This morning, I woke up to a 25% off discount code for Groupon local deals in my inbox, so I started hunting around the website. I found a $20 Groupon for three HelloFresh veggie meals, meaning that with the discount the deal is only $15. That comes out to $2.50 per meal per person! Um, yes please! I ordered the deal right away and I’m looking forward to trying HelloFresh out. This dish is just one example of their veggie offerings:
1. Easter Sweets! I don’t celebrate Easter (I was raised Jewish*), but I’m a sucker for Easter treats like Cadbury Creme Eggs and Robin Eggs. This year I found two new sugary Easter goodies: Peanut Butter M&M Eggs and Goldfish Vanilla Cupcake Grahams. Peanut butter M&Ms are my favorite candy (I always buy a bag at the airport!), and somehow they taste even better in pastel speckled robin egg form.
A year or so ago, a friend told me about a website called Stitch Fix: a subscription service that assigns you a personal shopper who will select five pieces of clothing and accessories for you based on your style preferences. Because I’m admittedly not the most stylish person (when I shop I tend to buy the same types of clothing over and over again), I decided I had to try this service out—and I love it!
When you sign up at Stitch Fix, you’ll fill out a style profile by answering questions about your clothing sizes, what sort of styles you’re attracted to (preppy, bohemian, trendy, classic, etc), colors you love or hate (for example, I almost never wear pink and definitely don’t do animal prints), styles you never want to see in a fix, etc. You can even specify a price range you’re willing to spend per piece. The style profile is pretty comprehensive, and they encourage you to include a link to your Pinterest style board (here’s mine) for stylist inspiration. You can even request specific items via your Pinterest board or on the Stitch Fix website, though there’s no guarantee you’ll get them.
You can schedule a fix as often as you’d like: monthly, every other month, for an upcoming special occasion, etc. Then you get a box filled with five items picked just for you by your stylist, along with a note from your stylist and cards showing suggested outfits for each piece, like this:
Recently I’ve been interested in DIY projects and wanted to try making my own lip balm. I’m a full-fledged, card-carrying lip balm addict and always have to have something on my lips. As you know, I have a ridiculous stash of lip products; there’s at least one balm within arm’s reach in each room of the apartment, and I usually have two or three options in my purse—at minimum.
Because I’m constantly re-applying lip balm, I decided it would be a good idea to make my own so that I have control over the ingredients that go into it—especially considering I probably ingest a full tube at least once a year (ew). I did some hunting on Amazon, and I found a Portland, Oregon-based company called Grow and Make that sells a variety of DIY kits including lip balm, candles, soap, and more. I selected their Exotic Flavors Lip Balm Making Kit with Tubes which cost $24.95 on Amazon (you can also order directly from G&M’s website, but I happened to be ordering some other stuff from Amazon at the time). The kit arrived in a nicely packaged little box:
We started tasting our kombucha the weekend before last and decided to let it continue to ferment for a few more days so it’d turn a little less sweet. But it has shaped up to be a very tasty treat! This past Saturday, we bottled our kombucha to allow it to go through secondary fermentation for a few days before we leave town later this week.
First, I removed the old + newly formed SCOBY and put it into a jar along with 1.5 cups of our very own homemade kombucha. This jar went into the fridge and will serve as the starter for our next batch! You can see the jar with the SCOBY on the left in this photo:
Like last Saturday morning, I got up today and made breakfast for the two of us (this is not something I do regularly). I decided to keep it even more simple this time by making scrambled eggs and avocado toast. To make the toast, I mashed up one avocado with a fork and added some lemon juice to keep it from browning, then spread it on the toasted bread. I sprinkled the avocado with sea salt and drizzled it with Mike’s Hot Honey. So simple, so yummy!
(Sorry for the crap photo. I’m trying to figure out how to take better photos of food!)
If you can’t find Mike’s Hot Honey—which I bought at the Gowanus Whole Foods for $9.99—you can order the similar Bee’s Knees Spicy Honey online.
What’s your favorite quick + easy weekend breakfast to make at home?
1. Credo, a new online natural and organic beauty store. I first read about it on Brit + Co and I got really excited. What’s extra cool about this beautifully designed site is that they have a page of healthy swaps: safe products that they recommend in place of popular products like Clinique’s Black Honey lipstick, Cetaphil facial cleanser, and Carmex. I haven’t ordered anything from Credo just yet, but they carry a lot of brands I’m interested in trying (Vapour, Ilia, W3LL People, and Fig + Yarrow, just for starters). I will definitely order some goodies from them when I find myself in need of beauty supplies!
As you may know from some of my earlier posts, I buy a lot of beauty products. Along with a great many of those purchases come free samples. Just last night it occurred to me how rarely I actually use these samples and how many I’ve amassed over the years (I’m one of those people who doesn’t throw stuff away…but I’m not like, an actual hoarder or anything. Stop it, I’m not in denial.).
This is a little embarrassing, but here it is:
Our first ever batch of homemade kombucha has been a-brewing for a week now, so I took photos this morning in order to share its progress. The liquid is cloudier than it was when we first mixed it up:
We had a bunch of white and red onion left over from our Plated order this week, so yesterday afternoon I caramelized the remainders. I did so without really having a plan for what to do with the caramelized onions, but I figured we’d come up with something. Last night a light bulb went on: a goat cheese and caramelized onion frittata for breakfast!
So this morning I braved the rain and went to Whole Foods for ingredients, then came home and started cooking. I looked online for basic frittata how-to’s, because it’s been awhile since I’ve made one, but I didn’t follow any particular recipe. And the frittata turned out great, if I do say so myself. 🙂
Photo evidence:
