shi.ny: August 2011

On my mind today...

These Jedi knights
Quirks. Some of mine include always squeezing the bottle of toothpaste from the bottom, turning a cereal bowl when I pour in milk, 1998732948374 food quirks, and having to make the total end in a multiple of five when putting gas in my car (got that one from my dad)
Mmm. Tempeh.
Hurricane Irene's impending arrival and the fact that I forgot to buy bottled water
Jonesing for Utah after seeing the picture my cousin Kate posted

Veg.

As a personal challenge, I have been cooking/eating vegan for almost a week .... and I actually kinda like it? I really miss cheese though.

Thanks to blogs like CKC, Herbivoracious, and VeganYumYum, it has not been difficult and I have already found a lot of healthy and (no exaggeration) supremely tasty dishes. I am undertaking this endeavor simply because I am trying to be healthy and eliminate as much processed food as possible from my daily diet. Though I will probably never fancy myself a true vegan (the vegan version is just not even worth it in some cases, i.e. my favorite example, cheese) in the very least I am discovering new recipes and paying better attention to the food that fuels my body. Here's to healthier eating!

Scholarly

Pardon the myspace-esque mirror/cell phone self portraiture atrocity. It's my 1st day of school outfit (well... this was a practice run, I have a major MA language test the first day of school so I probably won't remember that morning). Also, I am a walking Forever 21 ad. I am loving the giant pearl earrings I got at F21, not to mention the pajama-soft oversize shirt. Imagine if you will that there's a F21 jersey knit black pencil skirt underneath. In reality I wasn't wearing anything at all under it (TMI alert!) but it's too hot for real clothes in my air conditioning deprived apartment. Cheers to the last semester of my masters program! A.k.a. let's hope I survive it. Not only am I in more than one economics class (ew), I have a million books (which means lots of reading to come), along with PhD and PMF applications, job searching, and so much more on my plate between now and December 15 that it's overwhelming just to think about. Listen to my boi Eminem throw it down for you:
'Cause sometimes you feel tired,
feel weak, and when you feel weak, you feel like you wanna just give up.
But you gotta search within you, you gotta find that inner strength
and just pull that sh*t out of you and get that motivation to not give up
and not be a quitter, no matter how bad you wanna just fall flat on your face and collapse.

Snickerdoodle Pancakes

CKC (Fat, Delicious) Snickerdoodle Pancakes

(that I have made for breakfast every single morning this week)

Serves 1

1/2 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1T plus 1 tsp sugar
1/2 cup plus 2T almond or soy milk (or more, for thinner pancakes)
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
tiny bit over 1/16 tsp salt (don’t omit)
Cook on frying pan lightly sprayed with non-stick spray, turning once. Optional: if you don’t like the texture of fat-free pancakes (dense and cakey) you can add 1T canola oil

Calories: 223
Fat: 1 gram

'Sup?

What have I been up to lately? Good question. A lot of the time, the answer is 'not much.' This is becoming an issue, since I am supposed to be 10x farther than I am on my directed study paper. Some of my favorite summer days (aka days off) have included:

Any time with my friends in New York (for example Terrible Movie Nights with homemade ice cream and this gem of a film)
Gorgeous weather, Wonder City donuts, New York Public Library tour, yoga, reading Boccaccio in Bryant Park
Metropolitan Museum of Art and Magnolia Bakery banana pudding
American Museum of Natural History
Strand books, Sephora, Pizza Bash $1 Mondays, Union Square, NYU, reading in Washington Square Park, rainy walks through Central Park
Copley farmers market, a sunset cruise on the Charles River and Crane Beach
Salem, Exeter, Portsmouth, and Kittery
Watching movie adaptations of every Jane Austen novel

The rest of my summer will include finishing that darn paper (gah!), working, and hopefully Chelsea Highline park, Kleinfeld's, Levaine, Atlantic City, and Hoboken. Summer has a really really bad habit of always going by far too quickly. Enjoy the rest of yours, and meanwhile I will enjoy listening to the song that one of my old flames wrote for me and sent over last night haha. If I can figure out how to upload a music file into a blog post, I will share.

Pocahontas goes green

... I am loving my new shoes from Boden.

Anne with an E

Amanda posted an article about the lessons to be learned from one of our favorite literary ladies, Anne Shirley. I started re-reading the books today! Perfect timing, since I just finished The Enchantress of Florence. Next up, The Dud Avocado and The Postmistress, a 'book club' book I'm reading with Courtney.