Couldn't Think Of A Title.

So I'm still really jazzed about this cooking kick I'm on. I mean, I should be since I just started thinking about it 12 hours ago, but hey this is a sign of good things to come! Anyway, in a few hours I'm going to be meeting up with my mom for dinner but to kill time I decided to turn on the Food Network. Unfortunately Paula Deen was just ending, and for those of you who don't know, Paula Deen is my homegirl. But up next was none other than the Barefoot Contessa, Ina. Before you jump to the conclusion that I was excited by this, let me explain. I watch Barefoot Contessa when I'm feeling particularly masochistic. Ina drives me absolutely insane. She sounds like a pet therapist, talking to her locally grown peaches in soothing tones. Even when her food processor is going at full speed. And the camera crew for this show also really bothers me. Can you get any closer to the bowl? I can't even see what's in there, it's just a brown mass. BAAAAAH it's on right now and I wanna throw my laptop!!! Why do I watch it if it drives me this nuts, you ask? I told you, I enjoy self-torture. Just kidding. I'm watching because it's 1:15 on a wednesday and nothing else is on. Oh, and another thing that drives me nuts is the way she styles her dishes. They always look so clean, prim, and nautical. I know, I know, she lives in an upscale beachy community but still. Come on, Ina, whip off that preppy blue button up shirt and use some colored plates. Get really wild, just let your hair down.

Anyway, I know I just said I'm meeting my mom for dinner but really I'm meeting her around 4 and since I usually stay up until midnight, that is more of a late lunch for me. SO. I'm thinking that perhaps tonight could be new recipe number one. And I'm going back and forth between winging it with a few recipes I already know mixed together (which still counts) (PS Ina is making two dishes in one meal that include capers. Fail)(after every freaking dish she makes she goes "now I gotta take a picture. A picture for my article". Then she asks it to say cheese. K, after the third time, I think we get it! Shit!) or finding a new recipe altogether. But as of right now, this is what I'm picturing: roasting some vegetables with some jazzy vinaigrette, including the rest of my bell peppers, cooking some chicken with butter, garlic, and garlic salt, and eating it over noodles or brown rice. I just ate and I'm not hungry so this does not sound appealing to me at all right now but maybe by 8 o'clock tonight it will. Actually, this will probably be better tomorrow night since (I'm picturing Ina as a child...she hasn't changed a bit) roasting vegetables is a lot of prep time. Either way I have to hit TJ's on my back from seeing my mom, so we'll see what happens! (She just instructed me not to neglect the corners and then neglected the corner. That's what happens when you have a camera up your ass, Ina. We catch you being a cheater).

I had to change it, now I'm watching the Colbert Report. He's one of my TV husbands. Along with Johns Hamm and Krasinski. But nobody beats Peter Gallagher as Sandy Cohen on the OC.

Look at how he smolders. I call those the power brows.

If there are any self-proclaimed Sandy Cohens out there, call me. 

I digress. I suppose this is it for now. In case you were wondering, yes I am trying for the 2011 Mundane Blogger Award. Hence this post. Alright, I'll stop now.

-LG

Let Them Eat Cake.

Or, rather, let me eat cake. And scones, and roast chicken and vegetables, and zucchini bread, and soups with fluffy rice. No, not all at once, although to be completely honest with you I'm not entirely opposed to the idea. Here's the deal, guys. I love to cook. In fact, I adore it. Partially because I adore food, and if you want food, you have to cook it. I realize there are many ways around actually cooking (boil in a bag, anyone? For the record, I've never done that), but generally speaking there is some effort required if you want to eat. And I have so much extra time to cook, it's beyond ridiculous that I don't do it more! It's shameful, actually. I have a crazy amount of access to local produce, I live a short walk from Trader Joes where I shop once a week--usually on Mondays, if you were at all curious--and I'm not too shabby a cook, either. Granted, my kitchen is tiny, I have three roommates who also frequent the kitchen, and our selection of appliances and tools is random at best. But still, this is to be expected for a college student's kitchen and I can't in good conscience use those paltry excuses. So here's what I'm thinking. I want to try and make one new recipe every week. It can be breakfast, lunch, dinner, or dessert, whatever. As long as I'm doing it. Some of my favorite blogs to look at are food blogs and maybe instead of sitting on the couch reading about other people cooking, I should get off my tuchus and join them. My only hangup with this is I'd be cooking for one, and that's a tough job. You end up with leftovers and expiring ingredients that you may not use again before they go bad and I don't like being that wasteful. For instance, I was just thinking that my first recipe could be a roasted beet salad like the one I ate at Jovino and few weeks back. But then I realized that I wouldn't need an entire package of goat or feta cheese for just one salad. Nor would I need an entire bag of spinach. Could I make other meals throughout the week that include those extra ingredients? Of course. But you see my point, I'm sure. Perhaps my goal will be to find recipes that don't make large servings. Or perhaps my goal will be to find a recipe whose ingredients carry over into two or three other new recipes for that week, or at least other delicious meals. I eat a lot of brown rice and black beans, and while I still find it delicious, I need to expand my food horizons a bit. Anyway, this is me thinking out loud...writing out loud?...and I probably shouldn't do that since if I flake you'll all know, as opposed to flaking in private when there's only me to judge myself. But again, this blog is my personal journey and giving you all front row seats to my flakeage is as real as it gets! Anything less would be a lie.

