things in life...

hey there, guys! so life has gotten pretty hectic with school, but im really enjoying living with katy and working on my senior comps project:)  my comps are on this bacteria called xylella fastidiousa that infects coffee, citrus, and grape crops:) such a nerd but i totally love it!

last night, we all took a break from studying and celebrated our annual toga party at school...it was pretty fun, especially since we are all allowed to go into the beer gardens now:) audrey and i decided that we have progressed very little since our first toga night. haha.

Spring Rolls and dinner parties

On Friday night, Katy and I finally had our anticipated dinner with the front house.  We spent the evening getting together some food from the Asian market down the street from us (Seafood City=AWESOME!) and decided on making spring rolls from her girlosophy cookbook.

 We basically just panfried some tofu and made vermicelli noodles, and cut up carrots, parsley, cashews, green onions, and for a twist, avocados. yum!!!! The rice paper wraps are super easy and you just dip them in water for a few seconds on both sides and then lay them out like like a tortilla and basically make burritos.  I was stunned at how easy and fun they were.  Plus they look like they are really hard to make, so the front house was very impressed:)

Well, I'm off to go run at the Rosebowl with my friend Kelly and then maybe I will be able to start my homework and research project (which is going to be comparing two species of agave plants, the tequila agave and a local species....soo excited!!).  Hope the first week of school went well for everyone!

Oregon Berries

Kelly here. Excited to post my first Busy Bees blog entry. It's funny tho, because while the rest of you girls are indeed busy bees, with your first days of school and all, I am peacefully un-busy. I just got back to Grants Pass, Oregon, where Claire and I grew up, after a three week road trip, which involved visiting Claire and her new house in LA:

We had a great visit, but my boyfriend Trevor and I were more than ready to get back home. Grants Pass greeted us with hot hot days and a river edged with TONS of blackberries. We went out in the driftboat and filled this container FULL within 20 minutes. Note that it is now almost empty :

First I made a little crisp, with a topping made by crumbling together EarthSmart vegan butter, oats, cinnamon, a handful of oat bran, a handful of flax seeds, and some dark brown sugar. Yum Yum. I do wonder about EarthSmart though, because after eating half of the crisp on my own, I was bloated for like 24 hours. And then again when I ate the other half, haha. Maybe its overeating, but I wonder if the "milk protein" in butter substitutes is as hard to digest as other parts of milk. I'm a bad lactose intolerant.

Then we had a little BBQ and we made drinks with the berries: vodka, lemonade, and mushed black berries. Mmmm.

Then I had some on my oatmeal this morning. But there are STILL more!! Luckily, this morning I happened to check my favorite food blog, ChoosingRaw, and Gena had posted a recipe for a Peach and Blackberry skillet cake! Yes please.

Gena's Peach and Blackberry Skillet Cake

I had picked up some peaches at the Grower's Market yesterday morning, but I didn't want to use them all, so instead of measuring out Gena's proportions of fruit, I threw in a thick layer of berries, and thin slices from one fresh peach. I also sliced up the little wild strawberries my grandma gave me from her neighbor's garden. I didn't have applesauce, so I mashed up a frozen banana instead. Also, instead of all flour, I used mostly flour and a 1/4 cup oats, just because I love oats. And I used a packet of Stevia instead of sugar, though it was almost unnecessary because of how sweet the old banana was.

Phew, that was more tiny alterations than I expected.

What are your favorite summer foods and fruits? Is there anything you look forward to year round, and eat up when it comes? Obviously berries are that thing for us Oregon girls!

musica

here are a couple music videos that im a big fan of at the moment.  they are kind of an eclectic mix and the last video is super weird, but I think I have become a staunch feminist after taking a physics class that is literally 93% male.

This one is super cool and interactive:)  http://www.brokenbells.com/october/  (try moving your cursor a bunch...you'll see what i mean)

My vegetable of the week (and maybe month)

So I've been trying to test out new vegetables so that I don't get sick of any of them; gotta keep some flair in my life and this is my newest find: Romenesco broccoli. It is soooo good!  Plus, it's geometry contains fractals so I can even nerd-out while I'm eating it!  But seriously...how cool is it??!