Living at Home For the Summer? Rock on!

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The only thing harder than saying goodbye to your roommate for the summer is packing up your dorm… and mopping all of the dried beer of the floor.  And scrubbing your desk where pizza sauce has been encrusted for months. And figuring out how to pack it all into your two-door.  Yeah, moving out sucks.  But moving IN with your parents again… well, let’s face it.  It rocks.

Here are my top ten faves about crashing with Mom and Dad for three months.  What are yours?

1.  You can live with your parents without looking like a deadbeat loser.

You have an excuse: You’re still in college and the dorms closed.  If you were 35 and working at the Venus Club and living with the ‘rents… you might belong on Jerry Springer.  But there’s nothing shameful about going back to your teenage years and living under their roof for one more summer.

2.  You’re a legal adult now.

Maybe your parents tried to force some strict rules on you in high school, and you vowed to move out asap.  But now, you’re an adult.  So even if they try to enforce a curfew, you at least have the “I’m a grown up” argument, which can be bolstered with “I just made Dean’s List,” or “In college, you aren’t keeping tabs on me and I made it home alive, didn’t I?” Plus, a lot of parents won’t even pick that fight, because they realize that you are an adult, you are a responsible collegiate, and they don’t want to know what happens on spring break. Read More »

Home for the Holidays – A Love/Hate Relationship

pietrygaHappy Post-Easter-Monday! I don’t know about you, but I hit the snooze button 5 times this morning before I could get my ass out of bed. 12 hours of Peeps, Cadbury Eggs and Jelly Beans had me on a serious sugar high last night (I went to the campus gym at 11:30…for real), but left me in some sort of diabetic coma this morning. And heading back to class after a long weekend?

Yeah right.

The only thing that really got me moving out of bed was a little hair of the dog that bit me… in the form of an Easter Egg filled with Starbursts that I found under my pillow. Thanks, roomie!

Anyways, a long weekend at home with the family was pretty tubular (yeah, I’m trying to bring that word back), but there are just some things about going home that are less than rad (yup, trying to bring that one back, too!): Read More »

“Would You Rather…” Wednesdays

leftovers.jpgWednesdays are rough. Sure, you are halfway through the week, but you still have two more loooong days before the weekend. Barf.It doesn’t help that yesterday was filled with 16 hours of drinking…and dancing the Irish Jig. We’re pretty sure this is what an eternity in hell would feel like.

Anyways, in order to get you through the hardest day of the week we thought we’d play a little game of “Would You Rather?” Because what is more fun than pondering life’s most random conundrums?

So, here we go. Choose your answer and explain why in the comments section below!

Would you rather have sultry porno movie music sound out whenever you make a romantic advance OR lose all sexual inhibition in the presence of leftovers?

No, we did not think of these ourselves – we aren’t that sick. All questions come from our friends Justin Hiemberg and David Gomberg, creators of the Would You Rather…? series.

Weekly Wrap Up: The Good and the Bad

tired_baby-whew.jpgTired? We are. This week was full of emotional ups and downs. And so much TV we barely had time to sleep. There was a lot of bad (like the economy) and a lot of good (like all those awesome sales caused by the economy). Oh yeah, and midterms.

We’re so pooped now we can barely form complete sentences.

Or is that the boxed wine we just drank…

Anyways, here is a look back at this hellish week.

The Bad:

The not-so-great news from the gyno.

The lack of a social scene on some college campuses.

That douchey Jason and his Bachelor mind games.

The leftover pizza…eaten off the floor.

A university preventing students from getting access to birth control.

The knowledge that Ryan Seacrest and I could never be.

The Good:

Getting ready for SPRING BREAK, baby.

Which can still be awesome even if we’re not goin’ anywhere.

An awesome dance playlist.

Relaxed fit (read: no muffin top!) pants are back.

Alexander McQueen is coming to Target!

That not-so-hot boy can still turn you on.

And, the best of all, there are some seriously hot professors out there. 

I’m Torn: Leftovers

leftovers.jpg[Life isn’t black and white. As much as we wish we simply loved or hated things, there is often that whole annoying gray area in the middle. Like, we hate how Walmart treats its employees…but we love the low prices! Or, we love how that boy makes us laugh….but we hate that he has no motivation in life. Damn you, gray area; you make decision-making that much more complicated!

There are so many difficult choices in life (do we love or hate high heels??), so we thought we’d sort through ‘em right here. Every week we will discuss another issue we are torn up about. Let us know your thoughts in the comments section!]

I LOVE FOOD and enjoy it as often as I can: for meals, between meals, on the couch, on the way to class, on the way to the gym… And I am an equal opportunity eater.  I love Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Mexican, Korean, Brazilian, Greek, and of course, American.

There’s nothing better than walking into a restaurant or – yippee! – a bakery and taking in that hot-off-the-stove smell; the yummy aromas of fresh-baked goods fluttering into my nose and making my stomach growl with hunger. And then that moment when that delectable dish is sitting in front of me and I finally get the chance to dig in…

OMG I’m drooling.

There is one “type” of food that I’m not completely head-over-heels for, though, and that is the leftover. Read More »

Meals You Can Enjoy Again, and Again… and Again

casserole.jpgI am all about laziness—I mean, industriousness—and because of that, I love making dinners that I can use as leftovers later. Some things (salads) don’t keep quite as well as others (fruitcake), but it’s usually possible to find recipes that occupy a happy medium and can bail you out in a time crunch.

