Mail Time!

So happy to get my first two pieces of mail today! They really brightened my evening and put a smile on my face!

It's the Climb...

Nothing like walking up a mountain with 10 girls singing Miley Cyrus the whole way...

It was a short climb, only about 1.5 miles, but the last third is all smooth rock and the whole thing is practically straight up. I thought some of my students weren't going to make it, but we got them to finish! And it was definitely worth it to get to the top and see these gorgeous views of the beautiful state of New Hampshire!

 

 

WHEW!

THE STUDENTS ARE HERE!! THIS PICTURE WAS ME AT 7:30 THIS MORNING! NOW I AM GOING TO SLEEP!

Loop De Loop

Today is the last day of our orientation/prep week for summer school before the students arrive! I have spent pretty much the whole day running around like a crazy person trying to get all the last minute things done that I need. One thing I finally accomplished was to get my locker and this nifty little thing: a laundry loop. The athletics department here has a great service in which you get one of these loops and hook your dirty gym clothes on to it, throw it in the laundry bin, and they'll wash it for you overnight and redistribute the clean stuff to your locker the next morning. I am particularly glad about this since I'll be at the lakeside pretty much every day and having a clean towel each morning will be so welcome!

Lake!

Today I spent some time walking around and even swimming in the lake! It was definitely beautiful but SO cold!!

Trivia and New Hampshire Rains

One of my favorite things in the world is trivia competitions! Seriously, it is the best ever. My team won our faculty game last night and came in third overall at the Pub game tonight, so now we've even got a bit of a reputation to uphold!

 


Meanwhile, this loveliness has been happening outside:

So it was a great time to spend the day indoors. But it means that I still have not gotten a chance to do a full nature photo walk around my home for the rest of the summer. But I promise I will get to it soon! 

Catching up!

Sorry for the delay in these photos. I've been without internet on my laptop for several days now as I have been traveling to start my summer job in New Hampshire. Here are some photos from my travels.

Up first: The Scranton sign from "The Office"! 

Library at Dartmouth College:

I found this old map of New England in a "History of Dartmouth" exhibit and took a close up of the county/area where I'll be: right under the "V" where it says "Cardigan"

 This is the inside of the absolutely gorgeous Dartmouth library! It's like a scene from Harry Potter

Doctor Seuss is an alumnus of Dartmouth! They have a great little study room dedicated to him at the library

 

This is the organ inside the chapel and below is a cool sculpture representing Noah's Ark.

These two photos are of the Connecticut River which is right on the line between NH and VT where Hanover and Dartmouth are located.

 

Trolls!

 Saw this troll like hill yesterday. Can you see the face?? Also found this beautiful and bizarre flower!

New Shoes!!

Aren't they cute?! 

At the Carwash...

Soundtrack to this post (Yes, it is the "Shark Tale" version...)

I decided that today would be a good day to massively clean my car, interior and exterior. The weather decided that today would be a good day to be massively massively hot.

Valar Morghulis

With the season 4 finale airing last night, and being some percentage through the second book in the Game of Thrones mammoth, a picture of this map seemed only appropriate. I've been pretty immersed in the world of Westeros for the past several days. Amazon has a Kindle special on the books; all five for only $20! But they download as one humongous chunk, so even though I've been getting through the second book, my Kindle still has me as having completed only 30% of the book. So clearly I've got some work to do...

Paddle Faster, I Smell Zucchini

I finally cooked something! Actually, I knocked out three Moosewood recipes today! The first was these adorable "Zuccanoes" which are basically just stuffed zucchini. You're meant to use rice as the main stuffing, but of course, I used quinoa. Also my Mom is trying to use up all the of the random food we have in our pantry, so I put I serious dent in our quinoa stock with this recipe.

To go on top of the canoes, I made a carrot puree (other veggie purees seen here and here). This didn't quite thicken up as much as I thought it would, but it has a good combo of spice and sweet to go with zucchini. You add just a touch of orange juice as well as spices so the effect is a very very orange sauce.

The only downside is that you have to roast the carrots which weirdly takes FOREVER.

Dessert (as seen to the left) was another adventure into the fruit crisp world (I previously tackled apple) with a delectable peach cobbler! I used four peaches, which was absolutely plenty.

Please Sir, I Want S'more

It's a tradition at our pool to have a cookout on Saturday night and cookouts have to end with s'mores!

Summer Storms

A massive storm came through today and drenched us for about 20 minutes. It's hard to capture rain with just a phone camera and through windows, but I did my best! Below you can see it running down the sidewalk and stairs in pure waterfalls! It was a pretty impressive storm for this early in the summer.

Falconry!

Our mini-vacation ended today but not before I got a chance to learn about the sport of falconry and even have a Harris Hawk eat a piece of chicken out of my hand!  Seriously one of the coolest things I have ever done!

Delilah the owl who was blinded by the camera...

