220

220 days until departure.

Says Delta.com.

I'm so excited!

Lentil and Kale Stew

Amidst all of the excitement that was studying abroad this summer, I don't think I ever mentioned that my family and I went to Disney World this summer! I'll do a post on it at some point in the future (the photos are fun!), but first I need to mention the food.

When my family travels we figure out 1. Where we're going 2. When we're going 3. Where we're staying and 4. What we are going to eat. Usually we like to have reservations or at least plans of where we're going to eat when we vacation, because it's such a fun and important part about vacations. Plus, it's no fun to search for a place to eat when you're starving.

The same was true for Disney World. Their website is amazing: you plug in what day, restaurant, and meal (breakfast, lunch, or dinner) you would like, and they give you a list of available reservation times. You add all of these to your "cart" and then finalize it all, and you're set! Within half an hour all of our meals were planned for our trip. Score!

All of the food was incredible. I honestly cannot remember a meal I didn't thoroughly enjoy! I was so impressed, in fact, that I shelled out forty bucks for the Delicious Disney Cookbook.

This is the first recipe I have tried from it, and I like it a lot! You definitely need to like lentils, kale, and veggies (which I do!) to enjoy it!

One thing about this cookbook is that it definitely is written for a more experienced cook. It tells you the order in which to add ingredients, but not always the temperature, timing, or how-to's (how to peel a tomato, for example!).

After peeling and chopping the tomatoes:

Lentil and Kale Stew
From Delicious Disney
serves 8

 1 pound petite French lentils (I used green lentils that I had from the Co-op, and about 2 1/4 cups)
2 tsp sea salt, divided
1/2 cup olive oil
1 bay leaf
1 cup chopped onion (I used one huge onion from the farmer's market)
2 stalks celery, washed and chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 garlic cloves, mashed (this is super fun- use the flat blade of your chef's knife and pound the garlic down!)
6 ounces kale, washed and thinly sliced
5 tomatoes peeled and chopped
3 14.5 ounce cans fat-free chicken broth
1 cup fresh parsley, chopped
1 tsp freshly ground pepper
freshly grated parmesan cheese
olive oil (optional)

1. Rinse the lentils while sorting through to check for rocks, hulls, or any other non-consumables.

2. In a large soup pot, add the lentils, enough water to cover by a few inches, and 1 tsp of salt and bring to a boil. Allow to cook for about 5 minutes (maybe just a hair longer), then drain, rinse, and set aside.

3. Heat the olive oil with the bay leaf, onion, celery, carrots and garlic cloves in the same large soup pot at about a medium heat. Add the kale, stir, and allow to simmer together for about 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes.

4. Next add the lentils, chicken broth and remaining salt to the pot. Bring to a boil, turn down the heat, and allow to simmer partially covered for about 15 minutes.

5. Add parsley and pepper, and season to taste. Top with parmesan to serve.

The cookbook says that it is best eaten the day after it's made, which is what I did, sprinkled with a touch of nice parmesan. You can also drizzle olive oil over the top, but I skipped this. I also enjoyed a side of whole-wheat sourdough bread from the Co-op.

Not only was this really tasty (especially with the parmesan- don't skip this!), it is incredibly healthy. I plugged it into a nutrition and calorie facts calculator out of curiosity and was floored by the results. Check them out! The only "missing ingredient" it couldn't figure out was the bay leaf, which I'm sure doesn't add any calories ;)

Look at the amount of fiber! I feel so healthy today!

Halloween's a Comin'!

I cannot believe that September is almost over. This year just started! 

I am really looking forward to fall: the cooking, baking, crunch leaves, etc etc. To kick things off, I made a few little decorations this morning with some cardboard, scissors, tape and a sharpie! I think they turned out pretty cute, er, intimidating:

Easy Chick-peasey Hummus

Hummus! Ever since my mom mentioned it to me, I've been a-craving it, so I went ahead and made some for dinner.

Hummus
serves 4

1 15oz can Garbanzo beans, drained with the liquid reserved
1 clove garlic mashed or just cut up really small
2 tsp cumin (seems like a lot, is actually perfect)
1 Tbs olive oil
lemon juice
(1/4 tsp salt- optional)

Put all ingredients in blender. Blend. Mix by hand if necessary. Add some of the reserved bean liquid. EAT! I had mine with carrots, celery, and naan. Oh baby.

I tried freezing the naan- and it worked! I put them in slightly-greased freezer bags, and froze them so they weren't touching on another. As soon as they are frozen they can be touching in the bags and stacked. To cook, simply thaw, then fry with a little bit of olive oil in the cast iron. Amazing!

Ginger Sandwich Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting

Back when the US- Canada exchange rate was far in our favor, my family travelled to Calgary, Alberta a ton. We love the food (Moroccan, Indian, Thai, Ethiopian, the list goes on for days), the city, the hotel, the shopping, and the museums.

