beautyfoodnerdrunningshoptravel

October 2, 2013

broccoli soup

allow me to tell you a little about my new best bud: the berry blue cuisinart smart stick. this baby is awesome!

a few weeks ago gilt.com had some kitchen items on sale and after my success with the smoothie blender, i thought i'd give this baby a whirl at 60% off. i kind of don't know how i got along with out her. the fall is gonna be all about soups! maybe not all, but i'm excited to make some veggies into mush.

adapted from the martha's vineyard diet book, this soup was touted on fitsugar as fat burning broccoli soup. it's less actual burning and more metabolism boosting / filling. it's also vegan, which isn't a big seller as i'm a carnivore but, not a bad thing either.



so little required


September 6, 2013

"earning it" or "deserving it" celebrity edition pt 2

celebrate


a few months back in the uk, april 1st to be exact, marked the first issue of the waitrose grocery store magazine featuring pippa middleton at the meal planning helm. (from here on in "  " is how i will point out british snark) there has been no short of cattiness on her appointment since the "failure" of her party planning book celebrate. now i can't find any totals for her book sales beyond the first week, which were "disappointing" at just 2,000 copies. it was announced mid-april that she and her literary agent/publishing house had "parted ways, no doubt" due to her books "failure" which she received a £400,000 advance.

i'm going to assume that no one (but my mom) reading this blog has been thru the book publishing process. you wouldn't believe the number of times this book was read and edited by someone other than pippa. it's not like she wrote up a term paper, handed it in and was left to fend for her own grade. her editor approved every recipe, article and photo. while a newspaper is confined to a deadline based on it's daily/weekly release, the book industry, like film, is not subject to such a hard fast line. did y'all see gi joe 2 last summer? no? oh right, paramount pushed it's release a year to this summer. if the publisher had not been 100% behind her effort, good business sense would suggest he would have held release until it had been fine tuned. he should have also picked less hoity reviewers, and certainly not british as they've proved the only thing in their diet is sour grapes. i was not expecting martha stewart level effort, as i refuse the hand squeeze oranges, grapefruit and limes just to make a punch. i'll use mix from the jug thank you very much. that being said, martha was a print model and housewife before she made up her mind to be a caterer, so clearly her credentials are higher than pippa (insert american eye roll).

August 22, 2013

zucchini lasagna

inspired by kiki's tj stir fry, i set off to tj's to get everything i needed for zucchini lasagna. turns out, the recipe is basically meant for a tj's shopping trip. or possibly that's how it's always packaged, but i'm liking my reasoning better.

you may remember the mtv reality show the hills. it was on for a few seasons and followed a girl from laguna beach to la. somewhere along the way she met a lot of ridiculous people and ended up bailing on the show before it's run ended. while the rest of the cast is hanging on to the spotlight for dear life (those of us on the left coast are fully aware it's too cold to really be on the beach in a bikini in march) lauren "lc" conrad stepped out of it and built a fashion house (at khol's and boutiques), written some young adult books (nyt best sellers) and maintains 2 websites (beauty and lifestyle). why should you care? you probably shouldn't, but, it's where i found the recipe. i feel like i just got to my point much like billy from the family circus comic gets from the backyard to the house.


April 24, 2013

goop's chicken salad

i cannot grill chicken. seriously, i suck at it. i'm probably using all the wrong pans or oils or something, but i seriously can't get it right. i've used a cuisinart griddler a few times, did alright, but i have no room for that in my apt. i've poached it but only when shredding it to add to chicken casserole b/c the look of it disturbs me. a few people suggested i cook it in the oven instead and for this culinary attempt, i did just that.

ready for the oven

"go super stores!" or "hurray for the not-so-little guy"

a few weeks back i planned an epic battle royale of the grocery options in my life. it turned into, f-it, i'll just walk to trader joe's. just about every sunday at 4pm, i grab my reusable bag, call my mom and walk 7 blocks over and 2 blocks up to my trader joe's. we chat along the way, sometimes in the store, quietly, but never while i'm checking out. if she's not available i'll put in a pod cast and laugh a little too loudly "to myself." i'm totally focused, the ultimate multi-tasker. if the other shoppers would focus more on their shopping and less on looking at me with the "she's one of those ipod people," they wouldn't run into me or the other shoppers. i'm watching where i'm going!

