Things I Love: Kiehls

For Christmas in 2009, my brother's then-girlfriend, now-wife sent me a Christmas gift. It's not odd for us to exchange gifts with family members, but it was a nice surprise to see a gift from D's girlfriend. She sent me a Kiehl's Gift Set. Inside was a bottle of Lip Balm, Creme de Corps Lotion and Creme de Corps Body Polish. She's a New Yorker and knew all about this fancy stuff that I had never heard of. Hello, I shop for my personal products at CVS, I've never been into a specialty store before in my life unless it's the Clinique counter at my local Macy's for a free make-over.  Um, yeah.

 After mentioning to my Mom how much I loved the products, she bought me another gift set - the Creme de Corps Collection Set for Christmas this year! This one came with the same items I had received the year before, as well as a couple of samples. My favorite sample was the Ultra Facial Cream. It feel silky between your fingers and is like a conditioner for your face. I was in love.

I've never been a big "product" girl, I hardly ever wear make-up or wash my face with proper cleanser. I'm not a big fan of smelly products for the body, which is probably why I really liked these. None of the products I have used from them have a scent to them so you're left with just smooth, clean, soft skin.  

Earlier this month, when Mom and I were in New York, we stopped by the Kiehl's store at 154 Columbus Ave. The sales people there were super helpful and friendly. We tried a bunch of products and of course I ended up walking out $60 lighter.  

I had been looking for a good everyday face lotion, since I am trying to be nicer to my face now that I'm almost in my mid-30's.  I also wanted to get a big tub of the Ultra Facial Cream since I had only used the sample sizes. Our sales person sent us away with a big bag full of samples, as well. That's the best thing about buying from a company like this, they offer you samples of whatever you would like to try. I got a couple of samples of the nighttime repair cream for Mom, a sample of the face lotion for Mom so she would have a travel sized one and I got some of this Creamy Eye Treatment. I don't know what it does or how it works but OH MY it felt good on my face! If the proper term for something soft and supple on your face was buttery, that's how I would describe it. Fantastic. I think that will have to be my next Kiehl's purchase. After I recover from spending $60 on a jar of lotion and tube of face wash....

Funny how a gift can turn into a financial investment for your body. :) 

Dinner Tonight: Tilapia Tacos with Mango Salsa

I decided to make these fish tacos after Hops came home one night raving about the ones he had at lunch during one of his work meetings. I had enjoyed fish tacos in California and knew I could never recreate those at home, not to mention the white sauce in them would ruin us for an entire day! I started thinking about what I would like with our Tilapia we had in the freezer and my friend Renee's mango salsa popped into my head. It is her go-to snack to bring to game nights/parties and I thought it would be the perfect addition to our fish tacos.

I use frozen Tilapia filets that I get from (surprise) BJ's in the (surprise) huge bag. The filets are pretty simple to cook, once defrosted. Season them with some salt and pepper, place them in a baking dish and bake them for 20-25 minutes at 400.

For the salsa, peel and core one mango and slice it into chunks. I sliced mine into big chunks this time because I don't have a mango peeler and slicing a mango without one is a huge pain! It was easier after finally getting all of the meat out of the mango, to just rough chop and toss it in the bowl.  Add the mango, some chopped cilantro, onion and lime juice, olive oil and salt and pepper to the bowl. 

Place half of a Tilapia filet into each tortilla and add 1/4 of the salsa mango. 

Recipe

Tilapia Tacos with Mango Salsa

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 30 minutes

2 Tilapia Filets

Salt and Pepper

1 Mango

2 Tb Fresh Cilantro

2 Tb Onion

1 Lime

Olive Oil

4 6" Whole Wheat Tortillas

Preheat the oven to 400. Season the filets with the salt and pepper. Bake filets at 400 for 20-25 minutes.

Peel and core the mango and slice it into chunks. Add mango to mixing bowl. Chop the cilantro and onion and add to bowl. Cut the lime in half and squeeze each half into the bowl.  Add one teaspoon of olive oil. Add salt and pepper, to taste. Mix together gently.

Warm tortillas in the microwave for 20 seconds. 

Break the filets into strips. Put half of each filet onto the tortillas. Add salsa to tortillas. Serve hot.

Makes 2 servings.

Source of the Smoke Smell, Found

When we got home from work last night, we went up to the bedroom to do a little research before we plugged everything back in again. We pulled all of the plugs out from the walls, checking for burn marks, problems, etc. We found the culprit next to the bed. Dan's Sprint cell phone charger had shorted out and caught the carpet on fire. So, that is what that smells like....

