Mexican Tomato Rice and Beans

Also from the new cookbook, I made this one night when my partner was at his weekly Toastmasters meeting. I personally found this recipe to feel somewhat incomplete until I added cheese to my bowl. I added mozzerella because I had very few choices in the house, but it worked (more or less).

Ingredients

1 cup uncooked medium-grain white rice       (I used Jasmine, actually)
1 14 1/2 oz can diced tomatoes (preferably "petite-cut")
2 Tbs extra-virgin olive oil
6 medium cloves garlic, finely chopped         (I threw mine in a mini food processor for this)
1 medium fresh jalapeno, cored and finely chopped (or, if you like spicy food, leave in the ribs and seeds)           (I threw this in the food processor with the garlic for ease of prep)
1 15 oz can black beans, rinsed and drained
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp chili powder
Kosher or fine sea salt
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh oregano leaves and tender stems
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh cilantro leaves and tender stems

Directions

In a 1-quart saucepan, combine rice and 2 cups cold water. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, cover, reduce heat to low, and cook 20 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand covered another 5 minutes.

Meanwhile...

Set a fine-mesh sieve in a bowl and drain the can of tomatoes. Pour the tomato juice in a 1-cup liquid measuring cup and add enough water to the juice to equal 1 cup.

Heat a skillet over medium-high heat, pour in oil and stir fry garlic and jalapeno until garlic is brown and jalapeno is pungent. Add the black beans, cumni, chili powder, 2 tsp salt. Stir two or three times to incorporate the mixture and cook the spices (30 seconds). Stir in tomato juice and water mixture and bring to boil. Adjust heat to maintain gentle boil and cook until beans absorb much of the liquid (5-7 minutes).

Add tomatoes, oregano, cilantro, and cooked rice until everything is warm (1-2 minutes). Serve immediately.


I highly suggest the fresh cilantro. If you can find the oregano fresh, use it. Otherwise, I think dry probably will work. I'd say add it halfway through the bean cooking so it has a chance to absorb a bit of liquid.

Risotto with Peas, Mint, & Lemon

From the new cookbook, we tried this. I've only made boxed risotto, so this was a fun adventure. It was quite a bit more labor-intensive, which was a bit taxing that particular night. Overall, though, it was fine. I need to point out that it made a ton of food. We didn't finish it all before we had to chuck it for being too old.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture. I don't know how that happened. I could have sworn I had a picture. Oops. I'm so sorry. I did find this picture from the Fine Cooking website, though.

Ingredients

5-6 cups vegetable broth    (I used some leftover chicken broth mixed with vegetable broth)
4 Tbs unsalted butter
1 medium onion, cut into 1/4-inch dice
Kosher salt
2 cups arborio rice (or other risotto rice)
1/2 cup dry white wine (like Pinot Grigio)
2 cups frozen peas
1/2 cup chopped fresh mint
2 Tbs fresh lemon juice
1 Tbs finely grated lemon zest
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano; more for serving

Directions

Heat the broth in a saucepan until very hot, then reduce heat to just keep the broth hot.

In another pan, melt 2 Tbs butter over medium heat. Add onions, generous pinch of salt, and saute until onion softens and started to turn lightly golden. Add the rice and stir until the grains are well coated with butter and edges become translucent. Pour in the wine and stir until it's absorbed.

Add another generous pinch of salt and ladle enough hot broth into the pan to barely cover the rice (about 1 cup). Bring to a boil, then adjust the heat to maintain a lively simmer. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the broth has been mostly absorbed.

Continue adding broth in 1/2 cup increments, stirring and simmering until it has been absorbed each time.

After 16-18 minutes, the rice should be creamy but still fairly firm. Add peas and another 1/2 cup broth. Continue simmering and stirring until the peas are just cooked and rice is just tender. Stir in another splash of broth if it's too thick.

Remove from heat, stir in mint, lemon juice, lemon zest, remaining 2 Tbs butter, and parmigiano. Sprinkle with salt to taste. Serve immediately with sprinkling of extra parmigiano.



Next time I made this, I'll be cutting the recipe in half, I think. Or I'll serve more people.

Braised Sausage with Balsamic-Glazed Onions and Grapes

My sister gave me Fine Cooking Cook Fresh: 150 Recipes for Cooking and Eating Fresh Year-Round for Christmas. It's a really exciting recipe book filled with recipes I'm terrified to try but that look fairly doable. I went through the book and marked a bunch of recipes I wanted to try, then I made my partner look at those recipes and identify a few to try one week.

The first recipe we tried was braised sausage with balsamic-glazed onions and grapes. It sounds super fancy, tastes fancy, but was fairly simple to make. Here's the only picture I took of it (I didn't think to do so earlier in the process) plus the summary.

Salad, baguette, and sausage dinner

I'd like to give a couple little disclaimers:

• I really don't like vinegar that much. I like pickles, but vinegar itself is gross (remnant from my first job mixing giant vats of coleslaw at KFC). That said, this is good and doesn't taste like vinegar at all.
• We didn't use fancy anything. The sausage was the prepackaged store brand sausage from the meat department. I wager fancier stuff would taste even better.

