Scarves

So my bff N suggested I incorporate scarves into my outfits, and she sent me a link to a lovely Hermes pamphlet with different scarf ideas. Most of them require a large square silk scarf, which I am currently in the market for, so I had to be a little creative in incorporating those ideas. One idea was called something like "The Necklace" and it required the square scarf to be folded into a rectangle. Well lucky me, I have a rectangular scarf that I got for free at one of the booths at a Society of Women Engineers conference. I pulled it out of the back of my closet and knotted the ends and threw it on over a plain t-shirt.

I felt a little matronly, but I think a snazzier outfit with the scarf might do the trick. I'm thinking maybe a colored shirt and a jacket and the scarf on top of all of that? I don't know, I'm not used to wearing scarves but I'm going to keep trying to find something that works.

Gross smelling kitchen products

After a fun weekend with my sister (details to follow), the husband and I spent some time last night getting stuff back in order. We cooked dinner, did the dishes, and scanned and emailed all our tax documents to his cousin the tax preparer. After we did the dishes, I decided to pull out a new countertop cleaner from Target. It was on clearance and so I just grabbed it on the way to the checkout line.

Unfortunately, I didn't check the scent of the cleaner. I sprayed one spray on the countertop last night and my nostrils were immediately assaulted by a prune-scented blast of air. I checked the label and there it said in small purple letters "Plum & Nutmeg." Ugh. The worst smell ever.

I'm going to have to return the cleaner at Target when I go this weekend to return some of the dresses I bought on my last trip. There is no way I can live in a house that smells like prunes.

My sister is here!

I'm so excited to be hanging out with her.

Style Transformations

I promise to post more of these soon! I've been really bad about taking pictures...

Stressful weekend

So I'm looking forward to a relaxing week after a harrowing weekend. It started out well -- a long run on Saturday morning for the first time in weeks, lunch at Pink Taco at the mall, a movie (The Lincoln Lawyer - highly recommend), some shopping, and then hanging out at home with some episodes of The Office.

And then it went downhill. We went to an Italian restaurant for dinner -- La Botte. The reviews were positive and it got a Michelin star in 2009, the last year the LA restaurants were rated. So we expected something great. Instead, we had an awkward waiter who just stood there waiting for us to give us his drink, appetizer, and entree orders instead of asking what we wanted. And we were waiting forever for the waiter to take the order and then to bring the check. And the worst part was that the food just wasn't worth it. =(

Anyway, we were excited because after that we were going to a party hosted by one of my coworkers who lives down the street from us. It was going to be easy -- go there, hang out, have a few drinks, and walk back. Except that we locked ourselves out of the apartment. After calling a locksmith who failed to open the door (apparently we have a special un-pickable lock), we walked over to the party where the host was gracious enough to let us crash with him and then drive us to the management office to get a spare key in the morning.

On Sunday morning, we avoided the street closures from the LA marathon and drove through the rain to get our key and go home.

But unfortunately, after getting home and taking a nap and cooking dinner, we went back into crisis mode. A friend had relationship issues and the friend who let us crash with him needed a jump -- both at the same time. So after running around for a bit trying to help, we had a chance to take a deep breath and eat some semi-yummy Indian food for dinner. (It's always a risk when we make two new dishes for dinner but luckily they both turn out okay.)

And you may be wondering, why is this week relaxing? Well things are in good shape at work and my sister is coming into town on Wednesday night. It should be a good time =D

Recipe: Bitter Gourd with Tamarind

This is the bitter gourd recipe I mentioned in an earlier post. You can substitute the bitter gourd for okra if you prefer. The amounts are all approximations, and depend largely on your taste. I apologize for not having a more accurate recipe.

