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.

counting sheep

Okay, so this blogging thing has gotten few and far between. Life has finally slowed down and I think I should be all caught up on sleep (ie. 12 hours a night over the past week).

Sarah is all finished up with high school sans the official graduation shenanigans that are occurring next Wednesday.

Been spending lots of time lounging around making up for the lack of free time throughout the quarter of course. But one week of that is about enough so now onto actually being productive and things... while still sitting in my PJ's, of course.

patience, gungor & milkshakes

almost finished! final presentation for a client in marketing at noon and a final for calligraphy at 7 then i'm done! not heading home until this coming saturday though, i need a little time to SLEEP. plus this week went from being relatively open to having lots of meeting and such.

last night i went to a gungor concert at church -- so good! they're a band from denver and just happened to be playing a free concert at church, really glad i went. i don't really pretend to know that much about music but the guitar playing was fantastic. afterwards a couple of us went to jay's to get milkshakes -- which happened to be my dinner, oh hey 5 food groups. dairy?! i think it counts.

wee bit of stuff to wrap up before saturday. still not entirely sure what this summer is looking like-- learning patience!

elephants

Hard to believe there are only 2.5 weeks of school left (+ another one week of finals). But still. That's so SOON. I still have yet to figure out what I'm doing this summer. I did get two freelance offers within the last 4 days or so, so I think I might be alright. Plus admissions. Or perhaps I will go exploring around the US again. So many options, so little time to figure it out.

This weekend is a full day of work on Saturday (we're interviewing 82 new people for spots in admissions. yikes.). Sunday is a potential dodgeball tournament (RIT is trying to set a world record) and an end of the year honors picnic. Weekend after is Imagine RIT. Family is coming up in less than 2 weeks. Yay!

Lots of projects lately.. signage system for a cemetery, personal portfolio website, video for marketing, website for a charter school in rochester, screenprint of peanut butter & jelly, poster for an event, logo for a company, etc... keeps me busy & out of trouble :)

The picture at the top of this post? Elephant animal cracker & iced coffee. What keeps me going during 6 hour homework sessions at Javas. Which has been happening more and more lately.

RIT, early thoughts

Don't ask what odd sequence events led to finding this... but I located a blog post I did way back July 24th, 2007 right after my first visit to RIT...

"RIT was rather excellent. A little nerdy, but I guess that is why they call it the "rochester institute of technology" They have a fairly large graphic design/art department and the computer to student ratio might be close to 2:1. It's an engineering and computer science school too so they have these labs called fishbowls and one side of them is completely glass (they claim it's because the computer geeks need some sunlight once in a while). I think the thing I loved most was the scheduling. For graphic design majors you take almost only art classes-- with some core requirements-- but then you get these PE credits where you can take random stuff like ice fishing, canoe tipping, volleyball or whatever. Random, I know. Only down side is it snows almost constantly-- but they have underground tunnels so it's not that bad-- and it's kind of far away."

So amusing. A long ago.

In other news, I register for senior year classes in about 6 hours. How weird.

spring!

Been a wee bit on the busy side lately.

Spring means everything from internship searching to classes to LOTS and lots of admissions events. We had 1,000 accepted students come on campus yesterday (plus their parents) which makes for a rather busy campus and day. There is an event nearly every Friday from the end of March until May.

In my spare time I have been, well... sleeping! Or trying to anyway.

For some reason despite the craziness of this quarter I haven't been running around going insane too much and I might even get a chance to run around outside today for a bit. 50 degrees & sunny today! Love spring.

I suppose these posts are going to continue to be few and far between but that's called priorities. I've been trying to work on another website/blog for more professional viewing. Ya know, probably don't want to hire me for my dinner-making abilities. Although that would be fantastic.

Mt Hope Cemetery

Went exploring at Mt Hope Cemetery today in Rochester. I'm doing an environmental design project that requires us to redesign the signage for the cemetery so I wanted to go and get a feel for the place & what was already there. It was way more extensive than I anticipated and the signage is currently rather lacking.







Even though the pictures don't accurately depict it, it's surprisingly nice in Rochester. Sunny & light sweater weather which is fantastic because bulky winter coats were getting a tad bit old.

It's actually a really interesting place to walk around, there are random hills & plots tucked in corners as well as numerous stairs that lead to no where.

Just a suggestion.

Watch This:


And while you're listening look at this: www.emilyokey.com

And then maybe take a look at this --> portfolio

More work coming soon (hopefully!)

busy

Life is ridiculous busy right now.

Not spending very much time in my apartment at all. In short, between 2 jobs & 6 classes I've been rather swamped with work.

Got a chance to go to some hockey games though. (ie. i'm never too busy for hockey). Unfortunately both the men's and women's teams lost Saturday night (women ended up 2nd in the nation for d3).

Rochester has been extra kind lately and produced some lovely sunny weather (except for today) to make up for the extra snowy winter.

Next blog post: round up of classes for this quarter (which somehow we are already in week 3 of, not quite sure how that one happened...)

seattle

Seattle came next. We ended up having to take a bus due to a mudslide but we got there safe and sound so everything was okay.

Seattle is definitely a larger more happening city-- and slightly less on the crunchy granola hippy side. I think personally I preferred Portland a little more because it was a wee bit smaller & easy to get from one point to another quickly. Plus they had fantastic transportation. And the world's largest bookstore.

However, Seattle had a pretty neat Library. And it just so happened that the twice a year window washers were there. If I ever want to get into extreme sports, I'll just try that.

Plus we finally got to enjoy some vitamin D so what's not to like?

We checked out the skylines.

and the Seattle Aquarium!

Seattle has an awesome waterfront. It was decided that if you smooshed together Portland along with Seattle's market & waterfront it would be the best city ever.

We also posed in some elevators...

And drank our weight in coffee.

Seattle had some rather hilly streets.

Which just made me think about how cool it would be to roll bouncy balls down them. Like so...

It should also be noted that I tried meat. I believe it looked something like this. But luckily slightly less cute.

next up: the companies! and more pictures probably. because everyone likes parfaits... i mean.. pictures