genuinely happy

I've often wondered what it takes to make me happy and I've reached one conclusion.
When things in life turn out peachy for me, I'm usually at my happiest.
When things don't go so well, i.e. school, work, boy stress, I don't really register my mood as happy.
However, having some bumps along the way helps lower my expectations, and when things turn out alright after the speed bumps, I receive a huge emotional boost.

The last month and a bit has been emotionally stressful for me. It might because I had too much time to think, but it's really been a while since I've been through a tough time in my life. School wasn't the main stressor, but the job and boy were the mains.

With the job, the lesson I took from the whole debacle was patience. I also realized the importance of going with the flow. It's important to take matters into your own hands, but sometimes there are circumstances that you cannot control. Wanting to control everything not only stressed me out, but it also affected my performance as a viable candidate during interviews and messed with my self confidence.

In the boy department, I went through things I've never been through before. I'm not as experienced as you'd think in love. I don't think I've truly experienced love with another, at least never a lasting experience. To fall in and out of love as quickly as I did...I don't think that would constitute as love. I still feel clueless about love, but I know what I'm looking for now, and I still think I need time to just cleanse out certain feelings so I can focus on my future relationships. There's always going to be an inkling of "what if" in the back of my mind, but there's nothing I can do about that now, is there.

Right now though, after the whirlwind past few days, I feel genuinely happy.
Happy to have great friends who care about me and want to help me.
Happy to have met someone new who I enjoy spending time with.
Happy to be home and enjoying the beauty of the west coast.
Happy to see some family soon!

xoxo

Pesto Sauce (con pasta)

I was going to post this recipe earlier but it's been a hectic few days. Apartment hunting and packing. All that fun stuff.

I've never made my own pesto sauce before so this was a first for me. I didn't look up any other recipes online so I just eyeballed all the portions. I had a basic understanding of what goes into a pesto sauce, and I decided to make a spinach-basil pesto sauce. I was surprised how successful it turned out and ate pesto 2 days straight. I still have some left in the fridge!

Anyhow, here are the ingredients:

- A bag of baby spinach (approximately 4 cups)
- 7 sprigs of basil, chop off stems
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 1/4 cup of toasted pine nuts (I toasted my own)
- 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil
- 3 tsp salt
- 2 tsp pepper
- 1/4 cup grated parmigiano reggiano (optional)

- 5 cremini mushrooms, sliced
- sprinkle of pine nuts
- 100 grams cavatappi pasta

Directions:

Toss the spinach, basil, garlic, and pine nuts into a food processor. Slowly pulse the mixture until the leaves are fine. Then, add in the olive oil, salt and pepper, and the cheese if you'd like, and pulse until well-incorporated. I decided not to add the cheese in my pesto sauce because I wanted to taste the spinach and basil mixture. Cheese tends to overpower certain flavours I find.

While making your sauce, you should cook your pasta. I chose cavatappi pasta (my grocery store has all these cool Italian pastas) because it looked like a giant curly macaroni.
In a pan, add a little oil and add in the sliced mushrooms. Then add in pasta and the pesto sauce. The amounts I made were enough for 3 meals. So just eyeball how much pesto you put in. Let the pesto cook a little bit to release the pungent flavours of the garlic and basil.
Top off your pasta with some toasted pine nuts and pepper.

Pesto was a lot easier than I expected to make. I just never had access to a food processor until my roommate brought her's in to make pie with.

The day after I made the sauce, I made a pesto seafood pasta, and all you do is add some diced onions and seafood to the mix! Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of that meal because it looked too good to wait to eat!

P.S. to toast pine nuts, all you do is throw them into a pan (no oil) and toast them over medium heat until they turn golden brown. Remember to shake them around and keep an eye on them!

Cream Cheese Pasta

This is a great pasta dish to make if you’re short on time and craving something creamy. I first made this one day when I felt like eating pasta but I had no pasta sauce in the cupboards. I am a cream cheese fanatic (I put in my sandwiches and spread it on stoned wheat crackers) so I decided to use my smoked salmon cream cheese in my pasta. Now, I much prefer using cream cheese as opposed to alfredo sauce! I also like to use bite-sized pasta like gemelli (looks like fusilli or rotini) because the sauce gets trapped in the spirals of the pasta. I hope everyone will try it out!

