Summer Fun

I can't believe we are nearing the end of summer - it's gone by so fast! It's been a very busy summer - usually I feel like work is a bit slow in the summer with a lot of people off on vacation, but I happened to be in the middle of a big project all summer long that has been incredibly stressful. Luckily we (sort of) wrapped that up last Wednesday so I've been trying to decompress a little and enjoy the last few weeks of the summer weather.

Last weekend a group of us headed out to Central Oregon for a 2-day rafting trip on the Deschutes River. I'd been itching to go rafting again ever since we went for Jonathan's birthday on the Clackamas! We drove over to Bend on Friday afternoon, checked into our hotel, made a quick stop at REI, and then headed to the Bend Brewfest. The weather was gorgeous (it was all weekend) and it was free to get into the brewfest which was nice for our friends who don't drink. We spent the evening there, hanging out on the lawn, eating some food, and sampling lots of beers. It was still almost a two hour drive from Bend to get to the river so we were up by 6:30 scrambling to get our things together and grab some breakfast before heading out.

We went with a company called Ouzel - they were fantastic. They provide all of your camping gear (tents, sleeping bags, sleeping pads) and make all of your food for you - they were great with special dietary requests, with me being vegetarian  and not eating eggs and another girl being gluten and dairy intolerant I thought we might have a tough time, but everything worked out perfectly! Plus, as wonderful as those dehydrated meals are (slight sarcasm only - some of them are pretty reasonable) it was nice to have real, cooked, whole food while out camping!


The rapids on the Deschutes weren't as exciting as the Clackamas was, but the scenery definitely helped to make up for it - it's such a different environment on that side of the mountains and it was so pretty. A lot of time was spent just floating along and enjoying the views. There were also two inflatable kayaks that just about everyone got a chance to try out! I thought the kayak was pretty fun, but I kind of prefer to be in the paddle boat and have the experience with everyone else instead of just being off alone.

This past Friday my friend Stephanie was in Oregon so I took the afternoon off and drove out to Tillamook to meet up with her. The drive was wonderful - the highway to get out that way is a winding two lane highway through the Siuslaw National Forest, there is even a creek alongside it for a good portion. I love creeks, like a lot.





We met up at the Tillamook Cheese Factory and had lunch, watched the factory workers package cheese for a bit, had some samples, and then headed out to see what else was in Tillamook. Turns out, not much. We wandered around the town for a little bit without much luck and then drove ~10 miles out to the ocean to see the Cape Meares Lighthouse. It was pretty foggy out at the coast, but the cool weather was a nice change from the heat we've been having in the valley lately (when I say "heat" I mean it's been about 90 - which to me is crazy hot, but I realize that may not be so bad for some people, really it's just how hot the house gets that bothers me).

Now for the best part - the state fair! I pretty much love the fair no matter what, but let me tell you why I really love the Oregon State Fair. Vegan BBQ. I know, right!? The most unlikely place to find vegan food, and yet there it is - vegan bbq, vegan cheesesteak, vegan softserve ice cream!?! Seriously, I love Oregon. Also - there were more compost and recycling bins then there were trash cans. What fair has compost bins!? Not one I'd ever been to before Oregon's at least.

We met up with our friend Anton to watching the Stihl Lumberjack Championships - pretty crazy sport. I'm not sure how one gets into it, but it was definitely entertaining to watch! We saw some super cute animals - ducks, piglets, cows, deer (!?)... why there are deer at the fair I still have no idea. And then for the best part - rides!! Jonathan hates the rides, so I was super excited that Anton would go on some with me. We didn't do many - only three total because as it turns out, the fair is expensive! But we had a blast. We actually did convince Jonathan to go on the Tilt-a-Whirl, which was super fun. I can't believe he actually went on any ride - he usually only offers up the Ferris wheel (I think because he knows I won't go on it - who wants to pay money for that boring ride!?). I had a great time though and I can't wait for the fair again next year! Vegan bbq, here I come!  <3

-C

Eating Local

I haven't talked as much about the Harvest Box here as I thought I would. The summer has kind of gotten away from me and I haven't been cooking quite as elaborately as last summer. It may have something to do with now having evening meetings almost every day of the week (whatever happened to the work day ending anyway?).

Tonight it was just me for dinner, but today was also the day we receive this week's box of veggies and I felt maybe at least a little inspired. As I ate my dinner of pesto pasta with oven roasted tomatoes - basil and garlic from our CSA, sungold tomatoes from our garden, and hazelnuts from the farmer's market - I felt lucky and excited to have so much of this food available right in my own backyard. I don't think it will ever be a perfect commitment to eating entirely locally - I love things like coffee and avocados too much - but I think it's great that I can get a lot of my food from right here, either in my own backyard or from the farm over the hill.

I have some photos of our own garden that I want to share, but I actually have another meeting to run to - it never ends!

More to come.

-C

Kale Salad

Dear Kale Salad - I love you. Never in my life have I considered a salad an acceptable meal, until I discovered you that is.

I was feeling kind of terrible today - probably because all I did yesterday was snack on things and never really ate an actual meal. It may have also had something to do with all of the Jelly Belly's I ate at work today, I'm not really sure.

