Cowgirl food

Today was rough, mostly because I failed to go to sleep last night. Like, at all. So, needless to say, I did not feel at my best today.

However, the feelings expressed in my previous blog entry have mellowed out somewhat. They have not disappeared, and while I don't anticipate that happening in the near future, I am grateful to be in a somewhat more composed state of mind.

Today I helped my parents decide on a new comforter for their bedroom. We went to Macy's and looked at some items my mom had already checked out. As my mother was looking for the styles she has seen already, my eye was caught by, of all things, a bed in a bag.

Now, I think the "bed-in-a-bag" gets a bad wrap, but it's actually really convenient. And this one was beautiful. It combined my favorite colors of the moment: gunmetal grey and purple. Sigh. Bliss. My dad and I dutifully looked at the various bedspreads she was interested in, and the whole time I was waiting until I could go look at that comforter again. She said she had one more to show us and looked around for a minute or two. When she found it and motioned us over, which one do you think it was?

The one I loved! Good job, Mom! I saw it as a sign and immediately persuaded her to get it. She did. Here is a picture that does not do the beautiful spread justice. The lighter silver is a beautiful shine, like metal embroidery thread.

You see those accent pillows on the spread? They come with it! Genius! No sheets, but otherwise, what you see in this picture is what comes with the bag. I'm excited to design a room around it.

After that, since we were already in the posh new shopping center, Summit Fair, we decided to eat at a new sushi place there. I really liked it, and ended up having a sushi roll called a Golden Dragon. It was spicy crab meat with avocado and cream cheese, wrapped in tempura strips of banana, then topped with more tempura banana. Wow! To be honest, it was a little more sweet than I like my sushi, but it was exciting to try something new, and the wasabi around the plate helped spice it up. I decided that this was like the upscale sushi place in town, while our normal sushi place is more of the Mom 'n' Pop place with the "comfort" sushi.

By the way, in case any of you do not know, sushi is my absolute favorite food on this planet. And while I'm excited to move to a very small town, one thing that I know I will miss is sushi. That, and thai food, will become my standard when I visit the city. I will have pad thai for lunch and sushi for dinner, and my stomach will sing with happiness, and my taste-buds will melt for joy, and all will be right with the world again.

Anyway, I digress. Maybe someday I'll write an entire post about the beauty of sushi. But until that day . . .

I came home and showed my mother this amazing online tool to plan rooms. It's called the icovia Room Planner, and basically, you can plan out and design a room online for free. You can even change all the dimensions of the room, furniture, and accessories so that they perfectly match your exact space. It's saved me a lot of muscle work, for I can just plan it online until I find a furniture arrangement that works instead of manually placing each piece in multiple arrangements. We enjoyed ourselves.

I then spent the rest of the night looking up recipes. Talking to my parents earlier, I mused upon the fact that my grocery choices will be more simple in a smaller town, so figuring out what to do with the same ingredients all the time will behoove me greatly.

Like I have mentioned to multiple people, I am very inspired by The Pioneer Woman and her blog. Not only does she write great anecdotes that encourage me about moving to the country, she also creates some very country-friendly food by using staple ingredients. This particular sandwich is her husband's, whom she calls Marlboro Man, favorite. So simple. Onions, cube steak, and a toasted bun. And, of course, very, VERY bad for you! Can't wait to try this one out on my own and on any house guests I invite over in my new, small town. Maybe I can make some new friends through yummy, simple food.

This is the other confection that I was caught by. My good friend, A, and I both share a love for chocolate truffles covered in sea salt. Chocolate + salt = YUM.

Also, I could substitute caramel for it. Because caramel + salt = DOUBLE YUM. I absolutely love the chocolate caramel truffles with sea salt at this artisan chocolate maker, Cocoa Dolce.

This is a little less simple than that sandwich up there, so maybe I can lure people in with my simple, down-home cooking and then wow them with amazing, hand-made chocolate truffles. New friends, here I come!

Oh, and by the way, old friends, I'll make this for you too! But you have to promise to come visit me in my new digs.

And new digs might be obtained on Friday. Yikes!