Tir's Wedding

Mina's brother Tir got married this weekend. It ended up being 3 solid days of nonstop Indian wedding activity fun :) We had a blast, got dressed in fancy outfit after fancy outfit, and somehow, on virtually no sleep, made it through the weekend :)

Trellis

Trellis with me in a hotel in Schaumburg in between Wedding Events, Day 2.

Trellis on-the-go

Trellis has been with me everywhere this week.. Nearly done! :)

Egg Sandwich

There's nothing really special about this one, except that it makes a great midnight snack :)

Hard boiled egg, sliced on a piece of bread, seasoned with salt, pepper, and ketchup.

Trellis Scarf

I'm pulling double duty today to make up for yesterday's post. It's been a late night every day this week. In any case, I started teaching again today, the fall semester is in session. This semester I have both classes on Thursday, which makes it nice in some ways. I knew I would have a little downtime between class; I brought trellis scarf with me :)

Rooftop Feast

Natalie and I had dinner on her rooftop tonight. Summer is sadly ending (did it really ever begin?), so we made it a feast! Fun times on a Tuesday :)

Tomato Sauce, Part 1

I acquired a vintage food mill earlier this year (new toy!). Wanting to try it out, I decided to make tomato sauce. The tomatoes this year have been incredible; I knew I wanted to save some for winter.

The process is pretty easy. Clockwise from the top left: 12 pounds of tomatoes, quartered with skin and seeds on + one stick of butter, half an hour into cooking, 3 1/2 hours into cooking. 

I'm letting it cool overnight, and I'll finish cooking tomorrow :)

Lady Skipper

One year ago, I had never driven a race. Today, I, along with my crew, won the 2014 Lady Skipper Series!! I'm super happy, super proud of the amazing effort the team put together, and super grateful to Jeremy for letting me drive his boat :) And I'm already looking forward to what next season will bring! :)

Trellis Scarf

Update from yesterday: I finished off the second of three balls for the trellis scarf. Hopefully by the end of the week I'll be done! :)

Shawl

Whoops, forgot to post yesterday. Although I did spend a good amount of time with the shawl, and the end is within sight!!! :)

Pizza!

Mom suggested I make pizza the other night, so today I did :) Plus Mina came over for dinner, so I knew we have have both a vegetarian and non-vegetarian option.

I used Roberta's pizza dough recipe, which turned out well. 5 mins pre-bake (next time 10, I think) and 20 mins bake with toppings (next time 15) at 400.

Chicken + Rice

This was a great one pot meal: sauté shallots, saffron, paprika, rice; add chicken, season, cover with boiling water, cover the pot and let it cook for 20 minutes. I added chopped parsley when everything had cooked through. The rice came out perfectly but the chicken was a bit overdone. Next time, I think I'll let the rice cook for 5 minutes first, and then add the chicken.

Caprese Salad

Simple, sweet caprese. I had all the ingredients (most leftover from dinner last night) and I needed a quick meal, as I didn't get home from work until after 9 tonight. I still have a bunch of mozzarella leftover, I'm not sure what to do next..

Zucchini Pasta Salad

A coworker brought in a bunch of extra zucchini from their garden, to share with the team. Naturally, I grabbed one and made it the center of my meal. Fortunately, zucchini is in season right now, so I had plenty of recipes to choose from. I made this pasta salad; if I added chicken, this would also make a good meal for crew lunch.

Snow Angel

While I haven't posted about this one in a while, I did take her with me to upstate NY and got a fair chunk knit up over the weekend. There's still a ways to go, but it's nice to not only see progress, but to also get good momentum going :)

Made it through the first ball of yarn

Scarf is 1/3 done! Woo hoo!

Trellis Scarf

I'm in the Catskills this weekend for my cousin's wedding. I woke up this morning to fresh air, coffee, and knitting. Life's not bad on vacation :)

Knitting! On a plane!

My favorite inflight pastime :)

Deep Conditioner

I'm generally pretty low maintenance with my hair. I get it cut about 3 times per year, and I once went 51 weeks without cutting it. In any case, it is now at the point where it desperately needs cut. Between general neglect and tons of sun and wind damage (thanks, sailing), it's pretty fried and I'm pretty frustrated. 

However, I'm also out of time. My cousin's wedding is this weekend and the whole family is flying out to Roxbury, NY for it. And finally, I'm too lazy to go to CVS to buy a deep conditioning treatment, so I thought I'd make one at home. 

