You Don't Have to Be a Starving Student

I Love Food.

Or rather...

I Love GOOD Food.

Have you ever heard people talk about going to college and be a starving student. It's just one of those things people say (poor college kid, etc). Well, I have learned something about food and grocery shopping. 

Buying junk food is not cheaper than buying healthy in the long run.

Think about it. If you develop the habits now of eating junk all the time, you're going to have to pay the price of poor health and bad habits in the long run. 

But fear not! This is not a scolding post. Rather this is a tutorial on how I am eating fresh, delicious, home-cooking on a strict budget of time and money.

Welcome to my kitchen. :)

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I got a crock pot for Christmas, and may I just say...that is the best thing to give a college student. The whole premise is that you make delicious food by throwing stuff in a pot and forgetting about it. All you have to do is throw the food in the pot in the morning before classes, it cooks all day, and then you just come home and scarf!

This is my tutorial on making a delicious pot roast!

Here's your grocery list:

~~ A bag of potatoes

~~ A bundle of fresh celery

~~ A bag of baby carrots or 2 or 3 large carrots

~~ An onion or a container of chopped onion

~~ A rump roast

~~ Lawry's Seasoned Salt

Just to quickly touch on the ingredients (some of my tips and tricks). Have you recently looked at the price of a 10 pound bag of potatoes? They are insanely cheap. I mean dirt cheap (pun intended)! And so versatile, you can cook billions of things with potatoes. For things like chopped onion or seasoned salt, it seems like such a rip off to buy a whole container from the seasonings section of the grocery store, but you have a few things to keep in mind. First, how often are you going to use it? They are my go-to seasonings for chicken breasts, hamburger patties, etc. So weigh those things. If you really only need enough for this one recipe, most grocery stores sell these products in little envelopes. It just takes a little searching to find where they are in the store. Now for the roast, I bought a 4 pound rump roast for between 11 and 12 dollars. It seemed really pricey for a college food budget, but there are other things to consider. When I bought mine, I went home and immediately cut the roast into four smaller roasts. Then I put them in plastic bags to store in the freezer. In this recipe coming up, I pulled one roast out and used that. The recipe produced three and a half servings for me. Meaning I had a meal and two meals in leftovers. Meaning that purchase of the roast has yielded 14 meals. Meaning, I'm okay with that purchase.

Next up, the actual recipe! Keep in mind, through this process, you really can't mess it up.

The first thing I did was take my roast from the freezer and put it in the crock pot. No, I did not thaw it, I did not put it in the refrigerator the night before, I literally opened my freezer, grabbed the roast, ripped open the bag, and dropped it in the crock pot.

Next, I washed and chopped one full celery stalk and threw it in the crock pot.

I didn't buy whole carrots, I bought baby carrots. So, I didn't measure out how many carrots I wanted. I just reached in and pulled out a handful of carrots and tossed them in too.

Next, I pulled out two potatoes, washed, peeled, and chopped them and then...you guessed it! Threw them in the crock pot.

Once I threw the potatoes in, I added a quarter cup of water to the mix.

The final step is seasoning. The first thing I sprinkled in was 2 tablespoons of chopped onions. I sprinkled it around all through the veggies. The other seasoning I used was Lawry's Seasoned Salt and just sprinkled that generously over my veggies and roast.

Once the lid is on and the dial is set to low, you pretty much just walk away and forget about it for 10 hours. It's that easy!

Now, just for your information there are a couple little variations you can try that also work well. First, if you choose to thaw the meat before hand, make sure you shave between an hour and an hour and a half off your total cook time. Second, you can also set the dial to cook the meat on high for the first hour of cooking. Also remember that if you're cooking for your entire apartment/guests and you want to cook a bigger pot roast, don't forget to increase the recipe accordingly (half a roast will have twice as much as this recipe calls for, full roast is four times as much, etc).

Once the time is up you have a succulent, moist, fall-apart, melt-in-your-mouth dinner.

Definitely disregard the chips (I had a craving) and also, I totally did not need to use that knife. I was cutting the meat with my fork. 

And you have the most delicious leftover lunch ever!! 

Try it. Critique it. Tweak it. It's so easy, even a monkey could make it. Enjoy!!

This is Halloween

Okay, so maybe it's the day before Halloween, but whatevs. :)

When it comes to dressing up...

