Sylvita: Origins

So this week, there’s no Veg*n Review, instead, I thought I’d take a note from my sis and do a little intro.

I’m Sylvia, I’m the younger sister, I work in a museum, and I don’t really have a stablized family life like Pati. No kid, no husband, no house, just me, a single gal taking on the world!

Or if my life were a movie, that’s how it’d be marketed… the truth is, my life is pretty meh and I feel like I’m at that point where I’m just starting out!

It’s exciting and scary. I was one of those “lucky” twenty somethings who graduated college right in the depths of the economic downturn and so it took me three, almost four, years to get a full time job.  (now that I think of it… I coulda been a doctor by now!… oh well, I feel like I earned a doctorate in LIFE, okay?)

That time in between graduating and finally landing the job of my dreams built character, to say the least. (it really is the job of my dreams, considering that I was ready to take a job at a gym or a fast food place if I could’ve landed one). So, now when I come across a youngin’ complaining about their entry-level job they’ve had right out of graduation (which I have encountered recently)… I just roll my eyes way out into space. Kids these days… pssh!

Anyway, so you got the idea right? I’ve had a bit of an extended adolesence, like many in my generation… living at home well into my mid to late twenties… (I’ve spent the last year living with Pati though, so it was kinda like an experiment in independence) but I do plan on moving back with my parents soon so I can save up to finally strike out on my own.

But as I’ve said earlier, and as Calvin’s dad always said (from Calvin and Hobbes) “It builds character!” And I’m really glad I went through what I did post-graduation, I feel tough… like built Ford Tough. I can take on anything man, and it feels good!

So what’s it like to work in a museum? Well, first off, I don’t work in curatorial, as 90% of people assume… museums don’t run on curators alone folks! In fact, the musuem I work at has no permanent curator! But that’s more to do with the museum recovering from the economic downturn which saw half of the staff laid off a few years ago… thus, a lot of the people who work there “wear a lot of hats”… which is a nice way of saying: everyone’s a bit overworked.

I wear many hats myself; I work in Education, Public Programs, and a little bit of Visitor Services. I get to interact with schools, families, and everyday patrons, and I love it.   Yes, it is stressful quite often, but the place is great. My co-workers are all really cool, the volunteers are really sweet, and there are days where I think: “I can’t believe I work here!”

It’s been six months (three months full-time) since I started with the museum, and so I’m still getting my sea legs… which leads me to the other side of me which has been neglected a lot lately: the artist side.

I like to consider myself an artist, and I guess a crafter as well, and usually, I’ve always got some kinda project on the back burner. That’s where this blog comes in. While Pati is using this blog as motivation to organize her home life, I’m gonna use this blog to motivate my creative life. And of course, food plays a big part, hence the veg*n stuff.

So that’s just the jist of my origin story. I’m excited to share more!

Cheers!

Operation House to Home: Reclaiming the patio

It’s pretty much been summer here in LA since August 2013, and since then I have been harping too James about making our little patio a place we can hang out on hot summer nights.  Since moving into our house, the patio has basically been a catch-all room for our junk and as our dogs’ filthy little bachelor pad.  Not exactly the kind of place you want to spend a nice summer evening.   See what I mean:

I finally decided (came to the realization?) that if I want this patio to be a nice little hang out I needed to 1) Do it myself and 2) Spend some monies.  We didn’t really put a lot of money into the house when we first moved in, so that is my justification for spending ALL OF THE MONEY on getting our house in tip-top shape.  So, first I needed a plan for how I wanted to use the space.

1. Should have ample seating.
2. Needs shade from the afternoon sun.
3. CLutter free
4. The dog crates must be banished! (but there should be space for them during rainy days)
5. Spider-free
6. Functional for everyday life
7. Looks good (as in not ashamed to invite people over)
8. Easy to upkeep/clean (most important of all!!)

Now that I had an idea of what I wanted, it was time to go shopping!  I already purchased two Ikea chairs  (ÄPPLARÖ) which cost me $45 each and a green HAMPEN rug which I think may have been $39.99.  Now I needed to by some more seating, some sort of storage for dog and rabbit food, a side table, a shade, and maybe some plants and stuff to make the place feel homey.  Last week I came across this pretty nice potting bench from Cost Plus

The price was right, and to top it off, Cost plus was having a lawn furniture sale, AND they also had a coupon for 15% off a purchase of $100 or more.  SCORE!   I also bought this little capiz table to use as my side table for drinks and candles.

