Author Archives: Katherine Swanson

Finn McCool’s with ABC University

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Yesterday I went out with Emily, Leanna and Adam (err I mean Frank) to Finn McCool’s in Santa Monica. ABC University is a group of young professionals exploring the bar scene in LA one letter at a time. Yesterday was bar “F”. Those with “F” first names got appetizer specials. Overall, ABC University is just a good time.

I spy specials:

Finn McCool’s is your typical Irish Pub. It’s on Main St. in Santa Monica, an area I really need to explore more, and has tons of space.

We were sad that no one in our group had a “F” first name but then in a moment of brilliance Adam changed his name tag and became “Frank”. He even got to wear medal!

When you go to ABC you have to wear a name tag with your name and major. Here is mine…

Obviously I majored in gin martinis. I mean, that is what I’ve studied since I’ve been 21. Last night, however, I ordered a beer. Hey, when your in the Irish bar you should really order a beer, right?

After drinks we were having a good time and we decided to make an impromptu trip to the bowling ally around the corner!

Holy throwback! I haven’t been bowling in SO LONG! I cannot even remember the last time I went.

Of course, if your going bowling there is a pit stop that you have to make before hitting the lanes.

Little old me didn’t know that bars in bowling alleys are customary, but they are! Apparently in Chicago there are also laundry mats in bowling allys?! That is amazing.

Bowling is so much more fun with margaritas (on the rocks with salt) so obviously we got margs before hitting the lanes.

I have to say that I am a terrible bowler. I did, however, manage to bowl a spare and a strike. I only bowl well when Foreigner or Cutting Crew is playing. Unfortch, they only played two songs that fall into that category.

Here is the evidence of my bowling suckage:

Can’t win them all! At least I have my sense of humor (and a 31!). Overall, an awesome time was had by all. Definitely check out ABC University on facebook!

How to get yourself to study on Friday

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How do I get myself to actually be productive on a Friday afternoon?

Easy. Coffee from Espresso Profeta. Specifically, their Pacific Northwest Macchiato.

I love when people take coffee seriously and these people take coffee seriously. The barista even said that I should let him know if the taste was off because the macciatos are different when they are decaf. Love that! Of course it was delicious and helped me power though my Critical Race Theory reading.

Tons of updates coming tonight and some behind the scenes baking is underway!

A Preview

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I made my bev mo run today and I have a preview of what is to come this weekend. Let’s just say I picked up a little French friend.

Apologies for the poor photo quality- this has been blogged via iPhone because my camera battery died.

I ate nothing I prepared myself today because I went to student group gatherings for lunch and dinner. May I just say that If you are at UCLA LAW youshould join outlaw and CRS. Great organization and specilization with cool people and they also have superior quality meal items like Thai and Indian food.

I have to go now- I am a slave to evidence.

Primitivo

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Is there a better way to end a weekend than with Sangria Sunday? I don’t think so! My friend Kelly feels the same way so we decided to finally try out Primitivo last Sunday.

Primitivo is a tapas restaurant and bar located on Abbott Kinney in Venice (one of my favorite spots in Los Angeles). Sangria Sunday is essentially their happy hour menu. Kelly and I tried items off the happy hour menu and the regular price menu. We go all out.

The decor in Primitivo is eclectic and they have a great bar that appears to have a wonderful wine list.

There is also this interesting painting of a glittery tiger drinking from a pool. Good eye Kelly.

But lets focus!

We were here for two things:

Sangria:

So good. It was somewhat fruity and had a distinct red wine flavor. It was pretty strong, but I’m also kind of a cheap date.

Aside from sangria, we also came to Primitivo for delicious tapas. We were not disappointed. We ordered several items off the Sangria Sunday menu and one special item off the full price menu. One of the many reasons that I love tapas is that you can order a few dishes and then add more throughout the meal.

First we tried one of my favorite dishes, bacon wrapped dates with chorizo.

Sweet and smokey. Can’t go wrong with bacon wrapped dates.

We also had heard good things about the sliders:

Moroccan Lamb with pine nuts and tzatziki (def the favorite of the two) and BBQ Short Ribs with cabbage. The short ribs were also very good. These sliders were some of the best sliders that I have had in recent memory.

Because the short ribs were so good we decided to order short ribs with cheddar mashed potato. It was so good that I dug right in and forgot to take a picture until it was half gone. Whoops.

Blogger fail!

Moving on. We decided at this point that we were still hungry. We got more sliders, another round of sangria and our favorite tapas dish of the entire meal: Tiger Shrimp with garlic, lemon, white wine and chili flakes.

