Pink & Blue

May is a busy month for my family. My sister, mom, grandfather, and myself all have birthday's almost within a week of each other. Over the holiday weekend we were finally able all to meet up for dinner here in Boston. At dinner, my grandmother ordered one of the restaurant's usual salads with poached salmon on top. Due to the huge portions, I was able to take home about half of her left-overs. I decided to get a little creative for dinner last night and this is what I came up with.

Salmon & Crumbled Blue Cheese Pitas
1/4 lb Poached Salmon
1/4 cup Crumbled Blue Cheese
Romaine Lettuce
Chopped Celery
Craisins
2 Pitas

Fold up pita bread like a hard shell taco. Pack in lettuce, half of the salmon, and half of the blue cheese. Top with some chopped celery (for crunch) and craisins (for a sweet taste). Enjoy!

Good luck to Kristen on part three of her CPA exam today! Since she is the reason I started this blog only fair to wish her some luck!

The Charlie Card

There is no reason not to get a Charlie Card. Whether you live in the city or you are just visiting, you WILL save money! Charlie Cards are free and you can get them at any T stop at the assistance booth. See the below table showing your savings:

You can load up money at any of the ticket kiosks or if you register your card online at the MBTA website from your home computer. Money stored on your card will not expire and when traveling at peak hours, its faster to just tap your card. If you are a regular commuter, check out monthly/weekly/daily passes for additional savings. I just got my June monthly Link pass which gives me unlimited Subway and Bus rides for $59. That means as long as I travel back and forth more than 17 times in the month I am saving money, and with a daily commute I am golden!

Add some plastic to your wallet and you'll add some savings too! Get your Charlie Card today!!

For more information check out: http://www.mbta.com/fares_and_passes/charlie/

Dessert is Delicious

Yesterday was my 23rd birthday and one of my roommates is a big fan of making homemade ice cream cake. I thought I would share some pictures. Thank you Val it was quite delicious!!!

Layers:
Crushed Oreo Crust
Coffee Ice Cream
Brownie
Cookies & Cream Ice Cream
Oreo's and Chocolate Covered Espresso Beans

Grocery Shopping

Pay attention, grocery shopping adds up quickly! In Boston, there are lots of options for your food shopping, but they all depend on how much money you are willing to spend. For the most part each store carries if not the same, very similar products.

For pricier stores you have specialty food shops and Whole Foods. Whole Food's 365 brand, which is their private label, is not outrageous compared to your standard food stores. Next you have Trader Joe's which has very reasonable produce/fruits and their own label, but other items can be expensive. Then comes Stop & Shop and Shaw's where unless there is a sale, nothing to write home about. My supermarket of choice here in Boston is Market Basket. Market Basket carries all of your basics, with a full fish/meat/deli counter. They are also constantly restocking produce and their perishables due to such high shopper volume. They have the lowest prices in the city for all your essentials and you will see noticeable savings in your monthly food budget if you make the switch to Market Basket.

Convenience and location is a major factor when deciding where to go food shopping. Depending on availability and flexibility in your schedule to make it to a Market Basket location, I would at least keep it in mind. I have found that because of the savings, any hour on any day the store is busy. For me, any way to save some money is a plus. Why would you pay $6 somewhere for the same item $3 somewhere else??

Dinner, That's A Wrap

Simple yet elegant...well at least quick and easy! Wraps are my go to for an easy way to make a meal. Roll them up and you have a sandwich wrap, fold them in half and you have a quesadilla. Tonight I chose to go for a BBQ Fish Quesadilla and here's how I did it:

1 Whole Wheat Wrap
8 Fish Sticks
1/2 Tomato (sliced thinly)
1/8 Cup Sliced Red Onion
1/4 Cup Mexican Mix Shredded Cheese
BBQ Sauce - to your liking
Canola Cooking Oil Spray

Cooking Directions:
Bake up the fish sticks to the manufacturer's specifications (8 minutes on each side at 425 degrees - pretty standard). While they are finishing up on the second side, heat up skillet to Med/Low heat,  spray on the canola oil, and drop in your wrap. Distribute your shredded cheese mix and cover half of the surface of the wrap. Sprinkle then your sliced tomato and red onion. While the cheese is starting to melt down, the fish sticks will be ready from your oven/toaster oven. Take them out and cut into thirds. Add them on top of the cheesy tomato/onion mix, sauce to your liking with your choice of BBQ sauce, and fold over the non cheesed half of the wrap. Cook the wrap on each side to your personal level of crispiness. Remove from skillet, cut into thirds, and that's a BBQ fish stick quesadilla!

It's All About Who You Know

No matter where you are in you are in life, in school, looking for work, or employed networking is key. As a enthusiast of social media I enjoy spending time checking my Twitter timeline or Facebook newsfeed but nothing is more key than professionalism. Remember that everything you post may be visible to others, and can be shared via word of mouth or screen captured and spread on. What you choose to say or post is up to you, but be mindful of potential impacts. Nonetheless the true meaning of this post is how to network yourself in the most professional manner.

