I'm back!

So it's been a long time since I've tried to blog, but I figured I'd give it another shot! Since I last wrote, I began working for my friend Kara at her salon, Laveau (and really, she had asked me to work for her a while back before it opened, so that was always the plan); I got six months clean again (lol); and I turned twenty-seven and finally got a surprise birthday party like I'd always wanted and it was amazing -- my boyfriend, Mitch, took me to Ryu, gave me a new deck, and then we met up with everyone at Putt Putt and played mini golf and rode go karts all night. Obviously that's a very condensed summary of the past seven months, but those are the major points thus far.

My current situation is school is starting back in a matter of days, and Mitch and I are looking to move with our mutual friend Tony, and house/apartment-hunting has never been a particularly pleasurable thing for me to begin with, but we're all beyond ready to leave our current living arrangements and it would be amazing to have our own safe space. Being in charge of what is in my own kitchen is especially important to me, and even though those guys love their junk food, I still feel it's a more positive situation than what's going on now. Plus, living with people I can feed means this whole nurturing, weirdly domestic part of me gets to come out, because I don't ever cook for just myself, and I actually enjoy cleaning small spaces that I can say are mine. Maybe that's the Cancer in me, or maybe I'm more maternal than I care to admit... Hopefully not.

I decided to make dinner for Mitch last night, and being vegetarian with gluten and lactose intolerance is already difficult enough without having to involve someone else. So I'm constantly looking for something to try, and while on Instagram I found this baked Middle Eastern sweet potato from @earthfawn. I had already been craving sweet potato and I'm always down for fresh vegetables and anything Middle Eastern/Mediterranean. 

Baked Middle Eastern Sweet Potato
Ingredients (serves two):

• Two sweet potatoes 
• One tin chick peas 
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, sliced in half 
• 1/2 cucumber, diced 
• 1 cup parsley 
• Salt, pepper, onion and garlic powder 
• Black sesame seeds 
• 1/2 lime for garnish 

Sauce:

• 1/4 cup tahini 
• Juice 1/2 lime 
• 1/4 cup water (or more if you prefer a thinner sauce) 
• Salt and pepper to taste 

Method:

1. Place both sweet potatoes in oven and bake for 20 minutes. When slightly softened, take them out and slice them in half. Pop them back in the oven for another 30-40 minutes or until cooked. 
2. While baking, rinse your chickpeas and mix with onion powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper and put in oven underneath the sweet potato. Bake for 40 minutes or until crispy. 
3. Mix together ingredients for your sauce. 
4. Slice cherry tomatoes in half, dice cucumber and pluck parsley for your garnishes. 
5. When everything is ready, assemble your dish. Fluff the centre of your sweet potato up and place on the plate. Drizzle sauce over them, scatter your chick peas all over the plate, and your garnishes of cucumber, tomato, parsley, half lime and black sesame seeds to finish.

It turned out surprisingly well, though it wasn't nearly as pretty as her picture, and I couldn't seem to find sesame seeds to sprinkle on top. It was definitely a different taste and I worried Mitch wouldn't like it, but he assured me that he did. Since one serving was a whole potato, I could only eat half and took the rest to work for lunch, and it was actually pretty good reheated. I used one of the lime slices I saved to add more juice before microwaving it for 90 seconds, and it was delicious. The whole thing was mostly waiting on it all to cook more so than doing any actual work, which I am totally good with.

Today, Erica decided she wanted to cut all of her hair off. She's gone through every different color of the rainbow (many of which, recently, can be found in my portfolio), but then decided she wanted to stick with red and grow it out healthy, only to have a lot of breakage after color removing. I'd just cut about two inches off the other day, and I'm always down for some serious transformations, so when she told me to just have at it, I grabbed my carving comb and didn't look back.

Erica has a lot of natural wave to her hair that has been lost to chemical damage over time, so doing the entire bob with a razor gave it just enough pop to release that natural texture. I diffused it with Kevin Murphy Hair Resort Spray, refined her waves with a Paul Mitchell Neuro Unclipped 1.25" titanium cone, and then defined them with Kevin Murphy Easy Rider. It was really fun to do, partially because I hadn't done a complete razor cut in years, but mostly because of the fact that she wears it natural nine times out of ten so it didn't have to be perfect. I pride myself in precision cutting, but it's nice to be able to be messy and free sometimes, too. About a month ago, she had Kelly give her a triangular undercut, and this length will make that significantly easier to grow out once the weather starts to cool off, and in the meantime, it's already off of her neck. 

Tomorrow is one of my last Thursdays off before my entire schedule changes for the semester, so I'm looking forward to just being a gym rat most of the day, and then going to a late pole class. For now, finishing The Butterfly Effect with my sister and off to bed. Good night!