Welp, the day has finally come.

     I quit my job today.  Nothing dramatic happened, like a few people have assumed.  It was just time to move on.  I'll miss you, Hot Topic family! RIP job, 2008-2011.

Post-Easter detox day three and one looong update

     As I mentioned in my last post, this week I'm being a total kiss-ass to my own body after totally gorging it all this past Easter weekend.  I guess I almost always eat extremely healthy, but I'm trying to keep it to eating ONLY extremely healthy for now.  That means a whole lotta theeese

                                                                       and some-uh theeeese

                                                                        and even some of this!

     To be perfectly honest, I'm not huge on soymilk in general.  Aside from chocolate.  But for some reason, one day last week I had a strange urge to pick some up.  I was at the only store between wherever I was leaving and home, and they didn't carry the brand of rice/almond/soy/etc milks I usually buy for supercheapz at Trader Joe's, hence this one of the overpriced variety.  And the fact that I brought home the Omega-enhanced type was purely accidental.  However, I was actually really pleasantly surprised at the taste.  This kind seemed to have a creamier, more pleasant taste than regular.  Or, probably, I was just imagining it.
     I didn't really have a full meal yesterday, I was really busy and shamefully relied mainly on bits and pieces.  My dinner was basically this-

 A rice cake with some salted/lemon juiced avocado, with a pear sprinkled with salt and cinnamon (DON'T JUDGE ME!).

Going backwards to Monday, which was a very pretty day.  I guess Monday's dinner was similar, although my lethargic ass put just a bit more effort into it.  I had a sandwich.  Smoked Tofu and some half-assed yet delicious guacamole. 

                                   (just a nice photo of the trees behind our back yard, near sunset)
Later on my mommy made me some yummy vegetables in plain tomato sauce.  I don't usually like pizza or pasta sauces because I hate the combination of seasonings like oregano with the concentrated tomato flavor, so plain was lovely.  Was gooood.

 Dessert (prior to my surprise veggies) was a mashed up, very ripe banana mashed with some cocao powder and lots and lots of cinnamon.  Might look kinda bleh, but this stuff was good.

     Today I worked my butt off all day cleaning, and during the afternoon mostly just snacked on fruit.  For dinner, though, I put together another nice plate of veggies-

Mushrooms, zucchini, eggplant, garlic and spinach sauteed with toasted almonds, sesame seeds, lemon juice and cayenne.  With this I had a bowl of tomato (fresh and sun-dried), avocado, garlic, and feta (all from TJ's, all awesome)

                                                                      God, I'm adventurous.
 
     Dessert was strawberries and cantaloupe over some Greek yogurt mixed with cocao and cinnamon.  Trend here?  Gosh, I loves me some cinnamon..
     And going back about a week or so, I tested a recipe from my cookbook baby.  It was a polenta-pear cake, and the recipe itself was almost entirely vegan, which I quite liked.  The cake was delicious, but the texture was all...awful.  I'm not gonna tell you the stupid mistake I made, though. 
     Ok, I will.  I didn't use instant polenta.  I used..regular polenta.  Go on, mock me. Here it is, anyway, before baking, while baking and the finished product.

     Speaking of baking, yesterday I hung out with a good friend of mine and we made snickerdoodles and chamomile cookies.  Not EXACTLY detox, buuuuut hey.  The chamomile ones were awesome, I love the idea of cooking/baking with tea. 

     And one more thing- my thoughts go out to those affected by the tornadoes all over the side of the country over the past few days.

A slighlty belated very Happy Easter!

     Only slightly, only slightly.  I, for one, had a great past two days.  Yesterday began with a nice breakfast with my mom and my boyfriend (and early Easter Baskets), and ended with my family's early Easter dinner.  Today we visited my boyfriend's Grandparents and then headed over to his family's for their Easter dinner in Easton.  Totally worth the hour and a half drive, even over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in a storm.  I love those people.
     Needless to say, I haven't really had the time or need to cook all weekend.  Hand-in-hand with that is the fact that I definitely haven't been eating in a way that makes my body happy, although this holiday has been DELICIOUS.  So tomorrow begins some serious detox.
     Happy Easter, everybody!

Mr. William Donald Schaefer

     I know it's a couple of days late, but I really would like to send a shout-out to a man who was an amazing leader, who made an immeasurable impact on the city and state where I've grown up, Mayor/Governor/Comptroller/Awesome dude William Donald Schaefer.  I'm not old enough to really remember him being in office, and I wasn't even born when he began changing, really helping to DEFINE the city of Baltimore forever.  But when I look around the city, I'll always know who the man was who brought so many things in it to reality.  The Harbor Place, The National Aquarium, and so many other landmarks wouldn't have been possible without Mr. Schaefer,  and I know that just by being him, he impacted countless lives (and communities) for the better.

Rest in awesome peace, Willie-Don.  And thank you.

Antipasto, or something like it.

     It rained for the better part of today.  I couldn't enjoy any luscious sunshine, so  after running a couple of errands (including taking care of something that may or may not bring some big changes to my life for the better) and cleaning my ass off, I had nothing to do but, of course, cook.  This was alright, I needed some time to myself in the kitchen.  Actually, I stretched out the cooking time for everything I made just to pass the time.  So anyhow, I decided to put together a nice plate of assorted roasted veggies, a la that awesome antipasto plate I sometimes go to Bertucci's to waste money on (extra asparagus instead of the prosciutto, please!)  Here's mine.

