I’m trying to make money by not making money. Genius.

It’s only day 2 of Easter break and everyone’s already bored out of their skulls. Yesterday, Corrupted Brother was walking in circles in the kitchen, licking a Triscuit, and humming Fur Elise for a good five minutes. Yeah, it’s that bad.

I’m not taking a break this week because I’m a bit behind in school and I just need to finish. I’m so unmotivated to do school, so I’ve decided to plan things to look forward to this summer. Brilliant plan, no? I work well for incentives. Mainly Rolos. My siblings got a bunch of those for Easter and I’ve been living off of them. I’m pretending that they’re fruits and vegetables so I actually have a balanced diet. And starches. And meats. Hey, I have a weakness for candy. Don’t be a hater.

This summer is going to be insane, though. All I want to do is make money so I actually have money to spend on food in college. So far, I’m only volunteering. Logic at its finest. Earlier today, I filled out an application so I can volunteer at a local children’s hospital. I’m hoping to volunteer a few days a week this summer so that I can get a feel for the pediatric hospital environment, since that’s where I’m thinking of working after I graduate from nursing school. Anyway, it’s volunteer, so no payment there. I’m also hoping to volunteer in a lab where a friend of my grandpa’s works. I guess I’ll continue teaching piano, but that only pays so much. Basically I’m just going to have a humungous graduation party where you’ll all shower me with gifts and money because I’m broke.

I had a productive day applying for stuff that will make me absolutely no money. Know what else I did today? I looked at the return policy for a pair of running shoes I bought last week. They’re the barefoot trail shoes, which I was hoping would help me not be so incredibly sore when I run. But guess what? I opened the box yesterday to try on the shoes, AND MY DANG FEET ARE TOO WIDE. I think God sort of fell asleep at the wheel when he was designing me. He accidentally gave me bricks for feet. So I’m returning them. Speaking of running, I’m running a 5K on Saturday! And guess what! I totally hurt my knee yesterday! I’m pretty much an invalid right now. I feel like Crutchy from Newsies, minus the fact that I’m not a dude with a bad fake Brooklyn accent. That movie is so horrible, it’s good. I’m hoping whatever I did to my knee heals up before Saturday. I AM running/walking/limping the race. I dropped 40 bucks on this race, and last time I checked, I was still a poor, struggling student.

But you know what fixes all of life’s ills? Sour cream coffee cake. This stuff is the bomb… and I didn’t even get to eat it. We gave it to my mom’s friend who just had a baby. I absolutely hate giving away food I made. Not only do I not get to eat it, but I’m never sure if it’s cooked all the way through or it tastes good. First world chef problems for real, but I hate it. Anyway, here’s the coffee cake that I didn’t actually get to enjoy. It’s one of my favorite foods, so I’d strongly recommend making it. Or you can just go lick a Triscuit. That’s what all the cool kids do.

Sour Cream Coffee Cake

Cake:

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt

1 cup sour cream

Topping:

2/3 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 350F.

2. Beat the butter and granulated sugar together. Beat in two eggs, mixing thoroughly after each one. Add vanilla.

3. In a separate bowl (you gotta keep it separated…), combine the flour, baking powder and soda, and salt. Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter/sugar mixture, stirring until combined. Wallop in the sour cream. Is wallop a word? I know dollop is. I’m too lazy to look it up and there isn’t a red squiggly line under it, so it must be a word. Duh.

4. In yet another separate bowl, mix together the brown sugar and cinnamon. Um, that’s it.

5. Grease a bundt ban (well, it’s actually more of a pan used for angel food cake, but I’m not sure what to call it), and layer 1/2 of the batter in it. Sprinkle 2/3 of the topping (didn’t think you’d have a math lesson, huh?), then the rest of the batter, and the rest of the topping. Let’s review: batter, topping, batter, topping. Right then.

6. Bake at 350 for 40-50 minutes.

7. Yum.

Pie and my brothers. Right there you can tell it’s going to be a great blog post.

