Hello World

I am officially being released into the world to do grown-up things. I graduate college tomorrow morning. I wrote my last paper and took my last test yesterday. Then in 36 days I'm getting married to the most wonderful man.

This all being said I have made a few conclusions this morning...

1. I love food. I'm free from classes and homework and what did I do this first morning of freedom? Baked the most amazing blueberry banana muffins and am looking for the best cinnamon roll recipe. My favorite so far is from Pioneer Woman. I am drooling over all of her recipes. I have a feeling her blog will be my best friend this next year as I learn to cook "man food" for my soon to be husband (I'm perfectly content eating veggies all the time but for him its not a meal unless there is meat.)

2. I need a better camera. I took a picture of the muffins, but they don't look as amazing as they do in real life.

3. I had a third one but now I can't remember what it was.

Here's to you world! Off to enjoy my second cup of coffee and another muffin!

My life is crazy moving 100 mph right now... i'll be back soon.

Love of Books

I love books...

[Photo By:ginnerobot]

 I love reading them, looking at them, but most of all I love sharing them with friends. I could spend hours in a library or a book shop. My favorite Disney movie is Beauty and the Beast simply for the scene in the book shop with the rolling ladders and the part where Beast shows Belle the library in the castle. As a kid, I always had at least 3 books I was reading at a time and would check out dozens of books every summer. Now as a college student, I have a job in the research department of the library and I get to hang out with books all the time.

When I'm not busy at work I will often go through the shelves and pull books out that look interesting. Through this I've discovered so many wonderful books that often sit on the shelves forgotten. In fact I found one the other day that had never been opened! It's binding had never been broken even though its pages were yellowing. Sometimes I find one that I know a friend would love but would never find on their own. I then take it upon myself to be the book matchmaker and introduce them to one another. It makes me so happy to see them sit down with it and flip through it, with their homework neglected beside them.

The old books are my favorite. They are not computer printed cardboard like all the new ones. Instead they have cloth covers with gold ink letter imprinted on them. They are the ones with the most character and have such beautiful covers even though their edges are fraying and the binding makes a crackling sound as you open it because the hardened glue is coming loose. When you look in the back cover there is the old catalog card in the back that says all the due dates for check out. Some of them haven't been checked out in years and their most recent stamp says "Due Jan 23, 1974".

Books hold history beyond their content. The Librarian's stamps, the cover, the penciled notes in the margins,  the old bookmarks that were left in by mistake, even the crumbs in the binding from someone's late night study snack from 40 years ago, all tell a story. This is why I love books, especially library books. Sometimes I get so distracted thinking about where the book has been and who else has read it that I never actually get around to reading it...oh how wonderful life is with books...

Cheers!

After re-reading this I've realized that I need to own a bookshop. I don't think that I could be a librarian because then I would be stuck inside all the time, but a bookshop I could do. At the very least I need to have a space for a library in my house.

Rain today.

I really need to stop drinking Earl Gray Tea Lattes past 8 o'clock at night... this is the second night in a row that I have an haven't been able to fall asleep.

Also, thanks to my roommate, I always think of red shoes when I drink Earl Gray tea. {She decorated our Earl Gray tea tin with a collage with red shoes. When I asked her why she said "because red shoes are my favorite and so is earl gray!" So now Earl Gray tea= red shoes in my brain. That and the color purple because the tag is always purple.}

Here's to red shoes, the color purple, and Earl Gray tea...

Cheers!

Te quiero mi amor...

Love...

[Photo found: here]

 Be mine.

Valentine.

-xoxo-

Houses of red, yellow, green, and blue...

[One day I will return.]

Where the land becomes the coast, the place where the two great forces of nature meet; mountain and sea. There, the waves sing a song that is mournful and true. There the rocks hide stories of years past that no one ever speaks.  Shadowed houses of red, yellow, green, and blue rise out of the cliffs and between them stone roads twist and turn. Up, up, up. At dawn, the bell in the watch tower chimes, telling all to wake. The gulls join in with their screeching cry. 

