shoes on barefoot thursday

today is happy on not one, but TWO, feet-related happenings:

1) my new shoes came from zappos

2) it's barefoot thursday!

but back to number 1. i love zappos. i love how i select free 4-5 day shipping, but i know that in a few hours, i will get an email from the site telling me that i'm so fantastic that they've decided to expedite my order: "Although you originally ordered Standard (4 to 5 business days) shippingand handling, we have given your order special priority processing in our warehouse and are upgrading the shipping and delivery time frame for your order. Your order will ship out today and be given a special priority shipping status so that you can receive your order even faster than we originally promised!" and tada! my shoes came! sadly, i had just left for the gym so i'm stuck waiting until tomorrow to test them out. however, i do plan on wearing them all around the apartment tonight to break them in.

now onto number 2 of foot-induced happiness. kathy, over at all food considered, chose croque monsieur as the second recipe for april. i was particularly worried about this, since i rarely eat ham, can't have cheese, and substituting for either would be an entirely different recipe. 

and then came easter. the easter bunny brought a copy of go dairy free! i can't sing enough good praises about this book. for anyone who avoids dairy, this is a fabulous collection of original recipes from various bloggers, chefs, friends of the author, and the author herself (she has a lovely blog) that use normal ingredients to recreate the melty, gooey, salty goodness of cheese-laden dishes. i'm in love. i'd probably marry the book if i could.

easter also brought ham leftovers (you saw how much we had!), which worked nicely into the plan. 

as soon as i got back to school, i got to work on my own version of this decadently-dairy-licious creation. since fat is still an issue no matter what i sub out, i had to make some "healthy" modifications as well as for the cheese. i also don't have "good bread" in my apartment, so a plain old sandwich had to do.

i used alisa's recipe for "grilled cheese," added the ham slices, sprayed it with my olive oil spray bottle, and tucked it in for a nap in the toasty george foreman. it was perfect along side some grilled asparagus with lemon. i enjoyed it so much that i made myself another for lunch the following day with tomato soup. 

we have one more barefoot challenge for april (even beyond the bonus in which i didn't participate because recreating savory coeur a la creme really wasn't going to work out), which i'll be making next week. it's a "frugal" challenge, so i'll be whipping out the math skills. watch out. i'm a beast with a calculator.

tomorrow kicks off the 3-day fiesta of blue&white weekend here. there's a carnival, complete with shoddy rides and deep-fried everything (and cotton candy!!!), a football game between the 2 psu squads (hence blue v. white), and TAILGATING for no apparent reason except that it's awesome. i also have a picnic for ARHS and a party for my last thesis seminar. that means tons of baking. 

you can look forward to: blue velvet cupcakes, palmiers, and an array of cookies (toll-house, sugar with sprinkles, peanut butter, oatmeal cranberry...), provided that they all turn out. i'm so pumped to get to use 'the joy of cooking!' it's been lying dormant for way too long.

tonight is my thesis presentation. wish me luck!

ciao,

j