Because somebody doesn't know how to click publish...

I thought I clicked publish yesterday, aka Saturday, but I guess I didn't.
Like whoa. A Saturday Love post? That's right, back by popular demand (of one person) I bring you Saturday Love! I've got a lot of new readers since I stopped doing it, so here's a brief overview of what it actually is: Every Saturday I post about 11 things I love, wether it be pictures, links, quotes...anything! It's pretty simple, but it's nice to be able to have an outlet that allows me to focus on what I love as well as get rid of the million bookmarks I have on my computer. Feel free to join in on your own blog and leave a link in the comments! I'll link to them in the next weeks post. (And you can read previous Saturday Love posts here, but I warn you the pictures are so awful they'll make you cringe.)

<1>

Ok, seriously, this kind of thing makes me want to cry. If I were in that subway I would be bawling! I love music like this and love flash mobs, so it's perfect.

<2>
My aunt's friend writes a mommy blog called The Diaries of a Wimpy Mom and it is SO funny. Her posts are usually super short and always make me laugh. Here's an excerpt from a recent post:

Her arms are like her arch nemesis, pestering her in her sleep until she wakes up with a blow to the face...by her own fist. I can't even imagine what that must BE like- being ATTACKED by your own body part. Poor girl.  And although I feel so bad for her, flipping and flopping like a fish out of water in her crib at night, I can't help but secretly laugh to myself about how much this whole scenario reminds me of cow tipping. It's like someone pushed her over in her sleep and left her there to moo it out until someone came to her rescue.

I almost peed my pants when I read that!! Go check the rest of her blog out.
(And sorry Patricia, I'M A MOMMY BLOG LOVER. I mean, BABIES, how can you say no?)

<3>
Volunteering at the ER. I've already learned so man things on my first night, like that fact that there are SO many people that come through in a 4 hour period on a Saturday night. I changed probably 40 beds!

<4> 

My last and final CSA share! I made the BEST kale and potato salad with the potatoes I got. I have the recipe up and ready to go soon!

<5> 

Yellow flowers in the front yard!

<6>
Ghetto Hikes. Funniest tumblr ever. The guy hasn't posted since February, and I've been sad about it, but if you've never seen it, go read through the archives! I just read through them again and laughed just as hard. 

Is rabbits eatable? Or you just sposed to cuddle the fuck outta them?

<7>


Short hair. I came across an 'old' photo with me and my short hair last year. It's super long again and I love long hair, but not on me. I never ever wear it down and it's to the length where it gives me a headaches when it's in a ponytail. I'm going to cut it this short again in the next week!

<8>

I don't have a tumblr and rarely look at them despite the fact that I am posting three different ones here, but I love the Reasons to be Fit tumblr. I really like things like this to help get me pumped up before exercising!

<9>
No More Harvard Debt. This guy went to Harvard and graduated with about $90,000 in debt. He made a huge goal of paying it off within ten months and he did it early (granted, he makes a six figure salary). He really limited his budget, sold off his cars, and brought a flask when he went to the bars. Granted, I don't have a six figure salary, but it's oddly inspiring to read through the archives of how he achieved his goal. It makes me want to be extremely limited in what I spend my money on so that I don't have to have a lot of debt when I graduate!

 <10>

Creek time with Roxi girl and my bestie!

<11>
Lastly, this.

Created by: OnlineCriminalJusticeDegree

Chicken Chicken Bawk Bawk

Between not having many hours at work and being on summer vacation, this past week has been so relaxing!

I had my niece for a couple of days and we spent a lot of time in the sun. One of the days I went with her and my mom to Buffalo Park to walk around. When I went to pick them up, my mom had my niece in black sweats and a big jacket thinking it was cold outside! It was actually 75 degrees and sunny.

At the end of our walk we ate some oranges from the Farmer's Market and Alyla just devoured them. If you give her any kind of food, she scarfs it down and forgets to breath!

My mom had back surgery a couple months ago so I was happy to get her out of her house and in the warm sun!

Another day I had Alyla we went to the park with my best friend Annie. I had bought a cheap stroller for Alyla so we walked the mile or so to the park. The neighborhood is so beautiful this time of year as everything blooms and turns green!