Slowly an old man hobbles past the fountain, as he does every morning, to the Panaderia for his tea and pastry. He used to order coffee, but to please his wife he drinks tea now. She worries for his nerves. Some days, when she goes to the city to visit her sister, he orders coffee because she won't smell it on his breath. She pretends to not know.

The delivery boy rides his bike and waves as he passes the old man at his table in the sun. He always takes the long way on his deliveries because he says he is training for le Tour de France. He's been training for four years. Jorge, the delivery manager is always says he is going to fire the boy if he is late one more time, but everyone knows he never will because he has no other delivery boys and if he did he would have to make the deliveries himself. 

The fish monger in the market argues with Palo, the head chef at El Patio, about the price of fish as the fishermen unload the morning's catch. The flopping mackerel shimmer in the new sunlight as they are pulled from the nets. 

The square begins to buzz as the women come to purchase food to fill their pantries for the week. Children laugh while playing tag between the stalls as they hurry to school. Their shirts already dirty and their hair flying in every direction.

The bustle of life being lived begins again as the sun warms the stones and the dawn becomes the day...

Good Cup

[Dirty Chai. Creamy Chai Latte + Double Shot= Sweet Deliciousness with a little Spicy Flare]

 

....

Being here, the sights, the sounds, the smell,

Drives me to think, to write, to be.

....

Thanks Good Cup!

While running today

I had a brilliant idea about cookbooks: they should make a list of all the ingredients you will need for all the recipes in the book.

Like fennel...

[Such a strange vegetable...]

I don't know anyone (well maybe my foodie friends) who regularly stocks fennel in their fridge. I would probably only buy fennel to make one thing and then have to eat it for the next 2 weeks to make sure that it doesn't go bad...

Solution?

There can be with a short list of all of the strange ones that you only sometimes need (like fennel).  That way if it just so happens that fennel is on sale and you buy some then you can look at the list of strange ingredients you only sometimes need and know that there is something you can make with it!

Brilliant I say!

Another idea is to have a seasonal cookbook where there is 1 recipe a day for every day of the year (yes 365 recipes) and at the beginning of every "seasonal" section it can list what you can expect to find at your local produce store or farmers market that will be in the recipes for those months.

Cheers to great ideas while running!

St. Anselm

"I long to understand in some degree thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe - that unless I believe, I should not understand."

[Photo by: Jill Ison ]

 {p.s. this photo is taken by Jill Ison, a photographer and fellow blogger from Arizona whose blog Free People I discovered one day in all my wedding blog searching and I love it! this may sound kind of creepy but I hope to meet her someday.}

StumbleUpon & Food Blogs...

... are not helpful creations on Saturdays when textbooks should be read and wedding decisions should be made, however I'm embracing a lack of productiveness and am off to make the Chocolate Fudge Pomegranate Cookies that I found on the wonderful food blog How Sweet It Is. She not only shares my love for chocolate, but is hilarious.

If you want the recipe here it is:

Chocolate Fudge Pomegranate Cookies

makes about 30 cookies

[photo by: How Sweet It Is]

1 cup butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons pomegranate juice (I didn't take the time to get this out of the arils and mine turned out fine)
1 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup pomegranate arils (these are the little seeds in pomegranates)

Cream butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla until fluffy. Add flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt, then pomegranate juice and mix until combined.
Fold in chocolate chips and arils. Refrigerate dough for 2-4 hours (or more). When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350, roll into balls and set on baking sheet.
Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes. Let cool completely.

Be sure to check out some of her other recipes. I'm super excited to try her Apple Risotto With Toasted Pecans and I really want it to be someone's birthday so I can make the Cake Batter Pancakes.

[photo by: How Sweet It Is]

Wouldn't these be adorable for a birthday breakfast surprise?!?

Off to try to make some of the cute paper flowers I have in my head to have as my centerpieces...see I'm being semi-productive this afternoon (okay maybe not but I can pretend right?)

