There's A Huge Zit On My Face And I Know Everyone's Looking At It

I have had a huge zit on my face for about a week now.

And I'm not stupid. I know everyone is looking at it.

How can they not? It's huge. It's right there, next to my mouth. Every time I talk, the monstrous beast is only highlighted.

Hell, I may as well name it Franciscus and introduce it to people before I start talking. (Thank you, MerBear, for the sweet name.)

In fact, one of my closest friends, Candice, has a strategy similar to this. When she has a huge zit, she points it out first thing. She'll say something like, "See this huge zit here? It's huge. Look at it. Look at it! It's right there. I know it's there, now you know it's there." And then we move on. The elephant in the room has been addressed. It's genius.

Okay, so maybe MY zit is not that bad. BUT...I have been lucky enough to have pretty decent skin, and I don't often get legit acne, so when I do, it's quite traumatizing.

Even if you don't understand having a huge zit, I know you know what I'm saying here. The same thing happens when you're having a bad hair day (Or a bad shine day, if you're bald), or you don't have time to put makeup on before you leave the house (This happens to me often, and I look like sasquatch....more on this later), or basically any situation in which something out of your control is making you feel like you look like a hideous beast from the black lagoon.

When something like this happens, it's hard to imagine anyone being able to take you seriously. I mean, even if people aren't actually staring at it all day, it definitely feels like they are.

And sometimes, they are. Like with the huge zit on my face. 

I'm not going to kid myself and pretend like it's not ridiculously obvious, but I'm sure as hell going to try to make it less noticeable.

So, obviously, my first option is to use make up, which I don't even own. I considered using a dab of Roommate's make up (Yes, my MALE roommate has make up. I don't know why, and I'm not going to ask), but I came to the conclusion that this would be weird. This caused me to have to drive to Rite Aid and actually purchase this weird skin-toned face goo that I may or may not ever need again.

And we all know how using make up to conceal an imperfection goes. Sometimes when you just want to cover some shit up, you end up making it even more obvious.

Oh....and that's exactly what I did.

So that was a fail.

Option #2 was to try covering up Franciscus with a band-aid. But there was a problem:

My band-aid selection is limited (Or should I say, BOUNDLESS!). I don't actually own any normal band-aids. After trying and failing with neon green, Ninja Turtle, Hannah Montana, and Disney Princess band-aids, I pulled out the big guns.

Glitter. Yes, I have glitter band-aids. This would work. Everyone knows my favorite color is glitter. I figured it would just match my outfit and my personality.

It didn't. 

And after peeling off all of the other band-aids, I had almost no skin left, so this one took me almost twenty minutes to peel off.

I hope to say this hurt isn't necessary.

So wearing a band-aid was out.

Option #3 was to wear a scarf. It's a chilly 82 degrees Fahrenheit in sunny southern California today. This was a good idea. And it was stylish.

Cute?

This seemed like a solid plan, until I remembered how long this scarf is, and my severe ADHD kicked in. I have no doubt that at some point in my day, this would happen:

And what if this happened in the middle of class? Or at work? Or at the bank? (Or really, anywhere in public). Oh, and it would. Scarf was out.

I think once I realized that the scarf wasn't going to work, I got a little desperate...

...

...to say the least...

Option #4: HAIRBEARD!

Option #5: Pug Beard!!

Option #6: Paper Bag Face!

(I've really always wanted a beauty mark, voluptuous lips, and a sweet beard and goatee to stroke while I'm deep in thought anyway...)

Option #7: Naked!!

(Everyone will be distracted by boobz!)

Hours later....I realized that all of this was absolutely ridiculous. No one was really going to care what I did to conceal this disgusting flaw.

...but they would definitely want to know his name...

Meet Franciscus. He smiles when I smile!

Browned Butter White Chocolate Chip Blondies

This is what happens when you're broke, out of chocolate, and experiencing intense cravings as a result of your menstrual cycle.

Sometimes you've just gotta improvise.

And sometimes you've just got to give into the crazy cravings to save everyone else from a beast-like, acid-tongued wrath.

These blondies are necessary. I'd even call them healthy.

I pretty much took a basic blondie recipe and jazzed it up a bit. 

You're welcome, world.



Browned Butter White Chocolate Chip Blondies 

Adapted from Food Network

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup unsalted butter(1-1/2 sticks), plus more for the preparing the pan
• 1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour, plus more for preparing the pan
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon fine salt
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (optional)
• About 1/2 cup white chocolate chips or nuts or chocolate chips or anything else that sounds delicious! (optional)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour 9 x 13-inch baking pan.

1. In a small sauce pan melt the butter, and allow it to bubble, while stirring constantly, until it is fragrant and light brown in color. Don't worry if you get a few little black flakes in your mix. They add flavor!!
2. Put the light brown sugar in a large bowl, add the butter, and stir to combine. Cool to room temperature. 
3. Beat in the eggs and vanilla.
4. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. 
5. Add the flour mixture into the wet ingredients, mixing just until a smooth batter is formed. 
6. If using the chips, stir them into the batter.
7. Transfer the batter to the prepared pan. Bake until lightly browned and toothpick inserted in the center come out clean, about 20 minutes.

Cool the blondies in the pan slightly before inverting them onto a cooling rack. Cool completely. Cut into squares and serve. (They're delicious with ice cream!!)

Spicy Roast Chicken

Not gonna lie, this was my first attempt at cooking a whole chicken. I cook with chicken breast all the time, and I've even worked with a turkey on Thanksgiving (Or at least I've watched my mom do it a thousand times), but whole chickens always kind of freaked me out. My aunt and cousins have pet chickens, so whenever I see a raw whole chicken, I kind of have a weird impulse to give it a name and a proper burial (I know, I'm a freak...). Also, you have to pull out all of its teeny tiny organs, which is slightly gross. Anyway, this Spicy Roast Chicken recipe that Boyfriend found on the Food and Wine website was absolutely delicious, and you should definitely try it! 

And if you're as freaked out about working with a whole chicken as I was, never fear....it's really not that bad! I served it with roasted asparagus and white rice, and it was sooo good. This is a great recipe for beginners!

Spicy Roast Chicken

CHICKEN

• 1/4 cup Dijon mustard
• 1/2 tablespoon water
• 1/2 tablespoon ancho chile powder (It's a little pricey, but totally worth it. If you really don't want to spend too much, regular chili powder also works.)
• 5 garlic cloves, minced
• 3 tablespoons finely chopped sage (Or another chicken herb...I actually used rosemary!)
• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• One 4-pound whole chicken, cleaned and patted dry (To clean it, just pull out all of the gross stuff, rinse it out and pat it dry!)
• 2 tablespoons pickled jalapeño peppers, sliced, plus 1/4 cup of the brine strained into a spray bottle (You can get a little spray bottle in pretty much any store in the cleaning supply aisle, or at Target where they have all of the min travel bottles!)
• 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

TOPPING

• 2 garlic cloves, smashed
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 cup fresh bread crumbs
• Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
• 1 tablespoon chopped parsley
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne
• Salt

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 350°. In a blender, puree the Dijon mustard, water, chile powder, half of the gar­lic, 1 tablespoon of the sage, 1/2 teaspoon of the oil and 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Place the chicken breast side up in an ovenproof skillet; coat with the mixture.
2. Bake the chicken for 1 hour and 20 minutes, or until cooked through. Spray the chicken with the jalapeño brine; bake for 5 more minutes. Let rest for 10 minutes.
3. In a skillet, cook the jalapeños, parsley, lemon juice, the remaining garlic and the remaining sage in the butter and remaining oil over moderate heat until fragrant.
4. In a skillet, brown the garlic in the oil over moderate heat; discard the garlic. Add the bread crumbs, zest, parsley and cayenne and stir until the crumbs are crisp. Season with salt.
5. Top the chicken with the jalapeño butter, sprinkle with the crumbs and serve.

What It Means To Be An Adult- Part 1: Laundry

When you're an adult, you have to do your own laundry.


(Okay, of course there are exceptions, like if you're super rich or if you've conned your significant other into doing it...)


I think one of the weirdest things about moving out of my parents' house, was realizing that I am now responsible for buying things like laundry detergent, dish soap, and toilet paper. These are all things that were just there before. I never had to think about them, let alone BUY them. In fact, I probably didn't even realize that they existed before I moved out. No one told me I would need to buy laundry detergent.


First of all, how do you even know what kind of detergent to buy? I had no idea. The laundry aisle became this daunting challenge that ended up looking like the hallway from The Shining.


I mean, seriously...wtf is this!?

I'll tell you what it is. It's the laundry detergent rainbow row of hell, that's what.

