Pre-Fall Review.

3 Easy Items to Keep on Hand for Fall 2013

Courtesy http://www.marcjacobs.com/marc-by-marc-jacobs/

Courtesy http://www.driesvannoten.be

(top image) Courtesy http://www.costellotagliapietra.com/
Courtesy http://www.bottegaveneta.com/

Hello Cheetolings, this cool breeze that I LOVE has inspired me to do a bit of nosing around at the Fall 2013 runway looks, and their editorial reviews. I've come away with three easy hair and makeup items to keep around for fall :)

Anthony Vaccarello - photo courtesy www.harpersbazaar.com

1. A few bobby pins. Yup. So easy right? The runway has equal amounts curly and straight styles for fall, so no need to drastically attempt to change your natural texture. Curly hair: let your curls blow free! Forget the straightener or loads of frizz-ease. Just try a dime size amount of lotion, like align and let your hair air dry. Then shake it up! Separate some curls, pin a couple pieces back. Easy.

Straight hair don't worry, there's plenty for you too. Try an extreme part to mimic bangs and add a little texture with a sea salt spray or rough paste, and pin to keep in place. Not feeling it yet? That's ok, try a center part with smooth straight locks or use the paste to muss the hair and then place in a center parted low pony tail or chignon. Short hair was seen on a couple catwalks but if you're going there, go punk. The Met's retrospective had every designer inspired and doing their best to include some punk into their looks.

Courtesy http://www.31philliplim.com

2. Moisturizer with SPF. Pale dewey skin is all over the place and the best way to pull this off is proper skin care. Try using a little T-zone only primer, concealer, and then a pale peachy rouge to perfect your complexion. But for the most part, let your skin shine through. If  foundation is non-negotiable, try Makeup Forever's HD Liquid foundation and skip the bronzer!

Courtesy http://www.ferragamo.com/‎

3. Statement lips. Don't put away the red yet. Plums and bronzes tend to traditionally be fall's "new
colors" but a decent number of designers and forecasters are keeping bold reds, even corals, in the picture. Try one coat of a pigment rich red or wine color and then a light blot but leave the summer glosses at home. 

Cat eyes, color washes, glitter, braids, and wet styling all made appearances as well but are a bit trickier without a tutorial. Expect Cat Eyes to be coming up soon.

BKBTY

New Products at TJ's!

Coconut Water and Ghee

I'm pretty much always at Trader Joe's so new products are muchos exciting! So new I had to take photos as none existed online! Two that have caught my eye in the past couple weeks are their newly co-packed coconut water, and ghee. The coconut water comes in a tetra-pac container similar to vita-coco or one and taste wise is much nicer than the Zico, which was previously their only option. Also only has two ingredients coconut water not from concentrate and vitamin C. A delicious quick drink recipe is 1/4 coconut water with 3/4 unsweetened plain coconut milk. Then add just a shake of cardamom and nutmeg. Soooo yummy!

The ghee is right next to the coconut oil and is not organic sadly, but a great option for baking. Sometimes just using coconut oil is hard

because its melting and smoke points are so low you get a lot of spreading in your cookies. Like pancakes. So it's great to have a ghee option. For those who don't know, ghee is clarified butter. Clarified butter is basically the separated out fats, and much like coconut oil, is having a bit of a renaissance. Thanks to some new information about the importance of short to medium chain fatty acids and brain/endocrine function. A far better choice than canola oil for your baking needs. Vegetable oils have long chain fatty acids that oxidize at high temperatures making them unstable. This pretty much undoes all those nice healthy things they were doing for you at room temp. Even olive oil. So ghee and coconut oil are pretty much it for high temps. Keep the organic extra virgin around for cold to room temp purposes like salad dressing. Still great for that. Oh and yeah TJ's has that too :) --I like the Spanish because it has 2g of protein per serving and the others don't have any.

BKBTY

Celebrate Fresh Food!

 

Since my berrified feast Thursday, I started thinking about what a great concept it is not only to eat in season, but to have holidays just about every month and a half with built in meals specifically to do so! It really helps, especially us urbanites, to take a moment and re-connect with natural yearly changes. Celebrating what the Earth and dedicated Agrarians have gifted us with 8 times a year sounds good to me right? Regardless of faith base, a cool concept because last time I checked we all still live on Earth and eat food, (for now.....  ;) In this spirit I was looking up a few produce charts. Lists that specify what's in season where and when, and thought I'd share some of my fun findings! 

