OK, time for some more updates to my 101 in 1001.  Considering I only have 43 days left, it’s pretty clear that I’m not going to completely finish this list.  However, I’m still working away at it, and I’ve already got some great ideas for my next list.  One of the things I will be doing is try to carry over uncompleted goals from the current list to the new one, so I’m not letting myself off the hook, LOL!

#33 is host a formal dinner party.  I don’t know if you’d consider the dinner party that AJ and I had as formal, but it involved lots of awesome homecooked food, people we hadn’t seen in a while, and showing off all of AJ’s brand new dishes.  There was a theme, the house was spotless . . . in my mind the goal was a grown-up dinner party, and that’s what we had.

I had wanted to get Mama’s beads inventoried and make the inventory something she can easily work with daily (#61).  I got the system in place, but her interests have shifted somewhat, so this isn’t 100% complete.  I did my piece of it, even if she didn’t follow-through with actually utilizing the inventory system I set up.  Same goes for #72 - getting all of Mama’s email switched from Yahoo to her ISP account.  I got a great deal of it switched, but there are still a few things that she is choosing to keep on Yahoo.  I can’t force her to change that, but I did help her get set up better.

#70 - search for organic and free trade coffee and tea that I like, and make the switch.  I’m not going to do this with coffee right now because I get a free pound of coffee every week from Starbucks since I work there, and I’m not a particularly big fan of the fair trade or organic coffees that we have.  I can’t pass up the free coffee (I’m a poor grad student).  On the teas - I’m not really seeing a classification for fair trade tea, so perhaps that is yet to come.  However, i have found some awesome organic teas, and I have made the switch there.  Check!

The iTunes is sooo much happier now that #73 (reformat artists’ names on my iPod so that each one isn’t listed more than once) is finished.  However, I can tell that this might be something that I may have to constantly monitor and maintain.

When we went to Napa, we drank so many different wines.  I can’t really get a solid definition on what a “vintage wine” is, because they all have vintages, but we did some really cool barrell tasting, and I’m sure that somewhere in there I completed #90.

Only . . . 40 to go!  Sigh.

I love to cook! It’s one of my favorite things to do, though I rarely have time to do it (2 jobs and grad school does that to you).

One of the things I enjoy the most is trying new recipes, especially when I find older family recipes. I have a tea cake recipe that my grandmother used to make when I was a little girl, and I was so delighted to finally give it a try and have them come out just the way I remembered them!

Most of the recipes I try aren’t in cookbooks, so I have a binder that is overflowing with recipes I’ve either tried or are waiting to be tried. I’ve been looking for a while to find a way to keep them better organized, and of course the internet provided just that.

This neat website called TasteBook lets you create your own cookbooks! You can put in your own recipes, find great pictures, and then actually get it bound! For about $20 you can have a professionally printed cookbook for your own personal use!

This post is for the Day of Blogs 2008! I am blogging for Children’s Literacy Initiative. For more information about what I am doing, please click here, or you can sponsor me!

I LOVE Christmas . . . in case you didn’t know, LOL! Decorations, carols, old Disney classics . . . I love them all. One of the best things about Christmas are the smells. Christmas trees, candy canes, baking, yum yum!

I’ve got a great set of candles from Illuminations this year . . . so great that I’ve already almost completely used them up! So I found this really neat recipe that I want to try:

Found at Recipe Zaar:

2-4 tablespoons cloves
2-4 cinnamon sticks
4 bay leaves
1/2 orange, sliced
1/2 lemon, sliced

1. Add orange and lemon slices to dry mixture of spices.
2. Put in a small sauce pan with 4 cups of water.
3. Simmer on low to release the fragrance.
4. TO GIVE AS A GIFT: put ingredients in a decorative jar.
5. Add enough water to fill jar.
6. Add a few drops of red food coloring.
7. Close securely and give with a small gift tag explaining how to use it.
8. Store in refrigerator when not in use, to prevent molding.
9. Can be simmered over and over again!
10. Note, I prefer to use the lesser amount of cloves so that they don’t overwhelm the other fragrances.

If you get to it before me, let me know how it goes!!

Thirteen Things to Make with Chicken

1. Chicken Enchiladas

2. Chicken Caesar Pasta

3. Polish Chicken and Dumplings

4. Chicken Salad Puffs

5. Chicken Wraps

6. Buttermilk Potato Fried Chicken

7. Baked Chicken Breasts Supreme

8. Mandarin Chicken Salad

9. Chicken Cordon Bleu

10. Chicken Pot Pie

11. Cindy’s Tasty Wings

12. Caribbean Cook Up

13. Basic Chicken Stock - can be used for all sorts of things!

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