Ingredients

3 Tbs olive oil
8 links (about 2 lb.) sweet Italian sausage, pricked with a fork
1 large yellow onion, thinly sliced (about 2 cups)
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 cup lower-salt chicken broth
2 Tbs balsamic vinegar
20 seedless red grapes, halved
2 Tbs chopped fresh oregano

Directions

Heat 1 Tbs olive oil over medium heat, add the sausages and cook, turning every few minutes until they're brown all over. Remove to a large plate.

Add remaining olive oil, onions, and salt and cook until the onion softens and turns light brown. Add the chicken broth and balsamic vinegar and scrape the bottom of the skillet to incorporate browned bits. Reduce to a gentle simmer.

Add sausages and grapes, cover skillet with the lid ajar, and cook until the sausages are cooked, about 25 minutes. Stir occasionally. Serve sprinkled with oregano.



I'd say the fresh oregano is worth it, but we had a ridiculously hard time finding it in stores right after the holidays. You can probably sub dried, which I'll do if I can't find fresh easily. It's actually suggested you serve with baguette and a salad, which is how we ended up with the above salad. If you need to stay gluten-free, don't do the baguette or substitute something gluten-free. The whole thing took maybe 45 minutes including prep (which includes slicing the onion and grapes). We ate leftovers for a week. When you eat the leftovers, just watch that initially some coagulated fat will be on the top. Just scrape it off and reheat.

The book has some commentary I didn't copy out. It's written so that someone like my partner, who can cook a bit but not much, can follow the directions. It describes how the oil should look before you add the sausage and what temperatures to use at which stage. It also tells you to cut into the sausage at the end to figure out if it's cooked. Seriously, this book is awesome. I recommend finding it.

Once upon a kitchen...

Cooking is easily one of my favorite hobbies. Perhaps because it's so important to me or perhaps because it feels like everyone talks about loving cooking, I've been reluctant to talk about it more. That's just silly. I have to remember to give myself permission to be myself, no matter what everyone else does.

A short history of me cooking:

Two of my earliest memories of cooking are from around ages 4-6. 

In the first memory, my mom wasn't feeling great -- either sick or tired, probably pregnant with my younger sister -- and I was set the task of making ramen from a package. I'm sure you know what I mean when I talk about those $0.10 packages of ramen you can get. She used to have me help make ramen with her, so it wasn't totally strange that she asked me to make some. Sadly, when I read 2 cups of water, I grabbed a drinking cup (probably 12 oz or more) and used 2 of those instead of a measuring cup. The ramen was pretty horrible, and while I felt embarrassed at the time, I now just laugh.

In my second memory, my mom went outside to work in the front garden. I wanted to make cinnamon-sugar toast (something I was totally allowed to do). Being so small and enjoying the first piece so much, I decided to make more. And more. And more. Let's just say I probably made half a loaf of cinnamon-sugar toast, all the while not understanding that I'd be full long before I finished what was in front of me. I just thought it was so tasty. I remember realizing at some point that I had far too much toast in front of me and regularly glancing out the door to make sure my mom didn't come in and see how much I'd made. I can't remember if I actually ate it all before she came back in or if I threw some away or if maybe she came in and helped me eat the last couple pieces. Apparently I didn't think she'd notice half a loaf of bread gone in a couple hours.

Needless to say, as I grew, I helped my mom more and more in the kitchen.

As a teen, I made more dinners for my family. My mom loves baking. While she definitely can cook, she doesn't enjoy it as much as she enjoys baking. So I helped out and made dinners, especially on nights when I had youth group and we needed to eat by a specific time. In high school, I took two cooking classes. It was thanks to the cooking labs in those classes that I started to really enjoy reading recipes to decide if I wanted to try making the food.

I guess that all leads up to where I am now. I've been experimenting more as the years go on. I don't claim to be exceptionally great at cooking, but I think when you enjoy something and practice it regularly, you get better. So I'm not fantastic, but I'm fairly decent and adventurous. 

My sisters are a bit experimental and good, but they're more like my mom: they love baking more than cooking, though they're capable of both. Overall, though, they're impressed with what I tell them I've made. To be fair, they only hear what I've made, not tasted it.

Something I really want to share is my cooking experimentation. I've had successes and failures. It's kind of stupid what I fail at when I succeed with other things. Before I share what I've done, I wanted to share some of my favorite cooking youtube channels.

SORTED Food: This is easily my favorite cooking channel. The guys are from England (which makes conversions for me really challenging), so they have a different outlook on food. I love it because they share things more common to them and less common to me (like Indian-inspired cooking). Some recipes are intimidating, but most are fairly approachable. Plus, they've inspired an entire community on their website sortedfood.com where people share recipes and just talk about food.

