clothes

Forget Happy Hour, How about Happy Night?

I didn’t take photos of my eats this weekend. Mainly because it was boring (i.e. Oatmeal everyday for breakfast, another pita with tofu stuffed inside and cereal for dinner) Also, saturday ended up involving way more drinking than it did eating. I had so much fun though – my friend and I went downtown to go dancing, then went to a house party, which was suppose to be a dance party. Turns out, the said dance party was lame. The best part was the strobe light, which consisted of a guy covering then uncovering a light with his hand to the beat of the music. It was pretty comical. We left in hurry and did some more bar hopping. Turns out we didn’t really get to dance a ton, but we did get a lot of free drinks. I don’t go out that often, at least not to this extreme, so this was a treat. And the night ended with a long walk. On a random street we jumped at the chance to sit on top of a polar bear. I have no explanation, but I remember thinking it was the best idea ever at the time.

Doesn’t the bear’s eye make him look kind of mean? I assure you.. he was nice.

Clothes:

Needless to say, I was a little pooped out today so I haven’t done much of anything except lay around and search for fashion ideas online. I want to get a whole new wardrobe – I’m always feeling like I wear the same things because I hate the majority of my clothes. PLUS I GOT A NEW JOB. I found this out on Friday- woo hoo! So I definitely have an excuse to go shopping now.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I used to love to shop for clothes, now I am usually disappointed when I go in stores because I hardly ever find things I want. I feel like there aren’t a ton of stores that produce things I like or geared to the 20 something woman on a budget. Right now most of my clothes that I wear often are from H&M or Target. I love the style of Anthropologie, but they are just too expensive and I have never found anything I liked on the sale rack. I also like Urban Outfitters, but I can’t wear a lot of that stuff (especially to the office) – it just doesn’t look good on me, and I think their things should be better quality for the price. I’ve been considering ordering some things from the Victoria Secret Clothing catalog, but that is annoying too because you can’t try anything on. I find most stores at the mall to be marketing/designed for young girls or too mature looking. It’s just a on-going dilemma for me.. Where do you all shop?

Seriously, Where is the food?

I decided this post shouldn’t be devoted only to my binge drinking and shopping woes so I thought I would feature the recipe of a soup I made tonight. I love soup and I can’t wait for the cooler weather – I have quite a few soup recipes I can’t wait to make.

I have this bag of red lentils from a Mediterranean market that I have had for a while, actually I’ve had it since before I moved into my new apt – they moved with us. So as a result I had been searching online for different soup ideas that used red lentils. I couldn’t find any recipe in which I had all the ingredients so I decided to create my own. It was a quick and easy meal and it ended up tasting awesome. I really liked the addition of the butternut squash.

Butternut Squash and Red Lentil Soup

1 medium chopped onion

1 cup chopped carrots

2 cloves of minced garlic

1 tsp of olive oil

1 cup of dry red lentils (washed and picked through for stones)

1 1/2 cups of chopped butternut squash – I used 2 small one peeled and chopped

6 cups of vegetable broth (divided 4 cups and 2 cups) – I used Pacific low sodium

Seasonings to taste: (I used a pinch to two pinches of each)

Dried basil, oregano, thyme, black pepper, and cayenne pepper.

Heat oil in a large soup pot, and sauté the onion, carrots and garlic for about 5 minutes or until the onions are tender. Add lentils, squash and 4 cups of the broth to the pot. Add the seasonings and let simmer for about 30 minutes.

The lentils soaked up a lot of the broth so at the end to make it less thick I added the extra 2 cups of broth. I like my soup to be less thick, but you could forego the extra broth if you like it that way.