What I Hope To Accomplish This Week | April 13

This quarantine has me feeling some type of way, but I can't explain the way.

In one breath, I sadly feel like I have been training for something like this. I spend sooooo much time at home, and usually my weekends are spent home trying to relax and quell my fucking anxiety anyway. When I found out this was going to have to be a serious quarantining, self isolation situation for two weeks (now more), I wasn't concerned. Well, of course I was concerned for the well-being of the general public and those susceptible to the virus, but not concerned for me isolating.

I still remain the same. Concerned as shit for the well-being of our nation and the people in my community. Of course, number one being my father and the rest of my family. Not as concerned about my isolation or quarantine.

That being said, this quarantine is making me feel a few things. Mostly, I am feeling the need to just sit here and eat myself out of house and home (ew, that sounds weird, but you get it), but also to mitigate my stress (which I normally do anyway). It took me three full weeks of quarantine though to realize that I should get my shit in gear and maybe start to do more than watch shows and movies. Although, that's an accomplishment for me. Normally, I don't watch things - and it gets me into trouble in social situations. I know absolutely nothing about actors, actresses, movies, etc.

I am excited to share a few things with you that I look forward to accomplishing this week. Hopefully, this can maybe inspire you to get things done and share in it with me. Why not, right? Let's make the best we possibly can out of this, while staying safe, responsible and healthy.

THE F WORDS | THE QUARANTINE KITCHEN

Listen, I've always been a fan of cooking. I've been obsessed with getting cookbooks and Bon Appétit test kitchen videos and trying everything I see. There's something about cooking that is just the right amount of stressful pressure to get it right, combined with the satisfaction when it's done that really gets me going. A stupid way to put it? Probably. Do I care? No.

Anyway! With the quarantine going on right now, I am trying to find the best in everything. This is the perfect time to take out every single cooking tool I have an start making things I've been thinking about making for so long. I am going to call this series The Quarantine Kitchen and I hope you'll follow along! I am hoping to write these maybe once or twice per month with an update on new things I will be trying. Maybe it will turn into something weekly, that would be great.

If you try anything I put here, please share photos with me and use the hashtag #TheQuarantineKitchen! I would love to see how everyone is making these recipes their own.

SAUSAGE & WHITE BEAN ESCAROLE SOUP | EAT

I am most definitely not shy to say that I am probably the worst cook you will ever meet. Okay, I can make things, but it certainly doesn't mean they are going to turn out well. That I can say with confidence. 

I have amazing, fantastic cooks in my life. My grandmother was fantastic, I miss her cooking so much. My great aunt was wonderful. The two of them together was like a ball of Italian fire in the kitchen, so amazing. My dad definitely gained some of those skills and my uncle is a Chef. So there you have it, you get the idea. EVERYONE is great, and here I sit.... horrible at cooking.

There are a few things I make just because I know I can't screw them up, this soup being one of them. I remember my grandma making this when I was young and ever since then, I cannot get it out of my head. When I was old enough to start making it myself, I couldn't find a recipe that she used to follow, so I googled it and found one just to make sure I wouldn't make any mistakes. Now, I just do my own thing.

Honestly, everything this is pretty fool proof and being that I am so paranoid about heat when cooking, I take it really slow on every single step. This is a good thing, because that improves my chances of not screwing up (hopefully).

ALL HAIL QUEEN KALE | KALE CHIPS

Kale chips are everything.  Let's just be honest.  I never thought I would be a fan, but I definitely am and they are so simple to make.  You get almost the same crunch as you do with regular potato chips and it's much healthier.  I've even purchased them already made before and still think that the ones I make are better.  Here's what I do.

SAUSAGE, SPINACH, SALSA

Being that it is still fairly warm here, I am not quite into the whole heavy stew/soup life just yet.  I must admit, I have made some, but not to the highest power that I normally do by this time of year.

This simple little dish is something I pulled together recently that I was surprised tastes so good.  It's very simple and it's light, yet a fall dish.  All I did was sauté some sausage and spinach and put both on top of a bed of bow tie pasta.  I added a simple cherry tomato/avocado salsa on top for a little extra, but you don't have to do that.  If you substitute it for something else, tweet me!  