The picture with the kite and the ones below were actually from another day at the park with Annie and Roxi. There were two guys on a tandem bike flying a kite together, it was so cute!


This past week has been perfect for parks with sun-baked fruit like strawberries, bananas and oranges.

I also picked up our CSA share for the week on Thursday.

It consisted of a bag of salad greens, 15 small red potatoes, a chili plant, 3 onions, 4 artichoke, 5 yellow squash, dried pinto beans, 4 sweet potatoes, and a bunch of chard.

I wasn't quite sure what I'd do with so many yellow squash since I still had three from last week, but I ended up making squash and potato au gratin. It was so delicious! I'll post the recipe of it soon.

To end such a great week, my husband and I had a yummy date at Picazzo's. We like to go there every once in a while for $5 appetizers. It was especially fun this time because we rode around on my new bike that I LOVE and we got to 'see' part of the solar eclipse!

CSA

My day started off a little rough, with me breaking down in tears. I was looking for my immunization records to turn into school, and I realized I didn't know where they are, even though I used them as recently as last semester. I tore my house apart, which also led me to the realization that I don't know where my new social security card is, my passport, my birth certificate, my voter id card, Vince's social security card, and Vince's birth certificate. These are all thing I kept together in a little box, and now it's no where to be seen. After calling Vince at work to see if he knew where is was and hearing that he didn't, I started crying and got super frustrated.

Then I snapped myself out of it and though, 'Hey big baby, stop crying and be proactive!' So I called my old high school to ask them for a copy of my immunization record that I'm about to go pick up, I'm going to Social Security tomorrow with Vince to get us both new cards, I'm requesting voter id cards for both of us online, and filling out paperwork for both of our birth certificates. I know that as soon as I finish all this stuff I'm going to find the box it's in, but I'd rather be over prepared then come upon a circumstance where I need those things but don't have them!

Fortunately my day became better after that and even better after Vince came home to give me a hug and a kiss before walking me to pick up our CSA share. I've been meaning to post about our share each but haven't been taking pictures of everything.

This week we got some tasty things: green garlic, 1/2 dozen eggs, 5 red potatoes, 5 baby artichokes, 1 bunch cilantro, 1 bunch chard, 2 nopalitos (cactus), 3 grapefruits, and a bag of black beans with a dried red pepper.

This week has been the first week where I've loved everything I've got, maybe with the exception of the cactus. We got it another week and I ate it in eggs, but it wasn't everything special. Maybe I'll try it in a salsa this week!

The Spring Share is almost over and I must admit something: I'm not completely happy with how things have ended. I expected to get more food throughout the season, but that hasn't happened. At $25 a week, that's a lot of money for me, and I wasn't getting enough food for how much I was paying. I feel like if I shopped at New Frontiers for the same organic food I'd be paying less money. I know, I'm supporting a LOCAL farm, which is great, but at the same time, I'm a poor college student! When it comes down to it, I need to get the most bang for my buck because there's no sense in me being broke so that I can give money to another family.

I feel like I need to be buying what I can afford. If I could afford paying $25 a week for a CSA share I would absolutely do it. Just the  fact that I am supporting something local would be good enough for me. But I don't have the money!

For the summer I plan on buying fresh produce from our farmers market. Once a week there is a farmers market at the City Hall parking lot and a bunch of local farmers bring their crop and sell it. I like that I'd still be supporting local farmers, I'd get to buy what I want, and it's still cheap and mostly organic!

After the farmers market is over, I plan on going back to Bountiful Baskets. They have an organic share that's $25 a week (same as the CSA) but it is SO much more. It's a great variety of stuff, which I sadly didn't get with the CSA. I'm sad that it's not local, but at least I'm still buying fresh organic food. (By the way, I don't care if other people eat organic or not. If you're simply eating fresh food, I think that's healthier than eating processed stuff!)

Once I have more money (in what, 10 years when I'm done with med school?! haha) I'll go back to a CSA, but until then, I can't afford it. I'll still try and go shopping there because they have a little store, but I won't participate in a full share.

Humpty-Dumpty 3.28.12

Say what, a Humpty-Dumpty? It just so happens that I have today off so here it is. I'm also being incredibly lazy today and I'm hoping that by doing something semi-productive like this I will be motivated to do more with my day, like laundry, dishes, homework, or hey, just getting out of my pajamas!

