Mopey, Mopey, Mopey

Every once in a while I get into these mopey, feeling sorry for myself sort of moods, and I find them really hard to shake off.  Maybe it's the weather, maybe it's just me, but honestly.  What do I even have to complain about? Sure, my life isn't exactly where I wish it was, and I want a lot of things to happen a lot faster than they are, but you know what?  It's not bad.  My apartment is a little bit run down, and it's super cold in the winter because the heaters are crap for crap, and so when we run the shower, boil water, or cook anything, it turns into a sauna and the steam won't go away for hours unless you open up a window, but at least I have a place to live, and clothes and blankets to keep me warm.  My car is a dumpy old rust bucket on four wheels with 175,000 miles on it, but at least it starts and gets me to where I need to be.  By no means is my job my dream job, but they're good to me, and they probably pay me more than I'm really worth to them, and it pays the bills.  I have two little kitties to cuddle with, (even if one does like to pee on everything in the house, including me, which is just about as disgusting as you would expect) and a wonderful husband who loves me no matter how much money we make, or what car I drive, that our TV is probably 15 years old and smaller than the computer monitor, the fact that I am legitimately afraid of ghosts, and that our purple couches don't match the wood paneled walls and matted brown, shag carpet of our apartment.  (Those couches, by the way?  A free gift from friends who care.)  Plus he cleans up the cat messes every time.

I watched a documentary a little bit ago about the Lost Boys of Sudan.  Those men/kids had nothing, and they were still perfectly happy.  And by nothing, I mean they lived in dirt huts and went hungry most of the time.  They were separated from their families, driven out of their homes, and orphaned in a strange place.  How can I even start to complain about anything?  I am one of those lucky few who won the lottery in life.  Parents who love me, friends and family who help me every day and care about me...  It's amazing.  There's nothing to be upset about, not really.  All those little annoyances aren't worth very much when you take in the whole picture.

Besides all of that, feeling sorry for yourself is pretty dumb when 95% of the reason you feel that way is your own fault.  I have goals, and things that I want to do, and I don't ever do them, and, dear readers, this kind of passiveness and laziness on my part needs to end... So my goal is to set some goals, and then complete all of those goals.  I'll get you an update on that, eventually.

Anyway, now for your standard Lauren Blog recipe!

I love some good chicken noodle soup, but the stuff that comes out of a can is horrible, which is why I loved this recipe so hard.  It's creamy, and almost stew like, (or it was when I made it anyway, I don't actually know if it's supposed to be that way, but hey, whatever.) and it was pretty tasty.  I made some changes, but the recipe goes like this:

Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup

Ingredients:

1 ½ c cooked diced chicken breast

14 oz can (fat free) chicken broth

½ can of 10 oz can (reduced fat or fat free) cream of chicken soup

1 c peas & carrots, drained

(¼  t pepper, ¼ t garlic salt) 

2 oz No Yolk noodle

Directions:

Boil enough chicken for 1 ½ cups. Let chicken cool; then dice. Combine

 chicken, broth, soup, peas and carrots, pepper, garlic and salt and bring to a boil. 

 Stir in egg noodles; cook for 5 to 8 minutes, or until noodles are tender. 

Pretty quick, not a ton of skill involved... You just need to watch it to make sure it doesn't boil over, because I didn't, and it did.  Just a heads up.  The only changes I made, if you could call them changes, were adding the whole can of cream of chicken soup instead of just half of it, the whole can of peas and carrots, and twice as many noodles as it actually called for.  The noodle part was an accident, and I don't necessarily advice doing that, because that's probably why the soup turned out stewy.  I ended up having to add a little bit of water back into it so that I could cook the noodles the rest of the way, and I burned the bottom a little tiny bit...  BUT other than that, fabulous.  Haha.  Just serve it up with a baked potato, or some garlic bread, or even just normal bread - whatever you prefer - and bon apetite!