eat

EAT from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

Stuffed Shells

I tend to get lazy cooking for myself sometimes because after all, one person can only eat so much and after 40 billion days of trying to finish something I made up.. well, it gets tiring.

But sometimes I just feel the need to cook....

And to convince my roommate that she needs to be a model because clearly she's missed her calling.

Which she quickly got tired of when she realized that she was my only subject!

I actually didn't really take any semi decent photos of dinner because well... I was hungry! The Kristin photoshoot was just me waiting the 30 minutes for dinner to cook!

I made Vegan Stuffed Shells which were SO delicious. More delicious than the picture made it out to be. Don't let the tofu part scare you, it's tasty & protein filled. And adding sauteed onions from the public market on top makes it all the better.

Vegan Stuffed Shells

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1.5 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 16 ounces extra firm tofu
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
• 10 ounces frozen spinach, defrosted
• 1 box jumbo shells
• 1 jar of your favorite marinara sauce

Instructions

1. Drain the tofu and pat dry with paper towels. Crumble into the bowl of a food processor or high-speed blender along with olive oil, salt, oregano, garlic and nutritional yeast. Process on high until smooth and “ricotta-like”.
2. Add the defrosted spinach to the blended tofu mixture.
3. Cook shells in boiling salted water until el dente. Drain
4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pour about ½ cup pasta sauce into the bottom of a 9 x 13 inch pan. Stuff shells with 2 T of filling and place in pan, seam side down. Repeat until all shells have been stuffed.
5. Pour remaining pasta sauce over shells, cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Serve!

Number of servings (yield): 6-8

(this is what they were actually supposed to look like in all of their color-balanced glory! photo from PBS)

Peanut Butter.. or lack of.

This past week, I ran out of peanut butter... I considering calling for a state of emergency.

If you've ever seen my shelf in the pantry, I usually have no less than 4 jars of peanut butter. I wish I was kidding. It's probably some kind of incurable sickness. In my defense there are so many different kinds of peanut butter that makes deciding on one jar simply impossible.

The only thing that made this situation better was knowing that I had this puppy waiting in the fridge. And it's full of peanut butter.

(Still didn't stop me from going out the very next day to restock.)

My original intent for this was looking for a bread recipe that would be easy & protein filled for taking to work (and not messy because we tend to be eating lunch while we're still working). Unfortunately I don't think this is going to cut it so it's back to the drawing board but it was tasty anyway! Just not particularly healthy enough to count as lunch.

It's delicious by itself. Or with peanut butter spread on top -- if you haven't run out.

Peanut Butter Sandwich Bread

makes 1 loaf

Ingredients:

3/4 cup chunky peanut butter

1/2 cup sugar

1 1/2 cups milk

2 cups flour

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp salt

1 T baking powder

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a loaf pan well.

Cream together the peanut butter and sugar until well combined. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.

With the mixer running on low, slowly alternate between adding the milk and the dry ingredients. Mix until smooth.

Pour batter into greased loaf pan and bake for one hour. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes before turning out on a wire rack and cooling completely.

Time:

1 hr 15 minutes

These were blueberries from the public market. I did not do anything with them other than transport them from their container in the fridge into my tummy. Sometimes they made a pit stop on top of my oatmeal. Still, they deserve a picture.

And this.. I'm contemplating giving up my love of peanut butter for this.

So. Good.

cookie dough

So, I wasn't originally planning on sharing this because, well, at first I wasn't entirely sold on it.

But then I let it sit in the fridge for a day.. and then another...(testing it everyday of course)

And then came the third day. And oh my goodness.. delicious. It was FANTASTIC.

On carrots, graham crackers, zucchini. You name it, I tried it. A spoonful works too.

“Blondie Batter” Dip

• 1 1/2 cups chickpeas (1 can, drained)
• heaping 1/8 tsp salt
• tiny bit over 1/8 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup nut butter (or even a combination of applesauce and oil, and then use less milk)
• 1/4 cup plus 3T nondairy milk (or more or less, as needed) (I used skim milk...)
• Sweetener (used agave)
• 1/3 cup chocolate chips

recipe link

I would have taken more photos, but uhm.. it's gone.