I don’t like pie. I won’t restrain myself from eating an entire pie if it was placed in front of me, but I won’t go out of my way to make/eat one. Since we had a pie crust in the fridge that was best by Tuesday, I figured I had to make a pie. And make one I did.

I’m not sure about you, but I live in the Midwest. (Silently in your head) Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure we don’t grow any fruit here. Ok, I know we do, but we don’t have oranges like Florida or…uhhh… basically, I have no idea what I’m talking about here. The point of all of this is we had 2 bananas and 3 apples in our fruit basket and you can’t make a pie with those. Side note: I refuse to eat bananas because their edible shelf life is like 30 seconds. You get them and they’re like GREENGREENGREENGREENGREENyellowBROWNBROWNBROWN. They’re mean and therefore I boycott them. So I used canned peaches. I wrote an entire paragraph about I don’t even know what just to say that I used canned peaches to make a pie. And the best part is that I’m not going to rewrite it because I’m lazy.

This pie was hit and miss among my siblings. I ate two slices with Moose Tracks ice cream and it was quite delicious. There’s still half a pie left so I guess I’m going to have to eat that too. I know it would be much better with fresh peaches and not 3 cans of Costco peaches.

That’s really all I’ve got on the subject of pie. Because I have nothing else to say, here’s a story from the Italiana household.

My brothers were playing Monopoly earlier today and Future Chef Brother got a hotel. Evil Scientist Brother got really mad and said, “Fine. Now you have to go kiss a hobo.” Future Chef said, “But I don’t want to!” and Evil Scientist responded, “Oh, I see. You want to wait until AFTER you’re married to kiss him.”

There’s never a dull moment in this house. Also, I just hit 350 Pinterest followers. I love being loved by people I’ll never actually meet.

Peach pie

From I’mastinkingliar.com

1 8-inch pie plate

1 unbaked pie crust
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (Or not. Legumes don’t belong in pies, unless we’re talking about pecan pie, in which I approve.)
1/2 cup unbleached flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 white sugar plus 1 tsp. reserved
3 cans of sliced peaches in light syrup, drained
6 tsp. white sugar
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
2 tbsp. organic butter, chilled (I left in the organic part from the original recipe because it made me laugh. We’re a family of 9. There’s no way we’re spending the extra money to buy organic butter.)

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Combine the chopped walnuts, brown and white sugars, and flour in a small bowl. Set aside for the topping.

3. Place the pie crust into your pie pan and crimp the edges as beautifully as I crimped mine. Oof. Sprinkle the bottom of the crust with 1 tsp. of reserved white sugar.

4. Pour the canned peaches into a colander, rinse with fresh water, drain and gently pat dry.

5. Combine the peaches, cinnamon, nutmeg and 6 tsp. of sugar in a medium-sized bowl. Mix gently with your hands or a wooden spoon to blend. I recommend a spoon because that just sounds nasty.

6. Put half of the sliced peaches into the pie crust. Sprinkle half of the walnut (I can’t be friends with you if you added walnuts), flour and sugar topping over the peaches and top with the remaining fruit.

7. Sprinkle the second half of the topping over the peaches and dot with pea-sized crumbles of the organic butter. Stir to combine because I had flour on top of mine that didn’t soak in while it was baking. Mmm, nothing like the taste of dry flour with your canned peaches.

8. Bake the pie on the middle rack of the oven for 15 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 325 Fahrenheit and bake for an additional 25 minutes.

9. Om nom nom.

The Hobbit through the eyes of a non-Lord of the Rings fan. At all.

Let me start off by saying that I’m really not a big Lord of the Rings fan. I watched the movies a while ago and I might have read one of the books. I enjoy them, but I’m no diehard fan. So, I saw The Hobbit last Friday night. I was invited by a friend of the family, JJR, and his friend, The Brit. We decided to go to the 9:30 showing (totally not my idea. I’m not party animal and that was past my bedtime anyway.) and it didn’t get out until almost 1am. I even stayed awake the whole time. I’m growing up, guys.

