Chili Lime Pineapple!

Hello my anchos and cascabels!

A quick food post for you, but it's so delicious and simple, maybe it will chase away the Monday blues!  I was going to make some chili lime mango for my lunch tomorrow, but my mangoes aren't ripe enough, so instead I decided to use some of the pineapple in my fridge, and I'm so glad I did.



After I made this for my lunch, I made another batch to nibble on.

The construction could not be simpler: chop up some pineapple, squeeze on some lime juice and sprinkle on as much cayenne as you like.  The sweetness of the pineapple pairs nicely with the tart lime and cayenne and I bet it would be pretty good with a little sea salt.  Or you could give whole pineapple rings the same treatment and then grill them for extra deliciousness.

And that's all I've got for today, thanks for reading!!

love and cupcakes,
Ms. Meghan

Friday jam: is it really spring? Yes it is!

Happy weekend everyone!

I think by now it's technically saturday but WHO CARES IT'S THE WEEKEND.

I just spent a lovely evening with my family and will be spending more time with them tomorrow so let's get on with the jam!

Jam:
FRUITFRUITFRUITFRUIT

I can't wait for local fruit to hit the scene but man if I could afford it I would eat fruit all day erry day forever and ever.  I don't think this kind of deliciousness needs more of an explanation.

Jelly:

"Ice Cream Man" by Tom Waits, because seeing the ice cream trucks out and about are getting this song stuck in my head left and right. 

Marmalade:
Google Image searching for "tibetan spaniel puppies" because they are the coolest, fluffiest cutest dudes ever.  Don't believe me?  Check out this dude:

His name is Dorje and he's just the best.  He's not even a puppy at all but don't you just love his cuteness?!?

That's all I've got today, have a great weekend!!!

love and cupcakes,
Ms. Meghan

Hot pink lipstick: MUFE vs. Sephora!

Hello friends!

Once upon a time, I was Tumbling as I am wont to do, and I stumbled upon this post on The Makeup Box, comparing Sephora's Love Test creme lipstick to MAC's LE and sold out Quick Sizzle lipstick from the Shop MAC, Cook MAC collection.  The colors popped off the screen and looked so bold and vibrant, I decided to give Love Test a try.

Lo and behold it was a pretty fair color match for MUFE Rouge Artist Intense Lipstick #36, which I happen to own and love a WHOLE HECK OF A LOT.


MUFE on top, Sephora on the bottom.

So Sephora looks denser and more pigmented than MUFE but I think that's just the sheen of the MUFE lipstick.  It also appears warmer in pictures but they are pretty much the same color.  Honestly, I put them on my lips right next to each other and couldn't tell them apart.


MUFE on the left, Sephora on the right.

I honestly like the MUFE better, it's a really top quality lipstick, it's nice and creamy and wears quite well.  I'm still not 100% sure I should even be wearing the Sephora lipstick, as I have had allergic reactions to some of their lip products in the past.  I've had no bad reactions to Love Test so far, but I'm not totally convinced one way or the other.  I will say that Love Test has a noticable bad taste, not as bad as Urban Decay's lipsticks, but if you are sensitive to these sorts of things (and I am) it's worth keeping in mind.

So if you're looking for a Quick Sizzle dupe, apparently Love Test is a pretty close one, and IMO MUFE #36 is a perfect match for Love Test, so either way you're set.  But really, there's no such thing as too many bright pink lipsticks, am I right?!

love and cupcakes,
Ms. Meghan

Potato and Roasted Tomato Soup!

Hello my little crumpets and scones!

I'm going to share a delicious soup recipe with you today that is not only delicious and far superior to the canned iteration but it's also vegan and gluten free!  But truly, you won't miss the cream/butter.  I mean I'm okay with butter and I don't miss it at all in this soup! 

This recipe was definitely inspired by the "Creamy Tomato Soup" recipe from "Veganomicon" by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, and I referenced that recipe for the stock/potato quantities for this recipe.  However I've been making a roasted tomato and pepper pasta sauce for a while, and I thought roasting tomatoes would translate well for soup, and boy did it ever!  Incidentally you could roast the tomato mix for only about 30 minutes and then puree that mixture for an excellent pasta sauce. 
 

Potato and Roasted Tomato Soup

2 lbs. small tomatoes (cherry or grape) washed, cut in half

4-6 cloves of garlic, smashed

2 tbs balsamic vinegar

2 tbs tomato paste

1 tbs olive oil

½ tsp paprika

¼ tsp of dried thyme & oregano

½ tsp of salt

1 tbs of olive oil

1 medium carrot, 2 ribs of celery and a medium yellow onion diced

½ tsp of salt

6 cups stock/broth

1 lb of white or Yukon gold potatoes peeled and chopped

1. Preheat oven to 500F.  Mix the tomatoes with the garlic, vinegar, tomato paste, olive oil, paprika, thyme, oregano and salt.  You want all the ingredients to be well-combined and especially for the tomato paste to be completely mixed in with the other ingredients.  It should look like this:
   
