"It doesn't have to be perfect, it does have to be you"

I set aside today to put my new life in order--figuring out a new schedule to use my time, adjusting my budget, and making a giant to-do list for the next several weeks. Instead, I read a bunch of marketing blogs, ate another grilled cheese sandwich with mayo, took a nap, and am now procrastinating a bit more by blogging.

When I procrastinate, it's actually somewhat productive, most of the time.

Change ahead : advice welcome

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." -Albert Einstein 

I've been re-reading this quotation a lot over the past few weeks. You see, yesterday was my last day at my now-previous job. 

Quick tip: grilled cheese (& a question)

Busy week, so here's just a quick cooking tip that's new to me: when making grilled cheese, coat the bread with mayo instead of butter.

Ok guys, is this as novel as I seem to think it is? Because I've only started to hear this recently--the first time I heard about it was my sister's boyfriend, and to be honest, didn't really give it a lot of merit at the time. However, as it kept popping on food tv and blog circles, it started to make more sense: mayo is mostly oil, so it will brown and crisp like butter, but the emulsification with eggs lowers the burn/smoke point so your sandwich gets sufficiently melty inside but not burnt on the outside (and for those mayo-haters, it does NOT make the sandwich taste like mayonnaise).

I'm pretty sure I'll be making all my grilled cheese sandwiches (including grilled ham, egg and Jarlsberg sandwiches like pictured above--yum) this way from now on.

Sunday eggs with swiss chard and ricotta

One of my favorite things about living in D.C. is the access to beautiful produce at local farmers' markets, especially in the summer. The one I most frequent happens to be today, on Sundays. Really I should call this "Sunday scrambled eggs with garlic swiss chard and ricotta on fried potatoes," but that's a little wordy, isn't it? Plus, I think these eggs would be just as delicious on potatoes as they would with some rice or a nice piece of crusty bread (hell, even some spaghetti... I don't know why but in my mind the only noodle that would work is spaghetti).

Never is a promise

I read several blogs a day (thanks, Google Reader!), and one of my favorites is author Seth Godin's simply titled Seth Godin's Blog. His entries are some of the shortest on my blog roll, but also some of the most thought provoking. This post from last week particularly stood out to me:

Nothing says "welcome" like the smell of bacon.

One day, I'll have a blog named "Bakin' with Bacon," and it will all be recipes that include my favorite porcine product, and when it makes me wildly famous, I'll get to spend quality kitchen time with Kevin Bacon, because in this fantasy he loves a pun as much as I do. That day is not today, but that doesn't mean pig candy can't make a guest appearance here every now and then. And what better grand entrance than with bacon chocolate chip cookies?

Introducing a blog as random as I am.

Once upon a time, I blogged regularly... at least when I was on LiveJournal, you used to be able to call that blogging without getting a sideways glance. Those were the days when I thought, naively, that my day-to-day life really was so interesting and those moody song lyrics I posted really were so deep, that others actually cared about any of it.

(For anyone curious, the LiveJournal has officially been deleted to protect... myself.)

Fast forward a few years, and I've been tinkering with the idea of starting a blog for a while now, predominantly struggling with what to write about. I know that I'll write about some cooking adventures, marketing trends and ideas, and some general positing. Believe it or not, that's my version of narrowing things down. We'll call it eclectic. Actually, I'm calling it "Bettina writes."