Raw. Vegan. Not Gross.: I'm an omnivore, but I don't know huge amounts about eating vegetarian or vegan. I know it's super healthy, so I try to incorporate more of that kind of cuisine. Laura Miller shares these amazing raw vegan recipes. She discusses the health benefits of whatever main ingredient she's talking about so you understand it's not just "fad" stuff. Even if I've never eaten sauerkraut, her discussion of it and its health benefits makes me want to make it. I've made fewer of her recipes solely because it uses more expensive ingredients (like the sheer amount of nuts she uses!), but I absolutely love watching and learning more. I plan on trying more of her recipes this year. As a note, this show is on Tastemade, a channel of a bunch of cooking shows. I haven't watched many of the other shows because I don't find them as easily approachable as Raw. Vegan. Not Gross.

My Drunk Kitchen: Hannah Hart is around my age, which makes this approachable from the outset. She drinks (usually wine) and cooks in the kitchen. By the end of the episode, she's fairly tipsy. This is fantastic particularly because it means half of her food doesn't come out well. Something goes wrong (usually a lack of measuring ingredients or improper ingredients), but she's totally positive anyway. Half her food comes out great, it needs to be pointed out. She has guests on all the time. Sometimes it's other famous youtubers, sometimes it's actual celebrities like Mary Louise Parker, Lance Bass, Jamie Oliver, or Sarah Silverman. Hannah also does a great job of talking about issues of the day using food as a metaphor.

You Deserve a Drink: Mamrie Hart (friend but not relation of Hannah Hart) makes drinks. She's been a bartender. She attends mixology classes. She creates drinks. And she's vegan, so all her recipes are vegan. It's actually really neat. I've made pretty much none of her drinks, but I love watching what she does. I find it fascinating. Plus she makes more puns than you'd think a person could per episode. She also has special guests on sometimes, but usually they're youtubers (though she did recently do a drink for Jamie Oliver). Even if you're like me and not much of a drinker, you'd probably enjoy one or two of these.

Cooking Fast and Fresh with West: This can barely count as a cooking show. Misha Collins (who plays Castiel on Supernatural) has posted 4 videos where he lets his son, West, pick all the ingredients for a recipe and tell him exactly how to make the food. Then Misha eats the dinner. West is three or four, so the recipes are weird. It's more an example of amazing fathering than cooking, but the episodes are hilarious. I'd recommend watching them if you're ever feeling blue.

I watch other things, but mostly it's one-off recipes, not channels. These are far more inspiration than actual sources of recipes for me. 

I'd love suggestions of other channels to watch!

Transform

A couple years ago, I learned about a music group called Steam Powered Giraffe. They are both musicians and actors. Each band member has a steampunk robot persona.

From left to right: The Spine, Hatchworth, and Rabbit

I haven't been to a live show, but all their videos on youtube depict how amazingly the inhabit these robot forms. They move and talk only like robots during their shows and for publicity. If you're familiar at all with groups like GWAR or Lordi, this band has a similar attitude.

Today, the musician who plays Rabbit posted a beautiful video that depicts Rabbit's transformation through the years, focusing heavily on the gender change Rabbit underwent in 2014. I find the video so touching that I have to share it.

The actress, Isabella Bennett, is transgender and currently in her first year of hormone therapy. She is the twin sibling of The Spine, David Bennett.

I am moved by the way she documents her transgender experience with all the ups and downs included. If you're interested in her journey, I encourage you to watch her monthly videos.

Take Care of Yourself

Considering all my gifts for Yule and Christmas, the theme for 2015 is probably "take care of yourself". From friends and family I received the magic bullet I've talked about, cough drops, rubber duckies and bubble bath, luxurious scented bath salts, and an entire at-home spa kit. I'd just like to take a bit to talk about the spa kit because it was so incredible.

It contained:
Foot bath, marbles, scented epsom salt, oil vaporizer-diffuser, oils for  diffuser, gel facial mask, fuzzy socks, shower head, head massager, and an exfoliating shower pouf.

I've only used everything once so far, but I've used several of the pieces multiple times. I've been sick lately. I should probably have tried the spa kit to help me feel better but I felt too sick to even think that far.

I've loved using the oil diffuser. It lights up in changing colors, so it's pretty. It automatically shuts off when it gets too low, so I don't have to babysit it. And it makes the house smell great, which can't be wrong.

The shower head makes every shower fun. I really can't express how much fun it is. It changes color by temperature. Basically it's green when the water is cold, blue when warm, and red when hot. Since it's the middle of winter, I've been showering almost exclusively in red, but I'm sure I'll shower in blue when it's spring and during the summer I know I'll take my cool-off-before-bed showers in green.


Taking care of myself is something I struggle with. I'm not saying I'm bad to myself, but I forget that I'm allowed to pamper myself. I was recently talking with a friend about how hard it is to feel like cooking something really nice for yourself when you're single (or your partner is gone on a trip, like mine was recently).

It's hard to remember that I'm allowed to just stop and play around with soap and moisturizer and nail polish. I actually can put on makeup for no reason other than I feel like it. If I want to take myself out for a nice meal all alone, I can. I shouldn't worry what people at the restaurant think about me. I can take long baths just for myself.

