Tteokbokki - Korean Street Food You Can Make At Home

I love traditional fall and winter foods as much as the next girl - once the weather starts to cool down, I'm all about roasted meats and veggies, slow cooked soups, and more carbs and cheese than you can shake a stick at. Sometimes, though, you just need a palette cleanser, something to shock your taste buds back to life after months of comfort food.
Last week, I mentioned that I have a weakness for Asian junk food. That's accurate, but I also just love Asian food in general. I've never met a cuisine from that continent that I didn't love, and I've tried a lot of them: Indian, Thai, various regional styles of Chinese, Nepalese, Vietnamese, Korean. When I was in New York, I even took a ferry to Staten Island to try Sri Lanken food, and it was totally worth it.
I always felt a little intimidated about actually cooking these dishes for myself. I'm used to thinking of these kinds of food as restaurant food, something that you have to be a specialist to know how to prepare. That's certainly true of some dishes, but if you can get your hands on the ingredients, there are plenty of Asian dishes that are no harder to prepare than a good spaghetti.
Every time I go to the Korean spa, I have to get a plate of tteokbokki (also spelled ddukbokki). Have to. It's a deliciously spicy dish made with chewy Korean rice cakes and a fermented red pepper paste called gochujang, and it tastes like heaven when you've sweated your last three meals out through your pores in the insanely hot King Sauna. I was having a serious craving for it even after I left (probably fueled by the tteokbokki flavored chips I bought), so I actually looked up a recipe. Surprise - if you have access to the ingredients, it's pretty easy to make.
Ttekbokki Recipe via Serious Eats
Serves 4 hungry people
Sauce
3 Cups Water
3 Tablespoons Gochujang
1 Tablespoon Chili Pepper Flakes
1 Tablespoon Sugar
1 Tablespoon Soy Sauce

1 lb. rice cakes (tteok)
5 oz. fish cakes, sliced into triangles
5 oz. napa cabbage (about 1/3 of a head), sliced thin
5 cloves garlic, chopped fine (or to taste)
1 teaspoon sesame oil

Combine all ingredients for sauce in a large pan, whisking until gochujang paste is dissolved. Bring to a boil.
Add rice cakes, and reduce heat to medium. Boil, covered, for 7-10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until rice cakes are soft.
Add cabbage, fish cakes, and garlic. Reduce heat to a low simmer until sauce beings to thicken, approximately 10-15 minutes. Continue to stir occasionally to keep rice cakes from sticking.
Add sesame oil if desired, and serve.


I made a thing!

See? Wasn't that easy?
If you don't live somewhere where these ingredients are easily available and don't want to order them online, there are a few substitutions you can make. There isn't really anything you can sub in for the gochujang, but if you only want to order one thing, that's easy to get and will last you just this side of forever. Instead of rice cakes, throw in a couple of bricks of ramen, although you'd want to add them after you've simmered the sauce for a while and added the other ingredients. I ate a couple of pieces of the fish cake while I was cooking the dish, and it actually tastes really similar to imitation crab meat. If you sub out both of the main ingredients, obviously the dish will have a very different texture, but the flavor profile should be very similar.
If you are on a restricted diet, it's pretty easy to customize it to suit your needs. Vegetarian or vegan? Use tofu that you've frozen and thawed (it'll give it a denser, chewier texture) instead of the fish cake, and add a little nori to give it some of that fishy flavor. Gluten free? Skip the soy sauce and check the label on your fish cakes to make sure they're ok for you.

Has anyone else ever tried cooking traditional Asian dishes before? What did you think of the process? Would you ever try this dish?

What's eating you?

