And we're back!

I signed into Blogger today for the first time in what seems like forever. I clicked on 'Post' to see when the last time I had written anything was and realized I had started several and left them in draft and that I've been MIA since June!

I've had no creative energy this summer and every time I thought about writing it just felt like a chore. I think it's all the writing I've been having to do for school - it's really taking it out of me! I've been feeling totally overwhelmed with the whole moving/commuting/schoolwork business and I haven't gotten back into a good rhythm yet. I'm hoping now that Autumn is here that can start to change!

Can we talk about how amazing Autumn is for a minute? Right now it is gorgeous outside - bright blue skies, 74 degrees, but with a nice windy crisp in the air. I think we have at least another week before the rain starts to come and I'm trying to enjoy every minute of it. We actually set a record this summer in the Portland area for the driest July-September ever without any water issues due to the very rainy spring we had. You know what else makes Autumn fantastic? The crazy amounts of produce! I've already started getting back to some Autumn cooking with stuffed delicata squash, soups, and homemade bread.

Before I get too burnt out on trying to think of new and interesting things to write, I thought I'd share with you some of my new favorite foods of the past few months.

1) Greek Yogurt. This took me a long time to come to terms with - I haven't eaten anything but soy yogurt for years and regular yogurt kind of freaks me out. Now I use Greek yogurt in everything (well - everything that I can anyway). It makes an excellent substitute for mayo or sour cream (two other things I don't eat) and I've even used it to replace cream in a recipe or two.

2) Peaches. Ok, these are not a new food to me - but for some reason I've never been in love with peaches, they were also just pretty good. This year I seem to want peach everything. My favorite dessert by far has been roasted peaches with Greek yogurt (I'll share my recipe soon).

3) Oatmeal. Again - also not new, I've been eating oatmeal for breakfast nearly everyday for the past 6 or 7 years. How did it take me this long to realize that cooking it on the stove is like a thousand times better than in the microwave!? I don't know what my problem was, but now I want stove-top oatmeal just about every morning. In fact, it's not even morning and I kind of want some now.

4) Blue Cheese. I always thought I hated blue cheese - let's be honest, it is pretty freaky looking. But after slowly having it in dishes that I couldn't pick it out of I have decided that blue cheese is awesome. We stopped at Rogue Creamery on a recent road trip and sampled about a dozen different varieties. All were delicious, but their Smokey Blue is still my favorite (smoked over hazelnut shells and gives a very "meaty" taste to my vegetarian dishes).

5) Beets. Ok so I'm not eating beets at every meal yet - but since after my last list of new foods I was loving I commented that I still hated beets I thought it was worth mentioning that I have now had several beet dishes that have been quite excellent. First my friend Sara made this beet salad, and I was all "Ew, no - I don't like beets" except then I ate it and was like "What!? How is this beets? They don't taste like dirt at all!". Also the co-op in Corvallis makes this wrap with some shredded beets and other than the fact that it turns everything purple it is pretty great.

That's all for now - hopefully I'll be back again soon! I do have many recipes I'd love to share if I can find the time and energy to do so!

The Overwhelming World of Internet Recipes

You guys. I have 825  recipes favorited  on foodgawker at the moment. Eight hundred and twenty-five! Do you know how many of those recipes I have actually made? 25. (Yes I counted, yes I have better things I could probably be doing, but I really needed to know)

That means there are 800 more recipes to try, and that doesn't even count the recipes I've pinned on Pinterest, or the hundreds of other recipes I have bookmarked, or the hundreds of recipes that are being added every week to foodgawker. The world of internet recipes is definitely daunting. There is certainly more content out there than I could ever hope to try my hand at.

I'm feeling inspired to work through some of these recipes that have intrigued me though. I've been thinking a lot lately about my future and what I want to be when I grow up. Jonathan keeps asking me what it is that I would be doing if someone gave me a million dollars, and my immediate answer is always - cook. I love food and I'm most happy when I've spent the entire day in the kitchen trying all kids of different recipes. The flip side is that I'm also really disappointed when a recipe is a total failure - I'm working on that part!

