The snow day quickly became one and a half and finally 2 days. Thanks MSU for being reasonable and not exposing your people to dangerously cold conditions.
This winter confinement has brought an unexpected productivity with it. As I said in my previous post, not only Necessity is the mother of Invention, but Boredom may be the mother of Productivity as well. I’ve only left my apartment twice, both times to go to the fitness room (located less than 0.25 miles from my doorstep), and it’s so cold that I’m not tempted to go anywhere else.
As my mom said the other day, I’m living like a housewife from the 50s (without the husband). Yesterday I even ironed! For those of you who know me, that’s a little miracle in itself, but the highlight of my Monday was my resizing one of Nico’s old sweaters to fit me. Last time he did a clean up of his closet, I asked him to give me any sweaters he was trying to get rid of, and he complied 🙂 I’ve used some of those to make scarves (using this tutorial), but there was this one that I quite liked and couldn’t find a good use for. Yesterday I decided I wanted to wear it, but it was pretty large and unflattering for me, so I googled how to resize a sweater and gave it a try. I loosely followed these instructions.
After two and a half days of cooking, crafting and enjoying the internet, I decided that I had to do something work-related today. We were supposed to only have half a snow day, so I wanted to start working in the morning. I actually worked for several hours, which was good.
But after working (okay, I started during my lunch break, but most of this was done after science) housewife-Dani came back. I like housewife-Dani, she never ceases to amaze me. I ate the last of the cream of wheat today, which limits my breakfast options for tomorrow morning (after that I can go grocery shopping). What did I do? Inspired on this recipe and this recipe, I created my very own breakfast quinoa recipe, using some of the food we got for Christmas (so, thanks to the Hildens for many of the ingredients). I did what I’ve learned not to do in the lab: I tried my “reaction” in a big scale. It turned out pretty decent, so I won’t complain. Here’s the recipe:
Dani’s slow cooker breakfast quinoa
Ingredients:
– 2 cups uncooked quinoa
– 4.5 cups water
– 8 tsp vanilla extract
– 8 tsp maple syrup
– 1/2 dried cranberries
I just put everything in the crockpot and cooked at low for 4 hours. Based on what other people did, I divided this in 8 servings. They are not huge, which allows for some extra maple syrup 🙂 And I’ll add water when reheating. Ta-da! So proud of this.
But, wait! housewife-Dani didn’t stop there. Let me give you some background: living in Michigan, boots have become my BFFs for the winter. And I can only wear boots with skinny jeans (I hate seeing the extra fabric creeping out of the boots), which means I need as many skinny jeans as I can get my hands on. Okay, not so many. But many. I found this tutorial and decided to give it a try. It took me an hour (which I think it’s nothing) and now I have a nice pair of dark skinny jeans, which is great because almost all my skinny jeans were light blue 🙂
Aren’t you proud of me? This time I even have a picture.
What’s next, you ask? Well, it’s time for a 3 mile run, and after that, I’m making bagels!
I hope housewife-Dani stays around. Tomorrow I’ll go back to the lab, and will have to live up to these past days’ productivity. More on that later.
(have you noticed that the snow days even made me blog? wow)
Dani's Ramblings 