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.)

I Lava Cute.

Duh.

But it's becoming so much more than that, it's becoming my anchor.  If I'm having a bad day I try to turn it around and make it a cute day.

Image from http://www.etsy.com/shop/HRHQueenFrostine

Apparently I'm not the only one trying to use cute as a solution.  I've been etsystalking Queen Frostine the last few weeks, and she just announced that she'll be giving 100% of the profit from this freakin ADORBZ Icing Ring will be going to the Japanese Red Cross.  I couldn't not blog it.  Plus I'll be buying one of these after payday, convenient since she's doing this indefinitely.  Or you could buy it for me. 

Did I mention that it's only $15?

(I also love the Pink Frosting Ring that she's doing the same thing with for Planned Parenthood.)

Other things that have been calling out cute to me lately:

Yellow.  Everything yellow!
Supercute. How did I not know of this band before?  Thanks Jenn!
Mismatching patterns and prints and colors and tying it all together with ostentatious jewelry.  My mom would be horrified if she went out with me.
Tokidoki.
Tokidoki.
Tokidoki.
I can't emphasize enough the sheer pleasure of putting on pink lip stain that tastes like watermelon and has cute shit on the tube.


I have these great cute plans for my house that include maybe learning to weld so I can make 6 and 7 foot metal flowers and stick them out in my pasture so when I look out back I'll always have a field of wildflowers.  Colorful flags, wall decals, and unnecessary things like toaster cozies.  A lot of Nikki McClure prints. 

I'm at a crossroads and I can go bland and boring and depressing or I can cute the heck up and make it a better day.  Yeah, duh.

I Lava the Things That Hold Things Together.

Driving to pick my kids up at 4:45 this morning I had tears streaming down my face, and they're still coming.  Sometimes life, love can be extrememly fucking brutal.

So I was driving and feeling like the world is collapsing while trying to make it alive in the misty rain to see my babies.  Then BAM Beach Boys All Summer Long. 

It's like macaroni and cheese or clothes straight from the dryer, I was still bawling but I was singing at the top of my lungs "T-Shirts, cut offs and a pair of thongs...." through every stupid heartbreaky sob and I knew that just like all the times my dad has given me a hug and played Lovers Cross for me or my friends have responded instantly to any sign of distress, I'd make it through.

The universe is my support system, working in ways to uplift and keep me well, and little reminders like a favorite song on the radio (which rarely works, this is the real miracle in all of this) let me know it's okay.  Everything I need will come to me if I let it.

When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. -Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist.

I Lava RSL

This will be an ongoing LAVA. 

Right now I'm just putting a few things out there.  This was from my status update on facebook:

Confirmed: Burlesque lessons on May 18th and June 1st with Hells Belles.
Confirmed: One month of unlimited yoga classes at Perfect Balance Yoga.
Confirmed: I am officially in a relationship with myself. Let the James Franco-esque-self-smooching begin!

 

I also just became a Creative Fresno member.  

Spazzy Kitchen Danced.

Started telling parts of my body why I love them daily.

Sang Hannah Montana's "He Could Be The One" to my parents' dog, Ted, and whispered loudly to him that I am totally the one for me.

Why not, right?  I'm trying to make a good impression on myself, make this relationship last.

Nothing's gonna ever work out if I can't make this thing with myself work first.

Lets see what this love can do, baby I'm perfect for you.

That's right.  I'm serenading myself with Paris Hilton Reggae.

I Lava My Vegetarianniversary

Somehow in the muddled up reality that I've been inhabiting lately I totally missed celebrating my First Vegetarianniversary. 

Uh... that's kinda big.

Warning, this is gonna get vegetarian-high-horse-y.  I try not to do this, but dammit, its my big day.

A year and 4 days ago I was totally freaked out by meat thanks to bottle feeding a dying baby goat and making the connection that every time I had Indian food I ordered goat curry.

I was done, that was it.

The goat died, it really had no chance.  Doug brought it home from the Cherry Auction, a flea market swap meet kind of place where it's easy to wanna impulse buy the heck outta some livestock.  Problem is the animals there aren't healthy.  At all. As soon as I'd washed my hands and put flowers out in the pasture under the tree where we buried him I tried to eat a hamburger and couldn't make it happen.  I smelled goat shit.  I heart the pitiful bleating.  I pictured the limp neck and legs that would no longer hold him.

Done.

I was the girl who blogged about cheeseburgers with such love and devotion that (with the help of an article run about my blog in the local paper) my favorite place to grab one sold out of buns. That's right.  Sold the fuck out based on my voracious appetite for meat.

But I think that once my mind made the association it flipped a switch that couldn't be turned off and adopting a mostly vegetarian diet was pretty straightforward.  I decided to base my eating habits on my sister's because she's been at this whole no-meat business since she graduated high school- I could go to her for troubleshooting.   She follows a Pesca-Lacto-Ova-Vegetarian diet, and so have I for the last year.

I've only had meat once or twice in trace amounts since making the switch.  I enjoyed an egg roll made by Cho- you can't turn those down because they're so amazing- despite some ground pork and bacon in with the veggies.  And of course, I had corned beef for St. Patrick's Day... a slice almost as big as my pinky fingernail!

I've missed some things.  The Cheddar Burger being one of them, I also miss beef stew and the way the meat melts in your mouth, but then I always remember the reason I'm abstaining. Flesh, dude.  I'm willing to bet I'd cook up nice and tender too if I were in a crock-pot for 16 hours.  Let that marinate for a few seconds.

Yeah.  Gross.

I also like that I can still make terrible food choices and have crazy calorie days when I want to.  I think my love for Chile Relleno Burritos (so important it gets proper noun designation) transcends the love I felt for cheeseburgers.  And french fries, oh my god, don't get me started.

That said, I'm gonna be tweaking things a bit with my diet.  I'd like to say I'm giving up fish, but the sushistarved side of me just isn't ready for that step yet.  I am, however, going to have one day a week where I eat all vegan.  Just to try it out, y'know.  I'm looking at Fridays right now.  I might increase it to two days, and who knows, I might naturally fall into a vegan eating pattern some day.

To prepare I've purchased The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone on my Kindle, as well as Veganomicon and Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.  Even if I do still enjoy my Chile Relleno Burritos and all of their eggy cheesy goodness and I am not ready for a full vegan lifestyle, at least I'll have an arsenal of delicious recipes that I can make regardless of what dietary path I take.

Side note: I never thought this would happen but I'm even creeped out by leather now. 

I really LAVA being a picky eater now.  I love that my diet is more environmentally conscientious than it was last year.  Overall it's been a great switch and I look forward to trying out some tasty new things in the coming year.  Happy Vegetarianniversary to me!