter to take in my carry on. The jacket says that it's set in the 1960's (although I don't think the book actually discloses a date) in a very small mountain town in North Carolina. I finished this book in one day, and it's one of those novels that's described as "taut" and "fast paced" because the plot doesn't cover much chronological time. It's about a young woman named Luce who has run away from her childhood town due to some heavy traumadrama and is living hermit like in an old Victorian-era vacation lodge. She finds out that her sister has been murdered and Luce becomes the guardian to her young and psychologically damaged niece and nephew. The book follows them as all three work through their deep rooted issues while at the same time good and evil characters break into their peaceful seclusion of the lodge. It's a fast and exciting book.

Have you read anything recently that you would recommend?