I'm not planning on making any drastic career switches here - engineering is a good place to be plus I have my masters degree I'm still working on - but I do plan on spending a lot more time in the kitchen this summer working through some of these recipes!

That said - here are a few of my more recent kitchen creations inspired by various recipes found on the internet!

{Kale, Apple, & Chickpea Salad}

{Quinoa, Corn, and Black Bean Salad}

{Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Bites}

These are "healthy"!  Made with garbanzo beans, and pretty darn good.

When we left our house in Corvallis, we had a giant dill plant growing. I mean seriously giant, I didn't even know that dill could get that big! I think it was at least as tall as me! We snipped a few bunches off to take with us, so I really needed to find some recipes to use it in. I have also recently become somewhat obsessed with substituting nonfat Greek yogurt for various things like sour cream, mayo, etc. So that's what I did with the following two recipes, used Greek yogurt for sour cream and even half-and-half (yogurt cut with almond milk)!

 {Roasted Potato Salad with Dill}

{Cheddar Dill Scones}

{Cornflake BBQ Tofu}

No recipe for this one - just BBQ baked tofu breaded in cornflake crumbs and baked some more!

{Dark Chocolate Almond Cookies}

I subbed a flax egg, and they are still delicious!

Starting Fresh

So much has been going on here lately! Jonathan accepted a new job, far enough from where we were living that we had to move, we just got back from an amazing European vacation (that's us in Ephesus, Turkey!), and just completed our move! Good thing we're still in Oregon - I don't think I have the creative energy at the moment to rename the blog!

We've left the town of Corvallis, which over the last four years I've actually grown quite fond of. It was a big transition moving to a small college town from Seattle and truth be told I absolutely hated it when I first moved there (and even when I moved there the second time after a short stint in Portland). That all changed when Jonathan and I found the best rental property ever though - a 105 year old restored farm house surrounded by fields, a vineyard, and a horse barn. We had our country house and were still only a 5 minute drive from work and the grocery store (these things are important).

We spent two years there - we built two beautiful garden beds, Jonathan built a chicken coop and acquired two hens, but mostly we learned how to live together as our own little family there. We've left behind a lot of familiarity - a great group of friends, restaurants and bars where we were regulars, the ability to carpool to work and run out for lunch together, among many other things. But we're excited for our new adventure too.

We're just getting settled in our new place in Gresham - about 15-20 minutes outside of Portland. Now if you're familiar with the area at all, you might think I'm nuts for being excited about being in Gresham. It's not exactly known for being the nicest place to live I don't think (noted by the increase in my car insurance premium). But you know what? It's not so bad - I think we're in a pretty good spot, and we're in a nice unit too so that helps. Last Friday was our first "official" night here and we walked across the street to get some pizza for dinner (walking, yay!). Saturday we walked downtown to the farmer's market, which is only a little over a mile away (again - walking, yay!), got lunch at a little cafe, stopped at BB&B to get some spice jars, and joined a gym.

I'm beyond excited that all of these things are within walking distance - even if we are kind of in the suburbs, at least there are a few things around to do! We're also only two blocks away from the MAX which means getting into Portland without driving is entirely reasonable. So you see? It's not really that bad out here! And maybe, with time, I will learn to love it like I did Corvallis!

Homemade Takeout: Sweet & Sour Soy Curls

One of my fellow vegetarian coworkers brought me a bag of soy curls for Christmas. I was very excited because I'd only ever had soy curls at a few food carts in Portland, but never seen them in the store or used them at home. Unfortunately, my excitement wasn't enough to get me to use them right away. I think I just wanted to find the perfect dish since I only had this one small bag to use!

Well I finally felt inspired - a vegetarian version of a sweet & sour chicken! To tell you the truth, I don't think I've ever had sweet & sour chicken, but it all of a sudden sounded like something I must have right.now. And let me tell you, it is some pretty delicious stuff!

