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So you're off work and it's gloomy and raining outside. First, let's start with a collective boooooo. Now that we've gotten past that, rather than spend the whole day catching up on sleep, why not be proactive? I made a list of some things to do while stuck inside.1. PAMPER YOURSELF.
Listen, rainy days in are my favorites for this reason. Any excuse to pamper myself a little extra is always welcome. I generally do all these, but here's a few ideas to getcha started:
2. NETFLIX (& CHILL?).
Why not switch it up from your norm. Usually into rom-coms? Let's try an action movie, or maybe sci-fi! Go pop some popcorn, get cozy under a nice blanket, and check out this list for some great suggestions. Then get watching!
3. START THAT PROJECT.
Do you have a project you've been putting off with the excuse that you just don't have time?? Wellll... now you do. My project today was to start crocheting a little winter headband! It's so close to Christmas you can even use the time to make some Christmas cards or mini-gifts if you're feeling fancy.
4. BAKE.
Make some cookies! A pie! Maybe some spiced pears! If you've got the ingredients, today is definitely the day to try out a new recipe you're interested in.
5. CLEAN.
I know, I know, this sounds like the least amount of fun. But being stuck inside a cluttered house all day would give me anxiety. Normally when it's nice out we can avoid the mess by just leaving the house and pulling the outta-sight-outta-mind card, but not when we're forced to share the same space all day. Take on your cleaning in 10 minute increments (I mean it, set an stop watch!) or by item increments (10 minutes so quickly turns into 15 or more) and you'll have everything done before you know it!
With all this warm weather we've been having, it's hard to feel festive and want to make weather appropriate drinks. I'd rather be drinking a margarita (with salt, please!) than eggnog and I'm sure I'm not the only one. That said, I figured it was worth a try. Keeping in the vein of my spiced wine, I decided to make baked pears! Guys. Guys. This is the simplest recipe, but if you're into sweet things, you're gonna fall in love.
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Because it was just me, I only made enough for one serving, but normally I'd use two ripe pears. You're gonna take your pears and cut them in half, then use a spoon to scoop out the seeds toward the bottom center of the pear. Now, flip those pears and cut a liiiittle sliver off the backs, so they'll lay flat on your baking pan. I almost skipped this and they were sliding around. Not cute.
Line your baking pan with parchment paper (just for better clean up, you don't really have to do this if you don't want), and put your lil pear bbs on your pan. The recipe I roughly followed used legit measurements for the amount of honey (or agave if you're vegan), walnuts, and cinnamon in the recipe but I winged it because I like all those things and figured I'll like them in excess. If you're super anal, put 2 tsp of honey, 3 tbsp of walnuts, and 2 tsp of cinnamon on your pears. Basically just cover 'em with the ingredients.
Now, cook those bad boys for 25 minutes. You can either leave them as is and eat them once they're done, or do like I did and make a sweet ricotta sauce to top them with. If you choose the latter, combine 1 cup ricotta, 0.25 tsp cinnamon, and 1.5 tsp splenda in a blender and blend till smooth. I roughly used the ricotta sauce recipe from here, but with sugar instead of splenda. If you decide against splenda because you don't have it in your house (like I didn't), know that you'll need more sugar than that recipe calls for to really sweeten up the sauce.
Look at that!
Recipe Recap:
Pears:
2 pears
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp honey (or agave)
3 tbsp walnuts
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Half pears, scoop seeds, cut sliver off back & place on a lined baking pan.
3. Fill with walnuts, then cover with cinnamon & honey/agave.
4. Cook for 25 minutes.
Ricotta Sauce:
1 C fat free ricotta cheese
1.5 tsp splenda/sugar
.25 tsp cinnamon
1. Combine all ingredients in blender & blend. Adjust sugar for taste if needed.
2. Pour over peaches.
Let me know if you try these! If you don't fall in love I'll assume you made em wrong.
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Because it was just me, I only made enough for one serving, but normally I'd use two ripe pears. You're gonna take your pears and cut them in half, then use a spoon to scoop out the seeds toward the bottom center of the pear. Now, flip those pears and cut a liiiittle sliver off the backs, so they'll lay flat on your baking pan. I almost skipped this and they were sliding around. Not cute.
Line your baking pan with parchment paper (just for better clean up, you don't really have to do this if you don't want), and put your lil pear bbs on your pan. The recipe I roughly followed used legit measurements for the amount of honey (or agave if you're vegan), walnuts, and cinnamon in the recipe but I winged it because I like all those things and figured I'll like them in excess. If you're super anal, put 2 tsp of honey, 3 tbsp of walnuts, and 2 tsp of cinnamon on your pears. Basically just cover 'em with the ingredients.