In my opinion LinkedIn is your best bet. Create your profile in full! The more action key words the better and if you are job seeking recruiters can see completeness percent. In my short gap in employment I was contacted by recruiters based solely on the information I had provided on my LinkedIn profile, so yes you may even gain employment offers without actively perusing them yourself! Load up all information that is relevant to your professional life. I would recommend only linking websites or social media profiles if everything posted there is at that same level of professionalism, if not don't put yourself at a disadvantage and assist those recruiters in finding a potential hire damaging decision.

Once you have loaded up all your internships, work experience, skills, education, groups/activities, etc...connect with everyone you know! Connect with your peers from school, colleagues, higher-ups in your company, family friends, your parents friends...but at first limit your connections to people you actually know and that know you. Once you start networking yourself in person, via email, or phone conversations then outreach to those you haven't met in person yet.

You are your best marketing officer. Every chance you get to meet influential people regardless of their industry you should introduce yourself and get their contact information. If you have a company business card give it to them, if you aren't working its not a bad idea to print up some for yourself (there are plenty of websites like Vista Print where you can get 250 cards for under $10) so they have your information. Find them on LinkedIn as soon as possible so you are fresh in their mind when they see your connection request. Today WHO you know is more important and can be more helpful than WHAT you know. That is not to say don't try hard in school or at the workplace to continually grow your skill-sets, you need the foundation to have intelligent conversation and get the job done. What I mean by that is the more marketable you are with the network associated with you, is an intangible asset of tremendous worth.

Market yourself, introduce yourself, document all of your achievements, add bullet points to your job descriptions, and be proud of what you do! If you don't have a LinkedIn profile I strongly suggest creating one, if you have one and it's not 100% complete add those last bits of information! Networking is key, associate yourself with great people and make yourself a must-have connection for other people's networks!

For more information on the benefits of being found on LinkedIn my friend Sarah Mitus (www.SarahMitus.com) created a PDF download which is a great read! Check it out: How-To-Be-Found-On-LinkedIn.

Also feel free to check out my LinkedIn profile as a reference when creating yours, located here.

Lunch in a Crunch

For me three meals a day is a must. Some people can skip them but if I am hungry I can't focus on anything else. So here is a cheap and easy meal that will last a few days.

Micah's Chicken Salad:
1 pack of Chicken breasts (3)
1/4 Red onion
1/4 White onion
3 tbsp Canola oil

1/8 cup Green onion
2 tbsp Mayo
1/8 cup Craisins

Directions:
Dice up the chicken breasts into small chunks, I made ~ 8 chunks per breast. Mix chicken, half of your red onion, and all of your white onion with the canola oil in a bowl. Let this sit for 5 minutes to soak up the oil. Then pour into a skillet pan (image bellow is rare chicken) and cook up until chicken is no longer pink in the inside.

Once the chicken is cooked thoroughly allow to cool. I have always discarded the original onion cooked up with the chicken because the flavor has been infused into the chicken in the cooking process. I then take the cooked chicken and dice up into smaller bits. I chop up the remaining red onion and green onion and place into a bowl with the chicken. At this point you may add the Craisins and Mayo into that mixing bowl and mash everything up.

At this point you can serve the chicken salad however you want, in a wrap with lettuce and tomato, on a bed of lettuce as a salad, the possibilities are endless depending on how creative you would like to be. Today I was in the mood for a bagel so I made myself a chicken salad sandwich on a bagel accompanied with a Chobani yogurt for a nice complete meal. All your costs for materials involved in making the chicken salad will come to ~$14 but you'll have servings for at least 3 meals!

Enjoy and Bon Appetit!

The 411 on the Guy from the 401

So this is my blog! I am a soon to be twenty-three year old guy born and raised a Rhode Islander, Barrington to be exact, who moved up to Boston last June. I am a proud graduate from the College of Business at The University of Rhode Island with a degree in Finance and the Honors Program. I am the current financial and operations executive officer for The Shirt Guys which is a custom screen printing/embroidering business which serves the greater Boston area and will soon be expanding out all over the country. In addition to my corporate job I am a waiter at a brand new restaurant in Beacon Hill called The Tip Tap Room. I plan on going back to school for my masters in business focusing on management and down the line opening up my own consulting company.

I am a active tweeter (@poloreppresent) and find humor in almost anything. I enjoy playing sports (specifically downhill skiing, golf, softball), designer clothes, imported cars, investing money, fancy food, and SHOCK cheap beer! I prefer college sports to professional and reruns of Seinfeld to the majority of new TV today (that being said I do watch a lot of TV when I do have the time). I love love love my friends and family, they are constantly inspiring me to be great and do big things. I live life with an open mind and know that there are many opportunities and the only way to capitalize on them is to give everything a fair and equal shot. I hope this blog can provide some tips, fun pictures, and insights into the mind of a twenty something - single - and on a budget. Enjoy!!