My First Blog Award

So after three years of blogging, I've finally gotten my first award! Happy day for all!! Okay, maybe not for all, but definitely for me. :)


I am supposed to recite the below and then pass this fantastic award onto eight other bloggers who make me smile every time I read what they have to say. Thanks Ginny for thinking of me!

"This blog invests and believes the PROXIMITY - nearness in space, time and relationships! These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award."

My awardees are:
- Megan at Mookarama
- Cousin Trey (who should update more often!)
- Bonniebee Wester
- Courtney B
- Kristen
- Courtney N
- Mag, Maisy, and Weaver (it's private. no use posting a link. Love ya Mags!)
- Holly in NYC (private too. Keep out!)

More substantial posts to come soon! Including (but not limited to) My first pair of cowboy boots, recipe for a christmas movie, and maybe (just maybe) an actual recipe or two.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Hope you had a great day with family, food, and football. :)

On the field at Texas Stadium at a work event last year. :)

Happy Open Letter Day!

Today, SITS is hosting an Open Letter Linkup...everyone goes and puts links to their open letters. I love open letters. If you've read my blog for very long, you've probably seen a couple. So for your Friday enjoyment, here are my open letters. Enjoy the blast from the past!

A Letter To My Love

An Open Letter to Grocery Stores

An Open Letter to the Apple Store

Tiramisu

After posting Broccoli Rice Casserole recipe yesterday, by Sarah's request (glad to hear from you!) here is my tiramisu recipe. Background: after I went to Italy, I had the best tiramisu I've ever tasted. I went to numerous Italian restaurants in the US trying to find it again, and eventually realized that no one here has it. So I scoured several Italian blogs, found a couple of recipes that I played around with (not changing much...mostly altering to fit what I could find in the US) to create what I think is the perfect tiramisu. I have a couple of disclaimers that I'll throw in at the end. This recipe will make a 9x13 pan. You can half it for smaller ones.

5-6 packages of Mascarpone cheese (8 oz pkg. I usually buy mine from Super Target and its kept in the deli/bakery section close to the fresh mozarella and other specialty cheeses)

6 eggs (6 egg yolks, 4 egg whites. Separate into two bowls)

6-8 heaping spoonfuls of sugar (or more or less, depending on taste)

2 packages of ladyfingers (I usually find them at World Market - Vicenzovo brand in an orange pkg)

4-6 c. espresso (strong coffee will work just fine. Make it and then put it in a dish to cool)

Cocoa

Beat egg yolks and sugar. Add mascarpone cheese and whip until creamy. Beat egg whites until peaks form, then add to cheese mixture. Add extra sugar to taste (it shouldn't be overly sweet though).

Quickly dip ladyfingers in coffee one by one and line the bottom of your pan (I literally set it in the dish with the coffee, immediately flip it over and take it out. Very quickly or they get overly soggy). Put a layer of cheese mixture on top. Make another layer of coffee soaked ladyfingers. Add another layer of cheese mixture. That should be enough to fill a 2" dish. Sprinkle top with cocoa (a sifter works great for this). Stick in the refrigerator for a bit and serve cold.

Now my disclaimers:
- This never comes out the same twice. It all has to do with the consistency of the mascarpone cheese which is out of your control. Sometimes you may need a little cream to make it creamy (no pun intended) and sometimes it will come out entirely too thin and doesn't get a good thickness to make layers. Sometimes 5 pkgs of the cheese is perfect, sometimes you need 6, sometimes even with that it is too thin. Even when its a little thin though, it's still good!!
- You're probably wondering where the liquor is. When I was in Italy, I never had a tiramisu with liquor in it. Apparently, that is an American addition. Italians prefer to keep their alcohol separate...drink the wine on the side instead of throwing it into the dessert.

Hope you enjoy!! :)

Broccoli-Rice Casserole

Here is my recipe for Broccoli-Rice. We had another potluck today (for a different group) and I was tasked with dessert. I made homemade Tiramisu and it was a hit again! I'm just rocking out the potlucks this year. :)

1 stick of butter
½ onion chopped (or a little more or less, depending on how much you like onions)
1 package of frozen chopped broccoli
1 can cream of chicken soup
1/3 to ½ lb of velveeta cheese
¾ c milk
1 cup of uncooked rice, cooked (measure the rice before cooking it, but cook it before you put it in the casserole)

In a large skillet, sauté onions in butter. Add chopped broccoli and sauté until completely thawed. Add soup, velveeta, and milk and cook until all of the velveeta is melted. Stir in cooked rice. Pour mixture into greased pan and bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes.

