"I'll run in and yell like an elephant, but I might do a duck"

The quote from this week is from Who's Line is it Anyway? How are these girls even alive? I mean really!?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSs7NCWp6kA

Sorry mom! It's all my fault, AGAIN, that it's so late this week. Epic failure. *sigh* Anyway, this week was pretty busy. Lots of fun things went on. I registered for my winter classes on Sunday night. I even got into all the classes I had planned because Brittany had registered for some to save a spot for me. I'm so lucky to have her :). So I got registered for the 10 classes that I'm taking. Total of 15.5 credits. Isn't it awesome being a music major? Hopefully it won't be too much of an overload. I look forward to next semester, because after that I'll be able to apply for the actual music ed program instead of being a "pre-music" major. Woot!

I've finally picked out a piece for my juries (it's like a final in private lesson class). If anyone cares to know it's Villanelle by Paul Dukas. Here's a youtube link if you want to listen to it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8jmxtUGBw0. The performer is Steve Park, the professor at Utah State. Brittany has agreed to play piano for me, the sweet woman that she is. It's hard for her to find practice time, but she's so awesome in being willing to put in the effort. We'll see how things turn out.

Friday, Brittany and I went to the Bean Museum on campus for a biology assignment for me, and biology extra credit for Brittany. There was a show on invertebrates. It was kinda cool. They showed off all kinds of bugs and mollusks and other such things. They had this huge hairy tarantula that freaked out a bunch of people there, and a Madagascar hissing cockroach (you know, the ones that they made the people eat all the time on Fear Factor), and millipedes and centipedes. After that, the presenter decided that the bugs weren't cool enough, so she brought out a California king snake that she showed off. I got to hold it and Brittany touched it at least lol. There was a girl there that was absolutely terrified of all of the specimens. Thanks Brittany for not being like that girl.

Saturday, I went to St. George with the band. We were invited to perform in the high school Bands of America super-regional competition as the exhibition band. Imagine, nine hours on a bus for an eight minute performance. lol It was lots of fun though. The band performed phenomenally, and the crowd was way into it. It made things so much better. Brittany was home all day long by herself, unfortunately. I'll let her blog about what she did then. (Insert Brittany's stuff here when she gets home from work)

Sunday Brittany and I performed "Peace I Leave With You" by Rob Gardner in sacrament meeting. We performed this in Brittany's parents' ward about a year ago, and our bishop mentioned that he didn't want to do an intermediate hymn ever again because there was so much talent in the ward for special musical numbers. It went really well and we both got lots of compliments. I really enjoy performing with Brittany. It always seems to be better when it's with her.

I also had my first rehearsal as ward choir director. What a fiasco! For one, no one seemed to want to come to it. I was told we had lots of singers in the ward, so I'll be making some calls and "inviting" people to come sing. Also, the music that I was trying to work on was voiced, originally, for four-part mens. I had tried to re-voice it, but didn't have time to get it into Finale. So I tried to get the altos to sing bass clef and octave higher, but nothing seemed to work out. Then, I found out that our rehearsal had to be cut short because the next ward's choir was supposed to rehearse. *sigh* oh well, we'll see how it all works out.

Anyway, I have to get to band practice. We are having a concert tonight. This week's recipe is what we call Fried Zucchini Casserole. The original name is Zucchini Rice Casserole, but we decided to name it differently because it reminded us of fried zucchini. Hope you enjoy! Love yall

Christian and Brittany

Fried Zucchini Casserole

Ingredients:

2 lbs zucchini

¼ cup butter

¼ cup vegetable oil

1 ¼ cup white rice, cooked

1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

2 eggs, beaten

1 cup bread crumbs (we used Italian bread crumbs, and it was yummy)

2 Tbs butter, melted

grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to broil setting. Grease a 9x13 baking dish and set aside. Cut ends from zucchini and steam until tender. Dice. Combine butter and vegetable oil in a cooking pot and heat until butter is melted. Add cooked rice and zucchini and sauté until golden, stirring frequently. Stir in the cheese until it is melted. Quickly stir in the eggs, and before they’ve had time to cook in the pot, pour the mixture into the prepared baking dish. Sprinkle generously with bread crumbs, and drizzle with the melted butter. Broil on the top rack of the oven for about 5-10 minutes, or until golden brown and bubbly. Sprinkle each serving with Parmesan cheese, if desired.

Notes:

*We changed the original recipe a lot even before we typed it up for you. The recipe was also originally intended for use with a Dutch oven instead of a cooking pot. We altered it to work with a stove. These are the directions we gave you.

*If you have a rice cooker that has a steaming basket, you could cook the rice and steam the zucchini at the same time. We chopped the zucchini first, then steamed it (so we’d have room in the steaming basket for it). Also, we were impatient for the rice and zucchini to sauté to the “golden” stage (it was taking a surprisingly long time), so we just continued with the recipe before it was golden. It was just fine.

*Interesting tidbit: the original recipe was named “Zucchini Rice Casserole”, but when we tried the casserole Christian exclaimed how much it tasted like fried zucchini. I agreed, so we officially re-named it.