Who knew I could eat so much cereal?

I have always had a glorious dream of living on my own. Being the extremely social creature that I have always been, this dream usually involved me living in the middle of the woods by myself...picture Walden. Okay maybe not that solitary, but I always thought that I would prefer to live sans roommates. Since last Friday I have been living that dream and not exactly loving in. The fact that I don't really know anyone here or have any kind of purpose for the moment has not exactly helped my cause. Maximum efforts have been made to find things to do that do not involve sitting in my apartment and watching hulu, and up until yesterday I was doing relatively well. Thursday, Thursday, gotta get down on Thursday... I ran right of ideas on how to entertain myself. Milk and cookies, reading a book, taking a nap, blog stalking, facebook stalking, pintrest-ing, talking to my mom on the phone, and generally going stir-crazy is what I did yesterday. Here is where the shocking confession comes out--are you ready for it? Maybe not quite... go ahead and sit down and mentally prepare yourself. Okay, here it goes... Just to let you in on a little secret before we get into any major confessing--I have never said these words together in this context ever before... Alright the time has come to say what we have all been waiting for... drum roll please... I CAN'T WAIT FOR SCHOOL TO START! Don't act like you are not impressed. I am also psyched for my roommates to move in today.

Dinner on the Sofa

As a general rule growing up, our family always ate dinner at the table. Everyone had their seat (beware certain wrath if you sit in the wrong one). We would sit down together and pray over our food, tell everyone about the best and worst parts of our day, and stay at the table until we were excused. In a house full of 8+ people, dinnertime was sometimes our only moment in a busy day to really enjoy each others company--or engage in hour-long shouting matches... You can decide which to paint your ideal picture of my family with. Nevertheless, dinner with my family has always been my favorite part of the day. From a young age I have donned an apron and helped my mom in the kitchen, eventually sharing the duty of preparing family meals. My mother has taught me all that I know about food, love, and life in our kitchen. It is with these fond memories that I prepared my first meal living on my own. Who knew it was harder to make only enough food for two or three servings as opposed to eight or ten? Flying solo at dinner time was a whole new world of freedom, loneliness, and questions of how I would ever finish the leftovers (thanks Garredith for helping me out there). So here's to new memories in my own kitchen and to all of the old memories that will fill my recipes forever.