Now, cook those bad boys for 25 minutes. You can either leave them as is and eat them once they're done, or do like I did and make a sweet ricotta sauce to top them with. If you choose the latter, combine 1 cup ricotta, 0.25 tsp cinnamon, and 1.5 tsp splenda in a blender and blend till smooth. I roughly used the ricotta sauce recipe from here, but with sugar instead of splenda. If you decide against splenda because you don't have it in your house (like I didn't), know that you'll need more sugar than that recipe calls for to really sweeten up the sauce.
Look at that!
Recipe Recap:
Pears:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Half pears, scoop seeds, cut sliver off back & place on a lined baking pan.
3. Fill with walnuts, then cover with cinnamon & honey/agave.
4. Cook for 25 minutes.
Ricotta Sauce:
1. Combine all ingredients in blender & blend. Adjust sugar for taste if needed.
2. Pour over peaches.
Let me know if you try these! If you don't fall in love I'll assume you made em wrong.
mini-gift guide!
If you're anything like me, you wait till the absolute last minute to buy your gifts. I figured why not help y'all out with a mini-gift guide for some of the ladies and fellas in your life? Here's some of what I've been vibing with recently and things I think anyone would appreciate as a gift!
1. Silence + Noise Suede Mini Paper Bag : $49
• 2. 2016 Moon Phases Calendar : $23
3. Sailor's mirror : $58-$188 • 4. Shadow nesting boxes : $22
5. Porcelain Berry Basket : $19.95 • 6. Fuzzy Cardigan : $17.99 • 7. Girl Boss : $16.49
1. See No Evil T : $28 • 2. All Nighters Snapback : $34
3. Travel Cologne : $25 • 4. Amount of Love Sweatshirt : $30
5. Quartz Red Beanie : $19.95 • 6. Nikon Black Analog Watch : $100
Happy shopping guys-- and stop procrastinating~ ;)
3. Sailor's mirror : $58-$188 • 4. Shadow nesting boxes : $22
5. Porcelain Berry Basket : $19.95 • 6. Fuzzy Cardigan : $17.99 • 7. Girl Boss : $16.49
1. See No Evil T : $28 • 2. All Nighters Snapback : $34
3. Travel Cologne : $25 • 4. Amount of Love Sweatshirt : $30
5. Quartz Red Beanie : $19.95 • 6. Nikon Black Analog Watch : $100
Happy shopping guys-- and stop procrastinating~ ;)
I'm not a big drinker anymore (despite working in a bar) but lately I've been getting down with the idea of just chilling out with a glass of wine at night. Because of the season, I've wanted to check out spiced wine, but never felt like taking the time to make it... till today! The dreary, gloom today seemed like the most appropriate weather to chill out in some thick wool socks with a warm mug (and also some sheeky Christmas tunes).
I followed Ina Garten's (I just googled to see if her name was legit, and it's actually Ina Rosenerg Garten, not even kidding) recipe, which you can find here, as a guideline, tho somewhat loosely because I was just making a personal portion instead of enough to serve 8.
My modified recipe included:
I only used maybe a third of an orange for juice instead of a whole like suggested, and instead of adding apple cider (which likely would've made a huge difference) I put more honey. Next time I'll definitely include the cider; I didn't realize how strong the taste of such a small amount of fresh orange juice (and less than a teaspoon of zest) would be. Not that I hate it, but I would've liked to taste more of the anise's licorice-y taste.
Since it only takes a little over 10 minutes for Snickerdoodles to cook (the pre-mix kind) and about 5 minutes to make, I figured why not throw some of those in the oven while I had the wine simmering on the stove! I'm clearly in a very cinnamon-y mood today.
I'm looking forward to playing around with my recipe amounts for the next few winter months. While the wine and cookies were awesome, I definitely wanted a more spicey warmth to the wine and too much orange kind of ruined that. If you're interested in trying out some mulled wine and aren't down with trial-ing and error-ing like I am, you can always purchase yourself some mulling spices like these Whole Foods ones that are premixed! I've heard them mentioned a few times recently so they must be good. :))
What holiday drinks do you look forward to??
(source: barbombon.com)This past Monday after my shift I decided to switch it up a bit. Normally I just take myself shopping around Rittenhouse when I'm done working, but decided to switch up my routine and check out a new restaurant. I've been hearing about this place a lot recently (and seeing a lot of pictures on instagram as well) and decided it was worth checking out. I convinced my boyfriend to join me, but if he had known the premise of the restaurant prior hand, I don't think he'd have been as keen. Bar Bombon is a strictly vegetarian restaurant, offering only plant-based proteins (and John is probably as omnivorous as they come).