A little trial an error taught me a few things:

1. The color of the bottle does not matter.
2. Detergent is NOT equal to fabric softener. These are different products. Do not be fooled by the similarity of the bottles.
3. I am, in fact, quite allergic to fabric softener.
4. If your detergent is "Mountain Spring" scented, it probably smells like a car air freshener.

Detergen aside, the fact that I have to do laundry is an issue in itself.

I like clean clothes. I really do. However, I have a serious problem with laundry. Here's another list (With pictures!) to sum up my (somewhat disorganized) laundry routine:

Step 1: Decide on an outfit for the day. 

Step 2: Realize that there are many more options and start trying on EVERYTHING.

Step 3: In an attempt to save time, skip rehanging and add all tried on clothes to the dirty laundry pile at the bottom of the closet.

Step 4: Finally decide that the first outfit is the best, and plan to rehang the clean items later.

Step 5: Never rehang anything. Instead, spend all week picking from the closet laundry pile and using smell as a way to determine the cleanliness of each item. 

Step 6: Run out of clean underwear (Except for one pair of granny panties, reserved for "that time of the month.")

Step 7: Wear granny panties for a day. (Throw out all hope of getting laid.)

Step 8: Go commando for a day. (Be prepared to get laid twice.)

Step 9: Finally become bored enough to do laundry. Although there still may be clean clothes in the closet laundry pile, throw everything in the washing machine without sorting.

Step 10: When clothes are clean and dry, bring them upstairs and put them on the bed. Begin to hang things like a real adult. (While wearing "Laundry Day" bright red hoodie and purple polar bear boxers...)

Step 11: Become distracted by an article of clothing you thought was lost. Try it on with other clothes and jewelry to see what outfit possibilities there are. 

Step 12: Realize that it is a good idea to repurpose your wardrobe and try on everything to find all new outfit combinations.

Step 13: Decide to play dress up. Be a zombie. (Find Roommate and scream, "LOOK, I"M A ZOMBIE!")

Step 14: Take a nap.

Step 15: Become distracted by roommate.

Step 16: Put away underwear and hang a few things.

Step 17: Reward yourself with a beer.

Step 18: Create a new closet laundry pile with the remaining clothes and decide to hang them tomorrow.

Step 19: Put the clean clothes on your bed the next morning to force yourself to hang them when you get home later.

Step 20: Go about your day. Come home at night, get ready for bed, decide you're too tired to put away laundry, and throw all the laundry back into closet pile (Which may now have dirty clothes in it.)

Step 21: Repeat steps 1 through 20 FOREVERRRRRR.

Hey. At least my clothes still get clean, right?

Pumpkin PUPcakes

Let me first start by saying that these are for dogs. I mean, of course they're edible to humans, but they won't taste too great. In fact, I have tasted them, and they're pretty dense and bland, even though they smell amazing. Remember, dogs have a sense of smell and taste almost 1000 times better than ours, so to them, these Pupcakes are delicious.

There are a lot of dogs in our house. Seven, to be exact. Roommate has four pugs, a beagle, and a collie. I have a rescued pit bull/greyhound mix (We think...). Although most of the pups aren't mine, I still consider them my weird little furry family, and I love spoiling them (Especially my Toby!).

I actually first heard of Pupcakes from the Sprinkles Cupcakes website, while I was getting ideas for unique cupcake recipes. I did a little research on Pupcake recipes, and on what was and wasn't safe for puppies to eat, and I found that the top three treats for Pupcakes are meat, peanut butter, and pumpkin.

Now, I definitely didn't want to make a meat flavored Pupcake, because that's weird...and gross...and with my luck, Boyfriend would end up loving them, devour a bunch, and then smell like Beggin' Strips for a week and a half. Not attractive.

I also vetoed peanut butter-- actually, my pup, Toby, vetoed peanut butter. I happen to own the single dog in the world that hates peanut butter. This is inconvenient, not only because a lot of dog treats are peanut butter flavored, but because I will never, ever experience the joy and entertainment of seeing my dog try to eat a spoonful of peanut butter. This is a sad and depressing fact that I have yet to come to terms with.

Anyway, I decided on pumpkin, even though I wasn't sure if Toby or the rest of the dogs even liked it.

When my first batch was finished, I gave some to the pups, and they were promptly devoured.

This was when I realized that I may have done a terrible, terrible thing.

The dogs may not ever want to eat their normal dog food again...

