Week 10: Watch La Dolce Vita

Every week in 2011, for 52-straight weeks, I hope to try something new and blog about it here. This is the tenth post in the series, when I finally watched Fellini's La Dolce Vita, in the middle of a pretty rough week of being sick. Here you will find a list of all my weekly adventures thus far.

As someone who majored in French in college, I've seen a lot of foreign films. The jury is still out on whether or not I truly enjoy foreign films, especially films pre-1980. One of my classes on French culture involved an intensive study on Jean-Luc Godard and New Wave Francophone Cinema {generally of the black & white variety}. This is NOT to say I was a film studies major. First and foremost, I studied literature and doubled a major with English as well. When I had extra units to spare, I was able to dabble in French cultural classes like the aforementioned one.

Something about foreign films appeals to my ongoing desire to travel and passion for foreign languages. Plus, two of my favorite all-time movies have been Amélie {French} and Pan's Labyrinth {Spanish}. But I have yet to see so many movies, American or otherwise. I'm not sure why I've had it in my head forever, but I've felt the need to see La Dolce Vita for a very, very long time. That long term unfulfillment and the week-long flu/cold/plague I've been suffering from made this week's "new thing" a very simple choice. Lounge in front of the tv with kleenex, a billion pills and La Dolce Vita on Netflix. Perfection in this otherwise tainted week.

{Source}

If you know me at all, you'll remember my adoration of vintage posters and 1950s-60s culture/fashion.

I will spare you any commentary on the film other than it kept in the tradition of most 1960s foreign films: très, très bizarre. But it was also beautiful at the same time, split up into eight mini episodes of self-contained narrative, which seem to have nothing to do with the previous scene. Except, maybe some commentary about how love and fidelity was nearly impossible in the free loving, drinking, smoking and drug-using culture of the 1960s. I still don't entirely get it. And probably will end up watching it again soon.

Anyways, I definitely recommend at least checking it out. Just be warned that European cinema is anything but linear. This film was pivotal in cinematic development and has been referenced in a number of works since it came out.

So what else have I been up to this week?

Working baseball games

Giving Woodstock a bath {video below, I swear he's not all there upstairs}

And drinking lots and lots of these

It's an adaptation of Sweat & the City's cold/flu remedy smoothie. Into mine went:

• three oranges (from my garden, so they're not as large as supermarket oranges)
• 1 c coconut milk
• 1 handful coconut flakes
• 1/2 c mango
• ice to thicken it up

The smoothie tasted soooo good, I almost wouldn't mind being sick to have it :) Ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I have been drinking 1-2 of these bad boys a day. I hope it's helping.

Oh well, in the meantime I'm going to go back to snuggling up on the couch with my kleenex. Ugh, I'm ready to come out from being "under the weather" as they say...

Chocolate Raspberry Peanut Butter

Have I died and gone to heaven?! Who knew that by finally attempting to make my own peanut butter, I'd become obsessed and test out new combinations?

First there was honey nut, then coconut and now, the chocolate obsession has begun. You can rest assured I made two batches of this stuff...

Ingredients

• 2 c roasted peanuts
• 1 c chocolate chunks/chips
• 3 T almond oil
• splash of raspberry extract

Directions

The preparation is very similar to that of regular peanut butter. While the peanuts roasted at 350° for 12 minutes, I pulsed the chocolate chunks in my food processor (and tried not to eat chunks straight out of the bag...).

If you're going to follow this step, at least wait for the peanuts to cool before processing them with the chocolate! I couldn't wait, so my hot peanuts melted the chocolate :) It made for a nice, gooey mess. Then in went the almond oil and raspberry extract to keep the peanut butter from hardening into some sort of peanut fudge. Unless you like peanut fudge...

I haven't been able to stop eating this stuff! It goes on waffles, in sandwiches, on toast and oh yeah, in an awesome smoothie I can't wait to make again.

Chocolate Raspberry Smoothie

• 2 T chocolate raspberry peanut butter
• 1 banana
• 1/2 c frozen raspberries
• 1/2 c frozen strawberries
• 1 c nonfat milk
• 1/2 T chia seeds
• 1 small squirt of no sugar added chocolate syrup
• ice cubes and/or water to thin/thicken it out

I've been going on a bit of a smoothie binge lately. Sadly, my French press broke and I'm a little too cheap to replace it right now (we have a free Starbucks machine at work!), so smoothies have been important in waking me up in the mornings! Especially on those days when I have to get up at 5 a.m. for work...

But yeah, this peanut butter is ah-mazing! Go, make it now. I will need to replenish my supply again soon!

Week 9: Discover new plants

Every week in 2011, for 52-straight weeks, I hope to try something new and blog about it here. This is the ninth post in the series when I tried kale for the first time (in a smoothie) and visited the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden. Here you will find a list of all my weekly adventures thus far.

