Chicken you won't want to Mish...kebab...

Once again I've cooked something and eaten it before taking a picture. There should be leftovers in the fridge, maybe I'll get a picture tomorrow and post it. Chicken shishkebabs. SO. GOOD. Even the resident chef of the house told me that I did an excellent job. Capital, simply capital. So here we go:

This served 3 adults, plus probably a lunch or two left over. (Note: As previously stated, I just kind of eyeball it when it comes to spices, feel free to add/subtract as you see fit)

3 larger boneless chicken breasts
3 red peppers
1 large onion
1 pint grape tomatoes
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp dried mint leaves
3 larger cloves garlic
salt and pepper
1/8 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil (traditional family marinade formula- 2 parts oil, one part vinegar)

We used 4 skewers and then wrapped the leftovers in a foil packet and set that on the grill.

1. Cut chicken, red peppers, and onions into decent bite-sized pieces. The best way to do the onion is to cut it in half, then cut each half again and peel off the layers. Throw into large bowl, along with washed grape tomatoes.
2. Chop garlic and add to bowl.
3. Add oil, vinegar, salt, pepper mint, and oregano. Toss contents of bowl until all pieces are well-coated.
4. After mixing well, spear pieces onto shishkebabs. I liked to alternate pepper, tomato, onion, chicken, but it's really all about preference.
5. Place remaining vegetables and chicken in foil packet.
6. Start the grill at a very high heat so that the outside of the kebabs gets well-done. Use tongs to rotate the kebabs every once in awhile, watching carefully so that they don't get overcooked.
7. After a few minutes move them to a cooler part of the grill (less directly over the heat) until the chicken appears fully cooked.
It's really THAT EASY.

We ate this coupled with a rice cooked in chicken base. This "yellow rice" is a favorite from when I was a kid. Genius idea! The leftover will be going tomorrow would go well in a pita with some sort of a tzatziki (although it does pose the milk+meat issue for some, note to self: find dairy-free tzatziki recipe.)

Running vs Walking: The Great Debate

My parents and I had an interesting discussion this morning. About a year and a half ago they "bought each other" a treadmill as a way to encourage a healthier lifestyle. If you've ever seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Nia Vardalos describes her family as "loud, breeding, Greek eaters". That pretty much sums up my family. My dad has experience in the restaurant business, he's a great cook and we all enjoy sampling his food (in large portions). As it turns out, my brother is the only person in the family who appears to be immune to the vast amount of calories we've been consuming. Long story short, we're fat and we're all trying to do something about it.

With friends at the Making Strides Walk  in October 2010

Back to the discussion of this morning, my mom had just finished her workout and I was about to begin mine, when the three of us began to compare our workout routines. When I first started running, I decided that the best way to do things was to warm-up for about 5-7 minutes, run for as long as I could without stopping (about 5 minutes), walk for about 5 more minutes, then run at gradually decreasing intervals (5 mins straight, 2 minutes straight, a minute straight...etc). I don't know where I came up with this strategy, it just sort of happened. I was able to put in a pretty good workout this way, but I wanted a little more structure to figure out exactly how much running I was doing vs how much walking. Now warm-up for 5 minutes, and then alternate running 1.5 minutes, walking 1 minute for about 25-30 minutes. My mom says she walks the entire time, and somehow she seems to be getting in a greater workout than I am, adding that her doctor said that her 30 min walk in the morning should be coupled with a 30 min walk at night. At this point, my dad chimed in that his doctor admitted he would have preferred my dad to walk briskly rather than run.

So...the question, do you prefer walking or running? Which is "better for you" when you're a beginner? There are people who say that you can burn the same amount of calories running the same amount of time as you would walking it, but I'm not quite sure that's true. Any insight? I think it makes more sense that a doctor would recommend for my parents to run because....well, they're kind of getting old and the risk of developing arthritis and other joint damage is certainly increased for them. At my age, I think that the damage of carrying extra weight on my body could be comparable to the stress of running. For now I'm going to stick with my running, because I like the way it feels to run and I want to build up my endurance.

Why does Blogger always think I speak Finnish?

My feet in Senegal

Alas, one day I'll learn. At least I can muster my way through when it randomly gives me a Norwegian page or two! Not much to blog about. I'm heading up to Madison again for a few days and then on Sunday I'll be seeing Beauty and the Beast with my mom and some dear friends! It's pretty exciting because I used to drag her to see it in theaters when I was three years old, and as a graduation gift she's taking me to see it on stage.