Sweet & Sour Soy Curls
1/2 pkg soy curls
1 red bell pepper, large dice
1/2 large yellow onion, large dice
1 tsp fresh ginger, grated
1 small can of diced pineapple
Handful of roasted cashews
Green onion for garnish
1 recipe Sweet & Sour Sauce
Brown rice

1. Soak soy curls according to package (was 10 minutes in warm water) - drain well and place on a baking sheet in a 250 degree oven for 20-40 minutes, turning occasionally (the longer you let them bake, the crispier and drier they will be - I don't care for squishy textures so I left them in the oven awhile).
2. Make the Sweet & Sour sauce while the soy curls are cooking.
3. Saute the bell pepper, onion, and ginger over medium high heat until just tender, drain the pineapple and add to the peppers and onions.
4. Add the soy curls to the pan along with the Sweet & Sour sauce and toss to coat.
5. Serve over brown rice and top with roasted cashews and diced green onions.

Delicious! I must figure out where to get some soy curls of my own now - it's a nice texture change from tofu!

Instagram Recap

It's been a busy couple of months - after our Iceland trip I headed to Hawaii for a work conference, made a trip up to Washington to see my family and friends for a long weekend, and then was approved for a last minute work trip to Dublin. I also started my masters program this week which is a bit of an adjustment - I can't say I missed homework terribly, but I am excited about it nonetheless!

I finally signed up for an Instagram account, and I have some serious mixed feelings about it. I like the filters and effects it has better than Hipstamatic but I hate that I have to be connected to the network to finish taking a photo (doesn't work great for international travel) and I don't like that I can't save the raw photo and apply multiple affects to it. Regardless - here are a few photos from the recent weeks!

Grafton Street - Dublin

 

 Morning Coffee

 Vegetarian Breakfast @ Cornucopia Dublin

Flowers on Grafton Street

 Cathedral

 Dublin Doorway

 Rain from the hotel window

 Dinner on our day trip to Hood River

 Strawberry Cheesecake - My first creation for the "Dessert a Month" package donated on behalf of Heartland Humane Society

That's all for now - likely to have some exciting news to share within the next week or so, but keeping my mouth shut for now!

Iceland

 Yikes - I started writing this when we actually got back from our trip, which was over a month ago now! I've been traveling quite a bit lately, and between that, work, working out, and getting ready for grad school (eeee!) I haven't had much time to focus here. Regardless - here's the recap of our amazing Iceland trip!
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I know it's only February, but the potential highlight of my year was our recent trip to Iceland. I've been wanting to visit for years, mainly inspired by the beautiful scenery in a documentary by one of my favorite bands - Sigur Ros. You can see the trailer here  - I highly suggest you watch it, if you don't care for the music just watch it on mute and enjoy the footage. I bet you want to go to Iceland now too.

We got this great deal through Icelandair that included airfare (direct from Seattle), accommodations at the Hilton, and a guided glacier hike/northern lights tour. Iceland doesn't get many tourists this time of year so Icelandair has been making a big push to get people to travel there - it must be working because our guide said usually they're running hardly any tours this time of year but they've been working full time this year. Oh, and when we checked out of the hotel on Saturday there was a huge crowd - the hotel was overbooked and they were trying to find new accommodations for everyone. So glad that didn't happen when we checked in.

It was an easy 8 hours flight from Seattle (granted we did have to drive all the way to Seattle, but oh well) - the down side is that this put us arriving in Iceland just before 7am. With very little sleep. I had intended to spend the first day doing most of our exploring of Reykjavik and I hadn't really planned on serious jet lag. We were so relieved that there was a room ready for us when we arrived at the hotel since check in time wasn't really supposed to be until 2pm. I don't know what we would have done otherwise - I think we would have had to sleep in the lobby because we definitely weren't functioning! We ended up sleeping until about 2:30pm before we bundled up and headed out to see Reykjavik. 

