Sunday, September 27, 2009

Fashion Thoughts

Goodwill necklace, like$3.99?
Thrift store shoes I've had forever (which means I got them back in the day when I had even less $$)
Michael Kors flats I got half off (for about $12) at Buffalo Exchange
My boots mentioned below, Goodwill, $10 maybe?
Goodwill necklace (probably $3.99 or so)

Occasionally I get into these moods where I really want to get dressed up, wear heels, and do my make up all fancy. Unfortunately for me, these don't always hit at the right time (for example, Sunday afternoon), but I generally start playing with make up anyway. Today I attempted to master the smokey eye which I have never been able to get right, and succeeded! Now that I finally have makeup brushes (!), smudging is now doable so I'm pretty pleased. After playing with makeup I decided to do my nails. A while ago I came across a neat little website [http://style.la-mimi.com/beauty/spring-nail-polish-trends-2009/] and decided to check it out again. I went with navy blue nails since mine are a little short right now. They look pretty sweet.

From that site I found [http://thestylishwanderer.blogspot.com/] and [http://www.fashiontoast.com/], both of which I really enjoyed. These got me thinking, yes, here is my point, 1. why am I not frighteningly rich to buy all these awesome clothes and 2. you can totally get what you need to replicate these sweet clothes for quite a lot cheaper.
I really love clothes which is both awesome and dangerous. I happen to be very small so I won't grow out of any of my awesome finds and I have a nice assortment of clothes to wear depending on my mood. However, this also means that things aren't too small and I'm not forced to get rid of anything. Woops! Another dangerous element is that I am unemployed and even when I was, it was generally part time when I was in school. Therefore I had to get really great at sticking to a budget and figure out how to buy what i wanted without the painful price tag. Luckily for me, I learned the value of a great bargain at a young age (thanks Mom and Nana!) so I am all about thrift stores (the kind I'm talking about is not the super-chic-and-waaay-too-expensive-kind that sells all designer stuff at a slightly lower price, no thanks!) and Goodwills. The trick to making thrift stores and Goodwills work is to check the stores frequently and make sure you really want each item. These stores are dangerous because everything is so cheap you can be tempted to buy it because it's only $4.99! True, it certainly might be cheap, but how often will you wear it? I think I'm pretty good about not spending too much on unnecessary clothes (shoes are another story) and my best trick is to think of something else I could get for $5 and make sure that thing wouldn't be better. For example, I could buy the strangely-cool $5 t-shirt or get a cheeseburger, fries, and a PBR on tap at the 'Vern. Tough decision, really.

Probably my favorite thing about thrift stores (besides the obvious cheap factor) is that they often do not have duplicates so no one else will have what you're wearing (of course on the downside, you might not find what you want in your size). I try to pay attention to trends but I don't really follow them exactly--I prefer to pick and choose. For example I love boots, layering, knits, and dark nails, but I'm really not into boyfriend jeans and ripped tights. As you might guess, I like to be original and try to avoid looking like everyone else. I wear what I like. For example, last night I went to a house party and wore: black leggings, black knee-high motorcycle-y/riding boots, a longish charcoal top, a long pearl-and-purple-bead necklace. Here is the point. I got the boots AND the necklace, the two things I got complemented on, at the Goodwill. Score for me! Anyway, that's my point--you can totally do the thrift store thing and get unusual, awesome scores for very little money.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Ways To Not Fidget During An Interview

I would be a lot happier if this were called "How To Do Well In An Interview" but tragically I do not have a job yet, so I'm not sure that title would be qualified. I do, however, have a little practice with interviews. My biggest problem is that 1. I get nervous and then I sound nervous and then I get flustered. Not fun. I also (2.) tend to fidget when I get nervous. Here are my ways of stopping issue #2 and, by stopping, helping issue #1:

-->Wear rings on adjoining fingers. I find it really annoying when my rings touch, or at least unusual. Since I'm not used to metal on metal on my fingers, I am more aware of it and because I am aware of my rings, I am aware of my hands. I crack my knuckles (sorry mom, trying to stop) and play with my rings which I would imagine looks rather unprofessional. When I wear rings that touch, I try not to move my hands so they don't touch, and then, ta dah!, I am not fidgeting with my hands. Same goes for my hair--I don't touch it if I'm not moving my hands.