Lets take another glamor shot:

So yummy! The shrimp was sauteed to perfection but the real star of the dish was the sauce. It was so good that we refused to give up the broth after the shrimp was gone. The waitress clearly has seen this kind of hording of sauce before and brought us a bread basket to use as a mechanism for eating the rest of the sauce. The buser than tried to take it away and we had to stop him. He gave us a raised eyebrow, quasi judgmental look but it was totally worth it for the rest of the sauce.

Last we ordered calamari. It was pretty good. The standout of this dish was the pesto aioli. It would also have been great on the bread.

Overall, Primitivo was fantastic! Definitely try and go during Sangria Sunday. It isn’t that busy and lots of the best dishes are marked down. The only downside is finding parking, but its Venice and isn’t $4 sangria worth it? I think so.

New Obsession

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Post run I was craving gelato so I got my fix from Whole Foods.

I have a new favorite gelato.

I cannot tell you how much I love to see this on a label:

Creamy and delicious. Clearly I had to top it off with Chocolate Chips!

MMM. Washing my gelato down with a viewing of “If God is Willing and the Creek Don’t Rise”. Education yourself about post Katrina NOLA people! Ignorance shouldn’t be an option. Hoping it’s a good follow up to “When the Levees Broke”. I’ll probably be crying into my gelato in about 1o mins.

Honey Mustard Chicken with Corn and Roasted Potatoes

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If there was one meal that I loved as a child it was chicken with honey mustard sauce. The sweet and tangy honey mustard has continued to be a favorite as I have gotten older. Obviously I am not eating chicken fingers with honey mustard all the time but I decided to try a more “adult” variation on the theme of chicken fingers with honey mustard.

I got my recipe from the Trader Joe’s cook book. It’s a great resource for easy recipes with a limited number of ingredients.

This is where I got my honey mustard chicken recipe from. Then I collected my ingredients.

This is what you need:

First things first: start the potatoes. Like I always do, chop up, add S&P and EVO. Toss and place in an oven heated to 350 degrees. Let it be while you prep the other food.

Then you have to prepare the chicken. In a small bowl take 1/8 a cup of flour and combine with salt and pepper.

Mix it up and coat both sides of the chicken. Make sure the excess is knocked off.

Then take out a pan, place one tablespoon of EVO in the pan, heat it up and brown the chicken on both sides.

And now, while it is browning, it is time to multitask! This is when we make the honey mustard. It’s super easy.

Take a 1/2 cup of mustard, and 1/2 cup of honey and some basil. I’m sure you could increase of decrease as you need to.

Super easy! Taste test and adjust as you need to. Side note: I had leftovers and put it on a turkey sandwich and it was ah-maz-ing.

At this point the chicken should be done browning. Take it off the heat and into a pan that can go in the oven. Spread over the top of the chicken and place in the oven for ten mins. Save some HM to apply to the other side of the chicken later.

While you are waiting for the chicken to cook uncork that bottle of wine.

I tried a petite syrah the other night. It was pretty good. I love red wine and I am quickly becoming an expert on the cheap side of the TJ wine section. If its a vino under $6 and its red, I’ve probably taste tested it!

While I cooked Isala watched and “commented”.

She’s such a character!

OK. Back to work! Take the chicken out and flip it after 15 mins. Apply more HM sauce and put back into the oven for 15 mins. Time to get cracken’ on corn.

As a Midwesterner I am skeptical of CA corn. However, my mother was with me last week at the FM and taught me how to evaluate corn to determine if its good. Mostly you want to see that the kernels are large and in a row. You also want the husk to be damp. At my FM some of the corn was already shucked which I was told is bad and will dry it out. Shucking corn isn’t that hard, don’t buy it pre-shucked.

It should look something like this:

Very good. Bring unsalted water to a boil and put the corn in until it seems done.

At this point, your also going to want to take out the potatoes. I have to say, the potatoes were roasted to perfection! Maybe its because I used a lower heat than I usually do to roast (350 as opposed to 425).

Holy Yum!

At this point the chicken should be done as well as the corn. Literally just take the corn out of the water and plop it on the plate. You, of course, want to make sure your chicken is fully cooked.

Yum. The potatoes were delicious and the chicken was super moist. As stated above, the honey mustard was delicious and simple. Great to use on sandwiches or as a dip! The corn was good. It’s not Midwestern corn but it isn’t half bad. A meal I will be making again and a great adult twist on a classic.

Brentwood Farmer’s Market

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Normally I am very faithful to the Santa Monica Organic Farmer’s Market but today I decided it was time to branch out a little bit. I was on Montana in Santa Monica to attend a cooking class taught by my friend and cooking pro Scott. After learning how to make butter (!) I hit the Brentwood Farmer’s Market.

The Brentwood Farmer’s Market has more prepared food and gift items than Santa Monica. I got the essentials and then I wanted a small lunch. There were so many stands to choose from but one caught my eye.