Have you ever heard of HALT? It's hungry, angry, lonely, tired. If you feel any of those, stop and take care of yourself. It's hard to remember sometimes.

One day I felt bad and was beating myself up. My mom said, "Be nice to my daughter." It really hit me that I'm not "just me," I'm someone special to people. I'm my parents' daughter and my sisters' sister and my friends' friend and my partner's partner. That seems like something people should remember, but it's easy to forget. I don't want my friends to beat themselves up. I want them to take care of themselves. They feel the same for me. Sometimes I can't take care of myself for me but I can do it for them.

I can speculate why this is the case. It ranges from I'm a natural caretaker of others to I'm a woman and society has historically given us very little permission to do things for ourselves. It's strange to realize that at some point I was conditioned that I'm not worth it because I'm me, I'm only worth it because I'm something to someone else.

When I was younger, I was really proud of myself for taking like 5 minutes in the morning to get ready. Do makeup or special style my hair? Why? I'm not vain or shallow like so many girls in my middle and high schools. My looks don't matter. People need to like me for who I am, not what I look like. This, of course, had direct connections to the fact that I've been overweight (and ruthlessly teased) for a good chunk of my life.

Now that I'm past the years of middle and high school (and sorority life), I've finally come to realize several things.
One is that the person who was meanest to me and teased me most was me. Sure people said stuff sometimes, but I said it to myself far more than anyone else.
Two is that it's okay to spend time doing your hair or makeup or whatever you want, and it doesn't automatically mean you're vain. It means that you want to take any pride whatsoever in your appearance. You do it because you want to do it, not because society demands it or because someone else needs you to do it.
Three is that there's a good chance any negative comments made to me when I was younger was based on my personality. I'm a decent person, okay? But I was a know-it-all. I was a bit like Hermione from Harry Potter. People didn't hate her (you know, after that first Halloween), but before the troll situation in book 1, Ron and Harry thought she was pretty snobby or know-it-all. Well, that was me. It took me longer than her to stop being that way, but it eventually happened. In the meantime, I had socialization to learn. And I was always nice, but I've known a lot of people who are nice and smart and not know-it-all.

If I could talk to my younger self, I'd try to encourage me to relax, don't stress, stop trying to impress everyone, just be a bit more open. I judged people as much as they judged me.

I'd also tell myself that even though there were hard and really horrible things ahead, we all make it to the other side. And those things are what will really make me a better person, so stop worrying about that particular group of girls in high school.


Now that the hard, horrible stuff has mostly passed, it's time to learn to take care of myself. How did everyone else learn how to do it? It's not easy or intuitive.

Two tips

As I wrote about my health and beauty products experiments, I decided to share a couple tips I've found particularly helpful to me.

The most important thing to tell you is:

Ask the experts
What most people don't know is that librarians really love to help answer questions. We don't think most questions are stupid, and we don't tell you even if we think it's stupid. We want you to have the right information. We've been trained on identifying sources. We have advanced search techniques. Chances are, the librarian you're talking to is sitting there because they like the challenge of finding information.
Likewise, ask sales associates or other employees if you can't find what you want in a store. I had to ask to find green clay. I should have asked to save myself time finding glycerin. Recently I had to ask a co-op employee to help me when I wanted to taste a goji berry to check if I had an allergy (I do). By asking the employee the last time, I was just given two little berries to try and I didn't waste money or product with something I wouldn't, couldn't, or shouldn't eat.
The best lesson I learned at library school was that it's totally okay to say "I don't know". Follow it up with "let me find that answer" or "let me ask a colleague" or "let me look around and get back to you". The liberation I now have knowing "I don't know" is a completely appropriate and acceptable answer is something I can't even explain. I wish I could tell teenage me.


The other tip I can share is use Google drive or cloud storage. This is especially good if you have a smart device. I have an ipod touch and an Android phone. My phone is designed to work with Google, but I know iphones aren't. Still, here's my tip.

Create quick reference documents or spreadsheets on Google drive. When I went to get ingredients from the co-op, I ended up in a weird headspace due to my car not working. I had all the recipes I wanted to try in a document online so I didn't forget something (like guar gum).

I love this option because I can access all my drive documents on a computer or my phone. I type up shopping lists in drive on my computer, then read the list on my phone when I'm at the store. Using drive also allows me to change those lists from work, home, or the store. If I want to use it on my ipod, I just make sure I pull the document up before I leave an internet connection so it's there when I'm not online.


I know neither of these are ground-breaking pieces of information. It's just a reminder of what you probably know. There is no reason to make your life harder than it has to be.

Homemade Face Wash

On my harrowing adventure of walking to the co-op in 19° F weather I mentioned in my body wash post, I talked on the phone with my best friend. I've mentioned her apothacarian tendencies already. I told her all about the recipes I was going to try, and she told me about things she's done. She told me about the face wash she uses.