-->Put on makeup (or pay more attention/put more time into it than usual). You are then less likely to touch your face which is definitely something to avoid. I include lip gloss or lipstick into this category because then you won't lick your lips and be distracted by chapped lips, etc.

-->Wear a watch. This way you aren't looking at your cell phone (my usual watch) and you also can easily keep a eye on time to make sure you don't spend too much time rambling.

-->Bring a notepad and take notes. This gives you something non-fidgety to do with your hands and is likely to be useful.
*Personally I like to write down the position qualifications and what I've done to apply before the interview, as well as a few questions. I've always been one of those people who makes study guides because the act of writing stuff down helps me remember it better. Plus I'm horrible at coming up with questions on the fly.

-->Wear layers and look nice. Obviously you want to avoid sweating (and smelling) or shivering constantly, so layers come in handy. Additionally, I think most people feel more confident and happy when they know they look great (ahem, What Not To Wear...), and I am definately one of those people. I tend to dress according to my moods, but weaning something really nice can definately improve my mood. For example, last week I was feeling rather sick (I think I ate bad turkey the night before) but I had an interview to go to. I alllllmost didn't go, but then I sucked it up and got dressed. I wore a really cute navy blue skirt with a loose pale gold top tucked in and low-heeled shoes. It was a flattering outfit, and one that I could wear downtown wandering around or to an interview (not over-dressed, not under-dressed--always my goal) but it was also really comfortable. I tragically didn't get the job, but I definately felt the need to pull myself together and at least pretend I felt as good as those clothes looked. So, although I didn't get the interview, I also didn't vomit all over the table. Thus, I think it's a worthwhile trick.

Belated BBQ



A few weeks ago we had a rather impromptu barbecue I guess for labor day (although I didn't realize it was labor day until someone pointed that out--yay unemployment!). This was actually a little tricky to pull off since we don't actually have a full-sized barbecue and neither do any of my neighbors. I do have one little tiny barbecue and it turned out one of my neighbors had another little tiny one, so we were successful after all! This plan started with my housemate and a few friends she used to live with and turned into almost all of our neighbors plus a bunch of friends and a ton of food that we ate almost all of.

Since for some reason I know a lot of vegetarians, we had a nice amount of veggies and only some meat. Of course, I'm definately not complaining since veggies are generally pretty awesome, especially the way we did them. My personal bbq favorite (other than meat) is grilled green onions. All you do is chop off the very end of the white part and toss them on the grill. Once they're hot and have grill-marks, eat them.

My second favorite veggie bbq option is grilled corn on the cobb. Toss it on until it's got grill-marks and then eat as soon as you can without burning your fingers. Some people like to butter, salt, and pepper it and then wrap it back up in the husks before grilling, but I don't really think you need to. Put it on the grill in the husk and just add the butter etc when it's done.

I've grown up with barbecued meat thanks to my dad and I still cannot go to a barbecue and not eat meat. It just seems wrong. This bbq proved no different. For my part I made burgers that shrunk into sliders since it was my first time making the burgers and I made the patties too small. Woops. They were still excellent.

Really Good Burgers:
-1 pkg ground beef or whatever you wanna make your burgers out of
-onions
-garlic
-salt
-pepper
-cayenne
-soy vay

To Make:
-wash your hands
-take the meat out of the packaging and put it in a large-ish clean bowl
-liberally salt and pepper it
-crush a few cloves of garlic and add them
-finely chop a little less than half a white onion and toss that in
-pour in some soy vey teriaki sauce--I probably used a 1/4 cup or so to maybe 3/4 lbs of meat?
-mix everything together with your hands until just mixed *Do not over mix
-stick in the fridge until you're ready to make the burgers
*I think making the patties at the last minute likely would keep the meat more moist, but I'm not really an expert so who knows.
-form the meat mixture into rather large patties because they shrink up a lot. To give you a sense of how big, the ones I made were about the size of normal burgers and shrank into slider-sized. Woops.
-Cook for a few minutes per side and cut into one to see how done it is after 3 min or so (depending on how hot your grill is)
-eat immediately on toasted buns with grilled onions on top and ketchup.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

A Note On Yellow Plums


I forgot to mention this when I first discovered it, but I find it so interesting that I will share it with you now: yellow plums go fantastically well with champagne. I should mention that I am very interested in the way that alcohol pairs with food. I love that drinking a certain wine with a specific dinner can actually emphasize the flavors of what you are eating. While I have certainly heard about this, I can't say I've ever had a chance to really taste it for myself since I generally can't afford to go to a restaurant and ask for the wine pairings to go with all of my courses. Sad! However, I did get to experience this totally by accident one evening last year.

