I'm Baaaaaack

Alrighty! So it's been a while since I've been on here, and I have tons of new things to share!

Winter Quarter has been pretty interesting thus far and the weather has been getting less and less wintery.

I'm taking animation, painting, educational psychology and an art history class about American homes.

For our first assignment we were using this ridiculous program in animation called DanceForms.  It has to be the most annoying program I've ever used in the history of using programs.  I felt like I had no control over the characters that I created.  I made them, they should do what I want. Not what they want.. Anyway, just made my characters do some dance moves and got some weird camera angles and threw something together that was close to 3 minutes.  Haha, the first critique we had of our characters my professor literally said "Very disturbing (in a good way).." 

Painting has been pretty difficult lately because it's supposed to be an 'abstract' class, but I guess I think too much and too literally.  I think the things I make are cool, but they're not necessarily meant for this class.

Plane stencil

Lawn chair stencil

ON ANOTHER NOTE....

I've been feeling pretty distant from people lately, and that always brings me closer to my roots.  Makes me think a lot about family and the close friends that I do have.  What better way to bring these things together than with food?  For those of you who don't know, my mother and her side of the family all hail from the sweet city of New Orleans.  I'm thinking these next few weeks will be full of southern eats (:

I haven't been up on my cooking lately and I figured I'd go all out and make fried chicken, collard greens, baked beans and corn bread.

Yummm......

mmmmmm....

I knew the collard greens would take the longest so I started those first by browning an onion and some ham steak in a pot with some butter.

After that started getting all steamy and good-smelling, I added the greens and chicken broth almost enough to cover them.

I let that stay on medium-high heat for a bit and added brown sugar to taste, a splash of vinegar and few shakes of chili powder.

Reduce heat, put a lid on it and stir every once in a while. The longer they sit, the more the'll cook down. I like them after about 45 minutes on the stove.

I threw a can of baked beans into a pot to warm up while my roommate made some instant mix cornbread.

Once that was in the oven, I started on the chicken.  I made a kind of battering station.  Beat eggs in one bowl and made a mixture of flour, salt, pepper, chili powder and oregano in the other.

Okay, so making fried chicken is a little messy.  I like to double batter them so I dip the chicken into the egg, into the flour, into the egg again, into the flour again and finally into a pan of lots of HOT oil.  The way I check to see if my oil is hot enough is by throwing a little piece of batter into the pan.  If it immediately starts sizzling and floating, you're in business.

The chicken should be fully cooked after 10 to 15 minutes on each side, but flip constantly or else your bird will burn.

I have to say, my house smells comparable to KFC.  Which I'm happy about because I've been craving chicken for a while and I'm scared of the KFC up here.

Well, I hope y'all had a slammin' Saturday (: