Measuring spaghetti

I have a hard time knowing how much spaguetti to cook. Which is of course, one little excuse for wishlisting this

(via: reykjavikcornerstore.com on Pinterest)

A.A. - ¡mío! (mine!)

Mi prima con su hija de 3 años, cuyo corazón tiene un nuevo inquilino, Leonardo (¡un minuto de silencio por Marthelo!):

‎"Mami, Leonardo es sólo mío, mío nomás, ni de su madre!" (habrá que comunicárselo a la señora)....

Espero Leonardo esté de acuerdo también :)

Translation


My cousin with her 3-year old daughter, whose heart is now occupied by Leonardo (a minute of silence for Marthelo!):

‎"Monny, Leonardo is only mine, solely mine, not even his mom's!" (we'll have to tell the woman).... 

Hopefully Leonardo will also agree :)

(Illustration via Pinterest)

A.A. - unos zapatos educados (polite shoes)

Mi prima con su hija de 3 años:

‎-Mi amor, no te pongas esos zapatos, te lastiman y te sacan ampollas.
- Ya no me lastiman mami
- claro que si, hija
- No mami, ya me disculparon!!

Todavía me acuerdo cuando hablaba con mis cosas imaginando que estaban vivas :).

Esto me recuerda a un artículo del NYT que acaba de salir sobre cómo los tacones cambian la estructura musculo-esquelética de quien los usa frecuentemente. En pocas palabras, los gemelos se acortan, los tendones se vuelven menos elásticos y hace que aún cuando no se usan los tacones, la persona sea vuelva muy ineficiente al caminar. También aumentan las posibilidades de lastimarse los tobillos y las rodillas.




Translation


My cousin with her 3-year old daughter:

‎-Darling, don't wear those shoes. They hurt you and get you blisters. - They don't hurt anymore, mommy.- Of course they do, girl.- No mommy, they apologized!! 

 I still remember when I used to talk to my things thinking they were alive :).


Btw, this reminds me of an article recently published in the NYT  about how wearing high heels on a regular basis shortens the calf muscles, changing the position of joints and tendons. This makes the body less efficient at walking and increases the chances of getting injured.


(photo from here)

Good work

I have never watched/listened to any of the Creative Mornings lectures, but this phrase surely caught my eye.  I'll add it to my set of mantras and, who knows, maybe even watch the lecture (it's 1h long).

Happy Tuesday!

(via swissmiss)

Behind every photo...

Tim Mantoani took hundreds of pictures of photographers holding their most iconic images. It's nice to know/remember the face behind the face.

(via kottke)

pixelate your art wall

ixxi is a modular hanging system that allows you to create your own large wall art - the cards play as huge pixels. The Dutch company lets you enlarge a single image, create a collage, or create an abstract pixelated piece of your choice. 


Abstract (as much as you want), modern, practical, and beautiful. Me likey!! Happy Monday!

I am not a fan of pigs, but that cute little thing by the sofa is a-w-e-s-o-m-e :). 

You can also go playful

...and it is great as a room divider!

#wishlisted - #badly


(via swissmiss)

Stay consistent

It's hard to keep in mid the new year's resolutions throughout the year (that's why I have none : P). Seriously, I try not to have a long list of things I want to do for a year. I try to think to myself, that if I come up with a resolution throughout the year, then I will try to do it. On the spot. Make the change! Maybe the start of a solar year is a good excuse to actually try to put a lot of good intentions into practice, but I also believe that these occasions are prone to overpromising and underdelivering.

Anyway, PupilPeople has a nice poster to wish you a consistent and constant 2012. I would just add: Every year starts whenever you want if you use the right argument in your modulo function :-).

(via swissmiss)

Have a great weekend!

Any fun plans for the weekend? I overbooked: I am going to the theater tonight, to a museum tomorrow, and have a lunch with friends on Sunday. In the middle I have to do laundry, clean the apartment, and work on my thesis... oh, and sleep!

Have a great one!

Source: theprivateeye.tumblr.com via Joanna on Pinterest

Indulging on Clementine grilled salmon

Hello there! I am excited to post about a new recipe that I tried last Sunday. This is a one-dish meal. Perfect for fancy lunch or a nice dinner.

The recipe was based on this one, but I ended up making something sufficiently different to actually write about it, instead of just re-posting :-). The thing is, due to certain circumstances I have an excess of couscous and clementines with me; I recently bought salmon to have my monthly intake of omega-3 oils, and I wanted to try something that involved all three (and I also owed you a salmon recipe... even though the ingredients list changed a bit : P). I am happy to share decent results!

