Recipe: Chicken Noodle Soup

This may be slightly obvious, but I'm essentially using these posts as a way to remember recipes I threw together without writing much down at the time. Yay for taking advantage of the cloud in the cheapest way possible! :) Without further ado, here then is the chicken noodle soup that Simon and I both liked very much even though we both hate chicken noodle soup. I still don't know why I thought it was a good idea to try something we both hate, but it did make me feel a lot better about my cooking skills. Very (VERY) loosely based on this recipe here.

Miss Veronica's Totally-Awesome, One-Hour, Welcome-Home, Safe-For-Dental-Work, I-Just-Paid-The-Bills-So-Let's-See-What-We-Have-In-The-Cabinets Chicken Noodle Soup

Servings: 4-6
Cooking time: about an hour

Ingredients
3 frozen chicken breasts
1 can chicken broth
water
beef bouillon concentrate
dried parsley flakes
dried thyme
1 bay leaf
~2 cups dry rotini noodles
1 can sliced carrots
garlic salt
pepper

Instructions


Thaw out the chicken. If you got Simon or his roommate to stick it in the fridge this morning, great. If not, dump the frozen chicken breasts in a pot of water, turn the heat on about 3 or 4, and let that sit for 15 minutes or so until they thaw.

Pull out the pieces of chicken and cut them into smallish pieces. Dump out the water, scrub all the fat off the bottom of the pot, and put the pot back on the stove with the chicken and the broth. Add water to cover the chicken by an inch or so and put in about half a teaspoon of beef bouillon concentrate. Just make it smell good. Also put in parsley and thyme until it smells even better and drop in a bay leaf. Put all the spices away, scrub the cutting board with antibacterial dish soap, and turn up the heat until the broth boils. Skim off all the foam, turn it back down to a simmer, and sit back and study Systems Architecture for 15 or 20 minutes until the biggest piece of chicken is done all the way through.

Pull the chicken back out and stick it on a plate under a paper towel to cool down. Put noodles in the pot until it looks about right compared to the amount of chicken on the plate. Congratulate yourself on finding a use for that can of carrots Simon's mother gave you, drain it, and add the carrots along with more water and bouillon concentrate and some garlic salt. Simmer until the noodles are done, probably about another 10 minutes. Meanwhile, pull the cooled chicken pieces into shreds until they look like a size that would be good in soup. Put them back in when the noodles are cooked and leave the soup on the stove until it's all back to a comfortable temperature. Remove the bay leaf to avoid a repeat of the Thai chicken curry incident, add pepper to taste, and serve hot.

Re: "On the Difference Between Public and Private Christian Schools"

For the Record:
1.My spelling was so bad because of being tired/half asleep.
2.Veronica goes to a public university but went to a private secondary school, whereas I went to a private university and public secondary school.
3.I'm taller, ergo I win.
-Simon

"Painted in Twilight"

Dust in the fading light,
catching the eye
as  the wind catches,
cradles us
in a loving embrace.
-Simon

Veronica's Videos - Feeding the Positivity Monster

My negativity monster gets fed far too much as it is, so in the interests of helping my positive thoughts along, I'm making a post of things on Youtube that make me happy. (It got too long for a Facebook status.)

1) Trout Fishing in America - "The Window"

Trout Fishing in America's children's music is perfect for delightful absurdity. This song, "A Proper Cup of Coffee," "I Think I'll Need A Band-Aid"...they may ostensibly be kids' songs, but Keith and Ezra are funny enough that it doesn't matter.

2) Kristen Schaal - "Mel's Video Blog"

I'm watching the whole series of vlogs start to finish because it's just that hilarious to me. Simon finds the character of Mel from the Flight of the Conchords' TV series to be rather disturbing, but I love her...it probably has something to do with the number of  fangirls I know who act just like this, but who aren't considered creepy because the objects of their stalkerish affection are either fictional or dead.

