Sparkling water

As you may note, I've been trying out my (extremely limited) Photoshop skills as of late. It's more just for play as I'm working on learning some tools so that I can do for real stuff on Lydali. 

I truly have been loving on sparkling water lately. Jonny and I decided to give up alcohol for Lent, and I decided to throw sweets into the mix too, so I'm now trying to avoid habitual sweet-eating and wine-drinking. It's been pretty challenging, and it hasn't even been a full week yet. One of the things I'm really enjoying more of, though, is sparkling water. 

We had some friends over on Friday night, and normally we'd open up a bottle (or two) of wine, but since Jonny and I both weren't drinking, we just poured wine for our friends and then went through about four bottles of sparkling water! We've been buying it daily and drinking it like crazy since then. 

Going without alcohol or desserts has been an interesting exercise in discipline and self control so far - two character traits I am lacking in! Only 40 days to go...

Cookhouse

For Valentine's day, I gave Jonny a Beer and Cheese pairing class hosted at Cookhouse. We went last night, and it was such a cool experience. We learned tons more than we ever knew there was to know about cheese and beer and how they work together. 

It reminded me that I'd never posted about my earlier experience at cookhouse, and these are some long overdue pictures from a little Indian cooking adventure back in October. My friend Sri taught the class at Cookhouse, which turned out to be even more beautiful in real life than I had expected from the pictures on the internet. Sri taught us how to make several yummy dishes, and I would share the recipes if I could find the recipe sheet she printed out (oh the joys of being disorganized!). You'll just have to sign up for one of her classes and try it for yourself!