I know I have been awfully quiet as of late. I'm not even sure if anyone reads anymore. I never lost my desire to write, I just find it hard to let it all spew out when this site is so publicly known (not famous per se but known to friends and family in real life). Plus, as I get older and take on more normal grown up responsibilities, I find it so hard to carve out some time to write.
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It really seems like December just flew by and I'm sure that's not uncommon, since it always seems like we wait all year for Christmas then before we know it, we blink and it's gone. But December was busy for us because we had quite a few parties to go to and we had our trip to Pennsylvania to prepare for. I also have family here and family in North Carolina so when you're trying to split the holidays up among everyone, it gets really busy and overwhelming.
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Now that I feel all caught up with July’s post, it’s time to turn over a new leaf. I’m tossing around the idea of trying to post everyday for a month again, just to give myself another kick start. I’ve gotta do something. Got so, so, so many ideas rolling around in my head of stuff I want to write about and suss out and I just need to give myself a good kick in the butt.
But let’s end August and start of September the right way – with a monthly love post. There were SO MANY THINGS to love in August and I am thoroughly addicted to each and every one of them.
We kicked off August with STAYCATION! We were supposed to go to Pennsylvania but circumstances and finances didn’t work out so we decided to take a week off together and spend it in the Charleston area just relaxing and enjoying time sight seeing in our area and enjoying time together that we don’t normally get because we’re wrapped up in normal lives and when we do travel, we’re usually visiting friends and family. So we slept in and cooked dinner and baked food. We went fishing at the new Mt. Pleasant Pier (well, Steve fished, I read books all day on what turned out to be an absolutely BEAUTIFUL day!), watched a bunch of movies, drove around exploring the Lake Moultrie area, which we had never really been too, and even went to Savannah for the day. Overall, we had a great time and a much needed rest. It allowed me to recenter myself and reconnect with Steve and just overall have a wonderful time. It was such a great way to start off the month!
I can’t have a monthly love post without talking about food and I tell you what, I’ve had only ONE addiction this month: Whole Grain Goldfish crackers. I CANNOT get enough of these. Seriously, they are all I snack on these days and I’d like to say it’s because they’re like $2 a bag, but that doesn’t count when I can finish a bag in a day/night of snacking. I eat them at work, I eat them at home. That picture below is of my cabinet – those are FIVE bags that I just bought this weekend because they were cheap at Wal-Mart. What you do not see is the two packs of 9-bag snack packs at work or the countless number of bags that I have finished this month. I don’t know if it’s their cheesy, salty baked goodness or the whole grain, but something about these particular ones make them better than the original and it doesn’t hurt that they’re probably slightly better for me than the usual things I reach for, which is ice cream. Or Oreos!
Another discovery: Bacardi Puerto Rican RUM. I know, I know – it’s just rum and yes, I knew what it was long before this month. But I didn’t know I LIKED it until I didn’t have any wine one night and wanted a drink so I mixed it with Diet Dr. Pepper and damn, is it delicious! It has a nice, sweet, smoothness and it doesn’t give me a headache like hard liquor has previously done in the past. So hello, Bacardi, you are my new friend! Hope you like partying with goldfish because you’ll be seeing them in my stomach with you.
In the entertainment category, there’s nothing but Dexter! Holy shit, DEXTER! What an awesome, amazing show! We started watching it because others had recommended it and it was available on our Netflix Instant Queue and wow, why didn’t we hear about this show before? I have never wanted to root for a serial killer but I love Dexter. I love the stories, the mysteries and the unique and unpredictable twists and turns. I love the characters: Batista, LaGeurta, Masuka, even Quinn. I thought Jimmy Smits was phenomenal on the third season! (I hate, hate, hate Deb but I see her as a necessity to play against Dexter) And I’m so very excited for the fourth season. Seriously, if you are not watching Dexter, you should start. Right now! Like yesterday!
