Happy Halloween!

Hey Bloggies!

How is your weekend going? For me it's going entirely too fast but it has been a blast!

I did some unexpected cooking-I came home from the gym yesterday and was planning on simply sauteing some onions and peppers for an omelette. I then realized I had some tofu left that I needed to eat before it went bad along with an open can of coconut milk. So I added a thinly sliced carrot to my onions and pepper along with some tofu and sauteed until the veggies were sweated and soft and the tofu slightly browned. I then added the coconut milk, cumin, curry, salt and pepper, let the mixture come to a boil, lowered the heat and simmered for another 5 minutes or so.

Served with some brown rice, such a tasty and unexpected meal!
I also pulled out some of my old scrap booking and craft supplies on Friday to work on my Halloween costume.

The end result, a road!

My roommate also worked her creative genius and made a sour patch kid costume! She did an amazing job and put it together in less than 24 hours!!

Just noticed her eye is missing here :(

Other costumes of the weekend.

One of my favorite things about Halloween in the city-entire train stations packed with dressed up adults.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Nicole

Loving Fall

Sorry, I haven't taken such a long break from blogging in a while, but time seems to be going so quickly the last two weeks!

This past weekend by boss invited the lab out to his house for lunch followed by a trip to a local farm for pumpkin picking, hey rides, and such...

A Zonkey!

My boss and his wife-


Fun times! It was great to get out of the city and see the beautiful fall foliage, and I haven't gone on a hey ride or pumpkin picking in forever, it was the perfect way to spend a fall Saturday!

Nicole

I love new things!

I've tried a few new things in the food world this week, and all of them were good! Every time I see an ad or a coupon for a new food item, I want to try it. Advertiser's have a big effect on me! Anyway, one of them is pretzel m&m's. I know these have been out for a while, but I haven't been able to find them in stores until yesterday. I'm guessing I only found them because of people buying halloween candy instead of regular candy. They are great! Crunchy, sweet and salty.



I've been seeing an ad in many magazines for dark chocolate almond milk lately. I bought some yesterday and had some for breakfast today. It was amazing! Better than regular chocolate milk!



I also love trying new restaurants! I went to one called Fat Cat Cafe, which serves mostly sandwiches, soups, etc. We were the only table there for dinner, and I'm guessing it was because it was a Tuesday and it's recently expanded its hours to dinner. The dinner menu included a free glass of wine! I got chicken scalupini over linguine. It had chicken, sausage, black olives, and onions in a red sauce. It tasted like pizza and was so so good!



Fall always makes me want to eat soup, so I made a potato soup, with bacon, cheese, and scallions for garnish. Very yummy!



Have a nice weekend!

~Sarah

Back to Life Back to Reality

Back to life, back to the present time

Back from a fantasy Yeah

I'm back in New York and back to my everyday routine, the last 2 weeks were crazy but so much fun. After I returned from Austin last Tuesday I fell into my bed and slept for 10+ hours, woke on Wednesday to go into lab and work on my presentation and then was out the door at 4 am to catch my 6 am flight to California. Officially this trip was more work related, but there are always a few moments of downtime for fun.

Southern California was far from sunny this weekend and upon arrival I traded in my run to the pier for a session in the hotel's gym which had a fully equipped gym with free weights, several weight machines, medicine balls, ect., I was impressed!

And I must say, even with all the clouds, California is beautiful!

As was the hotel:

I then grabbed food from Wahoo's Fish Taco, a tofu and veggie rice bowl with beans,

and practiced my presentation and promptly fell asleep at 7:30 PDT. I felt like an old lady going to bed so early and ended up waking at 4 am (my body was still on east coast time) and felt so energized, ready to take on the world, or well at least staying alert for all talks, lectures, workshops, and such for my conference.

I actually kept myself pretty close to an east coast time schedule during my time in California which allowed me to be up and in lab by 8am on Monday morning without feeling too groggy.

Back to reality also meant back to my CSA food share. This week we received small edible squash and inedible gourds, can you tell which is which?

Ok, so I didn't make it that hard of a test because I took the funkiest gourds available, but some aren't so obvious. And what exactly makes a gourd inedible?

It turns out some contain a bitter substance which act as a purgative and some are poisonous. At a certain point some of the inedible can be consumed, as in the first stages of development.

In any case, I love having gourds around, it's a nice reminder that it's fall!

Happy Humpday,

Nicole

Renaissance Faire!

It's that time of year again... time to go to the Renaissance Faire! Yesterday was the third time I've been, and it's a lot of fun! There are tons of performances. Comedy singing acts, sword swallowing, knife throwing, jousting, living chess match, and so much more. What makes it even better is it takes place in a winery, so there was lots of wine and many other drinks! I started with a hard cider that was really tasty!



I drank it while I watched two performances, which were both hysterical!

The Dandy Pirates!

I also saw jousting and a few other performances, all really great!





I had some tasty Irish nachos. Potato chips with cheese, bacon, and scallions. Very yummy!



Another thing that's fun to do while at the Ren Faire is just people watching. There are some strange people!






Have a nice week!
~Sarah

Likes Mostly

So my list of likes and dislikes of Austin continues and the list is more likes than anything so I'll do the dislikes first.

The Airport! Particularly security, the lines were long and I only just made it for the boarding of my 6:20 flight.

Now the likes...

1. My friend Dana's 1968 Ford Truck, which she is looking to sell, any takers?

2. Her beautiful house with roses and many other flowers...

3. Cacti all over the place
4. The food cart culture
We had sushi from Sushi A-Go-Go, our first choice was Lulu B's, a vegan friendly Vietnamese truck, but it was closed-as are many carts on Monday.
Green tea straight from Japan-it was so strong!
Afterward I had a wedding cake snow cone, the texture was just like snow and the flavor was amazing, so so good!!
5. Lady Bird Lake and Barton Springs (part of the Colorado River), likely my favorite part of the city, while canoeing it felt like I was the furtherest thing away from a city. There were turtles and fish all over the place and the water was so clean and clear. Better yet, we were able to canoe for free by picking up trash along the way. Great way to keep the banks and water clean!! Dana rocked at this task and walked up in the bank picking up smelly trash that I would have never dared to go near. Thanks girl!!

6. The number of food co-ops and organic food options, I got some really inexpensive granola and nuts from Wheatsville
7. The number of Vietnamese food options, my last night we went to Le Soleil

And we got so much food for about 8 a person including tax and tip! I've clearly lived in NYC too long, I forgot you can go out and eat for under 10 a person.

Currently back in lab for a day working on a presentation, do some laundry, pack and fly off again tomorrow at the crack of dawn! Excited to stay put for a while starting Monday. It's been really hard to stick to my Mold free diet and I'm actually going to postpone my next allergy appointment since I haven't been the best with following it...I've been good but while in Austin in particular I've gone ahead and had a few sauces and cheese when I'm suppose to avoid.

See you soon from California,

Nicole