Atomic Buffalo Turds (ABTs)

ABTs, atomic buffalo turds, are the ultimate summer hors d'oeuvre.  These are smoked jalapeno peppers stuffed with chorizo and cream cheese then wrapped in bacon.  ABTs are classic party food at Dave’s old roommates’ house.  These friends are the ultimate do-it-yourselfers and boy can they cook!  ABTs are commonly consumed with homebrewed beer (hard cider for me!) before dinner.  Here’s my take on ABTs.

Ingredients:
1 package cream cheese
6 jalapenos
3 chorizo sausages, raw
6 slices of bacon

Directions:
Clean the jalapenos and cut each of them in half.  Get out all of the inner membrane and seeds to avoid overly spicy ABTs.  Wear rubber gloves when working with mass quantities of jalapenos!  Otherwise, the oils get on your skin and your hands can burn for days.  Also, if you touch your eyes, nose, or other sensitive body parts (think about this for a minute), you may regret it.  Trust me on this one.

Chorizo is a sort of Mexican pork sausage.  You want to find raw chorizo for this recipe.  You can sometimes find it in sausage link form, sometimes in a tube of meat, sometimes just set out in a container ground-beef-style.  You won’t need a huge amount of this, so you may want to just freeze half for your next batch.  On the stove, put chorizo in a frying pan and cook.  If your chorizo was in sausage link form, remove the casing and use the meat only.  Drain the grease.  Remove from heat and stir in the cream cheese until smooth. 

Stuff jalapenos with the chorizo and cream cheese mixture.

Put a half-piece of bacon around the jalapeno it bind it together with a toothpick. 

Smoke on low heat until bacon is cooked.  Dave’s old roommates used an actual home-made smoker for this purpose and let them cook for ~2 hours.  I have cooked these on the grill on low heat (watch out for grease fires!) and also broiled them in the oven on a cookie sheet, which works in a pinch, but to really get a true ABT, smoking over low heat is the way to go!  One of the projects on our to-do list is to make a smoker out of terracotta pots and an old stove we got from Dave’s Grandad.  I’ll let you know if we are successful. 

The longer you cook the jalapeno the less spicy they are, so keep this in mind if you have sensitive guests.  If you get a spicy batch, cut the spice by serving some mild queso with chips, glasses of milk, or spoonfuls of sour cream, depending on your degree of desperation.  I have read that vodka cuts the spice, but this has never actually worked for me.  Do you have any secrets to sooth a burning mouth?  

My first garden

After 5 years in a small apartment with no personal outdoor space of my own, I'm spending my first summer at my new digs, complete with community garden!  This is something I've been looking forward to for years!  We managed to get a very small plot and after doing some research (okay, I looked at probably two webpages), I found out that it's best to wait until Memorial Day weekend to plant in Colorado if you want to avoid frost.  I weeded and turned over dirt for an entire day, laid down some organic compost (organic only or the old garden ladies will murder me), and the next day, planted my first garden.  I planted tomato, pepper, and strawberry plants, then used seeds for oregano, basil, dill, beans, peas, broccoli, carrots, beats, and a butternut squash.  This all fit in a plot perhaps slightly larger than a twin bed.  I didn't really know what I was doing, so I just went for it. 

The view isn't too shabby from our garden plot.

Long before finding out we made it to the top of the garden-plot waiting list, we started an indoor garden in tubs and slowly moved them outside as the weather warmed up.  These tubs included cherry tomato bush-types, peas, beans, and tons of herbs.  

And then it hailed the day after I finished putting in all of my plants outside.  The problem was, we weren't home when it happened.  If we were, we could have stood outside with umbrellas over our plants or dragged our tub garden under the overhang.  Unfortunately, we returned home shortly after it finished to find random piles of hail resembling snow covered the area.  I was very upset and somewhat frantically removing chunks of ice from the bases of our tub plants when Dave saved the day with some xmas lights and a plastic tarp.