 

last photo cred to Whimsy Girl Photography

...I'm not the resident expert, but I like throwing something fun together. Also, I'd much rather dress like something from the past, than something that's trendy now. This year I didn't think I'd be dressing up for Halloween, but then my roommates and I got invited to a Halloween party, so I had to come up with something. After much deliberation, and a Facebook shout out I decided on Rosie the Riveter.

source

Not to go all feminist and patriotic on you, but I have always loved this icon! Rosie is the face of a strong America. She is the face of the sacrifices women made to guard the home front and keep this country going so that our boys would have something to come home to all the while manufacturing the machinery they needed to win the war. I mean gosh, can you imagine what we could do with that kind of fire in politics today? All from an ad. 

Anyway, back to Halloween. :)

I give you the tutorial for all things Rosie. 

The Outfit

For this look I used a red knit headband (ideally though you should use a red bandanna, but I was fresh out) to go in my hair, a blue and white polka dot shirt from Old Navy (again though, a denim shirt is more authentic for this look), an old pair of higher-waisted jeans (none of the low rise that I normally wear), grey socks, and white keds. I buttoned all but the top two and bottom two buttons. The top was left open and the bottom I tied in a little knot. In the back you can either roll your shirt tail up a few times toward your body--that way the roll won't show--or you can do what I did, which was to tuck it into my pants. I rolled my sleeves up to just under my elbow, then pushed them up above for the more authentic, bunched look. Also, put a small cuff in the bottom of your jeans (however length will permit). Mine are rolled up twice to make a small 1"-3/4" cuff.

The Hair

For the most authenticity you will want to put your hair up in pin-curls. I found a great tutorial for that on YouTube!

**Disclaimer: This is actually a heatless curl tutorial, but I love this tutorial for pin up curls as well.**

Also, remember that if you choose to use this pin-up curl method, you'll need to first make a poof with your hair/curl your bangs so that you can keep modelling the Rosie the Riveter look. 

If you like MY look, this is what I did.

1. I curled my hair. Had I not warn my hair in a braid that day I would've just used my own natural curl. Basically, you'll just need some kind of curl to make the rest of the hair style easier. I have long hair and sometimes have a hard time getting my hair to hold curls (that aren't the ones I was born with), but I stumbled upon this tutorial that has really helped me!

2. I made a pretty basic poof with my "bangs" (which I actually don't have, but I'm not a hair person so I don't know what that section of your hair would be called). Basically I just separated the front section of my hair, about an inch thick starting right above my right temple and going up across the top of my head and down to that same spot above my left temple. With my comb I teased the hair and then combed the front to smooth it, before finally pinning it in place to create some body. The reason this poof is important is because throughout the night, whether you use a bandanna or a headband, it will be tugging on the front of your hair, if you don't have the poof to keep the volume in the front, you'll end up having it pull your hair tight against your head. Last time I checked, that went out of style with the 90s... Again, here's a great tutorial!

**Just a little side note, I pretty much live off of YouTube hair tutorials, even the ones made by little junior high girls.**

3. Next, I pulled all of my hair up into high ponytail, combing back all the flyaways and hair spraying GENEROUSLY. This part you actually want all of your hair to be tight against your head. Make sure there are no bumps or loose spots. I mean tight!  

4. The last step might be kind of confusing because I just made it up. I'll explain it and then maybe in a few days I can through together a quick hair tutorial video:

If your hair is like mine, it's very bouncy and full and fun after it's been curled with a curling iron, so you probably have a pretty full, fun ponytail at this point. All I did was start taking curls and pinning them all over around the ponytail to make what almost looks like a bun, but it's big and full. On me it probably had a six inch diameter. The closest I can illustrate it for you is in this tutorial, but skip to 3:43 and watch that "Arranging the Curls" section. See how some of her ends are just hanging out? That's good! I reiterate what she said, "Don't get too perfect with it!"

5. Finally I just slapped on the headband right behind my bang poof. I secured it with some bobby pins behind my ears, and directly below the bun.

The Make-Up

 

This was arguably the most fun part for me. I loved going all out. So, again I'm falling back on a tutorial here. A few tips though, you can use a fake eyelash if you want to, just not too huge, this should still be old-timey. Also, the eyebrows took my a few tries to get right. Follow the tutorial's curve exactly, because if you curve the brows too much or too little, it looks really bad (I got a little crazy with the eyebrow pencil and had to redo it a billion times). This is the exact tutorial I used:

And so, there you have it!! 

A simple, cost effective, meaningful, DIY Halloween costume!! Have fun with it, tweak it, and most of all...TRY IT!! 

Happy Halloween!!!! :)

Love,

Rosie the Riveter, the Minions, and The Cartoon Artist