I also need to find a photo alternative to this 3 megapixel nonsense that leaves my carrots looking horribly orange. On that note, Jon informed me yesterday that I eat so many carrots I might turn orange.. I disagreed but after seeing this camera's coloring of them, I might change my mind.

Also in love with the Rochester Public Market - well all of Rochester in general but that's another story. Went yesterday morning with Kara and picked up all sorts of delicious fruits & veggies. As much as I'm looking forward to fall coming, I'm not ready to give up all of the things Rochester has in the summer (like sun! and blueberries!).

Another week of working, splitting my time between the internship & admissions still. This upcoming Friday & Saturday are College & Careers part 2 so looking forward to another weekend of exhaustion ;) Park Ave Fest is also next weekend so I'll definitely be checking that out.

More recipes coming soon.. as soon as I can get non-orange pictures of them.

Predictable Commute

Dad might be amused by my morning "commute" as it's only about 20 minutes long (what seems to be his warm up lap around the neighborhood). But I'm actually finding that I'm enjoying it!

That is.. after I found the safe way.

You see, Rochester is a great city. But it's a city. Which means there are tough parts.

Those tough parts unfortunately fall in the shortest path between here and work. After two days of double (and triple) checking that my doors were in fact locked, I found an alternate route. One in which, if I were to say.. forget to lock my doors, I might still make it in one piece.

What I like best about it is the predictability of it.

There is always a woman walking to work on the side of the road with her ipod on. There's always the large dump truck ahead as I pass over the train tracks (the train which thankfully does not delay my route). I always turn the corner onto Genesee St. around 8:46.

And there is the bus... the lovely bus that happens to ALWAYS be in my way. Apparently we have the same schedule.

Plus I've figured out that if I leave at 8:33 on the dot, I pull in the parking lot with 4 minutes to spare. That, of course, is displayed nicely on the fancy black clock by the parking lot as I turn the corner.

10 minutes later, an Amtrak train passes through on the tracks by the office.

Predictability, I like it.

Erie Canal

Weeks here seem to be flying by. Between working at WMNW & the admissions office, I've been super busy. It seems like I come home and it's time to do a little more work & all of a sudden, it's bed time!

If you want to hear about what I did this past weekend [here]. I take the easy way out and only blog about things once :) Saves time.

Anyway, amidst all of this working I've managed to fit in a fair amount of outside time. So much so that I actually have TAN lines. Shocker. This has happened.. uhm, never.

By far my favorite place to explore is the Erie Canal. Especially if I go by myself, I'd much rather drive the 15 minutes east to pick it up in Pittsford. Smart thinking.

This past weekend I made it all the way to Bushnell's Basin. Which isn't particularly far for a bike ride but I was walking it so I'd like a little more credit!

I got to get up close & personal with some ducks too. Unlike the annoying geese on campus, these ones you can actually walk up to.

Already planning my visit back here for the weekend. Between that, a visit to the public market & some more design work it should be good :)

I'm blogging, you just can't tell.

I started interning at We Make Nice Websites, a web design/development company in Rochester at the beginning of the month. I was brought on as a design intern but I'm slightly obsessed with social media. That might be an understatement.

Needless to say, I'm now in charge of 4 Twitter accounts and 4 Facebook accounts. Tweetdeck has become my best friend. And when I'm not tweeting or facebook insight stalking... I'm blogging. For them, admissions or my personal blogs (which have kind of taken the back burner).

You can read the posts for WMNW here: http://blog.wemakenicewebsites.com/ The ones tagged with my name are clearly written by me. Or just note the sarcasm ;) Can't run away from it.

I'm also getting to work on some sweet design projects. All web work which was frustrating at first until I discovered Google Web Fonts. Partyy. We're in the middle of designing & launching a new site for them. Pretty neat. And I recently designed a website for a preschool. In less than 24 hours. It involves lambs. Lambs are awkward animals, I have discovered. Also, I lack inspiration for preschool websites but I think I managed alright. Working on a super secret project too. Which will hopefully be launched soon? More details later.

