I Lava Beets and Other Roots.

This week I had the absolute pleasure of taking four foreign exchange high school students on a trip to Sacramento to go check out the state capitol and learn a bit more about democracy in action.  As always happens in these situations I ended up taking away more from the experience that I thought I would.

This particular cluster of kids happened to be all Russian-speaking, hailing from Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan.  They had heard that Sac has a huge Russian community, so we made part of our trip a search for a taste of home.  This search led us to Stolichniy in North Highlands where we shared a Russian meal.  I went in thinking I'd have no clue what to eat, but as I looked over the menu I recognized several foods that come straight out of my family's cookbook.  I even know how to make Vareniki.  See, we're Volga German and I had always just assumed all of these delicious foods that we have at family gatherings were from the German side of things.  Of course, I never factored in the Russian influence on our plate. So I enjoyed the familiar- Piroshki, Vareniki and Blini- but tried Borscht for the first time as well as Vinaigrette salad.

Oh my flipping goodness.  I never knew how much I love beets.  Seriously.  Majorly.  Madly.

Of course, the things at this restaurant weren't all vegan and I just kinda ignored that to enjoy the experience, but I decided that I'd do what I could to vegan-up a few of the things when I got home.

Enter magenta-stained hands, a purple-splattered kitchen and a delightfully filled belly.

I found this great blog- Natasha's Kitchen, a treasure trove of Russian and Ukrainian yummies.  For the Vinaigrette salad I didn't have to do any work to make it vegan- it's all veggies.  But for the Borscht I switched out the chicken bouillon with veggie bouillon and plopped a dollop of Tofutti cream cheese on top instead of the tradition sour cream.


I love that everything is pink.  This fits in with my cute manifesto well. 

Here are the recipes for Vinaigrette and Borscht, Make them, LAVA them.

Some photos of my finished product:

Vinaigrette. Beets, Potato, Pickles, Sauerkraut, Carrots, Onion.

Borscht. Beets, Potato, Carrots, Onion, Cabbage, White Beans, LAVA.

NOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOM

Purple fingers!  LOVE IT!

The most important part of making soup- sharing it with others.  I'll be making a few deliveries tonight!

My amazing students Kristina- Russia, Daulet- Kazakhstan, Julia- Ukraine, Anastasia-Russia.  They're silly and smart and I love them to pieces.

Lavapants

Just a quickie-

Working hard at becoming less self-centered (yeah, like blogging is gonna help that...) and so I'm just really taking a moment every day to recognize a person who is important to me.

Okay, back to being an egomaniac.

I Lava Coming Back.

Today is a big day.

I'm moving back into my house.  Okay, it's not my house- I rent it from my grandmother, but it is the home that she grew up in.  My mom was here all the time because she grew up 3 houses down.  I was here all the time to visit my great grandmother.

It's a BFD of a house.

Last night I also came home in another way.  It's kinda superficial but lets face it, we love it that way too.

I pulled my hair back to blonde.  Or something like that.  It's actually this really golden orange.  I was gonna put some "normal" blonde dye over it but decided I like looking like Princess Peach right now.  It's a futhermuckin goal of mine.

Check that off yo' bucket list!

So without further ado (and because I'm gonna get bitchcrazy about the house in a later blog I'm sure) here's the hair.  And my makeup.  Shit, like I'd forget that!

First of all, the before.  I made it small.  It's so last week. Psssh!

 I used Color Oops to get the red out, and it worked pretty well for not being super harsh.  My hair feels a little dry but not completely traumatized- the box even says you can turn right around and dye your hair the same day, so that's kinda badass.  It didn't remove all of the dye, but it's way better than dark freakin' red meets superblonde roots.  I panicked because my roommate told me I looked his age- my roots looked gray not blonde!  Panic, right? I can't be THAT OLD.  

I'm hoping he reads this and knows I'm being a total dick about his age right now.  It's out of love, I'm sure.

Anyway, leave the stuff on your hair for 20 minutes, rinse for 20 minutes.  That's right.  Hold your head under the stream of water for 20 minutes.  Talk about an arduous task.  I am a big fan of splash and go showers, I don't like to use more water than I need and I'm a mom.  Any shower taking more than 7 minutes is a shower that opens up too much opportunity for toddlers to ruin everything.  

Apparently Color Oops does something that makes the molecules that hold color clear (uh, what?) and while it's in and when you rinse it it just washes away. Okay.  

It works, I'm happy. And I'm back to normal.  Ish.  

WIWT Makeup

Benefit Hello Flawless

Cover Girl brow pencil (someday i'm gonna do something about my brows.  Promise.)

Tokidoki Momobella blush

Eyes

Urban Decay Primer Potion in Sin

Urban Decay Ransom, Graffiti and Peace

Sugarpill Dollipop (just in the inside corners)

Tokidoki Candycane everywhere.  I love the stuff!

Cargo HD blu_ray Mascara

Lips

Lined with Sugarpill Dollipop

A dab of Lime Crime Airborne Unicorn

Slathered with LORAC Multiplex 4D (You can get this and another pretty color for $28 here.  One usually goes for $22.)