Juicing

I'm attempting to juice (only) this whole week. I made it through Day 1! Woot! I feel great. I've thought about juicing before, and anyone who watches the documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead will want to do a juice fast. My motivation has come from this strange rash on my body right now. It could be a nutritional deficiency, an allergic reaction, or an overabundance of candida in my body. In any case, I quit using any products with sulfates in them and the juicing will help clear out toxins.

If you don't know much about juicing, it's fascinating to read about. Drinking fresh juices that are loaded with nutrients and enzymes, without fiber to slow digestion, gives your body a chance to divert lots of energy from digestion to cleansing.

You can read lots more about this stuff online. So far, I really do feel great. I did get pretty hungry at 4pm and at night yesterday, but it's totally manageable and I still had mental clarity. It's much different than being starving and irritable; you feel stable (and trust me, I can't do any work when I'm hungry.) I drank a ton of juice yesterday. I made kale-beet-apple-carrot-spinach-ginger, grapefruit, and some other green concoctions. I did put garlic in one of the last juices I made yesterday. It tasted fine, but burping the flavor up later is gross. Ew.

Although drinking any pre-made juice isn't recommended for the fast, having some OJ around gave me a nice break from having to juice so many things all day. In the morning I did a big batch so I could take juice to work. If you have to do this, I read that you should crush a vitamin C tablet and mix it in to help the juice from oxidizing. You really want to drink the juices immediately after juicing for the health benefits, but we all have to go to work..

Note: If you're interested in doing a juice cleanse, make sure you read all about it. There is a component that you must do during the process that clears your toxins...I won't talk about it here, but it's completely necessary.

(Legally) Drinking in the Street

One day on a walk Eric and I stopped at a little liquor store to buy a can of beer to take home. The cashier asked Eric if he wanted a paper bag and Eric answered yes because we were walking home with it. The cashier asked which way we were headed and we were surprised to find out that it's legal to have an open container in the area of Austin we were in! What?! It's actually legal to have an open container in many areas of Austin, excluding the springs and areas downtown where the bars are. Our walk home is totally in the legal zone! We opened the can and walked openly with it home that day.

Last weekend we walked to Whole Foods and got a beer and a glass of champagne "to-go" and walked home. When you get a beer on tap at WF, they actually ask you "for here or for walking?" (I think they are referring to just walking around the store.)

Now if we go out, we take a beer with us to the bus stop for the wait! (I think we did this once before we knew it was legal..really funny now thinking we were being shady.)

Refried Black Beans

(Oops, forgot to mention: Keep the liquid from the black beans - that goes in with the black beans.)

Austinite's love for breakfast tacos is ridiculous. You can find breakfast tacos at most coffee shops, gas stations, and of course the taco shops and the real deal Mexican spots. I'm in love with any bfast taco that comes with refried black beans or avocado or Mexican mashed potatoes. Eric and I make some nearly every weekend, and it's definitely guaranteed if someone is hungover (sorry Mom!). Eric makes a mean taco with bacon, potatoes (cooked in bacon fat) and egg.

It would be cliche to say now that my stomach is rumbling at the end of this post, but it really is..off to eat breakfast (wish it was a taco!).

friday!

2011 recap, a little late

This is a little late, but I was just now able to access my photos since my laptop started to die (my new computer arrived Friday and I'm in love.)

2011 was a really fun year with lots of baking, breakfast tacos, music festivals (SXSW, ACL and FFF!), girls' nights out, cute Sunday family dinners, picnics, visiting our families, swimming, and traveling.

The boy got lots of baked treats.

We drank tons of espresso thanks to mom's gift of an espresso machine.

South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival falls during my spring break every year and this past year may have been my most fun spring break, including spring breaks I had when I was a student. I could walk from our place to venues for free shows and there were so many places giving away free food and drinks. Austin's downtown is completely taken over by the festival; it's so much fun to walk around with all the people everywhere.

We rearranged our tiny apartment a ton.

We went on lots of walks in our cute neighborhood.

We had lots of date nights with friends and celebrated lots of birthdays.

I traveled to Sweden with my Aunt Elaine and met her truly incredible Swedish friends.

I got a cruiser so I could quit using my road bike for commuting.

We had lots of delicious dinners (Sunday Family Dinner, the official name) and brunches with Eric's family.

I saw my good friends in South Carolina and also got to meet this sweet little girl.

We had lots of girls' night outs (although our friend Greg got invited a couple of times..we started calling it Girls' Night Out..Plus Greg).

A best friend visited from Florida and we hosted a really fun Christmas party.

And on the final day of 2011, Eric asked me to marry him.

