How to get your five a day?

Eating healthy as a student doesn’t come without its challenges. How are you supposed to get your five a day when you’re on a budget and you barely have time to cook?

1. Breakfast: if you have muesli with lots of dried fruit and raisins in it*, apparently that counts as 1. And if you add a chopped banana (or some strawberries if you’re fancy) to that, you’ve already got 2 from breakfast! If you’re super motivated, you can also press an orange and blend it with a banana and some frozen berries or something similar and have a smoothie -another portion right there ;)

2. Snacks: grab an apple (you can have it with peanut butter which is also -in moderation- good for you), a banana or a couple of clementines. Or any other fruit you like really (those are the ones I usually have, partly because it’s so easy to transport them)! Carrots also make great snacks in my opinon, and you can always pair them with some hummus, which contains pulses (chickpeas) which I wouldn’t count as one of five a day but is still very good to eat! If you have a fruit/vegetable as a snack, that brings you up another portion.

3. Then, when it comes to meals… Make time to cook. You’ll save a lot of money and if you make big batches you can freeze the leftovers for easy meals. Not to mention it’s much healthier than eating processed food! Here are some easy ways to get more vegetables in your meals.

a. Soup. Make a big pot so it lasts, and you can have a nice bowl with a sandwich for lunch. That’s another portion of veg!

b. Even if you only have time for pasta, you can always have it with a sauce with tomato and vegetables (try making your own with onion, oive oil, chopped tomatoes, herbs, courgette, carrot, paprika… whatever you like!).

c. If you really don’t have time to make sauce, what I like doing is boiling some frozen vegetable mix with the pasta. It all cooks at the same time so it’s completely fuss-free. You can also add fresh broccoli in small bouquets.

d. Even if you’re just having a quick sandwich, you can always add some salad or tomato to it -it’s better than nothing right?

e. For dessert, try baked fruit. I’ve already done banana, apple and pear, but recently I tried pineapple -sprikled with some cinammon and a few cloves- and it’s delicious! Just bake chunks of fruit in the oven at 180 until you can no longer keep your mouth from watering at the smell ;)




*I know what you’re thinking, muesli is for fancy people and it’s expensive. Wrong! LIDL has great muesli with 50% fruit, seeds and nuts (which are also super-good for you), AND it tastes great, too!

Please forgive me for neglecting the blog while I fight for my life against the evil forces of finals. I’ll back soon -for now, please enjoy this awesome song and happy Christmas (thrift-shopping)!

With or without you (?)

Another day, another terrible song reference… I wore this outfit with knee-high socks, but would it have been better with just sheer black tights? I photographed both options.




I’m wearing my new zara sweater, my mom’s old skirt, hema tights, h&m socks and weekday sandals.




In hindsight, the second option looks more minimal and chic, and also works better with the grey-on-grey colour palette that (surprise surprise!) I have going on. However, it’s starting to get cold here so I had to resort to a little layering ;)


…Oh, and btw: even for me, this is a little dressy for uni -I wore it to dinner with my dad :)

Drive

A few days ago my film club organized a screening of Winding Refn’s Drive. Then, a week later, I attended a guest lecture by Sarah Artt on how this film included a “nostalgic revival of masculinity” and played with the themes of masculinity, silence and the body. It was interesting to see the film from that critical angle, and I also picked up some terms such as retrosexism (basically sexism that’s justified as ‘retro’, from another time), and revisited and reworked previously known theoretical concepts such as Laura Mulvey’s ‘male gaze’. But the best part of the evening was being introduced to a site called Feminist Ryan Gosling. I love love love it! A sample below:

On Christmas shopping

One thing that can spoil Christmas for me is the the social obligation, forcing us to buy presents en masse. I think that giving someone a present should be unasked-for, a special, personal act. It takes time and thought. Christmas forces you to give presents whether you like it or not -but giving something when you really feel like it is much more meaningful. Personally, I end up spending a lot of money on several small semi-decent presents, 90% of which are unwanted, impersonal, overpriced, consumerist products. I would love to give a friend a nice present, but I simply can’t afford to (especially since I’m forced to buy everyone a present at the same time!). A  present needs to be personal, well chosen; and that requires time you do not necessarily have when you have to buy so many presents in one go. So for me, Christmas makes gifts feel (and be) less special, turns us all into mindless consumerists and stresses the hell out of me when I’m trying to figure out what to get everyone.

So this year, I thought I would relieve my Christmas-shopping stress by starting with the easiest person on the list: me! Don’t hate or call me selfish: I’m giving myself something well-chosen, personal, and unsolicited -just because I felt like it. Exactlly how a gift should be. Which is probably more than most people will get from me this Christmas; not because I don’t love (some of) them, but because I’m terrible at this whole getting-things-for-other-people-on-demand thing.

I hereby present to you my gift from me to me: a Zara chunky grey knit and knee-high socks from H&M. And guess what: I love my present! No surprises there right?

A break

No no, don’t worry, there’s been no radical break from my past habits. We’re still very much on solid red-lipstick and garçon manqué outfits ground.

