I've read a lot of cookbooks and The Forest Feast is the most beautiful one I've ever seen! I'm a visual person and if a cookbook doesn't have pictures for every recipe, I can't make the recipe. Erin, the author, lives in a cabin in the California woods and used that as inspiration for all her photos. The vibrant colored recipes are shot on slabs of wood and look more like an oversized art book rather than a cookbook. The layout and presentation are not your typical cookbook, for instance, there are no white page backgrounds. It's a vegetarian cookbook but Erin describes her cooking style as very simple and so her recipes require few ingredients and there's little directions in the book. It's more an eye candy coffee table book with whimsical sketches. Expect lots of creative ways to use vegetables and many of the recipes are seasonal. While it's the most beautiful book I've ever seen, the recipes are more geared for party planning as there are no entrees. But I found these balls really delicious, they're the perfect sweet treat! I stored mine in the freezer.

Ingredients:

½ cup peanut butter, softened

½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut 

1 TB raw honey

10 pitted dates, soaked

Directions: 
Recipe source: The Forest Feast by Erin Gleeson

I'm sure you've gathered from all my recipe posts  that I love to cook. I wanted to post an update to my last post about kitchen gadgets. In it I featured a strawberry huller, well when I made strawberry mimosas with the glitter champage bottles, I asked a friend to prep all the strawberries for me. She raved about the strawberry huller and said she needed one too!





Black Salt Since we're on the topic of tofu, I have to share this new to me seasoning that makes scrambled tofu taste like scrambled eggs. It has a very distinctive sulfurous taste.
Since I'm often looking up recipes online to cook, this stand makes it easy to keep my phone proped up on the kitchen counter.


Related posts:
Which Kitchen Gadgets Are Worth the Money?
Reorganizing My Kitchen and Taming Clutter
Wean Green - Glass Food Storage Containers
New Vegetarian Cookbooks for 2015

The HBO show Girls is not the modern day Sex and the City mainly because it's more realistic. The show is about four college educated girls in their early 20s living in Brooklyn struggling to find a job and always broke. So no fancy fashion like SATC and the parties are underground. Another difference is there's a lot more disrespect from men, awkward moments, and ambiguity in relationships. The main character Hannah (Lena Dunham) is an aspiring writer, self-absorbed, suffers from OCD, bounces from job to job and is often filmed undressed on the show which isn't the norm on TV since she's average weight. The humorous parts of GIRLS are the most self-depreciating parts. It also shows how unstable their friendships are, I mean it's actually unclear if all 4 of them are friends or if they secretly hate each other but stick around? My favorite character is British born Jessa, the long-haired bohemian who is free spirited and in and out of rehab. Though she doesn't seem to get much air time on the show, some of the boys get more air time than the 4 main female characters. Funny thing I just noticed, every season is always filmed in the summer time. The show is fun to watch and you can catch up with episodes on netflix. Season 5 starts February 21!

Pantone's color of the year is Serenity (light blue) and Rose Quartz. I absolutely love this soft pastel shade of pink because it's such a feminine pink and one of my favorites. I'm sure it will appear more in spring/summer collections, but here are some ways to incorporate them in winter. I'm a big statement necklace gal and let me tell you that they are a great way to add a hint of color to your outfits if you tend to wear neutrals. Here are some of my recent purchases that I'm excited to rock.


Zoya had a sale last month where four bottles of nail polish were only $15 with free shipping! I picked up Kennedy which is described as "a full coverage, pale, french beige cream". If you look at the bottle the color doesn't look very impressive, but it's the perfect shade of pale pink on my skin tone. This is the shade I wore for Valentine's Day. It's a lighter shade of my other favorite pink Amanda.

I've been in the market for a new handbag for awhile but I'm not the type of person who collects them. I buy one every year or so and sport it daily until it wears out.  But I was watching the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills where the ladies were making fun of Eileen's bag. See Eileen, like me, pays little attention to her bag and sports old bags. Kathryn said she always looks at a woman's shoes then the handbag which polishes the outfit. I think that's true because whenever I look at fashion bloggers, the finishing piece to their outfit is their handbag. Michael Kors was having a sale and I got this pink Selma bag for 50%.

Kendra Scott is my favorite jewelry line and for your birthday, you get 50% off one item. So I visited the store and tried on just about everything having a hard time trying to pick out just what I want. I ended up with the Andy bracelet in rose quartz. It's such a beautiful jewel tone color I think I need the necklace and earrings too!

How many bracelets does it take to make your wrists happy?

Last year's color was Marsala which I didn't really wear or see much of in stores.
What do you think of the color Rose Quartz? Will incorporate it into your wardrobe this year?

Valentine's Day posts:
Happy Valentine's Day!
Chocolate Face Mask
Valentine’s Healthy Breakfast
Happy Valentine's Day!

I wrote my personal resolutions and goals for 2016 and I thought why not set some for TheBlondissima. I think setting goals and making lists of things you want to achieve is so important as it keeps you on track and keeps you motivated. I already stay pretty organized by keeping an editorial calendar of topics I want to to discuss. I'm a planner addict and this blog calendar is what keeps me consistent with producing content so I won't disappear on my readers.