A baking addiction

As many of my college classmates and friends know, I have a thing for baking.  This started with my discovery of Pinterest junior year of college, which also coincided with having a kitchen at school for the first time.

So, I started baking.  I have a Facebook album called “culinary adventures”, where you can find about 65 photos of cookie recipes I’ve baked in the past three years.

Winter is the best time to bake cookies and try new recipes, since the weather is a mess, and I don’t mind having the extra heat from the oven.  Over the past few weeks, I’ve made the following –

Flourless peanut butter chocolate chip cookies

http://instagram.com/p/wr8fjIRNBD/?modal=true

Everyone knows the standard “Hershey kiss on a cookie” dessert, but often, the cookie is a little dry.  Last year, I put a twist on it, by using a brownie cookie as the base and a candy cane kiss on top.  Brownie cookies are incredibly easy.  I use a recipe from Six Sisters’ Stuff (http://www.sixsistersstuff.com/2012/03/double-chocolate-brownie-mix-cookies.html).

Chocolate peanut butter chip cookies

I made these as a way to combat Monday night boredom before my Christmas break officially started.  They’re also from Six Sisters’ Stuff, and were definitely a hit with relatives at Christmas. (Recipe – http://www.sixsistersstuff.com/2013/02/chocolate-peanut-butter-chip-cookies.html).

http://instagram.com/p/w7nNa7xNJe/?modal=true

Chocolate chip cranberry cookies

I love cranberries, so I stocked up after Thanksgiving.  You can only eat so much cranberry sauce, so I decided to bake something with them last night.  The problem – most cookie recipes ask for dried cranberries, not fresh.  So I took the risk.  Turns out, 3/4 cup of dried cranberries is equivalent to 1 cup of fresh cranberries + 2 Tbsp granulated sugar.  I made these delicious cookies, and they are the perfect blend of sweet and tart

http://instagram.com/p/xIptxmxNAj/?modal=true

Recipe: http://sweetrosestudio.com/2014/11/cranberry-chocolate-chip-cookies.html

Looking forward to the new year and some new recipes 🙂

Kate

Living in My Hometown

Today, I live 10-11 miles from both of the houses I grew up in, attend the church my family has been members of since 1999, shop at the same malls, and go to the same dentist as when I was young.  I work at a company that we drove past on every trip to visit Illinois relatives, and graduated from a large, public, in-state university two hours west of my parents’ house.

I love all these things.

In college, I didn’t think I’d come back to St. Louis – my degree in chemical engineering seemed a little too specific, and I didn’t expect to find a job at a Fortune 500 company here (top 30 by the latest list).  I spent a summer in Kentucky working on materials research & development for laser printers (or in other words, playing with printer parts and vendor samples to find good material properties).  The next year, I moved up to the Pacific Northwest, where I discovered that my interest in aerospace would never fade.  While those summers were truly amazing, being away long-term didn’t seem right.

So I started fighting hard to get a job here in my hometown.  I am a Midwesterner at heart – the South and the Northwest were fun for a little while, but I couldn’t stand the accents, political attitudes that differed so greatly from my own, the complete unawareness that my alma mater existed, and the feeling that I’d be an outsider for a long time.  Though an adventure might have been fun for a few years, I knew that long-term, I should be near my family and the place that I call home.

Somehow (and I still don’t understand how), I managed to find not one, but two jobs in St. Louis, including the position that I’d been longing for since starting my internship in Seattle.  I accepted nearly the second I had an offer.  Senior year at Mizzou drew to a close, and I moved back home, ready to start a new chapter of life in an old familiar place.

That first year after college felt like high school again in some ways – living in my old bedroom, spending most evenings with my parents and sister, and coming home to our suburban house every afternoon.  I was happy to be home, but aside from one of my college roommates moving to STL, it felt like nothing had changed.

This summer, everything changed.  After years of saying I’d never move to the city, I signed a lease for an apartment in the Central West End, and I’ve absolutely fallen for St. Louis again.  I live walking distance from over a dozen restaurants and bars, and there are beautiful old homes all around.  I’m able to go to the zoo whenever I want (twice in the last month…) and can walk there or anywhere else in Forest Park. I can hear the bells of the Cathedral Basilica from inside my apartment, since it’s across the street.  Games at Busch Stadium or anything downtown are just a short metro ride away (when you don’t get stranded at Grand).  And my alma mater is a mere two-hour drive from my apartment.

The only downside of living in STL is that every day has the potential to be a mini-high school, church, or college reunion, so I can’t ever leave my apartment looking like a slob.  I run into or see someone I know on a significant percentage of shopping trips, grocery runs, and restaurant dates.  It’s a little ridiculous, but I kinda like it.