Ingredients

- 5 cremini mushrooms, sliced
- Half a red bell pepper, diced
- 1/3 to ½ an onion of a medium-sized onion, diced
- 1 clove of garlic,minced
- 1/3 of a bunch offresh spinach, roughly chopped
- 3 tablespoons ofsmoked salmon cream cheese
- 100 grams of gemellipasta (enough for one person)
- 2 tablespoons oliveoil
- salt and pepper to taste
- Italian seasoning

Directions

Boil the water for the pasta while you prep the vegetables. I usually don’t like to cook the pasta too early because I prefer to have it immediately transferred to the vegetable mixture. Add in pasta.

Heat the oil in a pan.

Add the onion and sautee for 1 minute. Add the garlic, mushrooms, and red bell pepper and mix around until onion is cooked through. Add the spinach to the mixture and cook until just wilted. Stir in the smoked salmon cream cheese with the mixture. Add in the al dente pasta and coat in the cream cheese sauce and vegetables. Add salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning to taste. Voila, you’re done!



Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 10 minutes

I made this pasta without meat, but feel free to add shrimp or chicken to this dish!
Also, you can substitute the spinach with another green vegetable such as broccoli or arugula. Just remember, broccoli takes a little longer to cook, so it might be smart to boil it for a minute or two with your pasta.

happy eating :)

Black Pepper Chicken Stirfry

First recipe post! woot!

Ok, I decided to start off with one of my favourite staple meals as a student. It's so quick and simple, and it helps that it's tasty too. I try to mix up the vegetables to keep things interesting. It's also good to use vegetables of different colours. A quick nutrition tip is to try to eat fruits and veggies of different colours to get the different vitamins and minerals. I also always use broccoli in my stirfries. Broccoli is a great source of Vitamin, Iron, and Calcium. It also has cancer-fighting agents!

Here are the ingredients:

1.5 cup chopped broccoli - I usually use about half a head for one meal
1/3 of a small onion, diced
1 clove of garlic
1/2 yellow zucchini. Green is fine too
4 cremini mushrooms, sliced
1 piece of chicken thigh, cut into small pieces
2 tablespoons olive oil/vegetable oil
1 tablespoon of black pepper sauce

You can most likely find this sauce at your Asian grocery stores

Method:
- Mix the chicken pieces with the black pepper sauce. Let it sit and marinate while you prepare the other vegetables.
- Heat the oil in the pan. Put in chicken and cook until one side is browned. Turn chicken over and add the onion, garlic, zucchini, and mushrooms.
- an fry for about 2 minutes on medium heat.
- Add in the broccoli, stir it around to incorporate with the other vegetables the black pepper sauce.
- Add a small amount of water, and cover with a lid for 2 minutes, or until broccoli is done to your satisfaction.



I have not added any additional salt or pepper to this dish because the black pepper sauce should be plenty of flavour for the stirfry. If you use more chicken, use more sauce.
Remember, the vegetables and the chicken can be substituted. The addition of red bell pepper is great. I usually use red bell peppers but I didn't have any that day. I've also tried this dish with pork, and it tastes pretty awesome as well!

Enjoy everyone!
Next recipe will be a pasta dish

story of my life

Marie Digby's songs and lyrics are stories of my life in the past few weeks...

Daybreak

If these walls could talk they´d whisper
Just hold on
Don´t let the sunshine in this place
If we lose tonight it might not be the same
Not the same

Ohhh
You look in my eyes and tell me things wont change and I feel
Safe letting you go

I don´t wanna move don´t let go of this moment
I don´t wanna close my eyes don´t wanna miss a thing
I don´t wanna know if this is tonight only
Stop the time
Stop the daylight
´Cause when daybreaks
When day, when day
It might all be over
When day, when day, when daybreaks
It might all be over
When day, when day, when daybreaks

Trace my skin hold out your hands and
Let me in
The truth is coming through those lights
Afraid the truth might be unkind
So unkind

Ohhh
You look in my eyes and tell me things wont change and I feel
Safe letting you go

I don´t wanna move don´t let go of this moment
I don´t wanna close my eyes don´t wanna miss a thing
I don´t wanna know if this is tonight only
Stop the time
Stop the daylight
´Cause when daybreaks
When day, when day
It might all be over
When day, when day, when daybreaks
It might all be over
When day, when day, when daybreaks

Rosa's Recipes

Because I have time and I enjoy cooking, I'm going to start writing about some of my cooking experiences. By no means am I a professional chef, but I have been complimented and praised on multiple occasions on my cooking abilities. Most of my cooking is meant for one, quick, healthy and simple. Perfect for the student lifestyle.

