I’ve been on a bit of a “watch my sugar intake” lately. It’s definitely not a diet (I try to just always eat a pretty balanced diet), and I’m DEFINITELY not cutting it out entirely. But I read somewhere recently that women should try to keep added sugar to around 6 teaspoons a day. (This doesn’t include naturally occurring sugar like in fruit or even milk.) The article even recommended including artificial sweeteners in that number, since it’s not like they’re great for you.

I am a big fan of Splenda, so the first change I’ve been trying to make is adding only 1 packet to my morning coffee or tea. I realized that if I have 2 cups with my typical 2 packets each, I’ve already consumed 4+ teaspoons of sweetener! Some days I’ll still go for 2 (I like making my tea strong and then getting it sweet and creamy…mmm), but I’ve really come to be okay with just 1. When I use quality, freshly ground coffee, I enjoy the actual coffee taste cutting through my vanilla creamer and fake sugar. Ha.

The other place I’ve been looking at sugar is in my yogurt. I’ve been doing Greek yogurt with granola for breakfast lately, and I found that even with the bite of plain Greek yogurt the granola adds enough sweetness that don’t feel compelled to drizzle it with honey like I usually would. However, since I’m also a bargain hunter, I tend to buy whatever brand of yogurt is on sale. This past week I got a great deal on Yoplait Greek, which only comes in blueberry, honey, or strawberry. Strawberry is the only one that appealed to me. I didn’t check the label at the store, but when I had the first one for breakfast I noticed that it has TWENTY grams of sugar. That’s preposterous! It makes a supposedly healthy food more like a dessert. So just keep in mind that just because it seems healthy doesn’t necessarily mean it is.

I’m not planning to go label crazy, and I do still get struck by a sweet teeth on occasion. But I’m trying to be more aware of sugar in my diet and choose sweet things that I’m really going to enjoy so that the indulgence will feel worth it.

And of course it’s ironic that I post this on Valentine’s Day, the ultimate in chocolate indulgence. On the menu for today are a breakfast date out that will probably include some sort of baked good and a coffee treat, chocolate covered strawberries snuck into A’s lunch bag (shhh!) and a mocha truffle cake for tonight. But THOSE, my friends, are sweets that are worth every teaspoon of added sugar!

The TV show Gilmore Girls was a pretty integral part of my life for several years. My mom and I watched it together, my senior year high school roommate and I both enjoyed it, and my college roommate/maid of honor and I often found ourselves eschewing the social quagmire of the college cafeteria to enjoy a lunch with Lorelai and Rory in our dorm common room. I always related to Rory's perfectionism and bookworminess (although I remain skeptical of her ultimate romantic decisions), so imagine my delight when I came across this reading list on Pinterest!

Look how young she looks there!

It includes (supposedly) all the books she read during the seven seasons of the show. I'm sure many of these were for school, but others are clearly not. It's fun looking over this list and remembering the episode where she mentioned it or the context in which it fit (i.e. the Europe guidebooks for her and Lorelai's backpacking trip to Europe). I've gone through and crossed out the ones I've read (many also for school!) and highlighted ones I would like to read. Many of these I've never heard of, so I'm not sure whether I would want to read it or not! I'll have to investigate further...

The list is ridiculously long (8.5 pages single spaced in Word), so I won't bore you with the whole thing here (click the image above if you're interested). I think it has 250 books on it. I've read 56 of them...not too shabby! Here are some that were either already on my to-read list or will be added because of this:

• An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
• Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
• The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night by Mark Haddon
• Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
• Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
• Holidays on Ice and Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
• Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Wilke
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• Mrs. Dalloway and A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
• Night by Elie Wiesel
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• A Passage to India and A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chobsky
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Whew! That's a lot of books! But I love having a running list to work from when I finish a book. This list encompasses a lot that would fit into my amorphous goal of "reading more classics" (plus it doesn't hurt that those a free on Kindle).

I was intrigued by how all over the place Rory's list was. Lots of Stephen King and pop-y fiction, which surprised me, along with a lot of poetry and serious literature, which did not. I would love to talk books with Rory! Is there a fictional character you would love to hang out with or discuss a shared hobby with? 

On Monday, I reported to the Fulton County Justice Center Tower for my first jury duty summons. I was pretty nervous about the logistics of it. As with most cities, downtown Atlanta is a maze of congested, one-way streets, with limited and expensive parking. Thankfully, there is a designated lot at Turner Field that has free parking for jurors with shuttle service to the justice center. The lot is only about 3 miles from my apartment, but I was unsure about traffic and nervous about missing a useful shuttle and being late, so I left at 7:00, an hour early. Of course I didn’t sleep well the night before, because I knew my alarm would be going off early. I hate that.

