Jitters

I’m so nervous- school starts tomorrow! What should I wear? Who’s gonna sit with me at lunch? Will the popular kids like me??

I actually am a little nervous, but thankfully less from social anxiety and more just general logistics. I finish babysitting around 4:15 and then have to drive to the train station and take the rail downtown to be in class by 5:30. That shouldn’t be too big of a deal but I have no clue how long it will take to get there and where my class is held on campus.

Today was filled errands and cooking in order to get ready for the week. I’ll be eating breakfast, lunch and dinner (pre-class) while babysitting on Monday and Tuesday, so to streamline the process I made a bunch of stuff today. See?

I’m missing a lid, apparently. How embarassing.

First- Butternut Squash Polenta. I adapted this from a Rachael Ray recipe. Hers called for pumpkin and asiago cheese, but all I had was frozen pureed squash and parmesan. So I boiled milk, veggie broth and butter, then added the polenta. Once that thickened a bit, I added a 14oz pkg of thawed, pureed butternut squash, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, a couple Tbs of honey, and about 1/4 c of grated parmesan. It smelled so good that I had to have a small serving as a snack:

Second- a quadruple recipe of my typical old-fashioned Banana Oatmeal (recipe here on Kath Eats- the marshmallow technique). I’ll have this for breakfast for the next 4 days, topped with a tsp of PB

And finally, my proudest dish of the day: Mexican Quinoa Salad. I NEVER make up my own recipes but this was a Heather Bakes creation! I had some quinoa leftover from last week’s muffins, so I threw in about a cup of black beans, some chopped grape tomatoes, chopped fresh parsley (cilantro would have been better), a couple of green onions and some chicken leftover from my dinner tonight. The dressing consisted of: 2 tsp olive oil, a lot of red wine vinegar, 1/2 a lime’s worth of lime zest, the juice from one lime, a tsp of cumin, and salt and pepper. How pretty is this??

And it made about 3 servings’ worth!

Busy weekend! Friday night we headed to a wine tasting/b-day party, but when we arrived the venue informed us that the party would have to be rescheduled due to a power outage. Crazy! So we headed to a wine bar instead (and I have a newfound love: Grenache. Sorry chardonnay, I’ve been cheating on you). Saturday we did some stuff around the house, went on a bike ride and headed to Sangria for dinner (tapas- YUM) and La Duni for dessert. We split a slice of the Nutella Cake, which was delicious but not nearly as good as our Cuatros Leches Cake standby.

I have a bunch of stuff to do tonight- thank you notes to address, some bachelorette party emails to send out, and a train schedule to go over, a ginormous sinkful of dirty dishes thanks to my cookfest- so I gots to go. Wish me luck tomorrow!