I'm a pretty big believer in writing every day. I used to really like doing morning pages, and writing about whatever I felt like just as my day was getting started. It felt like it helped me get the creative juices flowing, and most writers agree that the ability to write consistently and well is a habit you develop, not necessarily a skill that you're born with.
I do push myself to post every weekday, or at least every weekday that I'm working. In the warmer months, that wasn't too hard. If I didn't feel like writing or couldn't think of much to say, I could always fall back to a short outfit post and still feel like I was posting some decent content. Now, of course, it's winter, and daylight hours are short, so I can really only take outfit shots on the weekends. I hadn't realized how much I relied on typically having two posts a week that were just there and sorted out for me.
Of course, now that I have to be a little more creative about generating content, I'm having a little bit of a mental slump. I know, realistically, that I have plenty to talk about. I'm cooking every night, and some of my recipes are turning out pretty damn well. I'm knee deep in some awesome books and TV shows. There's a lot of stuff going on in the world that I have strong opinions about. I've also been toying with doing a campy little sci-fi or fantasy serial, which would help me dip my toes back into creative writing on a deadline.
As interesting as I would find it to write those kinds of posts, I'm not sure if it would be a positive step for this blog or not. A lot of the advice that I've read about blogging is to create a consistent brand. My posts are already a bit scatter shot - one day a fashion post, one day a movie review, the next day a social justice rant - and diversifying even further might just make the folks who were only interested in, say, the fashion aspect of the blog, tune out. I'm not so vain as to think that this will ever be much more than a hobby for me, but watching my readership grow has been a real point of pride. I'm still in the very minor leagues in terms of readership, but I am reaching a much broader audience than I was even a few months ago. I don't want to lose that readership to poorly thought out editorial changes.
I'm talking about this in part because I know a lot of the people reading this are fellow bloggers, and you guys probably have similar problems at least some of the time. It can be hard to balance quality with consistency, and creating content that both appeals to a broad audience and is reflective of a genuine voice and personality.
This is a really fucking long winded way to say that I couldn't think of anything to write about, so here are some pictures of old Hollywood babes eating. Enjoy.

Fuck Yeah Oatmeal

I freaking love oatmeal. I know that might sound a tad overenthusiastic for boiled wheat groats, but I could (and frequently do) have it for breakfast every day for weeks a time. Steel-cut oats are my weapon of choice, but old-fashioned rolled oats will do in a pinch.

I think what I like best about oatmeal is the versatility. It doesn't matter if my pantry is all but bare - just about anything goes with it. Peanut butter and banana is what I usually add, but I've also done, among other things, cocoa powder, milk, and a dash of cayenne; sausage and peas; a fried egg, spinach, and Sriracha; and olive oil, salt and pepper, and garlic powder, when there wasn't anything else in the house. And all of them were actually pretty good!
If your idea of oatmeal is the thick, gluey, over-sweetened mixture you've poured out of instant oatmeal packets, give it another try. Like I said, steel-cut oats are what I like to buy (Bob's Red Mill brand, if you have them near you), but old-fashioned rolled oats are great as well.
A single serving of steel cut oats is 1/4 cup, but for measuring purposes I make 1/3 cup, which takes 1 cup of water to cook.
Important first step: toast that shit. It doesn't take very long, and it adds a warm, slightly nutty flavor to your oats that I find makes them ten times better. Just measure out your oats and pour them into a pan. Turn your burner on medium-high heat. Shake the pan regularly, maybe every 10 seconds, to keep them from burning. After 3 or 4 minutes, your oats should be turning a golden brown and start to smell deliciously toasty.
Pour your water over the top - it will immediately come to a rolling boil. Turn your heat way down, just to a simmer. Put a lid on and leave it at a very low boil for 10-20 minutes. I don't even bother to stir it, I just come back in about 15 minutes, when I'm done washing my face and brushing my teeth and all that, and it's done. If you're using rolled oats, it's the exact same process, except that you can turn the heat completely off after bringing the water to a boil. That's probably the route you want to go if you don't like leaving your stove unattended at all, or have a kid or pet that might knock something off of or onto the stove.

Was looking for pictures of steel cut oats, stumbled across this. Ooooh, baby.

I can't be the only one that gets absurdly jazzed about something this random. I think I mostly just love my starches and carbohydrates. Mashed potatoes? Mouth watering. Mac and cheese? Would happily eat it for lunch every day in the winter. 