I've sent an email to Sprint letting them know about the problem with this particular model of charger. In case you use a Sprint phone, the charger info is:

Sprint All-In-One-Charger
(CTC-MCUUSB-MN) Rev.8


Some after shots:

The burn mark is not huge (and it was dark in the bedroom) but it's still there!!!

A little creepy seeing this afterwards...it MELTED!

In Case of Emergency

"J, wake up. I smell smoke"

Those are the words I woke up to at 3am. I mumbled, "Huh?" coming out of my deep sleep stupor and received the same words back at me again. I promptly yelled, "Shit!" and tried to get out of bed. Getting out of bed in a panic consists of me getting tangled up with the sheets, blankets and two dogs.  I finally was able to wrestle myself out of bed and we looked at each other to try and figure out what we were going to do.

First, we got two flashlights because we didn't want to turn on any lights in case it was an electrical fire in the walls somewhere.  We looked all around upstairs and the smell was no where to be found other than in our bedroom.  I went downstairs and (oops) found I had left the heat on all night.  That wasn't the culprit, though.  Since it didn't smell downstairs, we figured it was isolated to somewhere upstairs.  As I was investigating the main floor, I heard the screech of the ladder coming out in the laundry room. I went back upstairs and met Hops as he was putting up the ladder in the laundry room to get to the scuttle hole. I offered to go up since that's normally my job anyways. I got up there with the flashlight and didn't find any problems, it also did not smell up there.

We finally decided the problem had to be coming from the bedroom. I think the smell came from one of the electronic devices in our bedroom. Hops and I have differing views on how many electronic devices should be in the bedroom. If it were up to me, our phones would be allowed in there and that's it. Since it's not all about me, we have a TV, TiVo, Wii, DVD player, laptop and our phones in there. We unplugged everything from the walls and the surge protectors and I got the fire extinguisher from under the sink and put it on my bedside table. Then we went back to bed with the two dogs who had continued to snooze happily with no worries in their minds.

While Hops played on his phone, I lay there in the dark and silence, thinking of what I would do if there ever was a fire in the house. What would I grab that would be a must-have if we ever lost our home?  This is the list I came up with. I'm wondering if there is more I should be thinking of. To me, this is the important stuff, in order.

• Husband
• Dogs
• Purse/Wallets
• Scrapbook of our life together so far
• Passports/Marriage Certificate (these are all stored together)
• Underwear

I have to imagine there are things that I'm missing, though. God forbid we ever have a house fire, what else would we want to make sure we grabbed if we had to get out fast?

Get Croppin' Weekend

Last week, a bunch of my scrapbooking friends got together at the Dulles Convention Center for a Get Croppin' Event.  With this particular group of friends, we don't get to see one another all that often so when we do, we soak up every minute, and have a blast.  My sole purpose of this 2 1/2 day crop was to get some cards made so we actually have them when I'm told there's a birthday coming up....tomorrow.

A couple of pictures from the crop

Below are a few of the cards I made that weekend.  I'm completely devoted to Close To My Heart papers, inks, embellishments and stamps and probably will continue to be well after I am no longer a consultant.  I used the Jingle and Twitterpated Workshop Guides to make these cards.  The first four were made with paper from the Everyday Celebration Kit.  The next three were made with Topstitch paper pack and for the last one, I used Back Country.

I wish we had more weekends dedicated solely to friends, crafts and...food. :)

A New Distraction

On Thursday, the UPS man brought this to my office:

I might have jumped up in the air and yelled Yippee!! right in front of the UPS man.  I then proceeded to yank the box off of my co-workers desk (which was under a Staples box). She grabbed the Staples box before it fell to the ground and glared at me skipping away happily with my box saying "Thank You!!!" to the UPS man over my shoulder. I wonder how many times a day a UPS man gets thanked for things.  Probably pretty few and that's a shame.

Back to my story, I ordered the refurbished basic camera and kit lens from Adorama on Tuesday.  Considering shipping was free and it got here in two days, Adorama already has my heart! My goal is to get used to the camera, learn as many of the settings and features on my own as I can and then possibly take a class focusing on words that I know are important like aperture and ISO and shutter speed.

For now, I'll bug my husband and my dogs by taking hundreds and hundreds of photos of them.  Last night alone I took 150 pictures.  I will admit to deleting approximately 140 of those photos, though.  I have a problem that I ran into yesterday that I plan on working on tonight.  I was in the back yard taking pictures of Thumper, running around the yard.  Every single picture I took had the woods in focus and the dog a funny blur.  Ooops.  Tonight, we figure out why I was focused on the wrong thing.

