New Dish!

I'm laying around and waiting for dinner to be ready {which is around 20 minutes or so} and I'm totally ready for it. I branched out {yea!} and made tortilla soup!

Look at my pretty tortilla strips! 

I was taken by the beautiful mix of spices I threw together. The Pioneer Woman helped me out as she often does with recipes. I'll get back with how it is; delightful, hopefully. The one thing that's bothering me, though, is actually a characteristic of our apartment; it's not super well ventilated. Or air doesn't pass through nicely. Or old smells just like to sit around. There's a fan above the stove that's loud but supposedly helps with that stuff, I light candles and I open some of our copious windows {a perk for sure!} but I can guarantee you that we will awaken tomorrow morning to eau de tonight's dinner. It's a small price to pay, I suppose. Especially since I just wrote it down and realized what a ridiculous thing it is to complain about a roof over our heads. Now I'm getting self-preachy which means I should retire for the night before I do any more damage.
But. One more quick picture for you. Since in San Jose we now have to pay for bags in stores {ten cents per paper bags, no plastic allowed anymore; woot! [on a random side note, I have been loving seeing people's random assortment of bags!]} some stores seem to randomly give out their own re-usable bags {it's free advertising, after all, since you're bound to use it elsewhere...} and today Target gifted me with this gem:

...the wittle doggie face wooks wike a heart!
Have you cooked anything new and/or interesting recently? Do you get stuck in dinner ruts like we do? Happy almost Friday!


***Update: this soup is DANG good!***

xoxo, natty ♥