My Favs, Ramblings

10 Tips for Tax Season

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Those of you who are NOT tax accountants probably think of taxes on one of two days during the year:

a.) the day you get your w-2

b.) April 15th (AKA the day your tax return is due)

Ohhhhh how blissful that must be!  Tax accountants, on the other hand, live and breathe taxes.  We are number crunching, tax law massaging, carbo loading monsters this time of year.  Understandably, this season puts crazy stress on us and leads to periods of extreme unhappiness followed by periods of extreme slap-happiness in rapid succession.

Up and down, up and down.

Smile –> Sad smile  –> Surprised smile  –> Angry smile –> Rolling on the floor laughing  ->  Crying face  ->  Vampire bat

This is tax season #6 for moi and E.V.E.R.Y year I see myself and my coworkers fall into this instability.

Not this year, Uncle Sam.  Not this year. 

10 Tips for tax season.

  1. Find time for fun.
  2. Eat healthfully…  Especially when it’s 10 pm, you’re still at the office, and that Krispy Kreme donut has been calllllllllllllling your name all.friggin.day.
  3. Breathe.
  4. Exercise woman!  All that stuff about exercise and endorphins is true and don’t you forget it!
  5. Back.away.from.your.desk.  BACK AWAY.
  6. Smile.  Even it it hurts.  (AKA fake it til you make it, baby)
  7. DO NOT project your stress on to your lovely coworkers.  They’ve got enough poo on their shoulders without you flinging more at them.
  8. Go pee (you know you’ve been holding it for the last 2, possibly 3, hours)
  9. Dance.  Bust out at least one dance move, at a minimum, each day.  Work it…. workkkkkkk it.
  10. It’s just taxes.

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Ramblings, Travel

Things I’ve learned over a week in Charlotte

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  1. The people in Charlotte are nice.  Like SUPER nice.  Like almost weirdly nice.  I love them.
  2. Carwashes in Charlotte are a whole heck of a lot cheaper than in Ohio… 30% cheaper, to be exact.  Though, they will look at you funny when you ask to stay in the car as you go through the carwash.  Apparently, that’s not how they do it here in Charlotte.
  3. Everyone is really nicely dressed.  Not in a I’m-better-than-thou sort of way, but in a I’m-putting-my-best-foot-forward-today (and every day for that matter) sort of way.  I’m a fan.
  4. Chicken paws are not the same thing as chicken breasts!
  5. Speaking of chicken, why is the chicken breast at the butcher counter at Harris Teeter only $1.99 a pound???  That’s cheaper than the stuff they have on the shelves.  Mystery.
  6. Either u-turns are legal here or we’ve broken the law 7 times in the past week.  I’m hoping for the former.
  7. North Carolina is part of the South.   People actually have accents here.
  8. A Charlotte native can spot an Ohio accent a mile away… I didn’t think there was such a thing as an Ohio accent.  I was wrong.
  9. Public transportation is awesome.
  10. People are young here.  Like a city chock full of Doogie Howsers. 
  11. I’m pretty sure it’s possible to eat at a different delicious Charlotte restaurant for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day for a whole year without having any repeats.  I may have to try that sometime.  Charlotte knows a thang or two about food. (Stay tuned for more on that topic!)

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Ramblings

A Foodie Gift {cookie-mix-in-a-jar}

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In my opinion, nothing is better than the gift of food!  For Christmas this year, I decided to make some cookie jars using one of my favorite cookie recipes – the Nestle Tollhouse Recipe for Oatmeal Scotchies (oh-so-conveniently located on the back of the butterscotch chips bag).

These gifts are so easy, and with a little elbow grease and creative flair they really turn out beautifully!

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First step is to mix the following in a bowl:

  • .5 cup + 2 tbsp Flour
  • .5 tsp Baking Soda
  • .25 tsp Ground Cinnamon
  • .25 tsp Salt

Dump this into a 1 quart jar, then layer on:

  • 1.5 cups quick oats
  • half a bag of butterscotch chips

In another bowl mix together:

  • .25 cup + 2 tbsp White Sugar
  • .25 cup + 2 tbsp Brown Sugar

Toss the sugar mix into a ziploc baggie and tuck inside the glass jar (on top of the chips).

Next up, write out a note with the following instructions:

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Then it’s time get your creative flair on!

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Last but not least, I baked up a batch of the Oatmeal Scotchies and included a half dozen wrapped in a cellophane bag along with each gift jar.

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YUM!

Cookies.. the gift that keeps on giving Winking smile

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Ramblings

A Foodie Gift

5 Comments

In my opinion, nothing is better than the gift of food!  For Christmas this year, I decided to make up some cookie jars using one of my favorite cookie recipes – the Nestle Tollhouse Recipe for Oatmeal Scotchies (oh-so-conveniently located on the back of the butterscotch chips bag).

These gifts are so easy, and with a little elbow grease and creative flair they really turn out beautifully!

DSCF4537

First step is to mix the following in a bowl:

  • .5 cup + 2 tbsp Flour
  • .5 tsp Baking Soda
  • .25 tsp Ground Cinnamon
  • .25 tsp Salt

Dump this into a 1 quart jar, then layer on:

  • 1.5 cups quick oats
  • half a bag of butterscotch chips

In another bowl mix together:

  • .25 cup + 2 tbsp White Sugar
  • .25 cup + 2 tbsp Brown Sugar

Toss the sugar mix into a ziploc baggie and tuck inside the glass jar (on top of the chips).

Next up, write out a note with the following instructions:

DSCF4529

Then it’s time get your creative flair on!

DSCF4532

DSCF4538

DSCF4539

Last but not least, I baked up a batch of the Oatmeal Scotchies and included a half dozen wrapped in a cellophane bag along with each gift jar.

DSCF4550

YUM!

Cookies.. the gift that keeps on giving Winking smile 

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Ramblings

First Impressions

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First impressions are EVERYTHING.  How often have you heard that expression in life?  Work?  Relationships?  First impressions.  They either make ya or break ya.

When I first got the Betty Crocker 300 calorie cookbook, I was beyond excited. 

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I was SO excited, that I spent my lunch break thumbing through the pages and flagging all the recipes that sounded delicious. 

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(Overzealous, much?)

Could it be true?  300 calories of home cooked goodness?  Sounded like it was right up my alley!

Shortly after, I tried out my first recipe in the book:  Chicken and Spinach Skillet.  I picked the recipe because it used two of my favorite ingredients (chicken and spinach, obviously) and it was an extremely simple recipe.  How can you go wrong with that?

It seemed as though the stars were aligning.  Hundreds and hundreds of healthified recipes at my fingertips.  All hinging on this first recipe.  This first recipe that was, well, a big fat flop.  It was blah.  So blah, in fact, that I threw the leftovers away… and that is simply UNHEARD of in the Fervent Foodie household.

And so the book sat.  Poor little Betty Crocker and her 300 calorie recipes sandwiched between a bright green cover with fun yellow letters… dozens of pages flagged with anticipation…

Months passed.  FINALLY, this week I pulled the cookbook down from the bookshelf and my heart churned over the little yellow flags peeking out of the book.  And I decided to give it another go.  I decided to give Better Crocker a second chance.

This time around, I went with the Chicken Enchilada Pie:

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Annnnnddddd it was…..  meh. 

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Better than the Turkey Spinach Skillet, but not good enough to even bother posting the recipe on the blog.  I mean, I’m not throwing away the leftovers or anything, but let’s just say the tour de Chicken Enchilada Pie won’t be coming round my house again.

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Hmmmm… well….  crap.

So, do I give Betty a THIRD shot, or what? 

Pondery.

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