Immune System Boosting Tea

I recently read an interesting quote.  "The flu is not a season!  It's an inability to adapt due to decreased sun exposure and water intake combined with increased sugar intake and stress!"  The best way to deal with "flu season" is to take build up your immune system.  How, you ask?  Get plenty of sleep, drink lots of water, eat healthy food, and exercise.  In my experience, it's really difficult to do all of these things in once day, or for an entire week.  Life gets in the way.  One thing I do religiously is drink tea.  I love to start my day with a cup of green tea, so lately I've been adding some extra ingreds to give my tea more immunity boosting power!

How do you get a job writing inspirational quotes on the tags of tea bags?  Talk about a dream job!

I start with one clove of crushed garlic which I put into the mug while I wait for my water to boil.  After I've added the hot water and the green tea, I add the juice of a quarter of a lemon, about a teaspoon of turmeric, and half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper.  

 It sort of tastes like an earthy soup.  Weird, I know.  But undeniably warm and comforting.  Seriously, you will become healthier just by reading the list of ingredients....  green tea, water, lemon juice, garlic, turmeric, cayenne pepper....  Mmmmm....

This is the first holiday season ever that I'm not traveling and I am hosting as well!  Staying in town is great, and there's not much work to be done so that gives me plenty of time to goof off.  I met some girlfriends this morning for brunch where I consumed too much sugar (in the form of champagne) so I will be drinking my flu-prevention tea tonight.  And tomorrow morning.  Stay healthy my friends!

I Survived Icemageddon

Happy Monday!  This may be the last time I say this, but I am thrilled this weekend is over.  And it was a long one.  It started Thursday with the weather reports telling us to expect the worst and for once, the meteorologists were right.  I made sure to get my errands out of the way (bank, gym, grocery store) so I could be home before the ice rain started.  No pretty fluffy snow flakes, just sleet and icy rain.  Thursday night was spent at home with the bf.  We were both looking forward to staying in and catching up on Netflix, and I had just bought a load of ingredients for some new recipes I've been dying to try.  Doesn't that sound delightful?  School closings for Friday had already been announced, so we looked forward to sleeping in a little and working from home together the next day.

We awoke around 7:30am on Friday morning to the sound of tree branches creaking and snapping.  Otherwise, the world was silent.  I got up to make tea and turn on the news for a weather update.  Roads around the city were completely iced over.  We weren't going anywhere.  I started to get a weary feeling in my stomach that this wasn't going to be good.  There were already reports of power outages.  By 8:30am, ours went out.  When this happens, you know a tree fell down and took some critical power lines with it.  It's not a simple fix- the outage has to be reported, and then you wait for the trucks to roll in and the heroes to get things up and running again. 

I know people in other parts of the country make fun of Texas for shutting down in winter weather, but this is what happens to us here!  This happened a few miles from our house.

New York State of Mind

This weekend the bf and I took a little trip to NYC!  There were a lot of things going on there this weekend: the New York City Marathon, the Saints vs. Giants game, and your everyday general revelry.  We had a terrible time finding a reasonably priced hotel room for a Saturday night stay (nothing under $300), and as luck would have it, a friend of a friend needed a dog sitter that night, so we found ourselves in a fabulous Greenwich Village apartment hanging out with the cutest puggle named Levi!

Catching the sun rise on the plane... It was an early Saturday morning flight!

The bf and I have both been to NYC before, so this trip was about enjoying the fall weather and eating delicious food rather than running around to tourist destinations.  We enjoyed Greenwich immensely.  Saturday's highlights included:

A late lunch at Meme...

Surviving Halloween

Happy Dios De Los Muertos!  As I type this, I'm sitting in my kitchen having just scarfed down two breakfast tacos from Taco Joint and am making my way through my second cup of coffee.  I was a zombie yesterday.  And I'm a zombie this morning (which I guess is appropriate for DDLM).  But with no less makeup on my face/neck/arms/legs.  I'm still rocking dark circles under my eyes.  Oh Halloween, you're a harsh mistress. 

If you're strapped for cash and don't want to spend $40 on a Halloween costume, the zombie look is for you.  Just run over some old clothes with your car and slap some cheap white/black/gray makeup on your face and you're ready to go!

Yesterday started innocently enough: at work.  Buuuut there just happened to be a Bloody Mary and mimosa bar in an empty cubicle.  And Jell-O shots.  Lots of Jell-O shots.  I was proud of myself: I only had a Solo cup of champagne (filled up about a quarter of the way) and one Jell-O shot.  I should explain... The company I work for is big on celebrations and Halloween is the biggest.  Which is pretty awesome, albeit exhausting. 

Land of Enchantment

I absolutely LOVE New Mexico.  My bf and I recently took a weekend trip to the southern part of the state, which I'd never visited before.  Last year my brother moved to Santa Fe to work at an art gallery there, so I advantageously visited him four times.  The food, the art, the breathtaking scenery, the afternoon storms that roll in...  It was heaven to me, but for my brother who was 24 at the time, it was boring, as the average age of a Santa Fe resident is 70.  He had some incredible opportunities to work with local artists such as Forrest Moses.  It's no wonder Santa Fe is  home to so many creatives.  The surroundings are inspiring and I believe there is something otherworldly that draws people to the Land of Enchantment.  Here are somethings I adore about Santa Fe.  Let's starting with the Great Outdoors.  On one visit, my mom, brother, and I hiked the Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument...

Exploring OKC

This weekend I made the drive to Oklahoma City to hang out with family and attend my ten hear high school reunion.  (The bf got a pass since he was in conveniently in Denver for a bro weekend.) My high school career was... interesting.  Let's just say I enjoy grown-up life much more.  The reunion was a trip.  I'm in favor for calling it what it is: "Popular kids meet at the bar." 

I met a friend across the street at this dive for a pre-reunion drink.

The night started out just like my first day of high school, with my mom dropping me off and quickly taking a pic of me before anyone driving by could realize what a huge dork I am!

Even though I did not hang with the cool kids in high school, I had a surprisingly good time at the reunion.  Everyone was really nice and this time around I felt confident enough to talk to anyone.  I just asked them about their kids and then they did all the talking.  In my real life, most of my friends are not married and only two friends have kids.  These people have wasted no time making babies!  I was part of the 5% in attendance who were unmarried.  Which explains why a couple of the jocks were hitting on me towards the end of the night.  They were drawn to my unadorned wedding ring finger like moths to a flame.  I didn't take any pictures at the reunion because it's going to be another decade before I see these kids again and if I really need to look at any them there's always Facebook stalking.

Faux Comfort Food

To state the obvious, fall is here!  This is how I know:  #PSL.

via

I've never been a coffee drinker.  The taste of burnt dirt was never appealing to me in the past, but since I work from home I like to spend some time out of the house around other humans, and that inevitably brings me to coffee shops.  Recently I've started to acquire a taste for plain, black coffee.  It still takes willpower to not order a cafe mocha when I approach the counter, but I've been clean for months.  Today I visited a new (to me) coffee shop in my new-ish hood.  I saw "pumpkin chai" written on their chalkboard under "Specials" and I ordered it.  Not because of the pumpkin, but because of the chai- I was expecting some decaf earthy tasting tea (like the chai tea I have in my cupboard at home).  I realized my mistake when I took my first sip of the sweet, creamy concoction.  It was a pumpkin spice chai latte!  I accidentally ordered a PSL!  Ugh.  Now I have to tell you all the reasons I love fall...  Just kidding.  :)  Once the drink was in my hand, there was no turning back. I drank the whole thing.  All 354,782 calories.  And. it. was. so. good.