Since I've been dog-sitting a puppy girl who enjoys waking up at 5:30 AM, I was watching Arthur today in a sleepy stupor. (Don't judge.) Any nostalgic love I have for the show aside, I was really impressed with one of the episodes. (Yes, I watched the full 30 minutes.) The episode was entitled "In My Africa", and it centered around the Brain's cousin Cheikh who is from Dakar. Of course, as soon as the little cartoon version of Dakar came across the screen I was hooked. While Cheikh shares a bit of his Senegalese culture with his new friend D.W., the main point is that many people, like Arthur's sister, mistake Africa for a country. They assume that every part of this "country" is filled with lions and hippos and giraffes (Oh my!). When I was in Senegal, the most interesting animal I saw was a pelican that was about 4'5". The main characters of the episode wrote a song to teach children about some special aspects of all 54 countries in Africa. A noteable highlight was the random shouting of "DJIBOUTI!"

I applaud you, Arthur creators. You have finally addressed something which I feel like a majority of American children need to learn. They also do a great episode on Asperger's syndrome and give a nod to Judaism without a "chanukah special", I'm totally going to make my kids watch Arthur when they exist. And I'm going to continue watching it now. No regrets.

Spicy Sweet Potato Fries (I wish I had a picture...but I ate them all..)

I was hankering for these delicious sweet potato hashbrowns I had at a delicious Chicago restaurant...aptly named Hash Browns. Not really eating out anymore, due to various restrictions, I decided to whip up a batch of sweet potato fries for the first time. Since I learned to cook from my dad, I took his approach to making something you've never made before: take an educated guess at how it's made and see what happens.

Turns out it was delicious. I like a little (a lot) of spice to my recipes, so if you aren't a fan of spicy foods, leave out the cayenne pepper. But really, the cayenne pepper is the whole reason I love this recipe.

Spicy Sweet Potato Fries
(serves 2-3)
2-3 medium sized sweet potatoes
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp salt


1. Preheat oven to 450 F.
2. Cut the sweet potatoes into wedges or thicker strips. I left the skin on, which gave it a nice flavor and casing, but I supposed you could peel it as well if you aren't into that texture. In my experience, the wedges will be a variety of sizes. That's perfectly fine, they'll cook just fine.
3. Pour wedges, olive oil, paprika, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, and sal into a ziplock bag. Shake it up until the wedges are thoroughly coated.
5. Spread wedges into a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake at 450 for 30 minutes, turning the fries halfway through.

I served them with lemon chicken and a side salad, but they'll go great with just about anything. Be sure to save this recipe for leftover sweet potatoes after Thanksgiving!

Speaking of food, in case anyone was concerned, our garden is going amazingly! I'm going to be getting creative at the end of this summer because I'll have to use up:

Jalepenos and tomatoes!

мальчик читает!

This is my old Greek workbook:

All that messy little kid Greek scribble? I used to know what that means. Not that it was anything brilliant, I'm sure it was something that I thought was hilarious like "I'm going to the bar to drink five beers" or "Kostos ate six goats"...something like that. The point is, I've forgotten all of it. Granted, as you read further on you get to pages with "I don't know what's going on" written in French in the margins, maybe that's where my Greek lessons started to falter. I quit Greek class. I hated it. It was on Thursday nights after my piano lesson and I was tired and cold and I sat next to this Albanian woman who thought I was adorable and looooved talking to me about Albania. Finally, after faking sick several Thursdays in a row, I think I convinced my parents that I was NOT interested in returning to Greek school. Now...I wish I hadn't.

I'm good at languages. It's my thing, I get them. I speak French and German, and I took a little Italian in undergrad. Language learning has played a big part in my career path. I want to work in international relations, and eventually the United States Foreign Service so I can use what I've learned to help people. Had someone told me that enduring that cold, cheese-smelling classroom for a few more months would significantly impact my career later in life, I'm sure I would have stayed. I had no idea at the time. Nobody knew what I wanted to be. In a college interview when asked if I was interested in taking any particular foreign language, I said "Yes, Swedish, Norwegian, and Russian..maybe Swahili if possible". My dad, trying to ease the shock-factor, explained to the interviewer in words that I think still fit me quite well. "My daughter sees foreign languages as a buffet, she can take as much as she wants from each platter." It's true.

I'm worried though. I feel like as I get older that serving spoon is getting heavier and heavier and now there's a giant sneeze-guard in the way, making it harder for me to grasp the dishes.What if this talent is only useful for a couple of years more? What if once I turn 25 my gift for foreign languages disappears? So, I'm learning Russian. And it's hard! I figure I might as well do something productive while I'm waiting for my graduate school life to start, so I'm picking up another one. So far I can only say things like "He is eating an apple" (он ест яблоко!), but it's a start. The grammar is very confusing to me, it's unlike anything I've previously learned. I'm sure my studies in Russian will provide a few more blog posts. 

Getting Fresh Air...and Getting Lost!

