bad hair day

As part of my going-natural process, my bad hair days are on the rise :-/ On a day-to-day basis, I never quite know how my hair is going to turn out. The funny thing is, that is one of the things that a lot of long-time naturals (on the blogs I've been following) cite as being among their favorite parts of having natural hair. I think it's just more frustrating for me because I'm still transitioning and I haven't quite gotten my hair routine down.


I have a black tie event tonight for work and I'm not feeling great about how my hair is going to look in a formal setting. I co-washed my hair night before last so I kinda assumed it would be alright for today with a simple re-wetting via spray bottle...not so much. It looks/feels dry and frizzy :-(


This morning I've been going back and forth trying to decide whether I can justify (financially and practically) going to the hairdresser this weekend...it would basically make it my 3rd trip in like a 6 week period...way more than I usually go. And I'd have to drop $60+ just to cut off a biiiiit more (b/c I don't want to totally BC yet...at least i don't think i do but you never know!!!) of my relaxed ends. Sigh. At the same time, I'd rather spend the money and feel good (better) about the way I look lol. And for those of you thinking "Oh just go to Super Cuts" or one of those cheap walk-in salons....Never again!! I did it once and it was not smart...at least not for someone with my texture/cut.


Guess I'll go ahead and give Perry a call....




Today's *big chune* isn't new or anything but it just popped into my head and it's a really pretty reggae duet...and shockingly (for a caribbean-artist) the music video is actually pretty good lol.
Taurus Riley and Alaine: Forever More





:-D
 

what i cooked (and did to my hair) this week

I've been slacking on the food blogging this week. So here's a recap:


This past Saturday I made cornmeal banana pancakes from a Food Network recipe (thanks Emeril!) This particular recipe called for egg whites which gave the pancakes a nice airy texture. It also called from both milk and yogurt, which made them nice and moist. The cornmeal flavor wasn't as pronounced as I was expecting but they were overall quite delish. I definitely plan to incorporate egg whites into some (or all) of my future pancakes.

By the way, have I mentioned that we don't use syrup? Instead, we use a different topping (in the Fall/winter we used a yummy pumpkin butter spread from TJ's...recently we've been using fruit preserves/jam) and always have fresh-made (in Nix's VitaMix) apple sauce. PURE MAPLE syrup is fine but for those of you who use Aunt Jemima or those other "pancake syrups" you may want to check the ingredient labels. Syrup isn't even listed as an ingredient in some....so you're basically consuming high fructose corn syrup. Enjoy!


I also made those muffins I mentioned last week. I just tweaked my quinoa banana bread recipe by adding the following:
- whole wheat flour
- oat bran
- a dried berry mix from TJ's
- walnuts
- yogurt (obv!)

I think that's all I added....they came out really nicely I think. Forgot to take a pic tho! I actually wanted them to be heartier...more like a bran muffin, but I'd definitely need to add much more oat bran for that effect and Nix wasn't really feeling the idea. Next time perhaps.

Nix did lots of baking of her own this week as well! First up, she whipped up a chocolate bread pudding to use up a loaf of french bread that had been in the freezer for weeks. Though she was nervous about it, the end result was quite yummy. With a few tweaks, it will be even yummier!

And the day before yesterday she made her own granola bars! They were great!!! But no pic because I totally forgot...so I'll put one up next time she makes them (hint hint Nix).

We also had to eat real food at some point during the week but nothing too exciting on that front this week. We did have salmon one night with a great marinade from TJ's called Island Soyaki (or something). It was really good!

Ok that's all for food this week. Here's a pic of my hair lol:

No particular reason why...just felt like chronicling the process. I'm a big fan of part- or not-rinsing out the conditioner when I co-wash (condition wash...gettin the lingo down haha) it. It really gives it a better curl and seems to last better throughout the day. Aside from that I've been using the Carol's Daughter hair milk, a gel my stylist suggested (whose name I forget), and.....olive oil. haha

Yay Thursday...and it was actually nice and sunny today!

Today's *big chune* is from my girl Fefe Dobson. I'm generally not a big fan of rockish music, but she just does it for me...and (coincidentally i swear!) she's a fellow Mixie (a Canadian one)...white mom and Jamaican dad. She has a new album coming out this June.


:-D
 

o o o o obsessed

hi everyone! After a cool/rainy week, it's a GORGEOUS day in DC  :-)

Once I get onto a certain "thing" I can get semi-obsessed with it...previous (and some ongoing) "semi-obsessions" include biracialness, reading, cooking/food blogs, psychology, gluten free eating, skin care treatments, happiness, gossip blogs, caribbean literature...the list goes on and on.

