memorial day vacation

Wow - this has been a great Memorial Day! My new work schedule has me off on Fridays and Ned's schedule this week was pretty light so we started our three-day weekend early :) I finally made it out to Mission Hills Nursery (had a Groupon for 50% off, woohoo!) and we picked up new pants for the deck and the cute planters outside the guesthouse. All drought tolerant - so if I forget to water every one in a while it won't kill them. Let's hope at least!
We also did some good cooking. I had been wanting to try a homemade onion dip, and I found a recipe online that was quick and easy. Um, if you're ever doubting whether or not it's worth making your own, it is. So tasty and healthy, we had it with pop chips and veggies. Also made some cookies - a new chocolate-cherry combo. Also ridiculously good.
Going to watch a funny movie tonight and hang out with the doggies on the sofa. Good times.

Here's the recipes! Happy Sunday!

- Caramelized Onion Dip from Southern Living
On this one, I added in my Kitchen Stories french herb blend and I also did a slightly higher onions-to-sour cream-ratio, cuz I cannot get enough of them.

- Chocolate-Cherry Heart Smart Cookies from Cooking Light
A really yummy healthy-ish cookie. I did all whole-wheat flour, mini semi-sweet chips instead of bittersweet and took the sugar down to one half-cup, lightly packed. Tasty noms.

la getaway!

Wow! We are having a blast in LA. We planned a short trip up to the big city for a Sonny Rollins concert and we're having so much fun knocking around. This morning we had brunch at Real Food Daily in West Hollywood - a fab vegan place I found. Above is a pic of my super-yummy tofu benedict (grilled tomatoes and spinach topped with tofu and corn hollandaise, with tempeh (bacon substitute) and fresh fruit. It was awesome to eat something on vacay that didn't make us feel fatty bo batty. We even had a carrot-apple-beet-celery juice for breakfast dessert, so it was just like home :)
Today we'll be doing a bit of window shopping, heading back to Amoeba for some more music (scored some good stuff there yesterday afternoon) and then tonight - steak at Taylor's and Sonny Rollins with Chad, Esther and Sylvian. Ned wanted to share the concert with them so we're all going together, should be fun!

Baking and More Records

This was an awesome week. We both had good work stuff going on and we did all kinds of fun stuff this weekend. Ned put together some new furniture for the production room, we hit a couple of really good estate sales and today I did a ridiculous amount of baking.
The records of the estate sales were great finds - I think we ended up buying about 100 total or so, lots of stuff we hadn't seen before, a few we'd been looking for, and more than one that would be sellable online or at the record store - woohoo! It's fun for us if we just break even.
As for my baking, today I made some banana-blackberry bran muffins for the week, Italian herb crackers (sooo good), banana chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and also some chicken to shred for chicken salad tomorrow. I got to use my new French herb blend from Kitchen Stories. I just love that shop!