One particular museum is the Glenbow. They have a set number of permanent displays, and also have traveling ones as well so there's always something new to see. Plus they have an AMAZING craft room, which I'll do just about anything so I can go in and craft my heart out (see photo below and do not judge- I promise there is a hilarious story about this day!)

Anyhow, one of the biggest draws, other than the craft room of course, was that the cafe in the lobby had these amazing ginger sandwich cookies. They were two HUGE, soft ginger cookies with about an inch of cream cheese frosting in between them. Seriously too good for words. Sometimes if my sister and I didn't want to go look at the museum our parents would remind us of the cookie and we'd be sold.

This is my attempt to recreate these cookies. I didn't really want to make giant cookies with that much frosting, though, because I'd like to not go into a sugar coma after eating them!

Soft Ginger Cookies
Recipe made exactly from here, except I used unsalted butter instead of nasty trans fats margarine.
makes 24 cookies, 12 sandwich cookies (I made 24, and still have a bit of dough leftover!)


2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 tablespoon water
1/4 cup molasses
2 tablespoons white sugar

Preheat oven to 350* F. Sift together the flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt, and set aside. Beat together sugar and butter until smooth with an electric mixer, then beat in the egg before adding the molasses and water. Continue to beat until all is blended, then slowly add in the dry mixture a little bit at a time.

Grab a "walnut-sized" (???) piece of the dough, form it into a circle, and roll it in the remaining two tbs of sugar, and place on ungreased cookie sheet, and press down to flatten slightly.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, then allow cookies to cool on the pan for 5 minutes before moving them to the cooling rack to finish cooling.

Once all the cookies are baked and cooled, blob a decent-sized portion of cream cheese frosting (recipe below) on the flat side of one cookie, and put another cookie flat side down on top of it to make your sandwiches! Make all the sandwiches, then freeze in a freezer-proof plastic container so they can set up.

You could probably skip the freezing step, but this is how I'm storing them, and it helps prevent the cookies from flattening and all the frosting squishing out the sides.

Cream Cheese Frosting
Original Recipe Here, I just halved it

8 oz cream cheese
1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup butter
1/2 tsp vanilla

Cream together cream cheese and softened butter in electric mixer. Add the vanilla. Slowly add the powdered sugar and beat until combined. Allow to chill in the fridge for about 20-30 minutes before you frost the cookies :)

ENJOY!

Saturday Night Curry and Naan

Before:

After:

Tonight I made Vegetable Jalfrezi, an Indian-style curry from my beloved (see below) Jamie Oliver cookbook. Some of the ingredients are missing from the first photo, but you get the idea!

Here's the Recipe- it's online at Jamie's Website! I definitely recommend following his instructions; he describes how to make it perfectly, and I followed his instructions to the letter. However, the units he uses for some of the measurements need to be converted to cups and ounces, so here is the ingredient list using ounces and cups:

Vegetable Jalfrezi

1 medium onion
1 fresh red chile
a thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves
a small bunch of fresh cilantro
2 red bell peppers
1 cauliflower
3 ripe tomatoes
1 small butternut squash
1 15oz can garbanzo beans
vegetable oil
unsalted butter
1/2 cup medium curry paste (such as Patak's), I used 1/4 cup of a hot curry paste and 1/4 cup of a mild curry paste, because the Co-op doesn't have any medium curry pastes.
2 14oz cans of diced tomatoes, or one 28 oz can works too
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
sea salt and freshly ground pepper (I actually didn't need either)
lemons
natural yogurt, I used greek!

Ahh this was sooo delish. It definitely took some time to make, but was well worth it. And now I have a ton of leftovers! Bonus!

Here's what I served with my curry:

lemon wedges, plain greek yogurt, and cilantro. .

NAAN!!!  Recipe found here.

And finally the curry was served on top of a bed of steamed, white rice with cilantro. Yum.

Curried Tilapia

Curried Tilapia
From Jamie's Food Revolution, except I just made it for one person :)

1 tilapia fillet, thawed if frozen
1.5 Tbs mild curry powder
salt and pepper
small pat of butter
lug of olive oil
cilantro
lemon or lemon juice
plain yogurt (I used greek)

Put the curry powder, salt and pepper on a plate, and press the fish onto it one side at a time until completely covered with the spice mixture.

On high heat and in a nonstick pan, heat the olive oil and butter. Add the fish and cook for about 3-4 minutes, spooning the hot oil over the top of it to help the other side cook. Then flip it, and continue cooking until cooked through, about another 3-4 minutes. Do not be tempted to undercook this sucker. I did, and the middle of my fish was rather rare (sushi anyone?).

Serve on a bed of rice with cilantro leaves on top, a squeeze of lemon, and a dollop of plain yogurt. This is a super fast recipe- I easily made it in under half hour.

And I quote..

.. my honors professor! As a member of the WSU Honors College, I have a certain number of honors classes I get to take before graduation. I say "get" instead of "have to" because all of them are so much fun. The topics are interesting, the professors truly care, and the class sizes are tiny (tiny I tell you!).

