"Fall" & Meatless Monday: Banana Bread

Sunday afternoon we decided that if Fall wasn't going to come to us then we would just go to Fall! We packed up a picnic, grabbed our cameras and dog and headed out to Cedar City, about an hour north.

Apparently Fall has come and gone for Cedar City. It was a giant fail. We still had a picnic by the river, Rukia ran around to her hearts content and we snapped a few pictures anyways.

Need something to make your Monday better? This will definitely do the trick! I made 2 loaves of Banana Bread last week and threw one in the freezer for this week. I broke that guy out of the freezer on Wednesday and it was finished up on Saturday. We love our banana bread, even more if it's got some chocolate chips thrown in ;)

Best banana bread trick? When your bananas start to get real ripe, like brown, throw them out there no good here come the flies, brown... peel them open and throw the guts into a plastic Ziploc baggie and then throw that guy in the freezer. No wasted bananas and banana bread anytime you like without waiting for ripe bananas.

Banana Bread:

Ingredients:

• 2/3 C Shortening
• 1/2 C Sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 1 3/4 C Flou
• 1 t baking powder
• 1/2 t baking soda
• 1/2 t salt
• 1 c mashed banana
• 1/2 C walnuts... or chocolate chips :)

Directions:

1. Cream together shortening and sugar. Add eggs and beat well
2. Sift together dry ingredients. 
3. Add dry ingredients alternatley with bananas, blending well after each addition.
4. Stir in walnuts or as many chocolate chips as you want! Or both...
5. Pour into a well greased loaf pan.
6. Bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes

I'll Meet you at Midnight

It's becoming clear why we have a hard time getting up early. Friday night Date Night. For us it's really a Date Day since I get off work at noon on Fridays, woot. And really, our whole weekend is a Date Weekend because we have no kids. It's a fun time.

Anyways, Friday is our downfall. It starts out innocently enough. Lunch, usually a movie, then dinner. Lunch usually ends up being burritos from Cafe Rio, and then dinner is the leftovers. The problem comes later though.

We decide that we are going to go out and take pictures. At night. Once the sun is completely gone. So... around midnight. Which means we aren't getting home until 3, or 4. When other normal people are at home, you know - sleeping, we are acting like crazy people and wandering around the desert with cameras in hand.

2 Fridays ago we found some cool statues to photograph and then decided to drive around. All of a sudden we were in the middle of the Mojave Desert. In our janky car no less, shaking the whole way. We finally wised up and turned around to the main road. If we break down there is no one to call, especially at 3am. I joked and said we would just have to roll up the windows, lock the doors and sleep until morning when we could walk out. We made it home around 4am.

Last Monday night we decided to drive up to the Indian Reservation to see the wildfires. We had never seen one and were curious.. We grabbed our cameras and headed out.  Side note: the fires weren't near anyone's houses or anything so we didn't feel guilty about gawking since no one's house was going to burn down while we took pictures! It was very spooky. I felt like we were entering Mordor. It was smoky and black but the the lightning would come and light up the whole sky. We took some cool pictures and made it home after a brief blown tire.

We love taking night pictures and there's something very fun about being out just the two of you while everyone else is sleeping.

Well, fun until the next morning. It's not so bad until Monday really, when we have to wake up at a decent time and go to work. Blegh. By the time we finally adjust guess what? It's Friday, which means another Midnight Date Night!

{Sleepy} Meatless Monday: Brocolli Cheese Soup Fail

It was a whirlwind of a weekend here. It started out in the dead of night with a photography date and ended with us picking up Will at the airport last night/this morning :)

On the way to the airport

Chad and I headed out to a ghost town about a half hour away from us to take pictures. Who needs dinner and a movie when you can take pictures at 3am? Luckily we didn't alarm anyone, no police showed up wondering what we were doing, and we weren't abducted. Around 3am we started hearing weird noises in the distance. Chad wanted to go check it out, I wanted to get out. I won. I've seen these movies and they end in tears my friends.
 

 Sunday was spent cleaning, even though Will has seen our apartment at it's absolute worst, and cooking. It's a good thing the freezer is full and there's a giant container of soup in our fridge because there's no way that I'm cooking after work after 4 hours of sleep last night. It's frozen meals for us! That or we'll use this as an excuse for Cafe Rio, whatev.

We headed out to the airport last night, missing Breaking Bad - that's how much we love you Will. We ended up getting there around 9, his plane got in around 8:30. At least that's what we thought. We parked in short term parking and attempted to find him. After checking the arrival board and his itinerary again we realized he plane really didn't get there until 10:15. Boo. So we got gas, drove around aimlessly, parked in short term parking again and waited patiently. We wandered around the strip for a little while and headed back home. We were all falling asleep so we stocked up on sugar at our favorite gas station and made it home around 3:30am. phew.

In addition to lasagna rolls and twice baked potatoes I made a big pot of Broccoli Cheese Soup. I love a good broccoli cheese soup! I decided to try a new recipe, mostly because I saw someone make it on food network and it looked delicious and awesome. So I thought I would give it a go. Last Sunday I burnt it so this was round 2. Round 2 wasn't really a fail, but it wasn't a giant success.

