goodbye holidays. hello january.

sigh sigh sigh.
I won't lie, I am a little sad the holidays are finally done and I am back to 5 day work weeks and no more beautiful christmas tree in the living room. The holidays come upon us so quickly and are so filled with stress and money and wrapping paper and tape that it seems like you barely have time to breathe and take it all in before once again, its January and it's all over with. It was a wonderful month however and couldn't have been any more perfect with our "slightly" white christmas, both sean and i's parents coming to see us (except this is the first christmas i did not see my dad or brother which was a little sad for me), lots of amazing meals, and many thoughtful lovely gifts.
We spent our last day of the holiday weekend going to get Sean's books for the spring semester (!!!) and playing with a particularly CRAZY hyperactive puppy at the local puppy store.

this little girl would not stand still for a SECOND to get her picture taken.
while she was incredibly cute, it made me SO grateful that Roxy is SOOOOOO laid-back and chill.
I am hoping we will get a lab/lab mix this spring, a dog big enough to go out on runs with me but lazy enough to always be down for a good nap with us all on the couch. We already have the name picked out, "Pip" from Great Expectations!
After puppytime we went our for cheap Mexican food which I have not had in MONTHS.
It was delightfully gluttonous but definitely not anything I want to have again anytime soon.
Next up we went to one of our FAVORITE spots, Borders. We are both HUGE bookworms and can literally spend hours looking at books and movies.
We each ended up with a book (sean-the magicians and gen-wolf hall) along with an ansel adams calendar for the kitchen and recipe binder for all the shit we cook.


This was to me the MOST exciting.

I spent a good 45 minutes when we got home filling in recipes that we cook a lot (plus my annual pumpkin cheesecake which sean adores possibly more than me)

Speaking of which Sean made the MOST amazing meal tonight that I HAD to share.
He whipped it up off the top of his head and I was most impressed...

PRESENTING: Sean's Sweet Chili Citrus Tilapia

Ingredients:
-8 clemetines juiced
-1 clementine sliced
-1 tbsp fish sauce
-1.5 tbsp hoy fong chili garlic sauce
-pinch of sugar
-pinch of salt
-1 tsp chopped rosemary
-"dash" of chili flakes
-1/4 cup of chopped scallions
-4 tilapia filets

**Add in more chili sauce or clementines depending on how sweet or spicy you want the sauce to be.

Directions:
1. Juice clementines and combine juice with fishsauce, chili garlic sauce, sugar, salt, rosemary, and chili flakes.
2. Begin cooking filets and add in most of the sauce. Drizzle leftover sauce over the filets as they cook in the pan. Cook for 2 minutes and then add green onion and sliced clementines. Cook until filets are white and flakey.

EAT!


We each had one with some jasmine rice and a nice baked sweet potato.

They were A-MA-ZING.
I am extremely excited to nom leftovers of this for lunch tomorrow.

xo, gen!