Roasted yellow pepper, mushrooms with minced garlic, garlic cloves, carrots, eggplant, mozzarella and, in the middle, homemade dill hummus.  It looks good, but for some reason nothing on this plate wound up really resonating with my moody taste buds, aside from the garlic.  The garlic was perfect.  The eggplant was pretty good too, I guess.  The closest I've come to getting that texture I've been striving for. Not even the usual tomato/avocado/garlic salad I've been so fond of lately had me feelin' the love.  Sad.
     Just for funsies, here's some photos of the befores:

Hummus, pre-blending.  It needed, dare I say, more lemon.

     Dessert was an apple, a lemon zest Luna bar and a Cadbury Egg, which felt like a splurge, but hey.  It wasn't until about a half hour before sunset that the sun actually APPEARED.  Lame. 
     In the next couple of days I'll be testing a pear-polenta cake that I've had my eye on for forever, and that I hope is good enough to bring to Easter with my family, and maybe even my boyfriend's.  The recipe is from my favorite British-ass vegetarian cookbook, my BABY, which at the moment is being borrowed by my best friend.  YOU BETTER KNOW I TRUST YOU, EMMA! That is all.

Okay dinner, "Fried" okra, and SEVERE OVEN-BURNS D:

     Dinner tonight was sub-par-  roasted veggies, grilled plain smoked tofu, and a (actually really good) mixture of tomato, avocado, TJ's marinated artichokes, home-made croutons, fresh garlic, feta and dill.  Ok, actually it was awesome, and I really should have just made that dinner alone.  I should really just eat this every day. Hmm. 

 For dessert, I topped a piece of bread with Nutella, sliced apple, crushed cardamom and cinnamon, and then stuck it under the broiler for a few minutes.  Eet was gooood.  The Nutella soaked deep down into the bread while the bottom still stayed crunchy, and something about the warm apples went really nicely with the sesame seeds coating the crust.

The photo is yellow, I know.  But now for the AWFULNESS!  Upon hurriedly attempting to give my vegetables a stir before they stuck desperately to their foil, I moved my right arm just a BIT too ambitiously and burned the SHIT out of my inner-elbow on the partially-open oven door.  It hurt. like. a. bitch.  The pain has dulled a bit after several hours (and a nice rest on a bag of frozen edamame), but still, I feel like such a victim D: Just look!

The burn is actually worse than the photo makes it look, I assure you.  Send some pity to my daft, culinary burn-prone ass, won't you?  Don't make me take photos of my caramel scar!

     Moving on. Or rather, moving backward.  Yesterday my boyfriend and I went to an awesome coaster-nerd meet-up at Hershey Park,  and we ate lots of junk-food, and he had to drive home because I was coming dangerously close to falling asleep early on in the 1.5 hour drive home.  So, needless to say, no cooking.  Saturday, during the crazy rain, we went out for food.  Sooo, no cooking then either.  But I DID manage to try something new on Friday.
     I've had this package of frozen okra sitting around in the freezer from my recent okra phase, and I basically really just wanted to make it go away.  I thought I'd try breading it with panko and cayenne (and nothing else), figuring the slimyness miiight just function like a good eggwash.  Even after crushing the panko up real nice, it only stuck a little well.  Oh well, what can ya do.  Anyway, although sorta naked, they did brown somewhat nicely.  Too bad I keep ruining food for some reason with cayenne pepper, no matter how miniscule the amount.  Why do I do that? 
By the way, I apologize deeply for the crappy quality of the photos on this post.  For starters, my camera did not cost several hundred dollars.  Also, because of the weather recently, the lighting in the kitchen has been worse during the day than it is even at night.
     I had the okra with some nice roasted eggplant, mushrooms and yellow peppers and dolmas from Trader Joe's.  The dolmas were DEFINITELY the highlight of the meal.

     Hopefully I'll be fulfilling my goal of making my own dolmas fairly soon.  Ok, no more typing.  Time to watch me some Harry Potter too late at night.  Peace, people.

Funny pretentious bento lady story

Today I'm hitting up Trader Joe's, one because I need things but also because I need a weekend cheer-up on this glorious, Spring Break Friday  (I have no work until next Friday and this free weekend is a treat).  Anyway, I stumbled across a photo of this new bento box thing they have in TJ's frozen section.  It's pretty.  It looks like this-

(not my photo), and it's probably tasty.  However, it's like seven dollars, and for that I could just make something much more awesome with much, much more volume.  It's cute though! 
     But it reminded me- a few weeks ago I was at the store with my fast food king, non health-loving, ever-begrudging boyfriend, and I picked one of these boxes up.  I looked at it, sort of laughed off the price and jokingly said to him something like "ahh, if only."  Just then, a woman from elsewhere in the isle looks over, BEE-LINES to that particular box, picks it up, and as she walks away, she turns and throws me this unmistakable, SMUG-ass "must be lonely at the bottom" smirk.  I kid you not, it was unreal.  And absolutely hilarious.  I could barely stifle my snorts.

     So yeah, just thought I'd share.  Tonight? TJ'S AND HARRY POTTER! ferthewin.