In the beauty category, I decided to try something new. I’ve been a Bare Minerals foundation user for about two years. I liked it because it was light and didn’t feel so heavy and cakey on my face. But this past month, I started noticing that the powder actually began to cake and settled into my pores and sometimes, it made my skin feel irritated. Plus, it was $25! So I decided to switch it up and picked up some Maybelline Dream Matte Mousse. I picked it up because they said it was good to help disguise large pores and it still provided the coverage of a liquid with the feel of a powder and man, am I glad I did. It definitely helped disguise the pores, the coverage is nice and even, it goes on softly and smooth and it makes my complexion look flawless. It is my new love and is even cheaper than the Bare Minerals but about $15. So that’s make it all worth it!
There was also a rediscovery this month. A rekindling of a flame, per se, with my Canon 50mm f1.4 lens. I bought this lens when I originally bought my camera, forgoing the kit lens for this one at the advice of many others. I used it as my primary lens in the beginning but a 50mm focal length was hard for me to get used, having jumped for a point and shoot that had a wide zoom lens and focal length. So I bought a cheap 18-55mm kits lens to allow myself the ability to get more in the picture and began to rely heavily on that one because I hadn’t gotten used to 50mm yet. But I went back, because overall the 50mm is faster, has a crispier focus and does bokeh and depth of field wonderfully. And I’m so happy I did because I do love this lens so much! It’s going to take some getting used to again but I think I can handle. Practice makes perfect right?
And that’s about it! There are some other guilty pleasures, like the Real Housewives of Atlanta, the joys of cooking and baking goodies in my own home and coupon clipping from the Sunday paper (because, holy crap, they have coupons and great savings, in the PAPER! I would always look online and it never even occurred to me to look where women have been looking for years! DUH!) but I don’t find them guilty at all because I thoroughly enjoyed them and didn’t feel bad about it all.
Overall, August was a great month with wonderful finds! Here’s hoping to a productive and fun September. I can’t believe it’s three quarters of the way through the year. And I seriously, cannot wait for FALL!
I want a chill in the air, hoodies, sweaters and jeans!
There’s no excuse for me not posting in a month except I was lazy and unmotivated. And that’s all I’m going to say about that. Instead, I’ll move forward and make up for July’s monthly love post as well as throw some August in there.
And without further adieu, here’s everything that I loved in July.
Most importantly was weekends spent with friends. July 4th we had a few drinks and blew stuff up in a friends driveway. The following weekend was a pool party to celebrate another friends birthday. And it culminated the weekend of the 18th with a trip to Myrtle Beach to celebrate another friends birthday. We spent the weekend playing games, drinking some beers, hanging out on the beach, shopping and eating. A LOT! One of our friends has a lovely little house in a smaller, less touristy area north of Myrtle Beach and the great thing was that it wasn’t that crowded and the town was small and tiny enough to not even have a McDonald’s, just a bunch of sleepy little tourist shops and food joints and a gas station or so. All in all, it was lovely weekend spent with friends and fun in the sun and I had such a great time!
We culminated that weekend at Rioz, a Brazilian churrascarria (steakhouse). We had been looking forward to this for weeks and had pretty much specifically planned this trip around this place. It is basically all you can eat meat. I’ll say it again – ALL YOU CAN EAT MEAT! You sit down and they give you a coaster – one side is red and the other is green. You flip it to green to have them continue bringing you meat and when you need a break, flip it to red. The servers bring the meat on skewers to your table and cut off pieces and you just keep taking them until you can’t eat anymore. I’m talking filet mignon, filet mignon wrapped in bacon, chicken, lamb, flank steak, ribs, pork sausage, chicken wrapped bacon – just uber-deliciousness. And they have a phenomenal salad bar (but who wants salad?) with fresh shrimp, cheese, sushi, pasta. They also give you plantains and mashed potatoes with cheese and polenta. But again – who has room for any of that when it’s all you can eat MEAT! And it’s good cuts of meat and they are cooked succulently and flavored perfectly. Not to mention the grilled pineapple sprinkled with cinnamon that they cut off warm at the table and the drink and dessert carts they roll to your table. I had a caipiranha, which is basically just lime juice, sugar and a shitload of rum. And for dessert, a ginormous piece of cheesecake that was absolutely freaking delicious! And we both got all of that and got out of there for about $100 ($35 per person + extra for dessert and drinks). Seriously, if you are EVER in Myrtle Beach, you must go there. Just not this coming up weekend because we’ll be going back for Steve’s birthday!
