Thyme For An Update

Hahahaha. Pun'd.



This sucker is doing pretty well lately. It's been rainy lately, though. But my plant needs sun. So.. I can't really move it out of the rain. My house is not designed well for gardening in terms of sunlight and stuff. It's annoying. Eh. Mr. Rosemary plant is doing fairly well, too, by the way. But tracking my rosemary plant is not as interesting, since it was never in as much peril as Mr. Thyme plant.

Tastylicious

I had this for lunch today. It was amazing. I had it for breakfast the two prior days. It was amazing then, too. Looking at the picture makes me want more right now. ): But I have no more egg white salad. And I brushed my teeth already. Which means no more eating for the day. Boo.

Amazing Plastic

I found this box when cleaning stuff out from under my bed. I don't know where the railroad track came from, but the rest of the box appears to be Legos. Legos are amazing. I never had my own Lego sets as a kid, just random boxes of leftover stuff my brothers had (like this), but as an adult I've collected two X-Wings, Hogwarts, another Star Wars set, another Harry Potter set, and a Hollywood stuntman movie set. Legos are amazing. I want the Pirates of the Caribbean ship, Queen Anne's Revenge that just came out. But... I don't really have anywhere to put it. But it looks so cool. 0:

Uh Oh

I did a bad thing and calculated the nutrition, or lack thereof, in the "healthy" crispy treats I made yesterday.



Each square (they're small, much smaller than your standard square) is 280 calories, 12 grams of fat, 5.6 grams of protein and 22.1 grams of sugar. Egads. That's AWFUL. I've only eaten two so far because it scares me. Especially when I'm trying to slim down a bit. So much for healthy squares ): should have just made marshmallow ones!

"Healthy" Squares

I stumbled upon this "healthy" version of Rice Krispy Treats a few months ago. I finally got around to making it. It takes brown rice syrup, peanut butter, puffed rice cereal and a dash of vanilla extract. I managed to throw this together in roughly five minutes and I'm pretty pleased with the results. Oh, I guess I threw in mini chocolate chips for good measure (texture, varying flavor). They're tasty and easy to make. And peanut buttery. They don't stick together as well as normally Rice Krispy Treats, but that's because there's no sticky marshmallow. I guess there's also no yummy marshmallow flavor. ]:

I want marshmallow krispy treats now. ]:

Shoes

Okay, so I know I had a picture of my closet yesterday, but I'm particularly proud of my organized shoes.



I bought a case of plastic shoe boxes from The Container Store and I've labeled each shoe box with the contents. My shoes now line the top shelf of my closet. They used to be jumbled in a pile at the bottom and kind of a pain to get to. Now I have easy access, er, well, I have to stand on my bed post to reach them, but, easier access than before. :D Plus, I can see all my shoes (except my boots are still on the floor of my closet).

Yay for The Container Store. :D

My Garments

I love my closet. Not as much as my bookshelf, but, almost as much. Growing up, I barely had use of my closet because my parents kept a lot of old stuff in there. Old clothes, old photography stuff, idk. Since then, I've cleaned it out and finally taken claim to the whole thing. My closet is pretty clean and i know where everything is. No "cleaning out the closet" (literally) needs to be done here. Yay, me. (:

Sorry, Vie de France

I love palmiers. Or elephant ears. Or whatever you want to call them. Delicious, buttery, puff pastry sprinkled with sugar and baked until light, buttery, sweet and crisp. I've tracked down the best. At least, in my opinion.



And strangely enough, it's not from a French bakery. It's from Yamakazi Bakery in Little Tokyo, and only $1.50 for three. Less than half the price of Vie de France in South Coast Plaza and way better tasting. Yay! I have a scary feeling I'm going to buy at least three packs next time I visit x:

Hope

I have hope for my English thyme plant. I know seeing pictures of my herb plant every couple days is probably boring, but it's exciting to me, so, too bad. The new thyme growth seems to be thriving fairly well. It's still green and it's still growing. It was first growing out of the sides of the plant (English thyme likes to spread) so I tucked it back into the pot to encourage the "branches" to put down and establish more roots. I got a little overzealous with all the dried out branches and pulled out a lot of still-living roots that I probably shouldn't have. Practice makes perfect, I suppose. Thinking about my follies makes me sad ): I'll just think about my new thyme growths :D We haven't been getting much sun lately, argh. First, too much sun torched the remainder of my plant. Now, not enough is threatening to stunt growth. Bah! Thyme is supposed to be easy to grow, too...

BOO ):

I Dare

I've always wanted an orchid, but I was always afraid of killing them. My recent success at bringing my rosemary and thyme back to life from the brink of death makes me feel like my thumb is a little greener. I picked this sucker up from 99 Ranch market because the ones sold at American/Western places are not nearly as pretty and cost more. For once, the quality at an Asian place is better ;D woohoo! Looking at my pretty orchid plant makes me smile :D even thinking about it right now is making me happy. Yay, plants!!

