A Triangle Life

Adventures in LA

2011-08-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

My last big trip of the summer was to Los Angeles to visit a friend who works for a non-profit. I had never been before and wasn't entirely sure what to expect. But I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would (the 75 degree, low humidity weather may have helped!) and would love to go back with the husband sometime!

Some of our adventures over the weekend included:

Going to a park in downtown LA for a movie festival and food truck gathering

I got my dinner from Dogtown Dogs, a hot dog truck. It was delicious!

Red Velvet Pancakes from Buttermilk - a breakfast food truck. Amazingggggg.

A trip to Hermosa Beach

Visit from Griffith Observatory of the Hollywood sign - definitely the best place on trip we went! Such good views of the city

The famous Walt Disney Concert Hall

Cool graffiti exhibit downtown

In Santa Moncia

The original muscle beach!

No actual journeys into Hollywood this time - or celebrity sightings! Perhaps next trip! :)

Making Peach Preserves!

2011-08-08T08:44:00.000-07:00

On Friday, the local Whole Foods had peaches on sale for $.69 a lb! That was entirely too good a deal to pass up, so I went and bought a whole case of peaches! (so it was a half bushel for $15.52 - such a good deal on fresh, local NC peaches!)

However - I now have half a bushel of peaches to use up as they definitely won't last that long! Yesterday, I decided to use a good bit of them to make peach preserves. I just used a basic recipe from Martha Stewart (which can be found here) and I think they turned out really well!

Here are some pictures of the process:

Peaches freshly peeled and ready to be chopped up (notice the large box of peaches in the background...)

The recipe only calls for three ingredients - peaches, sugar, and lemon juice!

The peaches cooking while we sterilize the jars

Easy peasy sterilization!

The cooked down ingredients ready for the jars!

The final product - the jar size we use is a half pint jar - just because there are only two of us, so we don't want an open jar to spoil because we're not eating it quick enough. Plus, with the husband's diet, it's usually just me eating the preserves!

The plan for today is to bake a few more peach recipes and then freeze most of the rest!

What I'm doing today

2011-08-04T10:15:00.001-07:00

The much needed, but never been done before, task of cleaning our blinds. You know you're a grown-up when you realize the only way those blinds are going to get clean is if you man up and do it yourself....don't I look so cheerful??

A busy summer of traveling: East Coast edition

2011-08-04T08:57:00.000-07:00

The first week of July my mother's side of the family rented out a house in Kill Devil Hill's - over the course of the week, over 20 people stayed there! If you want to get in some good quality family time - this definitely seems to be a fun way to do it - rent out a giant house and just pile everyone in! Each family took a night of the week to make dinner, saving tons of money on eating out (although it does mean I have zero restaurant recs!). It was also quite hot in July - the northern relatives were feeling a bit melty, while us southerners poo-poohed their complaints :) But overall - definitely a memorable week and something I want to do again in the future - whether with family or friends!

Wild Horses on Corolla! (while they are "wild" - they seemed pretty tame...)

our home for the week!

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse - always a must see while at the OBX

Sunrise our last full day there!

A busy summer of travelling - San Francisco edition

2011-08-03T07:13:00.000-07:00

The husband and I really enjoy travelling and we've hit several locations on both the east and west coast since May. I thought it might be fun to do a few posts detailing our favorite spots to eat and things to do in each place.

In May we went to San Francisco for a whole week - which was absolutely amazing! We rarely get to really experience one place for that long, so it was great to really to be able to explore!

We stayed with a friend, so I don't have any hotel recs, but we ate out plenty - and did a fair amount of adventuring too!