Needing to stay away from gluten like she does, she tries things I don't. While talking about face wash, she told me this anecdote.
Her partner doesn't forgo gluten and he's not particular about avoiding certain chemicals. For years, though, he used face wash with salicylic acid to help his acne. She made her minimal ingredient face wash and told him it had salicylic acid in it so he'd try it. After a couple months of using it, when he was totally convinced it worked, she revealed that it doesn't in fact have acid. He's still using the face wash she makes.

I know her partner, so I know what kind of testimonial this actually is. Since you probably don't know him or understand the weight of the story, just go with me on this. I thought if her partner uses it and likes it, I can try it too. Plus, I love the fact that it's such simple ingredients.

The vegetable glycerin is the only thing that will be a challenge to locate. I knew it must exist at my co-op, but I didn't know where. I wandered around and around and had to check all the shelves before I finally found it.

Let that be a reminder to myself: you know it's better if you just ask for help. It's as true in stores as it is in libraries. Ask experts.

Anyway, I had to get additional castile soap for this experiment. My body wash took all the peppermint castile soap I had. By the time I finished buying the ingredients for all this homemade health and beauty, I considered buying stock in castile soap. This time I got citrus orange scented soap. It's for my face, so the scent won't linger the same way my body wash will. I also chose orange because I figured it would help me wake up in the mornings. I'm already a morning person, but I think this helps a bit.

This, like the deodorant, doesn't really look fancy for photos. I took a picture anyway.

See? It's a slightly different picture than what's on the instructions page.

I have mine in a small mason jar. It's okay, but it'd work much better in a pump bottle. The travel section in the grocery store doesn't have baby pump bottles though. Maybe I'll actually buy a bottle for it. As I've mentioned, until I'm sure I'll commit to something, I don't want to go out-of-my-way-crazy for supplies. (I bet you didn't realize buying a generic pump bottle was such a commitment, huh?) For right now, I have the lid on the jar, shake it to make sure everything is mixed, and use the insert part to smear the stuff on my face. Otherwise I use my fingers to pull out a tiny bit.

This isn't particularly soapy feeling or lather-producing. And it doesn't make my skin tingle or anything other soaps can do. I'm a bit underwhelmed by the application of it, but I like the smell and I like that it feels like my face is probably cleaner. I'm giving it a chance to work on me.


As a note, I've decided I really like Dr. Bronner's for castile soap. The biggest difference I notice is that the scents don't make me sneeze. I had to use sensitive skin fragrance-free soap usually because I just sneeze all the time with typical soap. My partner's Irish Spring soap makes me sneeze every single time I use it. I haven't sneezed due to fragrance since I started using any of my homemade stuff. That's a plus in my book since I really enjoy the scents I'm using.

Homemade Mineral Makeup

I've been seeing recipes for making your own Bare Minerals-esque makeup for years now. Why didn't I ever try it? Green clay.

I'm disinclined to order a bunch online when I don't know what the results will be. If I order a giant tub of it and don't like the makeup, what do I do with all that green clay? Besides that, I don't wear makeup every day and even if I do, I don't use much.
The instructions I used mentioned finding the green clay at Whole Foods. I correctly suspected my co-op would sell green clay. It was in the bulk section, so I not only bought the clay, I bought only enough to make two or three small batches instead of enough for several years.

I'll also mention that while the green clay was organic, the rest wasn't. I already had cocoa powder and cornstarch. I'm not inclined to go buy giant amounts of organic (or any extra) if I already have the supplies. When I'm not sure how I'll feel about something, I exercise caution.

I mixed up the powder like the instructions suggested. The biggest challenge I had was figuring out the cocoa. "A bit" isn't great measurements, especially when I'm making so little. Also, I'm pale. I sometimes joke that in northern Idaho we come in a few natural shades of pale, paler, palest and I'm glow-in-the-dark. I'm not the palest person I know, but I'm good at helping my friends feel like they have color.

I wish I remembered how much I made up so I could help others judge their cocoa needs. It was probably like 6 oz. To this mixture for 6 oz, I added maybe two literal pinches of cocoa. It's just about exactly what I needed. Judging your cocoa needs isn't easy when your makeup starts out green.

This is what mine looks like. First off, the color is a bit wrong, but it's fairly close. My green clay wasn't overtly green to start with. Secondly, yes, that's an 8 oz jam jar I've cleaned up and am storing it in. Thirdly, yes indeed, this stuff is basically nothing but get-everywhere-I'm-free! powder. I've taken to washing my face, applying lotion, waiting a minute or two, and then applying the powder. I make it stick to my lotion, which is really weirdly thick.

I've applied it so it looks green, but it was also very thick. When I work it in so you can't see the powder easily, it's totally fine.

I'm enjoying this makeup and its lightness, but I'm not sure about future batches. I'll probably make a bit more, but I'm fairly hesitant to say this is it forever and ever. I'll let you know.

Homemade Body Wash

Something else I made over my Christmas break was body wash. I'd thought about making some for a while, but this, more than any other recipe, involved a few too many ingredients I didn't have. What were those ingredients? Citric acid, liquid castile soap, and guar gum. Luckily, my co-op stocks all those ingredients.