Remember this post from earlier yesterday? The food pictures in that post were taken with the new camera.  Much better seeing my messy pantry that seems to always have the door hanging open in my pictures!  I love that it blurred out the background to focus on the important thing - food!

Here are a few decent shots I ended up with of Thumper. Clover was too busy looking for "biscuits" in the backyard to let me get a good shot of her (jerkdog).  Remember, this is my first SLR camera. At this point, I'm impressed the camera allowed me to take good, crisp photos!

It's supposed to rain all weekend long but I'm hoping it clears up for at least a couple of hours so I can go out and practice more!!

Clumpy Granola

I've been testing out various types of granola, hoping to find one that clumps just right. We're both big fans of clumpy granola and well, I have been pretty bad at creating it at home.  The day I started searching for a good clumpy granola recipe online, this popped up on my Google Reader from TheKitchn blog.  Yes, please!  I had just made a pretty big batch of not clumpy granola on Sunday, so I had to wait until that was mostly gone to try this one out.  Today is Thursday. That "pretty big batch" went really, really fast.  I have no self control. It may not have been clumpy but it was G.O.O.D.

I made adjustments to the original recipe and added my own photos

Clumpy Granola
adapted from The Traveler's Lunchbox
serves 6-8

1 lb rolled oats
3 cups coarsely chopped raw nuts and/or seeds (I used 2 Cups chopped almonds, 1/2 Cup shredded coconut, 1/4 Cup Sunflower Seeds, 1/4 Cup Flax Seeds)
1 heaping teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup, packed dark brown sugar
1/4 cup unsalted butter (I used Smart Balance Light Buttery Spread to make it dairy-free)
1/4 cup honey
1/3 cup water
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Dried Fruit (I used about 1 Cup of chopped dried cranberries)

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. In a food processor, coffee grinder or blender, grind half the oats to a fine powder (you are making the oat flour called for in the recipe). In a large bowl, combine the whole oats, ground oats, nuts and spices. 

In a microwave-safe bowl (or in a saucepan over medium heat), combine the brown sugar, butter, honey and water and heat just until the butter has melted and the mixture is bubbly. Stir the mixture together until smooth, then stir in the salt and vanilla. Pour this mixture over the oats and nuts, stirring well to coat. It should be uniformly moist - stir in another tablespoon or two of water if it isn't. Let stand for about ten minutes.

Spread the mixture out on a large baking sheet lined with parchment paper or sprayed liberally with PAM.  Move the mixture around with your hands, leaving some spaces between the granola to allow the heat to circulate.  Slide into the middle of the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the top is golden brown.

Remove from the oven and stir, gently breaking up the mixture into small-to-medium sized clumps.  Return to the oven and bake for 45 minutes.  Cool completely, then stir in any dried fruit you want to use.  I ended up with a lot of big clumps that I saved for treats. The rest got tossed with the dried cranberries.

Store in a covered container at room temperature. 

Dinner Tonight - Veggie Burger Pockets

It has been in the 80's in our part of the world the past couple of days.  Perfect weather for burgers on the grill and enjoying dinner outside on the patio.  Warmer temperatures make me think of summer veggies!  I bought some red peppers and zucchini on that last trip to BJ's I talked about in my other post about dinner.  This meal was inspired by summertime and living easy.

Veggie Burger Pockets

Yep, you're reading that right, we had BEER with our dinner tonight.  It added to our calorie count but didn't send us skyrocketing over the limit.  We do normally stick with light beers, sometimes we'll add a Yeungling or Guiness into the mix, though.  That's when all calorie counting goes out the window...

Moving on.

I chopped the red peppers and zucchini and sliced up some of the onion, threw it all in a pan sprayed with Pam and a teaspoon of garlic.  I added salt, pepper and Italian seasoning for flavor.  

After the veggies were browning and getting soft, I added a handful (note: I have big hands) of baby spinach to the pan.  Since I couldn't decide if I wanted to have salad or sauteed veggies for dinner, I decided to do both.  Sauteed Veggie Salad!  

I cheated tonight.  I warmed up the veggie burgers in the microwave (we used Morningstar).  I also warmed the pitas in the microwave for 15 seconds until they were soft enough to open without cracking.  Once the veggies were ready, I cut a pita in half, cut the veggie burger in half and stuff the two halves of veggie burger in a pocket, then I took forkfuls of veggies and shoved those in the pocket, as well.  Leftover veggies were piled on the plate, falling out of the pita to make it look like the pita exploded.  Fun visuals!

