The amount of frozen fruit I've eaten since the weather warmed up is, frankly, astonishing. My favorite is Trader Joe's Organic Tropical Fruit Blend, but I've also had berry blends, frozen peaches, frozen banana slices, you name it. When B insisted on buying a giant-ass (really, that's the only word for it) watermelon for $2.99 at Aldi, I had to freeze some, partly because there was no way the two of us could eat all this watermelon before it went bad and partly because I just really like frozen fruit.

So we had all these bags of frozen watermelon in the freezer. I ate some, and Luna ate some (this dog LOVES melon), but there was still a lot. And then I went to yoga one Tuesday night.

Toward the end of last month, I found out about some more "free books in exchange for reviews" programs for bloggers - oh, happy day!  B is excited, because the more free books I get the fewer I buy (theoretically - ha). I'm especially excited because one of them offers a ton of ARCs (advanced reader copies), meaning I have the opportunity to read books prior to their publication.

I did not realized, when I got started, that I would be awarded an ARC of Shauna Niequist's newest book, Present Over Perfect, coming out in August.

Malfatti. Add it to the list of things my husband introduced me to.

It sounds bad. Anyone who has studied a Romance language knows that "mal-" is a dangerous suffix. But not in this case. Malfatti is delicious. It's ricotta, spinach, and bread crumb logs covered with a great Italian sausage-based red sauce, and it's absolutely delicious.

B and I have slowly started exploring our new 'hood, starting, of course, with food. While we'd been to downtown Greer for dinner once or twice before, we hadn't really looked too closely. So we decided to start with the Greer Farmer's Market.

While you can certainly get vegetables and fruit there, vendors also sell everything from soaps to pimiento cheese to bark. Really good bark. Really, really good bark. We wound up taking home a box each of s'mores bark and strawberries and cream. While the s'mores (my choice) was good, it was the strawberry that blew us away. We knew we had to learn to make this.

Even though I'm not a bride anymore, I had the opportunity to review some beauty products through Influenster since I've gone to two weddings already this year, and have another coming up in the next month. I love a good excuse to get dressed up and pretty, so this was fun.

If you have any weddings or other events this summer, read on!

xoxo,
E

I warned you about this, you know. Now that we have a home for My Paris Kitchen and enough actual kitchen space to actually cook, you're going to get inundated with recipes.

All I can say right now is that I hope you like chicken.

I'm not normally a hot-weather person, but I'm really getting into summer this year. Maybe it's because we have this great new backyard to play in. Maybe it's because our house is full of natural light. Whatever the reason, I'm loving this summer so far - and these products have helped get me there.

xoxo,
E

You can imagine my reaction when I was assigned a story for the June issue of Greenville Business Magazine, entitled, "Why do we need engineers?" Pretty sure my answer to that is a little different than most people's. I need engineers (well, just the one, anyway) for love, support, and all those fun spousal things. However, I'm guessing that's not why the rest of society needs engineers.

So this was a relatively fun story to write, as I explored the different things engineers do and how they contribute. It was also helpful since after being together for five years, and married for two, I'm still fuzzy on what exactly it is my husband does for a living.

I have had the My Paris Kitchen cookbook by David Lebovitz for nearly two years now after reviewing it for Blogging for Books. Sadly, after a couple of half-hearted recipe attempts for reviewing purposes, it hasn't gotten much use. The condo's midget kitchen didn't leave much room for cookbooks or extravagant French recipes, and the book got relegated to the bookshelf, wedged in among other lonely friends.
 
But no more.

As I buckle down on my to-read list, my reading material is as varied as ever. At one point I might have tried to cultivate a certain type of books to read for each blog post, but I think genre-jumping is way more interesting. Best of all, each of these books was wonderful in its own way. So here's this month's installment of crazy. Enjoy!
 
xoxo,
E