Room with a View

Hey guys!  Ready for the weekend?  I started mine last night and it felt glorious.

I'm at my parents' house through Easter, so I got to wake up to this lovely view:

There's not usually a big pile of dirt out there - my dad's filling in a depression in the yard and the dirt still needs to settle before he plants more grass.

A little different from the view at my apartment, but I guess it'll do :)  Growing up, I didn't think too much about the land our house was on, but now that I've lived in 2 cities, I appreciate nature a lot more.

This morning I went to the gym with my mom and got to take two classes!  So fun.  I did zumba first (after making fun of my mom for years about taking zumba, she's turned me into a huge fan) and then an awesome ashtanga yoga class.  With tons of arm work.  Ouch.

We stopped at a local health food store, Earth Fare, and I finally got to try out the kombucha they have on tap.  Looks like a coffee cup, but it was actually filled with delicious and  nutritious kombucha.  Felt kind of like getting a beer in a to-go cup since it was on tap, haha.

I've also been sipping on this new-to-me tea.  I fell in love with Earl Grey tea when my host mom would make it for me during my semester abroad, but I only heard of Lady Grey tea recently.  It's delicious - kind of like a light version of Earl Grey.  Plus it sounds so feminine and pretty, dontcha think?

A lot of times when I'm reading blogs studying I find myself mindlessly snacking even though I'm not hungry. I try to drink tea instead so that my hands have something to do and I'm satisfied without eating empty calories.

I don't know about you, but I can have a tough time coming up with a great gift for someone, especially when that someone is my dad.  If he wants something/ needs something, he tends to just buy it for himself.  And he doesn't like knick knacks or things without a real purpose.

Awhile ago, I saw a LivingSocial deal for a website where you can make your own photo books, and I decided that would be something that could be a great gift.

So this year for my dad's birthday, I put together a book of old slides which my sister had scanned to the computer, as well as a few other photos I had previously scanned, and made this book for him.

Doesn't my grandpa look like a movie star in that top picture with the ukulele?  It's my favorite.  

It was so fun to look through all of the old pictures and put this together.  And surprisingly easy for someone not very tech-savvy like myself.  I had grand allusions of scrap-booking a few years ago (and have the unused supplies to prove it) but I never did get around to doing more than a few pages.  I think the online photo book was a really good alternative.

And because I can't resist, some more nature photos from my parents' yard:

Almost Easter, aka chocolate, time!

The bunnies are ready.

So am I.  I can't wait for the Easter bunny to fill up my Easter basket.  (That cute little chicky is mine.)  And yes, I do still get an Easter basket.  And I love it.

That's all, folks.

Song of the day:

"I'm Good, I'm Gone" by Lykke Li.

Veggie Stir Fry Recipe

While I'm really not very creative in the kitchen, I did manage to come up with a pretty tasty stir fry recipe last night.  It's a delicious meal with minimal prep and clean-up - great for a weeknight.

Veggie Stir Fry

Ingredients:
- 2 tablespoons coconut oil (or other oil of your choice)
- About 1/4 of a large white onion, sliced or chopped
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- Bag of frozen stir fry vegetables
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
- 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
- 1 zucchini, sliced
- Handful of mushrooms
- About an inch of fresh ginger, minced

First, and this step is very important, put on your apron!

My BFF Maryam made this apron for me - how awesome is that??  And there are owls on it!  Don't forget to cut your head off if you're using the self-timer to take a picture :)

Next, assemble your cast of characters:

Place 2 tablespoons of coconut oil in a wok on medium heat.  After oil has heated up, add onions and garlic, stirring intermittently.  Cover wok with lid when not stirring.

When onions and garlic have become translucent (after about 2 minutes), add the bag of frozen stir fry vegetables and gently break up and stir with spatula.  (My bag contained broccoli, sugar snap peas, green beans, carrots, celery, water chestnuts, onions, and red pepper.)  Cover with lid.

After the veggies have thawed, add the soy sauce, rice vinegar, and toasted sesame oil and stir.  Cover with lid.