Some of the good places we ate at:
Little Delhi - amazing indian food in the Tenderloin district http://www.yelp.com/biz/little-delhi-san-francisco

Beach Chalet - some of my husband's family took us here (they live in SF) - a little fancier but right along the water and has some very tasty crab dishes! http://www.beachchalet.com/

and probably the best meal of the trip was at B*Star - a Burmese restaurant that was to die for! We had never had Burmese food (which is kind of a thai/indian fusion type cuisine) but we were immediately sad it' not available in NC!) I highly recommend the avocado shake - super tasty! http://www.bstarbar.com/bstar.html

We also ate dim sum at an unassuming restaurant in Chinatown (there are so many options that it is hard to wrong there!) and delicious sushi at a small place right down the street from our friend's apartment. You can't really go wrong with Asian cuisine or fresh seafood in SF!

And of course, we had to hit up Ghiradelli for an over the top sundae! This trip we got the Peanut Butter and Chocolate sundae - every last bit was amazing!

Other things we did included:

Going to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)

Find fun statues around the city - and pose with them obviously.

Go to Fisherman's Wharf and see the Boudin Sourdough breads being made!

Indulge the husband's coffee habit and visit FOUR! coffee shops while there - including Blue Bottle and Ritual Coffee (which was the favorite - the Valencia St. location)

One of the most fun days we had was biking across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito. We used Blazing Saddles to rent the bikes from and spent the whole day biking - it was so much fun! We grabbed lunch in Sausalito - at a really good deli named Venace - highly recommend! I got a brie, apple and avocado sandwich - yummmm!

We also spent a day exploring Sonoma - which was recommended by the locals over Napa! We went to four wineries - Cline Cellars, Jacuzzi Winery, Gundlach Bundschu Winery which we all liked, and then Valley of the Moon Winery, which we weren't fans of. The first two had free tastings - which was a surprise - but a nice one! And at Jacuzzi, they also had an olive press and had olive oil tastings which we really enjoyed. You never realize olive oil can have so many different tastes until you taste different varieties side by side!

Free time = Time to clean

2011-07-12T10:26:00.000-07:00

After a whirlwind two weeks celebrating my brother's wedding and then a large family trip to the OBX, I am now facing a few weeks that are completely free. I knew the free time was coming, so I had started a mental list a while ago of things to do while I'm not working. Number one on the list was organize, clean, and clean out, our home office, which I don't think has really been tackled since we moved in over two years ago!

I'm expecting it to take a week or so to get through, slowly but surely. I figured I'd post a few before pictures and hopefully by the end of July we'll have a shiny, clean, organized office that doesn't feel like a dorm room to work in!

Scary right!?

Blueberry Picking!

2011-06-17T10:54:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure one of the best things about living in the Triangle is the abundance of pick your own berry farms within a mere 15-20 minutes of I-40. There's nothing that says late spring and summer like a freshly picked warm berry!!

Strawberry season has sadly ended, but starting this week blueberry season is in full swing! Taking advantage of a day off, I headed this morning to Snikroc Farms, which is on Wake Forest Hwy, to pick a bucket of berries!

For only $2 a lb, they're much cheaper than the grocery store, and of course, being freshly picked, wayy tastier too! If you want to check them out, their facebook page is here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Snikroc-Farm/361877592541 They have blackberries for picking too and I picked up a few tomatoes when I paid for my blueberries. Definitely a great way to spend a Friday morning!

Durham one of NYTimes places to go in 2011!

2011-01-08T10:36:00.000-08:00

It's not secret that I love the Triangle area - and the husband and I have really enjoyed getting to know our new hometown - Durham! Apparently we're not the only ones as the NY Times just named it one of the 41 places to visit in 2011 (it's #35!)

I hope this year to do a much better job highlighting fun things we do around the Triangle in general and Durham in particular :)

Other meals this week (and Happy Saturday!)

2011-01-08T06:11:00.000-08:00

Happy Saturday to everyone out there! The first week back after a holiday break can definitely be longg at work - it was great to sleep in a bit this morning!

We tend to only have time to make 3-4 meals a week - the rest ends up being leftovers or us going out to eat (which this week, Sunday, Thurs. and Saturday all will end up being eating out days, which is a bit above the norm for us). So as a result, we only ended up making three meals - the kale pasta and then slow cooked venison and last night we had sliders with fries, carrot sticks, and sliders.

