art works.

here comes yet another meal featuring the delicious and easy lipton/knorr pasta sides. but the pasta is not the star of this meal.

see that glass with all the bubbles? yep, it’s wine. and it’s delicious.
now, anyone who knows me is aware that i am a fan of alcohol - not a superfan (read: alcoholic), but i definitely appreciate it.
however, i’ve never really been able to get behind wine. you see, i’m more of a beer or liquor kinda gal.

until this past christmas.

after pulling off the greatest gift ever and surprising my family with a trip home for the holidays, we enjoyed our annual christmas eve dinner at my grandparents’ house.
as per tradition, everyone brought wine for dinner (sidenote: i think we ended up with 7 bottles for 9 people…so yeah.)

anyway, my mother brought my new favorite (readily available) wine, barefoot moscato. so, needless to say, i’ve tried to keep a bottle on hand in my apartment for company or long nights :) 

*my actual favorite wines are products of the winery at wilcox, a pennsylvania winery. they have these sparkling wines (peach, blueberry, and strawberry) that are so delicious!

parmesan noodles with crumb-coated chicken.

this meal was super easy, though a little more time consuming (with the whole thawing chicken and cooking it thing.) simple, nonetheless.

i just bought a package of lipton/knorr pasta sides, parmesan flavor and made it according to the instructions on the package. sometimes i eat this pasta as a main dish, but this particular night i wanted some chicken, so duh! - mixed some in.

the recipe for the chicken is one i found on allrecipes.com:
[you can either click on the link, or it’s listed below!]

ingredients:
1/2 cup seasoned bread crumbs
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp paprika
4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
2 tbsp melted butter 

directions:
1. in a shallow bowl, combine bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, garlic powder, and paprika (a.k.a. your dry ingredients) 
2. coat chicken with mixture
(and here’s the SUPER easy part…)
3. place chicken on microwave-safe plate and drizzle with butter
4. microwave on high, turning once, for 4-6 minutes or until juices run clear

so, there you have it! just cut up the chicken once it’s cooked, mix it in with your pasta, and enjoy :)

all it takes to make a gourmet hot chocolate is a little dressing up.

i always use hot milk (instead of water) to make hot chocolate, because it’s creamier and froths more - just add a little whipped cream and chocolate syrup and indulge :)

any morning i decide to try to make eggs in a basket, i’m cautiously aware of the fact that it only comes out right 1 out of every 5 attempts.  however, i got lucky this day and it came out looking (and tasting) delicious!

glamorous leftovers!

i’ve been eating a lot of spinach salads (when i remember to buy baby spinach leaves at the grocery store…), and they are oh so good.  i usually just have the spinach leaves with a little balsamic dressing, but sometimes i add in some cucumber or carrots, depending on what i have.

this particular meal was a second day serving of leftover fettucine alfredo with chicken that i took home from dinner at mr. mike’s, a local restaurant that is literally 5 minutes away from my apartment.  i haven’t been there since, and i’m not sure why because the food and beer was all kinds of good.

before i decided to try cooking for myself, i was eating a lot of fast food (and getting really angry at myself…), but some days you just need an original chick-fil-a sandwich. delicious.

on another day when i was wandering around downtown greensburg, i came across the cupcake shoppe, a really cute place with yummy cupcakes!  amazingly, i was able to exercise some self-control and only bought one cupcake, this peanut butter cup one pictured above.  i definitely want to try more of their stuff, especially some of their december flavors, which include hot chocolate,eggnog, gingerbread, and pink champagne!)

i’ll be sure to update when i try more flavors!

so, this is a photo from my first week of classes (and i think maybe my 1st or 2nd week after i moved…)

i wanted to see what downtown greensburg had to offer coffee shop-wise, so i could get an idea of where i could go to be super grad student-ish and go to a coffee shop and work on homework and such.
let’s just ignore the fact that i don’t drink coffee, and get super distracted by mostly everything.

anyways, i found a really cute place called dv8 and decided to hang out for a little bit.  as you can clearly see, i was on facebook (so i was obviously being super productive!), drinking some delicious blended red & black tea and eating a scrumptious blueberry muffin.

i’ve been there a few times after this when i have some time to kill before class :)