Let that cook for a couple of minutes so that the vegetables can absorb some of the liquid.  Next add the zucchini, mushrooms, and ginger.  Stir and cover with lid.  (Do you see a pattern here?  Haha.)

Allow to cook for a few more minutes until all of the vegetables have softened up and have darkened in color from absorbing the liquid, like so:

And there you have it, veggie stir fry!  Pretty simple, yet soooo delicious.

A couple of notes:  I used coconut oil because it is more heat-stable than other oils (like olive or canola), but you can use whatever oil you have on hand.  The great thing about stir fries is that it's very easy to use whatever ingredients you have on hand.  I added frozen vegetables for convenience, but that's definitely optional - feel free to use all fresh ingredients if you wish.  Don't be afraid to omit or add something!  The key is adding the soy sauce, rice vinegar, and toasted sesame oil - they give the vegetables a wonderful flavor.

I ate about half of the stir fried veggies with couscous and a baked sweet potato, with a kiwi on the side.  Excellent meal.  (And the leftovers tasted great for lunch today - even at room temperature!)

I used couscous because I already had some made from my Sunday prep, but other grains like brown rice or quinoa would also work well.

For the baked sweet potato, I scrubbed the potato to clean it off, pierced it all over with a fork, and placed it on a foil-lined baking sheet and baked at 400* for 45 minutes.  (Adjust time according to size of sweet potato.)  I topped it with some Earth Balance and... wait for it... cinnamon!  Shocking, I know.  It was deeeeeee-lish.

I get to start my weekend early!  Since Easter is on Sunday, I drove to my parents' house after my classes today.  I'm hoping to see a lot family and friends - the time always passes so quickly when I'm here.

Countdown to chocolate:  T-minus 2 days!  Woo!!

Oh yeah, one more important step in making your stir fry:

Run - really, run, you don't want to burn the food! - back and forth from the kitchen to the windows to catch the sunset :)

You can also sock skate back and forth, if you wish.  I'm not the only one who still does that, right?  Right??


Song of the day:

"Never Enough" by JJAMZ.  This is kind of a super group of musicians from a lot of other bands: Alex Greenwald of Phantom Planet (my favorite!!!), Z Berg of the Like (great all-girl band), James Valentine of Maroon 5, Jason Boesel of Rilo Kiley (yay!) and Bright Eyes (nay), and solo artist Michael Runion.  This is their first single from their upcoming album, Suicide Pact, which comes out July 10.  I can't wait - judging by this song, it's gonna be a good one, maybe even my go-to album for the summer.  Plus this video is super cool.  Hope you like it!

Gone Fishin'

My meals have been pretty standard recently (last slice of leftover vegetarian meatloaf last night, along with some sauteed onions, garlic, mushrooms, and spinach, oatmeal this morning, and a salad beast for lunch today).  So I've got a couple of snacks to share instead of meals:

I've been trying to have protein after I strength train, and one quick and delicious way to do that is through a protein smoothie.  Yesterday after I got home from the gym, I made a smoothie with 1 cup almond milk, 1/2 T chia seeds, 1 scoop vanilla Sun Warrior protein powder, 1 T natural peanut butter, lots of spinach, a heaping 1/2 cup of frozen pineapple, and a frozen banana.

It turned out to be a very delicious flavor combination.  Yummm.  I'm definitely getting good use out of my new blender.  It is SUPER loud, though - it sounds like a plane is taking off in my kitchen.  Ah well, no complaints from the neighbors - yet - but I won't be making any smoothies for a midnight snack.

Another favorite snack of mine, and a great source of protein, is Greek yogurt (if you didn't already guess that from my abundance of yogurt containers turned planters).  I like to top plain Greek yogurt with some dried fruit (cranberries, blueberries, cherries, goji berries, etc.) and add some dry oats (and I would have added a few chocolate chips if it weren't for Lent!).  Honey + chopped walnuts is also a wonderful combination.  So.  Good.  Random question - has anyone been to Greece?  It's definitely on my list of places to visit - every picture/ movie I've seen makes it look absolutely gorgeous.  Those white houses against the blue sea?  Divine.