For a 9x13 pyrex dish, I made 1 ½ of the recipe above. The normal portion works great for a 9x9 square pan. I usually make it the night before and bake the day of. Hope you enjoy it!

Potlucks...mmmm

I love potlucks. I love potlucks even more when everyone raves about my dish and asks me to send them my recipe! It satisfies that scared child in all of us that is wondering "are people going to like my dish? Is the food that I think is good actually weird or gross?" Hooray for Broccoli-Rice Casserole! :)

Things I Could Blog About, But Won't

- Work is busy as usual

- How Wheel of Fortune's new $1Million spot is a load of crap....too many hoops to jump through after you land on it

- The big storm that is headed my way bringing hail and tornadoes....in NOVEMBER! Seriously??

- The fact that How I Met Your Mother is the best. show. ever. It is legen...wait for it.....

- How depressing it is to leave work at 5:30pm and have it be completely dark outside. It feels like I'm leaving at 10:00pm!

- I thought working out was supposed to give you energy. It just makes me exhausted and tired

- ....dary

Hope you had a great Monday...or at least as good as it could be!

How About a Little Respect?

Last week, I went and exercised my right to vote. We have the luxury of being able to vote in secret, but I will tell you that I voted for John McCain. But I'm not here to talk about why McCain should win - people have made up their minds on that issue already and there are like, 1 1/2 hours left in the polls. Plus, I don't think anyone cares about my opinion on that! :)

What has made me really frustrated today is not who people are voting for. I'm pretty sure Obama is going to win. I'm frustrated at the lack of respect that people have and how divisive the whole voting process becomes. Throughout today, I have been reading horrible attacks on supporters of either candidate on blogs, facebook, myspace, etc. Obama supporters implying that people who don't vote for him are idiots, racist, just plain wrong, and so on. McCain supporters implying that people who don't vote for him are uneducated, lazy, just plain wrong, etc. The truth of the matter is, both candidates are great men. Yes, they have differing philosophies; yes, they focus on different things. You can take both platforms and spin them to be the best, state the same fact in two different ways to support different conclusions. That's just how politics is and always will be. Remember that millions of people are voting on the opposite side of you and that those millions of people aren't wrong - they're just voting on different things.

My best friend at work, Lauren, is voting for Obama. We are able to recognize that both of us are intelligent, we both make the same amount of money, we have the same education, we're both white females...we have just interpreted the two platforms differently. And when we show up for work tomorrow, neither of us is going to think any less of the other for our decision. And frankly, if we let who we vote for define us as people, we don't deserve each other's friendship.

Whether our next president is Obama or McCain, the world is going to keep on spinning tomorrow. I don't care who you vote for, but don't attack my decision and I won't attack yours.

Halloween Recap

It's 6:45pm and has already been pitch black outside for the past hour. That makes me sad. I don't know what I'd do if I lived in Sweden or Alaska or another one of those places where it is dark pretty much 24/7 in the winter!!

But on to the important stuff...Halloween! I've been so busy this year, I actually forgot it was coming. But my cousin, Allyson invited me to a party with some of her friends on Friday night. Then she started talking about dressing up and I was like "Why would we dress up?" That was the first time I realized it was Halloween!

So I made a quick trip to Academy after work on Friday and did a really pathetic transformation into camo-girl for the night. Ally channeled some 80's Madonna, and we headed off to The Glass Cactus for the Spazmatics Halloween Bash. Spazmatics are an awesome 80's band that I have been to probably 10-15 times (for example...here and here). It was the perfect Halloween activity - everyone had a great time just dancing and hanging out and they put on a really fun show. We felt like we were at the Halloween party out of Hocus Pocus with everyone dressed up and dancing to a live band. :) Is it sad I set my holiday expectations from a kids movie?

And now...pictures. ;) Starting with me, Ally, and her friend Anastasia (with the Spazmatics in the background!)

I incldued this one for the full effect of Allyson's outfit. Ha!

No Halloween party is complete without Uncle Fester and his (working) lightbulb!

Asian Michael Phelps and Shark. This guy had some SERIOUS self esteem to be able to walk around in a speedo all night!

We all had such a great time! Thanks for a great Halloween, Allyson! :)

It's time for another....

