Numero Quatro

I didn’t really know what to title this blog post, because this blog post is selfishly about my second, first favourite band in 2012.
I’m writing this really out of my stream of conscious with no intention for structure or plot development, but as I sit here in the warm glow of the music studio in Los Angeles, CA I can’t help but feel some type of way about the genesis of this new era, these new songs, and these people who have physically come into the ether of my life for more than a year now.
The last album and the last era was endearing and special to me in words I cannot describe. So many experiences I have enjoyed beyond the pictures of Instagram or the words of Twitter. Seeing the makings behind the scenes of a production and hanging out with touring crew members and making tour bus runs in the middle of the night is something I won’t forget. Other things I won’t forget as we close the chapter on the Youngblood era and introduce this new one is the sheer determination these gentlemen have to always work on their craft.
Instead of sitting complacent with big egos to coincide with their accolades, they strive to achieve a different sonic than their album prior. They’ve meticulously written and rewritten chord progressions, choruses, verses, bridges, hooks, so on and so forth. When I thought something was “fine” they always strived to finesse.

In a matter of 9+ hours we will have a new era, the fourth to be exact.
I’m excited and nervous for everyone to hear it, but it’ll be worth it. Cheers my lads, forever your faithful fan turned friend turned… well, we’ll see.

Indelible Gratitude,

• Kat

Cold Brew Nutella Banana Walnut Bread

When life gives you spotted brown bananas that emit fruit fly activity, life gives you banana bread.
I had the urge to make this banana bread in lieu of PMS symptoms in full rage and the deluge of chocolate cravings in full force. In the process of making this banana bread however, I wanted to tjuze it up a bit, so after a few more additions here and there, what went into my oven was a Cold Brew-Nutella-Banana-Walnut Bread (talk about the hyphenation game on fleek!).

INGREDIENTS
1 cup brown sugar
2 cups AP flour (I use King Arthur’s)
1 egg
1.5 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup cold brew coffee concentrate (I use Grady’s Cold Brew)
4 ripe bananas
12 tbsp butter (at room temperature)
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup nutella (or chocolate hazelnut spread)

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit.
2. In a medium sized bowl: mash bananas, milk, cold brew coffee, salt, vanilla and egg until banana mixture is the consistency of your desire (I like a bit of banana chunkage in mine).
3. In a separate bowl: sift together flour, baking soda, and baking powder.
4. In the largest bowl: beat together butter and sugar until well combined.
Add in banana mixture until well combined.
Add in dry ingredients + chopped walnuts until just combined. Do not over mix or your banana bread will baking into hardened condensed loaf!
5. In a 9″ x 6″ greased loaf pan, spread 1/4 o f the banana bread mixture and layer/marble in a layer of nutella.
Repeat this step until banana bread mixture and nutella reach 3/4 of the way up the loaf pans (this recipe makes 2 loaves).
6. Bake in oven for 1 hour or until your kitchen smells like chocolately-nutty-banana-coffee goodness!
7. When done baking, take out of the oven and rest for 30 minutes.
8. Slice up your little loaves of love and enjoy!

Indelible – Edible Gratitude, 
-Kat

Everyday Geek Chic

Okay guys, this isn’t really a confession of sorts for those that know me in real life, but for those that don’t I’m an aficionado of comics. Big time. I’d figure to make a post about this just in time for WonderCon 2018 coming up this week and how to celebrate through your wardrobe!

While other girls were playing with Barbies, I was that awkwardly disproportionate girl reading up on the latest comics and drawing horses to my heart’s content; I didn’t really fit in and nor do I think I ever will.

Anyways, with all these comic-based shows and movies coming to fruition (hint hint….Logan, The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Arrow, Wonder Woman, BLACK PANTHER… the list can go on and on) I figure why not show your spirit in the workplace through your wardrobe, I certainly did. Every Tuesday, I wear The Flash related shirts because that is when the new episodes premiere. My coworkers never notice, but it brings just a lightning bolt of happiness that improves my mood in regards to my workday.

I digress though, because what I’m about to bestow upon you is how to celebrate your everyday inner geek without wearing full on lycra that exposes your private bits in a “grown-up” professional manner. Here are five tips to wearing your geek wardrobe on the daily! (For those that work in an office environment). Nurses & other medical professionals, you’re on your own…

1. SHIRTS, SIMPLE AS SHIT– Wear your favourite super hero shirt and partner it with a structured piece (such as a blazer or leather jacket or denim ). I personally always go for a structured leather jacket or a blazer (see Featured Image).

2. THE SMALL THINGS ARE THE GREATEST- Wear small accessories (pins, jewelry, beanies). I’m notorious for sporting a Superman pin on Fridays or wearing Ironman socks on my feet, completely concealed from the unknowing eye. Whatever your vice, it could be a small simple reminder to yourself to feel less normal and more “superhero.”

3. IN LIVING COLOR- Come up with color palettes of your favorite superhero, pair them in muted colors OR be bold if you want to be. The choice is yours. Google “Disneybounding” and see what I’m talking about

4. CUTE ASS CUTICLES- For the females, cute up those cuticles with nail art. I personally suck at this because I don’t have the patience to work on a small scale masterpiece, but I’ve seen crazy detailed nail art via Pinterest.

5. TIE-DIED UP– For the men, a tie could work!

Managing How To Meal Plan: 5 Tips for Beginners

This blog entry has been a long time coming and I’m finally glad to say that I’m determined to carve out time to share my tips for efficiency  when it comes to meal planning that I have experienced.