The slow cooked venison was made with venison from deer that were hunted by the husband's family out in Illinois - it was delicious! We have quite a lot of venison since hunting season recently ended, so we'll likely be eating it quite a bit over the next few months. My husband has his own recipe for cooking it - it basically consists of the roast, a chopped up white onion, a chopped up mushroom (we used portabellas this time and they were excellent in it), and then some italian seasoning, red wine and salt and pepper. And as is the beauty of all slow cooking - you don't need to do anything when you get home from work except serve yourself!

Along with the venison, we also had this cauliflower mac and cheese - which was pretty easy to make and the husband loved it, as it was a great low carb recipe. We're still trying to figure out how to recreate a cauliflower cheese casserole we ate at Tupelo Honey in Asheville as this just didn't measure up - anyone know where we might find it??

I'll cover the sliders we had last night in another post - I'm off to Chick-fil-a for their new spicy chicken sandwich with some special visitors we had over night! :)

Kale and Tomato Pasta

2011-01-05T14:56:00.000-08:00

Two nights ago we tried a new recipe (from my favorite- Martha!) - and it turned out ok. I added some Parmesan at the end to throw in a little cheese and the husband added some butter and cheese to his to make a bit of a sauce. We're thinking of trying a buttery lemon sauce to go on it next time to add a bit of flavor and make it a bit more than just some vegetables with noodles.

However - for my first time trying something with kale I think it turned out ok and I definitely plan to try more kale recipes in the future - it's just a vegetable that's so packed with nutrients and super tasty in the winter!

Here's a few pictures from my prep last night:

And as I'm a bad blogger - all I have for the final meal is a picture of my leftovers for lunch yesterday :-/! But the website had a nice picture of what it ideally could turn out to look like.

Also - in case you're curious how the husband is eating pasta since he does low carb - he has found some shirataki tofu noodles at Whole Foods that are low carb friendly! I don't eat them - but it allows me to make pasta dishes and we just split the toppings between us!! If you want to find out more about these - check out this article here.

New Year's Resolution #1

2011-01-02T07:42:00.000-08:00

One of my main goals for 2011 is to really work on meal planning. After starting a full time job in August, I found that many nights we weren't eating until at least 8pm and often it was a less than satisfying meal because it was just thrown together. This year I am determined to do better!

I downloaded the "weekly meal planner" template from this website and after perusing several of my magazines [Everyday Food with Martha Stewart, Better Homes and Gardens, and Southern Living in particular] and cookbooks, as well as keeping in mind what we had in the fridge/freezer, came up with the first meal plan for 2011!

As the week progresses I plan to post each meal and links to any recipes I used or took inspiration from and we'll see how it goes!{although the plan doesn't start until tomorrow night - we're going out to dinner with a friend tonight!)

Starting off with the right muffin

2011-01-01T15:05:00.000-08:00

In an effort to get back on track with my eating after a very unhealthy holiday season I baked some carrot banana muffins that I found in the January 2010 (yes- a year old!) issue of Everyday Food by Martha Stewart. The recipe can be found here, on the Martha website. I left out the raisins as I'm not a big raisin girl!

Here's how mine turned out - pretty tasty looking - and I sampled one right out of the oven - they're very tasty indeed! And at only 186 calories a piece, perfect snacks :)

Trying this again

2011-01-01T08:45:00.000-08:00

Oops - guess last spring proved too busy for me to stick with blogging - finishing my master's degree was definitely a priority! But I'd like to try again for 2011 - which should be less crazy than 2010! We certainly rang in the New Year much more calmly this year - our friends hosted a fondue night and shortly after midnight we headed back home to our warm bed! This morning I woke up feeling a little stuffed but clear headed :)

For now - Happy New Year to all of you out on the internet - may it be your best year yet! :)

Wedding Planning Tools from Google

2010-02-16T11:03:00.000-08:00

For any of you out there currently wedding planning - Google Docs is now offering a suite of wedding planning tools and templates. Go here to check it out!