It was about a 1.5 mile walk from our hotel to the city center - but the city was very easy to navigate and to make it even easier we could basically just walk straight down the same road the whole way. We weren't very productive the first day, but we did manage to find some food and go see a documentary called The Volcano Show. The film maker was there to give us some background - his father started filming volcano eruptions in the 1940's and he picked it up after him so there was a ton of great footage. To me, volcanoes just spew ash, so to see footage of the ground opening and a wall of lava shooting out is pretty crazy. I'm glad we went to this though - it was a nice easy way to learn a lot about the geography in Iceland. By the time we left to catch the shuttle back to the hotel it has started snowing. Normally I am more inclined to walk, but let me tell you - after the sun sets in Iceland it is absolutely freezing out! I was so happy that we made it to the shuttle where it was warm
  
Our second day was filled with the tour that was included in our package - we were picked up at the hotel along with a few other guests (I think there ended up being about 10 or so of us in the group) and headed out of Reykjavik. We stopped briefly to see Eyjafjallajökull - the volcano whose 2010 eruption caused huge air traffic delays in Europe (I remember this clearly because I was waiting on some shipments for work from Italy and there were a bunch of delays!).

Then we stopped to see Skógarfoss - a beautiful waterfall. Legend has it that there is a chest of treasure somewhere underneath it.

Next stop was Sólheimajökull Glacier where we were going to do our hike. When we arrived the weather was bitterly cold - the wind was blowing like crazy and it was dumping snow on us as we stopped to put on our crampons. This continued as we walked up the glacier but luckily the wind was blowing at our backs. As soon as we reached the highest point the weather had turned, the wind died down and the sun even came out! The "hike" was more of a walk really, which Jonathan and I were a little disappointed with but I guess it has to be accessible to a wide range of people (including those in our group wearing just jeans and a jacket! I can't even imagine how cold they must have been).

We explored the glacier a bit, and even got to climb inside of an ice tube! The ice axes we had weren't ever really necessary, but they did look kind of cool!

The sun was starting to set by the time we made it off the glacier, and it had started snowing again. We made one quick stop at another waterfall before heading to a nice little restaurant for dinner. Most of the group had lobster soup, but they did have a vegetarian soup option which was very nice. We had a chance to try some Icelandic beer - Skjálfti (if I remember right, pronounced something like ski-OW-fTEE) which was really good, they also had some of the most delicious bread which I'm pretty sure I ate my fair share of.

Since the clouds had rolled in at this time, our chances of seeing the northern lights were pretty slim - we did drive for a bit looking for a clearing with no success. I was a bit disappointed, but to be honest it was SO cold by that time that I didn't feel much like standing outside and looking at the sky anyway!

We took time to continue exploring Reykjavik on our last full day - we went to the National Museum and spent a good amount of the afternoon there, we then took a cab over to a place called the Perlan which is where the Saga Museum is as well as a nice restaurant and great lookout point. We didn't make it in time to go to the Saga Museum, but we did get some gorgeous views of Reykjavik before the sunset.

We then hurried back downtown to make a stop at the liquor store (which is the only place you can buy any kind of alcohol) to try to pick up some of the Icelandic beer we liked to bring home. Unfortunately they did not have any Skjálfti - must be popular because every time we ordered it anywhere they commented that they would have to check and see if they had it still. Instead we picked up a couple of other random beers in hopes that they would be just as good.

Since this trip fell over both Valentine's Day and our anniversary we took the opportunity to go out to a nice dinner on our last night - we found a cute little Icelandic restaurant  (Lækjarbrekka) that was an old house-turned-restaurant. Their vegetarian option was quite delicious (I was not quite sure what to expect since Icelandic food is not particularly vegetarian friendly) - I had the Icelandic organic barley with wild mushrooms, angelica, root vegetables and herbs and Jonathan had a chance to enjoy some real Icelandic food (although he did go for lamb and not the rotten shark meet, neither sound great to me but it was probably a wise choice).