Anyhow, I'm currently exploring the world of cooking blogs. It is as vast and endless as the world of style blogs so it can be overwhelming. But food is so much less intimidating than style. Style can say "I challenge you to be this awesome", while food says "here, nurture your intimidation with the comfort of my bounty". "Um, Lauren, I'm pretty sure that's called stress eating...". Well, you can shut your mouth. Food is kind and forgiving. It fits everybody. I was about to say "it isn't seasonal", but it is. Whatever, you get my point. I'm about to kick my kitchen's ass with this new project. I'll show it things it's never even heard of. Hell, I'll take it's V card. And it's innocence. If violent cooking tickles your fancy, be sure to check out the "Make Dinner Your Bitch" segments over here. You should know that this is my cousin's blog. At first I wasn't going to tell you that so that you didn't all think I was shamelessly promoting a family member. It's not like that. It's really more like I'm shamelessly name dropping. Or I guess in this case blog dropping. I'm hoping that some of her awesomeness will rub off on me via the internets, and awesome by association is my only hope. I used to read her blog while in class but as it usually has me in tears from laughing so hard, that stopped being an option.

Anyway, it's 12:40, I'm exhausted, and my bed is currently piled high with tons of noisy items that sound like a marching band when they're looked at sideways. Roomie is already asleep. This means that in my current sleep-deprived state, I must try to silently navigate the mine field that is my half of the room in hopes that I do not wake her from her slumber. At that, I leave you.

-LG

Outside Lands.

This is the year that I will go to Outside Lands. I'm not sure why, but it feels like it's time. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Outside Lands is a massive weekend-long music festival in Golden Gate Park. People travel from all over to make it. Lucky for me I only have to travel a few city blocks. The tickets aren't cheap, however. They're like $200. Yes, that was the sound of my bank account breaking. It's actually not too bad, though, considering the festival isn't until August and if I start saving now I'll be fine. This is unlike me, as I'm usually not a fan of large music festivals inhabited primarily of rabble rousing hoodlums my age walking around in birkenstocks and tie-dye. But a coworker of mine brought it up at work the other day and for some reason all I could think was "I want to go". I hafta listen to that impulse, if only out of curiosity as to why now is the time. Part of it is the lineup. It's ridiculous. Lemme just name a few:

-The Black Keys (What? Yeah.)
-The Arctic Monkeys (I'm sorry, what? Yep.)
-Arcade Fire (Whoa, hold up, what? Yeah, I know.)
-MGMT (Okay, no way. But yes.)
-The Decemberists (My Dad will be supes jealous of this one. He's a fan.)
-Muse (Hold up...Yeah, it's for real.)

That's just a couple. And I am stoked. I'm confused, though, because a few of the bands I saw listed on my coworker's phone aren't listed on the Outside Lands website. And they were some of the bands that made me want to go in the first place. Like The Strokes, for instance, and I have been dying to see them live for centuries! Anyway, if you're interested in learning more about Outside Lands or seeing the rest of the lineup, here's the website.

There's a possibility that going to Outside Lands will be part of a birthday celebration for my bff Chelsea. You met her Disco Queen self here. So I'm mulling over the possibilities for birthday greatness. I don't want to say much here just in case she reads it, but she recently made me aware of the fact that she hardly ever reads my mundane musings. Whatever, Chelsea. I feel like she's my child, a child that I spent 27 hours in labor with to bring into this world and now she's a petulant teenager who spends her days pissing me off. The things we do for the people we love. It's not even worth it.

OMG JUST KIDDING!

-LG

P.S.

I fully intend to be in a band. I've always wanted to, obvi, but lately it's gone beyond being a "what if". Now it's an urge. It's gonna happen.

-LG

"Aint No Grave...

...gonna hold my body down".

This weekend I gave a friend a mini-tour of the Mission, complete with a walk down Clarion Alley, an alley filled wall-to-wall with amazing graffiti. In an unassuming spot on the ground, scrawled in spray paint, was that quote. I don't know who put it there or what it's from, but I stopped and stared at it for a good minute. Let the word "grave" stand for whatever you want. Aint no anything gonna hold my body down.