The husband and I used Google Docs a LOT when planning our wedding last year - it was much easier to access while not at home and made it easy to keep up with the changes each of us was making. I would have loved these easy to use templates though! :)

Busy Valentine's Day Weekend!

2010-02-15T07:10:00.000-08:00

It appears that I am not destined to post during the week! School/work/applying for post-graduation jobs is just keeping me too busy.

But I had a great weekend and got to try out three places (some new to the area, some have been here for years - I just hadn't made it to them yet) in Chapel Hill and Raleigh. And I got a snazzy business suit for some upcoming job interviews! :) So all in all a good weekend.

On Saturday night the husband and I met up with two good friends at Isaac Hunter's Taven in downtown Raleigh. It's located on Fayetteville St. - right by the Capitol. It opened late last fall and I've been wanting to check it out for a while. It's name is inspired by the original tavern located where Raleigh now is and reportedly it was there that the politicians decided to put the state capitol in Raleigh (back in the early 1790s!). We had a great time -the bar is much bigger than you'd think when you first walked in and we particularly loved that they had a shuffleboard, darts, fussball and a Wii set up to play with! My husband likes having something to do at the bar other than just sitting and we happily had a small wii bowling tournament among the four of us! Check out the website here! I tried a Cherry Bounce drink - which supposedly would have been served at the original Tavern. It was pretty tasty :) The Raleigh Connoisseur discusses the drink a bit more here if you're interested!

On Sunday - after coming home from church to a beautiful bouquet of flowers and chocolates from my wonderful husband! we headed to Chapel Hill for brunch. We ended up going to Ye Olde Waffle House - which I've walked past many times on Franklin St. but never gone to. It was quite good - I had the french toast which was quite good and husband got the Big Omelet which he liked. Overall we really enjoyed it but there was less quantity than we got at Elmo's the week before (and no coffee while we waited!). But I'm glad we finally got there. The Waffle Shoppe has no website but it's on Franklin St. right next to Four Corners.

We also checked out Caffe Driade Sunday afternoon - husband is very into coffee and has been wanting to try it out for a while. It was a really fun place - tucked away in the woods - and our cappacinos were delicious :) It seems like the perfect place to chat or get some serious studying/schoolwork done!

Oh gosh this was a text heavy post - I need to start taking pictures when we go places! I'll do better I promise!

Elmo's Diner

2010-02-06T11:03:00.000-08:00

photo from: www.durhamphotos.wordpress.com

This morning the husband and I had brunch at Elmo's Diner in Durham. I had had dinner at the one in Carrboro, but never gone to the one in Durham (or had breakfast at either!). I got pumpkin pancakes that were TO DIE FOR! The husband got an omelet that was filled with sausage and bacon - he somehow put it all away! We are already making plans to go back for dinner sometime soon.

If you want to check it the website is here: Elmo's Diner.
The one in Durham is on 9th St. and is fairly big - we only waited about 10 minutes on a Sat. morning for breakfast - and the best part was that they had a big pot of coffee at the front that you could grab some coffee while you wait!

Long Time, No Post

2010-02-03T13:22:00.001-08:00

Ack - time has run away from me and it's been over a week since my last post! I've been quite busy since then so I thought a run down in pictures would be more exciting than words.

Over a week ago, one of my friends hosted a fabulous fondue party at her house - we were stuffed by the end:
And then a week later, one of my good friends and I went to Florida to visit another very good friend. We watched the sunset shortly after landing (she lives on the Gulf Coast):
Went to a tiki bar:

Went to the beach (it wasn't quiteee tanning weather):

Went to another tiki bar:

Saw lovely spanish moss and palmettos:

Played at an aquarium and was a turtle:

And had an all around great time!!! It was very fun to just get away and have a ladies weekend. We arrived back in NC on Monday - just missing all the crazy snow. But there was still tons at the airport when we landed - the husband was quite sad he got snowed in without me all weekend!

Using yogurt in baking

2010-01-21T12:49:00.000-08:00

For some reason I keep trying to like vanilla yogurt. Mainly because it comes in such a lovely large container size unlike most other flavors. Yet - everything I try it it is just not what I'm looking for. But I didn't want to toss out a whole container of yogurt. So I thought that a simple google search would pull up an easy recipe to utilize a lot of the yogurt.

I found an oatmeal raisin muffin recipe on the Dannon website - and thought that sounded perfect! I doubled the recipe and froze half the muffins - and left out the raisins because I didn't have in the house. They came out really well and are a bit healthier than a normal muffin.

Oatmeal Raisin Yogurt Muffins

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup raisins, plumped
1 cup Dannon® Light 'n Fit® Vanilla, Cherry Vanilla or Strawberry nonfat yogurt
1 large egg, beaten lightly
2 Tablespoons canola oil

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
2. Lightly grease 1/2 cup muffin tins or use paper liners. In bowl stir together flour, oats, brown sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and the raisins; in another bowl whisk together yogurt, egg and oil.
3. Stir the yogurt mixture into the flour mixture and stir the batter until it is just combined.
4. Divide the batter among 10 cavities and bake the muffins on the middle oven rack for 22-25 minutes.

Yields: 10 Servings

Finch's Restaurant

2010-01-17T12:12:00.000-08:00

Raleigh has a few hidden gems for restaurants. Today I got to finally eat at one of them. After church one of my good friends suggested grabbing lunch at Finch's - a breakfast/lunch place that has been around for over 50 years. I jumped at the suggestion since I had yet to go. It is located on Peace St. right by the Capital Blvd. on-ramp. Set back a bit, it definitely is your standard quick order place- walk in, seat yourself and pick from a delicious assortment of breakfast and lunch choices -most of which are under $5! My friend got her favorite- french toast, which looked delicious. And I got a club sandwich (for only$4!).

I recommend checking it out - it's a great place for a quick bite and it's a big place so you never really have to wait, even on a Sunday after church. Just be sure to have cash - that's all they take!

I couldn't find a website for them - but here's a link to the page on google: Finch's

My "Wife" Cut

2010-01-15T13:25:00.000-08:00

Today - after not having it cut for over 8!!!! months - I finally got my hair cut. I am calling it the "wife" cut - even though I've been married for 6.5 months now! I got it cut at the Aveda Institute in downtown Chapel Hill and I thought the girl I had did a fabulous job! It's a school, so you get your hair done by students (supervised by an instructor of course!) and so it's cheaper than a normal salon. I was really pleased by my experience.

Before:

And after!!! I love it :)

Spaghetti Carbonara - Low Carb style

2010-01-15T13:10:00.000-08:00

ok so ours didn't look quite that amazing (and I'm a bad blogger and didn't take a picture of the final product - but it looked tasty, I promise! so tasty I forgot to take a photo!) (photo from www.stan-burger.com)

The other night (I meant to blog this then but...life gets in the way sometimes!) I made spaghetti carbonara for my husband and I - mine with noodles and his with spaghetti squash! Spaghetti squash is a really awesome substitute for noodles and we've used in a few different pasta dishes so he can enjoy too. It doesn't have a lot of flavor - so it takes on the flavors of sauces and toppings really well!

I followed this recipe from Emeril off Food Network.com

Ingredients

1/2 pound bacon, chopped
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
Freshly ground black pepper
1 pound fresh spaghetti, cooked al dente
4 large eggs, beaten
Salt
1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley leaves

Directions

In a large saute pan, over medium heat, cook the bacon until crispy, about 6 minutes. Remove the bacon and drain on paper towels. Pour off all of the oil except for 3 tablespoons. Add the garlic. Season with black pepper. Saute for 30 seconds. Add the crispy bacon and the pasta. Saute for 1 minute. Season the eggs with salt. Remove the pan from the heat and add the eggs, whisking quickly until the eggs thicken, but do not scramble. Add the cheese and re-season with salt and pepper. Mound into serving bowls and garnish with parsley.

