A New Month Begins~ Have I Gotten Any Wiser?

At the beginning of last month I did a little "Things I've Learned" wrap up of the month before. I decided to do it again, because after all 30 days have gone by and I do hope I have learned something.

I don't know if I was just not paying attention or if November was a boring month, but I had a hard time coming up with 5 things I learned...

Here goes, as boring as they may be:

1. I do not like pumpkin flavored anything. Apparently the new trend is to flavor everything with pumpkin spice- from coffee to beer (two of my favorite beverages) and I find it all positively disgusting. Please, for the love of humankind, stop doing this Beverage Makers!

2. A ganache is a fancy word for melted chocolate chips. I made a cake this month and did not have all the ingredients to make icing. Upon a quick google search I found a simple recipe to make a chocolate ganache. Who knew it was just chocolate chips and cream? I didn't.

(2a. A side note to the above fact- making a premixed, from the box, cake and covering it in a homemade ganache is a fantastic way to get back into your husband's good graces after you turned all hosebeast on him following a phone conversation with a family member. Displaced Anger+ Guilt Ganache= Marital Bliss)

3. You can't change the way people are, but you can control how you let them affect you. To be honest, this is something I knew in theory before this month- and it is easier said than done. But I feel like an instance in the past few weeks was one of the first times I successfully stepped back from a situation, recognized the craziness of the other person, and chose not to let it affect me. 

4. I cannot rush a story that is begging to be told. This month I tried and failed to write a shorter story to get out quickly. I mean I achieved writing it, but it felt wrong, like I was cutting off my best friend right before she told me the good parts in the story. Thankfully I have some good friends who told me I was selling myself short.

5. Cheap olive oil is sort of gross. Mr. McKay and I love Aldi- do you guys know of these food stores? Everything is super cheap and they have the best cheese. For reals! Their "Specially Selected Age Reserved White Cheddar" is fan-freaking-tastic! Pair that with some cracked pepper and olive oil Triscuits and I am a happy girl. Anyway, we were there cheese shopping and buying tortilla chips, just your basic essentials, and we picked up a small bottle of olive oil. Now olive oil can get sort of pricey, but this small bottle was very reasonable. We thought nothing of it because we had bought some there before, I guess the mistake was we had always cooked with it. On this fateful night I made some dressing with it for a pasta salad. It was gross, to say the least. I guess olive oil- especially when used for a dressing- is not something you want to skimp on. Lesson learned.

There you have it 5 (more like 5 and 1/2) sort of boring things I learned this month.