Links to Love

It's been a while since I've done one of these, hasn't it? Frankly, there are a lot of stories out there that I could be linking to right now, most of them just really depressing. Let's see... there's Ferguson, and the way white privilege and black disempowerment are coming to a head, not just in the South but everywhere in America. There's the rise of ISIS in the Middle East and the brutal beheading of journalist James Foley. There's the horrendous assault against Christy Mack by her ex-boyfriend, an MMA fighter, and the equally horrendous response on social media because she's a sex worker.
It's easy to start feeling angry and depressed with all of terrible things going on in the world, and to be honest, I don't want to talk about them (at least, not any more than I just have). So this week, I've got some frivolous and fun stuff to take my mind off of the gloom.
1. The Secret History of "Flashdance"

The movie Flashdance is one of those pop culture touchstones you don't have to have actually seen to be familiar with. It made millions of dollars and resonated with millions of people, but what most of those people don't know is that it's actually based on the lives and images of real dancers who worked in Toronto in the 70s and 80s. Unfortunately, they were taken advantage of by unscrupulous people in the movie business, and have made virtually nothing off of the use of their stories and images. The real stories of Gina Healey and Maureen Marder are fascinating, although they never got their own Hollywood endings.
2. Sleep Hack - Keep Your Feet Outside Your Covers

Photo unrelated to article. I just want my bedroom to look like that.
I'm kind of scared of the dark. I mean, not really anymore, but sometimes I still get creeped out. Up until recently I had this thing where my feet had to be covered by the blanket, because it they weren't I would get this feeling like something was going to reach out and grab them. When I moved, though, I left my bed frame behind (on purpose, it was really shitty), and now that my mattress is right on the floor that fear has gone away. But anyway, what I mean to say is that this trick actually works! I've been doing this ever since I read about it last week, and I'm finding I fall asleep much faster than normal.
3. Before Elvis There Was Nothing - Black and White Photos of Elvis in the 50s

I sometimes forget that before Elvis was a chubby, sweaty guy in a rhinestone jumpsuit, he was super hot. Thank you for reminding me.
And hey, spend some time exploring the website these are from. Vintag.es always has fantastic vintage photographs of everything from fashion to high culture to daily life. I try to check the site daily because the updates are so frequent. Definitely one to bookmark.
4. Escape is the unlikely link between The Shawshank Redemption and Natural Born Killers


I'm all about the double feature, and I might actually have to do this one. I would also quite like to do the one that they mentioned in passing as a joke - The Lion King and The Professional.
5.Why does asparagus make our urine smell?

Truly one of the great mysteries of our times.
6. Could the cravat make a comeback?

Man, I really hope so. That would be so sweet.

Pimm's Cup

After work tonight I'm going to hunt down ice cube trays. When I moved almost two months ago, I discovered that my new place didn't have any. Occasionally I'll remember to check for them in whatever random store I happen to be in, but, well, forever21 doesn't carry ice cube trays. WTF, right?
But today is the day. For one thing, the weather is starting to do that thing where you know it's going to be hot as balls in about two weeks, and stay that way until well after you've stopped enjoying it. Personally, I find that the best day to beat the heat is with a nice, cold, adult beverage, like a Dark and Stormy or, one of my personal favorites, the classic Pimm's Cup.

Pimm's No. 1, which created in the mid-1800's, has been a British staple for 150 years. Pimm's Cup is the drink to drink at Wimbledon, and every year about 80,000 cups are sold to spectators. It's light, refreshing, and easy to make, which makes it a win in my book.

Pimm's Cup No. 1 Recipe
In a large pitcher, mix 1 part Pimm's No. 1 with 3 parts lemonade (you can sub in lemon-lime soda or ginger ale if you prefer). Add slices of whatever kind of fruit you prefer - strawberries, apples, oranges, and cucumber is a classic combo - and pour into a Collin's glass over ice. Garnish with mint or other herb of your choice.
It's that simple. All you really need is Pimm's, some kind of fizzy liquid, and whatever kind of fruit you have on hand. And ice.

Links to Love

Firstly, I created a Facebook page for the blog last week, so please mosey on over there and like it! If you do I'll think warm thoughts about you while I'm baking cookies. I mean, I'd offer to just send you cookies, but that seems like a lot of work. Cakes and Cakes Vintage on Facebook
1. Why red carpet makeup looks bad in real life
Sure, makeup is about making yourself look good, but it's also about having fun. There are certain things, like contouring, that work really well in photos, but if you view it as something that can reconfigure your face in real life, well, you're going to be disappointed, and you're gonna look kind of strange.


2. Abraham Lincoln's Steampunk Presidency
Did you know that Abe Lincoln (in addition to being a Vampire Hunter) is the only U.S. president to hold a patent? And he also presided over one of the most technologically innovative periods in history.