PS: Yes, that's a weird wooden samurai sword in the background of the picture.

Box o' Yum

I finally decided to try a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program out. I found Tanaka Farms which is nearby in Irvine. I was always deterred by CSAs because of their prices and large amount of produce. Luckily, Tanaka Farms allows biweekly subscriptions for $20/small box. This works out perfectly for me since I won't get over inundated with produce I can't finish before it spoils.

This week, I got strawberries, two grapefruit, some spring onion thingys, carrots, bok choy, spring peas and lettuce. A pretty decent haul. The peas make me the happiest. Yay, peas (: and I've been wanting to make carrot cake :D

Flowers

Happy early Mother's Day.



These were for my grandma. We visited her last weekend.

I'm Glad Thyme Isn't My Kid

Remember that beautiful, bushy, full pot of English thyme I posted a few weeks ago?



Yeaaaa.. All of it was dead on Sunday. I started watering and pruning out dead stuff (well, it all looked dead). A few new green sprigs have popped up. I'm hoping these new sprigs continue to grow because I pulled most of the deadish roots out. I started with 50ish live sprigs of thyme, and now I have 3ish new ones. I'm monitoring watering it better to keep the soil damp until more roots appear. I fret about my herbs, a lot. I think it's giving me wrinkles.

Very, Very, Very Light Green Thumb

The rosemary plant is looking greener and less like a dying Christmas tree now, yay!

I've been monitoring watering it more, even though I know rosemary likes dried out soil. So they say. I think I went overboard with the dried out soil thing because it was dying.

If only my thyme was doing better.. ):

Oat-y

I like healthyish muffins and I like oatmeal, so I made the oatmeal muffin recipe from the King Arthur Flour Cookbook. It required me to soak the oats overnight in buttermilk. I don't like buttermilk, but I use it in baking a fair amount. The texture of these muffins was sort of weird. I'll leave it at that. They were tasty. But sort of spongy. Spongy is.. weird. I guess I didn't just leave it at that. Oops.

Smoggish

A rare, clear day in Los Angeles County. I took this from Rose Hills Cemetery, about thirty miles south of Downtown LA. Sad that this is considered a "clear day" but I'll take what I can get. You can see the mountains behind the city. Sometimes you can't even see the mountains behind the city when you're in the city. That's gross. ): We breathe that air. Ew. ):

Corn!

I love kettle corn. Ridiculous amounts of love. But I don't frequent fairs or farmers markets or anything that have it. So now that I know how to make it at home... I am picturing lots and lots of kettle corn in my future. Except, in my mind, the kettle corn in the future isn't burnt like the kettle corn pictured above. For once, using a nice Le Creuset pot is probably a BAD thing.

Goo

Gelatin + sugar/corn syrup/water/pinch of salt cooked to soft ball stage + paddle beater = marshmallow goo.

Fluffy Cubes

I got the brilliant idea that I wanted to make s'mores this weekend. I have a bag of the JET PUFFED marshmallows in my garage, but, well, it's me, so of course I made my own marshmallows.



You can't tell from this picture, but each fluffy, puffy cube is flecked with vanilla bean specks. I don't know why, but that always makes things seem more gourmet. I used a really, really, really, really dull paring knife to get the vanilla bean "caviar" out of the pod and I was pushing down on the sharp edge of the blade with my finger while scraping the "caviar" out. It was then when I re-noticed how dull the blade was, as it didn't hurt me at all. I tried throwing this paring knife away when I moved out of my apartment in college. My mom has insisted on keeping it all this time. l: Oh, I've gone off on a knife tangent. Oops.

In addition to the marshmallows, I made hideous graham crackers. I used Nancy Silverton's recipe instead of Alice Medrich's because I failed with Nancy's two years ago and wanted to make amends. They were way more hideous this time than last time, but they taste way better. I'll take my victories in the flavor and texture department this time around.

No Hockey Pucks

Apparently scones get a bad rap for being hockey puckish or dense and tasteless or just generally bad. I don't know what scones other people are eating, but they certainly aren't eating mine.

This is Ina's recipe and it's pretty awesome. I was originally looking for a copy-cat recipe of the Starbuck's Maple Oat Nut Scone but decided that those aren't really that tasty. I went with something that I knew would be more well received. Ina did not disappoint. I normally forgo glazes (see: sour cream coffee cake last week) but several reviews I read of this recipe insisted that I not leave it out. Good thing I did my e-search. These would have been pretty bland without the glaze as the scone itself is not sweet at all. The outside was crisp (wait, is that the proper adjective to describe the outside of a scone?) and the inside was light and fluffy. I sort of with it was oatier but I'm weird and I like overly oaty things. Yet.. I'm not a huge fan of oatmeal. Unless it's steel-cut and freshly made by me. Hmmm.. I want oatmeal now.

Oh yea, I added some maple extract. So I guess I adapted the recipe. Go me. And I used rolled oats instead of quick cooking. Scandalous.