The citric acid was the one thing I wasn't sure I'd be able to find. Both it and the guar gum were in the bulk section, though. I have a bit of citric acid left, but I'll probably just order more from Amazon since it'll be a slightly better deal than $9.55 a pound. 

I knew I could find castile soap, but I didn't realize the variety of scents I could find. In case you didn't know, Dr. Bronner's comes in quite the range of scents. I probably had 8 to choose from. I stood looking at scents for a long time before I found the mild unscented version. At the last minute, though, I remembered one of the best body washes I've ever used was peppermint scented. Sure enough, there's a peppermint Dr. Bronner's. I was close to choosing the citrus blend, but my partner has a few peculiar opinions about when to use citrus. We share a bathroom, so I thought I'd go with the scent he'd tolerate more. The benefit of choosing a scented soap is that I didn't have to worry about adding the essential oils at the end.

I infused with oats and dried rosemary even if the original recipe called for fresh. Any added oil benefits may have been missed, but since I let it infuse for a good long time, I feel like I probably got a good bit of benefits anyway. 

The thing I didn't understand was the thickening process. Since step 3 of the original recipe talks about the guar gum thickening so quickly, I was fairly worried when mine just wouldn't thicken as much as I wanted. It felt more like soap I should use in a foaming soap pump because it was so thin. After the body wash sat around for an hour or two, it thickened right up. I'm actually a bit startled how much it thickened. It's now almost on par with lotion instead of soap.

My finished product is quite nice. It doesn't foam up very much at all, but I still feel like it does a great job. That peppermint is an amazing smell in the shower. It helps open up my sinuses and feels luxurious.

As a fun side story, the day I decided to make everything, it was probably 19° F (-7° C). I'd hadn't started or moved my car for 11 days, which normally isn't an issue. I'd forgotten that northern Idaho in the winter can cause real car problems. When I went out to the car, it wouldn't turn on. I heard a sort of clicking, like something was trying to work. This didn't discourage me, though. Not only was I totally stir crazy and needing to be productive, I'd told my partner I'd drop off our rent checks at our rental company. The office is only a few blocks from our place, but with it being so cold and icy, walking to drop off the checks was a bit of an adventure. I didn't stop at that, though. I then walked approximately a mile to the co-op and back home again. It's important to note that I wasn't wearing my Yak-Trax, which made it a dangerous and probably foolish walk.

The next day was a weekend, so my partner and I put some Heet into my gas tank and jumped the car. It's been working fine ever since.

Homemade Deodorant

I had almost the complete last two weeks of December off this past holiday season. Generally I had a decent time away from work, but I know it was a bit too long of a break because the final day, I decided to do all the things.

I accidentally spent too much time on Pinterest last week and came up with a fairly extensive list of things to attempt.

As a quick bit of backstory, my best friend is started working as an independent, amateur apothecarian in the last couple years. She's made me several teas, facial wipes, headache remedies, bath salts, facial cleansers, and body butters (among other things). Most of what she's made for me has been to either lift my mood or help manage my stress levels. She's always encouraging me to try new things or telling me about what she's making (a surprising number of health and beauty products contain gluten, which is bad if you have Celiac disease).

Anyway, the last day of break I finally decided to try making some of the things on my list since they mostly didn't require complex ingredients. I had to go to my local co-op for a few of the items, but most I already had sitting around my home.

The first thing I made was homemade deodorant. It consisted of coconut oil, arrowroot powder, cornstarch, baking soda, and essential oil. It was really simple and quick to make. It's really not glamorous enough for a picture, but I'm including one anyway.

The biggest difference between how mine turned out and the recipe I used is that I used lemon and eucalyptus oils instead of bergamot. I don't have bergamot oil, but the oils I went with helped cover any linger scents from the other ingredients.

So far, I'm really enjoying it. I have it on good authority I don't smell bad.

I've made several more things, which I'll share a bit later.

Literary Video Series

Disclaimer: my undergrad degree was in English. I read (or "read," depending on your interpretation) a lot of literature.


Back in 2012, Hank Green and Bernie Sue reinterpreted Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. The video (transmedia) project was called The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

Here's a list of other similar projects I've enjoyed.


Welcome to Sanditon: based on Jane Austen's unfinished work Sanditon. It's cute enough, especially if you like Gigi Darcy from LBD

Emma Approved: based on Jane Austen's Emma. I dislike this one most of all that I'll recommend here. I felt like the acting was way over the top. Watching as it came out, there were too many hiatuses to keep me enthralled. And I didn't really care about any of the transmedia stuff (blogs, twitter, etc). I know a lot of people liked it, so give it a go.

Frankenstein, MD: You guessed it, based on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It's a fun adaptation as told by a young (about to graduate) doctor way too ambitious for her own good. There's an almost distracting amount of shoulder grabbing, though.

The March Family Letters: interpreted from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. It's just started at the end of 2014, so this is one to hop on if you want to go for a ride from beginning to end instead of binge watching.