Good Eats

On a totally different note... I made this for dinner tonight and it was sooo good that I thought I would share it with all of you:

Lemony Pasta With Chicken and Spinach

4 servings (serving size: 2 cups)

• 3  tablespoons  olive oil
• 3  skinless, boneless chicken-breast halves
• 3  thinly sliced medium red onions
• 1/2  cup  golden raisins
• 1 1/2  tablespoons  grated lemon rind
• 2  teaspoons  minced peeled fresh ginger (or 1 t ground ginger)
• 2  teaspoons  salt
• 1 1/2  teaspoons  balsamic vinegar
• 1/4  teaspoon  freshly ground black pepper
• 9  ounces  uncooked pasta
• 1  (6-ounce) package baby spinach
• Pine nuts, toasted (optional)

1. Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken; cook until slightly browned on each side. Transfer with tongs to a cutting board. Cool; shred with hands into big chunks.

2. Combine onions, raisins, rind, ginger, and salt in a large skillet over medium heat; cook 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Stir in vinegar and pepper.

3. Cook pasta according to package directions. Stir in spinach, chicken, and pasta to onion mixture. Garnish with pine nuts, if desired.

I added green beans to the onion mixture and I'm sure it would be good with asparagus too. Also, I used orzo for my pasta and it made it kind of different. I didn't have pine nuts so I added some dry roasted almonds instead.

Enjoy!

Wedding Version 4.2

I feeling like I have planned my wedding over 4 times. All different ways. Now hopefully version 4.2 is the final version. I'm not exactly sure what is the cause for this excessive planning [long engagement? military? me looking at TOO many wedding blogs???] but this is it. The upside is that I could pretty much help anyone plan any type of wedding now! haha!

So here's what I've got now [the benefit of planning so many times is that it gets quicker every time]:

• Handsome Groom... Check!
• Date... JUNE 18, 2011
• Dress... Found it today!! (now I'm praying for the $ for it...donations anyone?)
• Venue... My soon to be family-in-law's (or rather "family-in-love's") backyard
• Guest List Goal... Under 80
• Invitations... Coming soon.
• Music... Yay for a musical sister and iTunes playlists
• Food... Working on it...have the wine though (always a good start)
• Decorations...Working on those too... been collecting jars and bottles for the last year
• Rings... designed and in progress
• Honeymoon... is a surprise from the Handsome Groom

Lots of details under all these that need to be taken care of but hey its a start! 

In the mean time... don't you love how these tables are decorated? I love the books and the simplicity!

Brett

Is there such thing as impossible love?

Two peoples love for each other became labeled as stable love because they could not be physically in love due to an injury from war.

But the woman loved many men, and moved on from one as quickly as she found him.
The men who became blinded by her were ruined by their lust. But not the injured man, for he could have no lust.

If love is defined mainly as lustful interactions, romanticism, and desire.. then their love is imposiible..

But if love is defined as deep personal connection and an attachment to each other.. then these two people were in love.

[By Sister]

A Twist in the Plot Line

I have 2 (maybe 3, I haven't decided yet) things to say.

Topic 1:

Technology and Balance

Sorry its been a while since I've written. You would think not having classes for the last 3 weeks would have meant more time to post, but alas it did not happen that way. You see, I spent so much time on a computer during school that once I was freed from my classes, I did not even open my computer once for 3 weeks...not the best idea for work and internship planning...
In light of the new year (2011 really now?) I am striving for balance and am attempting to only check and respond to emails once a day. I really need to learn that the world will revolve without me and that disappearing from the face of technology is an extreme that is just as unrealistic...thus the once a day thing. I've been going at it for a week now and its harder than I thought...send me motivating thoughts please?

This all being said, on to Topic 2:

The Adventure of Wedding Planning and the Military

{This is a enrapturing chapter in the story of a young princess and her handsome prince charming to whom she is betrothed... A new twist has been added to the story as the handsome prince was asked to leave the Royal Naval Training School due to a poor performance in philosophy (what does philosophy have to do this the Navy anyway? Is is just to give them something to think about while they sit on a ship for month at a time???) With the future of her handsome prince now uncertain, the young princess can do nothing but wait and hope that this means the day of their long awaited matrimony is sooner than originally planned...}

 ...to be continued.

Topic 3: What do you think of these?

[photo from: LoveSac]

They are these crazy sectional couch things ("lego couches" in my fiance's words)...