englandsword

It's been a lovely week with my family! My mom, step-dad, and brother went home today and I'll be going home on Saturday. On Monday we went shopping at an outlet mall and had lunch at a chain restaurant called Yard House. They have a gigantic beer selection and surprisingly, an entire vegetarian menu featuring Gardein products! I got the BBQ Chicken Salad with no cheese and vinaigrette on the side, instead of the dressing it came with. I didn't want to make too many changes so I just picked off the fried onions and tortilla strips. It was really delicious and flavorful, and I didn't even really need the dressing. It had romaine, corn, black beans, tomatoes, avocado, red pepper, carrots, Gardein "chicken" strips, and the fried onions and tortilla strips I picked out. Mixed together: Great lunch! It's always nice to find a chain in the Midwest that has nice vegan options. We did some awesome outlet shopping, so I'm going to have great Fashion Friday post...

I'm having a lovely time with my family. My baby brother is so freaking cute and since I was here over Christmas he has developed some rather adorable OCD tendencies. He's going through a "helpful" phase and loves to clean. He's "vacuuming" the garage. He meticulously set up his Elmos next to him, and adjusted them so they were perfect. Hugs! He is so adorable. I do have some bad news. =( I pulled a muscle! The muscle right where my left hamstring connects to my butt really hurts. So I'm sticking to upper-body weights for a few days, icing, and taking aspirin. Hopefully it will feel better in a few days. But it's very hard to rest your butt, seeing as I use it every time I walk, stand up, sit down, bend over... I've been eating a lot of the same things because I didn't want to buy a bunch of stuff that wouldn't get eaten while I'm here. Cereal with blueberries, apple slices, and banana for breakfast: Broccoli with soup for lunch a...

My birthday was so much fun! First, we all went rollerskating. None of us had been rollerskating in about a decade so it was quite an adventure but we all survived. That's my step-mom, me, my mom, my step-dad, my brother, my baby brother, and my dad. I declared a 70's theme so my step-mom, mom, and dad were all wearing my dad's high school T-shirts and my step-dad shaved his beard retro style (not just for my birthday, but for a retro NYE party tonight, too). Oh, what a blast. And I think I've never laughed harder than when my mom tried to spin with me in the middle. I am NOT that good of a rollerskater! Afterwards we went to Local Burger for dinner and got salad! I wrote about them before here . Yes, my ideal birthday dinner is salad. Then we came home for cake. My mom found one slice of vegan carrot cake at the store, and that was it. So carrot cake it was! I opened presents. I'll show you some later, maybe next Fashion Friday. ;) Then we finished the nigh...

Well I'm home from my trip to the Midwest. I realized I hit up Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska in one trip (plus Arizona and Nevada if you count plane stops!). Maybe not everyone's idea of a thrilling getaway, but I had a great time. Now I've got a busy week coming up - I have an audition tomorrow in which I have to speak Italian, going to a sports bar with some other people to watch the Broncos game tomorrow, an audition on Monday that will be 100% improv, an event at The Actors Network on Tuesday to learn how to decipher TV production charts, and then another Broncos game on Thursday! It's shaping up to be an exciting week. The last couple days in Kansas were a little bittersweet, as I've been trying to absorb as much of baby brother as I can. I've been lucky enough to witness most of his big milestones before - I was there when he got his bottom teeth, his top teeth, when he learned to crawl, and when he started walking just last week. We just took...

I had a wilty-looking bunch of kale and a somewhat old corn on the cob in the fridge yesterday so I made a nice stir-fry. I first put in a bunch of garlic, my remaining maitake mushrooms and cut the corn off the cob right into the pot. Then I tore the kale off and added it and seasoned it all with some Caribbean jerk seasoning. Then I ate half of it it like colcannon, mashed with a potato and nutritional yeast. In the afternoon I went with my dad to Home Depot because he needed to buy some crown molding for his room. It was 17 feet long and he just stuck it out the back of his truck! After this picture was taken he tied it together with orange bungee cords so it would be visible to traffic but it still felt like a pretty silly thing to do. For dinner I made myself a lovely salad and talked to my mom on Skype! There's lettuce, radishes, carrots, mixed beans, parsley, chives, and red bell pepper, and I ate it with more Indian curry hummus. Today I had the rest of my kale/corn/mush...

Well phase one of my vacation has come to an end, because my mom and step-dad left today to go back to Indiana. =( It had been five months since I saw my mom, which was tied for longest time apart with my study abroad semester in China. Thank golly for Skype. We've already set up a coffee and Skype date tomorrow because we already can't freakin' stand it! We did have a great weekend, though. On Saturday we hung out a little in Kansas City. But first we had a yummy salad for lunch. There's three kinds of lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, sprouts, purple pepper, and chives. Instead of dressing we used Indian Curry hummus. WOW! I hadn't ever eaten curry hummus, but I really recommend it. You could probably make it yourself just by mixing hummus with a bunch of curry spice. This stuff is stroooong. It's made locally in Kansas City but I'm definitely going to look for something similar in LA. In Kansas City we did some shopping - we needed to buy a new oper...