I began meal planning seven years ago, when I watched a short documentary/ attended a lecture in university called “The Story of Stuff” by Annie Leonard. It opened up my eyes to the systematic ways of our capitalist consumerism and one thing led to another and I watched Food Inc. on Netflix. This documentary changed my perspective on our large scale monopolized food system and how detrimental mass-farming for profit and volume and conventional ways of producing food is both harmful to ourselves and to the organisms we hurt in the process. I was so inspired by both these films that I decided to take a summer internship in 2009 at a local learning center whose curriculum focuses on educating inner-city communities about growing organic healthy food and demonstrated how to create adaptable recipes to please everybody’s palate. This place is also where I gained knowledge about the global impact coffee culture has presented within our society and why I love coffeeshops so damn much. Third wave obviously…

Before I go on, I want to preface that I’m not a nutrition expert or a health care individual, but I demonstrate living a sustainable healthy lifestyle to the best of my ability everyday since 2009. So I’d like to say that I’ve had enough experience eating sustainably & healthy.

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There are a few tools/tips  that you need in order to begin your meal planning process. 

1. Start a Pinterest account

          Pinterest is a powerful visual vehicle for recipes and DIY. I have separate boards for things I want to bake, things to make for next week, and festive holiday recipes to try out.

2. Purchase a blank notebook 

          This step may seem simple, but I have volumes of filled notebooks that play witness to the documenting of recipes that I will eat throughout the week. Here’s usually a breakdown of how I categorize my meals

• Breakfast (heaviest/heartiest meal of the day, most protein dense to help fuel you)
• Snack 1 (sweet)
• Lunch (something that’ll sustain me, but won’t make me fall asleep post eating)
• Snack 2 (savory)
• Dinner (I always aim to make a soup for the week, soup is filling but light and for me, is something I can eat everyday)

3. Compile a list of pantry/fridge essentials

     Nothing frustrates me more than in the process of meal prepping and I noticed that I lack an ingredient. Having a continuous supply of necessary items in stock will ensure that you don’t run into this problem like I have. Over the years my essentials from week to week are:

• Herb of your choice (for me it’s cilantro and basil)
• Eggs
• Fresh lemon
• Rotisserie chicken
• Onions
• Garlic
• Kerrygold unsalted butter
• A tomato sauce of some sort (like a bolognese, that I’ve made prior)
• Salsa
• Green onions
• Bananas
• Seasonal snack fruit of choice
• Cheese (parmigiano reggiano, shredded cheddar, and cotija)
• Some sort of carb to carry the protein and side veggies (such as cous cous, brown rice, polenta, and oatmeal)
• A “carrier” veggie, basically any vegetable that you like that can also be a vehicle for flavors (for me it’s sweet potato, spaghetti squash, zuchini, and cauliflower)
• Extra virgin olive oil (high quality)
• Coconut oil
• A tub of full fat Greek yogurt

*If this list seems daunting, note that this list is just MY personal preference of what I like to have on hand. The beauty of cooking is that you can customize everything to your liking.

4. Set a budget for yourself. 

I’m typically not one to go into scrupulous detail regarding budgeting, but budgeting your money for things that you consume everyday is more essential and crucial to get a handle on as I step into a more frugal lifestyle.

For myself, since the farmers market that I frequent only accepts cash, the most I will spend for myself on produce is roughly 30 dollars. For anything else that I don’t purchase at the farmers market, I buy at Trader Joe’s, which results in a maximum budget of  40 dollars. If my calculations don’t deceive me the weekly total for my budget equates out to be $70 and if we were to break it down further, that means I spend roughly 10 dollars a day feeding myself three meals a day in addition to two snacks a day. If that’s not eating a healthy lifestyle on a budget, then I don’t know what is anymore.

5. Have designated containers for specific meals 

Once you’ve tackled the daunting task of preparing your meals, it is imperative for these delicious meals you’ve made to have a home. For myself, I have four 2-cup volume glass pyrex cups for my breakfast and two large BPA free rectangular tupperware containers to hold my lunches and dinners. My snacks are usually batched in gallon Ziploc baggies and my crucial cold brew is in my usual 32 ounce glass bottle. The overall spatial footprint of all these items in the fridge amounts to half a shelf with strategical maneuvering.

 

The Last Note:
Get hands on
Basically, you can mentally plan and plan all you want but without proper execution and gratitude for the trial and error process, you won’t know what works for you and what doesn’t. My trial and error process has been extensive to say the least, but I’ve had a lot of enjoyment out of it. Throughout the work week, I dream of spending Saturday mornings perusing my local farmers market and talking to all the farmers about their recent growing season. This process has served as a new method of therapy for me on the weekends, I call it “My Sacred Saturdays” and I wouldn’t change them for a second.

Febrewary.

Welcome To “Febrewary”

     Today is officially the first day of the second month of the new year. I feel like we as a culture have finally simmered down from the first month frenzy and have come equipped with some sort of routine for ourselves.

As for myself I’ve finally come out of the trenches of being sporadically ill for almost a month and have finally slowed to a pace of life I can manage right now. My sleeping schedule has finally aligned with my goals. My meal prepping is no longer a task that I had become anxious/scrupulous about and I am a month into the new fangled world of Bullet Journaling.

Needless to say the month of January was a readjustment month.

February however is just beginning and I am exclaiming that for this month, I will be writing with a focus on coffee. I’ve written about coffee before and my cathartic  relationship with it, but now I’m going to take that enthusiasm and expand it a bit.

I need to write about different coffeeshops and how each one I step into has a variable vibe.

This will further push my goal to write more and harness my writing skills that I have been in distant contact with (really need to do my English minor justice). Hopefully you enjoy the forthcoming posts featuring Instagram worthy images.

Indelible Gratitude,
-Kat