Stuff, Things, etc.: Friday Things, 1/12

1. This post brought to you by the fact that we have a third snow day this week. I love Missouri in January. I don't even know that I'm missing things I want to do in school. It'll all be there next week, unchanged. Since I basically create my own curriculum it doesn't actually matter. I'm not off pace with anything. This is one million percent reparations for me for the last 5 months.

2. Tortilla Soup

There are 93849 kinds of taco/tortilla soup recipes out there. I'm here to tell you that this is the best one. I made it in 2012 for the first time and I've quite literally been making it multiple times a year for the last 11 years. Every other recipe I've tried was a one and done and I've gone back to this. It is also much easier than most of the other recipes, I've found. I don't do even the onion and green pepper; I just use a chunky salsa. I top it with shredded cheese, stick it in the microwave for a minute to melt the cheese and then eat it with tortilla chips. It also freezes extremely well. I often make it and freeze half for later. I almost always have a bag of it in the deep freeze.

3. Birthday things. My birthday was on Wednesday.

My friend sent me a Stanley so I'm going to be unironically toting it around the house and and positioning it where I can see it out of the corner of my eye at all times.

I made a red velvet cake. Note: I do not recommend this icing recipe at all. Like, not even a little bit, sorry. That isn't the exact recipe I followed but that explains more of the method/reasoning behind the frosting than the link I used did. Turns out, I'm more of a crusting buttercream person. I just haaaaate making buttercream because it's so messy so I thought I'd try something different.

I will be making myself a replacement cake this weekend.

I ordered myself a present after hemming and hawing with What I really want is just for the kitchen to be done and realizing guilt-tripping wouldn't make him finish things any faster when he's not home to finish things.

We had Panda Express because out of the given options (BWW, pizza, or Panda Express) it is the crowd pleaser (it is true: Sutton refuses pizza). Also, I refuse to take them out for dinner. Lunch, sure. Dinner, absolutely not. So that took the local Thai restaurant off the table. Maybe we'll try sushi and/or hibachi again next month. Depends if Sutton can learn to control herself.

"Snow day"

My parents gave me this for Christmas and I'm making one for Wells' room and one for Sutton's room.

Basically I could not ask for a better birthday present than 3 snow days this week.

4. This week's podcast recommendation: SUCH a good episode and highly recommend. I've basically recommitted to Pilates this year, as I know I need to for maintaining strength and flexibility as I get older. I've absolutely slacked in the lasts 4-5 months (see #1) and I feel it.

5. I haven't posted memes in forever and a day, mostly because I get them from Pinterest, save them to my desktop, and then put them here. It's a process. Feel free to steal and share.