Crab Rangoon

I made crab rangoon tonight all by myself....and I don't mean I went to a Chinese restaurant and bought it. I actually followed a recipe, made the filling, stuffed the wontons and deep fried the suckers. I'm pretty sure this was my first experiennce deep frying anything. I used a wok to cook them. Here is the recipe I followed. Looking at it now I see that it yields 48 crab rangoon! Well holy crap. I did notice that I was making quite a bit...I didn't use all the filling...but 48 is a little much...I used over half of the filling and I probably had 15. Maybe I was stuffing them really full.

Anyway, it was a success!! It tasted really really good. Typically when I buy crab rangoon, it tastes good but the outside is a little chewy. These were the crispiest crab rangoon I've ever had!!

It was fiddly putting the crab rangoon together and I wouldn't make this every week or anything, but it's definitely a good thing to know how to make for parties or special occasions.

FaceTime

I recently upgraded to the iphone 4. Last night I got to try Face Time video calling for the first time. That's where you can video chat if two people have the iphone 4. My brother in law in Alaska has the iphone 4 so I called him last night. It was really great! It was fun to be able to see my two little nieces. I think the 2 year old especially enjoyed herself. As you know, not only can you point the camera at yourself, but you can flip it to point the camera looking away from you too. So I got to give them a tour of my apartment and let them see my cats which they enjoyed too. All in all a great experience, and well worth the money just for the feature, especially if you have family living far away that you don't get to see very much!

Jogging

Got back into jogging last night. Hadn't really jogged since the 5K I did in May. I went with my friend Becki (Bamboo) who just had gastric bypass surgery 9 weeks ago. In 9 weeks she has lost 76 pounds, freakin amazing!!! Last night we went to the Y and she decided to give jogging a try. She downloaded a Couch to 5K app on her phone and followed the directions...I think she jogged for a minute and walked for 2 minutes or something...anyway, she did it!! I know it wore her out, but I couldn't be more proud of her. I also jumped back in full force. I pushed myself to pretty much jog the whole thing. I stopped briefly for water breaks but then went right back to it. If I counted my laps right, I'm pretty sure I jogged the 5K in 42 minutes, which I'm quite happy with considering I hadn't been jogging at all. We are doing a 5K in October, so hopefully I'll be able to shorten that time. I would be ecstatic if I could do the run in 35 minutes.

My iphone 4 also came last night! woot! I need to go to Best Buy tonight to have a screen protector put on it and I'm waiting for a case I bought for it online to come in the mail and then I'll be all set. It works so much better than my 3G which was basically obsolete after the 4.0 software upgrade.

I also plan on watching Twilight tonight. I read the first book and am on to the second. My thoughts on this series are that I don't much care for the writing style of the books and don't find Stephanie Meyer a particularly good writer, but the story is good...so I guess I'll put up with the writing. I'll update on what I think of the movie.

55% Dixie

This is an interesting quiz that I got through an email.  I have lived 
in the Midwest all my life.
I'll be curious to see what your answers are, especially if 
you live places other
than the Midwest.  Like maybe Canada??  
Please post your answer in the comments section.


Click on link below:
The Yankee or Dixie quiz



http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/yankeetest.html

i iphone junkie

I have to go to work in 5 minutes, but let's see if I can get a quick post in. I just had a conversation with hubby about the iphone 4. He's known for a while that I have wanted one ever since I did the software upgrade to my iphone 3G and now my phone sucks! Anyone else have this problem. Apps crash all the time and some apps won't even run it's so bad. The problem is that I had to get hubby on board with spending $200 for a pretty new iphone 4 even though I already had an iphone. He finally said it was ok to buy one this morning. Yippee!!!! I have to wait until Thursday but then I can have my new phone. Has anyone had any problems with the new phone? Hubby wanted to make sure the new one would be ok too....I told him that I think the bumper fixed the call dropping issues and that I hadn't heard about any other problems. Is that true? I hope so, because I can't keep living with my crappy 3G.