Annnnnd these are the things I think about when i'm at work :-/ lol

My most recent obsession is hair!! As you know I'm in the process of growing out my relaxer in the hope of getting beautiful natural curls :-D

I did a half big chop last weekend and I'm counting down the weeks (about 6 - if i make it that long!) until i can go back and have Perry cut off some more. Hopefully it will have grown enough by then that I'll feel comfortable cutting off all the remaining relaxed parts. If not, I should have just a little bit of the awkward in-between hair left.

I've been perusing different natural/curly blogs/sites and I wanted to share a few that i like so far:
http://www.curlynikki.com 
http://www.livecurlylivefree.com/home.htm

http://www.tightlycurly.com


One of the hard (but great!) things is that there is so much diversity within natural hair, that it's been difficult to identify someone who has hair similar to my own. A lot of the natural hair sites I've been finding are for black women. The woman who does tightlycurly.com is mixed, but she'd muuuuuuch farther along (by 10 years and over 10 inches lol) in her hair process so her steps don't all apply to me yet. (Do any of you have other blogs/sites you'd recommend?)


In the end, i suppose it doesn't matter much because every single person's hair is different. What i need to do is continue to experiment and find out what works for me. I've been having what i consider a bad hair week (but I am pretty hard on myself about these things). In fact, yesterday i told Nix i was having an "ugly day." Does that ever happen to you. It's not that I'd done anything different and it wasn't even specifically about my hair. I just felt bleh.


Anyway, I'm not loving my hair today at all. Actually I think I may re-wash (conditioner only!) or at least re-wet tonight before I go out. My curls feel dry and unformed and the top/front awkward part is even more awkward than usual lol.


I'll be putting up Nix's guest post about her hair process soon, she's just making some revisions. I'm also soliciting posts from some of my friends so hopefully I'll have more of those on the way as well.


Today's *big chune* is another one of those songs that i really like but had forgotten about until it popped into my Pandora (i love Pandora for this reason). It's Avant's song called "Sailing"





:-D

my half BC

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm going natural (growing out my relaxer) and curly. I've tried a few times before but always gave up and just went back to straightening my hair. I've gotta give credit to Nix for staying strong and going natural before me. She's much farther along than me and her natural curls are coming in awesomely! Now that I've gotten a sneak peak of what mine will look like - sort of, because we don't have exactly the same hair - I am much more confident about the process and actually really excited!


On the natural hair blogs they talk a lot about the BC - the Big Chop....basically some people choose to just start with a clean slate, and cut off all the chemically treated hair. Well, I don't have enough confidence to rock that, so I opted for a half BC. I (well, my stylist Perry) basically chopped off the back down to the natural parts and trimmed off some of the treated hair up top. Here's what I'm working with now:

As you can see the back is pretty much my natural, curly hair...the front is the awkward stringy hair :-/ Luckily, though, I can pin it up and it's not too bad. I'm so glad to have the in-between hair gone from the back though! And a huge shout out to my stylist Perry and Bogart Salon on Georgetown. I first went to hum for a huge chop when I had super long hair my junior year at Gtown and decided to cut a good deal of it off. We've been together ever since :-) lol...but seriously, on Saturday he was reminiscing about how far we've come...and all the different phases I've gone through with my hair. Having him do my 1/2 BC make it much easier because I know I was in good hands. I'm going to go back for another trim right before I go home (to STT) in June.


As far as "routine" i don't really have one yet. Plus, as Nix and other have said, it will change as your hair changes. My hair is probably confused as heck right now lol.The key thing about natural hair is to keep it moisturized so it doesn't get all dry and ick looking. It's only been 2 days so I haven't done much yet. In the morning I rewet with a spy bottle with a mix of conditioner and water (lol). I've read good things about Carol's Daughter products - and this video makes me want to buy the whole line lol...her hair is gorgeous!
 Other than that I don't have much yet. My stylist told me don't brush out in the shower, just run your fingers through or whatever. After you get out you can dry a little with a towel, but not too much. Apply a bit of product and basically just leave it so that you don't frizz the curls. You can shake out your hair a bit and just kinda let it fall how it will. Later you can tease it and move things around a bit. Now, this is what he told me but everyone's hair will be different. I know some people like to twist the hair or braid it to get more defined shape when the twists/braids are taken out. Like I said, though, I'm just starting the process so I should have more insight as the weeks go by.

In other news, last night for dinner I made roast lamb with a (homemade) curry/pineapple marinade. I'd never cooked lambed before so I was a bit nervous about that. Aside from the cut of meat we got, which was pretty fatty (lamb is fatty in general), I think it came out well. I wouldn't do that same marinade again though...at least not for meat, maybe for fish, with some tweaks.

By the way, I heart Trader Joe's but their pineapples have nothing on Whole Foods pineapples. The pineapple we got from WF this weekend was AMAZING....So, I also whipped up a lightened version of pineapple upside down cake. I cannot even begin to tell you how good this cake smelled. I was doing laundry and could smell it down the hallway. As far as taste, not gonna lie, I was a bit disappointed. Then again, it's a light version of something so you have to take that into consideration. Nix and I agreed that it was overall more like a big, sqaure cake-shaped muffin than "cake." It was definitely not as moist as we would have liked, so I may add some homemade yogurt next time. I also cut down on the sugar even more than the lightened version called for, so we could probably afford to use the whole amount. I also used dark brown sugar while the recipe called for light brown...but I looked up whether there was a difference and it seems the only difference is in color and bit in taste, but my main problem was texture so I don't think that had an effect.

Having said all that....it was still yummy!! I'd make it again with some tweaks. Oh I almost forgot! I also made sweet potato pancakes this weekend. (Ok all I did was add mashed, cooked sweet potato to our pancake mix.) They came out great! Very moist and thick. I think I'd probably even add more sweet potato next time, to up the flavor.


Coming up this week in my culinary adventures...Nix and I bought a WF rotisserie chicken so we're going to stretch that as far as it goes. Today I used some in a greek style chicken pita pocket (chx, hummus, sprouts, carrots) for lunch. We're also planning to make our own tortillas from scratch, and do a Mexican night this week. And I love making muffins so I'm going to experiment with some more changes to my quinoa banana bread in muffin version.


Today's *big chune* is one of my old faithful favorites. I was obsessed with this song for like an entire year when I first heard it. The video is a hot mess though lol...most caribbean music videos are LOL





:-D

third time's a charm

I've mentioned a few times before that I've been sort of unsuccessful in my attempts to make yogurt without a yogurt maker. I say sort of, because my botched "yogurt" has been quite handy for baking and smoothies, and I would actually make botched yogurt again on purpose for these reasons.

Anyway, I'm excited to report that I finally got the real deal yogurt perfected! Without going into all the details of the process, I incubated the yogurt (at that point it was just milk) for 9 hours last night, put it in the fridge all day at work and came home to amazing yogurt goodness this evening. 

YUM!! and i'm really glad that i stuck with it and finally got it right!

I don't imagine many of you have any interest in actually doing this (lol), but just in case, this is what you do:

Bring 4 cups of milk to a boil in a saucepan and pour into an appropriate container (Pyrex, etc - put mine in a medium sized corningware) and cool until you can stand to hold your finger in the milk, just above lukewarm (to be more specific it should get down to about 112 degrees F if you have a thermometer(. While the milk cools, bring a large pot of water to a boil. Turn the oven on, set to about 200 degrees, for a few minutes, just so it gets warm. Once the milk is sufficiently cooled (this can take quite a while depending on how hot your milk got), add approx 1-2 tablespoon of  store-bought (or from a previous batch) yogurt with live cultures and mix well. Turn off the oven, and turn on the oven light. Cover the yogurt container and place in the oven alongside the hot water with the oven door closed, incubate overnight (i left mine for about 9 hours). Ttransfer it to the fridge in the morning, and let is spend the day chilling...then enjoy!

In other news, my latest obsession is hair. Specifically, I'm following Nix's lead and making the transition from relaxed/straight hair to natural/curly hair. Unfortunately, I'm in the awkward transition phase and it's...well, awkward! My hair is all different textures and it just looks ick. In the curly/natural blog world, the big chop (BC) is the cut that some women make to speed up/avoid the transition process. I don't think I'm brave enough for a full BC, so tomorrow I'm going to see Perry for a half BC lol...I'm basically going to cut the back down to the new growth, and leave the top as is...I'm not ready for anything too drastic, so I think this is a good compromise. I'm still nervous though!!

Oh well...I've had my hair pretty short before, so I should be ok. I'll write a follow-up to let you guys know how it goes!

By the way, I haven't forgotten your request for hair tips Zavi...Nix should put something together for a post soon. In the meantime check out curlynikki.com for some good tips and info. 

Any readers have advice for transition or for managing curly/natural once you've grown in out? Products/processes that work especially well?

Today's *big chune* is Wild Horses from the one and only Teena Marie...I'm not really sure why, but I really like this song. Of course, square biz is her most famous, but as usual i prefer something more obscure. Also, I saw video of her at the essence music festival last year...she reminds me of my mom LOL. 

:-D