Healthy, Not Boring | Recipes to Try

If you're anything like me, you'll find it difficult to eat healthy when you hang out with your friends.  There's nothing wrong with that, but it's completely true.  Think about it, social eating and drinking is just that, very social.  Every trip out to the bar or night eating out at some new restaurant has to do with the one thing we hate most about life.. calories!  I've made a couple of things over the past couple of days to remedy that problem and here's how they came out.

Cooking With Coconut Oil

There has been so much on the internet about cooking with coconut oil and using it as a substitute for several other oils.  I have always been an advocate for just using olive oil for almost everything because it has the best taste and I surely never figured I would give in to COOKING with coconut oil.  The only reason I actually ended up purchasing this coconut oil from Trader Joe's is because I wanted to use it on my skin.  

The way cooking with coconut oil actually happened for me is really simple.  I ran out of olive oil and had nothing else but Pam to use.  For starters I was using a little bit of the Pam but it just wasn't enough and I was mid-cooking already.  I basically ended up going back into the pantry to check for a third time for more olive oil to no avail.  I finally decided to pull out the coconut oil and give it a shot.

I have some sort of stigma against using coconut oil for cooking because I simply can't imagine a sweeter taste with my savory dishes.  For the below dish, I was just making some sauteed zucchini and onions with garlic, salt and pepper.  This is my absolute favorite dish lately, I just cannot get enough!  The simplicity of the dish is perfect and its just so characteristic of summer to be honest.  Also, I love how it's light but savory at the same time.  

Let me just tell you: I ABSOLUTELY HATED COOKING WITH COCONUT OIL.  Maybe I was doing it wrong but the taste was absolutely awful.  The coconut oil taste was super overwhelming and I didn't think it would be.  Like I said, I didn't look up anything when it comes to knowing what you should and shouldn't use when cooking with coconut oil, but I didn't think it was that strict.  For some reason, I just absolutely hated the taste.  I am pretty sure that I have mentioned on here before that I love everything that has to do with coconut.  Coconut is actually one of my favorite flavors for almost everything, so I was anticipating loving this but it just did not cut the mustard.

Do you have any suggestions for what I did wrong here?  Have you ever used coconut oil to cook anything?  Let me know in the comments or send me a tweet, I'd love to know.  -Brit.  

St Patrick's Day Cupcake Wars at the Office!

So I 100% wanted to make sure that I saved this post for today of course!  Happy St. Patrick's Day!  I don't know if any of you are Irish but I am a little bit.  We don't normally celebrate at my house or anything but at my office this year, we had a cupcake decorating contest!  This was someone on the executive teams idea and when he first approached me about sending out a mass e-mail to get everyone involved, I must admit that I was nervous.  I honestly didn't think that anyone was going to participate but I was completely wrong, a couple of people did.  I was so excited!

So instead of each person on my team at work making separate cupcakes, we decided to get together and make them together and we are so happy that we did.  I looked up some ideas on Pinterest and I couldn't find anything better than these, so we decided to go with it.  The competition was on Friday at the office so Thursday during lunch we went to the supermarket and got the ingredients and after work, we went to my coworkers house and started baking/decorating!

This is what the inside ended up looking like.  We were so excited when we finally got the batter to actually look like this orange color.  Must admit, I used SO MUCH yellow with a little bit of red and it took a lot of mixing to get it to this point.  I love it although it took so long.  The green took two seconds because of course it didn't involve mixing any colors.  Of course if you get the color too dark, you can always add more yellow but this didn't involve any of that.  

Here's what the final product looked like after adding the Rolos for the pots of gold!  We were impressed with them but what we did realize was that it was so hard to get the rainbows to stand up.  We used the AirHead rainbow candies and we think it might have been the wrong ones or something because they were a little bit 'gummier?'  Hahaha, I don't know.  