My dad recently got to travel to Europe (not to Greece, though) and brought me back an ornament for my collection!

It's a wooden angel from Germany.  Can't wait to hang it on my tree at Christmas this year!

So I've mentioned that I have a bit of a magazine obsession and yesterday I let out of a little sigh when I saw that the postman couldn't fit all of my mail in my mailbox.

Except this time it wasn't my fault - those are all from Restoration Hardware!  Um those are crazy big catalogs, geeze.

This morning I went to the gym for cardio and happily indulged my new-found love of the rowing machine.  It's generally very easy to use, but I still can't figure out the display screen.  I've clicked around and tried to familiarize myself with it, but I don't think it's very user-friendly.  One time I tried out something kind of weird - a fishing game, haha.  I never did figure out how it actually worked. Although I'm sure I won :)  Ha.  And then the last time I used the machine, the display was in German!  And for the life of me I could not change it back to English.  Oh well, maybe I'll learn some German while I'm working out.

I am SO glad that spring is here (knock on wood - I can still see a freak snow storm hitting us this month).  I love seeing all of the flowers and bright green leaves when I'm walking into school.  The tulips are so pretty!

It's a sunny day here, which automatically puts me in a good mood.  Hope you're all having a good day!

Although it's sunny, the temperatures are a little cooler today, which actually makes my view prettier because it's not hazy at all and I can see Lake Erie clearly!

PS If you want to enter a giveaway for an awesome KitchenAid stand mixer, go here!


Song of the day:

A pretty song for a pretty day:  "Dream" by Priscilla Ahn.

When Temptation Comes Knocking...

...I say, take a hike to my freezer.

Last night my neighbor knocked on my door and had a few treats for me (she doesn't know I gave up chocolate for Lent).  So I thanked her and immediately threw all of this into the back of my freezer.  Along with another "hidden" brownie she had previously given me.  Out of sight, out of mind, right?  Let's hope so.

I decided to put something healthy within sight - fresh fruit!

These are my absolute favorite bowls - how pretty are they??  There are 3 larger ones, too.  A lovely former co-worker of mine gave them to me for Christmas one year - so nice!

I ate my last piece of fresh fruit for lunch today, so I stopped at the store on my way home from class and loaded up on pears, kiwis, apples, and TONS of bananas.  The only way I can resist eating bananas when they're fresh in order to freeze them for smoothies and banana "ice cream" is to have loads of bananas on hand.  I currently have 13 sitting on my counter, haha.  I think that'll be enough :)

Although I was running low on fresh fruit, I had lots of fresh broccoli that I needed to use up, so last night I roasted a whole bunch of it.  I used olive oil, per usual, and added something new-to-me:

My family really likes to add meat to pretty much every dish (salad, vegetables, even dessert - mincemeat pie...), and I personally love green beans cooked with bacon.  I thought that using smoked sea salt on green beans might give the beans a flavor similar to ones cooked with bacon, but without having to use meat.  I haven't tried it on green beans yet, but I did try it on my roasted broccoli last night.

Along with the olive oil, it was a great seasoning for the broccoli.  It definitely gave it a richer taste than plain sea salt.  I'm excited to try it out on green beans soon.

Today started out a little rocky for me - I slept 15 minutes later than I planned, woke up in a weird mood (I later realized that I had been having a fight with my mom in a dream right before I woke up), and I must have still been half asleep while I was making my breakfast because I dropped my (open) oatmeal canister on the floor.  Very smooth.  So that was fun to clean up in my hurry to get to the gym (in time to watch Live! with Kelly, of course).  After my workout (elliptical and stairstepper), I went to grab my stuff from the locker and realized that I had forgotten to put my lock on.  Geeze.  And then when I was walking into school, I almost wiped out right in front of a school bus full of kids.  Oh man.