Ingredients:
2-3 medium size bitter gourd
1 tbsp tamarind paste
1 1/2 tbsp sambar (South Indian chili powder mix -- can substitute with plain chili powder)
1 tbsp salt (add as needed to get the spice on the front of your tongue and bring out the sourness)
1/2 tbsp brown sugar or jaggery
1/4 cup water
For popu:
1 tsp black mustard seeds
1/2 tsp hing/asofoetida
5-6 curry leaves
1 tbsp vegetable oil or sesame oil

1. Slice bitter gourd into 1/4 inch rounds.
   
2. Heat the oil in the saucepan until very hot. If you are using sesame oil, it will take longer for it to heat up. Add one mustard seed. If it starts to splutter, add the rest of the mustard seeds. If it doesn't, wait a few minutes and then try again.
3. After the mustard seeds splutter for a minute, add the hing and the curry leaves, and mix for 20-30 seconds. Try not to let the curry leaves burn.
4. Add the bitter gourd and cook until it starts to get dry and begins to brown. It's important to cook it enough to get some of the bitterness out.
5. Add the water and tamarind paste. Stir and mix well.
   
6. Add the sambar powder, salt, and brown sugar/jaggery. Stir and mix well.
7. While the gravy is still watery, taste and adjust as needed. If there is no flavor except maybe bitterness on the front of your tongue and the aftertaste is spicy, add salt. If you only get bitterness and no aftertaste, add more sambar powder. You may also need more salt but add the sambar powder first. If it's too spicy or sour, add some more brown sugar.
8. Serve hot with rice.

Hope this recipe helps!

Remember that celebrity...

Remember that celebrity I saw at Yogurtland after I just moved to LA? The guy that looked sort of Indian and older? (See post here)

Well I started watching Glee last night -- Season 1, Episodes 1 and 2 -- and I realized that the guy I saw is the principal on the show. Iqbal Theba. Not Indian -- Pakistani -- but still of South Asian descent. And he lives in LA so it all fits.

I'm glad that mystery is solved.

In other news, Glee is so awesome. I'm very excited to go home tonight and watch more episodes.

Target Dresses and Indian Food

So this weekend I had two accomplishments.
1. I went to Target the first day they had their Designer Collaboration re-release and I bought 4 dresses (of which I will keep 2-3). I'm very excited. I rarely buy stuff full price, but given that this is limited edition, I was willing to fork over the whole $40. I will probably write about the dresses in a later post.
2a. I cooked some good Indian food. Well, mostly good. I found some fresh okra at the Indian store and I was inspired to try a new recipe. I spent 20 minutes mincing onion really finely for a North Indian stuffed okra recipe, but by the time the okra actually cooked to an edible texture, the onions had burnt into a blackened mass on the bottom of the skillet. Sad. The okra was still good though.
2b. I also made bitter gourd with tamarind sauce. I absolutely love bitter gourd. It is, as its name suggests, really bitter, but with the right hot and sour sauce (the aforementioned tamarind plus chili powder plus other spices), the bitterness is tempered and you get a healthy bunch of goodness. Instead of using frozen bitter gourd as I usually do, I actually found some beautiful fresh bitter gourd at the Indian store, which results in a much crispier dish. Mmmmm looking forward to eating those leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

On another note, I had another celebrity sighting -- and this was one I sought/sighted/saw myself. We were walking out of a restaurant and I was looking around at all the people because I felt sorely underdressed. And then tucked away in a corner near the entrance I saw a familar face with blond hair and a weird nose. I did a double take and realized it was Owen Wilson. Not wanting the husband to miss out on the sighting (he missed the first one), I turned around and hissed "Hey, look, it's Owen Wilson to your right." Luckily, he was able to see him =) I'm pretty proud of myself for noticing a celebrity. I feel like I'm generally too oblivious to notice these things.

Lastly, to finish off this post revealing my true dorky sensibilities, I spent some time earlier today making a weight loss spreadsheet for my husband. I made graphs, I added a moving BMI counter, and I used index/match functions to link everything together. I'm pretty proud of myself actually. My husband, who's made his own share of Excel models, thought I'd downloaded the spreadsheet and didn't believe me when I told him I made it myself. So since it's not copyrighted or anything, let me know if you want the spreadsheet and I can send it to you. I'm hoping it will be useful and help him reach his goal.

