0061 -- xmas recap

X-mas has come and gone and what a nice one we had! It was one of many firsts-- our first married, our first without our families, our first in Portland, our first with the CatCamp. The day started with the CatCamp all waking up and exchanging gifts and having coffee. Marp and Stephen had some family stuff to do so off they went and we had some cinnamon rolls followed by a walk since it was sunny!

I love our street!

We got some really stuff from our friends all around! 

Spoke to the fam back south!

Our orange glazed cinnamon rolls, nom!

Mom Cat sent us a tree since we can't have a normal one because Larry will eat it...

Had to play a few rounds of Boggle!

Most of the rest of our day after our walk was spent in the kitchen making X-mas dinner. A peking duck that Marp and I had made the brine for the day before, home made maple butter, lavender cookies, wreath cookies, roasted veggies...

I made a new cocktail that was crazy yummy! Just rose lemonade (you could make your own by mixing lemonade with rose syrup), a few shots of vodka, and just a dash of rose water liquor! Yum!

Sorry for all those who don't eat meat, but this bird was crazy yummy!

Roasted butternut squash, roasted carrots and broccoli with peanut sauce, veggie stuffing, and duck!

After dinner Marp and Stephen headed out to get their puppies and we headed over to Lyndsay and Wesley's for a little X-mas dessert! Their daughter Phelyn and I are just becoming the best of friends! <3 aly="" an="" auntie="" being="" love="" p="">

My folks are in town and work has needed tending to so I appologize for being absent!
Update again soon!!

xxo

0055 -- our first visitor!

This weekend our old roommate and dear friend Dawn came up from LA to visit us. We have been so excited to get to show some one around as well as finally get to put our newly finished spare room to use! Of course I woke up for work on Friday and it was snowing. Yes, you read that right, SNOWING!!! I was too excited to see it, but with it came some seriously cold weather (duh)! Here's what our street looked like on Friday morning!

Fortunately the snow stopped before I had to drive back home, as much as I find it really neat and pretty, I'm still nervous to drive in the snow. We picked up Dawn from the airport and headed right over to grab some dinner and drinks!

Saturday we headed over to the NW to feed Dawn the best donuts up here (sorry Voodoo)! From there we shopped around at all the cute and painfully hip shops in the Pearl area. We headed over to a neat little gift pop up shop back in SE before finally heading up to Mississippi for some lunch and oddities shopping!

We walked around Mississippi picking up fun decorations for Dawn's new place and stopping into a few bars along the way for refreshments! How cute is my Dawny?! Love this girl to bits!

Check out what we ended up creating with all the awesome goodies Dawn found! I hope to make something similar to this soon!

Jordan and I also picked up a new little creepy plant for our house too. Meet Seymore, our Venus Fly Trap! Apparently this little guy will attract his own food as long as we make sure he gets enough sunlight and water. 

Jordan and I wanted to make a nice dinner for Dawn Saturday night so we made some pork chops, apple sauce, and sweet potato curry latkes. YUM! After dinner we walked over to a local bar to meet up with some other friends. Of course, we thought we were so tough walking the few blocks to the bar in 11 degree weather...

On Sunday we started over at City State Cafe, a little breakfast spot over by our house. One look at the menu and we knew we had make the right choice, I mean look at that bloody mary pyramid! 

After breakfast we headed down to Hawthorne to show Dawn some other fun shops and areas of Portland! We paused in one of our favorite knick knack shops and she snapped this hilarious shot of me in a pug mask.

As always, it's hard to let our friends leave (even Larry didn't want Dawn to go). We had such a great time and are really looking forward to having more visitors!!

Update again soon!!

xxo

0019 -- eating greek!

summer cooking is some of my favorite. i'm not sure if it's because the days are longer so i'm cooking (and usually eating) while it's still light out, or maybe it's because the produce selections are so lovely. either way we've been eating some really simple and really delicious food lately! i'm still on my crazy health kick, actually i don't think i should call it a kick since we don't think we'll ever go back to eating all the crazy calorie filled processed foods that we were once so tempted by.

one of our favorite ethnic foods lately has been greek. we cannot get enough of it! we used to be avid garden patch falafel buyers but recently when at the store we saw a "make your own" falafel balls. jordan of course was as giddy as a school boy so we tried it and man was it ever easy and so fun!
sadly i have no pictures of our actual process making them but i do have a photo of the outcome and the recipes! so enough chatter and enjoy!!

roasted garlic hummus:
2-15 oz. cans of chickpeas, drained & rinsed
1/3 cup tahini
1 lemon, juiced
1/3 cup water
3 T olive oil
1/4 t cumin
1/8 t black pepper
3/4 t salt
10 cloves roasted garlic (or 2 cloves fresh garlic)
combine ingredients in a food processor and plus until smooth. we add in our oil and water slowly as i find it help it mix better. this saves for about a week and half in an air tight container in the fridge! the thing we love about making our own hummus is you can really put anything you want into it, roasted garlic, sun dried tomato, peppers, cilantro, avocado...you get the idea!

tzatziki dip:
7 oz plain Greek yogurt
1/2 large English cucumber grated coarsely
1 tbsp minced fresh dill or mint
1 clove minced garlic
after cucumbers have been grated squeeze out as much extra water from them as possible. in a medium bowl add the rest of the ingredients to the cucumber. combine and stir. this will save for about a week in an air tight container in the fridge.
here's a photo of my falafel lettuce wrap complete with hummus, tzatziki, cucumber, avocado, and spinach!