The kitchen and living room are a mess.

As usual, I barely slept last night and went to work with just 3.5 hours of rest.  It was the perfect day-- sunny, warm but not hot, and beautiful clouds.  I wanted to sit at an outdoor bar and drink something delicious.  Instead, I went home and promptly washed my car.  It seems strange, it's just a seriously productive case of procrastination.

Car washing is no joke!  There's a reason why we pay good money for someone else to wash our cars for us-- it's strenuous, messy, and a chore.  After I was done, I was starving but too tired to make food.  Yet I didn't want to eat a frozen dinner or ramen either.

I made a quick dish of pasta with pepper, parmesan, and peas-- something I learned from my cousin (although mine came out nowhere as scrumptious as hers did).

It was tasty, leaving me in a good mood, so I wanted the rare after-dinner coffee.  But I got too adventurous.  I brought out the espresso maker that has not been touched since I broke the decanter before it was ever used.

sad espresso machine sitting in the corner

Yes, that's my living room floor.  Unfortunately (fortunately?) the cord is short as to prevent any accidents, so... there it is.  What followed was a ridiculous process of guessing how this machine operates.  10 minutes after plugging it in, I decided to download the manual and discovered that water is needed to produce steam (obviously..).  Then stupidly, I touched the machine, burning my hand.  The milk exploded a bit.  Things got dirty.

But I was left with this frothy milk atop of my coffee!

I'm really unhappy with these photos today, but what can you do...

After all this, I better get more sleep tonight!

More Food

Last night before going to bed, I felt like making oatmeal bars.  It's too bad I didn't check to see if we had oatmeal, though.  We didn't have whole wheat flour like I thought, either.  I was probably thinking about my kitchen back in Texas.. aiya.  Anyhow, I improvised with white flour, walnuts, half the sugar, an egg, milk, and pear and apple (as a substitute for butter):

Does not look appetizing

All that turned into this very chewy bread with a slightly sweet taste:

Does not look appetizing either, but it was tasty!

After visiting my parents today, V went home and I went to my friend E's house.  She has an absolutely magnificent orange tree!

These oranges cannot be used fast enough-- tons of them just from one tree.

We chatted while she made delicious coffee with her machine-- I haven't even used my own at home.  Now I've got to try!  Yum.

Perfect frothy milk

As I left, E gave me five beautiful oranges.  I squeezed several of them, added a lemon and lime, threw in some simple syrup (which I also heard about from M) and mixed it in with carbonated water made from V's soda maker.  Delicious!

Another Simple Pasta Dish

I'm so happy to be an Angeleno!  Got out of Austin just in time for the crowds visiting for SXSW.  Since being in LA, I've eaten lots of yummy food, but tried to keep up with the healthy eating and cooking.

Tonight I made pasta, topped with light cheese and roasted broccoli (we learned how to roast broccoli from our friend M who had us over to try our wedding cake!).  It was a super hack-- I just took two monterey jack cheese slices-- meant for sandwiches-- melted them with a little bit of butter and olive oil, mixed them with the pasta and the broccoli.  V made stuffed tomatoes, but unfortunately, I forgot to take photos of them before I ate them!

Apparently, broccoli is a super vegetable-- doesn't lose nutrients when it is cooked!

Leftover tomatoes, I turn you into healthy tomato sauce!

It's funny how busy I am in grad school.  Lately, I've been thinking about what I'm going to do with all my free time post-graduation-- learning how to properly cook, exercise, sew, start reading books again--!  until I realized that I said those same exact things while I was working.  I can't wait until I go to grad school so I can finally start exercising!  Learn how to cook and sew-- and I can read again!  Just goes to show you that if you want to do something, you just need to set time aside and do it.

But seriously, after I graduate, I'm going to start.  Forreals.

I'm trying to eat healthier-- less processed meals and more simple foods.  Eating fresh food isn't very difficult to prepare.  During this health kick, I've been wary of pasta.  I didn't want to use canned sauce anymore, but I really wanted pasta.  Since I'm working from home today, I decided to make some:

Does this not look delicious?  I dare you to say otherwise!

I used to buy too many tomatoes.  Since I love them, I thought I could eat them all, but always ended up throwing them away when they went bad.  I started freezing them-- just plopped whole tomatoes into the freezer.  No cutting or Tupperware necessary.

To create a sauce to top my whole wheat pasta, I threw two of my frozen tomatoes into the microwave.  Chopped up two cloves of garlic and threw in some red wine vinegar and olive oil and .. voila!  Just add pepper and top on pasta.  I'm surprised how flavorful it turned out!  Plus, tomatoes are a good source of lycopene, an antioxidant (I think?).

I bet eggplant would be good, too.  Maybe next time!