{Delicious Pizza Recipe}

Since I started making meals for two, I have discovered that I really love cooking! It's definitely been a trial and error process, but I discovered a recipe website that is amazing - All Recipes. I got this pizza recipe from there and altered it just slightly. This pizza is packed full of flavor!!! 

Chicken Pesto Pizza with Roasted Red Peppers and Asparagus
   

The final product, courtesy of Rob's camera 

...Ingredients...

• 2 boneless chicken breasts, diced
• 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1/3 cup diced onion
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
•   1 tablespoon olive oil
•   3 tablespoons basil pesto sauce
•  3 tablespoons tomato sauce (I used Classico Tomato and Garlic)
• Vegetable oil spray
• 1 package pre-made pizza crust (I used Boboli's whole wheat pizza crust)
• 1 cup fresh asparagus cut in 1-inch pieces
• 1 cup chopped roasted red bell peppers (drained from can)
• 1/2 cup shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
• 1.5 ounces feta cheese, crumbled

.................................................................................

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees F. Brown chicken with onion, garlic, Italian seasoning, salt and pepper in olive oil in a medium, non-stick skillet. Remove from heat; blend with 1 tablespoon pesto sauce; set aside.
2. Lightly coat a 9x12-inch baking sheet with vegetable oil spray. Spread 2 tablespoons pesto sauce and 3 tablespoons tomato sauce over dough, leaving a 1-inch edge. 
3. Arrange chicken mixture, asparagus and roasted red peppers on top. Sprinkle with mozzarella and feta cheeses. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes until cheeses melt and crust is lightly browned.

Happy One-Year Anniversary!!!

On February 21, 2010, Rob and I celebrated our one-year anniversary. Cannot believe it's been a year already! And what an amazing first year of marriage...

It's funny how girls always think about the person they're going to marry, or at least I did. I was telling Rob the other night how I always pictured a kind, gentle guy who would be tall, dark-haired and handsome, just like him. Or maybe this is how every little girl pictures their future husband. We were lying in bed talking, just about to go to sleep, and I told Rob that I wanted us to remember this moment for the rest of our lives.  This moment where we were young and in love, living in a big city by ourselves, and in our first year of marriage. I made him promise that he'd always remember us just like that, no matter how old and gray we get, and no matter how what the future holds for us...

Here's some pics from our anniversary celebration. In memory of our South American honeymoon, we ate a fabulous dinner at Fogo de Chao, a Brazilian churrascaria steakhouse. We were so full it was seriously painful! We drank a bottle of Salentein, an Argentine red wine, which we bought on our honeymoon in Argentina and lugged in our backpacks all the way back to the USA. We also ate our wedding cake topper, which had been taking over our freezer for a year. I thought it would be horribly freezer-burned, but it turned out to be really good!

The top of our {wedding cake}

Yay for 1 year!

Steamed!

Oh my goodness...I'M A TERRIBLE BLOGGER! As predicted, my intern year has been crazy, and I haven't been updated this blog AT ALL! So, I'm on vacation right now, and I've got time to update all our friends and family on what's been going on these last 6 months...

Well, I'm still an intern here in Chicago. My schedule varies a lot - some ward months (i.e. months that I'm taking care of inpatients in the hospital) I'm working close to 80 hours a week, taking call overnight, and working weekends. Other months are more laid-back and similar to a normal 40 hour work week, with no call and no weekends. Despite the hectic schedule, my intern year is much better than anything I could have hoped for. I was able to match into a Transitional Year, which is primarily for doctors who are going into surgical specialties (dermatology, ophthalmology, radiation oncology, anesthesiology), so it's ideally less demanding than a regular intern year. Rob has been working hard in grad school at DePaul University. He studies all day and then has classes 4 hours every weeknight. Our schedules are usually off, so we end up missing each other all day. But, we're able to catch up on the weekends and spend time enjoying the city.

Anyways, the point of this post was to update everyone on the DISASTER that happened this past fall. Rob and I were on a long-weekend trip to Knoxville for the UT-Auburn football game. We got a call from our landlord while we were tailgating with some bad news: our apartment in Chicago had been STEAMED!! Our apartment has old radiators in every room, and apparently when we moved in last summer, the floor cleaners never hooked them up. So, while we were gone, the building manager turned on the heat, and the radiators began blowing out hot steam into every room. It filled our whole apartment and permeated everything. Our landlord was finally called by our downstairs neighbor when his ceiling began caving in. I was freaked out, and mostly worried about our pet rabbit, Captain Doodles. We cut our trip short and rushed home to survey the damage. Sadly, we lost all our furniture, pictures, and books, and most of our other belongings were wet and moldy. Our apartment was destroyed, but somehow, Capt. Doodles survived!

The apartment got so hot that our fan was pointing to the floor!

 

Our brand new furniture...not so much anymore :(

 

Candles melted all over our bookshelf

 We started the long process of replacing everything (Thank God for renters insurance!), bought new furniture, and had all our clothes, rugs, etc. professional cleaned. Because of all the repairs, we had to move out of our apartment for several weeks. We relocated to a hotel downtown, which was actually really nice! It was right off Michigan Avenue, and it was twice the size of our tiny apartment in Wrigleyville. After a month of madness, cleaning, packing and unpacking, and cataloging all our belongings for insurance, we finally got settled back into our apartment. Here's what it looks like now...