All the sandwiches looked good but I really wanted to try the smoked salmon special! I heart smoked salmon and it was available in a half size which is perfect for me. I have early Sangria Sunday planned for later so I really only needed a small portion to hold me over. I placed my order and had to wait 15 mins. While I waited I watched the sandwich maker. I was completely entranced.

I grabbed the sandwich and made my way home to do some reading and enjoy my lunch.

I enjoy coming home because I can use my own supplemental food, rather than buying more while I’m out. My sandwich did come with a side of olives!

So delicious.

The sandwich had arugula, smoked salmon, dill and a cream cheese on whole wheat.

Worth the wait! This sandwich reminds me of one that I used to get all the time at Flour in Boston. The spiciness of the arugula and creaminess of the cream cheese with the cool smoked salmon was a great combination.

Overall, I love SMFM but I will probably go to Brentwood FM occasionally if the Saturday FM run doesn’t work.

Healthy Saturday

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Happy Saturday!

Today has been a chill day. Mostly I have run errands and done reading for school. Soon I am going out on my long run. As some of you may have gleaned, my training runs have been a but jumbled up this past week. I realized yesterday that I have to do my long run today because Sunday is going to be busy. Because Saturday is long run day, yesterday became a rest day. Although, I must say that my arms are still sore from pole dancing class! I plan to go again. It is an amazing arm workout which is just what I need!

This morning while reading I enjoyed a cup of coffee in my new mug…

Obviously it was with a side of peanut butter toast. I’m probably going to have another before I go out on my run.

My stomach was grumbling around 1 so I made a healthy lunch at home.

Sandwich, pita chips, poulet, chocolate chips, and black iced tea.

The sandwich was farmer’s market inspired:

Ezekiel bread with hummus, radish, spinach, heirloom tomato (!), and turkey. I love an heirloom. It makes it so, so delicious and fresh.

Supplemental food:

I love a side of chocolate chips with lunch. It satisfies my chocolate craving every time.

In other news:

I recently joined the website healthylivingblogs.com. Here is a little bit about the site:

Healthy Living Blogs is a new resource for the health blogging community. Created by Lindsey of Sound Eats, HLB is a site designed to enhance the positive community of the healthy living blog world. Bloggers and readers can explore the site and find more blogs to love, bloggers in their area, and forums to deepen healthy discussion and support. If you’re interested in having your site listed on HLB, simply send the following information to healthylivingblogs@gmail.com and check the site out for yourself!

  • Email subject line: MEMBERS

  • Your name (please share if you prefer to go by first name, first and last, or however you prefer to be known on the Internet)

  • Blog Name

  • Blog URL (please start with http://, not www.)

  • Your twitter handle, if applicable

  • Your location (if you prefer not to disclose this information for privacy’s sake, that is completely understandable. We’ll simply include your blog listing in the A-Z listing, not by location, too)

  • Any specific labels (i.e. vegan, gluten-free, weight loss, running, etc.)

I love the healthy living blog community and I am so excited to be part of the community. The healthy blog community is awesome and so supportive of my running, weight loss and is a fantastic resource if you want to learn more about having a healthy lifestyle. The best part of healthylivingblogs.com is that they inventory blogs by location. I really want to connect with other LA area healthy living and food bloggers. So feel free to check out the site!

Return to the Crow

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Last night Catie, Emily, Leanna, Leanna’s boyfriend Adam, and I returned to the Thirsty Crow in Silver Lake. We went to the Thirsty Crow in July to celebrate Emily’s birthday. Last time we were there we had a great time so we decided to go back yesterday night.

We started off the night with a round of their signature drink, The Thirty Crow.

The drink is a mix of citrus, whiskey, bitters and ginger beer. I’ve had so much whiskey the past few weeks. Who am I?!

I had a sip of this drink the last time we went to the bar. This time the drink seemed much more ginger-ey which is good because I love ginger. Its one of my favorite flavors. I really liked this drink and I would recommend it. Honestly if I were to go back I would probably try their mint julep because they have a killer cocktail list.

After a considerable effort we managed to wrangle a booth for the night. Leanna is a master booth wrangler. She literally stormed the booth!

Hey girls.

The crowd at Thirsty Crow last night wasn’t as fun as the last time we went but its still a great bar and I imagine we will be back. I got home at a reasonable hour because school is in session meaning I actually have to work on the weekends. I miss the summer already!

How are you spending your weekend?

And now for something different

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new year….

new do….

Readers know that I rarely do things that are impulsive. Generally I weight pros and cons.

But it’s 2L, I’m a year older, I lost 21 lbs. It was time for a change and I’ve never shied away from a change. You know the Emma Watson pixie cut? Yeah, I had it 8 years ago.

As you were…