scones.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  I'm half Irish but aside from the Irish Soda Bread that my mom made this morning, I won't be doing much of the "traditional" celebrating.  I have, however, spend a good amount of time outside today celebrating this beautiful weather.  So I did celebrate something...just not what the rest of the country is celebrating.  But eating some bread outside in sunny 70 degree weather?  Sounds like a good day to me.

I've been home on Spring Break this past week, but it's ending soon (wah) and I'll be back at school tomorrow night.  I've mentioned my love of baking here previously, and I especially love baking in my kitchen at home.  It's just, obviously, a lot more spacious than the one at my apartment, has better light, better appliances, a better setup, and just a better everything!  So when I do go home I usually take advantage of it and bake quite a lot.  This spring break I did not really bake much though, I was a little too preoccupied with something else (fyi there will be a post about these little books in the near future, as they have consumed my thoughts and taken over my life since the minute I read the first sentence of the first book).

I woke up yesterday morning really wanting to use a pastry cutter - do you have cravings of using certain baking tools?  No? It's not normal? Okay, just wanted to see.  After thinking about it for about 2 seconds I decided I wanted to make scones, and before my feet even hit the floor I had a recipe for Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Scones that I knew I was going to make.  That's not an exaggeration, by the way, I literally opened my eyes, thought of a pastry cutter, grabbed my phone and Googled chocolate chip scone recipes.  I found one, then got up and started my day.  The correct way to start a morning, if you ask me...

These Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Scones came from Evil Shenanigans.  It was my first time making scones, which is absolutely ridiculous and something I can't believe is true.  I love scones.  They are one of my favorite foods to eat so the fact that I had never made them before yesterday is an embarrassment.  They were super easy but completely delicious.  I loved that they used buttermilk and not heavy cream, because I always have buttermilk but heavy cream is not a pantry staple of mine.  The only thing I did differently was swapping out regular size chocolate chips for mini ones.  In scones, and most other pastries actually, I much prefer little bites of chocolate that melt into the scone as opposed to normal size chocolate chips that seem like an add on.  But, it's just a personal preference of mine!

There's an 87% chance I'm going to be making another batch of these in an hour or two while listening to the stunning soundtrack for The Hunger Games.  This is for two reasons - 1) I honestly can't get enough of the soundtrack, it's perfect.  And 2) The following picture is the amount of scones that are left in this house...

 It's unacceptable, it's a problem, and it needs to be addressed & fixed.  Good thing I'm up to the challenge


xx Meg

PS. Read The Hunger Games Triology, please & thank you.  

march photo a day.

I am really obsessed with taking pictures.  Of everything.  I've been taking them probably since the first minute I could correctly hold a camera.  I'm not a great photographer, I've always wanted to take classes or teach myself more about photography - I've just never gotten around to it, but it doesn't really matter all that much to me right now.  The reason I love taking pictures is because I'm always very kind of paranoid of forgetting little moments, or big moments, and the best way I know how to prevent that is just by taking a shot of the scene.  I have loads of pictures on my computer, phone, in boxes and one of my favorite things to do (in the world) is just to randomly go through an album and have each photo bring me back to that moment, that day in which it was taken.

This is a huge reason why I love the iPhone app Instagram.  First - it's on my phone, which means it is always with me.  I can always take a picture or decide to flip through my album to jog some memories.  Second - it has these very pretty filters that you can put your photos through that instantly make any shot look 100x better and more beautiful.  So for someone like me - who knows little to nothing about photography but also loves things to look pretty - it really is a Godsend.

A lot of my Instagram (I'd say a good 50%) is actually pictures of food.  What can I say?  I post what I love.  And everybody knows there's not much I love more than food, especially baking.  But lately my pictures have been a bit more varied because this month I'm doing the March Photo A Day challenge - created by fat mum slim.  I love little memes like this!  I've been having a lot of fun with it. 8 days in and I haven't missed a day yet, I hope & think that'll continue throughout the rest of the month.

home.

I'm not quite sure there's a truer statement then this one: I'm obsessed with being home.  Especially after a week of midterms...yeah, definitely obsessed with being home.  I love Rutgers and my apartment there but all the time sometimes it's nice to come back here to be with my family, my DVR, and two months worth of Pioneer Woman's show to catch up on.  Which is exactly what I'm doing right now.  And it's totally delicious.