A few things that I do not do in the kitchen:

• I used to bake cookies and pastries when I was in high school. But now, I seem to lost interest in baking sweets. Perhaps its due to the small student apartment kitchen and the lack of equipment. I miss the Kitchen Aid mixer at home dearly.

• I don't cook or eat beef at all. I rarely cook pork. This all started when I was in high school and decided that I was going to stop eating red meat. I was afraid of E. coli and the cholesterol. So I stuck to only eating white meat like chicken and turkey and seafood. I know chicken has loads of hormones and seafood may have mercury contamination, but I couldn't give up on meat entirely as I have anemia. As for seafood, I enjoy Japanese food and sashimi to give up on red tuna, clams, and crab.

I started cooking when I was in elementary school. Simple things like frying an egg and boiling water for dumplings or noodles. I've always enjoyed food and cuisine since I was young so I took a foods and nutrition class in Grade 9 and that started my self-taught cooking escapade. I learned how to bake cakes, make jam, whip cream, dice and slice, and learned a lot about nutrition. I used to take recipes home and make dinner for my family with a bit of help from my mother. I recall my favourite things to make were pineapple upside down cake, mac and cheese, and oatmeal cookies (my oatmeal cookies were to die for).

My cooking evolved as I watched shows on the Food Network. My favourite chefs to watch was David Rocco, a Canadian-Italian ex-Armani model who did his show from Florence. I was so in love with his show, and maybe him a little bit. I also enjoyed watching the Surreal Gourmet, Iron Chef Japan, Everyday Italian, and Rachel Ray's 30 Minute Meals. I also grew to appreciate vegetarian cuisine and Japanese foods.

When I went to France for 2 weeks, I stayed with a local French family who opened up the world of homey French food. I tasted things I've never tasted in my mom's traditional Chinese cooking. Since I lived in Dijon, the home of Dijon mustard, so many dishes were made with Dijon mustard. From salad dressings to rubs for meats. It was also where I tried pate, ratatouille, ate baguettes everyday, and tasted proscuitto-wrapped melon. It was divine. I returned home with a big jar of Dijon mustard, some locally dried herbes de provence, a delicious jam called Coign, which is made from "quince", and just a new appreciation for food.

The next few summers, I cared and cooked for myself as my mother was away in Taiwan and I had summer jobs. I had a lot of hits and misses, but it was from my mistakes where I learned not to add certain spices or sauces to my food.

Now that I'm in my third year of college, I experienced cafeteria food in first year and vowed never to go back to eating that fatty crap that made me gain 7 pounds in first year (thank god I didn't get the freshman 15). I moved out of residence and started cooking for myself as well as with my roommates.

I'm looking forward to posting some of my recipes. The idea was floating around in my head for a few months but I've never got around to recording and taking photos of my meals. I've decided that my first recipe will be a staple in my student diet - Stirfries.

Until then,
Rosa

utterly bewitched and beguiled

I don't know what it is about Pride and Prejudice (the movie), but it brings me a feeling of awe and contentment everytime I watch it.
It's not all about the love stories for me, although I do love the love stories; it's about the witty and smart banter exchanged - whether it be blatant or polite. People don't converse in that way anymore, and I understand why we don't. Today's conversations just seem so vulgar in comparison.

Perhaps it is also because I'm feeling forlorn from recent events of the heart; and the soundtrack to this movie is so bloody beautiful - I sit senseless for a good few hours, as I am now.

Sometimes I wish we could just follow our hearts with no barriers...but life as we know it is a minefield.
The strings tugging at our hearts versus our minds that bind us to sense and logic is severely difficult to deal with. However, we must accept the realities we face and cut the strings.

i need time

Sometimes I wished my mind could just stop and think about what is only necessary.
I don't think I've ever been in this situation before but I know time is the best remedy for any form of sadness and heartbreak.
Personally, I think I might be in denial without knowing. I really did feel fine until today, being a 5th wheel, that I felt sad. It wasn't really about the loss of a person, but that I just haven't found the right person yet.

Timing really is everything.