I arrived at the lot about about 7:15, and there was a shuttle waiting right there, so I walked in the front door of the justice center at 7:25, 5 minutes before they even started filtering people through security. But, I was far from alone, and I would always rather be early than late, especially for something as official and scary as a jury summons. I was glad I had done the shuttle thing, because it was very reassuring to be dropped at exactly the right place with plenty of other people doing the same thing I was. There was really good signage and direction, and throughout the day they kept us well-informed with announcements. I never felt confused or overwhelmed as I kind of expected to, which was a pleasant surprise.

Once we all made our way up to the 7th floor, we were checked in at different windows based on our summons and found seats in a big, open, room. I was prepared with 3 magazines and a novel! At about 10:30, after I’d gotten through 2.25 magazines, I was called with a group of 50 to report to a courtroom. I never even started my novel! From there, they spent a little bit of time explaining the case to us and then asking questions to filter out jurors who a) had a legitimate hardship that would have prevented them from serving or b) had some kind of personal or professional connection to the case or any involved parties. This particular case was scheduled to go all week; my summons for one day or one trial, so if I had been chosen I would have had to show up every day! I was number 42 of 50, and I breathed a sigh of relief when they finished interviewing the first 30 potential jurors and announced they had interviewed enough. I never even got asked any questions, so by having reported for the day my duty was fulfilled.

It was interesting thinking about the hardship process, which the judge decides. (The lawyers get to decide who is stricken based on other biases.) There were, of course, several moms who had childcare obligations, and others who were primary wage-earners for their families, but there were also some more unique ones like a man who was scheduled to take the LSAT on Friday and a guy who had an appointment for a kidney biopsy scheduled. Yikes! I was surprised at a couple of the jurors chosen–some because they had a particular hardship that I thought would have qualified, and others because they seemed to me to have a bias on one side or the other of the case. But maybe as long as they are balanced out by someone with the opposite bias that is desirable for the attorneys! I guess that’s why they leave those decisions to the people with law degrees. I didn’t even try to claim a hardship, because while it would have been annoying and an inconvenience to spend my week there, I had no real reasons keeping me from it.

Though the day as admittedly pretty mind-numbingly boring, I am interested to have seen the process and had some of the intrigue demystified. They showed us an orientation video first thing in the morning when we were all in the big room that had Justices Day-O’Connor and Alito and a couple of no-name jurors talking about their experiences. One juror in the video, a black lady, pointed out that her mother wouldn’t have had the right to serve as a juror, so she chose to view it as an honor and a privilege rather than an annoyance. I tried to keep that statement in the back of my mind all day, even though I didn’t feel that way 100%. Because it’s true: not too many years ago even I, as a woman, wouldn’t have been called to serve. And all of the staff I encountered throughout the day were very pleasant and understanding of the fact that most of us didn’t exactly want to be there. But that doesn’t mean I’m not still glad to have my week back under my own control!

Have you had to report for jury duty before? What was your experience like?

I'm always amazed at the proliferation of imitation recipes you can find online: Outback Steakhouse bloomin' onion. Olive Garden salad dressing. Etc. I'm impressed at people's ability to go home and recreate flavors they've tasted! I don't think I have that skill. BUT, I do enjoy following other people's instructions! Last week I tried this recipe for imitation Chick Fil A chicken nuggets I had pinned on Pinterest. It was my first time frying anything, so I was a little nervous, but my Dutch oven stood up to the task well. It was deep enough that hot oil wasn't spattering everywhere, and the heat-holding properties of the cast iron helped it seemingly stay at a consistent temperature. The oil wasn't hot enough for my first batch, but as it stayed on the burner and got hotter, the nuggets came out looking better and better. Each batch was a little browner and crisper than the one before. So that was one lesson learned. I also realized right before I mixed up the recipe that I didn't have any eggs, so I tried it with just the milk. Lesson learned number 2 is that I think the egg would have really helped the breading stick to the chicken. As I dropped each one into the oil, I could see clouds of flour floating off, and my oil was left looking pretty brown from the stuff that cooked up in it. But all in all this was a great experiment, and I would DEFINITELY make them again, especially with my increased knowledge about frying.

Here's the recipe, courtesy of Amy at My Name is Snickerdoodle. (P.S. Pinterest has become a big freaking deal! This blogger said she has literally gotten hundreds of thousands of hits to her blog since her recipe basically went viral on the boards.)

2 skinless and boneless chicken breasts
1 cup milk
1 egg
1 1/4 cups flour
2 TBSP powdered sugar
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
peanut oil (is best) or canola oil

(I used canola oil and, like I said, no egg. I've always claimed that Chick Fil A nuggets tasted sweet to me, and the inclusion of powdered sugar here proves me right! One bit of breading that I fished out of the canola oil that had fried up on its own really did taste JUST LIKE a CFA nugget.)

