Oh, hello!

It's been 3 months since my last post, good God!! Time flies, amiright??

I leave tomorrow for a 2 week vacation. I'm flying first to my hometown of Sarasota, Florida for 5 days, then heading back to Durham, North Carolina to hang for a couple days before Travis and I drive cross country back to Oregon. Because, see, he's moving here! Whoo! I'm excited for the trip and excited for him to be in the same town as I.

I should be going to bed though, but I thought I would just show you an awesome shirt I got from Because We Must, run by awesome Jeff.

"Don't Tell Me What to Wear, Tell People Not to Rape"

Organic cotton, only $20! Eff yes! Ladies (or those that like to wear girl-cut shirts), go get you one! In case it's helpfu: I'm wearing a size medium (as is the girl on their website).

Fall time!

Me in the kitchen

I feel like this picture doesn't represent at all the kitchen I use. The sun was really freakin' bright when I was taking this with my computer's Photobooth feature and makes the kitchen look big and open.

Anyways, that day (sunny, crisp...so fall!) I felt like pumping out some food (normally I cook one dish and maybe- maybe!- a side of kale and then call it a day), so I made 5 Spice Delicata from Appetite for Reduction, a bastardized version Breast of Tofu, and a brand new recipe to me, Bee's Knees Pumpkin Potatoes.

Sadly, none of my food tasted like The Shit. The delicata wasn't as sweet and flavorful as I remember, the tofu was meh, and the potatoes weren't as divine as I had hoped. HOWEVER, this was all on my part: the tofu soaked up too much oil when I was frying it because I didn't let the oil get hot enough, I didn't use a 5 spice mix and I don't think I added enough of the separate ingredients nor enough of the maple syrup- I did add more syrup to my leftover half, and I didn't use just russets (I had one russet, 2 reds, 1 parsnip, 1 sweet potato).

What I did really enjoy was the Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Pecan biscotti I made. It's my friend Katie's recipe and I've made it several times. I like my biscotti to be more like cookies, so mine aren't cooked to crunchy. More like cookie-logs. Yum!

What I've Been Up To

Hanging with this guy!

Meet Travis, my brand spankin' new boyfriend. It's been a long, long while since I've had one of those and he's super sweet and cute, so I'm psyched. Unfortunately, he lives in Durham, North Carolina, so we're not going to get to see each other much the next few months (we're thinking he might return to Portland to live). Sad face. He just left yesterday morning after visiting for 6 days, so I've been mopey. But I'm hoping to see him in a few weeks, in October!

New shoes!

Finally used up my Delia's credit! These Rocketdog sandals were on sale and I thought they were mighty cute. Turns out they're even cuter in person! Currently, they're a bit on the uncomfortable side (which is why leather is nice in that aspect...though I suppose you have to wear leather in as well...), but I do hope they get better with time.

Happy August to you and yours!

It's August now. The weather here hasn't been the hottest, but you know what? I am not complaining! I hate hot hot weather. It's just amusing to me that I'm still wearing pants and hoodies in the morning and evenings here.

My mom left today after being here for a couple weeks. We had a good time. But now back to my regular day to day life. We did go berry picking on Monday with my sister and her pitbull, May. May was quite useful and helped pull the wagon.

Isn't she sweet?

She really is. I love her so hard. If only she wouldn't whack her tail on me when she's happy...which is often.

She also picked her own berries...

That there's my mom giving me her strainer of berries to put in our tupperware. Sadly we ended up with mostly raspberries, not Kim and I's favorite. The blueberries were pretty picked over. I love making the blueberry scone-like things from a cookbook that I have (the name of which I'm totally spacing on!).

Vancouver BC

Our time in Vancouver was all right. We mostly drove around a lot, either lost or unable to find any free parking. (It didn't help that we didn't get some Canadian monies right away...We just kept putting it off for some reason.) Seriously, Vancouver's a pain in the ass when it comes to park. PAIN IN THE ASS! Most of it is permit-only parking for people that live in there, which, ok, I get, but hey, have some love for the tourists! I've just never seen so much permit only parking. A lot of which wasn't in use...

