Catching Up

I have been absolutely BURIED with schoolwork recently. I had my thesis proposal (it was accepted!) and I was just too stressed to worry about anything else. But now that it's behind me, I'm ready to get back to doing fun stuff on the weekends, taking photos, and telling you all about it! In the meantime, here's what I found on my camera from the last month:

Brandon built a play structure for our cat Quorra. She started climbing on it before he even finished, and now she LOVES it. 

Rewarding good behavior. 

Finishing the top level. 

Teaching her that it's safe. 

You mean... its all for me??

In my state of stress, I splurged on a new outfit. It was a bit pricey by my standards, so I had to make sure it was versatile... 

I was very pleased with the results.

Brandon made some fancy chicken kiev. He chopped the butter into little sticks and stuck it in the freezer with herbs. Then, after pounding the chicken flat, he rolled it up with the butter in the middle, breaded it and fried it in the cast iron skillet. It was delish! I don't normally like chicken, but Brandon always manages to make something really creative with it. 

On the side, we had quinoa and some amazing spinach salad with toasted apples and shallots.

Brandon made some insanely loaded burgers with avocado spread and spring mix, amongst many other things. He felt like a mad genius by the end.....

Drunk with burger power.

My friend Aparna came over and we baked some pies. She loves sweets, but never learned to bake, so I said we could do some baking projects together. Turns out: she's a natural!

That's it for now! Sorry for the hiatus, I'll try and post more regularly now that things have calmed down in lab. Famous last words, right? ;-)

Stacy and Eric Visited!

A LOT of stuff has happened since my last post. I didn't get photos of it all, but I will do a compilation "catching up" post soon. In the meantime, I want to talk about our friends coming to visit!!

Stacy and Eric are some of my closest friends from college. They got married while we were roommates, and now they have a baby on the way! I just *had* to get some girl time in with Stacy before her life was taken over by diapers and bottles. And experiencing Eric's exuberant craziness after a two-year break was certainly... refreshing. But also we wanted to show them a little of San Antonio before we move away next year! Here's the photo dump:

 Chillin' at the apartment.

Poolside. 

We didn't realize we had the camera on blue filter, but for pool photos, it kinda works anyway. 

At the Cove. I think Eric is doing a dance? 

 Alamo.

Riverwalk ice cream. 

Chillin on the riverwalk. 

Lulu's chicken-fried steak. Not sure why we're pouting... 

Lulu's massive cinnamon bun.

We also got in a lot of just relaxing around the house, catching up and chatting. It was a GREAT visit and I direly needed the chance to relax. In a day or so, I'll do a photo-dump entry to show you all the OTHER stuff we've been up to lately. ^_^

Brandon's Burfday.

Brandon was out of town on his birthday, so I baked a pumpkin pie for him when he got back. 

It's the first time I've tried a braided crust. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. 

I always have a little pie crust left over, and this time I used it to create a new dish that I'm pretty proud of. I baked the pie crust in one of my miniature cake pans. Then I made some creamy scrambled eggs, and some spicy guacamole, and sliced up some fresh red pepper for garnish. It was delish!

When I picked Brandon up from the airport, I told him I had birthday pie for him. He was thrilled. 

Happy Birthday, sweetheart. ^_^

Baking Fix

I've been restricting my diet lately, in an attempt to improve my health. This includes cutting back on processed sugar and flour, which means I've essentially had to stop baking altogether. But I learned very quickly that it's not necessarily about eating desserts - I really enjoy baking as a way to unwind... I just can't have it in the house afterward, for fear that I'll gobble it all up. Luckily, I've got lots of hungry friends who are MORE than willing to help me with that little conundrum!

This week I made chocolate-chocolate cupcakes. After a quick google search I found a great recipe that was right about my level in terms of difficulty. The cupcakes are plain chocolate. The icing is chocolate ganache, whipped up for frosting, with some optional liquor. I used amaretto.

I wanted to try and pipe the icing, but it was too thick, and it was getting late at night, so I opted to just frost the cupcakes normally, rather than wait for the icing to chill, then whip it up again. But in the end everything turned out pretty and delicious.

Butter/sugar/eggs.

Silly faces.

Dry ingredients.

Creamy and delish.

Made a few regular-sized ones...

And a few minis!

Baker's chocolate for the ganache.

Yummmmm.

They came out PERFECT.

The big ones overflowed slightly... 

I opted to decorate with miniature chocolate chips. 

I took the minis to lab for my labmates.

Brandon requested a special one just for him.

And the rest were for us to keep. 

I'm gonna try to find a nice balance where I can bake once in a while, in small batches, without totally destroying my diet. It's tough, I've got such a sweet tooth...

Kitten Photos

We've been eating out a lot lately, due mostly to being too exhausted to cook. As such, we have very few food photos. But we do take an awful lot of pictures of this tiny adorable cat!

Qorra is extremely playful and inquisitive, so she demands our attention pretty much all the time when we're home. One of the biggest problems so far has been keeping her busy at night while we're asleep. I decided to start giving her little "puzzles" to solve while we're sleeping, and so far its been working out well. Here are a few such puzzles and some of her more hilarious solutions that we found waiting for us in the morning.

Food in an old kleenex box. Hm, how do I get to it?

The solution apparently involved putting this toy inside the box, for unclear reasons.

Food under a bucket. In the morning, the bucket was still upright and all the food was gone. We think she pawed it out through the handles.

This is Qorra's food ball. We use this instead of a bowl, so she eats more slowly. We had to tape up a few of the holes because she was getting too good at it. 

When I put food under a little white crate, she used a similar pawing solution as the bucket, rather than toppling it over. 

Mommy, you made the hole smaller!

Why would you do that?

I guess I'll just get frustrated and throw it in the corner by the TV instead of solving it.

One night I wrapped her food up in a bandana. I don't know why I was surprised to wake up and find it full of holes.

We also rotate her toys so they are always new and different. I discovered recently that she goes absolutely INSANE for this one dangly toy that has feathers on it. I just had to share.

Also, Brandon has this hilarious fixation with training her to jump up on the backs of the furniture. So much so, that when he catches her doing it, he rewards her. But I just HAD to get a video of the ear-to-ear grin he gets when he does it. So here it is.

Hopefully we'll get back to cooking this week, but no promises. ^_^