I am way behind on podcasts from This American Life which I like to listen to on my phone at work. Currently, that app won't even run on the 3G. I also like to listen to Pandora and the 3G spends so much time buffering that that app is pretty useless too.

Let me know your reviews of the iphone 4 please!!

New Favorite Books

So, I am the type of person that goes through phases with reading. I'll have a stretch where I'll read every night before bed and go through several books in a few months. And then I'll have periods of time where I don't read at all. I guess the latter was more the case when I was in school and there were already textbooks I was reading all the time so why would I want to read for pleasure. Now that I have more time on my hands I've been reading again. I'm a huge Dean Koontz and Stephen King fan, so of course whenever they come out with something new, I'll read them. But I've been trying to broaden my horizons a bit. I started reading Nora Roberts "Bride Quartet" series. I borrowed the first 3 from my mom. I read the first one which I liked well enough but wanted to move on to a different genre. So, what did I choose next?

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo!!

I ABSOLUTELY loved it!!!!!! I had been hearing talk about this series for a while, so I wanted to know what all the hype was. Well it lived up to the hype I think! I agree with others out there that it was slightly hard to get into the first book, but man, once you got to the meat of the story, it was great! So, I immediately moved on to "The Girl Who Played with Fire". I'm still reading that one. I would say i'm 3/4 of the way through. It's an interesting story, but based on how far along I am already, I wouldn't say I like it better than the 1st book. I'm even thinking about seeing the movie that was taped in Sweden where I would have to read the translation....I dunno though. I hear they are coming out with an American version, but that we shouldn't expect to see anything until 2012. It's really kind of depressing that the author died. I think he could have had a fabulous career.

Books that I have bought that I still need to read:

1. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (obviously)
2. Twilight - yes, I finally bit the bullet and bought it to read
3. Freakanomics
4. Harlan Coben - Hold Tight, new author I'm going to try
5. David Baldacci - The Winner - new author I'm going to try
6. Dean Koontz 2nd Frankenstein book
7. Dean Koontz 3rd Frankenstein book

so that's quite a list considering that I only read before I go to bed at night, and half the time that consists of me getting through a few pages and the promptly falling asleep. Do you have any good books (current, not classics) that I must read??

Are you there Blog, It's Me Margaret (ok Goose)

Hey bloggers - is anyone still paying attention to lil ole goosey goose? I know it's been forever since I've been on here. Basically since the wedding and getting a job, it's true that I haven't been making it a priority. And I guess that's ok because it's my blog right....but there is a little part of me that feels bad in case anyone is wondering what is happening in Goose's world.

To be honest, not all that much. I'm still working..duh! I've also found a new love for ZUMBA!


Do any of you zumba? It really is fun. I got into it by taking a class at my gym at work. The teacher there is great! Really upbeat and we dance to a mix of tradionally latin inspired zumba and current hits. A few we dance too regularly are "California Gurls", "I Like It", and "Low". The sad part is that at work, zumba is only offered once a week. So then I looked into taking more zumba classes. My YMCA offers classes 4 nights a week, at different times of course. The downside is that I have to pay those fees on top of what I already pay at work....but maybe it's worth it to do exercise that I enjoy.

The other big news is that my husband got into PhD school. It's really exciting for him and it's something he's been wanting for a while. The downside is that school is 2 hours away from where we live now. And it looks like he'll need to be down there at least 4 days a week, at least for the coming year. So we got him a little studio apartment to live in while he's down there and then he will come home on the weekends. That part really sucks. I like spending time with him all the time. I'm not one of those girls who likes her alone time. For the most part, I would always rather be hanging out with people than not. So, that will be an adjustment to have him gone Monday - Thursday and home on the weekends. I hope I get used to it OK.

This week is a good trial run for that though. He went on vacation with his family. I tried to go too but couldn't get off work. So I've been alone since Saturday and E doesn't come back until Monday! Prognosis so far is that is kinda sucks and I miss him....but I guess I'm getting by.

Did any of you catch my Judy Blume reference in the title :-)

so anyway, I have a feeling that blogging is going to come back into my life since I will be alone a lot more often and have nothing better to do.