Homemade Peanut Butter

This might be old news to you but it was new to me when I received my food processor for Christmas. I had visions of me making these elaborate pie crusts and processed food things but no, my food processor gets its mileage on shredding blocks of cheese and making peanut butter for me. Yes, I needed a $300 machine for those two uses apparently.

Oh well! My biggest fear is when I ask for some giant cooking contraption is that I won't use it. At least I use it even if the task is minimal.

Homemade Peanut Butter

1 bag of peanuts ( I like Trader Joe's Honey Roasted Peanuts - 1lb -$1.99)
Food Processor
Small Tupperware/sealing type of container

Place peanuts in food processor and turn on. Process until the peanuts are smooth and free of chunks ( If you like smooth pb, otherwise, I'd reserve maybe 1/4c-1/2c of the chunky mixture and add that to the smoothed pb by hand)

With a spatula, move the peanut butter from processor into your mouth..erm I mean tupperware container and place in dark, cool place ( food pantry). I've had mine in there for a couple of months and it doesn't mold/smell/etc...If you're feeling wierd about it place it in the fridge.

That's all it takes to make homemade peanut butter. It takes me about 5 minutes and it's free of wierd chemicals and a bit cheaper than the fresh ground peanut butter you buy at Whole Foods. I think that stuff is $5.99-7.99 a pound. Yowza!


Let me know if you have any other favorite uses for your food processor. I think once I get a hearty crop of my basil plant I'm going to make some homemade pesto sauce. Nom.
Cheers-

Raech

I suck..

I haven't blogged in like forever and a day.

I hope you all had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend! We went down to San Diego and celebrated Jack's 26th birthday.

It was kind of a last minute trip because we weren't sure if I was going to be working or not! So we took the amtrak from Downtown LA's Union Station. This station is amazing and beautiful on the inside. Here's a pic borrowed from google.


To my surprise when we got into San Diego's amtrak station it was just as beautiful too!



The train ride was a bit long ( 3 hrs) and a bit expensive but it was really fun to take down. Its not necessarily a better deal than driving but its a little bit less hectic. We went to the zoo and walked around for nearly 6 hours! That place is huge. I've got to admit we spent the majority of the time in the great apes/monkey exhibits. They are amazing too watch!

After a few hours of napping we decided to head up to Little Italy and go to Benecotto for dinner. If you're ever in the San Diego area I highly recommend! Soo good! We had cheese, balsamic marinated cipollini's, Lamb, Cioppino and Tiramisu. We were stuffed but everything was soo good we kept on ordering!

And finally a little pic of me waiting in the hotel room for Jack to get ready for our walk to Benecotto.


After spending some time in areas that you can walk/cab to most of the areas. I really start to wish that we lived somewhere like that. I love LA and what it is but I sure do envy places like San Diego, San Francisco, Chicago etc..where you can walk/take public transportation somewhere easy, fast and cheaply.

Hope your Memorial Day was fab!

Cheers-
Raech

Saving for our Trip

Today, I finally sat down and figured out down to the dollar how much cash we would need to save for our upcoming trip to France and Belgium this fall. The number is steep but its attainable in the next 5 months. So to keep us motivated and for fun we put on our Maurice Chevalier ( very famous french singer from a lifetime ago) and Jack drew us a little wine glass to fill up as we meet our goal.



We are just under 1/2 done and we still have 5 months left to save! I'm pretty excited for this and it is helping to make this seem like a reality not just something so far off and in the future. What do you do to help actualize your goals?

Here's a little Maurice for you to enjoy!




Cheers-

Raech

Things I've been Wanting

I picked out this amazing Marc Jacobs purse for my bday and I've been wearing it ever since. I'm smitten with it! Its super buttery, well constrcuted, ( heavy!!), and great little pockets inside. If I was brave enough to spend another wad of cash I'd get this amazing yummy aqua colored version.


Also, when I was in SF, my bestie had these shoes in a blueish tinted snake skin. I've been thinking about them on a daily basis. They're pretty much sold out everywhere but these natural snake skin ones are still available...I might have to indulge! I love how they look and they are super comfy from what I tested out in my friends shoes. Love love love them!


