Mid-week Crisis: Happy birthday, my unphotogenic dog.

1. July 23rd was my dog Gemma’s 2nd birthday. I know there aren’t any pictures of me on this blog, but if you were wondering just how photogenic I am, take a look at her. We’re both equally as attractive on camera. And yes, that is an “I am 1″ party hat. Yeah.

2. It’s always nice to be told you’re awesome by Mitchell Davis

3. Did you hear that Christian Bale went to go visit the victims of the Colorado shooting? He stopped by a hospital that some of the people were at and, you know, was just generally amazing. That’s all I wanted to say. That man is my idol.

4. Remember Heelys, the shoes with the wheels on the back that were super popular like 5-10 years ago? I just found my old pair. Back in the day, my best friend had some and I would get super jealous when she was rolling around in them, being super cool. Looking back, they really weren’t that cool, but that didn’t stop me from relentlessly begging my mom to get me a pair. And then the first (maybe second?) day of having them, I proceeded to test them out in the basement, fall, and break my wrist. My mom LOVED that.

5. Batman themed wedding? WHAT IS THIS INSANITY?!

6. You know what song’s been going through my head for the past 3 days? Why do you build me up buttercup baby just to let me down? And the worst part is that I only know like two lines of that song, so I just keep repeating them. I need you, more than anyone darling…and that’s all I know. Just FYI.

7. Five Words: Grilled. Mozzarella. Sandwich. With. Pesto. It’s pretty much the most delicious food ever? And I dipped it in marinara sauce. Drool drool. And I took that picture with my phone in horrible lighting. And then I tried to fix it, aaannnddd…exhibit A why I should never go into photoshopping professionally. I also shouldn’t professionally go into never professing my love for Christian Bale…does that make sense? No? You know what, it’s been a long day…

Happy Wednesday?

Who wants to hear about my fat dog? *awkward silence*

Apparently my dog is borderline obese.

I’m sorry, I really am not a good conversation starter. Or ender. Or middler. Actually, let’s just say I’m really not as eloquent as I’d like to be, ok? Ok. Lovely.

Today was overcast and cold. Just the kind of day that makes you want to curl up with a novel and a cup of tea. Or bring your spastic dog to the vet. I’ve heard it both ways.

My dog Gemma is wonderful, but she seriously acts like I keep her locked in a cage and poke her with pointy objects all day. When I take her out of the house to go on walks (2-3 times a day…), she’s like FREE AT LAST! Every. Single. Time. So just imagine how she was at the vet today. I’ll tell you: she was insane. Her temperature was 103.6 from her almost hyperventilating. Aaannddd she peed on the floor. Is that too much information? Because if it’s not, I might go on to say that she also…loses control of her bladder when she’s around cleaning supplies. No joke. A broom fell on her and it just went downhill from there.

Today was her annual checkup. She dragged me into the office and everyone there was like “Oh look, it’s Gemma.” She’s well known there. Mainly because of her everyday is the greatest day of my life attitude. So after about 30 seconds of sniffing, tasting, and jumping all over the scale, she eventually sat on it. She weighs 67 pounds. Which might be why she almost rips my arm out of its socket on walks. When we got into the room, the veterinarian assistant called her crazy and the vet called her a spaz. Hmmm…

The vet started talking about how Labradors tend to be bottomless pits (amen. If I decided to let Gemma eat cheese and peanut butter all day, she would), but they also have knee problems when they get overweight. And hip problems. And elbow problems. And everything problems. So I was like ok…that’s nice? Where are you going with this? Then she pointed to a picture of a dog on the wall and said “See that dog? It has a full chest and a small stomach. Well…your dog is just kind of…full everywhere.” So now I have to cut back on her food and make her exercise more. More walks. Yay.

In other news, since I’m really not in the mood to blog everyday, I’m putting my pictures for the 30 day photo challenge on my Flickr. If you care to look at my photos, click on I LOVE SKANDAR KEYNES. It’s true.

Baked Chicken Nuggets

Ingredients

3 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
1 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs (or 4 slices of toasted or stale bread, finely chopped)
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 cup butter, melted

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

2. Cut chicken breasts into 1 1/2-inch sized pieces. In a medium bowl, mix together the bread crumbs, cheese, thyme and basil. Put melted butter in a bowl.

3. Dip chicken pieces into the melted butter, then coat with the breadcrumb mixture. Place the chicken pieces on a lightly greased cookie sheet in a single layer, and bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes. For extra crispiness, bake on a cookie rack (that’s what they’re called…right?) so that the bottom doesn’t get all mushy. Or set the broiler on low and broil for 1-2 minutes.

Serve with ketchup, Dijon mustard, or ranch dressing. Or just eat them by themselves, since they’re totally amazing.

GF note: if you’re using gluten-free bread (I used Udi bread, which tastes almost identical to “normal bread”), the gluten free companies like to gyp people and make the slices smaller, so it takes about 6 slices to make a cup of bread crumbs. In case you were wondering.

First rule of having a blog is, you don’t talk about having a blog

It’s funny how having a dog can sort of force you to be sociable. And by funny I mean slightly annoying. I was taking my dog for a walk this past weekend and I had totally spaced that my entire neighborhood was having a gigantic yard sale that day. So everyone was outside and I pretty much had to stop and talk to all of them. Since I’m the anti-social person that I am, I hadn’t talked to a few of them in a while (including my best friend from when I was little. Talk about awkward….). Of course, the first thing all of them say is “So, what’s going on in your life?” I’d love to say “Well, I have a pretty awesome cooking blog and get sometimes hundreds of different people looking at it each day and I have 11 subscribers (my own mother isn’t even subscribed…) and yesterday someone from 4,000 miles away in Finland found my blog by googling ‘Pretend I’m a cow and save me’!” But how do I say that without sounding like a total weirdo? Well, more of a weirdo than I already am. So I went with the super interesting response, “eh, not much.” And they said “Wow, you’re boring”. Ok they didn’t, but I could tell they were thinking it.

For my lovely readers that do have a blog, how do you talk about it? Or do you? And for those of you who don’t have a blog…um…do you have any plans for summer? Or winter, if you live in the Southern Hemisphere like the person from South Africa who found my blog by googling gold piranhas. Hmm…I’ll stop now…

Since my mom still hasn’t been feeling great, some of her lovely friends have been bringing us dinners. Which means I’m cooking even less than I already was. Which is hard to do, since I wasn’t cooking before and now I’m cooking less than nothing. So there’s really not much to blog about. I might put up a post about the super awesome 1960′s dress I made, WITH MY BARE HANDS. Oh yeah. Super awesome. Or I might not. I’m not sure how to write about it without boring people to tears. But once my mom’s better I’ll get back into cooking because, my gosh, I’m bored :/ <—that’s my bored face, in case you couldn’t tell.