my last day in the east bay

or a long while i suppose.

…

that’s all.

Oatmeal ChocoChip cookies

so i'm just trying to get rid of random ingredients as i pack up and move.

we have a lot of oats, chocolate chips and raisins.  come on now!  :-)

sooooo i perused my favorite food blog and came across pioneer woman's oatmeal crispies

i decided to do things my way though.. 

2 cup brown sugar  (i had to get rid of the sugar)

1 cup white sugar

2 sticks of butter/margarine  (one of each)  (i don't own crisco. it's nasty)

(mix!)

add:

about 1/2 c veggie oil (eyeballed it.. to keep it relatively proportionate)

3 eggs

1.5 tsp vanilla (about... i put 2 capfuls of safeway vanilla flavoring)

mix!

add

1.5 tsp salt  (sort of)

1.5 tsp baking soda (again eyeballed)

2 1/3 c flour (eyeballed.. maybe 2 1/2 cup..)

4 cups of oats

mix mix

add 1/2 bag of chocolate chips

1/2 bag of raisins

uhh let's see.

maybe 2 cups of each?

add 1/8 cup of walnuts (i only had that much)

mix mix!!!

spoon onto baking pan

bake at 350 for 18 minutes.

hopefully they'll turn out okay!  HAHAHA

update:

they didnt spread too much  (but leave aboute 1-2 inches between each cookie glob)

soft and not too sweet!

there's only one thing two do three words four you

last summer it was Lucky by Jason Mraz.
this summer it might be 1234. (plain white ts)

you know, those generally accepted to be good music artists that mean nothing to you until *that one song* ?

for me, it was jason mraz.
i just really didn’t care.
mraz?
eh.

and then i heard lucky. and i fell.
and i love jason mraz.

same thing for plain white ts.
i mean yeah.. hey there delilah was catchy, but it was whatevers.
but… 1234…. and yeah, now i’m listening to plain white ts.

i miss last summer. this summer came so quick.
if i could measure life by summers… i could.

summer of my russian authors

do u see the title play? and the implicit nods? eh? eh???

anyway, i’m packing and i realize although i’ve given up mostly the bad habit of collecting things, i still .. collect.. books

favorite bookstores in berkeley
Friends of the Public Library
(sooooo cheap!! and nice quality too!!)
but the bad thing is, is as i walk home, i naturally meander thru sather gate and browse thru the library - half an hour easily goes by - and then the change in my purse or the stray dollar bills end up as concrete, holdable, books in my hands. and they can be anything! from Five Quarters of the Orange (a book i read in high school that i remembered liking but don’t remember, which i am reading now) to Nanny Diaries (a book i read during finals whenever i needed a break and convincing that i don’t ever want to be a nanny or raise spoiled children or have a horrible husband who’ll cheat on me or be a horrible wife who’s gross and icky).

I like book readings at Moe’s

I liked walking around Cody’s (but it closed)

i like that random shakespeare store b/c i had a copy of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil which I needed badly

and..
okay,
Ned’s. because you’re cheaper than the student bookstore right across the street!

heh heh heh

anyway, i’m packing.. and… I have five compact heavy boxes of books. -_- 
and sadly, it’s not like when i was younger and i had a book in my hand all the time. i don’t have that time anymore. or else i waste my time sleeping.

so.. i just have.. decorations i guess. :-/ i also LOVe owning books. i love the idea that i can just pick out a book and flip through it and find a quote. and you know, with certain books, i do that a lot…

i realize my favorite genres are just.. plain ole good american literature and then young adult literature. 
but then i love the brontes and jane austin. and i love lm montgomery. and i love harry pottah. and i love cs lewis.

but then i love toni morrison and jerry spinelli and beverly cleary.

ANYWAY

this summer I plan on reading all the tolstoy and dostoevsky I ended up NOT reading during the school year b/c i dropped the class.

and i want to read short stories

and maybe edit my 2 stories i wrote.

and maybe go back to some songs.

and maybe try to be literarily creative

or just darkly morbidly humorous and write comic strips about the weird experiences at CCS which I foresee. :-)

AND………………………………………….
i want to return to Psalm 119.

blessed

“and then there were none"

-nursery rhyme

Jun's Mac on Crack

1 bag of trader joe's penne

1 1/2 bags of trader joe's pennette

1 cup of feta

3/2 cup of random frozen gourmet cheese lying around (muenster, gouda)

1 cup of mozzarella

4 handfuls of parmesan

2 liberal sprinklings of bread crumbs (about... 1 cup?)

3/2 cup of whole milk

1 bell pepper

1 package of italian hot sausages from trader joe's (6 sausages)

1 tb of minced garlic

2 jalapenos (chopped)

olive oil

3 Tb of butter

while boiling water

add about 2 tb of olive oil to a hot skillet

add minced garlic and chopped jalapenos and stir a bit (start the sinuses running!)

add sausage (cut it up with wooden spoon as you cook)

when it's browned add bell peppers (chopped)

add some milk and stir  

add pats of butter (makes it really feel like mac n cheese, doncha think?)

[think about adding flour to thicken it, don't actually do it]

boil pasta al dente

add pasta to the milk mixture

add lots of crushed red pepper (make it dance!)

add more milk

stir it a bit 

preheat oven to 315 degrees

add the cheeses one at a time

crumbliest first to shredded/solid last.  (save the parmesan for later!)

thennnn the fun oooh ahh part

sprinkled with breadcrumbs (liberal shakes if you will)

then fistfuls of parmesan over it.

stick it into the oven at 315 degrees and bake for about 7-10 minutes

take it out

throw some more fistfuls of parmesan over it

beautiful.

whatever you do, don't eat it cold at a picnic :-(

notes:

maybe adding bright colored peppers

spinach?

broccoli?

chicken?

the possibilities are endless: it's mac n cheese!

seriously for me, mac n cheese was something that when my mom made it, she would add all sorts of things.  my favorite was when she added tuna or she added broccoli.

other variants were not so good.. i don't remember... I think I blocked it out of my brain.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chewies

Okay, so I suck at titles.

Anyway: i found a recipe

and i didn't have eggs, enough pb, or chocolate or pb chips... so...

i did something different

eyeballed ~ 1.1/4 cup of flour

1/2 cup butter

1/2~2/3 cup of peanut butter

~1/3 cup of unsweetened cocoa

eye balled 1/4 (maybe less) .. basically a big chunk of brown sugar.

3/4 cup white sugar (eyeballed in a 1 cup)

2.5 Tb plain yogurt

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda