I bought a computer

Well, we bought a computer. A new laptop that hopefully, I can borrow to take the bar. It's more S's computer than mine, so bleh, but hopefully, I'll be able to buy myself a new battery for mine and be all excited about that.

This week's been pretty fun in terms of food, cooking, exercising, and all that stuff. Monday, I made these margarita cupcakes and brushed them with the whipped vodka because all the people drank all the tequila. The truth is that I love to use alcohol for flavoring my food (Vodka Cookbook), but not so much a fan of the straight up drinking it. I achieved one of my goals and that's that. Moving on now. I also don't think S was a big fan either since he was pretty bitter during and after. We did get to throw a party, so that was nice.

Tuesday was fajita day at our house. Smith's has some great pre-seasoned and cut fajita meats and peppers that work well  in a pinch. Also, we have so many tortillas left over, which is actually kind of great. Tuesday, for lunch, I had a weird tortilla thing recommended to me by The Spark: The 28-Day Breakthrough Plan for Losing Weight, Getting Fit, and Transforming Your Life, which involved cream cheese, raisins, and walnuts. I'm not sure it was good per se, but I think it was and if it makes me lose weight while retaining nutrients, then hey, I'm all for it.

Wednesday was my "I've been craving orange chicken for forever and I'll die if I don't have it day", so I made  a knock-off of Panda Express' Orange Chicken for two using a modified recipe from here. It tastes very little like orange chicken from Panda but is so delicious I'll try it again. It's also a little crispier than Panda's so there's that. In other news, I discovered that Panda Express actually posts their recipe here, so if you want to buy their orange sauce, it's pretty easy to make and takes less time than mine. But, this chicken was definitely good.

I'll have to post the recipe later, since I need to get ready for work. And get rid of the buzzing in my ears.

Dieting

Lately, perhaps as a way to rebel against having to study for the bar, I've started to think about losing weight and dieting. I've been using spark people (The Spark: The 28-Day Breakthrough Plan for Losing Weight, Getting Fit, and Transforming Your Life). The website is free and very supportive so that will be interesting. The only problem is that I've discovered a real desire for external validation. That means that when I feel like I've gone over my caloric intake, I also feel like lying to the computer about what I eat. Oh well.

On the brighter side: Margarita party tonight.

I recently convinced a few friends of mine to throw a party at my house. I feel like that was the best solution for having  a party, since I have no desire to throw one or invite people over. But if someone else is organizing it, I can just kick back and enjoy it. This also fits into one of my goals of having my drinking friends happily coexist with my non-drinking friends. Hopefully, this margarita/fajita party will have alcoholic and non-alcoholic options. To achieve that, I'm planning on making margarita cupcakes for this party.

Here are my options for this recipe, though. (I've started messing with recipes to make them my own, but it's doubtful I'll have the time today with bar review.)

I heart the brown eyed baker's site, so I'm thinking of trying her recipe, but I have a ton of other options. Also, I just discovered something that make change my life forever: a search for the food blogs. The thing with her recipe is that is seems to be a fairly heavy vanilla cupcake with lime and tequila. Which would be nice if I like vanilla cupcakes. Also, apparently red velvet is the most popular flavor according to The Staten Island Baker, which seems wrong.

I also really want to include a margarita mix in these cupcakes, but I keep running into the problem of never having tasted a margarita, so I'm unclear on how it should taste. Hum. This margarita party will probably degenerate into a video game playing party, so there's also that.  I recently bought Alice: Madness Returns, which is an awesome game that I wish I had more time to play and Guitar Hero World Tour. Hubby also snapped a drumstick on that one almost immediately, but we can still play. And finally, we got the DanceDanceRevolution Bundle, which we've never played. I'm hoping today will be the day. If not, oh well.

Now, for today's big dilemma. I told my boss I'd be coming in Tuesday - Thursday to study for the bar on Monday, but I have an answer to a divorce counterpetition to do and a reply that's due pretty soon. Do I want to study all day, or pop in to work today and likely get sucked in. Hum... Decisions decisions...