The next day we surveyed the damage to the garden plot and the tubs.  This hail storm took most of the leaves off of my plants and the leaves that were left were scarred and yellowed.  So, I wandered back to the store and got three more tomato plants, two more pepper plants, and one more strawberry plant.  Assuming the hail-damaged plants would soon die, I planted the new plants in very close proximity to the half-dead ones.  In the case of the tomatoes, all of the plants survived, so now I have six HUGE tomato plants within about a 2 by 2 foot area.  Oops!

We got hail several times after this and one time Dave was able to collect a few hail specimens and save them in our freezer.  Only in a house with two meteorologists would hail in a freezer be considered a romantic gesture!

Anyway, on Friday we took a walk to the garden plot and discovered our first rewards, four ripe tomatoes!  I left for the airport minutes later, and took one for the road.  Not knowing if it would be allowed through security, I sat there at DIA and enjoyed my tomato.   

Vacation #2: Wisconsin

As if 10 days in New Jersey wasn't enough, now I'm on family vacation #2, only this time it's MY family!  I got back to Colorado early Monday morning and flew to Wisconsin Friday evening, leaving Dave to fend for himself back home.  Saturday my parents, brother, and I drove north until we finally reached our destination, a collection of condos conveniently located in the middle of nowhere.  Here we have our annual extended family vacation consisting of somewhere on the order of 40-50 cousins, aunts, uncles, and Grandma.  We spend the week hanging out at the lake, enjoying water sports, swimming in the pool, eating lots of horribly unhealthy food in Wisconsin-sized portions, relaxing, and enjoying the company of family.  We have been coming here for more than 20 years!  

Oddly enough, I can't get a cell phone signal, but I do have wireless internet!  

Here's an old picture of the lake we're staying on.  It really is a beautiful place to relax for a week!

RIP Dave's ipod

After our camping trip Dave couldn't find his ipod.  The day we left for New Jersey he mentioned this to me over breakfast.  He mentioned that it could be anywhere, maybe in a jacket or his pants pockets.  His camping cargo pants happened to be drying on the back of my chair from laundry day the day before.  I put my hands into all of the cargo pockets and found nothing, then checked the top pockets.  I put my hand in and wrapped my fingers around his ipod nano.  He looked at me with a smirk thinking I was joking, but then realized I'm not good at being funny.  I took the ipod out of his recently washed pants, tried turning it on, and got nothing.  I immediately felt awful for washing his ipod and ruining it the day we left for a trip with long bus, train, and plane rides, and started to cry.  I was so sorry that I didn't think to check his pockets!  Were his pants actually IN the laundry basket or just next to it?  If it was next to it, this meant he hadn't gone through the pockets because he had deemed the pants not dirty enough to deserve to be washed just yet (like when I wear jeans for a week without washing them) so I should have either not washed them or at least gone through the pockets.  This was definitely my fault.

Dave calmed me down by assuring me that it wasn't the end of the world.  I later went to take a shower and he asked me if I wanted to listen to music in the shower, handing me the squeaky clean ipod.  Always the jokester!  I let him use my ipod touch on the plane while I watched really bad movies that Continental deemed worthy of showing to a mixed audience ("The Last Song" is possibly the dumbest movie I have ever seen.)

We let the ipod dry out over vacation in hopes that it hadn't been entirely ruined.  I tried plugging it in upon our return Monday and got nothing.  Now it's time to replace it, but it brings up too many decisions to be made:  should he get the updated nano?  the ipod touch?  wait to find out if the rumors of the iphone switching to verizon service are true?  This dilemma is an apple-geek's dream, so much research must be done before he decides which upgrade he will go with. 

RIP Dave's ipod. You were green, rounded, could play movies, helped Dave train for his 10k with your Nike + ipod capabilities, and were filled with Manu Chao, Phish, and Toubab Krewe.  You will be sadly missed.  I may make you into a Christmas ornament since you are green and now worthless.

