Saturday

My Saturday brought together some of my favorite preoccupations: food, clothes, and music.

First: my love of quinoa, an amazingly healthy and tasty grain (it's actually a seed, but that's another story.) Here's a new recipe I've improvised. I had it for lunch today.

Lemon Almond and Herb Quinoa
1.5 cups quinoa
3 cups vegetable or chicken broth
chopped herbs (I used rosemary, tarragon and thyme)
1 cup chopped veggies (I used carrots, but zucchini, asparagus, etc. will work)
a large shallot, minced
a small handful of almonds, chopped coarsely
olive oil and/or butter
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Saute shallot in 2 tablespoons of olive oil at medium heat. When shallots start to soften, add veggies and saute until tender. Add quinoa and mix thoroughly to coat each grain of quinoa. Add broth. Cook on medium heat, covered, until quinoa becomes fluffy, about twenty minutes. In the meantime, toast the almonds in a small amount of olive oil, just until you smell a toasty smell. Mix the almonds, herbs and the lemon juice into the quinoa, heat for another minute or two to reduce moisture, and serve.

Second: my new jeans. I buy 75% of my clothes at used-clothing stores like the Crossroads Trading Company and the Buffalo Exchange, but jeans are tricky. Repeated trips to my used-clothing haunts were not yielding anything but Old Navy jeans and tiny acid washed flares. So I hit J.Crew with a gift card my mom got me for Christmas and snagged the jeans below. Now I'm ready for spring.



Third: my new favorite song, which I listened to five times when I got home. Every now and then I find a song I love so much that it brings me great joy, and I listen to it over and over until I learn all the words. I might even listen to it so much that I get sick of it. As you must have guessed by now, most of the songs are about death, broken hearts and rebellion. Past songs have included:
Confeso, Amalia Rodriguez
Romulus, Sufjan Stevens
Clandestino, Manu Chao
The Greatest, Cat Power
Paper Planes, MIA
I Know No Pardon, Vetiver
Back to Black, Amy Winehouse
(not to mention the entire recorded output of Led Zeppelin)

This month's favorite is She Sends Kisses, by The Wrens. I found an adorable claymation video of it on YouTube. Check it out! It might become your favorite too. Maybe then we can scream the lyrics together like I do at home.