Since I haven't done a photo dump in a while I have a bit more than usual!

By the way, my username is iffyinklings on Instagram if you'd like to follow, and if you are on Instagram, leave your username so I can check you out! Also I apologize if you already follow me on Instagram or are friends on FB as you may have seen these already. But now you get a little background story, right?

From left to right.
||1|| Due to the fact that I kept posting healthy pictures on Instagram, I wanted to post a picture of another thing I drink most mornings: Pepsi! I still try not to eat/drink a lot of sugar, but Pepsi helps me stay full longer at work since I'm not a breakfast person. (Unhealthy, I know!)
||2|| A couple of my aunts and uncles were in town and my stepmom Pam insisted on playing Twister! The only person who would play with her was my Aunt Merry, however, and she was the winner and pushing Pam over! Hehe.
||3|| New hat, that you totally can't see in the picture. I don't need a reason to post a picture of my face, ok?


||4|| My hair, after a long session of shoveling snow.
||5|| The 2+ feet of snow we got! The few days before the storm was the 'warm before the storm' and we were wearing shorts! And then we got dumped on over 2 days. Yes, that's almost a foot a day!
||6|| And literally 3 days after the storm? THE SNOW WAS MELTED. It was so freaking crazy. One day we were wearing snow boots, shoveling so much snow, and the college was closed, and the next it just vanished and we were back to shorts. I haven't even needed to wear a sweater when I walk to work at 9am!

||7|| Orange + Apple juice made in my new juicer. I LOVE carrot juice but it is ridiculously expensive so now I'm happy to make my own!
||8|| I finally put some pictures up on our kitchen wall that I painted a couple weeks ago. We're still going to add another row on the bottom, but this will do for now. I'll do another post here soon that talks about the pictures.
||9|| Chard! I love the colors of this tasty vegetable.

||10|| Rawr.
||11|| Gluten free cranberry muffin that I got from a place next to my work. A lady from there came and introduced herself to me because I'm new (where my job is located is in a little 'shopping center' of sorts with 5 other shops) and somehow we came upon gluten free food. They had just made muffins and chocolate cupcakes. of course I bought some and they were amazingly delicious and only ONE DOLLAR. If you are GF you know that $1 for a cupcake is insane, they are usually $3-$5!
||12|| I've become addicted to Draw something thanks to some classmates. This happened to be a 'WTF?! I can't figure this out!' picture. Can you guess what he was trying to draw? A s'more. That looks like nothing of the sort! Ok, kind of, but you don't roast the graham cracker. It threw me off.

||13|| Carrot, beet, apple and kale juice. This is mine and Vince's new go-to, but he adds ginger to his. Bomb dignity.
||14|| My niece has decided she doesn't like wearing her hair in pigtails anymore. After her nap she took them out and looked like a cute little Einstein! She is such a cutie!
||15|| Grapefruit from the CSA with a little bit o' salt. ♥

CSA Week 2

(What does CSA mean? Community Supported Agriculture. Taken from flagcsa.com: 'Community Supported Agriculture is a direct connection between a local farmer and the people who eat the food they produce.' Basically, I pay money to a farmer who lives two hours away so that they can plant and maintain a family-run organic farm and I get food directly from it once a week. To get more information, visit Local Harvest. Read about Week 1 here.)

I definitely feel like we got more greens this week, and it shows in our fridge!

We don't typically have a huge box of wine taking up our fridge, it was leftover from camping!

We were able to eat all of the veggies from last week, even the wilted lettuce, and hopefully we can finish them again this week! The lettuce went pretty droopy after two or three days, which is pretty fast compared to supermarket lettuce, so today I'm going to rinse it all and break it up into a big bowl and make a salad. I know that when there is a salad already prepared it will be eaten immediately by Vince and I, so there will be no chance of it going bad!

Here's our 'harvest':

1 bag of kale, 3 oranges, 1 bunch baby beets, 2 heads of lettuce, 1 bunch collard greens, 1 bunch carrots, 1 container peas, and 1 bunch chard

Last week Vince kept telling me to make 'collie greens' (it's so freaking cute when he says it, my heart melts) and I kept saying, 'We don't have collard greens, it's chard!' But this week? We got ourselves some collard greens and I can now make it! I was thinking this recipe or this one. Let me know if you have any good recipes!