One thing you should know, though: I am more of a pragmatic than picky cook. That is, I arbitrarily substitute/delete ingredients depending upon my pantry inventory. Feel free to try, improve, and come back with feedback ;-). Without further due...

Clementine Salmon on Couscous

Portions: I cook for myself, so I actually had to scale down the recipe... just double up the quantities and you'll get the original recipe for 2 people.

It may have taken me about 20 minutes to prepare.


Ingredients:

Filet:
1 salmon filet
1/8 tsp clementine zest
1/8 tsp lemon zest
Freshly ground salt and pepper
A few rosemary leaves (fresh or dry)
A tinge of African heat hot spices (optional)

Couscous:
1/3 cup of cooked couscous (at least a bit warm)
1 clementine
2 campari tomatoes (or half a regular tomato)
1 or 2 scallions
olive oil and lemon to taste

1. Combine zests, rosemary, spices, salt, and pepper in a small bowl.

2. Coat your salmon fillet, let it stand for 10 or 15min. Let it stand while you heat some oil* on a pan. Swirl to coat.

3. Put the seasoned face of the filet down on the pan and cook until browned (depending on how thick your filet is, this could be 3 to 5 min.)

Add salt and pepper to the other side of the steak and flip. Let it cook for another 3min or so.

4. In the mean time, chop clementine in thirds, tomatoes, and scallions. Place couscous in a bowl and your just chopped friends. I added a bit more of salt and pepper here.

When salmon is ready, place it on top of everything. Drizzle with olive oil and lemon juice to taste. Enjoy!

Last comments: I have to say I was stingy with the scallions and I regret. I didn't use the original garlic nor the onions because I was not in the mood, but having a substitute like the scallion does add to the taste. Otherwise, it's too bland. Also, for the beginner cook, watch out your salmon while you chop, you want your filet browned, not blacked (like mine :-) ).

Oh, and sorry for the quality of the pictures. It's the very first time I photo-document while I cook and I found it best to use my cellphone. It's hard enough for me to follow the recipe!

* I personally use canola oil. As far as I know, you should not saute with olive oil. Even though it is much tastier, at high temperatures its chemistry changes and it's bad for health. A common substitute is avocado oil, but I haven't tried it. For more substitutes, look over at Spectrum oils: their labels indicate whether the oil is refined for high heat or not.

A.A. - un bebecito (a little baby)

Mi prima con su hija de 3 años:

Ayer al bañarnos jugamos mi hija y yo a que yo era Marthelo y ella Anna Aurora... Yo un tanto intrigada de ver que onda con el susodicho, le digo: "te quiero dar un besito picorito (en la boquita)", a lo que ella contesta "Claro que No, Marthelo, en mi cachetito solo" Yo, sintiéndome como pavo real muy orgullosa de su respuesta hasta que agregó: (tocando su pancita) "Mira Marthelo lo que tengo aquí, es un bebecito en mi pancita y es tuyo para jugar!"

!!!!!

Translation


My cousin with her 3-year old daughter:

Yesterday when we were taking a bath, my girl and I were playing that I was Marthelo and she was herself. I was a bit intrigued by this little guy, so I said: "I would like to give you a peck".. She replies: "Definitely no, Marthelo, only on my cheek". Iwas feeling very proud of her answer until she added (touching her belly): "Look, Marthelo, what I've got here: it's a little baby in my belly and it's yours to play with!"

!!!!!! 

NYC in the 80s

Here's a great photo gallery of what NYC looked like in the 80's. Here are some of my faves:

I am impressed by how the twin towers dominated the skyline. 

I see/feel it very differently now that I have lived here for a while than just seeing it on TV.

Graffiti seemed to be much more of a common (under) street art than what it is now!

This looks like a movie set... Instead it was the actual lobby of a building downtown!

There are things that don't change much: like Converse sneakers : P.

Here is the link to the gallery again. I recommend browsing it, especially if you like NYC for any reason. It has very cool shots.

(via kottke)

'Don't make me do this!' The equations screamed

NPR published today a fun post in their sciency blog about how equations could complain about things you make them do.

I am not sure if the equations would actually complain, but a couple of the results definitely made me giggle :-). Here are a couple:

on a mesh yields ...

and 

gives you a different (and much longer) way of greeting someone:

Nice way of greeting a Tuesday! Click here if you want to see more. Have a good one!

Teapot for masochists

Designed by Jacques Carelman.