But my day got better with this beauty:

Iced coffee from Starbucks.  The temperature is warming up again (yay!), which always makes me crave iced coffee.  While I love local coffee shops (Phoenix in Cleveland and Angel Falls in Akron, for my local readers), a Starbucks near school has the BEST policy: if you bring a reusable cup, brewed/ iced coffee is just $1, and espresso (aka "fancy") drinks are $2.  Any size.  Um, how awesome is that?   Good for the environment and for my wallet - win win.  You probably can't tell from the picture, but my reusable glass is pretty big - at least 16 oz., maybe 20 oz.  A huge $1 unsweetened iced coffee (with a splash of skim milk) makes me very happy.

Lunch today:

Whole wheat tortilla topped with hummus, some leftover homemade pesto from my pizza this past weekend, mushrooms, broccoli, and shredded carrots.  Eaten with a plum on the side.  Delish.

Standard sunset pictures.

I'm not sure why, but I really love when the sun streams through my windows and I get to see this on my walls:

It just makes my heart happy.

Well I'm off to rustle up something for dinner (I hear a sweet potato calling my name).  And try not to think about those brownies in my freezer.  Have a great night!

Reader question:  Have you ever had mincemeat pie?  Have you ever even heard of mincemeat pie?  I've actually never tried it, but it's a staple at most Blind-family get-togethers.  My grandma gave me the recipe, but that might be one I just preserve for memory's sake :)


Song of the day:

"June Gloom" by The Like.  This is from their first album, Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking?  They have a more recent album (Release Me), but they've gotten some new members, changed their look (more 60s mod than earthy chic) and changed their sound.  I like their new album, but there's something so pretty and feminine about their early songs.  They were one of the opening bands during the first Phantom Planet concert I went to, so they hold a special place in my music collection.

A la Mode-y

Whenever I hear the phrase "a la mode," I think about the scene in Little Miss Sunshine where Abigail Breslin's character orders waffles "a la mode-y."  Have you seen that movie?  If not, watch it ASAP - it's brilliant.

Last night I wanted something sweet, and I had an idea:  pancakes a la mode.  Except healthy.

I promise - actually healthy.  I heated up a leftover pancake from my brunch, topped it with banana "ice cream" (only 1 ingredient - a banana!), and heated up some natural peanut butter to pour on top.  I could have used some chocolate syrup, but the peanut butter still tasted good.  Definitely looking forward to the end of Lent.

This was basically the same thing I had for brunch, except I topped the pancake with a frozen banana rather than a sliced, fresh banana.  But it tasted decadent and was a truly satisfying dessert.  I have 3 more leftover pancakes in the fridge, and I see some repeats of this dessert in my near future.

I also made a batch of seed and raisin balls to have on hand for snacks throughout the week.

Very easy to make, and super tasty - they're pretty much as good as candy, in my opinion!

And I enjoyed a nice sunset after a mostly cloudy day, which was a treat.

Sorry if you're getting tired of the sunset pictures.  After living in 2 different basement apartments in DC for about a year and a half, I'm still relishing living above ground and being able to see the sun!

Btw, I'm loving the rowing machine.  I really can't believe it took me SO long to try it out.  This morning I followed my elliptical workout with 15 minutes on the rowing machine - 5 more minutes than I did last time!  I highly recommend trying it out if you haven't before.  I also watched some videos online about proper form and technique to make sure I knew how to use it correctly, which I would recommend doing for any new-to-you gym equipment (or ask a trainer if that's an option).

Hope everyone is having a good Monday.  A.k.a my favorite TV night - can't wait for 2 Broke Girls!  Still 2 more weeks until Hart of Dixie is new again :(

Reader question:  Do you ever eat breakfast for dessert?  Or for dinner?  Sometimes my mom used to make breakfast for dinner when I was growing up (usually waffles), and it was always a fun treat!


Song of the day:

"High Times" by Landon Pigg and the Turbo Fruits.  This is from the soundtrack for Whip It - another great movie which you should see ASAP if you haven't already.  Or just watch it again if you've already seen it :)  Landon acted in the movie and provided music for it.  Favorite lyric from this song:  "I think it's high time for me to give you kiss, if someone would cover for me we'll make it happen before the end of this riff."  Swoon.  I also love fan videos like this - hilarious yet helpful!

