Hooray!

It’s Thursday!

I know, I know, it’s not Friday, but I see the light at the end of the tunnel.   The light is probably Rudolph’s Nose, as Friday night is North Carolina Girls’ Pint Out’s First Annual Festival of BEERMAS!!  I’ve dusted off my hat and beard, and after today’s lunch, my belly is feeling particularly jolly.

As I nuked the Trader Joe’s Channa Masala, my tiny igloo apartment filled with the warm smells of Indian spices, and my tummy started rumbling. This was the first time I’ve ever tried this particular dish, and was so excited with how it turned out!

Since I didn’t have any rice on hand and, honestly, I kinda burned out on rice in my first year post-grad (rice, beans, cheese. all meals, every meal), I put down a solid base of spinach and just ladled the goods out on top. The chickpeas managed to not be too mushy as sometimes frozen foods can feel, and the base of spinach worked perfectly with the spices. While I actually wish there’d been more of a kick, spice-wise, I understand that, for the masses, sometimes you gotta tone it down a bit. It awakened the Indian food bug inside my belly, and I’m CRAVING some more, post-haste. Maybe I can convince someone to join me this weekend…. (or head over to TJs for some more of these goodies.)

In other news, it got COLD in North Carolina!!!

This morning, I was met with a 31 degree temperature and, when I stepped out to the car, a rude awakening of frost.  And, although I am the only member of my family that doesn’t own an ice scraper, I made due.

Ladies and gents: The Southern Girl’s Last-Effort Scraper!

Have you got an old Nickelback CD that you’d rather throw away than feature prominently in your car? Ashamed of that Baha Men phase in your life?  Collected a few too many of those free AOL CDs?  WORRY, NO MORE!  Your lame musical tastes and hoarding tendencies can be transformed into a practical and fun tool for the cold weather.

Toss on some gloves (because you’re getting up close and personal with this frost, no handles here!), and grab the CD, then get to scraping!!

You’d be surprised how fast you can scrape an entire car’s worth of windows when your hand basically becomes a scraper.  It’s much more flexible than a scraper with a handle and you can cover a lot of ground when you’re a long-armed scraping fiend like me.  For all you short folks with tiny raptor arms, I’m sorry and hope you manage to move to a warm location where your arm length won’t hinder your ability to get out in the morning.

Now that the world’s thawed out a bit, I’ve got a lot on my plate. I’ll be baking some beer bread for the Festival of Beermas tomorrow, and hosting the Carolina Brewing Company’s Winter Porter glass night at Rockfish.  In the meantime, I’ll just be bundling up, thanking my lucky stars I found these fake rabbit fur earmuffs at Booth’s Corner in the summer.

Do you ever MacGyver any of your belongings into new, handy contraptions? 

Other than the CD Scraper, best I’ve got lately may be using a can to crush up some graham cracker crumbs…

What’s your favorite food for when the weather gets chilly?

Chili for the chilly?