A Tell Tale Vlog: based on Edgar Allen Poe stories. It's short but funny. The channel it's on has been doing some interesting things, so I can recommend watching any of their playlists.

Green Gables Fables: the actress who plays Anne Shirley is great at being over-the-top like the title character from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery. It's still an active project as of my writing this. The acting is a bit stilted depending on the actor, but overall it's worth your time for sure.

Classic Alice: a college student decides to break out of her safe life and try living according to classic literature she's (usually) never read. I've enjoyed this one nearly as much as LBD. It was just funded for another season, which is great news for people who love it.

The Autobiography of Jane Eyre: another finished project. Based on Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, this video series is pretty good. The first couple episodes gave me a headache due to the way they were filmed, but it got better as it went. I was a bit disappointed in the ending as it didn't feel the same as the book's ending. Still, it's really good.

The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy: based on J.M. Barry's Peter Pan, this series is coming back for another season. That's great news since the first part didn't even come close to finishing the story. It's pretty wacky, and I don't watch much of the extra videos, but I've really been enjoying the story so far.

Jules and Monty: based on Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare, this is a great interpretation. It still ends as a tragedy, but it's a bit better than the play ended.

Nick Carraway: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is loved and has been reinterpreted a few times recently. I have to admit, I haven't watched much of this series. I will, eventually, but the acting was too hard for me to sit through when I first discovered it. Plus, I don't love Gatsby the way so many people do.

Kate the Cursed: the second best version of Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare I've seen. (The first best is 10 Things I Hate About You.) No dancing or singing involved (I think).

From Mansfield With Love: the story of Frankie Price (Fanny didn't hold up to the test of time apparently), from Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. It's only a few episodes in, so it's another great one to start.



To be perfectly clear, there are many more of these kind of projects out there. I haven't enjoyed them as much. Generally the acting is too distracting. I encourage other people to try them, though.

Also, this is just the list I can think of right now without going on a more in-depth search of my viewing history. If you learn of any series I shouldn't miss, let me know!

Less than Smooth(ie) Going Down

For Christmas, my partner's parents gave me a Magic Bullet Nutribullet. Ever since, we've been trying to determine how best to use it.

We have successfully figured out pretty much any recipe for sweet drinks, especially if they use ice cream. It's pretty hard to mess those up. We're having a harder time figuring out how to make the healthy drinks.

We have a bunch of ingredients, but my partner's preferred green is kale. And our grocery store only sells curly kale. I look forward to months from now when I can go find flat-leaf kale. Curly kale chips are pretty gross.

Here's a picture of a smoothie we tried:

Inside: kale, cucumber, fresh ginger, apple, green pepper, frozen mango, and coconut water.
Conclusion: too much ginger!

The ginger overwhelmed the flavor of anything else. I enjoy ginger, but I'm not a fan of it THIS much.

We've had good success with two kale smoothies.

The first one, a banana and kale smoothie, was pretty good. It had a stronger flavor of cinnamon than I'd prefer. I may try it again with 1/8 tsp of cinnamon instead of 1/4.

The second one we made up. I looked for recipes on the internet. I didn't find anything I wanted (primarily because I dismissed recipes using ingredients I'd forgotten we had). After looking around and comparing recipes, I used about half kale, and half frozen pineapple and mango and half a banana. We used coconut water in it, but as we had so much frozen fruit, I had to put in regular water after initial blending.

That one was good, but had a weirdly fishy flavor. Partner thinks it was from the pineapple. It's possible. Maybe I should have thrown in some almonds or something.


I'll keep trying with different recipes. The book that came with the device is unhelpful because it says use 50% greens (and presents a list), 50% fruit (and presents a list), and maybe a boost (and presents a list). Kale is rough to work with because it needs citrus to balance it out. The book doesn't say that though. We also find kale a bit easier to use than spinach. Despite what the book says, spinach was a harder-to-hide flavor than we've found kale to be.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle ... Nails

The winter is really rough on my hands and nails. For about 3 months a year, my nails break regularly (usually at the quick), I have more hangnails than any other time a year, and my hands are quite dry. Compared to my sibling, my hands aren't terrible. Compared to the rest of the year, the cracking and dryness is brutal.

I've been wanting a new nail polish for a little while. Nail polish seems to help my nails last a bit longer, though it chips off in a couple days due to my job. I thought I wanted a nice brown with reddish-maroon tint, but I couldn't find it anywhere. My partner and I went down to the drugstore one night when my extroversion was desperate to be around people and I wanted a walk.

I found a green gel nail polish for $1.99. My partner saw it and suggested I do a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles look.

The light was pretty rough when I took this picture, but that's about what my nails look like.

I painted my nails in kind of descending leadership authority as I saw it when I was three: Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo. The thumb is a dark maroon kind of for Splinter.

For those interested, I used a base of Sally Hanson Nail Nutrition Green Tea + Bamboo Nail Strengthener, the gel nail polish, the tips all have random assortments of nail polish, and I used a top coat of a clear polish. We're several days in now and it's still holding up. 

Maybe my nails will be green all season.

