The Summer of Cooking

As much as I enjoy cooking (and eating) good food, during the school year it's really not always an option. Tons of classes, homework and work time leave little room for cooking, not to mention I'm one person and can only eat one dish so many times before I get tired of it.

Enter summertime.

I've been fortunate enough to get to spend June at home in Maryland eating some good home cooking by my mom :)

With Dad's grill shenanigans thrown in..

And sometime from Sarah & her boyfriend, Sean.

And other times, I get in the baking mood and decide to make two kinds of granola bars & cookies all in one night. But at least there are plenty of people around to help eat them!

I tested out a recipe from my cousin, Erika for Peanut Butter Granola Bars. She had previously sent me a box of these during a really busy week at school. So tasty and much appreciated!

Peanut Butter Granola Bars

1 22-oz. box granola

1 cup nut pieces

3 cups crispy rice cereal or puffed brown rice

½ cup dried cherries or raisins

1 tsp. cinnamon, opt.

1 ½ cups peanut butter

1 to 1 ½ cups brown rice syrup

½ cup honey

In a large bowl mix dry ingredients. Mix together peanut butter, syrup and honey;

combine with dry ingredients. Press into greased 12 x 18” pan; put a piece of wax or

parchment paper over the bars and roll flat with a rolling pin. Refrigerate until firm.

Keeps best in the refrigerator. Yield: 2 dozen bars

I tried some Gingered Carrot Cake Cookies from BrownEyedBaker

Gingered Carrot Cake Cookies

Yield: 18 cookies

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Bake Time: 16 to 18 minutes

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
Pinch of grated nutmeg
¾ cup (1½ sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup shredded carrots (about 3, peeled and trimmed)
1 cup sweetened shredded coconut
1 cup raisins
½ cup coarsely chopped pecans

1. Position oven racks in the upper-middle and lower-middle positions and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.

2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, ginger and nutmeg.

3. With a stand or hand mixer, beat the butter on medium speed until creamy and smooth. Add the sugars and beat until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes, then add the egg and beat for another minute. Reduce the mixer speed to low and beat in the vanilla. Continuing on low speed, add the flour mixture in 2 or 3 batches and beat only until they just disappear into the mix. The dough will be very thick, but don’t overbeat to incorporate the flour. Using a rubber spatula, mix in the carrots, coconut, raisins and pecans.

4. Spoon about three heaping tablespoonfuls of dough (or use a large cookie scoop, which is what I did) onto the prepared baking sheets at a time, leaving about an inch of space between them. Using your fingers, every so slightly flatted the tops of the cookies.

5. Bake for 16 to 18 minutes, rotating the sheets from top to bottom and front to back at the midway point. The cookies should be light brown and only just firm on top. Carefully transfer the cookies to racks to cool to room temperature. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.

And some Cherry & Chocolate Peanut Butter Granola Bars from Healthy Food for Living. Although apparently I forgot to document those. Oops.

This past weekend we made our way up to New Jersey (after a long 7 hour drive due to flash floods and tons of traffic-- should have taken 4 hours) to spend some time with family and celebrate Father's Day!

Of course, there is the mandatory elevator shots in Eric's fancy Jersey City apartment complex (which by the way, I have decided that I'm going to move into the laundry room of the place if the rest of my life doesn't work out.)

On Saturday morning after breakfast I hopped on the train and headed into NYC to visit Jon for the day. Apparently my picture taking skills have gone down the drain because I failed to document any portion of it. But we spent a good long while wandering through Central Park, eating tasty pizza, and sitting on fire escapes.

Sunday was spent back in Jersey, after picking Eric up, with lots of outdoor patio time.

Tomorrow morning early we're headed off to Wisconsin for Grandma's 80th (belated) birthday celebration. But first a pit stop in Chicago tomorrow night to see Remy (one of my roommates from RIT this past year). After Wisconsin I have a few days at home to pack up -- and steal more of Sarah's clothes ;) -- before headed back up to Rochester for the rest of the summer.

15 days?!

i can't believe that it's already been that long since i last posted. good thing i already hit my quota for the year some time ago.

christmas was excellent. lots of family. lots of cookies. and TONS of card games (old maid, hearts, euchre, trash, etc). i'll have to dig up some pictures eventually. i tend to stop blogging when i come home because let's face it.. a good chunk of my daily readers are right here with me! ;) as for now, i've got some homework and admissions stuff to get working on. school seems pretty far away, it's a wonder i even remembered what homework i have.

sarah's getting her wisdom chompers out tomorrow morning so it looks like we'll be watching movies and making smoothies (ha! that kind of rhymes) for the next few days. no big plans for new years.

heading back to school on sunday night (late flight around 9 but tons cheaper than the earlier one) still have some friends to catch up with. things to do, people to see, sims lives to mess up (the sims is a computer game in case you didn't catch that).

check out [this] to read a cool hockey story

and [this] to see pictures of our 23 inches of snow!!

brick city homecoming 2009

the first 4 pictures are from a professional photographer for the RIT alumni website. it just gives a good look at how MANY fans were there. over 7,000!

homecoming weekend was this weekend. mom, dad and alison drove up friday morning and got here around 2 i think. i got... some... homework done before then. friday afternoon we went to Moe's for dinner and then to see Jim Gaffigan the comedian. saturday we woke up and got ready to go see Jimmy Wales (the founder of wikipedia). made a trip to wegmans for some lunch (pizza!) and then food shopping :) we even found some pumpkins on the way home. after that we got all dressed up in orange for the HOCKEY GAME! a new brick city homecoming tradition. it was awesome especially because it was so packed. we got seats right down on the ice which was excellent. after the game we were all starving so we went in search of some dinner. alison almost ate some small children she was so hungry, but not to worry we found her a sandwich so all of the kids are safe. just kidding ;) sunday morning we all went to jay's diner for some food before they headed off. excellent weekend :)

managing

yay family time tomorrow + alison :)

been kind of busy lately, of course it's midterm week so that makes sense. had enough time for movie nights, so i guess it's not that busy.

to do before then..