Overall I was really happy with the way they came out!  I had suggested that they stay in the fridge over night but we didn't end up doing that and I think it would have helped.  We ended up winning second place in the contest to someone who made ALMOST THE SAME EXACT cupcakes.  The only difference was that the batter was funfetti (not as cool as our tie dye, hahaha), the icing was green, and there were Lucky Charms on it instead of pots of gold.  The biggest thing was that a guy made it, hahah so he won!  It's healthy competition so we didn't mind, it was altogether really fun and we love doing this kind of stuff in the office to hang out with everyone.

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!  If you are doing anything to celebrate let me know in the comments or send me a photo/tweet on twitter!  I hope you enjoy the holiday and I'll talk to you soon!

Fun Links on Friday, 3/14!

via Cosmopolitan 

16 Ways Twentysomething Women Rationalize Spending Money via Cosmopolitan

So this story gives me life.  There are always times in your life when you feel like you just must spend money on something.  We all have to admit it.  For example, my ex-boyfriend has always been one to not spend any money on ANYTHING but even when he sees something come out, he spends the money immediately because he feels like he MUST have it before anyone else.  Everyone has the passion for at least one concept in their life that they feel is so important and thats where spending money often comes in.  While I admit that I do share that same passion for clothes, shoes and money, I don't always muse about why I should get said top or pair of jeans, I quickly rationalize and just make the purchase.  While a lot of these examples aren't exactly thoughts of mine, some of them make connections with the way I make my purchases and I couldn't help but share it with you guys.  After all, I did just have the busiest week at work EVER, so I do deserve $100 shopping spree at H&M, sign me up.  How do you rationalize spending money?  

via Buzzfeed

Sexiest Gif of Joe Jonas Ever via Buzzfeed

So everyone that knows me knows that while I was in high school I went through the hugest Jonas Brothers phase that you ever did see.  I skipped Senior Prom to get to a concert, I watch the live streams that they did, I learned as much has possible about the Road Dogs, I tried finding out everything there was to know about them living in New Jersey and a whole bunch more.  I wish I could say that I was embarrassed but I most certainly am not.  Being that they held such a soft spot in my heart for so long, I feel like at least Joe will never leave that spot and that's why I couldn't help but include this beautiful gif of the boy, ugh I love him.  Who was your favorite high school band?  

via Leaf tv

Rose Water Pudding via Leaf tv on Youtube

So what better way to welcome Spring than with trying out the recipe for something as magical as freaking Rose Pudding.  This video makes me want to go out this weekend and get the ingredients to make this ASAP.  Not only is the presentation of this adorable, but I feel like it will taste SO AMAZING.  I love anything rose flavored.  I remember when I tried Rose Water Macarons from Le Maison du Maraon in New York this summer I almost fell over they were so delicious.  

via a Fab Life

What To Do With Broken Jewelry via A Fab Life

I mean, let us be completely honest.  How much $2 jewelry have you purchase from Forever21?  I cannot tell a lie, I have way too much.  Granted, some of it is still holding up but a lot of it doesn't really last long especially if it's more statement-making or costume jewelry.  Leah and Mary always make 'Tipsy Tuesday' videos explaining some tips for random things in your life that you may not think to do and that's what sets them apart.  I love learning new things from them especially through their adorable storytelling videos and illuminating personalities.   They are adorable so go check them out and subscribe to their channel!

Chanel's Supermarket Chic via NY Times

Of course I can't let this go without talking about some of Chanel's latest.  I mean, as already a huge fan of everything Chanel, I can't really get over the fact that everything they do is perfect to me.  With this though, I felt fashionably touched.  Being that I used to work at a supermarket (most ridiculous, traumatizing seven years of my life), I felt like Lagerfeld reached deep into my soul and pulled out this fantastic connection.  Ugh, let me just sigh for a minute because even though I felt the connection, there are just more clothes that I probably will never be able to afford.  Strangely, I am still 100% okay with that.

What have you been loving this week?  Anything good?  You know I would love to see so feel free to share with me in the comments below or send me a tweet!  I hope you guys have an awesome weekend and I will talk to you soon!  Thanks for reading as always.