I know I’m young still, but I really, truly hope that St. Louis will be my long-term home.  After spending my entire life here, it’s really hard to imagine being anywhere else.  Living and working near my family, in my hometown, with a wonderful boyfriend – it’s all I dreamed of when I started college, and it’s really crazy that it finally worked out.

And besides, when anyone asks the age old St. Louis question, “where’d you go to high school?”, I can happily respond “Lindbergh, class of 2009”.

Kate

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A Toast to 2014

At the end of 2013, I probably wrote something to the tune of “blah, blah, life has changed so dramatically since graduating college, I can’t wait to see what 2014 brings”.  And it delivered.

I realize it’s only December 22, but why not end the year now?

• Watching one of my best friends from engineering school get married (George and Julie 🙂 )
• Getting an unexpected snow day from work
• Attending the 2014 Arts & Education Council gala at the Chase
• Cheering on the basketball Tigers to victory against South Carolina
• Abruptly meeting my now-boyfriend (and best friend) through a work-related happy hour
• Visit from my college roommate Amanda, in town for her dad’s birthday
• Seeing Mamma Mia at the Fox and Seussical at the Muny
• Judging Science Olympiad at SIUE
• Almost getting stuck in Wichita at the end of region conference
• Spending a long weekend in Washington, D.C., visiting Amy and Alex
• Seeing Billy Joel with Melissa and James Taylor with Kevin
• A beautiful Easter Sunday
• Representing SWE at the 2014 FIRST Championship
• Massive episode of burnout in May
• Finding out that one of my other favorite couples (Amanda and Jeremy) got engaged 🙂
• Watching my sister’s high school graduation
• Being featured in the summer 2014 issue of MIZZOU magazine
• Moving into my own place
• A weekend “up north” in Chicago & a day in Wisconsin
• Visiting friends in KC in conjunction with a SWEekend
• Discovering that I’m not meant to go paddleboating (it’s the worst)
• A magical trip to Disney World with Kevin
• Braving the heat for a Mizzou victory against South Dakota State
• Helping out with Kevin’s outreach programming at the Science Center
• Trying Indian food for the first time
• Apple picking and a wonderful birthday
• A day at Holiday World
• My favorite annual SWE conference yet, in Los Angeles
• A perfect November Saturday at Mizzou

As I write this, I can’t help but think of the only dark spot on 2014.  Back in July, we had to say goodbye to our boxer Daisy, who had become such a huge part of our lives.  That was five months ago, and it’s still almost impossible for me to think about her without bursting into tears.  I’m longing for the day when another puppy can fill that void, but for now, I’ll just ooh and ah over every cute dog I see…

Some more fun moments of 2014 are still to come – watch the blog for more 🙂 and til then, merry Christmas!

Kate

Back to blogging & Christmas festivities

First off, an apology – my last blog post was about SWE conference in Los Angeles, about two months ago.  I started a Thanksgiving week post several times, but my junky computer (more on that in a minute) kept deciding to erase large parts of the post, without saving anything.  So I gave up.

My laptop dates back to my first day in Lexington, Kentucky (yes, more than 3 1/2 years ago), when my Dell Inspiron bit the dust and I needed a replacement computer.  So, my parents took me to Walmart on Nicholasville Road, where I picked out a nice Sony Vaio.  It did well for awhile, and my computer science / engineering friends at Lexmark agreed with my purchase.

My birthday senior year of college was the first sign of my laptop’s demise — the battery came loose.  But I refused to give up – who buys a new laptop after less than two years?  I made it last through the rest of college and my first year working.  When I got to this past summer, I was no longer able to use it unplugged for more than 30 minutes, and things consistently ran slow.  There was even a weekend where it refused to turn on.

So, what next?  Laptops are too bulky and heavy for someone out of college, but I’m not settled down enough to buy a desktop computer.  I set my sights on a tablet, but of course, the beautiful Microsoft Surface 2 seemed too expensive… so I resigned myself to months more of my Sony Vaio, hoping that my mid-March bonus would justify buying one.

But something changed, and that something was receiving a Surface 2 as a Christmas present this weekend.  It’s beautiful, and that’s why I am finally sitting down to write my first blog post in about two months. 🙂

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The past week has been full of Christmas activities – brewery lights, ugly sweater party, Tilles Park Winter Wonderland, Christmas specials, and two movies with my family yesterday (Santa Clause and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation).  I’m beyond excited for these next weeks, as I celebrate another Christmas with my family, reunite with friends who live elsewhere, and ring in the New Year with my favorite guy.  More to come!

Kate