The consistency is a little wierd and even though I dumped in a LOT of cheese, it's not as cheesy as I would like somehow. It's not bad enough to toss out but it's not delicious enough to share. My favorite Broccoli Cheese soup? The kind in the Kroger soup bar. I'm fancy like that. So if you want a bowl of really good soup just pick up a cup next time your out grocery shopping. It will surprise you how tasty it is. Until I'm near a Kroger again though I will have to keep searching for a better recipe.

Weekends Rock

It is HOT, 112 to be exact. I know it's hot where you live too, because I'm pretty sure it's HOT everywhere. At least we don't have the humidity adding to the sweat fest :) We ventured out (just a little) this weekend to checkout more of the downtown area. Silly us. We left too late and most of the shops were closed, but we still had a great time. We walked around for a bit and then wised up and headed inside a cafe.

It was a cute little place with lots of cupcakes and a handful of vegetarian options, both of which made us very happy! We had dessert first of course, a chocolate cupcake that tasted just like Debi's brownies, down to the icing she puts on them. They were delicious!

After dinner, and lots of water, we went to the cockroach town center (no cockroaches during the daytime!) and took more pictures. Our date night ended with a big photo shoot. Chad was happy to take pictures and try out his new birthday lenses and I was happy to sit in the shade and not move much!

The rest of our weekend was pretty low key. We hung out in the air conditioned safety of our apartment and enjoyed a couple days of laziness :)  It was perfect.

Hope you all had a rockin' weekend as well!

Attack of the Roaches and Meatless Monday: Salt and Vinegar Roasted Chickpeas

On Friday we had a date night! After being in scrubs for work and then dressing like a scrub afterwards due to the heat it was nice to dress up and go out! We headed out to The Pizza Factory and got calzones, pizza (of course!), and the best bread sticks ever! Seriously good stuff. After dinner we went to see Brave, which was really cute. Then the fun really began...

We went down to the tabernacle in the historic section of downtown St. George so that Chad could take some pictures. It's a really cute area that we somehow have never been to. They have a lot of water features, the dreaded carousel, and a RIDICULOUS amount of cockroaches. I've never really seen cockroaches until we moved here - lovely right? And even then it's been one that Penny has been playing with or one that's dead in the kitchen or something. The most we've had is out on our patio but that was a quick fix (thank you Raid).

They... were.... everywhere. Crawling on everything. I would follow behind Chad as he "paved the way" down the sidewalk but quickly learned this was a horrible idea since as soon as he alerted them they would scatter and run around all crazy like. Hard to avoid crazy, scattering bugs. At one point we were taking pictures next to a tree when Chad told me to move to the left. Well I moved to late and one landed on me. GIANT FREAKOUT. I ran back screaming and flailing flashing all the hobos in the process. When a cockroach attacks your face you don't really care about acting like a lady in your pretty little skirt. No sir.

It was a lot of fun, regardless of the roach situation, since we did a lot of late night wandering/talking/making out ;) around Provo when we were first dating.

If stories of roaches don't make you hungry I don't know what will :)

I thought that I'd share one of my favorite new snacks with you. I LOVE potato chips. Salty, crunchy, addictive! We never had them in my house growing up so they were always considered a treat! Now I don't keep them in my house either because if I did they would be gone, and fast, with no help from Chad! I'm sure a lot of you have seen the roasted chickpea thing floating around the internet for a while now. You season up your beans and then roast them in the oven. They get all nice and crispy crunchy, satisfying any potato chip craving. You can do any kind of seasonings that you want but this one is my favorite!

Salt and Vinegar Roasted Chickpeas

Ingredients:

• 2 cups canned chickpeas (or homemade)
• 3-4 cups white vinegar
• Coarse sea salt
• 2 tsp extra virgin olive oil

Directions:

1. In a medium saucepan place the chickpeas and vinegar. Add a dash of salt. Bring to a boil and then remove from heat and let it sit for 30 - 45 minutes. I let mine sit for about 45 minutes and the vinegar taste was much stronger than the last time I made them - a good thing!

2. Preheat your oven to 425. Drain the chickpeas and place on a baking sheet. Drizzle the oilive oil over them along with a good sprinkling of the sea salt. Stir everything up so that all of the chickpeas are well coated. Roast them for 40 - 45 minutes, shaking them up halfway through. Keep an eye on them for the last 10 minutes so that they don't burn!

Date Night

When I came home from work and saw graham crackers, chocolate and marshmallows I knew that it was gonna be a good night! Chad found an awesome spot to have a date night when he was running on one of the bluffs near us.

After we got to the bluff we had to hike up to our spot, about a mile and half, hauling a bunch of wood and food. The promise of smore's was a good enough motivator though and we finally made it up the steep climb to the edge of the bluff. It was gorgeous!


The best part was the ridiculous amount of time it took to build a fire. In Michigan we are used to struggling to get a fire going. The wood always seems to be wet and nothing wants to light. It's taken the boys a long time to get fires going. Not here! It was super crazy easy with all the very dry wood. It lit up real fast, and then proceeded to burn real fast as well. Lucky for us someone had used that spot to build a fire before so we were able to "borrow" their stash of wood.


We had a great night snuggling by the fire, roasting smore's, seeing the full moon rise, watching Rukia run around and explore, and taking lots of pictures.