I made shrimp chowder

It was pretty good.

The recipe I used is from Southern Living's Busy Moms Weeknight Favorites, which somehow showed up at my house several years ago. I brought it back to college with me, hoping to use some of the recipes as I cooked in my on-campus apartment. But most of the time, it was easier for me to eat in the dining hall (or let's be honest, at Taco Bell) than to cook for myself.

Now, Dave and I are making a much more conscious effort to plan our meals ahead and cook for ourselves. It helps that I'm eating meat again (after seven years without red meat and almost four years totally vegetarian), but it really really helps to sit down together and think about what we're going to cook in the upcoming week -- and then we only have to make one trip to Harris Teeter.

This isn't my favorite cookbook. I don't know that I have a favorite cookbook, since most of my cooking up until this month has been baking. The Busy Moms Weeknight Favorites focuses on easy-to-make main dishes, utilizing a lot of shortcut ingredients like prepared biscuit dough or, in this case, easy-peel frozen shrimp. That's how I turned this

into this

into this.

Quick Shrimp Chowder
Recipe from Busy Moms Weeknight Favorites, Southern Living, Oxmoor House 2006.

In the bottom of a medium saucepan, saute half a medium yellow onion in 1 T butter or margarine until translucent (I undercooked my onions--don't do that! Make sure they are thoroughly done as you won't heat the soup long enough to cook the onions farther).

Add a 10 3/4 oz can of cream of potato soup, 1 3/4 C milk, and some ground red pepper (about 1/4 tsp or more to taste) and bring to a boil. Add the peeled, deveined shrimp of a 1 pound bag, reduce heat, and simmer 5 minutes or until shrimp are pink. (I bought ready-to-eat shrimp; I advise against this, as the shrimp were sort of tough, but if you're as wary about cooking seafood as I am, you may want to follow in my inexperienced footsteps.)

Stir in 1/2 C shredded Monterey jack cheese to melt. Serve with crackers. (The recipe advises a garnish of fresh parsley; I decided not to spend my money on decorative foodstuffs, but it may be nice if you're fancier than me.)

This would serve four to five people.

A month and a half later...

I posted again!
Starting a blog a month and a half before graduating may not have been the best idea. Blogging sort of (okay, completely) took a back seat to, oh I don't know... term papers, my thesis, group projects, final exams, getting an apartment, getting engaged, wrapping up my THREE jobs (and starting a new one!), moving and of course GRADUATING.

Whew. That was a lot. Maybe I should slow it down some and take this step by step.

Engagement bling.

1. I graduated! Whoo! No big deal, just completed four years of study and two majors, AND get to stop giving all my parents' and my money to the school (well, except for my student loans). A friend (who still has a semester left before graduating) asked me what it's like to have graduated, and the best analogy I've come up with is this: it's like getting in bed after a really long day. You've been working and studying and whatevering for fourteen hours (or four years, or more) and you finally get to just rest... but you know you have to wake up and face another day soon. Yeah, now I have a "real life" and a job and all that, but I'm still enjoying "yesterday" (college) being over.
2. Soooo I got engaged. :) That's pretty cool. It's not like it was unexpected; the Big D (that's what my brothers call him) and I have been talking about marriage for about two years. But I'd been getting more and more antsy about it (to the point of even saying that if he hadn't proposed by the end of the year, I was going to propose for him and he'd better not say no!) and couldn't stop bugging him about rings, and bling, and proposals, and locations, and everything... It happened on the first. We walked into our new apartment (more on that later) for the first time. I was busy checking out the bathroom (our tub is huge!), the closet, the other closet, the OTHER closets (there are a lot of closets). Then Dave stopped me and turned me to face him. "Meg, we're starting our lives together," he said, "and as such--" "YES!" I didn't even let him ask the question, I just said yesyesyes and kissed him a lot. (Like you do.) I did eventually calm down and make him ask the question-- "Will you marry me?" And I got this sweet "engagement bling" that is really just perfect for me (I'm a huge Harry Potter nerd).
3. And yeah, the apartment. It's pretty self-explanatory, we got an apartment and with it, free furniture (we scavenged TWO free futons during move-out) and lots of bills. Since I'm the one with the real job and the savings account, I'll be paying the rent and bills for a while, and Dave'll catch up once he has regular income. It's pretty nice, and I'm excited to get to decorate--maybe there will be pictures! Who knows!
4. Finally, my job. My REAL job. I wrapped up editing for the school paper, working in the bookstore, and being a Resident Advisor (all that on top of being a student--it was tough!) and started doing some contracting with my company so that I could learn what exactly I'll be doing for the next 18 months plus. I start full-time on Monday, but I worked full days this week so it won't be that much of a switch. My job is copy editing for tax software, and it's about as interesting as it sounds, so hopefully this old guy will be a way for me to at least pretend I have a creative outlet.

That's enough of that. If I talk too much today, I might not post again for another month and a half!