Margarita Bars (....or, why I don't normally take pictures of my food)

It's been a busy few weeks around here.....the thesis and my second big paper are almost finished (which, of course, means plenty of hours of tweaking and revising, but still, yay!).  I am starting to make plans to sell furniture, and packing up a few things to bring to Brendan's next time I visit.  The more I can bring now, the less I have to get into the moving van on May 1!

Instead of working on my paper introduction last night, I made margarita bars.  Now, I know those don't sound like a "thing" - you've probably heard of lemon bars, but not margarita bars.  I was introduced to them on an innocent walk through Williams and Sonoma one fine morning.....and they've been one of my favorite recipes ever since.  Shhhhh....don't tell anyone I didn't make these up myself!

These are just like lemon bars, but with margarita mix instead of lemon juice.  So they're a bit sweeter than lemon bars (or maybe just less sour?), and have an interesting lime flavor.  The shortbread really makes them special, too.  I'm not sharing the recipe online....I don't know if I can really call it "my" recipe.....but if anyone wants the recipe, e-mail me or let me know in the comments and I'll send it to you!

Now, this brings us into why I don't usually take pictures of my food.  I'm a graduate student living on my own - I don't have the time or the budget to get fancy placemats and dishes to put things on!  My attempt at a fancy picture here required using one of my bags as a "placemat" - and you'll notice that the bars are still on a styrofoam plate.  They looked better on there than on my black dishes, and they were already set up on there to bring to my doormen.

Even with my terrible attempt at nice food photography, there were some issues.  The sunlight coming into my apartment is nice, so that works....but unfortunately, Mimu loves to lay out on my bed when the sun is coming in.  It's cute - but she can get in the way of the food photography, for sure.

Look closely at that last one!  Lab-mates who read this - rest assured that these aren't the bars I'm bringing into work.  The doormen will be none the wiser - plus, she didn't actually touch any of them!

The other reason I don't usually take pictures of my food?  I make strange food choices.  I wanted to make a "green monster" smoothie today because I haven't been eating enough veggies lately.....but I did something shocking.  You know Siggi's yogurt?  The kind everyone's been talking about that's super expensive and fancy?  Well, I bought some the other day - Whole Foods had a coupon and I thought I'd try them while they weren't ridiculously expensive.  I tried the orange ginger flavor.....one bite and I almost spit it out.  It was WAY too strong for me.  Yummy flavor, sure, but I couldn't eat it straight up.  So what did I do?  I put it in my green monster.  Yes, you heard that right - I added $2/cup greek yogurt to a green smoothie instead of taking fancy pictures of the Siggi's cup.

I'm weird like that.