3. Being Happy With Sugar
There are a lot of reasons why people are gaining weight, and a lot of it, in nearly every corner of the globe. It might be human nature to look for the magic bullet, the one thing that we can cut out and demonize so that we don't have to make substantive changes in the way that we live, but that's incredibly unproductive. Do we need to eat less sugar? Oh, most definitely. However, like fat and carbs, sugar is fine for you so long as you don't eat too much of it. 


4. Colleges become the victims of progressivism
Ready for your hate read of the day? This guy, among another things, thinks that there are privileges that come with being a sexual assault victim, and even uses scare quotes around the words sexual assault. Also, apparently it isn't really rape if a woman says no, but doesn't resist physically, because of course it's only rape if a stranger jumps out of the bushes holds a knife to your throat. I am getting pissed off again just writing about it.

5. Thom Browne Resort 2015
Ok, so you had your hate read of the day; let's go out on a nice note with something pretty. I love Thom Browne, an American designer who is mostly known for having an uncanny ability to translate his absolutely bonkers runway looks into chic, wearable pieces in real life. His resort collection isn't as out there as other seasons, but there's still something a little 40s meets 70s meets acid trip, and I love it.

Body image and vintage clothing

Depending on what source you're looking at, between 70 and 90% of women in America express dissatisfaction with their bodies. Many of them turn to fad diets, body-shaping garments, or even cosmetic surgery in order to change their appearance. It seems like every week, there's some tabloid cover with a smiling celebrity celebrating their weight loss, or cruel speculation about how someone's gained weight and now no one loves her.

I usually feel like I have a pretty positive body image. I've always been a fairly confident person, and my body type is considered acceptable, even desirable, by society's standards - tall and fit, with a small waist and a big butt. I know, intellectually, that I have nothing to complain about. No one discriminates against me on the basis of my size. People don't make comments about what I eat, and it's wholly unremarkable if I exercise in public. No one's ever told me that "some guys are into women like me," as if I could only ever appeal to a niche market.
It can be uncomfortable to talk about how I think of my body because, as a thin person, no one really wants to hear me complain. I want to be clear that I'm not trolling for compliments, and I'm not trying to ask for anyone's sympathy. I fully acknowledge that any issues that I have are relatively minor, but I think they're issues that a lot of women have, and I think it's important to talk about them, particularly in the context of blogging.
The world of fashion is populated by thin women. This is just a statement of fact, and is not intended to denigrate them in any way. There is a very particular body type in fashion (at least in high fashion; I will get to pinup and retro styles in a bit) - tall, slim hipped, small breasted, with the long, slender limbs of a gazelle. Toned, but not muscular, and very lean. That's the typical model body type, and the most popular fashion bloggers tend to look to have the same look. Not as tall, perhaps, and maybe a bit softer and rounder, but it's still all about slender, graceful bodies that the clothes can hug and hang off of just so. Of course, it's also unusual for anyone to acknowledge how difficult it can be to maintain that body type. I'm sure that for some people it's natural, but most people have to be on a pretty strict diet to get to and maintain a size two. There's even an Instagram account called You Did Not Eat That, which capitalizes on the phenomena of very slender fashion and lifestyle bloggers posing coyly with macaroons, slices of pizza, giant burgers, and ice cream cones mere inches of their lips.
Although others usually see me as a relatively thin person, it can be hard for me not to zero in on what I think is wrong with my body when I look in the mirror. I said before that I usually feel pretty good about myself, but sometimes if I haven't been eating well or am just going through a rough patch emotionally, I look in the mirror and all I can see are legs like tree trunks, flabby thighs, and cellulite. My boobs look too small, my ass looks too big, and where the hell did these bingo wings come from? My weight rarely flucuates by more than five pounds either way, but the way that I see myself can vary widely from day to day.
When I take photos for outfit posts, I'm always conscious of how I pose. Hands of hips to make my waist and arms look slimmer, head tilted to elongate my neck, up on tip-toe if I'm not already wearing heels to make my legs look longer and slimmer. I try very hard to be conscious of any bias that I might have, and that includes being biased against heavier people; still, I work very hard to make sure that I, myself, look as thin as possible. I'll take photo after photo trying to get everything just right.