Ahhh...back when the path was well-defined.

In an attempt to cure boredom, the boyfriend-guy and I decided to go for a hike on Saturday! We went to Morton arboretum in the suburbs, which has a total of about 9 miles of trail. In the morning we bought some key trail mix ingredients (ie: peanuts, M&Ms, and Craisins), mixed it all together, and headed out on our way. We drove by a couple of garage sales before getting to the park, all of which were pretty disappointing. We're both moving into new places this year, so we have lots of things we need for our apartments, but most of the stuff at these sales was for little kids. (Items which we DO NOT NEED.) We got to the park around 11:30, ate some of our trail mix and watched families run around, then we took the nice little path around the children's part of the park before trekking out on our own.

We got lost.

Of the 9 miles of trail in the arboretum, I'd say we hiked about 11 of them. This being due to the fact that I, completely useless at reading maps, handed it to the boyfriend-guy, who apparently is also completely useless at reading maps. To his credit, eventually he did get us to a place where he could look at the map and say "See? We're right at this part!", but it took a lot of back tracking to get there. Part of the problem is simply because the parks have a not-so-great signage system. There are signs pointing in the right direction, but it would be helpful if there wasn't both a "visitor center" AND a "visitor station". We parked at the visitor center. After about an hour our mosquito repellent was wearing off (but it was heavy so I didn't want to carry it in my backpack) so we decided to walk back to the car and get some more before heading out again on a different trail. Well, as luck would have it, we ended up walking to the visitor station. Which is...of course...the other side of the park. So we back-tracked there, and a few other times, before finally getting back to the visitor center. We bought some sno-cones and collapsed on a bench. Boyfriend-guy's neck seems to have taken the majority of mosquito attacks, which is lucky for me. Not so much for him. I'm still scratching my legs, back, face, and arms, but I think the outing was a success. We met working at a summer camp, so as much as both of us squeal at the sight of bugs, we're pretty excited when we get to be outside for prolonged periods of time. (Except there was this one part with a really gross marshy pile of mud swarming with bugs that we had to cross twice due to back-tracking. That part was not so nice.)

The arboretum itself is a nice setup. It's kind of expensive, $11/adult to get in, with free parking. I just made it $5/person in my head and $12/parking and it made me feel a little better, but it was still pretty pricey. I mean, we brought our own food (minus the sno-cones), and all we were doing was walking around outside. We pretty much found ways to entertain ourselves. On Wednesdays they have discounted admission, so if you want an afternoon of fun or something then it's only about $7/adult I think. Overall, it was a great outing!

A Lapse in Blogging...because I haven't done anything.

I'm at this weird point in my life right now where I'm waiting for things to happen. I can't move into my new place until August, and so looking for jobs where I am now isn't going so well. Likewise, attempting to find work in a new city when you can't start for a few months and you don't know your class schedule is proving to be a lot harder than I thought it might be. I fill my days with random things...running, walking the dog, helping with dinner...a lot of Netflix, but I graduated COLLEGE! I should be doing something incredible right now! I know in a few months things are going to start happening so fast and I won't be able to find any time to spare. I should be enjoying the summer vacation I'm getting now, but I'm finding it hard to relax.

 I'm  bored. I need to go somewhere new, especially now that I have a place for the fall. I spend my spare time (of which there is quite a bit) planning out what my new apartment will be like. I've re-read countless books from my childhood, including All-of-a-Kind Family, Witch Week, and a couple of Harry Potters. I've been switching my brain to different languages the past few weeks, so that whenever I come across a weird vocab word that I don't know, I can look it up online. I'm really torn with what language I need to be practicing right now. Obviously, my graduate program is in French...but that's sort of like riding a bike to me. I'm not going to forget French, it's like forgetting English for me. German, I think, is where my interests should lie this summer. After completing the courses in undergrad, I feel like I'm supposed to have a firm grasp on the language...but I find myself slipping up a lot, having to look up words I already knew. Italian...well...Italian is just going to have to wait a little longer. I need to get my German up to speed with my French first.

I'm not really sure why I'm awake, but I realized I hadn't blogged in a few days and felt like I should keep up to speed. They say it takes doing something 3 days in a row to make a habit of it, but I'm not so sure that's true. I've tried that strategy with a few things...exercise...blogging...eating the same thing every day...Not sure how effective that strategy has been, as I've only run three times this week.

Boyfriend-Guy is coming into town this weekend, so I should have something interesting to write about. I think we're going to go to some museums and the park and try out a couple of restaurants but really...these suburbs are tough on somebody who has lived in the city for the past 4 years! More later, I should pretend that I'm going to go to sleep now, even though that's not happening...(I think it's the iced double shot espresso I knocked back on my way home from the grocery store...)