With the sale and coupon, the bench came out to $101.99 and the table was $33.99.  Man oh man do I love to save money.  After my little shopping spree at Cost Plus, I went over to Target and pretty much gave them all of my money.  I’ll talk more about that in my next post, but I will say this:  the end of June is THE BEST time to shop for outdoor furniture.  Apparently that’s when they start clearing everything out to make room for back to school crap.

Once I got home, I got started on cleaning up the patio and getting everything put together.  I didn’t think to take step by step pictures, but I did get pictures of my helpers!

 

 

 

 

 

In progress and the finished product!

 

Overall, it took me about 2 hours to put the bench together.  It wasn’t very hard, just lots of pieces and it probably is a 2 person project.  I actually enjoyed putting this together over dealing with Ikea crap and it feels pretty sturdy and best of all, the holes were placed in the correct spots.   Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the little side table I bought.  It came with the wrong pieces, so I have to take that back to the store.  BOO.  I really wanted to have someplace to put a drink.  Oh well.  At least the patio is looking a bit better.

Next week I’ll talk about what I got at Target and Home depot and I’ll show some more pretty progress pictures.  I won’t be able to work on this space till at least next Thursday, so everything is going to be pretty slow going for now.  Also, just to keep it real, all the junk that was in the patio is now just a few steps away.  I didn’t have time to go through everything and put it away, so I just cropped it out of the photos.  Photo cropping for the win!

-P

 

 

Sylvia’s veg*n food reviews: Victoria Vegan Alfredo Sauce

Oh Sprouts, I love that place, so many great vegan specialty goods available there and they have great produce (I get all of my fruit and veg there).  Unfortunately, I’ll be moving soon and so I won’t be so close to a Sprouts anymore, so in the meantime, every week, I’m going to treat myself to at least one vegan specialty item. This week was Victoria Vegan’s Alfredo Sauce.

Let’s just get this out of the way before we get onto the actual quality of the product… I hate the packaging, why is there a woman with presumably no top on holding little pasta shells?? Is this how you get an edge in the sauce selling game? Anyway…

I ended up buying some Hodgson Mill veggie noodles (because the price was right and it sounded healthy), they were rotini made with beet, tomato and spinach.

Cooked it all up, added some broccoli and voila:

looks as good as it tastes!

So first off, the alfredo sauce was good, and the only downside I could say is that it was a bit thin.  I always think of alfredo sauce as being thick and creamy.  A good solution to this would be to add some soy milk (or whatever milk of your choice) and maybe a tablespoon of nutritional yeast (something every veg*n should have in their pantry). The noodles were good too, although I wasn’t exactly fond of the beet noodles… or maybe I’m just biased against beets! I can’t really stand ’em.

All in all, despite the terrible packaging, Victoria Vegan makes a pretty good sauce which is good to buy in a pinch (and when it’s on sale).  I do prefer to make sauces from scratch, but for convenience purposes, this is a good choice.

My rating: 9 out of 10, since it requires adjustments, unless you like thin sauce.

 

 

 

Wow. So wordy. Introducktion. Much blog.

I have so much I want to write about , but I’ve been so busy today I think I’ll just write an introductory post.  I’m Sylvia’s older sister Pati (hence the blog name) and I live in Los Angeles, California.  I am married and live in a cute but messy house with 2 dogs and 2 rabbits.  I am a pharmacist and I’m sure some posts will talk about what I like to call the rxlife.  It’s a hard life and not as boring as some may think (eh, who am I kidding it probably is).  When I’m not dispensing drugs or giving out free medical advice,  I am a mom to the cutest baby in the world who I will just call Baby.  And yes, she is the cutest baby in the world.  Multiple studies and focus groups have confirmed it.  I am trying to decide whether I should post pictures of her on this blog, I mean I already plaster that kids adorable mug on Facebook and Instagram, but I don’t know if I want her out on the internets for all to see.  But I do plan on talking about mom stuff like mommy wars, kid crafts, and general my baby-is-so-great bragging.