On the way there, we were discussing what we thought our expectations were for it. I was going into it thinking that it would be like The Avengers: dumb but entertaining. Beforehand the Brit and JJR both thought it was going to be a 6 out of 10, and I gave it a zero. I figure if you have absolutely no expectations for things you’ll never be disappointed. That’s my motto. This has been life lessons with Picco. Apparently The Brit thought that I always have interesting critiques, and I wouldn’t want to let him down, so here are my thoughts.

First off, the previews were HILARIOUS. There were two for little kid movies, one for a rated R Al Pacino movie, a twilight wanna-be, and a transformers wanna-be. All looked incredibly stupid. During the movie all I could think about was Friday Night Boredom. The entire time I kept snickering to myself at totally inappropriate times because I was reciting lines from it to myself. Oh hey, you’re dying? Guess what I’m thinking? “I’m a woman. I like boys.” Also their hair was so voluptuous and perfect, and it made me jealous. Now for the non-superficial comments.

The violence was incredibly graphic. There was a lot of implied violence in the other 3 movies, but this one had up close beheadings and nasty stomach slicing.  The special effects were amazing, but I’m pretty sure they knew that because there were a lot of fast sweeping shots that almost made me feel sick. I also feel like they made it about an 45 minutes-an hour too long. Since there are going to be 2 other parts that I’m assuming are also going to be about 3 hours long, the whole Hobbit movie is going to be 9-10 hours long. Since the book isn’t that long, it seemed like they stretched the plot as thinly as possible so it could last longer. The movie seemed to drag on, but I couldn’t place why exactly. Parts of it felt like they were talking really slowly, but maybe it was just because I was getting sidetracked thinking about Friday Night Boredom and how earlier I successfully ripped a hole in my only pair of jeans. On the ride home, The Brit (being British) was talking about how he thought it was weird there were so many different accents in the movie. Apparently there were Hobbits with Welsh accents and some with Cockney accents. I told him, “Honestly, all I noticed was that they weren’t American.” Can people from other parts of the world not differentiate between the different American accents? Or am I just dumb…?

Although there was a lot I wasn’t too fond of, I really enjoyed it.  I really can’t critique the storyline much since I haven’t read the book, but I liked it. I don’t want to get shot-down like I was when I said I didn’t like Matthew from Downton Abbey. Actually, that was pretty funny… I do enjoy Matthew now, no worries.

I’m not entirely sure what to call these

The recipe can be found on Delena’s blog. I added cheese to the ground beef, in case you were wondering.

My uneventful last day on the earth. Thank you, doomsday, for making me seem incredibly boring.

As of right now it’s 10:04pm on Tuesday, December 20, 2012. Although by the time I actually post this it’ll probably be like midnight because I always reread my posts between 1 and 57 times so I can fix the typos. Also because I make myself laugh with my writing. Sorry for tooting my own horn. I’ll counter it by pointing out that I have officially failed the whole December photo challenge. See? Look how humble I am.

So, what did you all do on this fine last day on the planet? Here’s a list of things I accomplished today:

Slept in until almost 10am.

Finished some data entry I was doing for my aunt.

Realized that I never, ever want to be an accountant.

Helped my brother stir the chocolate chip cookie batter he made. So. Exciting.

Played Hay Day on my mom’s iPad. I’m ashamed that I’m addicted to that game, and I’m even more ashamed that Sister Celiac keeps going on it and using up all my money. ALL I WANT TO DO IS SAVE UP TO BUY A STUPID BOAT.

Recreated the food I made with my friend the first time I ever went to her house. It was about 3 years ago and her family completely intimidated me (not sure why…). I was so nervous, but right when I got there my friend was like let’s go to the store and get some broccoli. So she and I made these broccoli cheese meat things wrapped up in crescent rolls. I’m pretty sure it was at that moment that I realized our love of weird food would make us inseparable. Wasn’t that a beautiful story? Anyway, I left out the broccoli part tonight because I was too lazy to see if we had any frozen broccoli in the basement.