To get back to the airport we booked a shuttle that made a stop at the Blue Lagoon - a touristy geothermal spa. However touristy it might have been, it was definitely worth the stop. The pools are a gorgeous milky blue - filled with silica mud and minerals and plenty warm to hang out in even though it was hovering right around freezing outside. The downside to all of those minerals though? My hair felt like a tangley mess for at LEAST a week afterwards - no matter how many times I washed and conditioned it it still felt terrible!

All in all, a fantastic trip - I wish it could have been longer, but I'm glad we have something to go back for now! Can't wait to start planning an awesome summer trip even if it may be a few years away!

 

Vegan Superbowl Snacking

Life has been crazy since the new year started. Like so crazy that I haven't even been browsing foodgawker! I know, I can't hardly believe it either. I don't have nearly as much time to cook so that's probably a big part of it. To be honest, I don't remember much of what I've been cooking lately.

My current favorite post-workout meal has been stir fry. I prep the veggies on the weekend and keep them in the fridge, I've made a jar of stir fry sauce as well so that's ready to go. We can start the rice before the workout then afterwards through the veggies in a skillet for a few minutes and we're ready to eat. Seriously, what could be easier? My favorite recipe for stir fry is still this one from PPK - the avocado and basil additions are amazing.

The most cooking I've done in a long time was last weekend - Jonathan invited a few of our friends over to watch the Superbowl and we decided we would try to make some "healthier" snacks. I have serious issues with only picking one or two things to make and we ended up making no less than six different dishes.

Vegan Ranch Dip (I didn't even know how much I missed creamy dips until I made this!)

 Baked Sweet Potato Fries

 Black Bean Dip (with some added kick from chipotle powder)

 Crunchy Coleslaw Salad

 Sweet & Spicy Chipotle Tempeh Bites (ok these photograph terribly but they taste super good!)

 Chipotle Potato & Spinach Quesadillas

 Gardein Buffalo Chikn Wings (these are kind of cheating because all I did to make them was heat them up and pour the sauce over them)

There seemed to be a spicy theme - I think I ended up putting chipotle in just about everything, but I can't help it - it's just so delicious! It was also unintentional that everything ended up being vegan... although that may have had something to do with most of the recipes coming from my new cookbook Party Vegan that my cousin gave me for Christmas! This was the first time I'd used it and I was pretty happy with all of the recipes (coleslaw, tempeh, quesadillas, ranch dip).

There is much more I want to share from the last month, but we just returned from a weekend of skiing and tubing at Mt. Bachelor and I'm exhausted so it will have to be another time!

-C

Fifteen Days Down!

I sure hope one of my goals for the year wasn't to blog more! We may be only 15 days into the new year, but so far I have been sticking to my goal of working out more and doing P90X. That's 15 straight days of working out for at least an hour. That's insane (for me anyway). Now technically you are allowed one "rest" day per week, but it's either rest or do the stretching dvd - and trust me, after 6 days of the other workouts I need the stretching. Even still, that's an hours worth of stretching to still make time for.

I printed out a calendar for us (same one I used last year - you can find it here) and wrote in all of our workouts so we can mark them off each day. I know neither of us wants to see a day without a cross through it so it's working pretty well so far! There was a brief moment eariler this week when I couldn't take the lack of being able to come home and cook dinner and really wanted to just skip it - instead we rearranged slightly and did the stretching routine that day and I was able to make a (pretty) healthy pizza!

Speaking of cooking - it's been tough not being able to do that as much. I really enjoy thinking of new meals and putting together a nice dinner. There really isn't time to cook after coming home from work and doing these workouts though. The freezing meals thing is going ok so far - I've made several batches of soup and yesterday I made an enchilada pie with roasted butternut squash, onions, black beans, corn, and tomatoes. We had the regular enchiladas for dinner and had enough leftover for the pie so hopefully that's at least one dinner and one lunch!