(via Jesús Silva-Herzog's blog)

Every Presentation, Ever

(via swissmiss)

Spruced up wooden utensils

Happy Monday!

We had a very chilly weekend here in NYC (maybe the reason for which I have a very bad cold :( ), so I thought I would try to cheer up with a colorful post.

This one (pics and all) comes from Oh Happy Day, a blog about party planning:

Add a colorful detail to your (already nice) wooden utensils by drilling a hole and adding a ribbon flag. Yes, that's it. Simple and beautiful!

I just love it.  It looks great and it seems easy to do. If only I had an electric drill :-). I feel like this could be used for labeling too. I really don't like it when people use three spoons or forks because they don't know which one is theirs anymore. It's such a waste!

As if I was a continuously throwing parties I follow blogs that post ideas for events. I like crafts; I just don't have the time nor material to try to follow them. I fantasize how I will try to do them more often when I have a family, ha! We'll see. In the mean time they do inspire me to look for my own very small DIY projects, though... That makes me happy :-). I may end up blogging about them too. Have a good week!

Spray it, don't squeeze it!

I will steal kottke's words on this: "When life gives you lemons, turn them into spray bottles"!!

Such a cool attachment for lemons! I wonder how well it works. If it works, it would be good to train someone  into the Mexican practice of putting lemon juice into almost anything edible :-).


(via kottke)

NatGeo: Photo Contest 2011

I just stumbled upon the winners of the 2011 National Geographic Photo Contest. It's always breathtaking what people can capture with their lenses. How hard it must be to choose among all the submissions!

Here are my favorite picks. If you have some extra time, you can browse them all here.

Winner: by Shikhei Goh

Category: Nature

Honorable Mention: Anuar Patjane

Category: Places

I didn't particularly like neither the winner nor the honorable mentions of the People Category, so I picked one from the submissions of week 12. I love the colors and the cheeks of the boy.

Participant: Jun Park

2-sided sleep mask

For a frequent flyer like me (or at least that I used to be!), this is just awesome:

I think I would usually keep it showing the "wake me up for meals, please" side, but I find that with age and with airlines becoming cheaper and cheaper on their meal offerings (at least in the US), I sometimes prefer to sleep. Age, what are you doing to me??? 

Which side would you be your most common?

(via swissmiss).

P.S. Another very good use for sleep masks is to use them to blindfold people for piñata breaking (!!). I did that in our last posada and it was perfect! Maybe adding a bit of color or something that covered "jetblue" would have been better, but you get the idea :-). Here is the exact moment in which the piñata was broken!

Photo by my good friend (and excellent photographer), Rodrigo.

The Perils of Yoga

My good friend Bar just referred me to this article published a few days ago in the New York Times. It describes all the not-so-well-known bad sides of doing yoga. It's pretty shocking, but I think that if you practice or you are thinking of practicing Yoga (or even Pilates), you should definitely read it.

Here are a couple of excerpts that caught my eye:

In 2009, a New York City team based at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons published an ambitious worldwide survey of yoga teachers, therapists and doctors. The answers to the survey’s central question — What were the most serious yoga-related injuries (disabling and/or of long duration) they had seen? — revealed that the largest number of injuries (231) centered on the lower back. The other main sites were, in declining order of prevalence: the shoulder (219), the knee (174) and the neck (110). Then came stroke. The respondents noted four cases in which yoga’s extreme bending and contortions resulted in some degree of brain damage. The numbers weren’t alarming but the acknowledgment of risk — nearly four decades after Russell first issued his warning — pointed to a decided shift in the perception of the dangers yoga posed.

A quote from an experienced (+40 years) Yoga instructor that had to undergo spinal surgery:

“My message was that ‘Asana is not a panacea or a cure-all. In fact, if you do it with ego or obsession, you’ll end up causing problems.’ A lot of people don’t like to hear that.”

I have recently fell in love with yoga (say, since last summer), but it was only after almost a year of exercising 3 to 4 times a week that I felt comfortable to practice it regularly. I had problems with my lower back back then and I could barely do low lounges (that is a long story itself). Luckily, I got scared (and not obsessed, as I usually tend to do), and didn't go back. I tried a variation of a yoga class a year later that I really liked, and decided to go for a full yoga practice afterwards. No pain. Today I really enjoy it, but it's also true that if I don't exercise regularly, it starts to come back. I never stopped going to my weight-lifting class and I try to run once or twice a week (not more than 25min, or my back/knees hurt). Now I know that I should definitely not quit any of these.