Rehearsed for midnight mass. The orchestra I’m in at church is pretty lame. There are 3 violinist (two of which are Sister Celiac and I), and two cellists (one of whom is Future Chef). My mom used to play in it too, so it was pretty much the Italiana Family Orchestra. But for the mass, the choir director hired 3 more violinists, a violist, a cellist, a double bass..ist? trumpeter..ists, and there might have been drums. I don’t know. It was so cold in the church that I think my brain froze. It was absolutely beautiful with the whole choir singing and the orchestra playing, and I think I have frostbite.

Also, here are some conversations I’ve had with various siblings lately. I really have nothing to talk about here, but I figured I’d blog one last time before, you know, we all die and stuff.

Brute Sister: haha, JK.
Me: Do you even know what JK stands for?
Brute: Uh, yeah. Joe Kelly. (In case you were wondering, along with Yadier Molina, Joe Kelly is my favorite baseball player. I may or may not have a picture of him as the background for my laptop. And phone. And I wrote him a love letter that I’m going to send. And we wonder why I scare people…)
Me: …uhhh…?
Brute: Speaking of Joe Kelly, what would you do if he came up to you and was like “Hey, you’re gorgeous. Let’s get married.”

And then she walked away. It was the weirdest 15 seconds of my life.

Me: Goodnight, Corrupted Brother.
CB: Goodnight… Hey, Picco?
Me: Yes?
CB: Am I from Canada?
Me: No…
CB: Oooohhhh. That’s weird. Let’s shake hands and I’ll go to sleep.

Ok, I lied. That was the weirdest 15 seconds of my life.

Hey, it’s only 11:34. I got this done quicker than I thought, and I even got sidetracked looking at pictures of Joe Kelly. But I’d better get to sleep because I’m waking up tomorrow at 5 so I can witness the end of the world at 5:11. I’ll take a picture for you guys of the meteor or Planet X or whatever that’s supposed to crash into earth. Honestly, I’m not worried about the world ending tomorrow. I’ve lived through 28 doomsday predictions so far, and that’s not even counting the zombie apocalypse that was supposed to happen last year. Besides, the world isn’t allowed to end yet. At least not until I watch season 3 of Downton Abbey. Then it has my permission to end. Because not only do I make myself laugh, but I also control the fate of the earth. Who wouldn’t want to be friends with me? Exactly.

Gluten-free Crustless Spinach+Bacon Quiche

Adapted from a recipe on AllRecipes

1/2 cup butter (One. Whole. Stick)
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1 pound bacon, thawed, cooked, and chopped
1 (10 ounce) package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
1 (4.5 ounce) can mushrooms, drained
1 (6 ounce) package herb and garlic feta, crumbled
1 (8 ounce) package shredded Cheddar cheese
salt and pepper to taste

4 eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).

2. In a medium skillet, melt butter over medium heat. Saute garlic and onion in butter until lightly browned, about 7 minutes. Stir in bacon, spinach, mushrooms, feta and 1/2 cup Cheddar cheese. Season with salt and pepper.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs and milk. Season with salt and pepper. Pour into a pie dish and stir to thoroughly combine the egg mixture with the spinach mixture.

4. Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes. Sprinkle top with remaining Cheddar cheese, and bake an additional 35 to 40 minutes, until set in center. Allow to stand 10 minutes before serving.

5. Just kidding. Eat immediately and happily suffer through the 3rd degree burns you’ll get in your mouth, because this recipe is so dang delicious.

There’s never a dull moment when you have little brothers

Being the oldest of 6 (soon to be 7), I have a lot of odd things said to me on a daily basis, especially from my brothers. I obviously feel the need to tell you about them, so prepare to be amused/weirded out.

A few days ago I was just sitting on my bed when my engineer-brained freaky genius slightly evil scientist-like brother came in. This brother is known for pondering things and saying stuff that makes you go, “…wait, what?” He explained light refraction the other day. And he’s half my age. I’m not sure why my siblings feel like they can just barge into my room, but they do. So anyway, he looked at my wall and saw all the concert tickets I have taped to it. He asked, “Have you been to all of those concerts?” When I said yes, he exclaimed, “WOW! You’re the most interesting person I know! You sure know how to brighten up a room.” I just sat there dumbfounded while he turned to leave. On his way out he looked at my money jar labeled Ireland Fund and said, “You really think you’re gonna go to Ireland, huh? Because I don’t.” And walked out. I don’t even know where to begin with this…

Speaking of weird, let me give you the down-low of the conversation that went on in my head the other day:

Dum dee dum dum dum. I’m hungry. Ha, when am I not hungry? Exactly. I need to go scout out some food. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, stand a little taller…NO. That song will never get out of my head. Oooo, maybe I’ll have a peach. You’re insecure, don’t know what for…HEY, I JUST MET YOU, AND THIS IS CRAZY. Ugh. Why does my brain have it’s own soundtrack…? Gross, this peach has a rotten part on it. I need to cut it off. I think sodas need to come with a straw so when you’re trying to sip the last bit of it you don’t have to do an awkward backbend to get it. Yeah, that’s a great idea that I may or may not have stolen from Marie. I guess while I’m cutting off the gross part, I should just slice up the whole thing. Whoops, text from Kait. Must. Ignore. It. Well…ok, I have to respond. Oh, she’s just quoting Napoleon Dynamite. Never mind. Back to the peach. *slice slice slice* Wait, what the…HOLY ASTRINGENT PEACH-LIKE FRUIT, BATMAN. THAT’S A WORM.*

Yes, there was a disgusting worm in my peach. Worm. In something I was about to devour. Saying I was traumatized is an understatement. I still feel like I have bugs crawling on me.

*Side note, “Holy Astringent Plum-like Fruit, Batman” was actually a phrase uttered by Robin in the old Batman tv show. The writers on that show had serious issues.

Evil scientist brother explained to me the difference between cupcakes and muffins. “Cupcakes are just cake with frosting on top, while muffins are delicious pastries filled with fruit or chocolate.” Thanks for clearing that up.

Corrupted brother was looking at my dog Gemma and said to me, “When mommy’s new baby, Spiderbaby, is born, I think we need to shoot Gemma because she bites people.” I explained to him that he was insane and she’s never bitten anyone. After thinking about it for a second he said, “Maybe at Christmas after Santa gives us presents he’ll go STICK YOUR HANDS UP, GEMMA, shoot her, and leave.”

I could continue, but this post is getting long.

I love having brothers.

Ground Beef+Vegetable Casserole

Adapted from here

1lb ground beef
1 (10 3/4 ounce) can cream of chicken soup (I used cream of mushroom and the world didn’t explode, so don’t feel confined to only using cream of chicken.)
1 (10 3/4 ounce) can milk
1 (8 ounce) package of noodles. The original recipe called for egg noodles, but the only noodles we have in this house are spaghetti and penne. Obviously, I used penne.
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 cup shredded cheese

Brown ground beef in a large pot. I really hate cooking with meat because I’m always scared it’s not going to be cooked all the way and I’m going to poison my family. Valid fear…right?

Drain fat off and season meat with onion powder, salt, and pepper. After browning, add cream of chicken soup; mix well. Add one soup can full of milk and mix well.

Simmer on low 25 minutes.

Mix in cooked and drained noodles and transfer this to a baking dish.

Top with shredded cheese.

Bake the casserole covered in 325° oven for 25 to 30 minutes, and uncover for the last 10 minutes.

Enjoy.

Oh, and I just threw in some random frozen vegetables. You pretty much have to sneak vegetables into foods around here. Even with me…