long time, no talk

so, i know i have been away for awhile. okay, a looong while. but i'm going to try to start writing again.

lots has been going on and nothing has been going on. a 3 year, on/off relationship finally came to a close. with no closure. which sucks. and hurts. and just sucks.

my little kitten, lex, has grown into a cat. she is aptly fulfilling her serval-esque abilities and new scratches seem to appear on my arms daily, mysteriously.  regardless, i love her.

i finished school. finally... a little late but better than never. in actuality, it was incredibly anti-climatic.

my car was found 3 months after it got stolen. just parked on a street east of downtown, a little broken but not ruined. and by broken i mean that whoever stole it deemed it appropriate to vomit ALL OVER the inside of the car. it was disgusting. i had a really hard time saying goodbye to it though. i cried. people stared. after all, it was a present from my daddy. it kind of came to represent him in a way. so i felt that by losing it, i was losing just one more part of my dad. which left me with that much less of him.

I'M BACK...

updates coming soon little minions.

marv.com

my website of the moment is www.fab.com 

quirky, fashionable, fun. it's just plain, well, fab.

organic fresh

sometimes i just crave red meat.  i don't eat it very often, but every once in awhile i just get this urge.

a delectable steak and some fresh haricot verts (french green beans)

from the barn to the table

i've been cooking quite a bit later, experimenting with different recipes.

my latest venture was chicken poblano chowder. yummy. this recipe (see below) makes a ton so be prepared to throw a big dinner party with this as the main dish. or you can follow in my steps and freeze the majority of it for later consumption.

enjoy!

first step: grill some chicken breasts

simmer simmer

the final product

i used a paula deen recipe for the basis of this soup but added some extra ingredients, subtracted some original ingredients and just messed with it until i got a final product that was muy tasty.

chicken poblano chowder (recipe yields about 14 servings)


ingredients:
1/4 cup of olive oil
3 large carrots (diced)
2 large onions (diced)
3 stalks of celery (diced)
1 large bulb of garlic (think 7-10 cloves) (minced)
2 larger poblano peppers (diced)
1 teaspoon of salt (maybe a pinch more. i lurve salt)
1/2 teaspoon of black pepper
1 cube of chicken bouillon granules (= to 1 tablespoon)
1/4 teaspoon of cumin
1/4 teaspoon of dried thyme
3 quarts of chicken broth
3 cups of grilled chicken (cut into generous chunks)
2 cups of potatoes (i use the frozen breakfast potato hashbrown chunks)
1 stick of unsalted butter
1 cup of flour
1 cup of heavy cream


directions:
heat the olive oil in a large stockpot (i used the awesome le creuset in lime green, in case you were wondering) over medium heat (you don't want the oil sizzling and spitting at you). add the onions, celery, carrots, poblanos, potatoes, salt, pepper, thyme, & cumin. saute until veggies soften (about 10 minutes). add the chicken bouillon and stir to incorporate.  add the chicken broth and cook for around 10 minutes. stir in the chicken and cook until the chicken is heated through (around 7-10 minutes). 


do this next step while you are letting the chicken warm its bones in the soup: melt the butter in a large skillet over medium to medium low heat (you don't want the butter or this mixture to brown). add the flour and stir (i used a whisk) to combine. let this mixture cook for around 4 minutes (you don't want that raw flour taste), whisking or stirring frequently. after flour is cooked through, ladle in 1 cup of the hot soup liquid from your stockpot into the skillet, whisking constantly (this is kind of like making that italian rice that you have to stir and add liquid to frequently. the name of which has conveniently escaped me at this moment). you will add 2 more cups of the liquid (one at a time), making sure each is incorporated into the mixture before adding the next cup.  when this is complete, pour the mixture from the skillet into the stockpot and whisk to blend. stirring frequently, let the stockpot liquid & goodies cook for 5 minutes longer. remove the pot from the heat when these 5 minutes are up and stir in the heavy cream.


congratulations! your soup is ready to go. ladle into a bowl (or bowls) and grate some of your favorite cheese on top. final step: ENJOY!

new leather

i got (am in the process of getting) a new car!

crazy experience. it's my first large, large, large purchase.  i feel like such an adult.

bare naked

still no word on my car. she is probably sitting somewhere, stripped & abandoned, all alone out in the cold.

i miss her. she was a gift from my dad.

i miss her a lot.

bad car day

woke up this morning and felt like something was off.  went downstairs and saw that my car was gone. unless it has magical powers that i don't know about, it was stolen.

the thing that irks me: all my good makeup was in there.

i might need to reevaluate my mindset...

eye vs. i

lately i've been wanting to spell iphone like eyephone. i have no clue why. i think i get dumber by the day.

pin it to win it

follow me on pinterest!

http://pinterest.com/mareyh/

there are no words...

courtney stodden is one of the most fascinating human specimens that i have ever seen. she tops speidi by leaps & bounds. 

if you don't know who she is... it's your loss.  look her up.  i promise you that it will be an unforgettable experience.

hair pulling

this is the most stressed out i have been in a long, long time.  quite possibly ever (i'm not lying).

work + campaign + sociology deadline = no life & little sleep & frustrated friends

december cannot get here fast enough.

prevention

i've got the rubberband on my wrist. now, if i could only remember to snap it.

chanel (not really)

love www.cococozy.com

the other side

The following is the introduction from Scar Tissue, Anthony Kiedis' biography.  It is beautiful.  The last two paragraphs are my absolute favorite.  Enjoy.