I don't wear pants that often, and I almost never post photos of myself in them, mostly because I really don't like the way my hips and legs look in them.
I have mixed feelings about the influence that the vintage fashion world has had on me. On the one hand, size acceptance seems to be one of the core tenets of the scene, and the body types that you see are far more diverse than in mainstream fashion. The message that women of all sizes are beautiful is widely distributed, and popular clothing brands work to make sure that they can accomodate a variety of sizes. Practically speaking, there's also greater acceptance of using undergarments to reshape your body. Don't like your waist? Wear a corset! Don't like your ass? Girdle, she wrote. It's kind of refreshing to hear that you don't have to achieve physical perfection all on your own - just go out and buy this thing to put on under your clothing and problem solved. Vintage fashion generally acknowledges the articfice involved in nipping waists and cantilevering breasts, which creates more realistic expectations.
On the other hand, much of the media that we draw inspiration from features women who are almost as slim as today's fashion models, and if you prefer to buy vintage rather than reproduction, good luck finding larger sizes. I'm often annoyed by how much cheaper really beautiful items can be in very small sizes. I'll stumble across something on Etsy and think, "Oh my god, that dress is amazing! And it's only $60? And it's... 32-24-32. *sigh*" It just makes me think that I'm a medium now, and that's ok, but what if I were a small? Or better yet, an extra-small?
I've never had an actual eating disorder, although I am prone to disordered eating. It's gotten better, but there was a time, not that long ago, when I would count every calorie, obsess over how much I was working out, feel extreme guilt if I slipped up a little bit, and then have a down moment and eat until it was painful. On a couple of occasions, I would take laxatives afterwards to "get the food out of my system," as I thought about it. It's behavior that I recognize now was deeply unhealthy, and could have led to something much worse. I have to be careful about how I think about dieting and exercise and my body, because even though I recognize how terrible some of my choices were, I still find myself falling into that mindset sometimes.
I'm going to keep blogging, and I imagine I'm only going to become more deeply immersed in the world of vintage fashion as time goes on. I want this blog to be successful, so I'm probably going to continue to take dozens of photos every time I want to post an outfit to make sure that I'm presenting the best possible version of myself and my clothes. I want to be honest, though, about how I feel about myself, and the struggles that I have had and continue to have with my weight and with my self-image. I would feel like a fraud and like I'm doing a massive disservice both to myself and those of you who read this by doing anything else.

Links to Love

1. Want to Know if Your Food is Genetically Modified?
To quote somewhat at length:

"Though opposition to GMOs has its roots in the liberal environmental movement, an increasing number of environmental writers and thinkers have begun to take the industry’s side in the debate, pointing to an overwhelming scientific consensus—based on hundreds of independent, non-industry-funded, peer-reviewed, long-range studies—that GMOs are safe. The scariest recent study, which claimed that GMOs caused tumors in rats, was the work of a rogue laboratory in France whose findings have been widely debunked. The National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, the U.K.’s Royal Society, the European Commission, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest have all sought to weigh GMOs’ purported risks, and found that there is no evidence they are dangerous."

I've already made my feelings about GMOs pretty clear,  but I was really fascinated by this article from The Atlantic. It's a long read, but it's really worth the time.

2. A Taxonomy of Carbonated Waters
Summer's almost upon us, and L.V. Anderson from Slate tackles this most important of issues - what's the difference between various kinds of fizzy bubble water?

3. Women in Space (part 1)
This review of women in space based sci-fi added several new entries to my reading list. I've already read more fantasy than sci-fi, but lately I've really been drawn to science fiction. It tends to be such a male dominated genre, though, that it's nice to have a list of novels to check out that actually have women in them. 


4. The Hollow Cat Eye: A Customized Twist on a Classic Look
Much as I love a classic cat eye, sometimes you just have to switch things up a little bit. This xoVain tutorial gives a few different ideas for how to mix things up with your beauty routine.


5. Model Co Tan Mousse and Mitt
The reason why I'm featuring this link is less because of the product review, and more because of what the lovely Marianne has to say on the issue of skin tone. This is something that I've noticed myself - the vintage look seems to be a very white look, both demographically speaking (I know many more white people who've embraced the retro aesthetic than people of color) and aesthetically speaking (the beauty standard seems to be very pale skin). I think that there are a lot of reasons behind that, and they're way too complicated to get into in just a paragraph or two, but I have to echo her statement that "...all skin tones are beautiful and let's enjoy them, whatever we have, and paint them, or not paint them, whatever takes our fancy, as we see fit."

6. Silk Mystery Outfit
One of the joys of wearing and collecting vintage clothing is doing the research to try and pinpoint their era and origin. The Vintage Traveler recently purchased this lovely silk outfit, and was trying to place the time period it came from. I've spent plenty of time doing this myself, and it was great to read her working through the various clues that made her conclude that it was, in fact, a 1950s garment.

The one thing I really care about when it comes to organic food

I am an outlier when it comes to the organic food movement, in that I support it, but I think the anti-GMO dogma that characterizes it is wildly misplaced. For one thing, we've been genetically modifying food for thousands of years; those heirloom veggies you're paying top dollar for at the farmers market aren't any closer to their wild ancestors than the ones you'll find on the shelf at any grocery store. They also aren't bad for you. Study after study has confirmed that they are not poisoned, they will not give you cancer, they will not give you autism, they will not turn you purple. While I don't always trust the government, I sure as hell trust scientists over the kind of quacks that have people convinced that vaccines are bad for you, because they two groups seem to go hand in hand.

Not an accurate depiction of GMOs.
For the record, Monsanto is the worst. The things that they do to farmers who don't want to buy their products are atrocious, and it's criminal that they can get away with it. That's something that is wrong with them as a company, though, and needs to be dealt with through patent law reform, not anti-GMO activism. Monsanto is not the only company that creates GMOs, and lumping all of them together only stifles progress. When activists burn down fields of enriched wheat that's being developed by scientists in Australia, who have no affiliation with Monsanto and can help improve the nutrition of children in the developing world, it is immensely frustrating.
So, why do I care about organic food? Because there is something about factory farming that is really dangerous, and could potentially kill millions, if not billions.
Antibiotics.
The World Health Organization recently released a report that said, in a nutshell, that we really need to stop fucking around with antibiotics or they aren't going to work anymore. Play nicely with your lifesaving medicines or you'll break them and then you won't have them anymore.
Most people living today don't remember what the world was like before antibiotics. Syphilis, meningitis, pneumonia, gonorrhea, even minor flesh wounds could be deadly, and will be again if antibiotic resistant strains keep proliferating the way they have been in the past few decades.
Currently, most factory farmed livestock are regularly dosed with antibiotics, which help them to put on more weight than they would without them. The doses are sub-theraputic, so they don't actually keep them from getting sick from things, but they do create antibiotic resistance in the bacteria. This practice is banned in the EU and in Canada, but not here in the US. Given how strong the meat lobby is here, I don't know what the chances are of that happening any time soon.

Chipotle is one company that uses only antibiotic free meat.
I'm not always as conscientious about where I get my meat from as I should be, but making sure that it's antibiotic free, or skipping it entirely, is an important goal for me. Even if you don't care much for the "liberal agenda," not reverting to a pre-antibiotic society is a goal that everyone should be able to get behind.

A mid-century modern Easter birthday

Easter was yesterday, and so was my birthday. I remember the last time my birthday fell on Easter - I was turning 15 and I was so pissed about the whole thing. I wasn't a party having kind of girl, but I at least wanted my own cake. Instead someone just stuck a candle in the bunny shaped cake we made every year for Easter and called it a day.
My birthday got a bit swallowed again this year, but in a way it was kind of nice. I just turned 27, and non-milestone birthdays just aren't as big of a deal to me as they were even a few years ago. Friday night my boyfriend took me out for dinner and drinks at CH Distillery, where our new roommate works. The food and the cocktails were amazing, and I think I'm going to be spending plenty of time there in the future.

Just look at those big, beautiful stills. 

Saturday I did have a party with some of my closest friends. It was actually kind of a joint endeavor - my boyfriend's roommate was having her birthday party that night as well, so I just kind of rode her coattails. It worked out nicely, since we could be part of the bigger, crazier party if we wanted to, or retreat to Brian's room to just hang out and talk if we wanted to be able to hear each other. Things that I enjoyed included:

1. A Narwal Head

I do love this skirt from Trashy Diva, which I've mentioned previously. The bolero is a find from Vintage Underground that, according to the label, was made with love by someone named Phylis. 

2. The fact that my friends all have random things in common

One of my friends saw a copy of The Adventures of Asterix that Brian was reading to brush up on his French, and immediately had to plop down and look through it.  She's a polyglot, and French is one of her languages.

Another friend was impressed with Brian's collection of graphic novels. He ended up lending him a copy of The Deadwardians, where the vampire elite fight zombie plebs in Edwardian England.

3. Acro-yoga!

"I believe I can fly. I believe I can touch the sky..."

Sunday was Easter, and I ended up going to two brunch/lunch events. I didn't do a great job at pacing myself, so I ended up almost painfully overstuffed by the end of the day, but sometimes the food is just too good to resist. I made 3 cheese baked eggs for both events, the recipe for which I'll post at a later date.

I wanted to look as much like an Easter egg as possible. Mission accomplished. I love this lilac gingham dress, and paired with a yellow cashmere cardigan and matching pillbox hat, I felt like a walking, talking Peep.

The was, finally, really nice out. Brian and I spent a significant amount of time out of his aunt's deck.

Brian's family is delightfully retro, and that manifests itself in interesting ways. One of them is this jello dish - lime jello with crushed pineapple, cream cheese, and green olives. Strange as it sounds, it was really enjoyable.

This highly doubtful expression is from before I tried it. I promise.

They were even kind enough to get me a cake! It even matched my dress, though no coordination occurred.

Overall, I had a lovely weekend and a wonderful birthday. I'm so glad that I got to spend time with my favorite people, eating, drinking, dancing, and having fun. 

     

  

Six Links to Love

1. Sterner Stuff: Why Sansa Stark is a Political Powerhouse. I'm not gonna lie - I've never been that into Sansa. I mean, when you've got fierce little Arya, Brienne of Tarth, Cersei Lannister, and, in the tv show, Olena and Margaery Tyrell to compare her to, it's hard to get that excited about her. However, this article raises a valid point. She's not stupid, she's not useless, she's just in the weakest position of any major female character in the series, and she uses the tools available to her to negotiate some harrowing circumstances. Her charm, decorum, and ability to hide her true feelings are what have kept her alive, if not unharmed. I have to wonder if Cersei wasn't wrong when she said she was a little bit like her when she was young.

Ok, but this is some epic durp face. 

2. Chronically Vintage: Miss L Fire Shoes I've been drawing so much inspiration from Jessica of Chronically Vintage lately. She has a real sense of elegance and great taste, and her website is a great source if you're looking for vintage shops or reproduction brands. I am dying for a pair of Miss L Fire shoes after she showcased these gems. The styles are fabulously vintage in style but with a modern sensibility. I think I might have to invest in this pair for the summer.

 
3. Mississippi Sex Ed Class Compares Women to Dirty Pieces of Chocolate I went to school in rural Colorado, and we also got abstinence only, sex-negative sex ed. Women who have sex are compared to toothbrushes, to gum, to pieces of chocolate, which have no value after they've been used. This is an incredibly damaging message to send to impressionable teenagers for a lot of reasons. Girls who have sex are considered worthless sluts, both by others and often by themselves, and boys become entrenched in the virgin/whore dichotomy. As Elizabeth Smart, who is quoted in the article, says, it can also make life even more difficult for girls who are raped, or undergo other traumatic sexual experiences.

4. The Color of His Presidency American politics grow ever more tense and divisive, and as much as I'd love to lay that all at the feet of the Republican party, liberals and Democrats haven't exactly been open to discourse either. Accusations of racism and totalitarianism fly from both sides of the aisle, and it's not getting us anywhere. Entrenched politicians are unwilling to act decisively for fear of losing an election, and their cowardice is a problem in its own right, but it doesn't help matters that every statement that actually says anything is going to be dissected in the most partisan way possible. Unless we start actually listening to and thinking about the ideas that the other side is putting forth, the days of America the Beautiful are over.


5.  Plasticland Killer Kraken Pillow I'm moving to a new apartment soon, and my boyfriend is in full agreement with me that a steampunk pad would be the bees knees. I'm thinking this kraken throw pillow might be a nice place to start.

6. The Kitchn: Minty Pea and Arugula Wonton Ravioli Doesn't this just scream spring? I'm determined to give it a shot this weekend, maybe with roasted chicken or tilapia.