In a medium bowl whisk the egg and stir in the milk. Trim any fat away from chicken. Cube chicken into bite size pieces. Place chicken in milk mixture,and cover. Let it 'marinate' for 2-4 hours in the fridge. This will make the chicken very nice and tender. In a gallon size resealable baggie combine flour, powdered sugar, salt and pepper. Seal and shake to combine. (I forgot to shake the dry ingredients before adding the chicken and it definitely would have helped--some nuggets ended up with more pepper, others none, etc. Whoops!) Place about 2 inches of oil (we used way less....more like an inch) in a medium deep pot. Over medium high heat (more towards the high side) heat oil until hot. Using a fork or tongs remove cut chicken from milk mixture and place in the flour mixture. Seal and shake until nuggets are completely coated. Place about a 6-8 nuggets into hot oil and let them cook until golden brown, turning half way through once the edge of your chicken starts to turn white. About 1 minute each side. (Mine took longer, probably because my oil wasn't hot enough. Or maybe I was just overly cautious about letting it cook enough.) Always double check to see if any chicken you make is cooked through. I always just make a tiny cut to see if it's pink. Remove and drain on a paper towel. (Lemme tell ya, that paper towel was nasty! I figure these must be healthier than actual fast food nuggets, because those surely aren't drained.) Repeat until all nuggets are cooked.

This was a really fun, pretty quick meal to throw together with some frozen, baked french fries and green beans! A. helped me out a bit throughout the frying process, and we had a good time figuring it out together.

Here was my final product:

 You can see the progression of color from left to right. Ha! We had a bunch left over, and they were okay reheated for lunch, though obviously not crispy anymore. This will be a fun recipe to add to my repertoire.

I'm linked up to the Tasty Tuesday Parade of Foods at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam!

A couple of weeks ago (well, okay, a month…it was on New Year’s Eve) A. and I used a Groupon that I had bought back in October to take a tour of Red Brick Brewery. They’re the oldest craft brewery in Atlanta, and their slogan is “beer from around here.” I am not a huge fan of beer usually, but I am always game to try new flavors, and I thought it would be fun to visit this local landmark. The brewery itself is tucked back behind a residential neighborhood at the end of an almost industrial dead-end–kind of a strange setting! But they had everything set up really well for a fun Saturday afternoon.

The deal with the Groupon was a tasting package, complete with souvenir pint class and coozie (which they were out of, so we should be getting in the mail sometime). Well, the “tasting” tickets were each an entire pint, and we had 4 each! I only used three, and on the third I asked for just half a glass. Needless to say, I was a little happy. But it was fun trying their unique offerings! I had a blonde, a brown, and their signature Laughing Skull Amber Ale. I think the blonde was my favorite (it was pretty light and insipid, which is a good descriptor in my beer vocabulary), but the brown had its merits too. We were a little disappointed that we couldn’t buy any to take home with us, but I guess it requires a different sort of license to be able to sell.

Since they obviously can’t expect people to down 4 beers in a short period of time, the brewery provides some entertainment while you taste and wait for the tour. Some nights they have trivia or live music, but Saturday afternoons are game time! They had cornhole toss set up outside (even though it was January it was 70 degrees and sunny, so that was fun) and ping pong and darts inside. They also had some tables where you could just sit that were practically on the brewing floor.

The actual brewery itself isn’t much to look at–it’s basically a big open warehouse with lots of different vats and barrels. So the “tour” didn’t move a whole lot, as you might expect a tour to, but it did  include a lot of interesting information about the brewery’s history and the process of making beer. One fun fact I learned is that yeast begins to mutate if you let it feed on gluten for too long, so brewers have to keep a careful eye on it and discard the yeast when it starts getting “funky.” However, Belgian beer has such a unique taste because they have, over the years, embraced the “funk” and let their yeast mutate away! Red Brick is still a relatively small operation, partly due to the weird liquor distribution laws in Georgia. They have a very small bottling operation that can only do 6 bottles at a time! So any time you see Red Brick in a store, you know it has been bottled practically by hand.

 Pardon the terrible quality iPhone picture. The lighting was not so good, and we had an older (probably drunk) man snap this for us. Let’s just pretend it was Instagramed and is supposed to be grainy like this!

All in all, it was a really fun afternoon, especially with the Groupon that only cost $15 for both of us to enjoy our beers! I would do this visit again with out of town friends who were particular beer enthusiasts, because it’s a really neat segment of Atlanta history.

Cheers to a good weekend and fun times for all!