I first mixed 1 tbsp red palm oil with 1 tbsp coconut oil, melted it in the microwave and left it on my head for about half an hour. Note that this is very very messy, I had to lay paper towels down in the sink to prevent the excess from going down the drain. I then used a baking soda water mixture (2 tbsp baking soda to 4 tbsp water) to rinse it out. Then came the raw egg, for another 20 mins. This got rinsed in the shower, again with the baking soda-water mix, but I also added a few drops of lavender and lemon essential oils. Finally, I applied about a dime's worth of vitamin E oil, just to the ends, and went to bed.

So did it work? When I woke up this morning, my hair was a clumpy, greasy mess. I washed my hair as I normally would this morning and after it dried..I have to admit, there is an improvement. Now, this does not negate that I still need a haircut, but my hair is feeling softer and smoother, and is looking shinier. I'm wondering how long this'll last, and I'm hoping it gets me through the weekend. And at least I now know that I have a cheap and natural quick fix for emergencies :)

Shrimp + Broccoli

Again. I have a feeling this is going to be a regular dish for me.. :)

Half for dinner tonight, half for lunch tomorrow.

Both

I had the chance to work on BOTH these projects tonight :) Finally, progress!!

Kombucha

More 'booch tonight. I didn't have any juice, so these are going straight into the fridge as is. One thing new about this batch is that I'm adding chia seeds to the mix. I'm curious to see how it turns out.

Art Frame

Yesterday was the Verve Cup. We raced the distance course and did not do well. Basically, we ate a big slice of humble pie this weekend. In any case, I did not make this yesterday - rather, this happened on Friday before all the celebrations began. The idea for this piece is to take a bunch of pieces of painted wood and create a whiteboard "frame" for one of our conference rooms at work. We'll see how it turns out..

Broccoli + Shrimp

I had a head of broccoli that I wasn't sure what to do with; since I'm still loving the NYTimes cooking website, I quickly searched there to find something. I was initially intrigued by the combination of shrimp and broccoli, but this recipe for roasting the two together was truly spectacular! :) 

PS- Mom, you have to try this :)

Trellis Scarf

Ok. I started the new scarf...and I'm not totally thrilled. Granted, I've only knit through one pattern repeat, but I can already tell that something's off. Not wanting to either continue, modify, or frog tonight, I just put it down and I'll figure it out tomorrow.

Made it through another day

My apartment flooded today. This was the second worst flood I ever had. I spent most of the day in a horrible and unproductive mood. Thank god there was sailing to get me out of the house and my mind off everything that didn't get done today. It was perfect sailing weather, graced by a gorgeous sunset. Tomorrow will be a better day - goodnight!

Snow Angel

I didn't make anything yesterday, so I thought I'd pull double duty today. First up: 2 more rows of snow angel. At this rate, it'll be 2017 before this thing is done. Again, beautiful shawl, but just not the right knit for me right now. I actually got frustrated enough to go out and buy some more yarn, for a project that I think will suit me better. Casting on tomorrow.. :)

Baked Chicken

I haven't cooked dinner in what feels like forever, so I was super happy to finally do it tonight. I had chicken left over from the weekend; I ended up browsing the NYTimes Cooking site to find this recipe for baked chicken with mustard, herbs, and breadcrumbs by Mark Bittman. I added garam masala instead of tarragon and it worked just as well. Overall, easy and delicious! For the salad, I made a kombucha vinaigrette from my Nourished Kitchen cookbook - also simple and tasty. Dessert was a bite of fudge from Mackinac Island. All in all, not a bad way to start off the week  :)

Sleepy Tea

Another rendition of sleepy tea this evening. This is just my standard mix of lemon, honey, mint, and rose water.

Chicken Pasta Salad

I was in charge of crew lunch for Lady Skipper. I decided to revive the chicken pasta salad, since everyone seemed to love it the last time around. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring forks, so it was intesting eating pasta salad straight from the cup. I also forgot to take an "in moment" photo, so here you see leftovers, which Jeremy and Heather ended up taking home.

Also, we won both of the lady skipper races :)

Carpet Freshner

Over the past several years, I've been trying to incorporate organic and traditionally prepared food into my diet. I've done a little bit of cleaning with natural ingredients, mostly vinegar, and I've been curious to expand my cleaning habits. I recently bought "The Organically Clean Home," a great find and reference. Today was my first attempt at one of the "recipes." I made a carpet freshner using baking soda and a few drops of essential oil. I don't normally use carpet powder, but the house did smell good after I was done vacuuming!