With the start of MLB Spring Training comes an onslaught of visitors over the next two months. For the majority of this week and part of next, J.D. has some friends from college visiting from Wisconsin to catch a few Milwaukee Brewers games. I figured with all the working I'd be doing and entertaining to be had, I wouldn't have much time to try something new this week! So my original goal was to make something with kale. But it just so worked out that we had some down time to explore some place I'd been wanting to see for a very long time: the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden. Therefore, it worked out that I was able to knock out two new things this week!

I'll begin with the kale. For my first use of the vegetable, I whipped up a kiwi kale smoothie for breakfast one day. I do plan on trying other applications later this week, but this will have to suffice for now :)

Kale smoothies aren't quite the same thing as spinach smoothies. It was quite an adventurous endeavor; the mixture tasted much "weedier" and did have a bit stronger of a vegetable taste. Good thing I went with my trusty coconut milk; the flavor is much more overpowering (and delicious!) than regular milk, soy milk or almond milk.

Kiwi Kale Smoothie

• 1 kiwi
• 1 c rinsed kale
• 1 banana
• 1/2 c spinach
• 1/2 c frozen papaya & mango
• 1 c coconut milk
• 1 T chia seeds
• water and/or ice for reaching desired consistency

Not only did I enjoy the smoothie for breakfast the other day, but I also rounded out the meal with a Belgian waffle!

Several weeks ago, J.D. made us Belgian waffles with the new machine I got for Christmas. He made a batch of regular and chocolate chip waffles, but ended up making something ridiculous like 12 waffles with the recipe he used. So into the freezer half the batch went for me to enjoy later... much later, as I completely forgot about them until this week.

I guess I should also mention that I made my own chocolate raspberry peanut butter to spread on the waffle. Maybe it's a little mean to hold onto it, but I'll share the recipe in another post later! Trust me, it was to dieeeee for. :)

Now onto the botanical garden!

Luckily the day we had nothing planned, Groupon had an offer that turned out to be cheaper than buy one get one free admission to the Desert Botanical Garden. At $7 a person, it was pretty hard to say no to the gardens, especially when you take into consideration that the weather this week has been in the low 80s.

I enjoyed it, but my one complaint is that most desert flowers are still dead for the winter... if you can imagine, it's still too cold out to support some desert wildlife! They also do a lot of concerts and evening tours of the gardens throughout the spring. I would definitely love to come back and see it again in the future.

I'll leave you now with some pictures from our trip to the Desert Botanical Gardens:

I spotted a rabbit! Can you see him?! :)

Valentine's Day and then some

Yesterday, J.D. had the day off and the two of us explored the Phoenix area a little more. I'm starting to know my way around the area pretty well now! With Cactus League (MLB) Spring Training starting next weekend, we're going to have a steady flow of visitors coming and going throughout the month of March. I can't believe baseball season is almost here! In preparation for all the craziness March will bring, J.D. and I set out yesterday to purchase a few Spring Training tickets. We went to two stadiums in Phoenix, including the Arizona Diamondbacks.

I'm stoked out of my mind that we'll be hosting the 2011 All-Star game, and also, that I'll get to attend/work it!

The field (my new office). A pretty imposing building, if you ask me!

We walked around inside and I used my employee discount to purchase clothing with D-backs logos. Yep, I have to wear official merchandise for all the games, but at least I get a discount I guess. As you can imagine, all that running around made us pretty hungry. Out of impulse, we decided it would be kind of fun to do a Valentine's lunch instead of dinner, especially since we hadn't really made any plans or reservations. Instead, a recent episode of Man v. Food inspired our lunch in downtown Phoenix.

I guess I should back up and explain that downtown Phoenix is basically all the sporting venues (NBA, MLB) and a healthy mix of bars to accommodate the rowdy sports enthusiasts. We knew we HAD to try Alice Cooper's restaurant, Cooper'stown. I hope you recognize the pun within the name. What we really came for was in the episode of MVF I linked above. The Big Unit -- a 22" hot dog made to honor former D-back, future MLB hall of famer and generally gigantic man, Randy Johnson, whose nickname is the Big Unit.

I couldn't really make up my mind on the menu, but J.D. really wanted the 'dog. He put forth a valiant effort, yet could only finish all but 9" of the hot dog. In case you're wondering, I ordered a MASSIVE turkey burger with melted swiss and portobello mushrooms. And it still was dwarfed by the Big Unit! I couldn't finish mine either. Let's see that thing again, in all its meaty glory.