After seeing the calorie count on the dressing behind my plate, I didn't end up using it.

I wasn't sure if this would be moist enough to eat without a sauce but I couldn't come up with something that would work with it, so I left mine plain and Dan added Rooster Sauce to his.  Have you tried this stuff?  It's fantastic.  I first had it on sushi and it certainly does add a kick to that!  I can't handle a lot of it, even if it's just a drop on a sushi roll.  My husband, on the other hand, could eat it by the spoonful.  

Veggie Burger Pockets Recipe:

1 Zucchini

1 Red Bell Pepper

1/4 Onion

1 Cup Baby Spinach

1/2 Teaspoon Chopped Garlic

Salt

Pepper

Italian Seasoning

2 Veggie Burgers

1 Whole Wheat Pita

Chop the zucchini and pepper into bite-sized pieces.  

Slice the onion to 1/4" thickness. 

Spray your non-stick pan with Pam and add garlic.  Heat for one minute.

Add zucchini, pepper and onion. 

Add a pinch of salt, pepper and italian seasoning.  Saute until bite-tender.

Add Spinach and shake the pan or use tongs to mix spinach into mixture until wilted.

Heat Veggie Burgers on High for 2 minutes in the microwave.  Remove.

Heat pita on High for 30 seconds in microwave.  Slice pita in half to make two pockets.

Slice Burgers in half and stuff into pita pockets (one whole burger goes into one pocket).  

Spoon 1/4 veggie mixture into each pocket, spoon 1/4 veggie mixture onto each plate.

Top with low calorie dressing or Rooster sauce.  I also thought if we had had avocado in house, I could have sliced that up and placed a few slices on the meal.  

Dinner Tonight - Salmon and Sweet Potatoes

**3/27 Update: I re-made this meal tonight and pre-heated the Griddler on High.  I turned it to Medium to cook the salmon and it came out perfectly!

Tuesday night.  We almost allllmost went out to eat.  We talked about where we could go.  I suggested Chipotle ... too far.  He suggested Zaxby's ... blech!  He pushed Zaxby's for a good minute or two and all I could think was fried chicken and couldn't handle it.  We thought about Buffalo Wild Wings ... until I said we can't have fries.  The idea of fries sparked Tuesday's meal.

Grilled Salmon, Edamame and Sweet Potato Fries

I bought a huge piece of salmon from BJ's on Monday, cut it up into 4oz pieces and wrapped each piece in saran wrap.  I placed the salmon pieces into a zip lock freezer bag for future use.  I find buying the big hunk of fish is a lot more inexpensive than buying individual pieces whether they're frozen in a bag or at the fish counter.

On Tuesday night, I pulled out two hunks of salmon and put them in the microwave to defrost.  Yes, I use my microwave to defrost everything.  Don't judge.

I put the salmon in a low bowl and added our asian marinade to it.  The marinade for the salmon wasn't the best I've ever made.  I think mostly because I didn't let it marinade long enough.  I only let it sit in the fridge for 1/2 hour until our stomachs couldn't wait any longer for me to put it on the grill.

I pre-heated our Griddler for this job.  Two salmon pieces is not big enough to give us an excuse to turn on the big fatty gas grill outside.  I'd like to thank my co-worker Jason for this lovely wedding gift.  We bought it to make panini's on.  We have since used it many, many times for sandwiches, fish, burgers and pancakes!

Precious....my precious....

I flipped open the top of the Griddler, so it was flat on both sides, preheated to 350 on High and sprayed the top of the griddle with PAM.  I lowered the heat down to Low and put the salmon on the grill.  It was taking FOREVER for the salmon to cook, so I moved the heat up to Medium and they started sizzling a bit more.  I flipped them twice because they just didn't seem to be cooking fast enough.  In the future, I would probably cook them at medium the whole time.

While the salmon was cooking, I baked the Sweet Potato fries, we use the Alexia brand because you can get the gigantor bag of them at BJ's for a really good price. They're sweet and delicious.  We haven't tried the spicy version yet because we're big fans of these.  I have to say, if you don't do sweet potatoes, at least try these fries.  I won't eat a sweet potato, but I'll scarf down a big helping of these bad boys.