On another note, I wanted to apologize again for the slow down of posts lately. I didn't think that spring break ending would be such a sad event but it really was! I have spring fever and am getting impatient. I want the semester to be over. There's been a lot going on lately, mostly all of it in my head but still. I've been experiencing a major slow down in creativity lately. Getting dressed in the morning has been impossible for the past two weeks and that's always a bad sign. I guess the upside is that I've been in a writing mood lately. Just a few lines here and there, but it's something. I'm not sure how to get out of this funk. It's not helping that I'm sick. Son of a nutcracker, I am a mess! It's about to be a good week, though, because I remembered today that I don't work again until Friday!

And finally, it's the big birthday next Wednesday. The big 2-0. I feel like I should leave my teens with a bang. Something to send 19 off in style. Any suggestions?

-LG

These Are My Confessions.

Thought I would quote one of my least favorite songs up thurr with that little Usher number. Anyhow, here they are. There's a good possibility that this is going to be very disorganized and scatterbrained but that is fine with me. And now I'm going over the quick notes I jotted down in my phone to help me remember all this and I'm wishing I had done a little more than jot. I always tell myself that I'll remember things--what page I'm on in a book, the lyrics to a song I want to look up later, the more important details of a rant I plan on sharing with the internet--and alas, I never fail to forget. But I'll try anyway.

Disclaimer: I was about to write "I wrote this in the heat of the moment. I'm sorry if anyone is offended". But to be completely honest, I'm not sorry. If you're offended by something like this then I can't help ya.

Last Thursday, during a long traffic-filled car ride from the city to my wee hometown on the other side of the bay, I passed the time flipping through an old Elle, the most recent edition of San Francisco, and the most recent edition of 7x7 (which really pissed me off because those bastards stole the name of my future business. More on that later) which is a magazine also based out of and on San Francisco. And just like every other time I look through fashion and lifestyle magazines, I found myself getting increasingly irritated and impatient. And annoyed and about a hundred other adjectives that have to do with judging other people's lives. I'm not sure how to build up to this, so here it is. I cannot stand the Fashion World. I hate fashion magazines. I do not frequent Style.Com and on the few occasions that I have, I wanted to throw something out the window. I love style, and exploring style and my personal style and the personal style of other individuals but to me, that's worlds apart from the Fashion World. I have it in caps the way one might put Wall Street in caps. It's an entity. A breathing beast. And in 2 seconds I've managed to turn into Andy from The Devil Wears Prada in the unforgettable scene where Meryl Streep kindly explains to her just where her bargain blue sweater really came from. I get it. The clothes I wear, the clothes you wear, are or were at one time decided into existence by the Fashion World and it's affiliates. I am a piece of it whether I want to be or not. I know. But I felt the need to make my feelings clear here as a way to stop kidding myself into believing that I'm happily suckling at the fashion teet. I don't follow designers. This doesn't mean that I don't respect and revere artistic brilliance when I see it (Alexander Mcqueen, and not just because he is recently deceased. I've never understood why death makes mediocre people geniuses). I don't seek out trends, but I'm aware of their influence on me and try to be as conscious of that as possible. I do not blindly step into a harem pant simply because it is a harem pant and I find it infuriating when people do. I don't appreciate the ploys used by fashion magazines and websites to create an inclusive yet exclusive feeling: "what we're loving right now", "who we're wearing", "how to get our look for less". Screw you. Sorry, it had to be said. I don't like the person I am when I read these magazines. I start feeling like I'm not doing enough, and it won't be enough until random people know my name and my business. I hate that. I feel immediately better when I close the magazine, or get off whatever site I'm on. I don't need 15 minutes of B-list fame to feel like I'm doing what I'm meant to do with my life. Yes, I want to be successful yes I'm ambitious. Yes, I love personal style and panache. And yes, I'm okay admitting that much of what is incorporated into my style is influenced and determined by Karl Lagerfeld and his friends. But I have always been this way. Before I even knew what a fashion magazine was. It's just one of the many ways I express my creativity. So why? Why do I feel the need to tag along behind this beast that I don't particularly like and mock when it's not looking? For the record, I don't judge those who are good friends of the beast. I don't judge the beast itself. I wish I didn't have such strong feelings about the beast because in a parallel universe, I could inhabit it's world easily. But in this universe, the one that I do inhabit, I find it frivolous. And don't think that I don't scrutinize myself for my own frivolity because believe me, I do.

This didn't quite come out as eloquently as I planned but there it is. I'm not going to continue putting fashion content on this blog unless it really strikes a chord with me, and so far that is how it's been for the most part. But I gotta cut the bull shit. That's it for now. I don't feel like checking over it for mistakes so I hope there aren't any!