This semester, one of my classes (UH 380) is titled "Looking at Leadership Through the Eyes of the European Renaissance." We'll be reading Machiavelli and Shakespeare. Umm sign me up!

Anyhow, our professor is hilarious, and I have to share three awesome quotes from lecture today:

"To not appreciate man is to deny the greatness of God" (As related to how man thought during the renaissance, this isn't necessarily what my prof believes- we don't really get into that..)

"Going to Church doesn't mean you're Christian as much as being in a garage makes you a car."

"Knowledge is knowing that the tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing to not put it in your fruit salad."

The third one is definitely my fav :)

Happy Birthday Georgia Mae!

I love you sissy :)

Homemade Crunchy Buckwheat Granola

I've been craving granola for my oatmeal for quite some time now, but either couldn't bring myself to buy it (it's kind of expensive!) or would forget to every time I went to the store. So, when I read about this recipe on Kath's blog  I really wanted to try it out.

I had a hard time finding the Buckwheat: I went to dismore's and safeway with no success, but finally found some at the Coop in Moscow. That store is amazing. I'll have to do a separate post on it someday.

But I digress. Short story short, I found and bought the ingredients, I made the granola, and it tastes something wonderful, and has an awesome crunch to it. Yum yum!

Crunchy Buckwheat Granola
From here

2 cups raw rolled oats
1/4 cup raw almonds (or I think any other nut would work here as well)
3/4 cup raw buckwheat (aka groats)
3/4 cup raw sunflower seeds

1/4 cup canola oil or coconut oil (I used coconut which was awesome)
1/4 cup honey (or a mix of honey and maple syrup, which is also tasty!)
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla

Combine dry ingredients in big metal bowl. Combine wet ingredients in separate bowl, then add them to the dry ingredients and stir until all is mixed through.

Bake in the metal bowl or in 9X9 baking pan at 300* for 1 hour, stirring every half-hour. After the hour, remove from oven and stir again about every half hour while it's cooling. Some of it will seem to clump together and/or stick to the pan. This is a-okay!

Cool completely before storing. Enjoy!

Apartment Tour part Three: the Kitchen!

Want to know the main reason why I moved off campus? Here it is: a kitchen :)

The two paintings were a antique store find in Palouse- 10 bucks for both. The table was a craigslist find, though a little more expensive at about 70 I think. Still, for an ikea table and four chairs, that's not too bad.

We still need to find something cool to hang above the sink, we were thinking about hanging up some fun trays, but we weren't sure how.

Knives, coffee, and utensils!

Our teeny counters are packed! But actually still functional. Most of the space that is used up by appliances is space that we wouldn't really use anyways because it's so far back on the counter.

The coupon corner and home of my awesome colander (see top left of the photo) and Kitchenaid. I still need to name her, any suggestions? The steak thawing is Haley's haha

And last, but definitely not least, here's our awesome pantry. Who knew apartments had pantries??

Here's all my stuff!

The End!

Apartment Tour part 2: The bathroom

THIS IS THE MOST EXCITING ROOM IN THE ENTIRE PLACE.

Okay not really, or at all. BUT we have an awesome bath tub, and the entire bathroom is spick and span thanks to some good cleaning that went down this weekend.

Here is where we stash most of our stuff. My shelf is on the bottom, Haley's is the middle, then Tay has the top. There are only towels on the top shelf now, though, because Tay uses some of the storage space under the sink for that.

The folded towels remind me of a hotel!

The sink and medicine cabinet:

Don't mind the lack of makeup! I think this sign is pretty fun :)

....and (drumroll please) the bathtub! Yay! Other than cooking, having a bath was one of the things I missed most when I was living in the dorms. Nothing beats a nice hot bath (at the end of the day haha).

The final installment of the apartment tours will be the kitchen! Stay tuned.

My Room

Apartment Tour part 1: my room :)

and yes, I do live in the living room!

Remember this bed that I was thinking about buying last spring? Well I bought and painted it! Check it out:

Here's where I get ready every morning. The little white medicine cabinet is where I stash my herbs and spices (the kitchen is right around the corner).

The bedside tables are actually two of the seats from my desk/dining room set. They work really well, match the rest of the furniture, and I we didn't have to buy them separately!

My desk and work area! I keep all of my office-y stuff on my bookcase along with my books, text books, scarves, and other miscellaneous stuff.

Hey!

My own little corner!

More of my work area room. I love having so much open space and natural light.

The End! Next part of the Apartment Tour: The Kitchen!

Fair Time

This is the only fair I've been to all year/summer! It was freezing and kinda late in the evening, but it was a blast.

Hally the cow and Halley the human!

She was eating my coat, which explains the possessed look on my face :P

Swine: they only look dead. I swear they were actually sleeping.

The Ladies (the guy who took this photo and his buddies were laughing at us for taking photos in the barn :) )

The Zipper is my sister's favorite ride at our fair. This made me think of her. Heya Georgie!

I got ice cream at the fair. Strawberry with chocolate chips. Umm yumi!