3) The Magic School Bus - "Busasaurus"

Arnold is so awesome in this episode - it's super cute. :) The Magic School Bus books were one of those things that I ended up reading despite being a bit old for them when they were being published. (I was even past the Magic Tree House level, I think, though I happily read those too.) Now, I just really want to dress like Ms. Frizzle and see what my students say...love those Triceratops shoes. I'm such a nerd.

4) Les Miserables, French Concept Album - "Dites-Moi Ce Qui Se Passe"

Am I right in thinking that you don't have to speak French to get why this is funny, as long as you know the context? Here Javert is arresting poor Fantine for assaulting Bamatabois, and, gee, could the background music sound more peppy? Of course, if you do speak French, you get to imagine Javert and the chorus doing a little skippy dance as they call her a slut and say she ought to be thrown in prison so she can get back in her right mind. (The OFC lyrics are much...darker than the English.)

5) Babyschwimmen

This video perplexes me. It should be terrifying, given that my first submersion experience was rather traumatic and has kept me ever since in deadly fear of Not Being Able to Touch the Bottom of the Pool, but...it's just...beautiful. None of the babies look afraid at all. They've even got their eyes open in wonder and awe. I wish I could be so fearless.

6) FLUFFY KITTEN.

26 seconds of fluffy, short-legged cuteness. <3

And that's it because it's 2:30 and I'm tired. But, finally, not depressed.

--Veronica--

The Difference Between Public and Private Christian Schools

{Veronica helps out at her university's chili cook-off, gets bored, and decides to text Simon about her team's tent-mates. Edited because Simon can't spell when he's panicked.}

V: Yay for sharing a tent with the drunk frat kids!
V: From the other side of the tent: "Ok, I'm gonna go not sober up."
V: "I knew we should have started the whiskey earlier..."
V: ...they should not be allowed to play with propane tanks and lighters in their present condition! (No one was hurt, but there was a small fireball there...)
S: Oh god are you okay????
V: Yes!! Yes I'm fine! I was standing a few feet away and my shoe got pretty hot for a minute and the pop scared me, but nothing caught fire!
S: :((( god sorry sorry for not being there
V: Dear it's fine! They haven't messed with it since, i'm fine.
S: *hug*
V: *hug* Don't worry, darling. I'm fine. I'm being the booth decoration. :)
V: I'm more worried for them...the girl keeps almost falling into their chili pot.
S: No teachers are in charge??
V: No - we're adults...public school, remember?
S: Ohh...
V: Yes - no church-mandated chaperones. ;)
S: Oh, right.

Salt and Water

This morning I had a horrible, horrible nightmare in which I was reliving a particular sin, and woke up from it very suddenly with feelings of disgust and fear. I've had this problem before, generally leading to another downward spiral of depression as I get onto myself for thinking about something I was never supposed to think about again.

At the same time, I realized with a shock that I'd fallen back asleep after my alarm had gone off and had almost overslept my meeting that morning. I placed a quick call to the affected person and we got things worked out, and in the meantime I started to feel a little better about the nightmare, realizing that it was only a dream and that I would be able to stop myself if I were ever in that situation again while awake. However, these things have a habit of breaking out in clusters (often causing me to go days without proper sleep because I'm afraid to go to bed and have them again), and I began wondering how I could keep them from effecting me while I was awake, if I couldn't stop them in the first place.

At that moment, I had a mental vision of plunging my head into a bowl of salt water. That would cleanse my mind and allow me to keep going forward with my day. "This is how peasant superstitions get started," I laughed, and resolved to use the thing in a piece of writing somewhere rather than seriously do it myself. However, I kept getting gently poked by the idea until I decided to look it up and see if it was really a thing, or what the symbolism of it might be - and was shocked to see that salt water actually is a common 'magical' defense against nightmares. At first I panicked a bit, thinking, "Oh God, now the devil is trying to get me into magic." I admit I have proclivities toward superstition to start with (most people do, it's why we develop rituals for everything) and I was rather worried that they were getting directed in the wrong way. I prayed like mad and kept clicking links to see if I might be wrong.