Afternoon Tea

My family is on vacation right now at a resort that was first built in 1766! One of the long standing traditions at the hotel is afternoon tea in the main lobby, so we had to partake! Nothing like pretending you're a Downton Abbey character for the afternoon! 

A Frozen Treat and Summer Beats!

Ate this amazing dessert at a Vampire Weekend concert with my sisters! Delicious! 

The Best Part of Waking Up...

...is a fried egg and cheese biscuit!
Happy Monday!

Shopping!

Today's photo challenge tag should really be "ALL OF THINGS I BOUGHT!!"

So, I had an early morning drive to take my grandparents to the airport :(

BUT, I decided to take advantage of being in the city and go on a massive shopping trip, mostly to buy teacher clothes and fill some closet holes. I might've gone slightly overboard; there were at least three more bags added after that picture was taken. But now I get to play dress up with my closet!

Still no more Moosewood recipes to blog about. We're just eating up leftovers at the house right now and I am not complaining!

Blue and Orange!

These two pictures pretty much sum up my entire day. The morning was spent at the pool reading and relaxing. I got a little color and my shoulders are only slightly burned; nothing too serious. And then after lunch I marathoned through the first half of the new season of OITNB, which was fantastic, as always! No Moosewood recipes done, but still all in all, a great day!

First Day of Summer!!

Soundtrack to this post!

My summer classes are finally over! I have two weeks of funemployment ahead of me and I can't wait! Last night to celebrate, my roommate and I went out to dinner and I got a sweet tea vodka and lemonade martini which was the most delicious thing ever. (Earlier in the day I had celebrated with a mint julep and my friends from class, but I forgot to take a picture.)

But now I am back home and not unpacking my car...

Today marks another exciting event because it is the start of a new project I am undertaking called, "75 Days of Summer, 2014" in which I will take one photo a day for the next 74 days! Check out the tab above to read more about this endeavor and to see the categories that will loosely guide my photos! 

The first day is, appropriately, a selfie. I took this on the bus this morning as I came back to my roommate's apartment after getting coffee. It's gonna be a great summer! 

Rabbit Rabbit!

Happy June, again! Keeping with the tradition of saying "rabbit rabbit" to start each month with good luck, I made "White Rabbit" salad. Which is really just cottage cheese and apples. I also stirred in some honey. You're supposed to add some other stuff like nuts (I added sunflower seeds), raisins (nope), and poppy seeds (also nope). But this simple dish is actually pretty good, if a little plain! It's a really good light lunch that's filling and tastes really good. Can you believe that I'm willingly eating cottage cheese?? It might actually even be a new favorite of mine!

I'm ready for these summer classes to be over and to be poolside, reading or kitchen-side, cooking!

Eggplant Mozzarella

I have now cooked 100 recipes from The New Moosewood Cookbook!!! It’s kind of hard to believe that I’ve made it this far, and I am so proud of myself for sticking with the project for this long. I initially thought I would be at the 100-recipe mark several months sooner, but this is not the time to dwell on “should of”s. The important part is that I’m here now!

Fancy...

            To celebrate my accomplishment, I decided to make eggplant mozzarella, which is what you get when you forget to buy Parmesan cheese at the grocery store. Turns out it’s just as good. I also whipped up some spaghetti to eat alongside the eggplant. 

Basically, eggplant parm (mozz) is lasagna but instead of layering noodles you layer giant pieces of eggplant. Technically Moosewood’s recipe called for using one of their recipes for the marinara sauce, but I was too lazy and just bought a jar of Classico at Kroger. But I did splurge and get the fancy “Italian Style” breadcrumbs, whatever that means.

            The dish was absolutely wonderful! Since eggplant is basically flavorless, the dish really just tasted like cheesy pasta sauce, which I am totally fine with. And it’s quite filling because of the eggplant. My only wish was that I had some crusty garlic bread to mop up the excess sauce. I might have to make a grocery store run before eating the leftovers as my lunch this week!

            A couple days ago, I decided to repurpose the blueberry pie fiasco I made for Memorial Day. I made it into blueberry crisp using Moosewood’s topping recipe from its apple crisp recipe. It is perfect this way; much better than the pie. With vanilla bean ice cream on the top, it’s pretty much the quintessential summer dessert.

            I have one more week of summer classes remaining and then about 2 weeks back with my family. I have already sketched out a plan that involves me cooking a LOT because I really really want to finish this project. And after those two weeks at home, I’ll be spending the next 7 weeks without a kitchen! So the cooking will be on a major hiatus and I’ll be setting myself back quite a bit. The pressure of the deadline is really there!

           

 If you want to read a bit more about my last 100 recipes, be sure to check out my new “Greatest Hits” tab on the top of the blog. I’ve included my 10 favorite recipes there along with links to the posts. Thanks for the encouragement! 141 recipes to go!