*ok so this post doesn't technically specifically have anything to do with peaches other than they're in season right now. Also maybe it's like a gluttonous fantasy of mine to walk through the peach orchards of Niagara on the Lake eating fat peaches until they have to find an XL wheelbarrow to cart me out with.....sigh. A girl can but dream.

1. Specifically NYC. ---Check it out, super neat. Brooklyn based (of course) Tyler Mintz started a platform for individuals to talk about local agg in 2010 that has become Foodstalk. Complete with a market locator, restaurant guide, CSA finder, and downloadable food chart for the 200 mile radius of the city and it's surroundings. :) NEATO! 

2. State wide. - Pride of NY baby! Search harvest dates, certified pride of NY farmers and restaurants, and get free downloads of their awesome logo! (I totes still have my little pin I got at the Erie County Fair one year <3 Love!) Plus much more, great resource for the whole state, region by region.

3. For Design enthusiasts, Russel Van Kraayenburg's Seasonal Produce Posters are really streamlined and come in Fruits, Vegetables, and Herbs. Van Kraayenburg is Texas based and the charts are approximate to "USA" so a good & attractive general guide to display, but not super specific to region. 

4. (This is really too cool.) The saying "there's an app for that" rings true yet again with the Apple store's "Seasons" app ($1.99.) This nifty guide detects what region you're in (supports USA, Canada, UK, Australia, Central and Western Europe.) Then tells you when over 214 different types of foods are in season in the region you live in, with photos, and descriptions for each. You can search by season, month, or category. Can be set to English, Spanish, French or German. Plus it can use your current location to tell you what farmer's markets are in your area. Cool right?!?!?!  

I hope you take this post and run with it. It merely scratches the surface here so go ahead and delve deeper into your own local produce! Because who doesn't love yummy fresh food??? (Crazy people and Kate Moss...... So crazy people.)

BKBTY

Recipe: Left Over Banana Cookies!

Sunday Baking Experiments!!!

I fortuitously intercepted a pair of very overripe bananas today from being trashed by one of my roomies and offered instead to think up some kind of banana based baked good for us all to eat. (Back in college, before the recession, when things were plentiful, Sundays were cleaning & baking day. I would get up and clean the apartment, do the laundry, and then bake cookies or brownies or rice crispy treats or whatever for us all for the week. Man, miss those days :) Anywho- I've come up with a dark chocolate banana cookie that's quite low in shortening and refined sugar. Somewhat like a biscotti if it were only baked once. Similarly I feel these will go best with a hot cup of tea or coffee or perhaps crumbled atop a frozen treat :)

Ingredients

 1/3 cup shortening (I used a combo of coconut oil and ghee)

1/2 tsp honey and 1 tsp raw monk fruit sweetener

2 large overripe bananas smushed with a fork

1/2 tbsp good bourbon vanilla 

1/2 tbsp scotch

1/2 cup Dutch process cocoa powder

1/4 cup unsweetened baking chocolate melted

2 cups flour (as it was for everyone I just used up a GF baking mix but you could use lower GI ones.)

1/2 tsp xanthan gum

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

pinch of cardamom

Directions

1. In a mixing bowl, add the shortening and sweetener and cream together with a hand mixer. A couple minutes as there's not much sweetener to mix in.
2. Add the vanilla and scotch. Keep mixing and add the mashed bananas and melted chocolate to the bowl and mix until combined.
3. In another bowl, mix the cocoa powder, flour, baking soda, salt, and cardamom. Slowly add the dry ingredients and continue mixing until incorporated.

Roll the dough into 2 logs that are about 2-inches high and 1-foot long. Wrap them in saran wrap and refrigerate for two hours. (Best method I found was to roll the log onto the saran wrap rather than try to pick it up. if you have old school racks in the fridge rather than flat shelving, place the logs into a pyrex or on another baking sheet to keep flat. (Due to the lack of egg, this makes GREAT cookie dough for eating, mixing into ice cream, etc. So you can stop here if you like)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Slice the cookies into 1/2-inch thick rounds, place on a cookie sheet and bake for 5 minutes.

BKBTY

And Then This Happens....

Should Be Listed as a Side Effect of Watching Too Many Youtube Tutorials....

 

Yes, it's the wee hours of the morning, and yes my arm looks crazy. But late night makeup always seems to be when you get the itch. I'm afraid I watched one makeup video too many today.... So this. And yes the eyes are two different color families. Was playing around with different applications. Thanks to my Dad for actually bringing the dupatta to me from India, I guess it's the only thing that's authentic....

BKBTY

At the Sauce Again.......

and an oldie but all time fav I love to watch :)

my face when I watch these...

BKBTY

Foundation for Success Part IV

Pressed Powder

Let's get a little into the history of pressed powder as a foundation for a second, well really foundation in general, because it will make it easier to understand why it became so popular and why it's, in my opinion, becoming somewhat obsolete, for primary applications, in today's market. 

So, skipping Egyptians and Grecian Priestesses using clay/minerals/led to paint their faces let's move into the 20th century to speed things up a bit. The only people who were really using makeup (openly) were theatrical individuals or prostitutes. (woot! good group.) But these were thick led based grease paints with heavy powders for setting. In 1914 the great Max Factor started creating film based cosmetics similar to stage but which would hold up to the scrutiny of close camera angles. First came "flexible grease paint" that had a creme base blended with oil. But that was still set with a fine loose powder. Afterwards in the 1930's the next innovation for Factor was pancake makeup. Now pancake didn't need to be set with powder. It went on wet and set itself while drying, and believe it or not this is the very first pressed powder. Yup early pressed powders required water to apply and they took off like wildfire. Pancake makeup is responsible for foundation wear in this country. While lip color and mascara started becoming more popular in the 1920's most women didn't wear foundation until pancake, when

suddenly over a quarter of them did. From there a lighter oil based "grease stick" became popular during the 1940's and then water based Liquid Foundation in the 50's. Pressed powder was busy getting turned into rouge and eyeshadow. Emollients like wax were being either replaced or removed for dry applications. Pressed foundations were also being made this way but were being used more as work day touch ups. Every 1960's woman applied her liquid but kept her pressed powder compact in her purse for "on the go." Then during the mid 90's pressed powder foundation had a revival. Better formulations meant skipping liquid all together and having an "all in one" powder plus foundation for ladies who didn't want to wear "a ton" of makeup but who still wanted some "sheer & matte" coverage. (What's funny about this to me is that pressed powder is considered quite heavy by today's standards, but we'll get to that.) MAC's pigment dense pressed powders went hand in hand with the rise in popularity of their liquids, and starlets like Britney and Christina often sported both during the Millennial years. Then, the bubble burst. Suddenly the light weight became the heavy weight. Digital film and HDTV made it obvious how cake like and pore-iffic pressed powder looked. In the mid 90's a small San Francisco based loose powder makeup company began advertising late at night on QVC, and by the late 2000's bareMinerals had become a household name.

So why would we still use a pressed powder? Well, frankly, they're dang convenient. Just about every foundation (save air brush) now has a pressed version of itself, (including Bare Minerals.) Much easier to carry in one's purse, brief case, gym bag, than a bottle or jar of liquid or loose powder. Easier to keep the applicator and bag, clean, (good luck with a kabuki brush in your purse...) I myself skip pressed powder. Why? I use oil blotting sheets and call it a day. If I really need to control the shine I'll bring a little loose setting powder as well, but I'm not a huge fan of continually reapplying foundation all day,

or I should say, my skin isn't. That being said there are some brands still worth mentioning if you want to try a little more coverage with a little less fuss.

1. MAC Studio Fix Powder & Foundation (1st pic in this entry)

If you really want the all in one this is still best choice. It's exceedingly pigment dense and has a high moisture content. Not known to be great for the skin but meant to look great in pics if you're not using a close up digital camera or maybe you're even using, dare I say, film??? (what's that? younglings say, and then you slap them.) Remember Britney on her "Oops I did it Again" cover? That's MAC liquid followed by a MAC pressed = COVERAGE!!!!!!!

2. Clinique's Superpowder Double Face makeup.  (2nd pic in this entry)

Long time standby of many a lady and still at the top of it's game. Not quite as rich or pigmented than MAC, but long touted for it's ability to cover just about anything you throw at it. Or under it. As the case may be. Heh. My personal beef with this product is it's lack in colors frankly. I think it's a little appalling that in 2013 a big time line like this offers a foundation in 8 shades. Yup 8. All pretty light too if you ask me.... 

3. Makeup Forever Pro Finish Multi Use Powder Foundation (3rd pic in this entry)

Good because of it's flexibility, harkens back to older products that can be used either wet or dry for different finishes. Not as full coverage as the previous two, but also hides better in film. 

4. bareMinerals Ready Foundation Broad Spectrum SPF 20. (pictured left)  

See the mineral makeup entry for all the benefits of this product. Makes this list due to it's skin/body friendly formulation. Cons seems to be a consistency issue with some left feeling it's too cakey. Others site this as an application/inexperience issue and claim it's great when not caked on....

It's not my first pick for a foundation, but it's clear that given it's great ability to travel, well, it isn't really going anywhere.... ;)

BKBTY