On the food front again, there’s this Fruit Salsa that I posted earlier in the month. This was an experimentation that I picked up off the Internet because I needed a quick and easy dip type thing for one of the parties and I wanted to do something “different” than most people did. Thankfully, it was a success and it’s versatile enough for me to interchange fruits as they go in and out of season. I definitely think next time, I will cut the recipe in half because we had so much more left than we needed. I ended up leaving it at our host’s house and he pretty much said he was eating it ALL WEEK!
As far as entertainment goes, I can’t talk about July without mentioning Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Like I said to everyone else, I don’t care that the critics didn’t like it. I don’t care that the story was pretty much disjointed and nonsensical. I don’t even care that Megan Fox needs to keep her douchebaggy piehole shut and serve the exact purpose that she got famous for: eye candy. I just care that shits blows up and there are giant robots and awesome cars and giant robots and oh, did I mention? GIANT ROBOTS. GIANT ROBOTS THAT CURB STOMP EACH OTHER. Seriously, that’s all I have to say about that.
Finally, there’s an album I fell in LOVE with and am still playing it over and over through this month. Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss has got to be one of the most hauntingly beautiful albums I’ve ever heard. Even now, when I hear one of it’s song on my iPod shuffle, I kick it off random just to listen to the whole album again. It’s a weird combination, with Plant of Zepplin fame and Krauss’ root primarily in country and bluegrass but it works phenomenally. I’d throw the name of some of my favorite songs out there but I’d end up giving you the entire list so it’s prudent for you to check it out yourself and then thank me as you find yourself humming the tunes over and over again even when you’re away from the music.
And that’s pretty much it! July had some great times and August had some even better ones. And even though this is late, it’s still nice looking back on the little things I enjoyed!
Summer, it seems, is in full swing around here! Though last weekend was rather low key for us (we spent the 4th at a friend’s house shooting fireworks off in his street – the joys of living in a state where they’re legal), we found ourselves rather busy this weekend and actually have the next few booked up.
Friday night we had a nice leisurely dinner with some friends then headed to Wal-Mart to pick up supplies for a surprise party that we threw another friend yesterday evening. I then spent all day yesterday preparing food and myself and hanging out with my little brother before heading over to the party location to setup. After that it was eating and drinking and celebrating and swimming and I’ll tell you what, last night was the perfect night for swimming! Warm and balmy but not overly humid and even the water was nice and warm to where you didn’t get a chill from being in it. I think I have to get myself a pool, or at least make a point to visit one more often.
Today, as a result of me feeling just flat-out exhausted, we didn’t do much. I slept in and sat around for awhile trying to force myself awake. Then in the early afternoon I decided I couldn’t take the clutter and mess that had overtook my house, so I spent the afternoon picking things up, doing laundry and going through some cubbies in the kitchen and laundry room as part of my overall ‘get rid of useless shit’ campaign that I have taken on the past few weeks.
And now it’s time for True Blood and just the general wrapping up of another week and preparing for a new one.
Tonight though, I would like to share with a recipe. I’ve never done this before, despite wanting to, but I figured I’d try something new because, well, I like food and I like sharing good food with people. This doesn’t mean I’m a good cook but I try and get by, somewhat. I basically like things quick, easy and accessible and most of the food we tend to eat can be rather plain – we are only mildly (and by mildly I mean rarely) adventurous eaters.