Good Idea:
Making mac and cheese for lunch while working from home

Bad Idea:
After discovering your box of Kraft is missing the cheese packet, attempting to make mac and cheese from leftover shredded cheese and milk that you have in the fridge.

Random Thought of the Day

How did the American Accent come to be? I mean, our country was formed by people coming over here from England, which is why the majority of us speak English. We kept the language - wouldn't we have kept the accent too?

Bloglist12345

Today I was playing around with Sitemeter (don't we all?) looking at how people found my page. I think its funny to see what people have googled to get to my blog and its fun to see which friends blogs they're coming through.

Today one of the referrals was clicking through a link at bloglist12345.blogspot.com. I didn't recognize that one, so I thought I'd see who linked to me (I have to confess...it makes me feel special when I'm on someone's blogroll). Turns out, bloglist12345 is PRIVATE! And I'm not invited! So someone out there has me on their blogroll, but I can't read theirs. Or it could just be that someone made a blog to keep track of their favorites without having other people read it, I'm not sure.

So Bloglist12345, if you're out there....invite me! I love to read other people's blogs!

P.S. My most common google phrases refer to "Mexican weddings" (which is really amusing to me) from this, "I Hate Apartment Living" from this, and "Funny European Sayings" from this. I always have at least 4 links from each of those every time I look at sitemeter (which is only about once every 3 months or so).

For Sale: Riverfront Property in Texas

An Open Letter to the Apple Store

Dear Apple Store,

When I battle traffic for almost an hour on my day off to give you a chance to show me why I should become a "Mac" instead of a "PC", it would be nice if one of your "geniuses" could at least acknowledge my existence in the 45 minutes I spent wandering around your small store looking lost. Not a great first impression of your "outstanding customer service."

I'm just saying...

Best Regards,
Emily

Go Frogs!

Tonight, I went to the TCU vs. BYU football game with my friends, Chris, Erin, and Mike. It was DEFINITELY a fun game....we had a good tailgate before the game (all 45 minutes before the game since it was Thursday and we were coming from work), saw some friends from grad school that we haven't seen in awhile, and got to watch the #24 Horned Frogs completely smash the #9 BYU-ers (anyone know their mascot?). It was a great night! And even better...I'm taking the day off work tomorrow, so I don't even have to worry about going straight to bed and getting up tomorrow. :)

Here is a very blurry cell phone picture of me, Erin, and Mike in front of Frog Fountain. Go Frogs!

A Conversation With My Dad

Dad: So I'm getting a new car....

Me: What kind?

Dad: Well I figure I'm 58, which means I only have 2 years left in my "mid-life." I'd better get my mid-life crisis car while I can!

And that is the story of how my dad became a proud Corvette owner. :) And after driving the 1983 El Camino for the past 10 years, I can honestly say no one deserves it more!

SITS

It's probably not a secret to anyone who reads my blog (seeing as at least three of you are people that I first met through blogging...) but I like to read random blogs. I love seeing other families and what they do, what they are interested in, and how different it is from my own life. Yes, I know its weird. But today I discovered that there is a whole community out there just like me! And even better, I discovered it on one of my favorite blogs to read, The Quilao Triplets, so now I know that she doesn't mind random people checking in from time to time!

All that to say, the new site I discovered today is SITS and it is all about connecting people who like to read and write blogs. I'm excited about digging into it and finding new blogs to read - you should go check it out too! They're having a "blogathon" today with all sorts of giveaways. Who knows, you might make a new friend! :)

3010 Words

Chief Marketing Officer, VP of Corporate Strategy, all for charity.

Blah Blah Blahg

I'm sick. You've gotta love having at least one of these posts every 6 months or so! The fun part of this one is that my fabulous sinus infection hit the same week as our company Talent Show that I was supposed to sing in (its a part of our Give Together fundraising week and all proceeds go to charity). I sang in it anyways - it wasn't great, but the song I sang was more funny than serious so it wasn't terrible. Now I'm just hoping that I can spend this weekend getting well so I can hit next week with full force...I've got a TON of work to do since quite a bit of this week was taken up with Give Together and Talent Show stuff. Blah.

Sesame Street

One of these things is not like the other.....

Yes, that is Patty Weaver in a Supergirl costume. Yes, we were out in public at a restaurant. No, this was not a part of any dare, nor was she under the influence.