I simply split the recipe in half and had two different pans to mix one half with spaghetti noodles and the other half with spaghetti squash.

Spaghetti squash is super easy to cook - just cut in half - take out the seeds and then coat each side with a little olive oil. Then put cut side down on a baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Then flip over and bake for another 20-30 minutes. Then just scrape the insides with a fork and you have "Spaghetti!"

A bittersweet project

2010-01-10T06:53:00.000-08:00

My main project for this weekend was putting away all the Christmas decorations - which is always a little bittersweet to me because I love the holidays and the decorations help brighten up the house during the cold winter. (ok so in NC it's not normally THAT cold...but this year it is!). I managed to get most of it away yesterday - I just have a mini fake tree to pull down today and our main tree is still standing, bare, ready to be laid by the curb tonight for pickup by the city.

I picked up "holiday" colored storage bins at Target last week - unnecessary to get the colorful ones, but they were on sale and they're more fun! :) Just two bins held all our first Christmas stuff...knowing my shopping habits though that wont last long!

Tasty Rave!

2010-01-08T14:47:00.000-08:00

I usually eat Trader Joe's hummus (b/c it's so cheap and yet so yummy!) But I picked up some hummus (traditional) at Harris Teeter yesterday and it is deliciousssss.

Trivia!

2010-01-07T11:03:00.000-08:00

My husband and I are trivia junkies - and luckily so are our friends! For the past year and a half a group of us have been playing trivia at Tir Na Nog in downtown Raleigh on a fairly regular basis. Sadly, last night was my last night of trivia for four months because I have a night class starting next week :( We didn't do as well as usual - but we had a gift card from previous winnings to spend, so it was a fun night nevertheless :)

If you're looking for trivia in the Raleigh area, I definitely recommend checking out Tir Na Nog - it's held every Wed. night at 9pm. There are a lot of other trivia nights in the area at other places as well - I might have to do some exploring into other ones so I can still get my weekly trivia fix! :)

Dinner Tonight

2010-01-05T16:38:00.001-08:00

I made orange peel chicken tonight - I kind of winged it. My husband loves it but regular orange peel chicken has sugar and orange juice in it and he does a low carb diet so this is changed a bit for him.

3 chicken breasts - cut into bite size pieces
4 green onions, chopped
2 tbsps or so of soy sauce
1 garlic clove
3 tbsps of vegetable oil
1/4 cup of water
~.5 lb. of snow peas - boil for 3 minutes and then rinse in cold water before adding to the pan.
4 oranges' worth of peel
1 tbsp. splenda (or sugar)
2 tbsp. of garlic chili sauce

I heated up a large saute pan with the oil and heated up the garlic over medium high heat. After the garlic browned ever so slightly, add in the green onions, soy sauce, water, garlic chili sauce, and splenda, turn the heat down to medium. Let it cook for 5 or so minutes to reduce down. Then add the chicken and orange peel. Cook until the chicken is done and add in the snow peas. Cook for another minute or two, until everything in coated. Serve over rice, or plain!

My present for following through

2010-01-04T12:10:00.001-08:00

This is the reward I got for actually getting up a half hour earlier than normal for work to do yoga:

The sunrise over our neighborhood.

Plus I felt so awake and good this morning at work (despite it being monday!) - let's hope I can keep it up!

Happy New Year!

2010-01-02T21:50:00.001-08:00

We started the New Year off with our two good friends at Tobacco Rd. Sports Bar and Cafe in downtown Raleigh! :)

Starting the new year off

2010-01-02T21:40:00.000-08:00

Goals for 2010

1. start a blog. even if it’s just a picture a day at first - I think it will be a neat way to remember all that happens over the year. plus I read blogs all the time and I feel greedy not contributing something of my own! (so check! blog started!)

2. graduate with my master’s - on track for May!

3. exercise 3 times a week in some way shape or form.