-LG

Edit: I just reread my poorly jotted notes and realized I left some details out. And then I just tried to fill those details in, but I can't really. This will have to do.

Edit 2: By "fashion content", I mean runway shows that I didn't watch, blurbs on designers that I know nothing about, or trends that I find ridiculous but see everywhere I go. I'll continue posting outfits that I want to share.

Heads Up.

You all have a bit of a rant coming your way. Actually, I take that back. It's more of a confession with rant-like undertones. I would write it now but I'm about to have an awesome phone conversation with a long lost best friend who seems to have fallen down the rabbit hole that we refer to as the California public university system.

Before I go, however, I will give you an education update: my withdrawal from two of my classes is 90% complete, which means that I will officially have a five and a half day weekend until the end of the semester. Also, the community college catalog continues to reveal more and more treasures that I am dying to take over the course of the next two semesters. Some of these include fencing and archery (what?!? I know. Both of which I have always always always wanted to learn), photography, lighting for photography, metalworking, tango, salsa, figure drawing, clothing construction, lingerie construction (which I am stoked for and hope it's available), weaving...I know that there are more but I can't remember off the top of my head. Anyway, it's looking like it's gonna be closer to a two year university hiatus. Shucks, isn't that a shame.

-LG

Build Me Up Buttercup.

It's time for my first update of how I spent my spring break. On Tuesday of last week it was one of my best friend's birthdays and in honor of the day, I decided to make them peanut butter cups. The weather was very warm last week (it was a godsend) so chocolate confections probably weren't the best idea. But they were delicious, albeit rich, and I'm sure I'll be making them again. I used this recipe from Design Sponge. If you haven't already noticed, it's one of my favorite websites ever. And if you haven't already done so, check them out. Here are a few photos I snapped once they were done!

The recipe calls for a mini cupcake tin, and it's great if you have one. However, I found that if I tripled up on the paper cups, they were stiff enough to withstand the chocolate and a tin wasn't completely necessary. I can't get enough of making things like this. It serves as a wonderful reminder that most of the things we go to great pains to buy can easily be made by our own hands in our own kitchens. Turn on some of your favorite cooking music and prepare to snack on the ingredients the whole time you're making them, and enjoy!

Sea of Love.

I have made my first pieces of jewelry! I am jazzed. Unfortunately the pictures I took of them are crap since I took them with my phone. I could wait until I get some decent pictures but...I don't want to. I'll take more at a later date, ones that really do these babies justice. But first, a little back story. A recent expedition to the beach had me picking up a few treasures from off the sand. I can't rightly say that I had to dig for these puppies. The gulls do all the hard work. I don't know for sure, but my theory is that they find and eat their mussels and leave the beach littered with the shells. Maybe it's the season, or perhaps it's the particular beach we were on, but you couldn't walk two inches without stepping on another shell. In retrospect I should have picked up a whole garbage bag's worth, but at the time I didn't have a project in mind for them so I only took three. Three. What in god's name is wrong with me? I'm a hoarder by nature. Yeah, I said it. Hoarder. And I only took 3 shells. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to go back to the beach! Shucks. Anyway,  here they are! Pendants. I don't have chains for them yet, not ones I like for them anyway. That'll be next.

I didn't take a picture of the third one because it's much smaller than the first two and my cell camera just couldn't pick up the details, so that one will have to come later.

I'm rather fond of these. I wore the white one at work today and it was quite the hit. One of my coworkers even wants one! How exciting is that! So I really REALLY need to go back to the beach. Damn! What terrible luck!

-LG

The Prodigal Blogger Returns.

Hello all! I'm back. Let me apologize for my week-long absence. The only explanation I can offer you is that it was my Spring Break and I wanted to spend as much time soaking up the sun and as little time in front of my computer as possible. It was a great success. The weather was beautiful the entire week and the sun was so energizing! I felt productive and did, in fact, get things done. Like buy a pretty lilac dress, for example. Anyhow, I have a few posts in mind: projects to share with you, some goodies that I made, shopping finds, and (as usual) some musings on life. Or rather, musings on blogging. While the weather today isn't quuiiite as lovely as it has been, it's still technically sunny. So until class tonight I'm going to take this opportunity to get things done inside. I have some more wedding research to do for my sister, perhaps a dress to hem, some painting to do, and some grocery shopping. That last one can only take place after I've retrieved my debit card from the ATM I left it in yesterday. Yeah. I would do that. And that's assuming that nobody took it. So I hope everybody has a wonderful Tuesday and I will be back as soon as I can to start filling you in on my past week. Toodles!

-LG

And PS. I think my experiment is failing. The Michael Kors post is STILL getting more views than any of the others. I think I'll have to reformulate the experiment. I shall be mulling this over today.