Friday the 13th Memories

I woke up this morning to a text from one of my high school friends, asking if I remember my Friday the 13th parties, which made my day!

So in a trip down memory lane….

When I was in high school, if ever there would be a Friday the 13th, I would beg my mom to let me throw a sleep over!  The most memorable one involved a seance with rituals we obviously made up and got from a book in the library. Now, back then, one of my male friends, Jeff, had a huge crush on my friend and sleep-over attendee, Amanda. Jeff was (still is) a huge nerd and was the kind of guy who hung out in the science labs and wore pocket protectors. Amanda was the kind of girl who was also pretty nerdy, got straight A’s always, took super precise notes, and all the teachers loved her. It was a match made in heaven! Right? Wrong! Amanda wanted nothing to do with Jeff!

So for this Friday the 13th party, we decided to have a seance and do some spells, because we were fourteen and silly and thought it would be hilarious. So we checked out a book of spells from the library, and decided to do a love spell to make Amanda fall in love with Jeff, which would have been hilarious! The spell required some hair from Jeff, so during lunch that Friday before the sleepover, Reema, myself, and another friend all went up to the science labs to find a way to trick Jeff into giving us some of his hair. Now, we were all participants in this extracurricular called Science Olympiad, and an event in Science Olympiad involved looking at hair samples under a microscope. Perfect excuse, right?

Wrong! We put Reema up to actually asking Jeff. Poor Reema was laughing so hard that she was doubled over, clutching her stomach, and her brown skin was actually turning red from laughing so hard! She finally spits out, “We need some of your hair!”

Now, I will never really understand what happened next. My other friend and I were also laughing incredibly hard, and I am sure we looked like total a bunch of total spazzes. However, Jeff, the good obliging chap, grabbed a pair of scissors and just cut a chunk of his hair out of the back of his head, leaving a dime-sized hairless spot that persisted for atleast a week.  We bagged up the hair and we were on our way!

Needless to say, the spell didn’t work, and Amanda never fell in love with Jeff. As for the seance part, I didn’t feel anything other worldly, but Amanda got super creeped out so we cut it short and switched gears to snacks and movies. But, despite that, the Friday the 13th party was hilarious and a hit!

So, thanks, Reema, for the text this morning, and thanks, Jeff, for giving us some of your hair and creating one of my favorite stories from high school that always, always makes me laugh.

I don’t know if this post was amusing to anyone else, because, well, you don’t know these people or the intense amount of awkwardness and hilarity.  But it was a nice trip down memory lane!

And, to finish up this post, a real conversation I just had with Jeff:

me: Jeff i have a question for you

 Jeff: fire away

 me: im writing about you in my blog lol

  so that one time that we asked you for a chunk of your hair

 Jeff: ruh roh

 me: why did you just give it to us?

  i have never understood

  why you just grabbed scissors

  and gave yourself a week long bald spot

  😛

 Jeff: so you’d leave me alone

 lol

  haha

 me: HAHAHA

  ok lol

Jeff: i like keeping my hair short

  and really don’t care what my hair looks like in general

  so it was worth it

  y’all were pestering a great deal about it

________________________________________________________

I  like how, 11 years later, he instantly knew exactly what I was talking about. That’s how funny and awkward it was.

Here’s wishing everyone a happy Friday the 13th!!!!!!

Mom’s Chicken and Broccoli Casserole – lightened up just a bit

So I’ve been building recipes on Weight Watchers to track the points. And I am pretty sure I have shared this recipe on my old blog before, but I wanted to share it again for a few reasons:

1. I now know the weight watchers points

2. Mom used to make this for me as a celebration, and I had a minor celebration tonight, so I made it. 🙂  The minor celebration being that I received the highest grade in law school that I have ever received. And please don’t ask me what that was because that will totally ruin the celebration, lol.

