Things I Love, and You Should Too.

These are a few of my favorite things!
Aside from the obvious things, like my cats, my family & my boyfriend. Aside from the typical(chocolate, ice cream, vacation time, sleeping in) these are some of the things I love.

1)Coming home or waking up to a clean house. It just puts my whole world back in happyville.
2)Warm from the oven bread. Any kind will do; french, sourdough, banana, zuchinni.
3)Berries fresh from the farmers market.
4)Greek yohgurt, it's an awesome substitute for sour cream and other dense creamy things in recipes.
5)Agave nectar, it's awesome in place of sugar or simple syrup.
6)Epsom salts. Old fashioned I know, but they make my bath into a home spa!
7)Homemade sugar scrub. So cheap, so easy, SO indulgent!
8)My Ninja blender. This thing makes easy work of so many things, from smoothies & margaritas to salsa and more.
9)Mizythra cheese. If you happen to have an Old Spahgetti Factory nearby, lucky you! You can have Spahgetti a la Homer (the only place I know that makes it) but mizythra with spahgetti in browned butter is only one way to indulge in this fabulous cheese. It is nutty and salty and a little goes a long way in pasta, salads and more! Use it the same way you would fresh parmesan.
10)Butter lettuce, otherwise known as boston bibb lettuce. More nutritious than iceberg, sweeter and more tender than romain, I love this lettuce in everything from salads to sandwhiches!

Those are ten off the top of my head for now, I'll add more in another entry.

Soy Vay! That's the stuff!

Oh my, recently I had the bug, the cooking bug that is. Since I've had some time off from work, I have spent a lot of time in the kitchen, not to mention at the grocery store!
My two recent creations I have fallen in love with are as follow.

Pesto Tortelini with Mushroom, garlic and tomato saute topped with my favorite, mizythra cheese

I found these awesomely tasty vegetarian tortelini's at Grocery Outlet, imported directly from Italy you know they were fabulous! I threw in a splash of sherry while cooking up the mushrooms and added the cherry tomatoes at the end just to heat them through. It was so good I had to take a picture, I was proud of myself for this dish, so simple and tasty.

Our friend Dave is a fabulous guy, and as a vegetarian he has some great recipe's that I am in love with. Tofu jerky is one of those that I've not been brave enough to attempt until now. It wasn't quite as good as Dave's, but I am certain that with more practice this will become a staple around here.

This is:

I package extra firm tofu

marinated in soy sauce, sauted till brown, cool then coat in Soy Vey teriyaki and return to pan.

The thinner you are able to slice your tofu the more like jerky it will become , (almost like a meaty texture and very firm) Please take my advice and either water down your soy sauce or use low sodium, no need to marinate it TOO long, 30 minutes will do it in fact. Be aware that any sauce is fine but that if it contains garlic or sugar it will burn, so watch your pan and if your kitchen is tiny like mine be ready for the smoke detector to scare the living daylights out of everyone in your neighborhood!

Some may not believe me but my kitchen truly is quite tiny, barely any room to open the oven door or the refridgerator. I make it work though.

My kitchen is well hung.

I am working with limited income right now, so trying to find affordable healthy & tasty food is becoming like a new adventure! I am having fun with! Tonight it's cheese quesadillas with spicy black beans and(brown) rice with my homemade mexi-corn. Tomorrow it's classic stuffed bell peppers and green salad. Haven't made a menu for friday yet.

Saturdays we traditionally have a big dinner get together with the neighbors and a bunch of friends. It is always a blast and this weekend Jenn is making her Creamy chicken and brocolli enchiladas. They are SO good! I will extract the recipe from her and post it here.

Lucky for my kitchen and my pocketbook I should be headed back to work next week!

Viva la Roadtrip

So this past weekend myself, Steph and Maria all headed south for some good food and relaxing fun. After two hours in the car and some good laughs we met our food destiny at Viva Vegetarian Food Cart in Eugene.

Oh it was goodness. That is each of us with our Viva vegan cheesesteaks.

After filling up on tasty stuff, including vegan coffee soft serve ice cream, we headed out to tour some of the covered bridges on the Lowell Covered Bridge Loop Tour.

Beautiful!

Between the three of us we got some really nice pictures of the bridges and of each other.

Don't laugh, I love that hat!

Maria, myself & Steph finishing up our beers by the river.

This was the second road trip I'd taken this summer, the first one I will look back on later(with pictures of course). Being a student again not only gives me the opportunity to meet new friends(like Steph) but to have some time off during the summer to enjoy and feel young again!

I have wonderful friends, they always know how to have a good time. We never run out of laughs and that's the best!

I came home to an empty house, as Chris was out of town for the weekend with the guys doing his DJ thing. The rest of the weekend I spent recovering from a slight sunburn and my friday roadtrip of awesome. I am keeping my fingers crossed for at least one more of these great roadtrips before classes start up again in September. I'll keep you posted!

In The Beginning

For years I have been keeping my thoughts online in a blog, however I have come to outgrow that and am now here. I have spent years of time and effort in that blog, and have high hopes for this blog as well.

To begin, my name is Crystal, I was born and raised in Portland Oregon. I spent many years working as a nursing assistant before returning to school, getting my phlebotomy & lab assisting license and discovering my love of scientific research. Currently I am again a student, live in the Portland Metro area with my long term love, my boyfriend Christopher and our two lovely cats Cleopatra & Atreyu.

My mother's native to Seattle, her family is Scottish & Norwegian. My mother's family is very large and extended, we have had huge gatherings my whole life that consist of no less than 30 people and enough home-cooked food to feed the entire Oregon National Guard!

My father was born in Kentucky and still has roots there though he moved around most of his life and has lived all over the country, finally settling in Oregon because as he tells it "there we just so many trees!" My father is in a two and a half year battle with stage IV metastesized colon cancer. His disease and his fight has become a central part of my life and my relationship with both my parents.

I have one younger brother, Mac, who for lack of a better explanation is a recovering Meth addict who lives with my parents on their small farm in Columbia County.

I have a bunch of cousins and aunts and uncles who are regulars in my life, but those are the main characters who are a daily part of my life. I have fabulously loud, crazy, fun and entertaining neighbors who keep me smiling and laughing and mostly from ever being bored. I do not have a plethora of friends, but those I do count are good friends and have stuck by me through many different rough patches in my life.

At some point I will mention all of these people, so here I give them fair warning!

My life has been, as most I am sure, with wonderful parts and not so wonderful parts, thus the title to this blog.

I must thank Steph for turning me on to blogspot, as I was attempting to find a new place to make my internet home and she made it look easy. Probably because she is 10 times more creative than me.