So let’s see, I’ve talked about mah job and mah baby, ah yes I have forgotten about the tie that binds sylvia and me together….FOOD.  Food is going to have a very big presence here, so much so that maybe we should acknowledge it as another member of this blog.  Food is big in our family.  Growing up, I think it’s safe to say that we probably looked forward to the food at holiday get togethers more than the presents.  At least I know I did.  Sylvia is my food buddy, and we’ll try to get out and try some restaurants and talk all about it here.  I will also try talking about cooking for my family, but really I hate to cook, so don’t expect too much of that going on here.

I also plan on talking about my house, trying to keep it clean (haha never gonna happen, consider that dragon CHASED), DIY, pretty much everything under the sun.  I’m hoping that by having this blog and needing to write something every week for it, it will light a fire under my ass to get things done.   Hey look, this post didn’t turn out as wordy as I thought. WOW.

-P

Sylvia’s veg*n food reviews: Helen’s Kitchen Organic Veggie Carnitas

So I’m a veg*n. What’s that little star there for you ask? Well, that’s a way that I’ve noticed those in the veg community like to refer to both vegan and vegetarian… without having to say “vegan and vegetarian”… which can be annoying  to type all the time.

I started taking animal products out of my diet back in 2008 and gradually got to the point where I am now, which is primarily a vegan diet, with the occasional animal product (such as cookies and Morning Star Blackbean burgers, which last I checked, have egg as a binder). Because of those occasional treats, I don’t call myself vegan, but I definitely strive to be. So yes, that is why I like to identify as veg*n… online at least… I have no idea how you would pronounce that in real life (Veg-asterisk-en???).

Anyway, you’ll all probably hear more veg*n rants from me as this blog progresses, but right now… let’s get down to business.

CARNITAS.

As a Mexican-American, this was a food I grew up with and loved! Carnitas are soooo good! So savory and like all food bad for you, mouth wateringly delicious. But is the taste worth the guilt of eating a poor pig? In my case, no (along with lots of other meat products I’ve given up) And sure, I can live without ever having another carnitas taco again, there are lots of other foods I enjoy just as much, but there are times when I think, “man, too bad there aren’t any vegan equivalents to them”.

So of course, when I did my grocery shopping for the week and found these bad boys:

I had to try them.

Normally, I don’t buy too many veggie-meat products. One, because they tend to be expensive, and two, even when an item is meatless, processed food is still not good to have on a regular basis. I get most of my protein from Tofu, Tempeh, nuts and beans… but I thought, might as well try them!

My first impression was… this is a pretty small package and $5??? They better be good! Upon opening the package, they lumped right out onto the pan like … well, I’m not gonna sugar coat it… it looked like dog food, but I still kept my hopes up (plenty of foods look unappetizing before they’re cooked anyway).

Sure enough, as soon as they started to brown, my appetite grew back as the soy carnitas started to look… well… more carnita-y.

I heated up some corn tortillas and added a few toppings (cilantro, salsa, and Daiya cheese) and boom! Carnita tacos for the first time in six years!

kept the ingredients pretty simple, just cilantro, cheese and some salsa, though next time I’d like to add cabbage.

So how were they?

By themselves, they had a good texture and taste, though I tasted a bit too much lime flavor. Together with all the toppings, it was delicious… my sister took a bite and even said she couldn’t really tell the difference. Oh and I’ll also note that the package was deceptively small, the portion is actually pretty big and I got full off of two tacos, with more than half of the package left for at least another two meals this week.

The only downside to these carnitas is that one of the ingredients is lime, and man, could you taste the lime. It was too limey in my opinion, and I don’t understand why it would be part of the package when lime is one of those ingredients that’s best fresh.

Really, if I want lime in my tacos, I’ll put lime in my tacos. That’s the only thing holding these carnitas back. But do I recommend them, sure! If you find yourself in the mood for tacos… they’re a good choice for taco night.

So there you have it, if you’re looking for pretty decent vegan carnitas, Helen’s Kitchen has em’… but seeing as they’re the only brand I’ve seen that makes them, it’s really your only choice and I hope you really like lime!

My Rating: 8 out of 10, btw, I found them at Sprouts.

-Sylvia