So here we go, Mom’s Chicken and Broccoli Casserole

Ingredients:

1 Chicken Breast

3 cups Broccoli florets

1 can 98% fat free cream of mushroom soup (I only use Campbell’s)

Cheddar cheese to the sharpness of your preference. I like it better as slices from a block of cheese because of how the casserole layers, but I’ve been told that shredded cheese is just fine

1.5 Slices whole wheat bread (you could use white bread if you are not concerned about weight loss or health or fiber… but the points do go up if you use white bread.)

a pat of butter

Cook the chicken how you please. (I heat a pan with a touch of olive oil, and cook the breast whole and then cut it into bite sized chunks. You can also pre-cut the chicken and then sautee it. The first method makes the chicken come out juicier but takes longer. The second method is quicker.)

While the chicken is cooking, steam or boil the broccoli florets until cooked, but still firm.

If you’re a super multi-tasker like me, while the chicken and broccoli are going, make toast to your preference. For this recipe, I like to do texas toast on the stove… so.. melt the pat of butter in a pan, and rub the bread around in the butter on both sides, and sizzles until toasty. Chop the bread into crouton-like bites.

Once the chicken and broccoli are done, get an 8×8 pan. Put the chicken in the bottom, then put the broccoli on top. Pour the cream of mushroom soup from the can into the pan on top of the broccoli and spread it around until the broccoli is covered. Slice thin slices of cheddar cheese and make a solid layer on top of the soup. Put the breadcrumbs on top.

Bake in the over on 350 until the cheese is nice and melty (10-15 minutes).

Voila!  Simple, delicious southern food.

1/4 of the recipe is 5 WW points.

1/2 of the recipe is 7 WW points.

You’ve got protein, dairy, healthy carbs, and veggies all in one easy meal! It only takes about 25 minutes total to prepare, and the last 10-15 you can be chilling watching tv while it bakes.

I highly recommend it!

Shout outs to my mom, who made this recipe for me all the time when I was a kid. 🙂 Although mom always used white bread and full fat cream of mushroom soup.

Maybe next week I will tackle mom’s chicken curry…. although I doubt it will turn out quite as good!

Turkey Day… is on it’s way!

Holidays have become more and more anticlimactic for me. Thanksgiving is a time of intense studying.. or complete procrastination and irresponsible decision making ( ..like.. I don’t know… going to Sweden for Thanksgiving to see my little sister.)

 

Yeah. Last year was awesome and I got to see my sister! But on the other hand, I was soooooo behind when it came to school work. So this year, I’m studying.

 

But, I still love thinking about holidays and festivities. so bring me some Thanksgiving cheer and tell me about a favorite dish, tradition, or something weird/interesting/cool your family does to celebrate! Bonus points if you have a recipe to share! 

 

As for me, my family is a bit quirky. My sisters have both been on and off vegetarians(though never at the same time!), so one year we made a Tofurkey… that was a disaster! And actually, my older sister hasn’t been home for Thanksgiving since before I graduated undergrad. Since I went to grad school, neither have I and now that I’m realizing that, it makes me kind of sad.

But usually we just have the standard: turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing, corn bread, and rolls.

As a kid, I used to love getting up and watching the Macy’s Day parade, but it’s been a long time since I’ve done that.

I guess the one thing we always do  is black Friday shopping. Some of my favorite memories with my family come from standing in the freezing cold at 3 am just to buy something silly like movies or headphones. So much fun! When’s the last time I did that?  Three years ago I made Jonathan go with me… (we spent Thanksgiving in Oklahoma that first year (and I spent a lot of time in our room studying), here in St. Louis for studying my second year, and I spent it in Sweden with my sister our third year. I’d go home this year, but I know if I’m around my family, I won’t want to study at all!) Maybe next year I’ll have to make sure I spend Thanksgiving with my family so that we can go black Friday shopping and round it off with some IHOP pancakes!

Google “Do a Barrel Roll”

If you are unfamiliar with Starfox, you are missing out. We played the Starfox 64 version as kids, and loved it! If you haven’t played Starfox, you probably won’t get the do a barrel roll reference, but it’s still pretty cool so google it anyway. 🙂

 

“It’s quiet… too quiet….”

“Be careful Fox, it might be a trap.”

😀

 

Think I might have to play some Starfox over Christmas break….