Here's another blogger talking about No Impact Man. She has decided to not purchase commercially packaged food. That means making your own bread for sandwiches, soaking and boiling beans at home and even making your own jam. I haven't been able to do the no electricity past 6pm all that well...I kind of need it since I'm still in school working on papers and assignments.

summer meals

last night's vegetarian dinner

close up of the yellow summer squash boat stuffed with rice

my picture of the dish made at home

Real Simple's version

 

 

Japanese summer noodles

 

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.