Happy Birthday Mom!

Gotta start with a Happy Birthday to my Momma!  I wish I was home so I could bake her a big fancy-schmancy cake!  Another Happy Birthday goes out to my former co-worker, Miss Sara!  Hope it was wonderful!

I have been working so much lately with my bug sampling finally in full swing I hardly have time to take a photo of the day, so heres a work photo because thats my whole life these days.  This is the river I spent 9 hours playing in today...not so bad when you consider most alternatives (cubicles don't hold a candle to this!):

 Next I have a semi-recipe for you...well its a whole recipe really, but I just used it to jazz up left-overs.  So a few days ago I made that big bowl of pasta (recipe posted here) which I was hoping would last me through the week so I wouldn't have to worry about any more cooking.  Well it has, but I'm getting a little tired of the same thing for one to two meals a day and I had some left over ingredients I needed to use up to this is what I did:  I sliced and sautéed the remainder on the onion in olive oil, when it was translucent I added a splash of wine and some of the left over veggie broth from the pasta.  I tossed in the other bag of sun dried tomatoes I had bought and let it simmer for a few minutes to soften the tomatoes.  After that I added another can of chopped olives and one of sliced mushrooms, and a fresh farmers market eggplant sliced and then quartered. I poured it all into a wok and added the rest of the chicken broth, cooking it down until there was very little left.  This was good on its own, and would probably make a good side dish, but instead I tossed mine into the leftover cold pasta and tadaaa!  Same flavors, so it all fits, but just different enough to be new.  Also, I dusted it with some crumbled goat cheese just like before and yumm...it did not disappoint.

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