Adrian

I bought a new car today! It's a Dodge Dart SXT/Rallye. And it's electric blue. It's both exciting and surreal. Surreal because I knew they didn't have one in stock, so I wouldn't be able to drive it home when I bought it, but I wasn't expecting to be able to pick it up this evening.

Also, there's a very good chance my dad's going to get a frantic phone call when I get done work tomorrow that the truck's been stolen. :-P

Yesterday, I cleaned some things out of the refrigerator (thankfully, nothing green and fuzzy) and gathered up all of the loose recipes in the "cookbook drawer" so I can go through them and possibly attempt a few of them. (Most of them are ones my dad will pull out of the paper thinking it looks interesting, but it's either a) something we'll never make - *ever* or b) the same recipe five times with one little variation that's not enough to make it different.)

Today, my grammy wanted me to get some things for her from the dollar store, so while I was there, I picked up a few things too. I got a bunch of two cup Rubbermaid containers so I can cook stuff and not feel overwhelmed by larger sized recipes (and literally feed myself for a week! :-P) and two Nalgene-type bottles - one for ice tea (when I don't feel like making a big pitcher) and the other for water (I've found I'm more willing to drink water outside of meals when it's in a container instead of a glass - not sure why).

And I cooked today too! A lot!
- I made a batch of baked oatmeal for breakfast this week.
- I made two chicken dishes - one with egg noodles and veggies and the other was a cheesy Mexican dish - that I divvied up into the newly purchased containers for dinners this week. And I had part of the Mexican chicken recipe tonight for dinner. (I think next time, I'm going to skip the cream of celery soup that the Mexican dish called for - it was a bit much with the cheese and I have a feeling it'll taste better with out it. Why do all chicken dishes find it necessary to use cream of ___ soups in their recipes? They're disgusting!)
- I cut up an onion, a tomato, and a cucumber and mixed them with some olive oil, vinegar, and spices and stuck it in the fridge, so it'll be interesting to try it after it's had some time to marinate. The cucumber was from my granddad's garden. I can't wait until the rest of the stuff starts coming in - peppers, tomatoes, eggplant.
- I cut up a few apples we had left over from last week and some of the plums my dad bought today and mixed them with some blueberries also left over from last week. I think they might need a little sugar to make them juicier, but we'll see.
- I made chocolate oatmeal drop cookies. I didn't get as many as the recipe said I would, but whatever - they're still good.

I've decided that in my effort to eat better, lose weight, etc., I need to finish what I started months ago and really go through the kitchen and use up what we have and start getting fresh blood in (so to speak) in the way of food.

As it stands now, I'm hesitant to cook because I want to use up what we have first, but I don't know what we have. And I don't think my dad knows what we have - which is why he almost always make the same stuff. (Plus, he has a tendency to buy stuff because he figures we can use it "at some point", and then we never do because it's not something we use on a regular basis - hence the absurd number of cans of peas, when we don't use canned peas to begin with.)

And I figure that if I clean things out and know exactly what we have, then I'll be more inclined to buy things on a regular basis to cook and eat better.