I Forgot My Forget-Me-Nots

This is what happens when you grocery shop on an empty stomach:

My dinner last night was courtesy of Whole Foods.  I went grocery shopping after class and some errands, and since I didn't know what I was going to do for dinner, I decided to swing by the hot bar.  I ended up loading up at the salad bar instead of the hot bar.  I got lots of goodies: wheat berry Waldorf salad, carrot and beet salad, garlicky kale salad, szechuan green beans, roasted veggies, charbroiled eggplant, lentil salad, and tabbouleh.  The wheat berry Waldorf salad was my favorite - great flavor combo with apples, raisins, and yummy spices.  I found the recipe on WF's website and definitely want to make it myself sometime.

I had half of a strawberry kombucha to drink, and picked up some plums as well.  Aaaaand I got a cookie for dessert.  I'm definitely having chocolate cravings lately (gave it up for Lent) and find myself staring hopelessly into my cupboards and fridge at night, and then eating something that doesn't actually satisfy me.  So I decided to preempt that problem by getting a pumpkin cranberry cookie - I think it was a good decision :)

I cut up a plum and some strawberries - so excited for summer fruit!

Pencil for size comparison!

I was also SUPER excited to find this huge container of strawberries at GFS for $9.99 (where I like to buy huge bags of spinach and frozen fruit in bulk, among other things).  I think that I startled the cashier with my overjoyed exclamations about the strawberries... but that's fine.  I have a feeling that all of my meals are going to include strawberries for awhile.  And that's perfectly fine with me.

I was also really excited by the colors of these eggs I picked up - so pretty!  I can't wait for farmers' markets to start opening soon.  When I lived in DC, the mom of one of my roommates had chickens and sometimes she would give us fresh eggs; they really are so much more flavorful and a real treat.

Every time the weather warms up, I get the urge to plant things.  Unfortunately, I can't say that I've had much luck in the past... nevertheless, the urge hit me again, so I'm going to give it another shot.

I have a basil plant already (which could actually use some TLC...) and I'm going to try growing some lavender, chives, rosemary, and forget-me-nots.  Forget-me-nots are my favorite flowers!  I grew some when I was really little, maybe 5?  And they actually did really well!  I was so sad when we moved from my first house when I was 7 and I forgot to dig them up and bring them with us to our new house, haha.  If I could do it when I was 5, hopefully I can grow them now at 24.  We shall see.

I pulled a chair right up to my kitchen window so I could see the sunset as I ate dinner.  It was another unseasonably warm day, and I wished more than anything that I had a balcony or porch.  I did the next best thing - ate as close to my open window as possible.  One side of my window has a screen and one side doesn't, so I opened the one without a screen to pretend like I was outside.  I was really scared of a bird flying in, though.  But the danger was worth it.

I will never get tired of this view.

This afternoon I did a repeat of Tuesday's workout, with 7 minutes on the elliptical for a warm-up, finishing up with stretching at the end.  I think it was a combination of the tough treadmill workout and this warm weather raising the temperature in the gym that left me drenched!

If you want to enter a fun giveaway for a natural mascara, check out this post by Colourful Palate.  (I want to start spelling things the British/ Canadian way - colourful looks so much prettier than colorful!)

Hope everyone had a great day.  Are you ready for Friday??

Reader question:  Do you have a green thumb?  Or more of a black thumb, like me?


Interesting Articles:
5 Easy Ways to Manage Cortisol, The Stress Hormone
What 100 Calories Look Like: Easter Candy (This made me glad I resisted my urge to buy a HUGE container of jelly beans at GFS!)


Song of the day:

Another throwback song - "Punk Rock Princess" by Something Corporate.  Takes me back to my youth.  And my desperate wish to be "punk" :)  I actually got to interview the lead singer of Something Corporate (and Jack's Mannequin), Andrew McMahon, over the phone one time, and he was super nice.  I had a very brief stint writing music-related articles for the Cleveland Leader, and that interview was one of them.  I always thought it would be amazing to be a music writer for a magazine like Rolling Stone or Spin.  Anyone a fan of Almost Famous?  Love that movie.