-read two chapters for art history with notes.

-10 concepts for imagery poster

-chapter 10/chapter 11 read and discussion board and take tests

-finalize photo shoot place for monday

-read watchmen

-journal topic 3

-study for typography quiz monday

-start on paper assignment two

think i can manage?

it might help if i actually left for my 8 am class now. good thinking.

taco salad birthdays

my birthday is in 50 minutes =)

alison slept over last night, we woke up this morning and went to brunch with kristin at double t. we all go blueberry pancakes they were excellently delicious. came back and watched some full house with sarah. ate taco salad for dinner. sarah and i looked up super expensive houses in various states. alison and jimmy came over around 9 and we watched ella enchanted. now we're watching myth busters and the guys are swimming through syrup.

not sure what's up for tomorrow. maybe some delicious muffins, random hanging around and other fun things.

pictures

Picture dump, number one. my updating plan last week failed, so here are some pictures. 

Liz and I went to Silver Spring on Thursday. We ate some tasty breakfast at the Whole Foods, walked around the downtown, spent 3 hours in Borders, and went to Jeremy's rock concert. 

Wednesday night Dad and I took Ever and Lux to centennial park for the wednesday night music in the parks. 

This picture was from before mom and Sarah left so technically not last week but they were some pretty tasty cherry square thingamabobs.

Midwest Adventures

Hookay, the much anticipated vacation blog post. After all, what could we have possibly been doing running around the midwest for 12 days? 

Started out in Valparaiso, Indiana for Joel & Jessica's wedding. Which was a lovely excuse for a mid-year family get together. We all spent the weekend pal-ing (is that a word?) about the hotel, swimming, eating, hanging out and being waited on attentively by the concierge who insisted that we all needed to eat more cookies and drink more water. The wedding itself was beautiful (the chapel is seen below) despite the crazy heat! Man that place was hot. After a boatload of pictures, we all drove over to a restaurant near the hotel for the reception which included lots and lots of dancing! 

The day after the wedding we piled back in the car and drove 4 hours to Michigan to meet with the volleyball head coach and tour campus -- a schedule to which we were about to become quite accustom to. 

Monday night after seeing Michigan we drove...err, snacked... 4 hours to Chicago to eat some pizza. Oh yeah, we were there for more than just the food. Tuesday morning we woke up and ate some pancakes. Right, right.. after that we drove to Northwestern and visited with the volleyball coach and toured the gym and what not. Seeing a pattern?

After meeting with the coach on Tuesday we drove 4 hours to Bloomington Indiana to eat pizza... Except that plan failed since Mama Bear's pizza was apparently "closing early for unexpected summer cleaning". Jimmy John's turned out to be an acceptable alternative. Wednesday morning we woke up and met with the coach at Indiana... pattern continuing. Apparently we're creatures of habit. Food, meet, drive.. 

Wednesday afternoon we piled back in the car and drove 3.5 hours to Ohio. Thursday consisted of.. coach, meet, tour, ask questions.. you know the usual. It's old hat by now. After that we got back in the car... oh wait no, we stayed the night! Two nights in one place!! 

Friday morning we woke up and drove to Kentucky for some good old horse racing... i mean roller derbying. Actually Sarah had a 4 day volleyball tournament there. It was really nice though because Grandpa & Frances were able to come up and rescue me from the insanity!! Just kidding, it wasn't that bad. But we did manage to get away and check out some fossils and a 7 story wooden bat. We even got matching tattoos (Grandpa insisted) and hung out at a local irish pub. (Apparently I have not loaded these pictures yet, so check back later!)

jourth of fuly

happy 4th of july! 

i haven't forgotten about my blog... just momentarily busy with other stuffs. i'll update hopefully sometime this weekend about all of our midwest travels. 

yesterday we picked 22+ lbs of tart cherries.. it was ridiculous! but they are oh, so tasty. we'll be making cherry pie, cherry crisp, cherry ice cream for a long while. 

going over to the mariano's in a little while for some 4th of july crabs & pool time. possibly going to see the fireworks later tonight. 

sisterly love

Yee Haw!

Drove up to New Jersey Friday after Sarah and dad got home, it was a bit of a rainy trip but we made it there eventually. Grandpa & Frances had flown up from Georgia. We had a tasty dinner with TONS of food :) Saturday morning, woke up and ate scones before heading off to see Eric perform his principle role!! The show was excellent and we had amazing seats which made it even better. Good job Eric, you made sleech proud :)

"self picture"

cousins!

village center shenanigans

i'm sort of failing miserably at updating my blog. i think this tends to happen a lot when i get home because i'm so distracted and i figure that most everyone who reads it is here anyway. but then again alison and i were talking the other day about something that happened last year and neither one of us could remember what the heck had happened...so we read the blog :) 

we've been having pretty much a week long sleepover. most of my day consists of waking up, checking email, working on whatever design thing is currently needed, talking to people and then alison comes over, we hang out and the whole day is repeated. of course, there is other stuff thrown in so don't worry i do manage to make it out of the house everyday between visiting river hill, picnics at centennial park, walking jimmy, going to the gym, going to work with my dad, etc. tomorrow we're leaving after sarah gets out of school to drive up to new jersey to see eric dance! 

the other night sarah and i went to the village center to meet up with sarah and liz for a bit. shenanigans occurred. 

this was the most normal of the pictures

and this should pretty much sum up everything else that happened... 

awww.. cute...