I’m sitting on the couch in the living room of my house in the Hollywood Hills. It’s a clear,crisp January day, and from my vantage point, I can see the beautiful expanse known as the San Fernando Valley. When I was younger, I subscribed to the conventional wisdom, shared by everyone who lived on the Hollywood side of the hills, that the Valley was a place where the losers who couldn’t make it in Hollywood went to disappear. But the longer I’ve lived here, the more I’ve come to appreciate the Valley as a soulful and quieter side of the Los Angeles experience. Now I can’t wait to wake up and look out on those majestic mountain ranges topped with snow.

But the doorbell interrupts my reverie. A few minutes later, a beautiful young woman enters the living room, carrying an exquisite leather case. She opens it and begins to set up her equipment. Her preparations complete, she dons sterile rubber gloves and then sits next to me on the couch.

Her elegant large glass syringe is handcrafted in Italy. It’s attached to a spaghetti-shaped piece of plastic that contains a small micro-filter so no impurities will pass into my bloodstream. The needle is a brand-new, completely sterilized microfine butterfly variant.

Today my friend has misplaced her normal medical tourniquet, so she pulls off her fishnet stocking and uses it to tie off my right arm. She dabs at my exposed vein with an alcohol swab, then hits the vein with the needle. My blood comes oozing up into the spaghetti-shaped tube, and then she slowly pushes the contents of the syringe into my bloodstream.

I immediately feel the familiar weight in the center of my chest, so I just lie back and relax. I used to let her inject me four times in one sitting, but now I’m down to two syringes full. After she’s refilled the syringe and given me my second shot, she withdraws the needle, opens a sterile cotton swab, and applies pressure to my puncture wound for at least a minute to avoid bruising or marking on my arms. I’ve never had any tracks from her ministrations. Finally, she takes a little piece of medical tape and attaches the cotton to my arm.

Then we sit and talk about sobriety.
 
Three years ago, there might have been China White heroin in that syringe. For years and years, I filled syringes and injected myself with cocaine, speed, Black Tar heroin, Persian heroin,and once even LSD. But today I get my injections from my beautiful nurse, whose name is Sat Hari And the substance that she injects into my bloodstream is ozone, a wonderful-smelling gas that has been used legally in Europe for years to treat everything from strokes to cancer.

I’m raking ozone intravenously because somewhere along the line, I contracted hepatitis C from my drug experimentation. When I found out that I had it, sometime in the early ‘90s, I immediately researched the topic and found a herbal regimen that would cleanse my liver and eradicate the hepatitis. And it worked. My doctor was shocked when my second blood test came up negative. So the ozone is a preventative step to make sure that pesky hep C virus stays away.

It took years and years of experience and introspection and insight to get to the point where I could stick a needle into my arm to remove toxins from my system as opposed to introducing them. But I don’t regret any of my youthful indiscretions. I spent most of my life looking for the quick fix and the deep kick. I shot drugs under freeway off-ramps with Mexican gang bangers and in thousand-dollar-a-day hotel suites. Now I sip vitamin-infused water and seek out wild, as opposed to farm raised salmon.

For twenty years now, I’ve been able to channel my love for music and writing, and tap into the universal slipstream of creativity and spirituality, while writing and performing our own unique sonic stew with my brothers, both present and departed, in the Red Hot Chili Peppers. This is my account of those times, as well as the story of how a kid who was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan,migrated to Hollywood and found more than he could handle at the end of the rainbow. This is my story, scar tissue and all.

grey matter

my head is blank except for statistical information about incarceration rates and "get tough" policies... don't ask.  i swear, though, it's not because i'm doing research for my upcoming murder trial.

breezy

where should i jaunt away to for a short vacation?

i'm open to any & all ideas.

a little twist of fate

i ran into this man today in the park.  it was our 3rd random encounter.  i don't know his name. he doesn't know mine. he speaks broken english. i speak broken spanish. yet, somehow, we manage to communicate perfectly.  he remembers everything i have told him in our previous 2 encounters. i remember that he gave me a valentines poem the last time we ran into each other. the beauty of it all is that this man, a virtual stranger, has given me the clearest insight into a man's mind. through his broken words, he has told me why men do what the do, how they are scared of vulnerability. his words make what i am feeling okay, they validate me. in our brief encounters, he has given me a vast knowledge into another life and shown me what i believe is a beautiful soul.  i told him it was fate that we kept meeting like this. he told me he had a feeling that today would be the last time we saw each other, until the next life. i wanted to call after him as he walked away. to thank him for making me believe in something, what exactly i don't know. for showing me that my heart was strong. as he crossed the street, expanding the distance between us, i felt my throat constrict. i knew that i wanted to cry. but i didn't. i did what i always do. i just kept walking.

delicious dinner

every single game he'd play, he'd always win

click to below to listen to "set fire to the rain" from adele's 21 album.  it's an amazing song.  i couldn't have said it any better myself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBcMKwbMEcQ