This weekend, Sarah and I went Gallery Hopping. We split dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Alfalfa. It’s a downtown restaurant that specializes in Vegetarian fare, but they have delicious meat items as well. I love that they have a seasonal menu, so you can always get the freshest tastes. Friday, we very much enjoyed their Trinidadian Doubles. I would summarize what exactly it was, but their description does a much better job: “A spicy island chana with onion, potato, chickpeas, garlic, ginger, cilantro and spices folded inside fry bread then topped with mango kuchela and chopped scallions.”

I think this meal had the perfect balance between savory and sweet; the mangoes added just the right amount of sweetness to the dish. I also love how they always plate the food so beautifully. It sure makes eating a holistic experience for your senses!

I don’t usually post on Saturdays, but I had this one ready to publish on Friday.  So, of course, I forgot to post it.  Woops.  Have a great weekend!

While doing some grocery shopping, I came across some relatively well-priced ground chicken and decided to make burgers. I had access to a frying pan, and the process was painless. I mixed in red curry power, a bit of garam masala, seasoning salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder. The latter two seem a bit not-that-great, but I wanted to add a bit more flavor with my limited kitchen resources. They turned out quite tasty!

After mixing in the seasonings with the chicken, I formed the mixture into patties and fried them in olive oil over medium heat, 5 minutes each side. I cut the patties in half and put them in whole wheat pita bread with sweet baby lettuces and plain yogurt.

I like having a quick fix but delicious meal on a week night. Now on to the much-anticipated weekend!

Ever since I’ve started my student teaching, I just haven’t practiced like I need to. I’ve been way too tired to make myself go to the practice rooms and practice, and it makes me feel awful. I feel as if a part of me has been disconnected.

Of course, there’s a (fairly) simple solution: go practice. Since I only have two days of student teaching left to go, I guess it will be somewhat easier for me to do. The only thing is, I only have a super busy period of time coming up. At least that does entail singing. I just have this burning need to perform. I don’t mean taking center stage with a huge cast and performing a musical or anything. No–I need to do what I love: perform art songs. I think it must seem trivial to those who don’t know me very well or who don’t understand the art form, but I do believe that singing Lieder and mélodie is just simply a part of my essence. The surreal connection between singer and pianist as the two find the twirling emotion of the music cannot be matched. I miss it terribly, and regardless of what I’m doing career-wise, I vow to always find a way to make this type of performing a part of my life. Otherwise, I will always have a part of me missing.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that music has stolen a piece of my life. I can’t say I terribly mind, but I realize that I’ll never be able to be the person I was before I began to discover the joys of a quietly resolving dissonance.

Note: I decided to publish this post, because I do believe that understanding my passion for Classical music is a key to understanding my sense of aesthetics. Music moves me, just as other beautiful wonders of this world captivate me.

I’m suddenly realizing that with a growing collection of straight pins and needles, I’m in need of a pincushion. Through an Etsy browse, I ran across this one:

[image from item’s listing]

This Spring Birdie Pincushion comes from seller createitcottage. The pincushion looks very appropriate for Spring and well-crafted. I would love to get a hold of some felt in that color of green!

Well, I’m back after a much-needed and necessary hiatus. Over the weekend, Sarah and I had fun with Aranzi Aronzo’s The Cute Book. After stocking up on felt and embroidery floss, we crafted away. The first one I made (which has also been the only one I’ve made so far…) is Terry the Terrier.

Maybe I’ll get around to making some more soon. I just need to perfect my Triple French Knots. Argh!

This week is an extremely busy one for me, and I’ve decided it would be best for my sanity to take a blogging break until next week. I should be back with a new post on Monday. As much as I’d love to post my little daily findings for the world to see, I simply don’t have time this week. I’ll look forward to bring you more chortles soon, though!

Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a great week!

In a recent craft attempt, I decided to try crocheting embroidery floss around memory wire to make a bracelet. The result didn’t turn out too badly, even though it looks something equivalent to a hair scrunchie. Not necessarily the look I was going for, but I now have some guidance for what to do next time. I’m also wanting to try crocheting wire to make beaded jewelery. I’m just a little scared, though, because crocheting with wire looks a little tricky.

Let’s hope my next jewelry making attempts look a little less juvenile. (Not that that’s always a bad thing.)

Yesterday, I went to the eye doctor, and I decided to try contact lenses again. I had tried them a couple years ago, but one of my eyes didn’t take too well to the type of lens. Apparently, they don’t make that kind anymore, and the new astigmatism contacts work a lot better for most people. So I’m trying them out. So far, they’re working pretty well.

I realized there would be a dilemma when I return to school on Sunday: my roommate has the same contact lens case. They had given me the standard white and aqua/seafoam/teal capped lens case. It’s the same kind that he has, and I’d hate for us to get our contacts mixed up in the bathroom. I went to Wal*Mart to see if they had any different cases, but they were all expensive and/or ugly. So, I decided to change up the one they gave me. This is the result:

I much prefer the green to the original seafoam aqua. And now, I won’t get my contacts mixed up with my roommates’. In case you’d like to pull this stunt off as well, all I did was mix equal parts decoupage medium and acrylic paint. That way, it gave it a nice plasticy finish, and it bonded pretty well with the plastic. I just put on one thick coat. I realize it won’t last forever, but it’s okay. You’re supposed to switch out cases every 3 months, anyway!

During a recent etsy browse, I came across the following Meadow wall graphic. I thought it had a beautiful shape, and the silhouette could add a nice touch of nature to any room. I like that the graphic (made of Vinyl) can be easily removed, making it nice for rented spaces. If you take a look at ellynelly’s other items, you’ll find a lot of other nice designs as well. They all seem to be reasonably priced, too.

[image from item’s listing]

I think I’m just a huge sucker for plant silhouettes.

Yesterday was my birthday, and Sarah and I had decided to make my birthday dinner for my family while we were at my house. After searching the internet for a recipe I wanted to try, I stumbled upon a super-looking chicken curry recipe at Rachael Ray’s magazine website. To go along with it, I cooked some basmati rice and chapati bread. For my birthday cake, we tried a recipe from Food Network’s Ultimate Recipe Showdown for Individual Molten Chocolate Coconut Cakes that had intrigued me. Sarah even made me some quick almond syrup to mix into Sprite to make Almond Sodas. (I have this weird obsession with imitation almond flavor.) Here are the pictures [and recipe links] to document the results of our two-hour long kitchen adventure:

The curry turned out spectacular–the taste was very similar to Chicken Korma, my favorite dish to order at Indian restaurants. I for sure will be making Chandran’s Chicken Curry once again! The Indian Chapati Bread recipe is one I discovered this past summer; it’s a quick fix and works well as a side-bread.

We already had some simple syrup in the fridge, so Sarah just added a bit of almond extract to taste and stirred it into the glass of Sprite. (So, umm…no real recipe to share.)

The cakes turned out delicious! They were really rich, but I highly recommend them. Check out the recipe from the Food Network website here.

The meal ended up taking a lot longer to prepare than we had anticipated, but we had a lot of things going on at once. At any rate, it ended up being really fun. It helped to make for a really nice birthday!