It was last fall and cold and rainy. I got back home from class and decided that I really wanted a grilled-cheese-and-tomato sandwich. I only recently discovered how wonderful grilled-cheese-and-tomato can be (the key is great bread and fabulous cheese), thanks to Vault, and decided to attempt to recreate it. I prefer sourdough bread for grilled-cheeses and I butter one side of each and stick it in the pan, add the cheese and tomato, and flip the sandwich when the cheese starts melting and the bread is crunchy. Easy, easy, I know. Here is my point: Trader Joe's caramelized onion cheddar cheese. Man oh man that stuff is amazing. It's fantastic no matter what, but it's especially great with tomatoes. To make things even better, I happened to have grabbed a 6-pack of Drop Top Amber. GUESS WHAT?! It goes perfectly with that grilled-cheese. It was awesome. I took a bite of my sandwich and washed it down with a sip of beer. Everything suddenly tasted better! Anyway this was pretty exciting, but I digress:

As I was eating that plum cake I made a while ago, I decided to have a slice for dessert. I happen to love champagne, and, in order to avoid drinking a whole bottle in a night or risk it going flat, I buy those mini bottles of cooks every once in a while. The same thing happened as it did with the beer and grilled-cheese! Everything suddenly tasted better! That was my exciting discovery.

I should also point out that champagne really doesn't go with strawberries and chocolate (sadly), because the strawberries and chocolate are just too sweet and they bring out the tartness in the champagne too much. If you want strawberries in champagne, try putting sliced strawberries into mimosas. That's ideal.

Useful Decorations


As I learned from my mother, you can never have too much jewelry because it's easy to store. While this may be true that it's easy to store, it's often not easy to find and untangle without proper storage. I have this issue myself, and have finally figured out how to fix it while making use of my lack of real jewelry box. I love jewelry, clothes, shoes, and getting dressed up. Yes, you might even call me "girly." Maybe this is the reason that I love my new way to hang up my necklaces without getting them tangled and simultaneously find them easily: bulletin boards. Now the ones I have happen to be totally cute--they have these big gold frames--and don't look as boring as most do. However, if you are not as lucky as me, you can get one of those really basic silver-framed bulletin boards and hot-glue fake pearls to it. It looks fabulous, I made one for a friend for her birthday one time. Anyway, here is my necklace solution:
-get one (or two in my case) bulletin board
-decorate the frame to your liking
-find a bunch of clear tacks
-stick them in at different heights and hang your necklaces off them
*Naturally, since they are right there in the open, don't use this to display your ruby chokers and diamond pendants. Sadly for me, I am really lacking in the ruby choker and diamond pendant department, so no worries there.

More Farmer's Market Goodness





As I mentioned in my last post, along with the corn, I found green and yellow zucchinis as well as potatoes at the market. I'd forgotten about these for a few days, and when I remembered, I figured I should really eat them as soon as possible. However, being a small person, two zucchinis and several potatoes are a lot for one meal. This led me to think of something I could make that might last for a few days and not get boring or soggy. I decided to make a variation of Smitten Kitchen's Herbed Summer Squash and Potato Torte (http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/07/herbed-summer-squash-and-potato-torte/). The original recipe is fantastic as well, but I decided I was too lazy to look up exactly what she put in it and make it as best I remembered. Plus, I wanted to use up the rest of the artichoke stuffing I had left over.
Zucchini and Potato Torte (adapted from Smitten Kitchen)
Ingredients:
-1 yellow zucchini (sliced into thin rounds--not too thin or they get too mushy)
-1 green zucchini (same as above)
-2 purple potatoes (sliced into thin rounds--thinner that the zucchini since they take longer to cook)
-2 red potatoes (same as above)
-about a stalk of minced celery
-1/4-1/2 a white onion, finely chopped
-a few sprigs minced rosemary
-a few sprigs minces oregano
-a few sprigs minced thyme
-a few spoonfuls of flour
-finely chopped ham (I'm not sure how much I used since I used pre-sliced lunch meat that I had on hand--so a few slices of that, I guess)
-grated Parmesan and mozzarella cheese to taste (depending on how much cheese you want)
-toasted breadcrumbs
-olive oil
-salt n pepper