We ended up sitting outside because it was so nice out and probably our last chance to take advantage of the weather like that till spring, but the inside decor was super cute (from what I saw on my way to the bathroom hah!). Our server was training someone and probably could have been more attentive, but I understand he also may not have wanted to be all over our table because we were really undecided on what we wanted.
I got their quinoa aztec salad, which has quinoa, butternut squash, currants, citrus (orange and grapefruit supremes I believe), and pumpkin seed vinaigrette, on mixed greens. I'd never had currants before but I definitely don't hate them as much as traditional raisins, and the mix of ingredients all worked together well. I may even attempt to recreate this salad on my own time. John got a "beef" burrito, and while not being a huge fan of fake meats, ate half of it without much complaint. I think he was surprised that it was a decent substitute for meat. I'm definitely going to have to take him to a steakhouse next to make up for this place, but I can at least attest to him being a good sport!
The food there is a little pricey, but because of the type of food they serve as well as their location (right off Rittenhouse park), it's to be expected. I think I'll definitely take a trip back to try out some more dishes, just with one of my veg*n friends instead of my boy. :)
I'm not a huge partier anymore, so after puking for a few hours my first full day in town, I was pretty much over getting hammered at all... in the city where it seems like that's all people do? I noticed that unlike Philadelphia, which has a pretty decent mix of entertainment for tourist and non-tourist crowds in general, everything in New Orleans seemed geared toward visitors. I did find a small corner of boutiques on Magazine and one decent vintage store off Frenchmen, but most shops just seemed to feature "GREETINGS FROM NEW ORLEANS" paraphernalia or mardi gras style masquerade masks. Learning curve!
I honestly wasn't sure how to write about my trip here so this is largely pictures. I didn't get to see as many (any) sights like graveyards, spooky tours, and museums as I would have liked to because I waited around for other people instead of going off on my own in the beginning of the trip, and the end of my trip got rained out; I don't think I will be returning to New Orleans in the near future to remedy that though, as my overall experience left me more bitter than a vacation should. What I did see of the city was gorgeous and bright; even the buildings that had been left abandoned had a beauty to their decay. There were plants EVERYWHERE, and I wish I could've snuck them all back in my carry-on, but I unfortunately packed 4 too many pairs of shoes.
Just left to its lonesome; they even left their boat!
I wanted to lay in the branches of all the trees I kept seeing just covered in moss.
Blue Dream Vintage Boutique. kinda pricey but I was just stoked to finally find a decent store I actually bought stuff.
Art from a gallery I passed. Unfortunately I didn't write down the artist's name.
This rad bar called the Dungeon off Bourbon that you can miss if you aren't looking for. Really. It's a little hole in the wall bar that plays metal music and is lit up in all red light. You're not supposed to take pictures in there but no one listens anyway.
See?
Dreamy Weenie - Pothole Dog: Potato salad, chili & cheese!
So much green, I was just aching to curl up in some moss
A crazy Halloween party at this weird old money plantation house that looked out of a movie.
I was way too sober to properly enjoy it but the place looked cool.
John and Steve playing pacman in The Other Bar
We spent Halloween at a strange Mermaid themed warehouse party.
I didn't take enough photos here because I felt like nothing properly conveyed the atmosphere.
Partial Halloween reflections.
Napoleon House - Cheese boardt
Napoleon House - Ratatouille Calzone
A night market off Frenchmen we stumbled onto.
I took a lot of photos the handful of times I was able to get out so it looks like I had a much more eventful trip than I did, hah (I guess that's the nature of social media though, right?!?) By the end I was truly ready to be back in my own bed, in my own town. My only advice is this:
If you're getting an airbnb in a city you've never been to, double and triple check your friend's suggestions. What you may save in cost by being slightly out of the way you may end up paying in transportation (we spent at least $200 on uber in 3 days. $200.)
If you want to go see things, do it.
I honestly wasn't sure how to write about my trip here so this is largely pictures. I didn't get to see as many (any) sights like graveyards, spooky tours, and museums as I would have liked to because I waited around for other people instead of going off on my own in the beginning of the trip, and the end of my trip got rained out; I don't think I will be returning to New Orleans in the near future to remedy that though, as my overall experience left me more bitter than a vacation should. What I did see of the city was gorgeous and bright; even the buildings that had been left abandoned had a beauty to their decay. There were plants EVERYWHERE, and I wish I could've snuck them all back in my carry-on, but I unfortunately packed 4 too many pairs of shoes.
I was way too sober to properly enjoy it but the place looked cool.
I didn't take enough photos here because I felt like nothing properly conveyed the atmosphere.
I took a lot of photos the handful of times I was able to get out so it looks like I had a much more eventful trip than I did, hah (I guess that's the nature of social media though, right?!?) By the end I was truly ready to be back in my own bed, in my own town. My only advice is this:
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