That being said, I was looking for something interesting and different but festive to take to this evening pool party last night and stumled upong this recipe for Fruit Salsa and homemade Cinammon Sugar chips (on AllRecipes) and decided it fit the exact idea I was looking for. I took my own liberties with the recipes and came up with a delicious, fairly easy and perfect summer dish! I also received tons of compliments on it and numerous requests for the recipe so I might as well share it with y’all too!
Happy preparing!
Fruit Salsa
5 peaches
1 lb. strawberries
2 Fuji apples
1 pint blueberries
1 jar fruit preserves
At the simplest level, dice the peaches, strawberries and apples into small, “salsa” size pieces. Mix them together is a large bowl with the blueberries. Then throughly mix the preserves together with the fruit. Cover and chill.
Now for some details.
The recipe originally called for kiwis, raspberries, strawberries and and apples but I don’t like kiwis and couldn’t find raspberries so I substituted, which is the beautiful thing about this recipe. I’m sure you can substitute almost any fruit that’s in season.
Part of the key to this recipe is that the berries and fruit make their own “juice”. The recipe originally called for some white and brown sugar to be added but I omitted it at the suggestion of others on the site and I’m glad I did because it definitely would have been way too sweet had I added it. Also, I used a jar and a half of preserves because it didn’t seem like it would be enough but next time, I’ll use just as a jar because it, combined with the natural fruit juices, made the salsa a bit too liquidy for my taste.
For the preserves, I used apricot and they were delicious! Others have suggested strawberry and regular grape jam.
Overall, people loved the salsa and I received tons of requests for the recipe so I’m going to add it to my repertoire and continue to experiment with it to find out what other different things I can do with it.
Homemade Cinnamon Sugar Chips
10 flour tortillas
Butter flavored cooking spray
Cinnamon & sugar mix
Another basic level recipe – spray both sides of the tortilla, slice into chip size pieces, coat with cinnamon sugar mixture then bake at 350 degrees for approximately 9-11 minutes.
Again, since this is a very easy recipe that you can take liberties with, I’ll share my tips with you and you can modify them accordingly.
I started off spraying a tortilla, cutting it, coating it with cinammon sugar then baking it but this was rather time consuming. By the end, I would take a tortilla, spray both sides, stack it on a plate, then spray another one on both sides and stack it on top of the original one. I did this for about four tortillas before I cut them then just left them on the plate and coated enough chips at a time that would fit on the pan.
The easiest way I found to coat them is to mix the cinnamon and sugar together in a ziploc bag (about 1/2 cup sugar to 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon, though don’t quote me on those measurements as I just eyeballed it – it should look more like dirty sugar and not brown sugar) then drop about four to six chips in at a time and shake the bag.
The hardest thing to gauge was baking them. I wasn’t sure if the sugar was supposed to turn the sugar dark brown and crystallize it or if it was ok for them to look like you could still brush the sugar off. It took me a few batches to figure out that I was looking more for the chips to just get hard and crunchy to the touch instead of the sugar crystallizing. So just feel it out for a few sessions and you’ll get comfortable with it.
After that, serve the chips with the salsa – dipping them in the fruits is absolutely delicious!
Overall, I really enjoyed making this and loved that it was fairly easy but well received. The chopping up of the fresh fruit was really only the more labor intensive part – it took about two and a half hours to get everything as finely chopped as I needed it, but it was well worth it!
As of now, we still have quite a month planned. Next weekend, we are going to Myrtle Beach for a long, relaxing time at the beach to celebrate another friends birthday. I’ve equated it to a big slumber party where we grill out, play some board games, hang out on the beach all day and just generally relax. The following weekend is fairly free but the weekend after that we heading to Pennsylvania for a week-long visit with the family.
Overall, I have quite a bit to look forward to and while life is rather busy and chaotic still, it’s these little things that give me something to look forward to.
Hope you all are having a good summer so far and if you try the recipe, let me know how it went for you!
