Pot-pies are like pizza

Katie sent home a bunch of leftover turkey with me and I really didn't know what to do with it all. Talking to my mom the idea for a potpie was brought up. So, I give you turkey potpie!

I grabbed a couple frozen pie shells, a can of potatoes, a bag of frozen corn and another one of broccoli, and a can of cream of broccoli soup.

It turned out a little runny. I don't think I needed to water down the soup at all broccoli in there. Still taste delicious though. Which brings me to the thought that potpies are like pizzas, the possibilities are endless. Since I barely made a dent in the leftover turkey I see another one of these in the near future (maybe with lima beans or onion or carrots!)

In case you haven't had enough of pictures from my glorious days up in Iowa, here's Timm being a dork wanting his beard to look super long.

it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas

at the mall that is. I worked for 8.5 hours today and it was disgustingly busy. See our hourly report - four $250 hours in a row. I feel like my legs might fall off or at the very least have been run over by a bus. I really hope the company gets their act together and hires some extra people soon. When it finally slowed down for a minute I ran downstairs to grab dinner. As I approached the top of the escalators I could smell the delicious brown sugar coated nuts. I thought I was going crazy or maybe one of the bath and body stores had a new scent out, but as I got closer to the food court I saw a "Roasted Nut" seller. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) I have no pictures for you (mostly because I consumed the two "snack packs" before I even left work). This may be very dangerous for me through the rest of the holiday season.

This morning, I managed to get myself out of bed with the promise of Mulligatawny for my belly later. I started chopping onions. I kept chopping onions. I chopped a little bit of my thumb nail and then chopped still more onions. Lots of onions, but I love onions, so it's all good. They were sauteed and got all golden brown. Then I added all the spices, at which point, the whole apartment smelled delicious. I think garam masala might be the best spice ever and I don't know how I hadn't discovered it until yesterday. Then add red lentils and chicken broth and let simmer. Then comes the real interesting part. After the lentils have gotten tender, the soup is still chunky. So what do you do? You blend it! So I got out the blender that was an X-mas gift last year and opened the box. It's super nice wish I'd gotten it out sooner but haven't really had much to blend I guess. You can kinda see the chunkiness in the picture before the blender got turned on. When I took the first batch from the blender and poured it into a bowl, I got so excited - it looked almost exactly like what I get at restaurants. I got it all blended added the chicken. Then cooked a little rice up and poured myself a bowl for lunch. It is sooooo delicious. It's a little different than the one from Mother India and I didn't have any cilantro to throw on top. I think I'll stop at the store tomorrow for cilantro and see if I can place my finger on what else is missing. I definitely think I'll be making this again though.


Sorry still no pattern review for my socks. I'm behind in studying and physically exhausted. I work 6 hours tomorrow and then have to be at work 2 hours after I get off for a staff meeting, so I really need to get some studying done before I crash tonight.

it just keeps getting colder

Actually that's not entirely true, it's been relatively warm considering its the start of November. But today was particularly windy and I've been feeling that winter is slowly creeping up on us. This feeling has been manifested in me wanting to cook and bake and knit and snuggle under blankets with kitties (or you know just about anything but homework).

My hat was actually dry this morning (well I should say afternoon, as I didn't have class until 1). I didn't expect it to stretch quite as much as it did and I probably could have made the medium length. Someone commented a couple post down about what pattern it was, so I've included the details below the pictures.

Pattern: Brambles Beret (Knitty, Deep Fall 10, Ravelry)

Yarn: Cascade 220 (forget the name of the colour-way, but it's leftovers from my Mrs. Darcy Cardigan and it basically used up all my leftovers less than a skein)

Needles: Brittany DPNs 4s and 6s

This pattern was the first one in a while that I looked at and said "Oh my gosh, I want this. I want to knit this right now!" There are plenty of patterns that I appreciate and add to the list of things to knit eventually, but I literally cast on for this hat within days of seeing the pattern and set aside my other WIPs. I knit the medium size around and the long length (mostly because I like slouchy and have a lot of hair). As I mentioned above though, it stretched a lot to block it and I probably could have gone with the medium length. The band size was almost perfect, I still pinned it into my hair but mostly because it was so windy today. It was a pretty simple pattern. I love the mix of textures and how it looks like a flower on the back. I have a feeling this hat will get made many more times and possibly for Christmas gifts. I think I might make Eleanor to go with it, as I have a wool sport weight in almost the exact same colour in my stash. I'd also like to thank one of my lab partners, Becca, for taking the pics after lab today.

Speaking of lab, we saw the testicles today and took the skin and fat off the abdomen. We got to see our cadaver's abs and all the fascia that creates the look of six-pack abs in fit people. Part of our group continued dissecting the thorax and by the end of lab we could see all sorts of cool stuff including the trachea, which I think looks like the kinky straws that you get as a kid, because of the cartilage rings around it.

Then I went to the grocery store and came home and started to cook.

Any guesses?

Yep! Chili!!!! Growing up it seemed like this was always the time of year for chili (as I'm sure it is for a lot of people). I've also been a little homesick lately, partially because I haven't been home since May and partially because I won't be able to go home for Thanksgiving this year and I've never missed Thanksgiving with my family (although I'm sure it will be tons of fun with Timm's family this year). So I made chili exactly the way my mom makes it:


Yes, there's macaroni noodles in there. Timm says that it may be good with macaroni, but it's not chili anymore and I have to disagree. But either way it's delicious and even though I'd already had dinner hours ago, I still had to dip myself up a bowl and chow down.



It definitely hit the spot. I made ~4.5 quarts, so I'm really hoping Timm consumes a lot while he's here this weekend or I'll end up eating chili till Thanksgiving. Now I gotta get some homework done, so I won't be doing it the entire time Timm is here (just most of it).

If you haven't dropped by Timm's blog today, you should. I'll warn you that it's pretty depressing, but definitely worth the read.