Basically all fun things. I switch between the two jobs. When I'm not working on one, I go to the other. And when I'm not doing that I'm working on some wedding invites for a friend. Or brainstorming my personal website.

Or tweeting. Oh, social media.

I think I picked the right major. I realized that as I was working 9 hour days in between 2 jobs only to come home and think more about them. So. Much. Fun.

And I also might have a shot at not having to live in a cardboard box in a year. All good things.

It Be Hot.

Just needed a reminder of the cold.



Today was the hottest it's been in Rochester since 1993.

For real.

I'm all for breaking records. Heat is not one of those I wish to break.

My car showed temperatures I wish to never see again.

I was not pleased.



Especially considering my internship has no AC. And work required carrying heavy boxes outside.



So I came home and looked at pictures of snow.

Working all day tomorrow and Saturday for College & Careers. Outside, giving tours. Luckily it's supposed to be a "cool" 92 degrees. Melting might occur.

week with mom

Since last Wednesday Mom has been in upstate NY hanging out with me! Sarah had a volleyball camp over at Cornell so it made sense for her to just come hang out with me for a few days until that was over.

It was nice having my own personal coffee barista :)

And dinner preparer! (note: that beer isn't mine.. it is however a Rochester one with a label done at a local design place around here that won a big design award for it. very cool.)

We tested out some new Rochester restaurants.. like John's Tex Mex in South Wedge that had delicious tofu burrito bowls. Yum. And a funky restaurant.. too bad we had to wait for what seemed like forever to get our food.. I think our level of hunger led to us being even more impatient.

Checked out a free concert up at Park Point. An ACDC cover band.. totally not our scene. We decided that getting a few tattoos and a motorcycle might help us fit in a bit more. Still nice to sit outside for a while.

Ate dinner outside at Global Village in our own personal outdoor living room (there are sweet outdoor couches & no one else was around!)

(that's my roommate Kristin, she came along for some company)

And mom took lots of pictures, although I have yet to get those from her so all I have are these grainy ipod pics! Ooops.

Definitely nice to come home from work everyday and hang out. Mom might argue that going home will buy her a wee bit more room in bed because apparently I choose to only sleep directly in the middle of my bed here :) Whoops.

On to week number 3 at work... more updates on that later. And more pictures once I get those.

canal ride

Today we decided to one up our 7 mile bike ride around campus from yesterday. In all honesty, that ride was done as a let's just get out for a while and circle campus but it ended up being tons of fun!

So today we went back at it with a longer ride in mind (yeah jon, you can quit laughing now ;)). Our only faulty planning in this was we decided to go right around noon when it was blazing hot (90 degrees) and super sunny. Regardless we packed up Kristin's car and headed off.

It did require some strategic packing..

We ended up driving to Pittsford which is about 15 minutes away from campus. There is technically a path that goes to the canal that we could pick up right from RIT except I feel more comfortable around Pittsford and I really wanted to see some new parts of the canal without getting super exhausted first (just getting from RIT to Pittsford and back would have added about 15 miles to the ride).

Got our bikes all unloaded and ready to go (Kristin only questioned our sanity once during this...)

It ended up being really nice along the water with a breeze and everything. Made it a good 45 minutes before our first water break.

Kristin was less than pleased.

Our bikes also got a lovely coating of white all over them from the dust. The part we biked along was not paved so the gravel kicked up a lot. In short, we got a wee bit dirty.

And became somewhat discouraged when we saw that others were enjoying the view from the comfort of their large boat.. That was until we passed them with ease :)

Finally made it to Fairport which is about 7 miles from Pittsford. We got there just in time to watch the bridge go down after the boats passed.

And took a quick apple/water break.

And then apparently forgot to take more pictures... Oops! We were so hot by the time we made it back to Pittsford, it didn't help that the wind was working against us on the way back. Did run into Destler & his wife (he's the President of RIT) except they were on their electric bikes which kind of left us in the dust.

At this rate we're going to have to do a 28 mile ride tomorrow ;) Just judging from our energy levels after work last week that's not going to happen.