Hippie Dippie Days

Hey readers! So I know I haven’t posted in a while, but I just started an internship in the wonderful city of Chicago and it’s been taking up a lot of my time. 

Wandering the streets of Chicago really gets my mind rolling with fashion ideas. I’m not the most fashionable person, but I definitely enjoy seeing what’s new to the fashionistas of today. So, of course, on my journey to deciding what to wear, I’ve been taking loads of inspiration from the beautifully wonderful Harley Viera Newton. I like to call it my recent style crush.

So here a few photos I just love:

Happy Cinco de Mayo! For all you last-minute party planners like me, I thought I’d post a quick recipe for a yummy Mexican dessert I learned a long time ago. It’s a hit every year. 

Sopapillas-

Ingredients:

-1 bag of soft shell tortillas

-Cinnamon sugar

-Honey

-Safflower Oil

Directions:

- Heat up a deep frying pan with safflower oil

- Cut the tortillas into triangles

-Once this oil is bubbling, place the shells in the fryer

- The tortilla shell will inflate, flip over and cook until golden brown

-Let them dry

-Drizzle with honey and top with cinnamon sugar

Have a lovely fiesta everyone!

With gardening season coming up, I got to thinking- “What is a great way to help a garden?” The first thing that came to mind was composting, which I’ve already shown you all how to do.

After thinking about something I really want to do to help my garden I thought about bee-keeping.

A friend of mine just put a bee-hive in her zero-carbon cabin in the middle of the woods. She has fruit trees and an organic garden she maintains to hopefully sell at the local farmer’s market.

I knew I wanted to have bees someday. To be able to make my own soap and candles and even have honey of my own. But what I didn’t think about was how great they are for the garden! Pollination is huge, especially for the fruit trees and maintaining wild prairie flowers.

So my green tip for this month is to support your local beekeepers and maybe even start a bee kit yourself! You can support local beekeepers by checking out your local farmers markets for their honey or candles or beeswax soaps or, my personal favorite, lip balms!

Bee keeping is much simpler than it sounds, and they are fascinating creatures. Note: it will be a project and it’s just a set-up-and-leave type deal. But bees are wonderful.

Here’s a really great site that can give you the tips and tricks of the trade: http://www.homegrown.org/forum/topics/beekeeping-101-the-first-year

Good luck!

“And though she be but little, she is fierce.”

-Shakespeare

Kale Chips! One of the easiest, nutritious and delicious snacks. I’ve been obsessively making this for quite some time now.

What you’ll need:

1 bunch of Kale

Sea salt

Olive oil spray

Fresh ground pepper

Parmesan Cheese

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

2. Wash kale and let dry

3. Place kale on baking sheet in a single layer

4. Spray kale with olive oil

5. Sprinkle sea salt and pepper to seasoning

6. Cover in parmesan cheese

7. Bake for 8-10 minutes, shaking every couple of minutes to make sure kale doesn’t stick

Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

-Walt Whitman 

DO: make change

Today I had a lesson in one of my classes on the influence of the 70’s. I’ve always been told I had a very vintage personality and mindset that would fit into this era, but it really got me thinking about how much our ideals have changed. Maybe we need to stop moving forward and rewind for a second.

Aside from the wonderful music that poured out of the 70’s, what I thought was most important was our ability to facilitate change. Incorporating music and culture to design a world we want to live in. Why has that changed so much?

Everyone makes the stereotype of “hippies,” but no one really talks about all the things hippies did to fix our society peacefully.

When we wanted clean air and clean water we made the change to fix them. When we wanted equality we didn’t let anyone stop us from taking the steps to get there. When we wanted to end the war we did. Why not now? 

After a fiesta night led me to making this delicious appetizer, I’m officially obsessed.

What you’ll need:

• 1 cup pineapple (chopped)
• 1 cup mango
• 3 tablespoons cilantro
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 seeded and chopped tomato
• 2 green onions
• 2 tablespoons of lime juice
• 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
• 1 jalapeno chopped
• Tortilla Chips

(Half eaten because no one would wait for me to take a picture before devouring it!)