Thursday night's dinner

Southwest Cobb salad recipe from Cooking Light magazine

my attempt at the cobb salad (romaine, spinach, cannellini beans, bacon, chicken, avocado, parmesan, pico de gallo and green onions)

I got the idea of making this flatbread pizza with arugula, prosciutto & parmesan from this blog.

 

 

 

I really enjoyed dinner tonight. It was really easy to make and healthy too. I think the salad came under 300 calories. I thought I would get sick of eating salads for dinner every night, but so far I haven't gotten tired of them. I ran out of bottled salad dressing a couple of days ago so I've been making my own from scratch and I actually prefer homemade rather than store bought. You can find the recipe for the salad here.

Terrariums

Rolling Greens Nursery held a free terrarium workshop this past Saturday. It was a lot of fun picking out the vase, the plants, arranging them and learning how to take care of them. It was therapeutic too...it allowed me to escape for an hour from the studying I have to do for Kinesiology. I think terrariums make lovely gifts because they're beautiful to look at, it's assembled by you and they're low maintenance. 

I had to add this picture because I look super cheesy

Gathering plants and succulents for the terrarium.

Instructor is giving me suggestions on other things I could add to the bowl.

starting to come together

Tim's terrarium =)

somebody likes my terrarium, hee hee

Our terrariums at home

Dodger Stadium Flea Market

I missed church last Sunday to go to the flea market at Dodger Stadium. I saw a stainless steel mid century ceiling light fixture that was beautiful and in really good shape, but since we're renting right now it didn't make sense to get it. It looked similar to the picture below. Imagine light bulbs screwing on to each end, cool no?

In front of the Ludo Bites truck

fried rosemary and sea salt chicken with lavender honey buttermilk biscuit

mochi wrapped in bacon with ponzu dipping sauce

Cool Haus ice cream sandwich truck

Tim making the sauce for the rigatoni pasta dish

salad

I'm trying to eat healthier, at least for dinner. Yesterday I had the buffalo chicken salad and today I made the shrimp, mango, and avocado salad with sweet chili-ginger vinaigrette. The recipe comes from Bon Appetit magazine. 

Recipe:

• 1/2 C asian sweet chili sauce
• 2 T unseasoned rice vinegar
• 1 T minced peeled fresh ginger
• 12 peeled cooked large shrimp with tails left intact (about 8 oz)
• 1 large mango, peeled, pitted, cut into 1/2 inch-thick slices
• 1 avocado, halved, pitted, peeled, cut into 1/2 inch-thick slices
• 1 large head of butter lettuce, leaves separated 
• 2 green onions chopped

Whisk first 3 ingredients in small bowl; season with salt and pepper. Place shrimp in medium bowl. Add 3 tablespoons vinaigrette; toss to coat. Divide lettuce among plates. Alternate mango, avocado, and shrimp atop lettuce on each plate. Drizzle vinaigrette over.Sprinkle chopped green onions on top. Enjoy!

nothing in particular

Don't be alarmed, I'm trying to show you the new eyeliner I got. =)

1. New eyeliner from Chanel, Cassis, 2. Chanel Particuliere nail polish mixed with Chinchilly from Essie, 3. buffalo chicken salad, 4. Image from The Sartorialist

I've been looking for Particuliere from Chanel for a long time and finally Nordstroms got 6 of them a few days ago. I actually purchased one about a month ago, but I bought it for someone else. Anyway, it's an earthy mushroom color, slight grey, slight beige/brown. I also got a deep plum colored eyeliner, an alternative to black eyeliner. Well, what happened was I was feeling pretty down couple of days ago and decided that I needed to go to Zara to find the blush pink blouse from the 4th picture above. I knew it would be sold out, but I just had to go and check. Of course it was sold out and although I knew I wouldn't find it, it still bummed me out. So, it just added on to the funk I was already in and I needed to remedy that by buying the nail polish and the eyeliner. Does that make sense? Haha, I know I shouldn't be making myself feel better by retail therapy, but sometimes it does the trick.

About the eyeliner...I got it because it was part of retail therapy and the saleslady said it would make the brown in my iris standout. I don't know if it really does that because the plum shade of the eyeliner is pretty dark, very close to black. The thing I do like about it though is that it doesn't smear and that's a good thing in humid hot weather.

hollywood bowl 7.18.10

handmade cloth napkins- I LOVE IT!

