A Little Bit About Moi

I was one of the three people spotlighted in our ward's directory on Sunday. Here's my bio word for word from the directory:

"Rachel grew up in Maryville, Tennessee. She loves cupcakes, sushi, chicken pot pie and Burgers Supreme cheeseburgers. Her favorite authors are Dickens, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Mark Danielewski, Jonathan Safron Foer, etc. Rachel's favorite movie is About A Boy. If she ha a free afternoon she would go running, cook something yummy (and healthy!), read a book and take a nap. When she grows up she wants to work for a record company, preferably as an A&R executive or work for non-profit."

This does a pretty decent job of spotlighting me. However, I have a little bit of beef with questions that expect you to choose a, that's right just one, favorite of pretty much anything. How can a reasonable, well-rounded kind of person choose just one song, food, movie, or book from the practically infinite number of possibilities? In my opinion it is pretty much impossible. Limiting yourself to simply one favorite is kind of tragic in a way. If out of all the infinite possibilities someone does choose just one favorite they are missing out on a lot of wonderful things.

I could talk for quite literally hours on end about my numerous favorite books, movies, artists, songs, and foods. And I certainly don't expect what I'm considering my favorite at this very moment to last for too awful long. I'm more about experiencing everything, rather than finding the one thing I like.

On that same strain, we played a fun game at FHE tonight. You wrote down a song that describes you and folded the paper and mixed them all up. Someone then looks up the song on iTunes and plays the 30 second clip. Everybody then has to guess which song goes with each person. While trying to choose a song on the spot, I sort of blanked. I wrote down Us by Regina Spektor which is a rather phenomenal song. I've been listening to it a lot lately. However, I don't think the song really describes me. After throwing my paper in the cup along with everybody else's I suddenly knew which songs I should have chosen instead. I've narrowed it down to three, but of course these might not be the same ones I think of next time around. I really love all of these songs, and fully recommend searching for more stuff by any of the artists. Anyways, I think these songs do a pretty decent job of representing me. Yeah?

Paramore and Pasta

I've been listening to Paramore since early 2006ish. I'm a little overly proud of the fact that I jumped on the Paramore bandwagon before there actually was a Paramore bandwagon. Plus, they are from good ol' Tennessee which makes me love them even more. I even did a stint with red hair my sophomore year inspired by Hayley Williams.

Before I discovered Paramore and Eisley I was pretty discouraged about the lack of talented female-led bands outside the realm of country music. Luckily, I saw the light and have since discovered a whole slew of talented female artists.

Paramore's new CD Brand New Eyes (which incidentally has the name of one of my all time favorite bands in the title) is out now and I highly recommend picking one up! And I know it's good because I've already listened to it!!!

Also, I've had an eggplant and some ricotta cheese sitting in my fridge for the past week. I've been dreaming about having me some cheesy stuffed 

shells with grilled eggplant for quite a few days now. Alas, I am way too busy to find time to cook anything that requires time on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. I finally had time tonight! It was delicious! You can just barely see a bit of the eggplant from under the shells on the bottom right. After I filled the shells I poured a little more sauce and cheese on top and baked it in the oven for about 20 mins.

I used ricotta, mozzarella, parmesan, asiago, and ramano cheeses, Italian seasoning, oregano, garlic, salt and pepper for the filling. No amounts...I just kind of made it up as I went. I used the same thing (minus the cheese) and a little oil to season the eggplant. yum yum

I'm three for three with kids in tears during sports class. Every week so far somebody has cried because of some injury. I'm going for four next week when we play whiffle/soft ball because that sport is just asking for an injury.