Vince loves what I do with the chard, so I thought I'd share the recipe. I adapted it from a recipe I found online a couple of years ago and don't know where I found the original, but it's pretty basic.

Garlic Chard with a Balsamic Vinaigrette Reduction

3-4 cloves garlic, minced

2-4 tablespoon olive oil

10-12 pieces chard, cut up into small strips (you can use just the leaves and get rid of the stalk or use the whole thing like I do)

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper

Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium heat and add the garlic. Let the garlic sauté for only a minute or two until it smells garlicy. You don't want the garlic to be cooked to its 'full potential' because it will still be cooking with the chard. IMMEDIATELY add the chard and put a lid on it. Let the chard cook for 3-5 minutes, stirring frequently, until it is soft and wilted. If it looks like the chard or the pan is too dry, add more olive oil. Remove the pan from heat and add the balsamic vinegar. Serve right away! 

We got some more chard and I plan on making this again...it's so delicious! I think it will be great over some quinoa as a snack.

As for the carrots and beets, I plan on juicing them! My juicer should be here today (even though UPS said it should have been here yesterday) and I can't wait to try it out. I still have that huge bag of carrots in my fridge!

Lastly, the peas are great to snack on. While they would be delicious in a stir fry, I love snapping off the ends and picking the peas out before eating the shell!

CSA Goodies and Update

Sometimes when I don't blog in a long time, I shy away from coming back. It's like I've done a bad thing! But I'm here. Kind of. I've been out of the blogging groove so I'm at the point where I don't even know how to write anymore or know what to write about. So, I'm just writing to write, and hopefully this will turn into something coherent. And if not? Oh well. Maybe I'll just make this into a list post. Things are so much easier when they are lists!

Vince and I went to California. We drove out and stayed at his mom and aunts for a night. The next day we hangout in downtown Santa Barbara before Vince and I went to our campsite. We camped for a couple nights and then went to his dad and step moms to stay for the night. We played golf and went bowling, as well as a quick hike! Though it was cloudy most of the time, it was nice to take a little vacation and eat some good food. I'll post some more pictures and stories from our trip later.

 

The stairs at our campsite. 

A park where I waited for Vince after his bike ride. Isn't this a dreamy picture?!


I signed up for the CSA! Woohoo! It was on my goal list for the year and I'm excited about it. I signed up in the nick of time yesterday, which was the last day to sign up for the spring share! I don't know what urged me to go yesterday, but I'm glad I finally did. We got the first share today.

It's not what I was expecting, but at the same time I don't know what I expected! I was thinking I'd get more fruit than just grapefruit, especially after the large amount of food from Bountiful Baskets last summer. I reminded myself that it's still winter though, and that more will come later!
We signed up for the full spring share, which is pickup once a week from March 15-May 31. It was pretty pricey compared to Bounitful Baskets, BUT I get it every week and it is supporting a truly local farm! I just love that. They have 'farm days' where supporters can go check out the farm and get a tour and harvest some food. I can't wait to do one of those and see where my food comes from. It's kind of an invigorating and inspiring thing to know that I can see the farm where my food came from whenever I want!

I also bought some chocolate form the CSA so I can make some real Mexican hot cocoa...my favorite!

I bought a juicer after wanting one for so long, and I'm dying for it to get here. The 2 that I wanted that were available online weren't available in stores, so I ordered one online. Luckily I had some reward money for Best Buy so it ended up sooting me almost nothing! I bought a big 5lb bag of organic carrots that are just waiting to be juiced!

I got a job at Black Hound Gallerie. I've done a couple days of orientation and have my first real day tomorrow night! I've been a customer of BHG for years and have always loved the place, so I'm happy to be part of the team now. I'm also stoked that I get to 'dress up' for work now! I've been interested in wearing fun clothes recently, but have had nowhere to wear them. I couldn't wear stuff to the library because of all the creeps and it's just not the same dressing up for class! Now I'll be able to look cute at work and wear fun things like yellow pants and pink shoes!

Lastly, this speaks to my soul. I love everything about this girl! Her spunk, her music, her moves!