A slick deal: our new espresso machine!

Dave rushed through the door before we left for vacation and said, "I'm going to Broomfield, there's a slick deal on an espresso machine!"  There is a "slick deals" webpage where people with a lot of time on their hands post slick deals that they find in order to help out their fellow cheapskates.  A slick deal has to be an extreme savings in order to be a true slick deal.  We check this webpage every now and again, particularly around xmas time, and have gotten maybe two or three good deals in the past from it.  This particular deal was for a $1299 espresso machine marked down to $299.  I convinced him to let me call William Sonoma before he drove a half an hour out of his way for something that could be sold out.  The first rule of slick dealing is never to call because as soon as the employee realizes the deal, he or she may take it for themselves.  I called.  The helpful woman on the phone informed me that a man just called and put their last one on hold.  Okay, that was enough for Dave, we were too late.  I, on the other hand, was not about to give up.  I've been wanting a good machine for years and have been checking Craigslist for a good one since Christmas.  I called the William Sonoma at Mayfair in Milwaukee and they had one left!  I had them hold it for me.  My generous dad agreed to pick it up for me on his way home from work, then ship it to me here.  I felt pretty silly for having my dad do this for me all for an espresso machine, but here was my reasoning:

I like lattes.  Grande soy white mochas, to be precise.

One of these runs me about $4.55 at Starbucks, my coffee house of choice due to its proximity to my work(s) and, well, everywhere.  This past spring semester I drank two of these a week when I walked by Starbucks on the way to my early morning class after my bus ride.  Now, this is a very conservative estimate of my coffee drinking.  Sometimes I wanted a drink in the afternoon to get me through my night class, this only adds onto my Starbucks fund from there.  This fall I will have four early morning classes, meaning I might be tempted to spend $4.55 four times a week!  Let's use the twice a week estimate.

2 X $4.55 = $9.10 per week X 52 weeks per year = $473.20 on coffee at Starbucks per year. 

This is a lot of money!  A few years ago I drank one a day!  That's $1660.75 per year.  (I think that translated to about 7% of my graduate student salary at the time.  Smart.)

When I don't drink lattes I make drip coffee at home or bialetti coffee or plunger coffee (don't ask) or even french press coffee.  While these are all great ways to save money, they just don't taste as good as properly made espresso, meaning I am tempted to get my Starbucks fix too often.  (I sound ridiculous in my reasoning here, sorry.)

Of course by having my own machine I'm not making coffee for free.  There's the initial cost of the machine ($299+shipping), the cost of coffee beans, and the cost of silk vanilla soy milk (Costco!).  Still, in the end, I think this machine will pay for itself off in the first year if I avoid Starbucks 100%.  Plus, I'll get to enjoy tasty coffee every day of the week!

I will miss going to Starbucks though.  I actually enjoyed the interaction of getting my morning coffee, and if I had time, sitting down on the Starbucks couch to grade any last-minute papers before rushing off to class on a cold morning.  It made me feel classy, which is what they want, I'm sure.

Well, the espresso machine just arrived and in the last 24 hours I've tried it three times.  Yum, yum, and yum!!!  All I have to do is turn it on, put my cup under the spout, push a button, and my perfect espresso comes out.  I can then froth my milk if I so desire.  It's a Delonghi Perfecta.

Thus far I am very hyper happy about the purchase!

Phish Tacos

Having five couples on vacation together meant each of us got one night to show off our cooking skills to the 14 person crowd.  This could have been a nightmare for a gluten free gal, but somehow, through some thoughtful menu making on the part of Dave's family, I was able to eat every meal and they were all delicious!  A few desserts I had to avoid, but it just gave me a great excuse to walk down the road for ice cream instead (I ODed on lactose one night for sure, oops!)

As it turns out, New Jersey has a large supply of seafood due to its close proximity to the ocean.  Clearly we don't get much fresh seafood here in Boulder where most of the fish I buy has been previously frozen.  Therefore, for our meal, Dave suggested we make fish tacos.  I reminded him that my fish tacos normally taste like nothing, but we decided to go for it anyway.  My first fish taco experience was at the Denver Aquarium last summer where we ate in a restaurant surrounded by schools of fish swimming by.  I've been trying to match that flavor ever since, and I think we got it this time! We went down to the fish market in Sea Isle City, grabbed three pounds of fresh mahi-mahi, and made some pretty successful fish tacos that had some great flavor to them.   See fish taco recipe below. 

My phish-head enjoying the Denver Aquarium in summer 2009.

The next night we had a "Country Boil" which featured fresh jumbo shrimp.  This involved boiling potatoes, onions, kielbasa (ring bologna for us Midwestern folk), corn on the cob halves, and jumbo shrimp in water seasoned with Old Bay.  This was something completely new to me and I really enjoyed it! 

Other fabulous meals included fajitas, pulled pork, and grilled chicken and veggies.  It was a great week for my tastebuds!

Phish Taco Recipe (I'm scaling portions down to a 2-4 person meal rather than the 14 person meal)

Ingredients
1 lb Mahi-mahi
Fish marinade (recipe from Bobby Flay of the Food Network):
  1/4 c. oil (olive or canola)
  1 Tbsp chili powder
  1 lime juiced
  1 jalopeno finely chopped (set small amount aside for pico de gallo)
  1/4 c. cilantro finely chopped
Jicama slaw
  1/2 jicama grated
  1 lime juiced
  Kosher salt
Pico de gallo
  1 large tomato or a few small ones finely diced
  1 Tbsp cilantro finely diced
  1 Tbsp red onion finely diced
  1 Tsp jalopeno finely chopped
  1/2 lime juiced
  pinch salt
Drizzle
  3 Tbsp sour cream
  1 Tbsp mayo (olive oil mayo just came out-- make the switch, people)
  1 Tsp cider vinegar
  1 Tsp lime juice
  Dash of paprika
Avocado
Corn tortillas
  oil

Directions
Make the fish marinade by whisking ingredients together.  Marinate fish for 20 minutes then grill the fish, skin side down (if there is a skin side) for 8 minutes over medium high heat, then flip over for another 8 minutes.
 

Grilled mahi-mahi

 Make the jicama slaw by pealing the jicama with a knife or carrot peeler.  Cut it in half and grate it on a cheese grater (the biggest holes).  In a bowl, stir together the lime juice, pinch of kosher salt, and jicama.  Jicama is found near the weird vegetables in my grocery store, like mushrooms and fingerling potatoes.  If you can't find it, substitute white cabbage dressed with cider vinegar and a pinch of salt (Don't want to cut up smelly cabbage?  Grab a bag of prepackaged coleslaw that hasn't been dressed yet.) 

Jicama slaw

 Make the pico de gallo by combining all ingredients in a bowl and seasoning with salt to taste.  (When I made this at the shore, I used 10 tomatoes for a huge batch and put out chips so that people could munch on the pico while the fish was grilling, which kept me from feeling too rushed by the hungry masses.  By the end of dinner it was 100% gone.) 

Pico de gallo

 Corn tortillas are gluten free, but they fall apart if not properly prepped.  After months of thinking that microwaving would suffice and having my taco insides end up plopped on my plate, I have decided that corn tortillas must be fried in order to properly hold food.  Throw a Tbsp of oil into a hot frying pan and throw in a tortilla or two.  Coat in oil by flopping them around in the pan and wait for them to puff up a bit.  Keep them warm until you're ready to serve them. 

With a fork, combine the drizzle ingredients.  Taste the drizzle and add more acid (lime or vinegar) to taste.  It should be tangy!  

Lastly, if avocados are affordable and ripe, slice one up into small pieces for taco filling.


Serve the fish, jicama slaw, pico de gallo, avocado, and drizzle in corn tortillas.  I just took all of these items and put them in order on the bar so people could make their own tacos with what they liked.  Plan on each person having 2-3 of these tacos.  Rice or a lettuce salad with lime vinaigrette dressing make great sides for this dish. 
 

Enjoy!

I Was Told There'd be Cake and Eiger Dreams

My trip to the shore was going to involve several firsts:  my first time flying into Newark, my first time swimming in the Atlantic Ocean that I can remember, my first time to New Jersey-- home of my live-in-bf, first time meeting two of Dave's three brothers, his grandma, his two nieces and his nephew, his sister-in-law, and his brothers' girlfriends.  I wouldn't say I was nervous, but I also didn't really know what to expect spending 10 days with them in a house that didn't have enough beds or rooms for any sort of privacy. 

Before I left I had a catch-up lunch with a few of my girlfriends where Melissa, being the thoughtful person that she is and knowing that I needed something fun to read on my trip after sensing my nervousness, brought me two books of hers to read on the beach.  One of the books, Eiger Dreams, is by one of my favorite authors, Jon Krakauer, author of Into the Wild, now a major motion picture, and Into Thin Air, the story of the Mt. Everest tragedy of 1996 that he was a part of (one of my all time favorite books).  Eiger Dreams is a collection of essays about his various mountaineering expeditions.  I had a hard time concentrating on the technical stories in this book while on the beach, but when in a quiet room by myself, I really enjoyed reading it. 

The other book was, I Was Told There'd be Cake, essays by Sloane Crosely.  This book is hilarious and great for beach reading when there are occasional interruptions from 2- to 5-year-olds needing someone to hold their hand while jumping over waves.  The essays are a collection of random stories from her life told in comedic fashion.  I particularly loved the essay called "You on a Stick," which documents the story of Sloane being asked to be the maid of honor in one of her high school friend's weddings, a friend she hadn't spoken to since high school.

"Weddings are like the triathlon of female friendship:  the Shower, the Bachlorette Party, and the Main Event.  It's the Iron Woman and most people never make it through.  They fall off their bikes or choke on ocean water.  I figured if I valued my life, I'd stay away from weddings and they'd stay away from me."

"In the movies, brides cry of joy on their wedding day, sashaying down petal-covered aisles in six-thousand-dollar dresses.  In real life the crying comes way earler, usually in the confines of a bridal suite bathroom, and results from the stress of a bouffant gone awry or a missing mother-in-law."

"The bride on her wedding day is like a giant eggshell of emotional turmoil ready to crack and turn this whole feast of love into a trauma scramble.  ... The five-alarm freak-out comes not from cold feet or anything having to do with something silly like the actual prospect of sleeping with the same person for the rest of your life.  It comes from not wanting to look puffy in posterity." 

I highly recommend bringing this book on your next vacation to the beach!

As it turns out, my fear of the unknown quickly dissipated when I realized that Dave's family was just like Dave:  fun and easy to get along with.  What better way to get to know someone's family than spending an entire week sharing close quarters with them?  Still, I'm glad I had some great books to read on the beach!

My first trip to NYC

What's that?  The forecast for today is 100 degrees and sunny?  Perfect!  Let's take a trip to NYC and walk around all day in it!  

Well, that's not entirely how it went.  I am 28 years old, but have never been to New York City, despite the fact that my brother lived in Brooklyn for two years.  (Our senior class trip was to NYC, but I was on the band trip in Australia at the time!)  If I was in New Jersey, there was no way I was leaving without seeing NYC.  After our week at the shore in Sea Isle City, NJ, we drove north to Secaucus, NJ on Saturday where Dave's slightly younger brother dropped us off at the NJ Transit train station.  We took the train to Penn Station in NYC and got there much later than planned, 1:40.  One of the main reasons I wanted to go to NYC was to see a Broadway show and matinees started at 2:00.  We got out of the train station and booked it 15 blocks to the theaters where Fela and then La Cage were showing, but decided to wait until we could walk into a performance on time and for a price we were comfortable with, which meant we'd be sticking around for an 8:00 pm performance.  We hadn't eaten, it was 100 degrees outside, I had just popped up into NYC for the first time in my life and powerwalked 15 blocks trying not to loose Dave through Time Square, and when Dave asked me where I wanted to eat, I picked the only restaurant I remembered seeing that wasn't McDonalds: Ruby Tuesdays in Time Square.  No, this is not where I dreamed of eating in NYC, a city famous for good food and filled with several gluten free opportunities, and in retrospect it was silly to have a sit down lunch at 3:00 pm when we could have had a local dinner a few hours later, but I'll blame the poor decision on the dizzying effect of the city, the heat, and the low blood sugar.  After we were seated, I realized my mistake and felt bad about it the rest of the day.  We had some yummy juice and iced tea and some lunch.

After a regretful lunch, we wandered by the tkts line in the middle of Time Square to see if we could get discount tickets for the 8:00 show and sure enough, there was already a full line formed.  We waited in it for probably a half an hour (just long enough to make a trip to the Natural History Museum out of reach, damn!) and snagged some tickets to La Cage Aux Folles for $70 each.  Dave was hoping to see Fela, but we both decided it could be a boring show and went with something more showy.   

We hit Rockerfeller Center where I saw the place where the xmas tree and skating rink would be.  We then turned the corner and saw huge crowds for a movie being filmed called "Friends with Benefits" staring Woody Harrelson, Justin Timberlake, and Jackie from "That 70s Show."  The possibility of being in a movie or seeing a star meant that several hundred people were crowding the area.  We made our way through and across the street we checked out St Patrick's Cathedral, which was beautiful.  We then walked down the street to the shopping district where we pretended to be even slightly interested in browsing at Louis Vuitton, Tiffany's, and then FAO Schwartz.  The highlight of the shopping district was when we heard Manu Chao's tunes come on over the radio just in time for me to grab a giant penguin in FAO Schwartz and make it dance. 

Central Park was across the street so we wandered through it from east to west.  I couldn't believe how beautiful and huge Central Park really was, and I only saw a small portion of it!  The whole day I was wondering how anyone could possibly live in this crowded, dirty city, but also realized I was only seeing the touristy area, then after seeing Central Park realized that New Yorkers aren't as in sane as I imagined.  It's like having a little piece of Boulder right in the middle of a city where I had yet to see a single strand of grass the whole day.  The whole time I was in Central Park I kept repeating a dumb line from Flight of the Conchords:  [in New Zealand accent] "No, not Central Park in New York, I said, A central park in Newark." 

We turned back towards where our show would be and grabbed a Jamba Juice for dinner in order to fight our dehydration, overheating, and lack of hunger for solid food.  We went to my first Broadway show, La Cage Aux Folles (The bird cage).  The show normally stars Kelsey Grammer, but we got his understudy, who did a great job.  The theater was one of the smaller ones on Broadway, but it was beautiful.  The show was hilarious!  The best part was the dancing transvestite chorus.

After the show, we had 25 minutes to get to Penn Station to catch our train home.  We were on 48th and the station is on 34th, so it was a major power-walk with uncooperative traffic lights, but we made the train.  Dave was disappointed that he didn't get a pretzel or peanuts at any of the stands on the way.  We took the train to Madison, NJ where Dave's brother lives, grabbed his parents' car, and drove to his parents' house about 30 minutes away.  It was a long day and we finally got to bed around 1:30. 

Things I would do differently the next time:  plan the day.  I found out the day of that we were going to NYC and had no time to so much as find a map of the city before showing up there.  Luckily Dave knows his way around, but I'm the kind of person who likes to know where I am and I didn't get a map until about half way through my day.  I'd also try to buy tickets ahead of time and see a bigger show.  Although I was pleasantly surprised with La Cage, I'd love to see some huge production of Lion King instead of something with more acting than singing, something with over the top costumes, harmonies, dancing, and chorus numbers.  There's nothing better than seeing 100 people on a stage at once singing and dancing.  I dream of seeing Les Miserables or Joseph on Broadway if they ever come back (I was in Joseph in community theater when I was young).  I have seen these in Chicago, but think I may appreciate them more as an adult and on Broadway.  I would also empty my purse of any unnecessary items like keys to my offices and car.  About mid-day my purse felt like it weighed 50 lbs.  I would also wear better shoes.  MaryJane Crocs are comfortable and can pass as dress shoes for getting into a show, but they are not worthy of 10 hours of walking in NYC.  I'd probably wear a cute, but comfortable outfit worthy of being photographed and bring a dress along in my purse to change into before the show.  Lastly, I'd arrive in the city with enough time to go to the museums before they close, because who are we kidding, I'd much rather spend hours in the Natural History Museum than shopping for purses and diamonds. I would also love to see the more residential areas of the city and avoid Time Square at all costs.  Hopefully I get my second chance to do the city right!

The Jersey Shore

I'm at the Jersey Shore!  Yup, just one more life-list destination to cross off my list (just kidding).  Dave's family is from New Jersey and planned a week-long trip to "The Shore" so I decided to tag along since I have time off this summer.  There are a few very distinct differences between "The Shore" and my usual beach bum spot on a lake in Wisconsin.

1.  There is sand at the shore.  This means that you and all of your possessions will be covered in sand by the end of the day.  And it's not like it will just brush off by the time you get back to the house.  No, it's humid here and things don't just dry naturally like they do in good old Boulder.  In fact my swim suit has this mysterious inner layer that has somehow trapped a few handfuls of sand that will not come out.  People have special chairs for sitting in the sand and these beach umbrellas that get setup in the sand.  You can build sandcastles and dig holes in the sand that eventually might get filled up with water by a large wave.

2.  There are waves at the shore and the water is salt water!  Obviously, I understand that the ocean has salt water, but you forget sometimes until you get a face full of water and taste the stuff.  Yuck!

3.  The most unattractive people you've ever met are not at all bashful about wearing a string bikini and letting it all hang out.  

4.  There's no boat I can jump on for a ride or take me tubing or water skiing, but the waves themselves are just as entertaining.

It has been a fun week thus far.  Tonight we might venture to Atlantic City and I might get to visit NYC for the first time on Sunday!  I'll post more (with pictures) soon!  I'm off to the beach!

Ode to my toiletry bag

While I sit here waiting for my laundry to finish washing so I can run down to the laundrymat to dry it (never rent a place where the dryer vents indoors, yet also doesn't have air conditioning), I'd like to talk about my toiletry bag.  This Vera Bradley set was given to me by my awesome Aunt Darcy as a PhD graduation gift a year and a half ago.  (Really, I stopped asking for gifts after high school graduation, but sometimes aunties just can't be stopped!)  What better gift could a girl like me ask for?  I'm constantly flying home, flying to a conference, flying to a vacation, or camping.  This bag fits in the top part of my backpacking bag like a dream!  Whilst hiking along I can have easy access to all of its goodies in a pinch, whether it be hand sanitizer or Advil.  This past weekend it was nice to just grab this bag by its cute little handle and hike on over to the bathrooms to brush my teeth, no-rinse-shampoo my bangs, or take care of whatever high-maintenance hygienic thing was on my mind at the time.  It has a little zipper pouch for personal items, small organizational pouches on the sides for small items, and a big spot in the middle for everything else.  I keep this baby packed year round with my travel toiletries and just change out a few things according to trip.

 

It also has a cute overnight bag that goes with it!  Very Bradley has fabulous purses as well.  If I really knew how to quilt, I would whip myself up a few of these!  

Do you have a travel item you can't do without?  Also, any beach reading book suggestions for me? 

While you're here, check out some sweet comments on yesterday's post and see if you have some opinions of your own!   Yay readers and yay commenters!