If you find yourself without the time to cook 3 meals a day, 7 days a week, these dishes are perfect for you. Get in the kitchen once and eat for days.

Door Number 1: Soup

Soup is a classic for good reason. It’s quick to make, it stays well in the fridge or the freezer, and it’s extremely simple to cook up a giant batch and use it for meal after meal. Soup is also incredibly versatile—in almost any soup recipe, you can add or subtract basically whatever you want (don’t like celery? Try some zucchini!) and it will still turn out tasting great. Plus, you don’t even know how much better it is than soup in the can until you’ve made it yourself and experienced the difference. A good starting point is this potato soup, which is All Recipes’s highest-rated soup recipe.

Door Number 2: Rice

My personal favorite thing to do with rice is to cook a huge pan of fried rice with tons of vegetables and bits of chicken or tofu, and then keep the leftovers for my lunches all week. Following this recipe will give you great Chinese fried rice. If you prefer a more Indian flava, leave out the soy sauce, sub the sesame oil with another type of oil (canola or mustard is good), and add turmeric, cumin, chili powder, and pepper. Read More »

Candy Dish: Black Friday Will Kill You

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Seriously. Wal-mart shoppers trampled and killed an employee.

Michael Phelps bring his GF home to mama.

Carry your lunch in (super cute) style!

Make your hair look 10 years younger! 

Old people aren’t so safe about sex. 

Milo Ventimiglia is better than sweeter than pumpkin pie. 

Jessica Simpson is anti-bras, apparently.

He’s Just Not That Into You, the movie.

Creative ideas for downing those leftovers. 

The Weekly Wrap Up: We’re Stuffed Like a Turkey

tired_baby-whew.jpgWhat a week! Between Heidi and Spencer’s “spontaneous wedding,” the surfacing of some scary pro-anorexia support groups on Facebook, and the arrival of yet another frigid winter, we couldn’t wait for the weekend to come. And by “weekend” we mean Thanksgiving, only the best holiday of all time.

Upon arriving at home to a comfy bed, clean shower, and lots of home cookin’, we immediately headed out to the bar to enjoy the Biggest Bar Night of the Year. We are using the term “enjoy” loosely, of course, because the evening was really just a night of awkward conversation and not enough alcohol. (Funny, that sounds a lot like Thanksgiving dinner when our bf met our parents.)

We loaded up on the carbs at Thanksgiving dinner to prepare for today’s Black Friday shopping spree, and besides a few broken nails and a black eye (on that bitch who tried to grab the last Flip Cam),  things turned out OK.  We came home with the perfect gift for our roommates, got some hot new jeans, and a really cute scarf to cover the hickey our BF left on the most obvious part of our neck.

Now it’s time to enjoy the rest of the weekend…and all the Thanksgiving leftovers.

Flashback: How Not to Date

chinese_takeout.jpgNot so long ago, in a fantasyland far, far away called College, I was your average little freshman, running around wide-eyed and ready to meet as many college boys as possible. And, because I went Greek, I pretty much had to find some unsuspecting (i.e., completely suspecting) frat boy to accompany me to winter semiformal.

Somehow, I found the one non-douchey frat boy ever to exist. He was perfect: tall, dark, and beautiful, with a 4.0, perfect teeth, a lot of cute friends, and – the kicker—a self-pact to not drink until he was 21. Which meant there would be no pre-game, just… game. And I had none, because he was that hot.

I’m not entirely sure why he said yes, and I’m not sure why I thought I was even cool enough to ask this guy out, but somehow the transaction occurred and there we were, sitting, soberly, talking for two hours while my friends drunkenly danced and ran around. Ever the gentleman, he took me to pseudo-dinner at 2:30 AM, got his leftovers wrapped and then drove me back to my dorm. And so it was time to say goodnight.

Ever the self-conscious one, I assumed that he wasn’t interested, but had put on a happy face so as not to crush my little freshman dreams. And just as I went to kiss him on the cheek, his mouth landed fully on mine. I was shocked. He hadn’t tried to make a move all night!

So clearly, the normal reaction is to kiss right back and linger a little longer, possibly suggest you get a tour of his house, etc. But no, rather than being caught up in the moment I said, “MUAH.”

Yes. That’s right. Right after he makes his move, the first thing that my body, which must hate me, does, is pucker right back up and say “MUAH.” Read More »

Simple Summer Meals in Minutes

woman singing and cookingIf you’re anything like me (extremely poor and continuously sweaty from no AC), dinner has turned into a can of PBR, hummus and baby carrots.

The summer heat and lack of money melt my formerly creative inner cook, and even though I’m slightly decent at preparing a meal, all I can think to do is eat apples, fry eggs and drink beer.

Even worse than cooking in the summer heat is cooking for one. It’s depressing. There are always leftovers and really, who wants to make an elaborate meal if you’re the only one eating it?

Which is why I was so excited to see these 101 simple summer meals that can be prepared in 10 minutes or less.

I’m all for using fresh ingredients and keeping it healthy, but sometimes recipes that call for a dozen different fresh components just end up rotting in the fridge.

These meals, however, don’t require too much and really do spark a little creativity in the kitchen. I’m so pumped about having so many new ideas that I’m already planning how I can use my leftovers (see #89).

Here are some of my favorites: Read More »