These are my main takeaways:

• Yoga can heal, but it can definitely hurt too.

• It's hard but imperative to know the limits of pain and of your body. 

• You should do yoga only after your body is strong enough, and look for other sources of strengthening exercises to complement and improve your practice. 

Maybe in the end exercise is a bit like agriculture (although I don't really know anything about it : P). We should not plant the same seeds over and over in the same soil if we don't want to exhaust it. We should find a balance between different crops. Especially as we age.

My favorite blend: yoga, Pilates, running, and swimming. What's yours?

UPDATE: My favorite yoga instructor just mentioned the article in our last session. I was thrilled. If there is something about a good instructor, is his or her consciousness about taking as much advantage as you can out from the practice without forgetting how to take care of your body. Kudos to Ann!

A.A. - ocupada (busy)

Mi prima con su hija de 3 años:

-Hija, ven. 
-No
-¿Por qué no?
-Por el momento me encuentro ocupada. 

Vocabulario de una niña de tres años... después de que cumplió otros 4 jaja. Habrá que fomentárselo. Regalo de 4 años, su primer libro de García Márquez. Ya en serio, seguro hay libros infantiles padres con vocabulario no trivial, ¿no? Habrá que preguntar.



Translation


My cousin with her 3-year old daughter:

-Daughter, come. -No-Why not?-I am busy at the moment. 

I would say we should foster this. Next birthday gift: her first García Márquez : P. Seriously, it may be worth it to look for something adequate. Does anybody know of any kids book with good vocab (English or Spanish)? 

A couple of cartoons on New Year's

*** This was meant to be published several days ago, but the schedule function of blogspot didn't work... grr... In any case, these are nice cartoons for a Sunday :)

I don't know why I totally sympathize :-).

Btw, in the article where he recently posted this cartoon he says that the rule is that you can keep on wishing happy new year until the 3rd week of January. However, in the most recent PhD Comic it says that after the 5th of January you are already a weirdo (?) . The Anatomy of a winter break is astonishingly accurate, though.

What do you say? I rather like the former. It gives me more chance to catch up with my wishes backlog...

(You can find Mankoff's cartoon at From the desk of Bob Mankoff )

Animated GIF of NYC Subway history

Lines of subway are drawn in the order in which they were built.

I would've never expected to see that the first subway lines were built in Brooklyn/Queens! The glorious part of the red line that I used the most was the first to be built in Manhattan :-)

Have a great weekend!

(via very-appealing)

Tackling new year's resolutions

Do you have many new year's resolutions? Do you write them down or keep track of them? I have to confess I am too lazy for that... and I am also afraid that if I try to do something "formal" about it, I will only be disappointed to see how I don't do any (or do just very few) of them.

So this year I decided I will just try not to procrastinate so much. It's unbelievable the time I can waste on the web by just clicking on random (sometimes very interesting) links on facebook, not to mention my Google Reader; both combined are a black hole.

To help myself I decided to use a whiteboard I have in my room. Every night I go back home I write a list of things that I would really like to have done before I go to sleep. Not too long. Important tasks are done first. Looking constantly at the list helps me to keep me focused. At least it has worked for these past couple of days :-).

Here is one other thing that I may not dare to try but I find fun and cute: temporary tattoos!! The image above is of a temporary tattoo designed by Christoph Niemann (ufff). The company that makes them,  Tattlys , has released that and other 3 new designs to help you tackle your resolutions. The other 3 designs are: Ok, Let’s Do This by Marc Johns, Oh, Hello There by Mike Lowery and Thinking of a Master Plan by Arianna Orland.

Would you ever wear any of these -- I mean, as an adult? Or what do you do to tackle your resolutions whether they are linked to the new year or not?

(via swissmiss)

A.A. - pluma y papel (pen and paper)

Mi prima con su hija de 3 años:

Mi hija con un papel y una pluma jugando, decía: "Mira, no vamos a comprender tu vida, porque aquí es la fase nutritiva y acá está la putarrorra ( computadora) y todos, todos tus portamientos (comportamientos) y si no ta va a ir muy mal."

Diría yo que esta frase está abierta a todo tipo de interpretaciones...


Translation


My cousin with her 3-year old daughter -- she doesn't pronounce some words very well yet, so I tried to make some analogies to how it could be in English, but this is an addition of my own completely.

My daughter playing with pen and paper was saying: "Look, we won't understand your life because this is the nurturing phase and here is the puterr (computer) and all, all your behavor (behaviorr) and if not, you will regret it."

Open to any kind of interpretation, I would say...