Hanging Out

I’m lucky to have a lot of creative people in my life. One person who seems to have an endless flow of creativity (and craftiness!) is my boyfriend’s mom. Way back in high school (yes, we’ve been together since then!), she made my corsages for dances and the prom. They were much prettier and more unique than anything that anybody else had! Recently when I complained that I had nowhere to hang my large collection of handbags, she offered up another crafty solution: fork hangers!

The concept is simple, but I would’ve never thought of it on my own. She’s been making them for a few months now in varying lengths and styles and she was sweet enough to make one for me as well! I love that it gets my favorite bags off of the floor and out of cramped boxes while also paying homage to my love of cooking and eating! These forks came from my boyfriend’s grandmother’s house too, which I find sort of cool.

 

Test Kitchen: Samosas

A few months ago, my roommate and I started watching a new show on Food Network called Aarti Party. Aarti won The Next Food Network Star competition, and now she uses her show to teach people how to cook Indian dishes — something that I don’t think Food Network has really done before. I love Indian food, but I’d never even thought about making it myself. This week when I had some time to experiment, I made Aarti’s recipe for baked samosas (a flaky pastry filled with a spicy potato, mango and meat mixture) with mint chutney.

I was really happy with how easy these were to make and how impressive they look and taste. The original recipe calls for shredded chicken in the filling, but I felt like some ground lamb would be a great partner to the mint chutney so I used it instead. You can make your own pastry dough, but Aarti suggests using frozen pastry sheets (which is what I did!) to save time. All you have to do is roll out the pastry into circles, fill them with the potato mixture, and bake them for 20 minutes! You can see that I filled a few of them a bit too full, but they tasted great all the same! I’ll definitely be making these again soon — they are perfect for those nights when you aren’t quite hungry enough for a full meal but you need a substantial snack to fill you up. I’m sure they’d also make a great hors d’oeuvre if you’re having guests over!

Time to Breathe

This past weekend I went on my first-ever yoga retreat with my favorite instructor and a group of really awesome people, including my mom. After a really busy October (as evidenced by my lack of posting), it was the perfect way for me to let go a little and ease into the holiday season — yeah, I know it’s the beginning of November but the season will be quickly upon us!

The retreat house we stayed in (above) was so cozy and nice. We spent a lot of time hanging out together in the kitchen preparing vegan meals and we even built a good old-fashioned fire in the fireplace on Saturday evening!

There were lots of neat little window seats and nooks to hang out in, and the house boasted some seriously charming old mirrors and stained-glass windows too!

I don’t remember the last time that I was so unaware (or so indifferent) of what time it was during the day! There was nothing to plan for or to schedule other than our yoga sessions, so frankly the time didn’t matter at all. It was so relaxing! I also made a lot of progress in my personal yoga practice (watch out, inversions! I’m conquering you one-by-one!) and just felt so chilled out by the end of the weekend that I didn’t really want to go home! Amazing what happens when you take a few days to remember what it’s like to breathe.