   
2. Place the whole mix in a roasting pan (lined with foil if you like easy clean up!) and roast for 50 minutes, making sure to give the pan a shake every 10 minutes or so.  You want the tomatoes to look a little bit roasted and you want the liquid to be about halfway evaporated. It looks like this after roasting:
   
   
3. While the tomatoes are cooling in a large-ish pot sautee the carrot, onion and celery in the olive oil with the salt on medium heat for about 6-7 minutes.  Once they have begun to turn translucent and brown a little add the stock, and the potatoes, as well as the tomato mixture.  Bring it up to boil and turn down to a simmer.
4. It should take about 30 minutes for the potatoes to be cooked through, and once they are cooked, puree the mixture (carefully!) in a blender or using an immersion blender if you have one.  Once the soup is completely blended, run it through a strainer back into the pot and heat for another 10 minutes and serve.
   
   

You can garnish it with fresh basil or parsley, pesto or some cheese if you’re not vegan.  This would be great with sandwiches, especially grilled cheese or a garlicky chickpea type sandwich or just some good garlic bread. 

And that's it for today, I hope you all try this soup and love it as much as I do!

Love and cupcakes,

Ms. Meghan

The premiere of Friday Jams!

Happy Friday and May the Fourth be with you!!!

I decided to start a new weekly post on Fridays called Friday Jams!  This gives me a chance to post about things I love, or things that are my jam, jelly and marmalade!!

Jam:

So this is definitely a slow jam but what a song.  This album and this song have been in my life for 15 years, and this song has been with me for almost every crush I have ever had, which is a powerful thing.  But I honestly think this version of the song is a perfect representation of longing: Ani's performance vocally and instrumentally is a little delicate and reined in, and the slide guitar is a perfect accompaniment to represent the bittersweet tang of un/requited love.  If you like Ani, and you don't have this album, do yourself a favor and check it out.

Jelly:

Meelo is my patronus, funny eyebrows, lumpy head and all.  BE THE LEAF!  Actually The Legend of Korra has been pretty amazing thus far, I'm pretty excited to see where it goes (and to find out who Lin's father is!!!)

Marmalade:

I just started reading "Zone One" and it is so so so good.  I don't mind zombie fiction and I do read it, but most of it is just genre fiction.  This is a zombie book that defies its genre, and I would even go so far as to compare it to "World War Z".  Well worth checking out.

And that's all I've got today, have a great weekend everyone!

love and cupcakes,
Ms. Meghan

Compare and contrast: pink blushes!

Hey everyone!

I recently purchased a couple of products that seemed awfully similar to each other, so I thought I would compare.  I've got another one of these posts coming up with lipstick as well, but I'm pretty stoked on this as one of the products is limited edition and already HTF.

MAC Lovecloud versus Sonia Kashuk Flushed!



Lovecloud was released as part of the Très Cheek collection pretty recently and sold out fast fast fast at all the counters (at least the ones by me) though I just checked and you can still purchase it online (although it sold out at first). It's a beautiful pale, bright pink. It's matte, a little warm, but it's still very pink and I completely love it. Flushed is a slightly deeper bright pink, with some shimmer, it is definitely closely related to Lovecloud, but it's a little warmer, deeper and doesn't apply as smooth.



In the pan, they look remarkably similar. But once they are swatched, their differences come out a little bit more. If you can find them, both are worth owning, though the SK is a bit cheaper and much more widely available.


Flushed on the left, Lovecloud on the right

 So that's Flushed vs. Lovecloud, I hope you liked it! 

love and cupcakes,
Ms. Meghan

Juicelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Solid Food

(You can read up on day one here!)

I hinted at it on my twitter feed, but I broke cleanse*!  I KNOW.  I feel sort of guilty and then I don't and then I'm indifferent to the whole thing.  Honestly after the bowl of cappellini aglio a olio everything was garlicy and nothing hurt, and ultimately my decision was made after considering the following:

1. Time: I spent a lot of time washing, peeling, chopping, juicing, AND cleaning.  I would say at least an hour if not more each night.  I'm not a quick person, and I have small hands and minor coordination issues, so you might be faster than me.
2. Waste/cost: for all the goodness that came out of the juice, this is not a top of the line juicer and a lot of goodness (and waste for sure) was getting thrown out.  And that means a lot of money was getting thrown out.  On the other hand, I don't always use up all my produce so I suppose the difference about balances out.
3. Physical effects: I had cravings like mad and they never went away.  I never had any blood sugar crashes, but I was cold most of the time, and really unfocused and sleepy all day.  And even yesterday when I upped my juice intake, I felt slightly feverish which is my body's way of telling me that something isn't right. 

I want to try again, and I want to keep juicing, it is really nice, but I think my slightly poor time management skills plus the turn of cold, damp weather combined in such a way that this didn't work out the way I wanted it to.  I think that if I alternate days versus doing it for days at a stretch, I'll have an easier time of it.  We'll see I suppose. 