Random facebook stalking

No, no, it's not what you think. I was just looking at some old pictures of me on Facebook while the husband was playing Call of Duty. I realized a few things:
1) I look really young without any eye makeup. Note to self.
2) My sense of style really hasn't changed since college. I'm still drawn to things like cardigans and camisoles, and button downs with shorts, and really feminine pieces. I never realized that until today. I assumed I had evolved. Oops, well, I guess you can't improve on something perfect. =D

So my bff N sent me a link to an Hermes pdf showing different ways to wear scarves. I don't have any scarves that fall softly the way I think a superexpensive Hermes silk scarf does, but I'm trying to see if I can incorporate scarves into my outfits. I'll post when I do.

First business trip and first client presentation

So I'm really excited to finally present to a client at our meeting on Friday. I'm a little nervous, but I think some prep time on the plane -- or actually in the airport, since I'll be sleeping on the plane given that it's a 7:30 am flight -- should be enough. I'm also practicing in front of my team, but I'd like to make sure I don't sound stupid before I get in front of them -- in case they decide to take away that responsibility.

But I don't know what to wear. I have a grey dress that goes with a bunch of suit separates, that I was planning to wear. However, after pulling it out for a trial run last week, I realized it's a little on the short side. I'm not sure it's really business appropriate. It's also going to be 59 degrees and cloudy, so it's not the best weather. So question for you all. Should I wear pants or the dress and tights? I have such a hard time deciding =(

A very late update on the weekend

I actually had a really good weekend. One of the best I've had in a while. It helped that it didn't drizzle/rain this weekend. Not that I can complain because it's like 50 degrees here.

So on Saturday, I found a tailor and dropped off some blinged out sweatpants to be hemmed and a tweed-ish dress to be adjusted. It was really nice to find a tailor in LA finally -- and one within walking distance. I'm hopeful that he does a good job, and considering all the designer stuff he had in his store, I'm sure if other people can trust him with designer dresses, I can trust him with a $10 pair of sweatpants (and ironically the hemming charge was more than the cost of the pants). Also, I finally cleaned the kitchen and swept the floors and cleaned all my clothes off the floor so I didn't feel so constrained by the clutter.

And then we went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant in Santa Monica. The food was really really good. They had some garlicky basil olive oil dipping sauce that I was considering just drinking. I refrained. But then at some point after a few sips of champagne, a plate of salad, and 3 pieces of bread with oil, I started to feel nauseous. I don't know what it was, but something disagreed with me, and I had to throw up -- for the first time in 2 years (the last time was on the day I defended my masters thesis and I gave into peer pressure and had way too much to drink). Not fun. But I came back and attacked my truffle-y, mushroom-y papardelle with gusto. I don't ever use the word "gusto" but it seemed oddly appropriate in this case. Anyway, even with my "issues", I plan to go back to the restaurant and keep all 3 courses in my stomach.

On Sunday, the husband and I got Indian food with some of my coworkers. It was really nice to hang out with a big group of people and just laugh and have fun. And then the best part of Sunday -- I found an Indian store within sane driving distance. I got guavas, mangos, custard apples/cherimoyas, frozen okra, frozen Indian snacks, and Indian yogurt/dahi/thayir/perugu. My husband is obsessed with Indian yogurt, and for the last 6 months has really been craving rice and yogurt, but we hadn't found a good Indian store that stocked it. So finally, we have one.

The best part of Sunday though really was making spicy caramel popcorn (see above) (recipe here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/brian-boitano/sweet-and-spicy-kettle-corn-recipe/index.html). I'd never made caramel before, and it had been one of those things I wanted to learn to do. It wasn't a chewy caramel, but it gave a nice sweet flavor to the popcorn, and the spices were really good. There was a little too much salt though, so if you make the recipe, I'd recommend putting about half the recommended amount.

And then after a dinner of yummy Indian food, the husband and I watched the end of the final season of Dollhouse. Totally awesome.