Anyway - I came home and threw some veggies we had in the fridge together with some kale, Swiss chard, and this amazing lemon-tahini dressing (scroll down for the recipe) and now I feel great! The photo isn't actually from today because I was too out of it to make it look nice - I actually just ate it out of one of my mixing bowls.  :)

Things I would recommend adding to your kale salad: radishes, tomatoes, carrots, onions (I prefer red onion but I only had yellow onion on hand today), avocado, almonds, and sunflower seeds.

I could eat this salad all the time - too bad Jonathan isn't actually a huge fan of the dressing. I guess I'll have to try to find another kind, but I kind of think the dressing makes it.

Also, completely unrelated - a photo of Pixel looking totally adorable with his tongue out. I love it.

-C

Baby Shower

There are some things that I have been itching to share for the past week or so, but today I threw a baby shower for my friend Sara which meant two things: 1. I've been busy! and 2. Some of the things to share were related to the baby shower and I didn't want to ruin any surprises!

So first things first - I have recently (maybe a little late to the game) discovered Pinterest and I am now obsessed. You can find anything on there and I love having an easy way to browse tons of creative projects, recipes, and cute clothing. I'm just getting started so I don't have much on my own page yet and I have to remember to "pin" things whenever I find things I'm interested in, but I'm really excited about it.

Ok - now on to the baby shower. I'd never thrown a baby shower before, and actually I've only ever been to one before. I'm not usually a big "shower" person because I think all of the games are a little weird, but luckily almost everyone coming to this shower already knew each other so there wasn't much need for icebreakers and lots of games. I did, however, want to put a lot of effort into the decorations and food and I've been browsing the internet for inspiration for the past couple of weeks.


I tried to limit the number of things I made (but if you remember my post from around Thanksgiving time you probably know how well that went). I actually didn't even finalize the menu until yesterday - Caramelized Onion and Goat Cheese Phyllo Triangles, Cheese Straws, and Stuffed Mushrooms. It wasn't until after I decided on the menu that I realized everything was cheese-filled, oops! I also couldn't resist making mini-cupcakes even though I decided to do an ice cream sundae buffet as the main dessert. I bought this cupcake tree for my other friend Sara's bridal shower last year and it's just so cute I can't help it. We also rounded out all of that cheese with a veggie platter and some lemonade. That does balance it, right?

Two of the recipes - the cheese straws and the phyllo triangles - were new to me for this event, which I don't normally like to do. I prefer things to be tested out before serving them to guests, but I was also stumped for what to make so I did what I had to do. The cheese straws were good and interesting - definitely not like anything I'd made before. Also - I guess Cheez Its do kind of taste like real cheese because these were pretty darn similar tasting! I made one batch last night and they were good but pretty spicy (red pepper flakes) so I decided to make second batch this morning without the spice in case some people weren't a fan. If you're interested in the recipe I got it from Smitten Kitchen and they literally only took a few minutes to make - the longest part of the process was grating the cheese! I don't know how to store them though - she suggests in the refrigerator but that seems weird. I put the batch from last night in a plastic bag but that made them a little soft and I had to re-bake them this morning for a few minutes to get the texture back.


I actually got the second new recipe from Smitten Kitchen as well - it was based on a Spanakopita recipe but had options for different fillings. I kind of love caramelized onions, so I chose that one. This was my first time working with phyllo dough and it was kind of fun, but also a lot of work. I have a very important note about this recipe though - bake them on a rimmed baking sheet! There is about a million pounds of butter in there and when you go to bake it on a flat sheet it will spill all over and pool up in the bottom of your oven causing all of the smoke alarms to go off and you having to ask your boyfriend very nicely to clean out the oven for you while you get ready so that you can continue to bake and don't totally ruin the party. Phew. I warned you - don't do it. Or maybe just don't use a million pounds of butter like I did.

Ok - now let me tell you about what I made for the gift. I saw the tutorial for these burp clothes a few months ago and thought they were really cute but also though why the heck would I need burp clothes!? And then it dawned on me - baby shower gifts!! This did mean that I finally had to learn how to use my sewing machine - luckily Jonathan was able to show me how. I had actually set it up and wound the bobbin and threaded the thing a year ago but never could get it to stitch, I have no idea what was wrong then but it works now!


We also got this super cute, super soft teddy bear (because every kid needs a good teddy bear) and a few other baby related things and put them in this wicker basket. The basket originally came with a fabric liner that was not very cute, so Jonathan took it apart and made one with this cuter fabric that went with the theme a little bit better.



I was really pleased with how it all turned out - I couldn't really get a good photo of the whole set up with this camera, which is too bad because I think the decorations went with it pretty nicely, but I do have a few other random photos to share!

Hope everyone else had a nice weekend too!

-C

Bali, Summer, and Birthdays

Wow - it's been a busy summer so far! And it's been over a month since I've posted anything, oops! Let me try to recap and we can get back to a regular schedule!

I never did share any photos from my trip to Bali, and hardly any from Singapore so let me get to that!

