Some Summer Blog Love

So here I am in a weird travel limbo. Got back late on Monday from LA, Tuesday I chose to spend my time outside of work wisely with the boy, which leaves tonight as my only real night home until I head out for my Maryland-DC-Virginia concert adventure, with the weekend after that to be spent in Avalon. Goodness. And here I was thinking that my life was settling down a bit when in fact it's just revving up.

Beautiful Cali. The view from the balcony in my room at the Four Seasons

With just one night home, shopping for food presents it's own little challenge. I don't want to make a mess, I don't want to have leftovers, but I also want to get enough so that I'm not repeating this entire process next week when I get back. So only non-perishables or items that can be frozen back. Which requires thought. And when I don't have the time to sit and plan I cheat a little and head to my favs. It's almost as though they knew I was coming.

Counting Down

And catching up. It's been an amazing past week, that has been all part of an amazing month so I figured I'd brush up on my Flickr skills and share a little slideshow of what I've been up to, mostly food, drink, music and sports oriented.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

So you got my highly coveted LCD Soundsystem ticket (thank you B) with a delicious Johnny Mack's cheeseburger in the background. Once of my nicer shots from TV on the Radio part 1 at Radio City. Having a pretty decent glass of Pinot Noir at the Yankees Game. Very delicious siracha deviled eggs with pickled swiss chard stems I nabbed from Luisa's link love last Friday for the perfect (clearly non-vegan) dinner party appetizer and ending the night with a homemade blueberry crumble pie. Then it was off to Boston and hitting up some blueberry beer before TV on the Radio part 2. Brunch the next day was a Sinatra Sunday at Lucky's Lounge and then catching a last minute Red Sox game. April... I'm exhausted, and that isn't even the 1/2 of it.

Vegan Fail

I love Korean food. The do it yourself bbq meat, the perfect combination of spicy and tart pickled vegetables, the fact that they aren't afraid to throw a raw egg into a scalding hot bowl of rice, that it satisfies almost every usual craving of mine in one fell swoop. Prior to the vegan challenge I made a Korean dinner part of my last hurrah, as it's one cuisine I'll definitely miss especially working so close to New York's Little Korea, and immediately began thinking of ways to incorporate the cuisine as much as possible into my challenge.

Enter Mother In Law's Kimchi. In my mad dash Wednesday night to Whole Foods, I stood gaping openly at the soy-Asian refrigerated section and when I saw this innocent little jar of kimchi, complete with the design friendly label, it was an immediate grab. Of course I didn't read the ingredients. It's kimchi. It's spicy, tart, fermented. At worse as far as meat of any sort goes there's shrimp paste, fish sauce and/or anchovies. 

Out with Dumb Holidays

I really don't want to do the seemingly obligatory single girl hate-on-V-day post but another part of me is finding this day so hard to ignore to the point that it's just really pissing me off (thanks Mark Zuckerberg with your targeted facebook ads, et al). But truth be told while there is definitely a heightened sensitivity to this most pointless of holidays this year in particular, I've always generally found it, well... a pretty pointless holiday. Even when I've been in relationships. And in no way am I belittling love, but rather the obligation to show someone you love that you love them. It defeats the purpose somewhat. Because there's nothing romantic about feeling obligated to do something.

My sentiments on this faux holiday may change if I got this bear. This bear is AWESOME!

Think about it for a sec. Some guy gets you some stuff not because he wants to but because he feels obligated by Hallmark  or some retarded jeweler to, you are constantly one-upped by co-workers and frienemies whose flowers are bigger, they're presents shinier (I would know, I've been that girl), you pay too much for an overrated "romantic" pre-fixe at some sucky restaurant because you couldn't get a reservation at a nicer one. This. Is. Not. Fun. So why do it?