We each enjoyed our food with some beers on tap and took in the environment, which was sort of a mix of the Hard Rock Café and a well-packed sports bar. It was awesome! I imagine it's quite an untraditional place to celebrate Valentine's Day, but we were hardly the only ones there. And nothing says love like a 22" wiener! When we returned home, I was surprised to find these:

Beautiful and super fragrant roses delivered just for moi. We then heated up leftovers for dinner, popped open some wine and caught up on our DVR. Mostly, this week's Jeopardy! special -- the IBM Watson challenge! Call me a super nerd, but I have been pumped for this forever. Watson kicked ass, and I did fairly well myself against three super geniuses. All-in-all, I'd say it was a fun holiday!

We ended the night by grocery shopping, where I found some key ingredients to inspire this morning's breakfast, the Blueberry Coconut Green Smoothie. I'll have you know that until this morning my green smoothies never actually turned out green. What a way to transition out of Valentine's Day and into preparations for the next holiday in March...

Blueberry Coconut Green Smoothie:

• 1 c spinach
• 1 c Silk coconut milk
• 1 banana
• 2 handfuls blueberries
• 1/2 t chia seeds

It was so refreshing and tropical that if not for the color, I never would have guessed it was full of spinach! And there's another cup in the fridge for me to devour later :)

In my next post, I promise I'll show you what I did with this...

Time for some reflection

I feel like I've been having more major freakouts in the past few days than I've ever had in my life. Living off "savings" without a job to replenish that is a harsh awakening at only 25 years old. I thought I'd still be adding to my savings right now, as my ultimate hope is to soon buy a new car, or rent for as short a time as possible!

I guess we can't always plan everything out perfectly, now can we?

Anyways, while I evaluate my life and the direction in which it's heading (seriously considering being a TA and applying for a master's in French Comparative Literature at ASU), I'm going for a little blog makeover.

Now I am living on a pretty tight budget. So my goal is to eat under a certain budget each day. I'm going to go all Rachel Ray on you and say $40 or less a day, but this is more of a dialogue. As I realize where my money's going on food each day, I'll maybe cutback or boost food allocations on a weekly basis. We'll see.

But first, how about those peanut butter brownies I promised you a few days back?!?!

I cheated a bit to start here by using a regular old box of brownie mix. I would have liked to make them from scratch, but that would require going out and buying chocolate and the box has been sitting in our pantry forever now.

My favorite part about baking is that I always get to channel my inner child and LICK THE SPOON!!! I don't care that it had raw eggs inside... I used to lick spoons all the time when I was a kid and I turned out just fine. Then again, maybe I should stop licking spoons....

...NAH!!!!

I knew I wanted to jazz the brownies up a little so I googled peanut butter frosting recipes and came up with this fluffy PB frosting recipe from allrecipes.com.

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup creamy peanut butter
• 3 tablespoons milk, or as needed
• 2 cups confectioners' sugar

Place the butter and peanut butter into a medium bowl, and beat with an electric mixer. Gradually mix in the sugar, and when it starts to get thick, incorporate milk one tablespoon at a time until all of the sugar is mixed in and the frosting is thick and spreadable. Beat for at least 3 minutes for it to get good and fluffy.

I won a container of PB2 from Mary's blog before I moved and knew this was the best time to put it to the test! I think because it's just ground peanuts and doesn't contain any of the oils, it made for the perfect whipped topping! And it was super fun to mix.

The finished product (kind of looks like a meringue):

It really is one of the best brownies I've made! Notice how I said made and not had... I'm not that snobby :) And it made a ton, too. I didn't even use the entire mixture because look how fluffy it got. Let's just say, I'm happily eating a brownie (or two) a day, even after giving J.D. 1/3 to take to work and share.

And as for today's breakfast it consisted of a homemade tropical smoothie (Jamba Juice size, for half the price) and oatmeal.

Smoothie: 248 calories (if you drink all of it, I could only make it through 75%)

• 1 c watermelon (46 cal): the entire seedless watermelon cost me $1, so I'd say this was about $0.30 worth
• 1/4 mango (54 cal): one mango cost $1, so again $0.25
• 1/3 can chopped pineapple (36 cal): $1.50 for the whole can, so $0.50 spent there
• 3/4 scoop of Aria protein powder (32 cal): $9.99, one scoop is about 1/34 the can therefore $0.30
• 1 container of pomegranate light yogurt (80 cal): $0.50
• Total cost = $1.85

My oatmeal was the generic brand raspberries and creme which cost about $2 for the entire box. Therefore I spent $0.25 on the packet of oatmeal (130 cal). Then topped it with a small handful of chocolate hazelnut biscotti granola (75 cal). The entire box cost $3, so I doubt I even spent $0.25 for the handful.

There, that brings my breakfast tally to 453 calories (again, if all of the smoothie is consumed) and $2.35. Not a bad start to the morning! And guess what, my lunch is FREE because I didn't finish all of my dinner last night, so leftovers are in my future! Granted, I did have to budget out for dinner last night, so it really wasn't free, but as far as today's spending is concerned it is!