Happy Wednesday! What are you craving?

Raech

Lady Gaga

I am seriously loving this song!




Ohhh lady gaga, what will you come up with next!

Also, love this song right now too!



Sometimes I just love to listen to pop music to get up and get going...

Cheers-

Raechel

Brussels, Part 2 of the trip

Spent a few hours on Sunday pouring through tripadvisor.com on where to stay. We decided that not only are hotels expensive but lack the one on one personal interaction we want so we decided to spend our time in Brussels in Bed and Breakfasts.

So we spend 8 days in Paris/France and drive up to Bruge on the 8th day and spend one night in this amazing looking b&b.


I mean really? Look at those dark wood beams, the pitched roof, the wood planked floors. This is the most expensive place we are staying at 115 euros for the night but it includes breakfast. We figured that breakfast could easily run us 10-20 euros a person and so that made the room more around our price range of 70-80 euros a night. From Bruges we will stop in Ghent for the day and look around and head to Brussels for the evening where we will check into Leopold II b&b. Its built in an art noveau house ( swoooon!) . I'm not a huge architect nerd but art noveau is one of my most favorite eras of architecture ever! Plus, the beautiful bed and wallpaper sold me immediately!




I think I need to forewarn my family, friends and work that I might just permanently take up residence in Europe. I love the charm of these b&b's. Even though, I love the place we picked in Paris, I am a bit disappointed that we won't have a charming b&b host to give us the scoop on the locale.

Can't believe its already Monday again. The weekend flew by. I did spend nearly 6-7 hours trying on jeans this past weekend. I found a few pairs but I'm not completely sold on them so they are going to stay in the bag with the tags and I'll try them on again in a week and see if I've changed my mind about them. Its hard to spend $100 on jeans when I can imagine that could be our food budget for a day in Paris. Oh well, C'est La Vie!

Cheers-

Raechel

A post birthday spending spree...

Ok, so we all know that I have a highly inappropriate love affair with Anthropologie. Well my lover sent me a 15% off coupon for my birthday to be used by 4/30. I opened it up in the beginning of the month and was super excited to use it and planned on getting some things when I was in San Francisco but the dressing room turned out to be 100ft long waiting line and the bestie and I were with 2 boys who weren't really interested in going to Anthro in the first place or waiting for us for 2 hours. Sooo, I quickly tried on this little guy

and fell in love with it! Its a super soft cardigan and I can wear it to work and look put together and nice. I actually got a green and white one but anthro isn't showing that color available online. So, for one shirt I didn't want to use the coupon. I knew that if I went home and could spend some more leisurely time looking around Id probably find some more stuff that was more my speed. Well luckily yesterday, I double checked the coupon, and lo and behold it expired that day. I managed to leave work early enough to hop over to the Anthropologie on the promenade and this is what I found!

A yummy Santiago Huckleberry Voluspa candle


A French Cade and Lavender Voluspa candle ( aka hot man candle)
I didn't get this navy sweater but I'm toying with getting it. I have lots of black stuff and some brown stuff but no navy things...Hmmm...maybe I'll wait for it to go on sale. They were out of my size in the store and it was too late for them to check the call center.




Luckily, my really attentive cash register lady found this sweater in back and I went for it! Its partially made out of silk and super soft and flowy. Its a nice neutral color and I could wear it with lots of different stuff.
The bf hated this pattern but loved the fit. I loved both the fit and pattern. So I vetoed his opinion :)
and the last item is this charcoal gray fitted sweater. This sweater is professional and put together looking. Its very tight and fitted. I fell in love. Also, the bottom where it is stepped is permanently constructed that way so you always have the perfect ruffled look.
The lucky part, I set a budget, and stuck to it. I actually came under! I do need to get new jeans but that's a different store and maybe a good project for today!

Happy Weekend!

Raechel

P.S. I am sorry my blog posts have become more erratic, spuratic, and maybe boring. I am hoping that once I get back into things I will be back to my old self! Also, if you are still coming back thank you! I try my best to make sure I get a couple of posts in every week at the minimum!