Zooey Deschanel

 

We went to Hollywood Bowl on Sunday and saw The Bird and The Bee, She and Him, and The Swell Season. Zooey Deschanel, geez she is just uber cute! I love her style and quirkiness. I wasn't expecting much from The Swell Season, but man...they blew me away. It was the perfect date for my husband and I, good food, music and wine. I also randomly ran into some classmates that night which was a nice surprise. =) 

Mapo Galbi, Koreatown

Went to Mapo Galbi this past Saturday with M and I. It's kind of ghetto inside, but the food was delicious. It was M's first time trying some of the different Korean dishes and she definitely impressed me by her willingness to try everything. I think she liked everything, right M? There are some Korean dishes that can smell and appear unappetizing to those unfamiliar with Korean food, but both of my friends that night seemed to enjoy it. It was a fun experience as we talked about food while eating food, haha.

basil

About a month ago I got a basil plant from Trader Joes. I bought it because I thought it was better to have a plant around than to buy basil each time a recipe required it. It adds a nice aroma to our small apt which can sometimes have a foul funk due to our trash can and the old nature of the complex. So far, we used basil from our plant 4 times. 

 1. basil plant, 2. Caprese salad, 3. oven fried chicken (i used cornflakes)

 I've been feeling a little down lately...sometimes I doubt myself and wonder if I made the right decision about things, I know I'm being vague right now, but I'm not ready to share more at the moment.
 

something to think about

First, I'd like to say "happy birthday" to my dear friend Jamie, she turned 29 today. =)


Since subscribing to netflix, Tim and I watch a lot of movies, especially ones on instant play. Some are duds and some are actually quite good. Last night we saw No Impact Man, which is a documentary about a couple that decides to dedicate a year to experiment what it would be like to try to live a life with minimal negative impact on earth. This entailed hand washing clothes with borax and baking soda, eliminating electricity, eating locally, not producing trash, composting, walking or cycling, making their own cleaning products including shampoo, just to name a few. With the BP oil spill and proliferation of global warming it makes sense for us to think about how we can make earth a better place to live, not only for ourselves, but for our children as well. From a Christian standpoint, it makes even more sense to live sustainably and do what we can to perserve God's creation. Here are two verses from the bible about our stewardship of the earth:


"The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." (Genesis 2:15)


"You shall not pollute the land in which you live.... You shall not defile the land in which you live, in which I also dwell; for I the LORD dwell among the Israelites." (Numbers 35:33-34)


After watching the movie, Tim and I had a series of conversation about what we can do to live more sustainably. We found a few areas we could immediately start on such as food, cleaning products and electricity. We're thinking about limiting the use of electricity from 6pm and on at least once a week. We're going to leave the refrigerator plugged in because we don't want to spoil our food, but we won't watch TV, turn on the lights or use appliances. We're taking baby steps and gradually making changes because we want to eventually make them permanent. We have much to learn and by no means am I judging the way others live. I'm simply interested in what I can do and hope that we all take a little time to think about our impact on the environment. 

Sunday Supper at Lucques

Suzanne Goin rocks! She's successful, respected, talented, humble and so so nice. I love that she still works in the kitchen. You can see her (next to my large head) talking to some people at the table next to us as I'm building some courage to ask her for a picture.

I have admired her for some time now and it was a real treat to have met her in person- total surprise, did not expect her to be there. She is everything I hoped and thought she'd be. My culinary goal is to make something out of her cookbook...her recipes require a little more than just following directions. It calls for some knowledge about ingredients, access to ingredients required, time and culinary skills that's more than mediocre. I'm just not sure that I'm ready to take a stab at it. In the meantime there's always Lucques, The Tavern, The Hungry Cat and AOC.

Breakfast

My husband and I like to make breakfast for our OOT guests to show them a little TLC and to make them feel welcome in our home. Breakfast may include any of the following:

1. banana pancakes/french toast
2. scrambled eggs/omelet
3. seasonal fruits
4. spicy sausage 
5. fruit smoothie

and here are some plants and succulents around the apt