So have you tried a juice cleanse?  Did you have more success than I?  Do tell in the comments!!

*In case this confused you, straight edge people use the term "breaking edge" when they choose to starting drinking/using drugs.  So breaking cleanse = stopping the cleanse.

My first glitter gradient mani!

Soooo in the wake of not dealing well with the aforementioned juice cleanse, I completely spaced on writing my post for yesterday, so you get 2 posts today, and this one is about the sweet manicure spotted in Monday's post.  So without further adieu...my very first glitter gradient manicure!



First, let me wax about Illamasqua Nomad, which is the base for this polish.  It is MAGNIFICENT.   It is a glorious, gorgeous jade green that applies pretty much perfectly.  I had almost no clean up and it barely needed 2 coats.

I used 2 China Glaze polishes for the glitter, "White Cap" which is a sheer gold glass fleck and "Medallion" which is extra small and small gold and medium silver holo glitter in a clear base.  Both polishes are great, though I didn't really need "White Cap", "Medallion" is spectacular all on its own.

To make the gradient, I did a layer of polish on the top third of the nail and let that set for about a minute.  I then applied a thick second layer over that, and working quickly, took a clear polish and ran that over the top and middle third of the nail from the top down.  I used a clear Essie I had lying around, but any clear polish will do as long as it's not a quick drying polish.  I only had to do this all once through.



I think it came out fairly well for a first time, and if I had more patience it probably would have been even nicer!  I hope you liked this post, I'll be back later with the juice cleanse update!

love and cupcakes,
Ms. Meghan

Juice Cleanse: Day One

Hello friends!

I recently decided to hop on the bandwagon and do a juice cleanse. But I am not made of money or influence and cannot afford the $100 a day for the much talked about R.C. However, I really like the idea of resetting my body and brain a little bit, and I definitely struggle with appropriate portion size and impulse control, and that seems to be a touted benefit of doing a cleanse.  So after re-reading Hannah's post on XOJane I decided to give it a go myself. I purchased a juicer thanks to my tax refund, and I got to work.

Last night I made 2 juices, and forgive the indulgence but I have given them slighty silly names:

Green Goodness
2 handfuls of chopped kale and baby spinach
1 fuji apple, peeled/chopped
1 kiwi, peeled/chopped
4 romaine leaves, washed
1 tablespoon lemon juice (I juiced 2 lemons and am keeping that in the fridge to add as needed, I probably needed 1.5 for this juice)
2 mini english cukes, chopped
tiny piece of peeled ginger
a few parsley & mint leaves

Ravishing Red
(the inspiration for this was a frequent side dish favorite of mine which is orange ginger roasted beets)
1 beet, washed, peeled, chopped
3 medium carrots, peeled, chopped 1 fuji apple, peeled, chopped
1 orange peeled, broken up into reasonable segments
larger piece of peeled ginger
4 romaine leaves

I sent all ingredients through the juicer, though I found that I needed to send the expelled pulp back through a couple of times. Both juices came out fine. The recipes here maybe made 14 oz of juice, maybe 16 oz.? I am using 20 oz. water bottles so I just made up the difference with water. Both juices were good but it certainly was not enough to get me through the day and I came home cold, hungry and a little crabby. So I made this:
(Does that amazing looking manicure intrigue you? Check back tomorrow for the details!)
3 small tomatoes
2 handfuls kale, one of spinach
1/2 small clove of garlic
A few parsley leaves
Sprinkle of cayenne

I then added a little water to this, plus a couple of pinches of salt (!!!! I think the salt is definitely cheating!!!!) and heated up the whole mixture in the microwave. It was fine, it was obviously not a perfect substitute for the delicious, delicious pizza I am craving right now. The pizza that is in my fridge not 10 feet from where I sit. But I will ignore it and stick with the juice as long as I can, and I'll be back on Wednesday with a cleanse update!

-Ms. Meghan

p.s. Big disclaimer: I am not a medical professional and I don't necessarily recommend doing anything like this without doing research and/or consulting with your doctor.  Do what's right and healthy for you.

Featured on Temptalia: Polka Dots on Pink!

Hey friends,

Temptalia put out a call for spring nails, and since I was stuck at home dealing with major drama (UGH) but nothing to do, I decided to put together a sweet manicure to submit!


Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear polish was used for almost all of this look. Bubblegum Pink is the base, and the dots were done in Mint Sorbet and Lacey Lilac. I added a top coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust, because it's a nice subtle sparkle that doesn't hide the colors underneath it.

I've done just the polka dots as an accent nail, for my birthday manicure last year:

You can't really see them because I topped the whole look with the sinful glitter polish and it's kind of thick.

So if you want to check out the other shot of my look or all the other super cute spring manicures, just click here! Thanks to Christine for opening up for submissions, that's super cool of her!

love and cupcakes,
Ms Meghan