Oriental Markets and stuff

Lately I've been ignoring my blog. I don't know why. I keep experiencing things and thinking "I should blog about that." But then I don't. Sorry, blog.

I've been sewing a lot. Maybe I'll post some pattern reviews later. I made a vest for my nephew, two pioneer dresses complete with bonnets and aprons made out of an old ripped bedsheet for my niece and sister-in-law, and I made a shirt for myself, which I haven't photographed yet. I don't know where my camera is.
I am also in the middle of sewing a duvet cover for our bed. This is long overdue. I will definitely take pictures (or have Dan do it) and post them when I am done.

I finally renewed my gym membership. We were poor for a little while, so I went 6 months without an honest to goodness workout. Unless you count things like dancing in plays. And you might be thinking "Why didn't you just work out at home?" Well, it is difficult for me to split my time when my kids are awake. I can multi-task things like reading and working out, or cleaning and writing music, but you throw my kids into any equation and I just can't do it. And I'd love to walk around outside with the kiddos if it weren't for the infernal heat.

I also decided to go on another cleanse. I feel like I've tried just about every diet, and nothing I've gone through before sounded appealing to me, so I found something new. Somehow I ended up at Gwyneth Paltrow's website of all places and this is my second day of cleansing. Let me tell you, this is the easiest cleanse or diet I have done. The Carrot and Ginger dressing is to die for.

However, the cleanse requires some pretty interesting ingredients. I was able to get whey protein and pro green powder at my local supermarket in the health food section, but they didn't have any miso paste or mirin or dried wakame or bonito flakes. I didn't know what any of that even was, but it sounded Asian.... so I went to my closest oriental supermarket. Which isn't that close.
Lee Lee's also sells jewelry and buys your gold. It is huge inside. And none of the workers that I ran into really spoke english very well. And none of the food looked familiar to me, and most of the labeling was in Japanese. It took me a while to find out where all of my ingredients were hiding...

...which was a shame, because the whole place smells very strongly of fish. Not my favorite smell. I guess I got used to it after awhile. And it was worth it, because I got to see things like this.
In case any of you were wondering, I found the miso paste in the refrigerated section, the dried wakame (seaweed) and mirin (sweet liquid) in the Japanese section, and I didn't want to buy the bonito flakes when I found out what they were. I figured my miso soup will taste better without the dried fish flakes in it.