It’s February…Shouldn’t it be raining?

It’s the end of February and with the exception of right now the weather has been phenomenal.  It’s weird to think that we are able to go outside and sit, lay, or swim laps by the pool and actually get a tan.

Sorry for all my friends on the East Coast who (SHOULD) be reading my blog.  I know the weather has been unusually great over there for this time of year, however it is pale…literally haha…in comparison to the weather going on in California right now…SO you all should be jealous. I know my friend Hillary is from the picture that I sent to her of the tan lines I got from swimming laps at the pool earlier today. 

Personally, I believe that the sun makes everyone look better...unless of course you get lobster red.  While I don’t think you should be attempting to rock your summer glow to it's full extent during the winter (ahem to all you fake and bakers), I think that people just look gross when they are all pasty white.  I am including myself in this.  I get extremely tan in the summer and the difference between the color of my skin then to how it gets in the winter is just ridiculous.  So, you could say that I am taking advantage of this sunny weather, as shown in this picture from the other day at the pool when my afternoon class got canceled.  Obviously it was just a sign that I was supposed to lounge at the pool and relax with a beer all afternoon.

We can all give a big thank you to global warming for this lovely summer like weather, which is causing our seasons to get confused.  I am all for having summer year round, but I will be EXTREMELY annoyed if it starts to rain during the actual season of summer, as we don’t have any school and have all the time in the world to just enjoy the sun.

So appreciate this nice weather while you can and go outside and enjoy it.  If you are on the East Coast, have fun enjoying your 40-degree weather with your “light winter jacket” instead of your normal huge down jacket. J

Hot Sauce

I felt that I should start my first real entry what had inspired me the most in writing this blog…hot sauce.  This topic should not come to any surprise for anyone who knows me.  You don’t even need to know me very well to know that I LOVE hot sauce.  Just one meal with me and you’ll notice. Trust me.

The origin of this crazy obsession comes from my Auntie Da who is a spicy food fanatic.  She works as a chef for a catering company in Massachusetts, and whenever she would come visit us, or we would visit her she would always prepare some spicy dish for us.  Thus introducing me into the world of spicy food.

It spiked my freshmen year of college, when I was forced to eat bland cafeteria food every single day.  I quickly noticed that hot sauce was an easy fix to make sure that I had a good, flavorful, and of course spicy meal.  I am no Martha Stewart, so this continued on when I moved off campus and started to cook for myself.  It escaladed when I started working at a summer camp two years ago and had camp food three meals a day for two months.  Camp food can be more or less worse than cafeteria food, depending on the night.  So obviously Frank’s Hot Sauce, camp’s hot sauce of choice, was on everything.  And I repeat everything that was on my tray.  My campers were both disgusted and in awe of this, some even felt inclined to try it out for themselves.

I have tried many hot sauces throughout the years. Tapatio and Cholula were my go to hot sauces for a while, as they were always conveniently in restaurants and cheap to buy.  However lately I can confidently say that Trader Joe’s Jalapeño Pepper Hot Sauce is my staple item.  It has enough flavor and spice, but not too much that you can’t taste the real flavor of the meal.  It also is under $2, which is awesome for a college student on a budget!  At home Trader Joe’s is literally a minute drive away, so I can run and get this hot sauce any time I want.  However the closest TJ’s at school is a fifteen-minute drive away and not always as convenient, which forces me to stock up.  Sadly I am running out of my current bottle and am forced to either suck it up and drive to the store or use my cheap random brand of hot sauce that I keep for emergencies solely like this.

Many people think that hot sauce is gross, but the phrase, “don’t hate it until you’ve tried it” comes to mind.  If you’re a baby you can get a tamer hot sauce, and if you like a lot of heat then there are plenty of options to choose from, either way it is a great way to add flavor to any meal. 

Finally..A Blog

So…it has finally come down to this…having a blog.  I had one failed attempt this past summer where, I wanted to have a blog about all of the ice cream that I (and my stomach) encountered spending this summer on Cape Cod.  For those who do not know, Cape Cod has some of the best homemade ice cream around, and I love ice cream so it seemed only natural that I write about it.  The blog only lasted for two entries, even though I continued to eat ice cream for the rest of the summer.

Now I have the wonderful opportunity of writing a blog for class, where I have to write at least one entry a week, forcing myself to keep up with it.  This I would have to say is a blessing in disguise because I have wanted to have a blog for a while.

The hardest part of putting together this blog was trying to come up with something to write about.  I wanted my “theme” to be something that I am passionate about, so that way I can, literally, write passionately about it.  I had originally had an idea for a blog about comparing the differences between West and East coast, because I have spent a lot of time on the East coast and thought that the comparison would be interesting.  But then after I spent practically an hour coming up with a cool name and web domain, I realized that I might not want to continue a blog like that for a while.  So then I sat down to start thinking of other ideas…nothing came to me. 

It was not until I started talking to Angela (shout out to you!) about other potential topics, such as hot sauce, which I absolutely love, and which you will most definitely hear about later, that I was able to come up with my final idea for my blog.

It is…a blog about my favorite things.  I couldn’t pick one topic in general so I thought why not write about all of the things that I love and that make me who I am?  So this is what this blog will be about.  

Enjoy!