I'll give you a topic...discuss.

I felt bloggy (you know, when you want to write a blog but don't know what to write), so I asked Kevin for some inspiration. "Tell them about your food!" he said..."You mean how I heated up frozen dinners for us tonight?"..."Well..."

I did heat up frozen dinners tonight, but I also cooked a little to go with their pitiful selves. We don't eat frozen dinners every night and I DO love to cook..I don't have any pictures to share tonight of my food (I will soon!), but I do think I'll share a recipe I love (and that I kind of made up...I know. It's a big deal.)

So, you know what spanakopita is? If not, it is a delicious Greek pastry-phyllo dough filled with spinach, feta, dill and a few other things depending on the recipe. It is WONDERFUL and one of Kevin's favorite foods. And they look like this:


(these are not mine....someday i will share my pictures with you!)

What could be tastier than this crunchy, ooey gooey cheesy spinachy treat?...crunchy, ooey gooey CHOCOLATEY spanikopita. That's right....spanikopita minus the "span"..ich. One night I had some leftover phyllo dough and some really yummy chocolate-banana spread from World Market (one of my favorites) as well as some ripe bananas. So i just replaced all the spinch, feta, etc and used this--and TA DA!! Dessert spanakopita was born. I tried them out on Kevin and he loved them! I later let my parents and sister taste them (they were considerably more nervous than Kevin was) and they loved them too...so I think they are here to stay!

Now, spanakopita are fairly easy to make. To make dessert spanakopita, I simply used about a teaspoon of my spread and a banana slice inside each one. I'm sure there are multiple spreads and delicious things to put inside the dessert version (I suspect Nutella might be what I try next...how can anything made with Nutella be bad?)! You know what goes best with dessert spanakopita? Vanilla bean ice cream (or plain vanilla if you ask Kevin) and coffee. Yummm....I want some NOW!

So where do I go to get food inspiration? All kinds of places, but Allrecipes and The Pioneer Woman are my favorites.

I love cooking--it is a great creative outlet and stress reliever! I think everyone needs those...and it gives me an excuse to play with my food and not always follow the directions on the box. And if I can't find some good recipe to make or model after, the Pioneer Woman always offers up a good laugh (just click the link to be redirected).And she gives me homeschooling hope. But that is a topic for another day!

summer days, driftin' away...

Please forgive my Grease reference, but summer is almost over (the part where I don't go to work, anyway...i think the temperatures are here to stay awhile). In light of this, I thought I would share a little of what we did with our summer:

1. Even though I was out from school, Kevin still had to "work"...even when the World Cup was on for the whole month of June.



hey...wait a second..is that soccer on the laptop?!?

2. We got a new friend for Tom Selleck...




We are currently trying to convince him that she is not a pirhana, but is indeed a puppy. We are also not sure that it matters to him; he has a strong distaste for her either way.



3. We celebrated being married for six months..



he makes me happy!



aaand what number am I on? oh yes. 4. We went to our nation's capital. This deserves its own post altogether (which will happen later..I haven't yet recovered physically/mentally/emotionally. ha.):





...that is my husband, the future President. Please disregard the tomato. That's also a story for another time.

And that was my summer! What did YOU do?

p.s.
i promise not all of my posts will be in list form :)

So, this is my first blog. I'm obviously not going to be awesome at it at first, but I have lots of thoughts swimming in my head about many things, and I wanted a place to write them. So, to start out, this is just a randomly compiled list of things about me (and in no particular order...I don't want any of them getting jealous).

1. Right now my biggest struggle is not yelling at the puppy (Emmy, nee Emily Dickinson) when she scratches away my skin, bites off my little toe (not literally, it just felt like it) or eats cat poop (tmi?). Why is it a struggle, you ask?...She is just so darn cute.

2. One of my current favorite things is editing my husband (kevin k lewis') status updates before he posts them on facebook. you people have no idea what you are missing out on sometimes.

3.I love to cook. sometimes I make things up and sometimes it turns out okay and others it does not. Mostly I'm learning to follow recipes (I know, a novel concept) and tweak where I want to. This is something I'll post about occasionally and is one of the reasons I wanted to start a blog!

4. I'm a graduate student, and my classes start back in about a month. So, after then I'll just see you guys in person around April because I'll be hiding in a cave doing homework until then. I'm going to miss you, sunlight. And people.

5. Five days of vacation=six months of laundry. Apparently.

Well, that is all for now..i'm very worn out from chasing Emily Dickinson around the yard earlier.
Now that's a sentence you don't see everyday, huh?