I’m simply talking about taking a break from showing my face. It turns out (!) that I’m not particularly photogenic (evidence below!), and to be honest with you, this picture with minimal posing or movement seems to capture the outfit best -which is, for me, the hardest but also most important part of getting pictures right.

So, going out, take 2. For a night of fancy cocktails, I put on my trusty skinny Weekday jeans* and I tucked my navy silk shirt in them while it was still unbuttoned, crossing one side over the other. I strategically buttoned a button; not too high, not too low… OK, pretty low -but the beauty of small boobs is that this is perfectly OK! (in my book at least) And yet another time, nude zara pumps.



Once again, I felt much sexier in a masculine-meets-feminine combination. And there’s something suggestive about the smooth, cool silk just barely grazing your skin and that no oppressively tight number leaving nothing to the imagination can compare to.


*which, in hindsight, I realize make my, ehm, behind look as big as a certain socialiate… whose name -fun fact- my dad wanted to give me when I was born. How funny would it have been if my dad had gotten his way?

La crise!

I’m having a bit of a style crisis (but don’t worry, this happens more or less twice a month). I could compare it with a battle between Aristotle and postmodernism!

On the one hand I want to have a style that’s essential, well-defined, that feels natural and is part of me. I have an idea of what that style would be like* (but not necessarily the funds to make it happen!) -but basically the idea is that you have a sort of safe zone that makes you feel yourself, cool and sophisticated no matter what.

On the other hand, I also like the idea of playing with my style -I often do little “impersonations” with my outfit: today I’m from the 70’s, tomorrow I’m a character from an Almodovar movie (you can find all of my ‘inspired by’ or sort of dress-up outfits under the dress-up tag). But this also involves getting out of my comfort zone, and obviously not everyone will get my subtle yet clever and academic (yeah right) pastiches of cultural landmarks… **

So what to do?

I think I’ll just keep experimenting. Wear whatever I feel comfortable and stylish in. Be inspired. At the end of the day, I think that personal style is not something you can devise overnight; it slowly evolves through time. However, style is something to be constructed, and for this reason I’m extra careful about the purchases I make these days: I try to only buy things that will really go with the aesthetic I’m trying to adopt, but are also classic enough to survive the test of time. This is where my ‘essentials’ list comes in :)


*mainly minimal (but still existent colour) and simple, sophisticated shapes. The problem is that my attempts to go towards that style are …not working. My friend told me I’m ‘bohemian’. Obviously I’m doing something wrong. :(

**which brings me to a different but relevant point: I shouldn’t care. Why do I care what others think?

Webcamming it back to the 70's

When shit gets too much, try going back to the time of free love and carelessness… Um, with your outfit, that is. Taking drugs is bad for you.

I was so bored by uni work that I did something with my hair for once (this thing on my head is called milkmaid braids and you can find youtube videos explaining it for useless people like me)…

Funny faces optional.









The result seemed very 70’s to me so I just went from there with my outfit:




I’m wearing my so-called Mom jeans (which pretty much sands for unflattering but inexplicably cool -mine are the real vintage deal: my mom’s by Giafranco Ferre), belt to keep the aforementioned jeans up, red top by weekday and holey, unidentifiable cardigan, originally my mom’s circa when I was born. You can’t see them but I wore converse. Oh and red lipstick cause it matches the top :)   




So, are you coming to the 70’s?

What would Sunday be without pancakes?

…think about it.


It would just be a weekday. (And no, for once I’m not referring to Weekday, whose clothes you might sacrifice your pancake-eating habits for…*)

I got the recipe from here (by now you know I’m a big fan!) and I also plan on giving the apple crisps a go :)







So come on over to the dark side and allow yourself to relax with some easy-peasy Sunday morning noon cooking, a nice cup of your favourite tea/coffee/soy latte/smoothie, and… **

- tumblr: other people call it procrastination, I call it inspiration. Nothing like gazing at beautiful/funny images to relax after a long week. Exhibit A: This illustration that makes me so impatient for Girls season 3! (more here)




- your bed. Unbeatable.

- a museum visit. Dress cozy and take your time engaging with art.

- cook some more. If you hate cooking then do skip this, but I find chopping vegetable etc. very very therapeutic.

- a good book. It’s been a long time since I read, but an assignment for this weekend is to read Cloud Atlas, so I have no excuses, hehe! I’ll keep you posted on whether I finish it or not what I thought of it.




- some nice, relaxing yoga. I promise you’ll feel like you’re floating on a little cloud afterwards.

- catch up with your favourite TV show. It’s OK, it’s Sunday, you’re allowed.

- get excited about Christmas. It’s finally time :)

- if you insist on working (and I know a lot of people are busy these days…) then try this little website called Noisli. It’s chromotherapy + customizable sounds that help you concentrate/relax + a distraction-free basic text editor. So no excuses! ;)






Whatever you do, have a happy Sunday!

*clearly not me, though ;)

**note: this is not an exhaustive list…