Mixed Bag Monday

I really love to cook. Whenever I have an extra day off, it's always a thrill to put the good old Wüstof Santoku to work. However, the BF and I have been known to find just about any excuse to bust out this kitchen weaponry: cutting fruit, veggies, the occasional stick of butter...

Now, I'm certainly not the best cook on the block, but I can follow a recipe like nobody's business. Most of the time.


A few months back, my foodie friend R suggested I try The Foodinista's pasta e fagioli. I've made it few times now and it seems like no matter what ingredients or measurements I alter, the good stuff always comes out, well, amazing. This time around, I used mini wheel pasta and bacon as I didn't have orecchiette or pancetta on hand. I was also short a can of beans. Whoops. As usual though, the soup was delish and I have a week's worth of lunches as well as some containers bound for the freezer. Yum!

Late Saturday night, I finished The Impostor's Daughter. Whoa. Heavy. Clever. Beautiful. Inspirational. I'm still trying to wrap my thoughts around it all. In the meantime, my extremely brilliant and worldly friend "GladysG" recently sent out the request italicized below. Now, we (meaning me) here at Booking it Bus Style try not to get too involved in popularity contests. But, GladysG is not only a friend, she's also a proponent of something uber near and dear to my heart: public transportation. Her entry sings the praises of LA's own Union Station.

Dear Friends and Family:

Some of you know that I recently started writing travel reviews for a Web site called Trazzler.com, under pen name GladysG (in honor of Judy Holliday's role in It Should Happen to You). The commissions came about when I won Trazzler's contest themed "work of art." I've entered their latest contest -- on the theme of "oasis," with a grand prize of two weeks' writing residency in New York -- and I am a semifinalist!

My getting to the final round depends on how popular my trip is. Would you please help me out by "wish listing" it? You do need to set up a Trazzler login and password, but it's free, they don't ask for much personal information, and you can, like me, identify yourself under an alias if you don't want to use your real name.

Those of you who use Facebook can link your account to Trazzler and log in that way. And if you are one of those FB users with hundreds of friends, please ask them to vote for GladysG!! Others can log in as follows:

- Visit here.

- Click "Sign In or Sign Up" in the upper right corner

- Click "Sign Up" under "No Facebook account?" (I know, they totally want you to use FB...)

- Fill in the form to process

- Return here and click "add to wishlist" under the photo

PASS IT ON!

N.B.: More than five votes from the same IP address gets me disqualified.

Thank you very much for your vote. Feel welcome to wish list GladysG's other trips, too!

Wonderful stuff, right? Thanks in advance for reading GladysG's musings. And an extra special thanks if you voted for her. ;)