ok, that took a dark turn, back to my original point: to shop at a super store or a smaller grocery store. for a few months i'd been taking one evening every other week and driving out to target. my reasoning was that they had the stuff i don't usually buy at the grocery store: toilet paper, paper towels, the occasional superhero t-shirt. this week, as i made my list of what to get at target, i couldn't really justify the trip. everything i'd put in the "target" column of my excel grocery file (i'll show you in a moment) i realized could be purchased closer to my apt at tj's or albertson's, i was basically just going there b/c i needed toilet paper and it is usually a better deal. totally not worth the drive. i went to tj's instead and i gotta say, i think it's about the same price. not as plush as my cottonelle (the puppy is so cute!) but, it'll do. i'll save the target trips for when i need a prescription refilled or for when they have a really good deal, like this shiny new shelving unit i put in the kitchen.

please ignore the bags of recycling, the day got away from me

April 16, 2013

roasted chickpeas

you may notice the above title is a little, um, boring. i've been doing a lot of food fixin' lately and there just aren't enough rocky n bullwinkle themed titles to go around. so from now on, unless there's a soap box to stand on, i'm sticking to boring old "name of what i made."

moving along. i've been enjoying my little afternoon snacks. they keep me from going all hulk smash! at the end of the day. the energy bars are awesome but after 2 weeks, i needed a little change up. enter the roasted chickpeas.

March 26, 2013

"earning it" or "deserving it" celebrity edition

new book due out in april

recently there's been a lot of talk in my office about haters. especially women hating on women. i'm guilty of this during every broadcast sporting event. as a woman who loves sports i am all for women being integrated into the male dominated field of sports broadcasting. what i'm not for, are the networks putting a woman on the game coverage when she clearly is only there for her pleasing looks. that being said, i love pam ward, she knows her sports.

i'll move away from sports and on to food, cause i love food. i feel like women, more often than men, are the target of cook book hate. from rachel ray to pippa middleton to gwenyth paltrow, if it isn't a complicated chem lab a-la martha stewart, it just isn't good enough.  i wonder, if george clooney did a cook book would he be judged so harshly?

while stumbling around the interwebs one day i discovered goop.com, gwenyth paltrow's personal blog. she's been a health nut for a few years and while i'm not into cupping (ew), macrobiotic or cleansing, i can get on board with healthier versions of the foods i already love.



March 14, 2013

"breakfast burrito" or "breakfast of champions"

cathy is feeling my pain.


the days have been shorter and as the sun goes, so goes my energy. that doesn't mean when the sun comes up i get up. no, far from it. luckily this sunday began daylight savings time. i'll finally have enough light in the evening to run after work.

in a run up (hehe) to getting back on the running schedule, i've spent the last week bingeing on pinterest for motivation and healthier snacks. i had my yearly check up and the doctor suggested i add some vitamins to my daily diet, fun!

fixing food, in my opinion, is a pain. i can bake b/c it requires about 20 min of hands on and then you leave it alone for a while and let the oven do the rest. cooking requires much more attention. i trolled the interwebs for some quick and easy nourishment i felt i could actually do. as opposed to buying everything at the store and then letting it go to waste in the fridge after yet another taco bell craving. so here's what i've been doing for breakfast and mid-afternoon snacks.

breakfast has been oatmeal at work most mornings. in the past i was strictly coffee only until lunch but i've been getting so hungry/bored that i can't stand it.

February 27, 2013

"chicken dumplings for the soul" or "chicken dumplings on my hips"

a little off topic from my usual posts but something that has been bothering me none the less, my eating habits.

rhoda morgenstern once said of food as comfort, "cottage cheese solves nothing, chocolate can do it all."

not a week goes by that my boss doesn't comment on my choice of lunchtime food. it used to be daily, but it seems 2 years of working together has dulled the shock. in my 28 years before moving to la i can't remember anyone commenting on the composition of my meals. the quantity occasionally, as i'm a tiny person, but never the items i was choosing to eat. while complaining about this to a southern friend over dinner, i finally gained some clarity as to why that may be. my conclusion was supported in the october issue of southern living magazine.

southern living, oct. 2012

February 12, 2013

"i'll start tomorrow" or "maybe next week"

have you notice there's been no posts for a while, all 3 of you? i'd like to say there was a good reason but, no such luck. just good old fashion laziness, that does in fact end next week.

since the last post i've done 2 runs: san diego color run and santa monica/venice santa run. i had a blast at both.

for the color run i ventured out with a few of kadi's disney co-workers. it was more of a walk run in the end, but still fun. i was totally prepared to run the entire thing, only 5 k after all. i was not prepared for the effect the color had on me. it's all natural, colored corn starch. talk about dehydration, powder in my lungs, up my nose, the first color was red and i felt like i was running thru that sandstorm ethan hunt ran thru in ghost protocol. the difference being, we animated that sand, this dust was real. none the less, it was fun, see the before and after.

 before