In an effort to have different dinner options I tried a new soup recipe today (if it were up to Jonathan I think we'd only ever eat that Italian Sausage Soup but I need a little more variety). I searched Allrecipes for their top rated soups and found this one for a Brazilian Black Bean Stew. It was well rated and I liked a lot of the ingredients so I decided to give it a shot, and of course make it vegetarian. I use Gimme Lean veggie sausage in place of the chorizo and added some cayenne to it for spice. I also used a little liquid smoke to replicate the ham flavor - not sure that really worked, but who doesn't like a little extra smokiness? There aren't any seasonings listed on the recipe - I threw in some cumin, red pepper flakes, and of course salt and pepper.

The soup was pretty good - maybe not quite as good as that Italian Sausage Soup, but at least there is something to strive for!  ;)

Hope everyone else is doing well with their New Year's resolutions or goals! It's not easy, but I guess if it was we'd have been doing it all along!

-C

Wrapping up 2011 - on to 2012!

It's 9:30am - Jonathan is still asleep and I'm sitting on the couch drinking coffee, Pixel is curled up with me, and we've just been looking out at the gray skies and the crows flying around. It feels like the perfect Sunday morning, except it's actually Monday but since it's the last day I have off before returning to work it definitely feels like a Sunday!

The holidays have been crazy busy, and although I'm glad for the quiet and relaxation that this morning brings, the holidays were also great. We spent a lot of time with friends in the weeks leading up to Christmas - the time between Thanksgiving and then just flew by! Jonathan and I have both had work off for the past week and a half which has been fantastic - it's great not being at work and also not missing out on meetings/emails/etc. because everyone else is also gone! I stopped in Portland on my way home to Seattle for a vegan cooking class (more on that later) - Portland still takes my breath away, I just love that city. I was able to see my two best friends and spend a lot of time with my family while I was in Washington for a couple of days, and then on Christmas day I headed out to Michigan to visit Jonathan and his family.

As you can see, there was a fair amount of travel involved this holiday season - luckily all of the driving and all of the flights went well! Michigan was great - it was so much fun to see where Jonathan grew up and hear all of his stories that the places reminded him of. We spent a lot of time wandering around Kalamazoo and exploring the city, we also drove over to Ann Arbor one day and he showed me the Michigan campus. Both cities were super cute and we had a great time. I loved that I was able to split Christmas time this year with my family and his - unfortunately I can't be in two places at once, but this was a nice solution!

We made it home on New Year's Eve morning after staying in a somewhat dumpy hotel off of I-5. After traveling for about 15 hours it's tough to make the hour and a half drive back from the airport, especially when it's midnight here and you've been on east coast time. We had the quietest NYE that I have had in a very long time, but it was fantastic. We rented movies, ate appetizers, drank wine and were in bed by about 10pm. We celebrated with the east coast by drinking sparkling wine at 9pm - attempted to watch the ball drop, only to find out that they delay the broadcast here so it drops at midnight. LAME. I swear I remember watching that as a kid, and definitely at 9pm and not midnight.

Speaking of New Year's, I thought I'd share a few of my goals - I prefer goals to resolutions, I'm not exactly sure why. But here we go:
- Complete the P90X workout series (we're on Day 2!)
- Continue to work on meal planning, especially with these lengthy workouts I want to have meals prepared and ready to go ahead of time. I'm going to work on "freezer meals" - soups and other things that can be made ahead of time and freeze easily.
- 365 photo challenge... there will likely be far less food photos in the beginning though since I don't think I'll be cooking as often.

We'll see how it goes! The P90X workouts are super tough, we've been prepping for the past month or so doing the bonus workouts 3 days a week, but now to move up to 7 days a week is definitely going to be a challenge. We've been really bad about working out for the past year though, so hopefully this is a good jumpstart for us. I'm really aiming to be in better shape before this Mediterranean cruise at the end of May!

We've also been doing some New Year's cleaning - organizing and getting rid of a bunch of things we don't need (why did we still have two toasters, two hand beaters, and two Foreman grills!?). It's nice to start off the year with a little less junk around.

Hope you all had a great start to 2012 as well - I think it's going to be a great year!


-C