Cause and effect

If you leave a glass of water on the nightstand unattended, the cat will drink from the glass of water.

If you roast anything in your shitty oven that needs a cleaning badly, the smoke alarm (which now has batteries) will go off.

If you do attempt to run the self-clean cycle on said oven, the smoke alarm will also go off.

Ahhh, life’s little lessons…

I grabbed dinner tonight from a tiny (and I mean tiny – we’re talking room for 4 stools kind of tiny) taco hole-in-the-wall joint with a few friends before heading to Sam’s reading in the S Halsted art district-y area. They were GOOD. The cook/hostess/waitress didn’t even speak enough English to tell us our bill’s total (a point did just fine though!), and the steak tacos were di-vine. Oh, and did I mention they cost about a buck each?

I got home around 10:30, and considered just flopping into bed, but I threw together a quick lunch for tomorrow instead. I made some quinoa in my rice cooker (win!) with veggie broth, baked a sliced up TJ’s sundried tomato chicken sausage, mixed them together with two chopped heirloom tomatoes, a handful of baby spinach, a Dorot cube each of basil and garlic, a drizzle of olive oil and some sea salt. It smelled delicious, so I’m hoping it tastes just as good tomorrow!

After making a quickie salad, I had some leftover fennel and leek that were too small of pieces to save, but too much to throw out, so I tossed them in the still-hot oven with a drizzle of olive oil and some salt and roasted them. This is when the smoke alarm went off…grr! I would have kept them in longer, but it was late and my roommates were going to bed, so a screaming smoke alarm was not an option at this point. I threw them on top of the quinoa mix, but I have a feeling they weren’t roasted long enough to soften and sweeten up. We’ll see tomorrow, but I certainly want to try it again.

And without further ado, some pictures!

my chocolate oatmeal this morning :)

It may not look like much, but it sure was good!

eggplant and celery stew

Did you know that just about everywhere else in the world, eggplants are called aubergines?

can ya see the creaminess?

veggie time

Isn’t that pepper pretty?

I had some TJ's poppyseed dressing for dipping

and what's this?

is it peanut butter?

Nope, that’s snickerdoodle dessert hummus!

a beautiful pomegranate I seeded and brought to work

one of the Chicago food trucks, Flirty Cupcakes, came to our office

mmmm!

I got the McDreamy, a chocolate cupcake, with cream cheese frosting and a chocolate/cream cheese filling. Tasty! A little too sweet for me though.

 

That concludes the pictures for now…it’s this girl’s bedtime!