Puffy Pillow Pancakes

Oh gosh, these are so good. I'm not a pancake person and I don't recall ever wanting to make pancakes on the weekend. This morning I stumbled upon this post on a blog and was convinced this might be a pancake I would like. These are absolutely perfect. I've never had pancakes this fluffy! The baking powder and vinegar are the trick to the fluffiness.

Recipe (Taken and slightly adapted from the Post Punk Kitchen Blog)
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon ground flax seeds
1/2 cup water
3 tablespoons canola oil
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

In a large mixing bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Make a well in the center.

Measure the milk and add the vinegar and ground flax seeds. Using a fork, vigorously mix the ingredients until foamy.

Pour the milk mixture into the center of the dry ingredients. Add the water, canola oil and vanilla and use a fork to mix until a thick, lumpy batter forms. DO NOT OVERMIX. Just mix until incorporated --mine had many small lumps throughout. The less you mix, the better they will be, I promise.

Preheat the pan over medium-low heat and let the batter rest for 10 minutes. Don't skip this step - the resting is crucial.

Lightly coat the pan in oil. Add 1/3 cup of batter for each pancake. Mine were ready in two minutes or a little less to flip, although the original recipe said 4 minutes on each side (take a peek on the underneath for yours).

I will never use another pancake recipe again. Not that I had one to begin with because I never make pancakes...but now I will!

Cure your own salmon

This is just another thing to add to the wait, is it really that easy? list.

I would have never thought to cure my own salmon, but some of my best friends recently did and it was delicious. It's ridiculously easy: generously sprinkle some salt on fresh salmon along with pepper and other herbs like dill or thyme, wrap tightly in saran wrap, place in a dish and weight the fish down in your fridge for three days. (We weighted ours down using 3 cans of black beans.)

That's it. Whenever I find out something like this is so easy, I feel cheated. This salmon tastes better than the smoked salmon and you'll buy at the store, and we only paid $3 for the package of salmon we used.

Happy weekend! Mine consists of happy hour, crafts, and maybe even a wedding magazine.

necklaces

I made them out of the small wire pieces that are intended for earring making (what are they called? earring rods?). These things (at the bottom). I think the necklaces turned out really cute and they were relatively easy to make. Below is the necklace I gave to my mom as a Christmas gift. She actually thought it was a necklace I bought - very flattering, but I should give most of the credit to the nice box I put it in.

happy friday!

The weather is gorgeous in Austin today, so I rode my bike to work. I'm in such a good mood getting to work when I get to ride my bike. Today Eric and I are going on a late afternoon picnic together in Zilker Park. We haven't celebrated alone since we got engaged so I bought some champagne and want to pick up some yummy cheeses before we walk out to the park.

Happy Friday!

Magnets

Over the holiday break, I got together with some of my family and an old friend for a craft day. We made magnets from fish tank marbles (you can get some fancier ones in craft stores, but you'll pay a ton more) and cute paper. We used clear tacky glue to glue the marbles to the paper, and once the glue dried, we glued magnets on the back. We used some cheap black circle magnets on some and bought some super-duper magnets to use on the others. We used some scary powerful glue for glueing the magnets (E700 or something like that.)

They turned out really cute.

I think the craft day will stick as an annual event for the break, along with the "Christmas Sweater 5k Fun Run" that my brother organized. Which, by the way, left me incredibly sore afterwards. That was a wake up call to get back in shape and finally buy some new running shoes.

Happy New Year!

2012! I'm really excited to get a fresh start on everything. Ironically, our apartment is the biggest disaster since we first moved in here. Our luggage and gifts from returning from Florida are dumped everywhere around the house. That doesn't sound too bad, but you really have no idea. I can't even walk in our bedroom right now.

Eric bought me a really nice juicer for Christmas, and I am planning to use it a lot. This morning I made some kale, apple, and beet juice. My body is in desperate need of a food makeover. I think I've had more french fries in the past month than I usually eat in months. Last week I even had french fries fried in duck fat for the first time (delicious).

The biggest news to be excited about is...

Eric proposed on New Year's Eve! Saturday was gorgeous. We woke up and went for a walk to Whole Foods to eat breakfast and then we continued walking to the pedestrian bridge. The bridge has been my favorite place in Austin since I've moved here. The bridge itself is pretty and the view on both sides is beautiful. We sat on a bench and he said a couple of really sweet things and then got down on one knee. A couple of runners saw and start hollering. It was super cute. I cried. The ring is an heirloom from Eric's side of the family and that's a green diamond (it looks more turquoise in bright light) in the center!



P.S. One of my resolutions is to post much more frequently on the blog!