Cuffin Season Update

Yes ladies and gentlemen, cuffin' season is upon us and it's been quite a dosey. For those of you that are unaware of what cuffin' season is here is my defenition.

Cuffin' Season: the season in which everyone is getting coupled up usually happens when the weather is changing and it is getting cold outside. this is usually between late sept- early december.

This happens for plenty of understandable reasons such as it's cold, men produce heat, and it almost a survival mechanism. The cold always seems a bit more bearable when you have someone keeping you warm. This can be both a positive, wonderful, exciting time of year or it can be one stressful continuous flashback of your dating past. I say the latter because ladies, this is when EVERY ex or guy you used to kinda maybe sorta talk to,but nothing really happened, starts to call you constantly. And lord jesus as my witness this is when they get the confidence of an adonis. and if you're not careful they can sweet talk you back into communication without you even remembering the reason you made them an ex in the first place.

On another note, this is also a great time when people can start to build beautiful relationships that can last a lifetime. and honestly who doesn't look forward to the concept of new love.

New love= new hope= new beginnings... and that's all good in my book. And just in case you don't find love this season, don't feel blue. This, just like all other seasons, will come around again in a cycle and relationships are not limited to starting during cuffin season. Unlike most animals, we humans have the luxury to mate year round.

Happy Hunting

-Ms. Foxdale

Must I Really Say it again? Third Wheel = BAD!!!

Brand new city, brand new people, same old shitty situations one faces when surrounded by couples... Now first I want to point out that I am not a cynical and bitter single woman, because I'm not. I am a huge cheerleader for L-O-V-E (picture me here with my pom-poms). I think there is nothing greater than feeling so strongly about the person you're with that you simply want to share that with everyone around you. I get it! BUT, a line must be drawn at some point. Couples really need to understand that although their relationship may be awesome it can be a bit overwhelming for others, especially around their single peers. Speaking as a single, I don't want to see you doing certain things, saying certain things, or even at times being around me. I understand that at times you might think that you need to include your single friends as not to alienate them, but the only real soltion to this is to keep it separate but equal... (please don't look too into this). I know that it may seem more effiecient to kill two birds with one stone and have both parties joined together, but this causes a lack of quality time spent with both. Simply make time for both, there's time with your girls and time with your man, or vice versa. I don't want to make this too long and drawn out, because I've talked on this topic before. I'll just finish off with saying that anyone who tries to force their friends into third wheel situations need to be tarred, feathered, and strung up on display for everyone to see and taunt, but since that would just be all kinds of illegal I think I'm going to develop a website where we can post the couples guilty of this horrible crime.

What's on the menu?

Let's take a trip down south for our next menu item shall we? What's on the menu for this weekend is good old fashioned Southern Gumbo! I was able to snag this recipe from my Papa Ramos and was able to make a few tweeks to it to make it my own. Here are a list of the ingredients you'll need:

chicken broth
tomato paste
celery or okra (depends on personal preference)
water
1 onion
1-2 bell peppers
bacon
kielbasa sausage
chicken (breast or thighs)
shrimp
pork sausage (optional)
hot sauce (any kind will do but i would recommend a cheap Mexican hot sauce with Louisianan)
Cheyenne pepper
5 garlic cloves
salt and pepper
seasoned salt
and whatever other seasoning you would like to use for your meats.

Preparation: First you are going to fry you pork bacon, you do this in order to use the grease to sautee your vegetables. This gives them such a powerful flavor, in fact this may be the most important step in this whole process. Once the bacon is done you take it out of the pan and add your diced vegetables and garlic to the grease and get a nice carmel color on them. (you can either add the bacon to the gumbo or not it's up to you). Once the veggies are done you will add them into a large pot. Next we will prepare the meats you selected to be in your gumbo. Use which ever seasoning you'd like for your meat, simple salt and pepper will be fine since the gumbo itself will already provide a lot of flavor. I chose to bake the chicken, fry the kielbasa sausage in the left over bacon grease, boil the shrimp, and make mini meatballs out of the pork sausage and pan sear those. After the meat is all cooked and cut into bite size pieces add it to the pot with the veggies. Add 1-2 cans of tomato paste and a box of chicken broth. Bring to a boil and stir all ingredients together. At this point you can determine how thick you'd like to your gumbo to be. Southern style tends to be thick, but I like mine to be more of a medium thick soup so I either add water or more chicken broth. (chicken broth adds more flavor than water). This is when we add the spice! I like my food really spicy so I add almost half a bottle hot sauce, but you can add as much as you can handle. Since this recipe has more of a tomato base the longer you let it sit the more the flavor intensifies. This is easily a meal you can make the day before and serve the next day and it also has a great longevity for you college students. You can either serve this meal over rice or corn bread, both are great choices.

If you like this feel free to let me know and you can always feel free to make your own changes to this recipe, for example if you are vegetarian I would add more substantial vegetables like eggplant, potato, tomatoes, spinach, and whatever else you can think of.