We stayed with a friend of mine, who was out of town. He lives a few miles from downtown, where all the action is. We even got towed our first day there! It was great! Ugh. Yeah, that alone might have tainted our time there.

BUT we did eat some good food, saw pretty things, and saw the 5th (or was it 6th?) Stanley Cup Finals. It would've been awesome to be there if the Canucks had won that game (thereby winning the Cup), but alas, they sucked that game. (And you know what happened the final game.) There were reminders everywhere that the Canucks were playing the finals. On buses (see below), on signs hanging in businesses, on people's clothes...

See?

Capilano Reserve- where we went for a hike

Naam for breakfast- those sausages had the realest fake skin on them!

The waterfront. That stadium, I believe, was part of the Olympics they hosted.

View from Jericho Beach that we happened across. I liked the lined up logs.

Me and the view

More traveling...

So now I'm in Vancouver, BC. I've been here previously to visit a friend (and to go to Vancouver, of course!). My friend still lives here but he's currently on a long-ass honeymoon, so no hang out with him. It's nice to have a free place to stay. Especially when, on the first day, your car gets towed out of a spot that we thought wasn't reserved and you have to pay $100 for towing, $13 for a taxi to get to the car lot, and then plus a $60 parking ticket from the ImPark people. Yeah. Awesome sauce. But Corinn's working on getting at least the parking ticket taken off...Hopefully that works.

Anyways, when I left you last post I was still in Seattle for a couple more days. I went to the Victrola Coffee shop on 15th for another French Toast donut and coffee. I also went to Sage (former Hillside Quickie II or something??), which was only a few blocks from where I was staying. I got it to go so I could eat it in our apartment/hotel with some Dr. Pepper. I ordered their version of the Philly, called the Fremont Philly. It's made with seitan, which is my favorite "meat" to use for a Philly (though the tempeh version at my former workplace, Paradox Cafe, was my kryptonite for awhile). The menu said it was going to be $10, but it ended up as $11. Taxes? But why an even $1? I don't know. I do know it was the most costly sandwich I've ever gotten. Anyways, it did come with a side of rice. Not plain rice, but I couldn't tell you what exactly it was. It was all right. The sandwich itself was hella messy to eat, very saucy and sadly, not a lot of seitan. (DC Vegetarian kicks it's ass in every department) Mostly bell peppers and onions. Yeah. I wouldn't get it again and it's not awesome enough for me to tell you to even try it once. I want to hope that all of the ingredients are organic, so at least that's why it's so costly.

The disappointing Fremont Philly

That reminds me, the bread was damn tasty. But onwards!

That evening we went stopped at Grim's, a Capital Hill bar nearby, for Happy Hour. We had drinks in cute little mason jars and I got the Cauliflower and Hummus Crostini (it might have been cauliflower hummus...), which during Happy Hour is only $4.75 (instead of $7.50 or something). It was a great price for the 5 large crostini's we got. I'm not the biggest cauliflower fan, but it went well with the hummus and pickled/carmelized(?) red onions and cute chives atop.

After that, we stopped at Bimbo's Taqueria, which isn't worth much mention, and we went on to Moe's, which is venue Nuemo's attached bar. We were going there to see Campfire OK play at Neumo's. If you haven't checked out Campfire OK, you should. The Oddfellows Cafe video is the best. Moe's played great hip hop, I really enjoyed it, Corinn...not so much...

Saturday morning, we went to Wayward Vegan Cafe for breakfast before driving north to Vancouver. Again, no pictures...I got 3 sides: tofu scram, grits, and garlic greens. The greens weren't cooked enough for my liking and by the time I got them, they were about room temperature. The tofu scram was almost inedible because the amount of turmeric on them, I barely touched them. The grits were good. Nothing crazy good about them, just grits with Earth Balance, a little faux cheddar, and some salt & pepper. Corinn got the Monte Cristo, a huge French Toast sandwich with fake ham and turkey and served with some jam. It also came with homefries. If Wayward does anything, it gives the largest portions I've seen. I just wish the food came out of the kitchen better. The French Toast wasn't cooked long enough, a little soggy. Too much faux meat. The latter wasn't a huge deal, but the sandwich just was lacking in general. We did leave full though.

I'll talk about Vancouver on the next post...