Facials from Kitchen Stuff

Last night as my partner and I were home alone instead of celebrating at a party, I found some facial recipes on Pinterest. To be fair, I found one pin that had already collected 10 recipes. I decided to try two of the recipes.

If the sensitive skin scale is 0 = sensitive as all get-out, don't go outside without layers of protection and 10 = come at me with anything, cement won't phase my skin, I'm probably a 2.5 or 3. To be fair, this scale I just made up smooshes a wide range into not enough numbers.

As a disclaimer, I used honey which had crystallized. I microwaved it first, but in order to dissolve all the crystals, I had to heat it up so it was fairly thin when I measured it.

Coffee & Cocoa facial
This recipe called for coffee, unsweetened cocoa powder, honey, and some kind of dairy product or possibly oil. I looked at the recipe, looked at what I had, and tossed it together using coconut oil instead of a dairy and ground white coffee instead of standard coffee. I even convinced my partner to join me in the facial.

Here we are, waiting for the mask to dry. It never did. I suspect it's because our body temperature kept the honey and coconut oil too warm to ever fully set. We probably left it on for an hour or more before I couldn't handle it on my face any longer.

I don't know if it was because of the oil or the white coffee or because it was on too long or never fully set, but this mask left my face feeling dry and overly exfoliated. Also, the oil made it so you really didn't want to risk it getting in your mouth. The white coffee also made me resistant to getting it in my mouth, plus it didn't smell as great as regular coffee would have.

Conclusion: I won't be using it again.


Cinnamon-Nutmeg-Honey facial
The second mask smelled better. I have to say that equal parts cinnamon and nutmeg left this mask smelling slightly off what I expected. Nutmeg is fairly strong. I also didn't take a picture of this on my face.

This one was easier to put on, but with only honey holding it all together, it dripped pretty bad. I didn't make it 30 minutes because it itched and dripped so bad I thought I'd got nutty. Also, this one got on the collar of the sweatshirt I was wearing. It just wants to move. With gravity. Toward the floor.

After I was done with this, I felt like it had restored my face a bit from the previous mask. Either my face wasn't going to feel any exfoliation after the first or it really wasn't as bad. That coffee was pretty rough. The spice granules, in comparison, were quite lovely.

Conclusion: I'll probably try it again, but I'll wait for the honey to cool down quite a bit before I put it on my face.

After all that, I put lotion on my face. My partner did too. My face feels pretty nice now.


Clean up was kind of special. I didn't clean the excess mask mixture out of their glasses for nearly 2 hours. By the time I did it, the hot water was enough to dilute and send the cinnamon mask down the drain. The coffee-cocoa mask had really solidified the way coconut oil will if it gets cool. I microwaved it for 15 seconds and that plus hot water got it all down the drain. I ran the disposal and the hot water for a bit of extra time, just because I wanted to be sure I wasn't going to clog the drain.


As an extra note, the first facial mask was hard to clean up around my nose stud. The coffee really got around and under the head of the jewel. The second mask I don't remember having problems with at all. I'm fairly certain I cleaned it all up, but I didn't remove the stud all the way for fear of something getting inside the piercing. One day I'll discuss the minor trauma I faced with the piercing when I first got it. It's made me cautious.

Thoughts From a Sort-of Librarian

Even though I earned my masters in library and information science back in 2010, I have a hard time thinking of myself as a librarian.

I work at a state university, but I'm a library assistant. At my work, there is a substantial difference between librarian and library assistant. Primarily it has to do with tenure and faculty vs. staff, but it's also the kinds of tasks you perform. I handle the mail, marking, mending, newspapers, and current periodicals at work. That probably doesn't mean much to you and it shouldn't. What you should take from it is that I'm about as far away from librarian work as I can get an still be employed at a library.

Still, I have my degree, I took the courses, and I definitely act like a librarian when not on the clock. I provide reading suggestions and resource recommendations to pretty much anyone who asks. I research whatever people want info on (including my partner's random queries like "Is this article about the Smithsonian destroying giant bones real?" or "I saw something about a dead professor's estate donating alien artifacts to a museum. Can you find out more about that?" I feel fairly confident stating what he saw were both bogus stories).

Mostly I acquire information. One of my grad instructors told us librarians should acquire random information and squirrel it away. It's a trait of my profession and many people who work in libraries. One year as part of our strategic planning, we all took the StrengthsFinder 2.0 test. A huge majority of people working at the library were "input," which basically means we collect things. In a library, that tends to be knowledge.

Growing up, I learned a lot of random information. I felt a lot like there were things I wasn't allowed to learn, though. I decided I wasn't in the right crowd or social group to know certain things. The best new year resolution I ever made was the year I decided I wasn't going to put up with that. If I wanted to learn about something, I would. No one could tell me I couldn't learn how to fishtail braid. Ever since that year, I've acquired information at a surprising rate. If you ever want a resolution fairly easy to stick to, use mine. Learn whatever you want and don't let some imaginary someone stop you.

Here's some of what I've learned or done.