When I saw that one site suggested using salted holy water, I calmed down and remembered how much 'magic' is derived from valid sacramentals that have become worshiped in and of themselves rather than seen as simply focuses for devotion, grace, and protection. I then started looking specifically for the uses of salt in holy water and found to my surprise that blessed salt and blessed salt in holy water are long-established means of driving away evil in all its forms. Despite a long Catholic education, somehow I had never actually learned much about salt besides the whole "salt of the earth" thing. We're accustomed in modern times to revile it for being unhealthy in quantity, but salt has been used since the ancients for preservation, and Catholics take that to symbolize preservation from sin. Obviously, a sacramental is not going to be all-efficacious against the devil, given that people sin in churches all the time, but really - besides direct Divine intervention, what is?

This post is running much longer than I meant to, so I'll try to wrap it up. What does it mean that the idea came to me by itself? Could mean almost anything. It's possible, I suppose, that I learned about blessed saltwater at one point and simply forgot until now, but I don't often do that kind of thing. It's also possible that I came up with the idea myself, based on the symbolism of salt and water, basic human symbols, but I'm not so sure that's what happened. I also highly doubt, now that I'm calmer, that the devil is going to hand me the key to a sacramental that will help me lessen his influence over me. I think it was from God. Now, am I going to literally go stick my head in a bowl of holy saltwater? Probably not, but I'm not ruling it out. I see it like the difference between baptism by immersion and baptism by pouring: they do the same thing, but one is more deeply symbolic and makes it easier to make the mental connection between form and matter.

Since a sacramental has no power in and of itself, it only does good when a person understands it as a physical link to God. Perhaps what was really needed here was just for me to realize the power of the prayers that are constantly gathered around me. I mean, like most Catholic girls, I have a collection of holy medals big enough to sink a battleship. In all honesty, I'm too chicken to go ask a priest to bless some salt for me, so I'll probably just go back to taking my rosary to bed...which really ought to be just as good.

Still, I wonder if we have any more holy water laying around the house.

--Veronica--

Recipe: Tuna Rice Bake

I'm terrible at fasting.

I don't really understand why I am; if it's a regular day and I simply don't think about food, I can easily make it through the whole day, having eaten less than half of a "normal" meal, without having any adverse effects. However, if I'm fasting for a purpose, I can guarantee I'll be sick as a dog before noon. I'd love to be able to just offer it up, grit my teeth, and soldier on, but it usually manifests itself in horrible acid reflux that keeps me from breathing, thinking, driving...I'm literally unable to function at all. I'm not sure what makes that fasting different from "Oh, whoops it's 8 pm, better eat something," but it's really infuriating. Another day of fast and abstinence is coming up, though, so I'm trying to figure out what I can eat to keep me reasonably functional through an entire day of school and travel. (Simon is taking me to meet some of his family over Easter.) I'm thinking maybe a protein bar and part of a banana before I leave for school, maybe some yogurt before bed, and a real lunch before Simon and I leave for his mom's house. A few days ago I came up with this tuna rice...thing to satisfy a craving I had - I'll probably throw that together for us, with a salad on the side. Mmm. Greens. I don't have a picture of the tuna bake because of how quickly it was eaten both times I've made it, so...use your imagination.

Tuna Rice Bake
Prep Time: 6-7 min
Serves: 2

1 can tuna
1 package (2 individual containers) "Minute Rice" - the brown rice.
~1 tbsp spicy mustard
~2 tbsp mayonnaise
paprika, to taste
"Mexican blend" shredded cheese

Cook the rice in the microwave per package directions. Combine all ingredients except the cheese in a small casserole dish or large ramekin, adjusting proportions as desired. Top with shredded cheese and bake in the microwave for 3-4 minutes, until cheese melts and starts to brown..

-Veronica-