Ingredients

Pupcakes

• 2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour (Make sure it's whole wheat and NOT unbleached. They are not the same!)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 (16) oz can of pumpkin
• 2 (5 oz.) cups of plain yogurt
• 1/2 cup (4 oz) honey
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract

Cream Cheese Frosting

• 8 ounces of cream cheese, softened
• 2 tbsp honey

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Line cupcake pans with 24 lightly greased cupcake liners
3. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and ginger in a large bowl
4. In a separate, medium bowl, combine pumpkin, yogurt, honey, vegetable oil, and vanilla.
5. Fold wet ingredient mixture into the large bowl with the dry ingredient mixture. (Final mixture will be very thick and sticky)
6. Spoon mixture into liners, about 3/4 full. (Pupcakes will rise a little, but not too much.)
7. Bake for 18 minutes
8. While Pupcakes are baking, mix cream cheese and honey until smooth 
9. Cool cupcakes completely.
10. You can put the frosting into a piping bag and pipe it on, or you can just frost by hand with a butter knife!
11. Watch your furry friend(s) devour (or inhale!) their delicious treat!!

Quick Shrimp and Basil Pasta

I'm not even going to pretend that I'm not a lazy asshole sometimes. Yes, I love food, and yes, I love to cook, but a lot of the time, I don't really feel like cooking, or even waiting for food to cook. A lot of the time, the urge to be lazy and sit in front of the tv watching Grey's Anatomy and eating a protein bar wins over cooking a nice dinner when I've worked all day and I'm exhausted and starving.

I got the idea for this pasta at a dinner party I went to years ago, and I tweaked it a bit, created my own version, and it's been my lazy-night "fancy" dinner go-to ever since. Oh, and did I mention it's totally healthy? Every time I make this, I feel like a fancy, wealthy, food-saavy, hipster, health nut. I should just buy a pair of Tom's and some thick-rimmed glasses already to really fit the part.


Shrimp and Basil Pasta

Ingredients

• 1/2 package whole wheat thick spaghetti
• 2 tbs olive oil
• 1/2 lb. fresh uncooked (cleaned) shrimp (frozen works, too!)
• 1/2 cup fresh basil, chopped
• 2-4 ounces goat cheese
• salt and pepper to taste
• balsamic vinegar to taste

Directions

1. Cook pasta according to package instructions
2. Saute shrimp in a pan over medium heat in olive oil until shrimp is fully cooked and pink in color
3. Add the pasta to the pan with the shrimp.
4. Fold in basil, and stir until it is slightly wilted
5. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
6. Serve with crumbled goat cheese and sprinkle with balsamic vinegar

Note: Make sure that you crumble the goat cheese on the pasta after you've plated it, or the cheese will melt and disappear into the pasta mixture (And it is a serious bummer haha)

Lemon Ricotta Cookies

I will usually take any excuse to use cheese in a recipe. Seriously. It's a problem. (Or is it...?)

When I stumbled upon this recipe from Giada De Laurentis, I knew I had found my new favorite cookie.

I'm not usually a big cookie person. I prefer more hearty desserts-- warm desserts of frozen desserts. Cookies just seem like a snack, rather than a dessert, and it's really hard to find a cookie with the perfect texture. These lemon glazed lemon ricotta cookies are more cake-like, similar to Madelines, and they are packed with flavor. Giada really hit the nail on the head with these. I didn't change a thing, and everyone loved them. (In fact, I left some in a tupperware in my car for over a week, and Boyfriend loved them so much that he insisted on eating them. Ick.)

Ingredients

Cookies:

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 (15-ounce) container whole milk ricotta cheese
• 3 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 lemon, zested

Glaze:

• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 3 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 lemon, zested

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Cookies:

In a medium bowl combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

In the large bowl combine the butter and the sugar. Using an electric mixer beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating until incorporated. Add the ricotta cheese, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Beat to combine. Stir in the dry ingredients.

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Spoon the dough (about 2 tablespoons for each cookie) onto the baking sheets. Bake for 15 minutes, until slightly golden at the edges. Remove from the oven and let the cookies rest on the baking sheet for 20 minutes.

Glaze:

Combine the powdered sugar, lemon juice, and lemon zest in a small bowl and stir until smooth. Spoon about 1/2-teaspoon onto each cookie and use the back of the spoon to gently spread. Let the glaze harden for about 2 hours. Pack the cookies into a decorative container.

*This recipe makes about 40 cookies, so I usually cut it in half. The measurements for this one are actually really easy to divide.