Life of a Single Married Lady

I just wanted to update you on my very first experiment in crock-pot cooking!  I made an Indian dish, chicken tikka masala, and it was delicious .  I couldn't find the correct spices at Kroger, so I visited Foods of India and ended up with a spice packet specifically designed for a meat masala, so I didn't have to use all the other spices I already had at home.  Unfortunately, this meant there was a lot more cayenne than I would have put in!  But, as Mary put it, it hurt so good :)  It cooked in the slow cooker for 8 hours, so the chicken fell apart on my fork.  This picture doesn't look fantastic but the taste was! Here are my goals for the next two weeks: pick apples make applesauce make dried apples to send to Wil be taken off hold by a TSA customer service representative Talk to you all later!

This weekend I hung out with people and did social things like a real person!  It was pretty exciting. On Saturday, my plan was to spend most of the day doing this: Thankfully I got woken up with a call from Keri, who essentially said, "What are you doing tomorrow night? It doesn't matter. You're going to the Red Wings game with us!!!"  So I did!  It was awesome!  Keri and Darin came to my place on Saturday evening, we cooked dinner and took out the recycling, and I loved hanging out with them.  It was nice to see people after 6pm again :)  Keri even came and sang with me at church on Sunday morning!  Everyone loved her because she is awesome.  And...I guess I still did all that math stuff, but there was a light at the end of the tunnel! The Wings game was CRAAAAZY!  The Blackhawks were up for a while, but then a few minutes from the end the Wings got a goal to bring the score to 4-3 (Blackhawks).  For the last few minutes th...

I've not got anything particularly exciting, so this is just a few updates on the Life of Sam. Zumba I made it to Zumba this week, both days!  This a big accomplishment because to do so I wake at 5:30am and resist the urge to fall back asleep.  I'm having fun though; I think I'll be able to stick with it through the whole semester without issue.  It's good for me, switching up my schedule, getting me exercising again, really making me work to get results.  Zumba's pretty great :) Cooking Like a Grown-Up Remember that sauce I tried to make but ended up spilling because I unscrewed the blender bowl and the sauce all fell out the bottom?  Turns out I saved enough for a few servings.  Kale cooks up pretty quickly and I had some noodles already in the fridge.  Put it all together with that sauce...oh, it was delicious.  In case you want to try it: 12 oz jar sundried tomatoes packed in oil, 12 oz jar roasted red peppers, 0.5-1 cup walnuts, 1 ...

Today has been...interesting (and will include pictures!).  It's been one of those fat, lazy days, so I decided I had to at least try  to do something productive.  I found a recipe a while ago for a pasta with kale and a roasted red pepper/sundried tomato/walnut pesto sauce.  It sounded super tasty so I thought I'd try it. I started out making smoothies with all my frozen fruit, yogurt, and juice so I can have them in the mornings.  I love me some smoothie, especially when I have Zumba in the mornings (which I'll have to get to at some point, right?).  Smoothie-making went off without a hitch until it came time to wash out the blender pitcher.  It has this problem becoming detached from the plastic part that holds the glass pitcher onto the base, the problem being that it...doesn't detach.  I rinsed it out with really hot water and used it to make my pesto.  Pesto making went well too, until I figured out I could manage to move the glass p...

I wanted to write today about my early-morning Zumba sessions!  I was very excited (and a little nervous) to sign up for them.  After all, they're at 6:00am on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  However, I love exercising in the morning--I'm always more tired in the afternoons, I've been working all day, I might have a headache...so here was a chance to exercise in the morning and I jumped on it! It has not gone well. Day one: last Thursday. I woke up at 5:30am with a surprising amount of clarity and energy.  I was excited to go to Zumba!  I haven't exercised all summer because I was in a cast most of the time, so I really need to get back to it.  The previous night I looked up directions to the location and memorized them, so I got there without a hitch at about 5:55am.  The hitch was realized when I discovered I had gone to the wrong location and there was no way I was going to make it to the right one in time!  I drove there anyway, just so I coul...

Once upon a time, there was a girl who was afraid of the dark.  Then she grew up, went away to college, got married, and...well, silly as it seems, never really got over her fear of the dark.  One day, the girl's husband decided to take a job in Alaska and for the first time she lived on her own!  It was fun and games and pizza for a while, until she heard The Noise. The girl had just set her alarm for the morning and was about to fall asleep when she heard The Noise.  It was a sound of metal clanking against metal, and it was most definitely coming from inside the apartment.  She immediately called her husband but, as he was occupied at the time, had to communicate via text message.  Her husband decided it had probably just been in her head and was therefore not worried.  But the girl was!  So instead of investigating like a grown-up, the girl sat in her bed with the light on, clutching her phone and her Mace, until she was mostly convinced the...

So it's been a full day and here I am, still alive!  I guess that's a good sign. I made it all the way to 6:30pm yesterday before giving in and ordering pizza!  I also watched like 6 episodes of Dr Who because I didn't know what to do with myself with no one to talk to around the apartment. I did get to talk to Wil though!  He isn't missing out on much here.  When I talked to him it was in the 60s and cloudy, while in Ann Arbor it was 60s and raining.  He just gets pretty mountains and the ocean, nbd. I've been on a Dr Who kick lately, rewatching all of the newer episodes.  I'm currently on the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant, the best Doctor) and his current companion is Martha Jones.  I'm kind of excited for Donna again, I think she's my favorite overall so far as a companion.  She doesn't fall in love with the Doctor like everyone else, she's fantastic at keeping him humble, and she takes on responsibilities like no one else does.  Granted...

I've never made a blog before--I couldn't even keep up a journal for more than three days in a row when I was a kid.  But seeing as I just dropped off my husband at the airport for a year-long AmeriCorps stint 3000 miles away and I have no idea what I'm going to do with myself now, blogging might just be the thing.  We'll start with an introduction. My name is Samantha and I'm a graduate student in atmospheric science.  I've always loved math, science, education, and the outdoors, and I hope that by the time I graduate I can figure out the perfect career that lets me combine all of those.  Dogs are my favorite domesticated animals, and wolves and dolphins are my favorite wild animals.  I cross-stitch, read, and watch Dr. Who, Game of Thrones, Modern Family...all the good stuff on Netflix and Hulu.  I got married to my husband Wil after we graduated from college.  We've been together for a year now!  I love him like crazy, and you can read about ...