My Favorite Quick Lunch When I'm Working

I love food.  I eat really slowly, comically slowly.  Even when I think I'm wolfing something down, I'm still always the last one to finish.  

I work for myself, and when I'm in the middle of a workday I want to throw together lunch very quickly. Fast usually means pre-packaged and bad for you, which I'm not inherently opposed to.  But I don't want to eat something that's going to leave me feeling hungry, or, worse, make me crash an hour or two later.

Here's my favorite fast lunch for when I'm working.  It's quick and easy to make, really flavorful, and it satisfies me until dinner.  Bonus points for it being vegan and healthy!

ARUGULA + AVOCADO SALAD

Makes one big salad you can eat while you're working on building your empire.

  • Tear up a bunch of arugula leaves into a big bowl. Like two big handfuls.  I love arugula.  You can substitute any hearty leaf, just skip iceberg or kale.

  • Dice up a small avocado.  I'm not afraid to eat an entire avocado. You can do half if you want.
  • Mix up the dressing:
    • Take out a small bowl and pour in a tablespoon or two of olive oil or grapeseed oil.
    • Pour in about an equal amount of balsamic vinegar.
    • Add about a spoonful of stoneground mustard.  It needs to be fancy mustard, not the yellow hot dog mustard.  
    • Stir up the dressing.  Stir it pretty fast.  The tartness of the mustard offsets the sweetness of the balsamic vinegar and binds it with the oil.
  • Pour the dressing over the arugula and avocado.  Yum.
  • Optional, but recommended:
    • Sprinkle a handful of walnuts into the salad. I just bust them up into smaller pieces with my fingers.
    • Shake some dulse flakes in.  Dulse is a sea vegetable, and the flakes give a slightly salty and tangy taste though it's not very strong. It's rich in vitamins, minerals, trace elements and iodine, which all sound like things I don't eat often enough.  Shake a whole bunch on there.
    • Add a bunch of nutritional yeast. The yellow flakes are popular with vegans because they taste slightly like cheese or nuts, but not really because they're flakes.  I personally really like the way nutritional yeast tastes.  It's full of B-complex vitamins and all 18 amino acids, which sound like things I don't eat often enough.
    • You can grind some fresh black pepper over the top.
    • Today I added in some chopped up chives from my garden.
    • If your taste buds are super fancy, drip a few drops of truffle oil over the top.
  • Mix it up and eat it while writing a blog post about your lunch.  Hopefully it will drive traffic to your website.  The blog post, not the salad.

I'm growing arugula in my garden so I was able to pick all the fresh arugula I needed for my salad today.  I'm feeling very smug about this.

Does this salad sound good to you?  If you try making this salad, let me know!

BAND MERCH DESIGN: Success for Dead Rock West

My friends in the band Dead Rock West recently asked me to design a T-shirt for them.  They have a new record coming out on July 19th called "It's Everly Time!" (it's an album of Everly Brothers covers).  I love how Cindy and Frank honored the songs by staying mostly trew to them, but they also added in their own signature harmonies.  I also love how the production is all sunny, glamorous, vintage California yet with a modern polish.  Fantastic record.

Usually I give anywhere from one to four sketch ideas to start, and I gave Cindy four sketches to choose from.  She loved two of them, and I was able to quickly produce one of the designs in time for them to sell at their April 30th show at Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles.  

The popular Dead Rock West baseball tee

The popular Dead Rock West baseball tee

The Hotel Cafe only holds about 150 people, so it was an intimate show.  Over the years I've been to hundreds of live shows, and I know that sometimes at a very small show the band might only sell a couple of T-shirts, or even none at all, so my expectations weren't too high.  I was just glad to get one of their designs to them in time for the gig.

Cindy called me the next day, saying the shirts were a success:

Transcript:  "Your shirts are such a hit, I've been having a barrage of emails all day of 'Where can I get those sent to me?'...To the point where if I even send them...they'll just be sold out!  I've never had this happen before with a T-shirt. (laffs)  It's amazing. They're really awesome and they were just a superb hit.  I just thought I'd tell you that...thanks to you the merch was a swimming success."

When I called Cindy back and talked to her, I asked how many people called or emailed or commented on Facebook about the shirts.  Five?  Ten? She told me she must have heard from 30 people.  I think she's exaggerating, though she swears she's not, so I'll take it.

They've already re-ordered the baseball tee design, after a single show.  It's a win for me, a win for the band, and a win for their fans.  I love it.

MUSIC MONDAY: Chad VanGaalen

I love Chad VanGaalen, he's a true original.  So strange, like he's transmitting from another dimension, yet with gorgeous melodies and satisfying song structures.  He's trew.

"Wing Finger" is a favorite.

Sing it with me:

"Pterodactyls

Abandoned pianos

Your stepdad's bongo drums

Snails that live inside aquariums..."

Another favorite, "Hot Red Drops" - he animated this video himself.



Support Small Biz: La Curie Artisan Perfume

I have a pretty strong sense of smell, which can be a blessing and a curse.  I love natural smells, sniffing flowers and herbs, incense and essential oils.  A great, natural scent can be life-enhancing.  Sometimes when I stick my face into a rose and inhale...I feel high, elated.  

On the flipside, most synthetic smells give me a headache.  I can't use laundry detergents with strong scents and I hate the smell of most perfumes.  When I'm unexpectedly bombarded with scents of hairspray, excess cologne or cigarette smoke, I can feel sick to my stomach or even angry! 

So I've learned to be careful when choosing any scents to wear on my body.  The more natural they are, the better.

La Curie is a small line of unisex perfumes that I love.  They're "luxurious bohemian scents handmade in Tucson AZ" by Lesli Wood.

How to describe the scents?  That's tough.  They're reminiscent of natural smells: campfire, the wind after a storm.  Familiar, but hard to place, and like nothing I've smelled before.  There's mystery in each scent, which I absolutely love.

Scents change on your skin, over time and according to your own unique chemistry.  I like to live with a scent before I decide to invest in it.

La Curie offers a wonderful option for people like me, who are slow to make up their minds and want to try everything:  

THE MASTER SAMPLER

For a super affordable $20, you get sample sizes of her three eau de parfum scents (Ossuary, Faunus, Larrea) and her four perfume oils.

I've been living with my sampler pack for weeks, trying to decide by process of elimination which full size I'd like to purchase.  It's very hard to decide!

Another reason I love this sample pack is because they also double as travel size.

Go on, support a small business.  Indulge in a sampler pack, at just $20 it's an affordable luxury.