The fries were done before the salmon and they take a about 15 minutes.  I put the edamame in another low bowl and warmed those in the microwave for 2 minutes on defrost and then 2 minutes on regular heat.  The bag we had says 2 minutes on defrost but they always come out cold when I do that, so this 2 and 2 method seems to work well without making them soggy.

Our go-to Edamame comes from Trader Joe's.

Salmon Marinade:

1 Tablespoon Soy Sauce

1 Teaspoon Olive Oil

1 Teaspoon Sesame Oil

1 Tablespoon Brown Sugar

1/2 Teaspoon Garlic

1 Tablespoon Honey

Marinate Salmon for at least 30 minutes, best at an hour or longer, though.

Grill Salmon for 12-18 minutes, flipping once.

Place Edamame in a shallow bowl and microwave on defrost for 2 minutes.  Stir and microwave on High for 2 more minutes.

Bake Sweet Potato Fries in 400 degree oven for 15 minutes or until crispy on the outside.

Someday I'll actually remember to take pictures of our meals...

Does Anyone Have a Sense of Direction They Could Lend Me?

I didn't think so.  It would have come in handy this past week.  Sense of direction? I have none. If you told me you were going to drop me in the middle of Manhattan and I was going to have to find a subway stop to get to my destination in the next 30 minutes, I would have a serious melt-down. Thankfully, I have a mother and husband who both have an acute sense of direction.  We spent this past Tuesday tooling around New York before I had to head into the station where I was working for the week.  We walked over to a delicious breakfast spot and had our bagels with lox spread and crunchy-topped corn muffins.  Mmmm.  

I am a bad blogger/scrapbooker.  I took absolutely no pictures during our trip in New York.  I don't know what happened but every time we went out, I would root around for my camera and find it no where.  I finally found it. It was in my suitcase. Great place for it, I know.

After breakfast, we searched  for the proper subway to take us downtown to City Hall.  We were on our way to tourist central - the site of the Trade Centers and St Paul's Chapel.  Have you heard about this chapel?  Amazing story.  Built in 1766, SEVENTEEN SIXTY-SIX!!!!!!  George Washington worshiped there!! Also interesting, Washington had his men come to the chapel to have their feet washed since a majority of his troops did not have boots!

(I stole the following photos from here)

When we went through, the pews had been removed and there were some chairs set up in the middle of the room, but otherwise it seemed to be set up for tourism rather than service.  It is near to the World Trade Center disaster area and survived even though it was covered with debris after the buildings collapsed.  The chapel was used as a healing area for 9/11 recovery workers.  

Mom and I had recently read about this chapel in New York: A Novel by Edward Rutherford.  It's always fun to find the real places we read about in person and think about the events (the true ones, of course) that occurred there. Amazing.

Once we had checked out the chapel and the plans for the new World Trade Center park, we took a walk uptown.  Or so we thought.  We looked at the map (it was the worst map ever, by the way. 3/4 of the streets weren't even labeled) and we headed the way we thought we wanted to go (towards Chinatown). Nope. We ended up in Wall Street. We're special. I think Mom could have gotten us to the right place if I hadn't been saying, "Maybe we should go this way, this seems right."  Always go in the opposite direction of where I say is the right way to go.  Just remember that for the future, k?

Anyways, by the time we got downtown, we realized I had to head back up to the hotel to get ready for work.  Yes, at this point we are beyond annoyed at ourselves.  So, off we go searching for a subway stop.  I let Mom lead. We did look at the map...

...but it wasn't super easy to figure out what streets the stops were on.  Mom picked Broadway (I think) and we walked.  We passed a couple that would have taken me to the East side (not good) and finally found a line that would take me up to the West side where we were staying. How she knew it would be on that street, I have no idea. The woman has spidey-sense...unless we're looking for Chinatown. I went down, hopped a train and prayed I got on the right one.  I did...sort of.  Apparently I hopped an express train instead of the local train and had to hoof 10 blocks back to the hotel after the train went sailing past the 50th street stop where I would have liked to have gotten off...ooops.  Oh well, I made it to the hotel with time to spare to sit down and breathe for a few minutes before heading off to work.

Our hotel for the week

After I left, Mom said she walked around aimlessly for what seemed like hours (probably was) finally found a bus to hop onto and came back uptown to get ready to go see the show she was going to that night - Jersey Boys.

Phew, what a day of pretty much nothing since we mostly just walked the wrong way!  It doesn't feel like we accomplished a lot while we were in the city, but we did get to experience some NYC culture.  I'll go into those experiences later.  For now, I have to get back to getting back to normal!