To Create:
-Preheat the oven to 375/350 depending on how hot your oven gets (mine gets really hot)
-Butter/oil a round 8-9'' cake pan
-Assemble the potatoes in concentric circles until they fill the the bottom of the pan in a single layer
-Do the same with the zucchini
-Sprinkle lightly with flour and cheese--not so thickly that you can't see the zucchini, but enough so you'll be able to taste it
-Sprinkle on the ham, herbs, breadcrumbs, celery etc
-Add salt n pepper to taste
-Drizzle lightly with olive oil
-Repeat until there isn't any more zucchinis or potatoes
-Be sure to save the enough cheese/four/ham/etc for the very top
-Stick it in the oven and cook, covered, for 20-30 min (again, my oven runs hot) and then take off the cover and cook for about 10 min or until you stick a knife in and it goes in easily.
-Let cool slightly and scoop onto a plate, or now that I think about it, maybe scoop it into a bowl!

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

The Joys of Farmers Markets





I love farmers markets for many reasons--supporting local farmers, tasting the products, (often) cheaper produce, and, most of all, finding things you weren't expecting or thinking about getting. There is only of these neat little markets down the street from me (well, quite a few blocks I guess, but totally walkable) and I went a few weeks ago, yes, this is a little belated, sorry! I didn't really go there with a shopping list, I figured I'd wander around and see if anything caught me eye. I *almost* bought a loaf of cinnamon swirl bread but controlled myself. I would've eating the whole thing that weekend, no joke. I have a bread problem where I can eat it any time, any day, every day and never be sick of it. I made my way towards the produce and ended up with some fabulous corn on the cobb, a yellow and a green zucchini, and some red and purple potatoes. I spent lesss than $5! Woohoo! I ate one ear of corn that night--I prefer to roast them at 350 degrees for 25 min or so and then add butter, salt, and pepper. I threw the rest in my fridge and forgot about everything else because I'd bought artichokes the other day. I love artichokes, but I'm totally spoiled because we grow them at my house in California and they are way way better than the stuff up here. I realized this upon attempting to cook them the way we always do at home (put in a pot of boiling water and cook until tender) and they just weren't as good. I then had three little artichokes to somehow use up so I checked out various recipes online as well as in my cookbooks. Here is the result:
Stuffed Artichokes adapted from Steven Raichlen's Big Flavor Cookbook
*His recipe is for 6 but I chopped it down to the amount needed for two. I'm putting in his recipe because that math was tricky and I leave it to you to figure how much you wanna make
-6 small artichokes
-1/2 lemon+1tsp grated zest
-salt
STUFFING:
-1 tbs olive oil
-1 small onion finely chopped (I used white)
-1 stalk celery finely chopped
-1 oz prosciutto finely chopped (I used deli-style ham that I happened to have on hand and ripped it into little pieces til I thought there was enough since I had to guess how much was an oz)
-1 c toasted bread crumbs
-3 tbs minced flat-leaf parsley (I eyeballed it)
-fresh thyme finely chopped (to taste)
-fresh oregano finely chopped (to taste)
-1/4 c grated cheese (parmigiano-reggiano or whatever you like, really)
-salt n pepper

Cut off the ends of the artichoke stems, leaving about an inch. Chop off the top third. Cut the artichoke in half lengthwise and scoop out the choke (a spoon works alright) and put the artichokes in a bowl of cold water w some lemon juice.
When you've finished with all of the artichokes, cook them in about 4 quarts of boiling salted water until tender (6-8 min but you can tell if the leaves on the outside break off easily)
Drain and rinse and put them in a baking dish
For the stuffing: heat half the olive oil in a nonstick pan, add everything but the breadcrumbs and cheese and cook until soft but not brown. Stir in the breadcrumbs and half of the cheese and stir a few times.
Put the stuffing in the scooped out artichokes using a big spoon and smushing the stuffing down so you get a lot in there. Top with cheese and stick under the broiler for a few minutes until the cheese on top gets melted. Remove and eat (ideally with fresh corn on the cob and a refreshing glass of pinot grigio).
*NOTE: be careful not to burn the breadcrumbs.
*ALSO: this is a rather tricky dish to eat since the artichoke is sometimes hard to get out. Don't feel bad if you get it all over your plate, it's worth it!