The food in Singapore is quite delicious, and it is so vegetarian friendly! They use a lot of mock meats (wheat gluten based mostly I think) which are actually quite good. Their desserts, on the other hand, are the strangest (read: bad) things I have ever heard of. They put corn and beans in everything! The picture on the bottom right is of the desserts I ordered with my coworkers - the top one is shaved ice with soursop jellies (they also love jelly things - I don't get it), the next one is shaved ice with brown and pink flavoring (I have no idea what the flavors were supposed to be and neither did my coworkers) topped with durian sauce (have you ever had durian? I wouldn't recommend it) and then FILLED with corn, beans, and more jelly things! The last one is simply shaved ice with strawberry syrup topped with peaches - I ended up eating mostly that one.  :)

I spent the weekend in Bali - in an inland town called Ubud. My hotel was across the street from the Monkey Forest - a place where monkeys are sacred and roam everywhere, including all around my hotel. At breakfast the staff was constantly shooing them away with brooms or sling shots. It was pretty cool to see an animal in person that I had only ever seen in the zoo before, but I was a bit wary of them and tried to stay a good distance away.




 This little offering was set out on the stairs between my hotel room and the lobby on my first morning there. I think it is by far the most beautiful offering I saw while I was there. Let me tell you a little bit about the offerings while I'm at it. All day long the locals set out these small offerings for the spirits and the gods. They are often filled with cigarettes, small pieces of food, flowers, and incense. If I understood my driver correctly the offerings set out on the ground are for the spirits and the offerings placed on a temple are for the gods. Literally everywhere you walk there are offerings set out on the sidewalk - in front of every store, every restaurant. You had to be really careful not to step on them or kick them over (I imagine that is bad karma, although no one told me that specifically).

I spent my first day wandering around Ubud and relaxing. I walked up to a place called the Ubud Market - they sell mostly crafts and fabric foods, along with some food - mostly fruit. There was a small temple at the edge of the market where this woman was placing offerings - look at the piles of them everywhere! I find it fascinating.

I am also really intrigued by the tropical fruits you can find there that are harder to come by here in Oregon (maybe I can get frozen versions of some of these at a specialty store - but I've never seen fresh durian or mangosteen). By the way - mangosteen is probably the most delicious fruit I have ever eaten. And that crazy spikey thing underneath the table? That's the famous durian - smells like feet and natural gas, and kind of tastes about the same.

I'm not going to say much about the rest of the photos so that I can move on to other things, but they are pictures from around the island and some various temples I visited!

I had a few days to recover from my jet lag before Jonathan's family came to visit us for the 4th of July weekend. We had a great time - the weather was perfect which is always great when you have visitors! We took them to breakfast at Gathering Together Farms, went to the farmer's market, did some wine and cheese tasting, had a BBQ, attempted to go to a Knights game, and spent some time at the Corvallis Red, White & Blue festival. I failed at taking many photos of the weekend unfortunately.

We made a trip up to Portland the following weekend to go to Portland's Vegan Iron Chef competition. I had found out about this competition right after the first one happened a year ago so I'd been waiting all year for it to come around again and I was really excited I was able to get tickets to it! We decided to go to a new sandwich place for lunch called Brass Tacks - I read about them because they were tabling at the competition and they had both vegan and meat options so Jonathan wouldn't bee too unhappy.

Turned out the girl who owns the shop is someone Jonathan knows from high school back in Kalamazoo! Pretty small world. The sandwiches were awesome (we've actually even been back another time already). The iron chef competition itself was pretty interesting, although a little hard to follow since the seating was all flat and there was only one screen which was difficult to see. It was cool to feel the energy at all of the kitchen stations though, and I think I just will watch the video of the event when I have some time to get a better view of everything that was really happening!

The weekend after that had been planned out for months, and I was really ready for all of the secrets to be out! It was Jonathan's 30th birthday and six of his friends flew in from all over the country to come celebrate it - all a surprise to him! Everything went perfectly - the surprises had to be staggered since people were arriving at different times, but it all worked out great! We met up with everyone up in Portland and spent Friday night there. Saturday we headed out for a rafting trip on the Clackamas River - it was so much fun that we're booking a 2-day rafting trip here in a couple of weekends! We went with a company called the Oregon River Experiences and the guides were great, I would definitely recommend them to anyone looking for a fun rafting trip!

 After the trip we headed back to Corvallis to clean up and then meet up with a few other friends at Block 15 to continue the birthday celebration. We got lucky and were able to take over their game room which is nice because there was plenty of space for everyone and avoids the awkwardness of sitting at a long table where you can't mingle. Jonathan got to pick a dessert for his birthday and he chose a rootbeer float - the waitress we had was pretty fantastic and actually brought shot glasses of their house made rootbeer for everyone along with the float.


By Sunday we were all pretty exhausted, so we mostly just relaxed and recovered - we did get in some birthday cake and singing though before the first people to leave had to head back to the airport. This picture cracks me up because the party hat looks so ridiculously tiny. I think it was a pretty good 30th for Jonathan though and I'm glad all of the planning and surprise work is over, at least for another year.  :)

That doesn't quite catch us up on summer, but I think that's good for now. More to come and hopefully before another month passes!

-C