Natural Wonders & Monuments To See:

N:

1. Yellowstone Park
2. Glacier National Park
3. Northern Lights



Image from Telegraph UK

4. Egyptian Pyramids
5. Taj Mahal
6. Grand Canyon
7. Amazon Rainforest
8. Galapagos Islands
9. Great Barrier Reef
10. Niagra Falls
11. Rolling Irish fields
12. Tides at the Bay of Fundy



Image from Boston.com

S:

1. Galapagos Islands



Image from National Geographic>

2. Yellowstone
3. Alaska/Denali National Park
4. Everglades
5. Crystal Caves - any and all of them!



Image from Crystalinks.com>

6. Those caves where they found the first cave paintings, in France I think
7. The super super giant redwood trees, the ones only a few scientists know about in the middle of California somewhere
8. Ice Caves - in Greenland maybe?
9. Amazon rainforest

It's kinda funny but S and I have a lot of overlap! Also we've done things on each other's lists. I've been to Alaska and the Everglades and she's seen the Northern Lights and Niagra Falls. I do think we should go to the Galapagos Islands and/or Yellowstone together soon!

Paint Chip Mosaic

So I recently moved into a new house, and was struggling to find cheap decorations for my walls that didn't look awful. After many Pinterest searches, I came across the idea of making a paint chip mosaic! The inspiration comes from here, and I pretty much copied the design exactly since I love sunflowers.

The first step is going to the hardware store and stealing a ton of paint chips. This is the best step. You get to pretend that you are painting all the rooms in your house, and that you really need 15 chips of the same color, just in case. Maybe you have 15 roommates and they all want their own sample to approve before you paint it. I made up a lot of stories in my head like this, in case a store employee asked me what I was doing. No one did.

Despite stealing like 100, I still ran out of the colors I needed but luckily found this entire book of them in our garage!

Next you trace out your design lightly in pencil, cut your paint chips in to small, uneven squares and get to pasting! (Note: This will take 1 million years).

I made my pieces a little too small, so it really took forever. I did each piece individually, putting a dab of glue on the back of each with a toothpick. It's good to watch old episodes of Arthur while doing this. 

I framed it on some white printer paper, and voila!

It really complements my craigslist chair.

Final thoughts: Would I recommend this project? I guess, if you are under-employed, not easily bored, have TV to catch up on, and your housemates don't mind having a table covered in newspaper and glue and scraps of paper for weeks. 

The end result was quite nice though! 

Things you would like to learn how to make with your own two hands:

I love lists.  Maybe a bit more than S but I think we both love lists.  Anyway, she loves lists at least enough to make a few lists with me.  When I came across this book with topics for tons of lists I knew it'd be the next Donuts After Dark feature!  Here we go...

Things you would like to learn how to make with your own two hands:

N:

1. Bread! I <3 Bread.
2. Beautiful dumplings like my grandma (hers are so uniform!)
   
3. Good looking shelves/other woodworking projects. Like a HOUSE.
4. Good looking and well fitting clothing (normally my sewing projects turn out okay..)
5. An impressive sculpted bust of my dog
   
6. Welding! Just cause.

S:

1. Bread! All my bread-baking endeavors have been failures, probably because I am too lazy to knead or let rise properly. 

2. Dresses. I always start sewing projects enthusiastically then get overwhelmed by the patterns, and give up once I inevitably break the sewing machine and can't figure out how to rethread it.
3. Tables/chairs/general woodworking. I did take wood shop in middle school and successfully completed a box and a mirror frame. Our teacher had multiple missing fingers. The wood shop was actually closed down after our year because too many people were giving each other tattoos with the wood burners. I remember really enjoying drafting. 
4. Origami. Just to impress people at dinner parties and such. 
5. Goat cheese. Because I love it and then I would get to have a pet goat.

Based on this you should probably expect some posts on bread, carpentry and sewing coming up!

Cauliflower Crust Pizza

When the internet told me that you can make a pizza crust using solely cauliflower, an egg, and some cheese, I was skeptical. But I am trying gluten-free cooking, so why not! The recipe I used comes from The Lucky Penny and claims to be the BEST cauliflower crust ever. 

The hardest part was chopping up the cauliflower and putting it in the food processor. It wasn't really that hard, just messy. And I was excited to learn that I have a food processor in my new house! 

You basically grind up the cauliflower, microwave it, then squeeze it in a towel to get the extra liquid out. Seems complicated, but it's not. 

I actually followed her recipe exactly and it came out great! 

You pre-bake the crust for like 10 minutes, then put your toppings on.

It was a little chewy and held together great. The dried herbs in the crust really made it amazing. I have been requested to make it once a week from now on! We even agreed that it was better than the regular flour crust we bought from Trader Joe's.

CAULIFLOWER! Who knew? 

What we're cooking...Blueberry Sweet Rolls

When you share a kitchen this size with 8 other people, baking can get tricky. This recipe seemed complicated and I was afraid I would screw it up horribly and it would be embarrassing. So I got up super early one morning and tried to bake quietly without waking anyone up so at least no one would see my failure. 

But shockingly, everything went smoothly! The dough came together very nicely. 

No rolling pin? No problem!

Next time I would add more blueberries. I feel like 1 cup was not enough to fill all the rolls completely. 

I let them rise for about 2 hours. The recipe said to cover with foil, but I didn't have any. I briefly considered covering them in a dish towel but I couldn't find a clean one. Then I covered them in a paper towel but took it off because I got paranoid someone would turn on the oven without realizing anything was in there and it would burst into flame.

I also baked them sans foil. They got a bit brown but still delicious! For the glaze I just used a bunch of lemon juice until it tasted right.

Everyone in the house seemed to enjoy them. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy they were. I would even try and use this same base recipe just to make plain yeast rolls.
- S.
-----------------
Approximately 8 months after S. suggested we make these Blueberry Lemon Rolls I got around to it!  One day I just woke up and it felt right.

I actually used blueberries that S. had picked last year and I'd stolen when we moved out of our old house and stored in a Peaches/Mango bag.  My current roommate was pretty confused.

Normally any yeast-based food I try and cook comes out so-so at best but as S. said these were really easy!  I followed the exact recipe/instructions from Sally (except I didn't have her fancy yeast on hand but it turned out just fine!) and after letting them rise soon had the rolls in the oven!

I would also recommend upping the blueberry amount since a few rolls were light on fruit.  Luckily we have foil so I baked them about half without and half with foil.  I think the color came out quite nice!  And they were very good!  A bit sweet for my taste and next time I'd probably change up the glaze to try and decrease the sweetness but the entire pan was gone in a day.  The dough itself was amazing, the perfect texture and taste, definitely a keeper recipe!  Next up maybe a sweet orange version?

-N.

What we're reading...Eating Animals

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

And it was great.

Harbor Islands

It was my last day in Boston, and our last day as roomies (at least for a while), so we took a trip to the Harbor Islands. The weather was perfect. We had some time before the ferry so we wandered the North End, listened to some music in the park, stalked some fanny pack wearers, and stuck our heads in this thing. 

We went to Spectacle Island first. It was kite day! We skipped the walking tour to decorate our kite. 

N. was a pro kite flyer. 

                                     

After crashing the kite, I gave up and took a million pictures of the skyline instead. 

Then it was time for lunch! We brought a bottle of champagne that someone had given us at one of our parties. When N. opened it, the cork flew off, across the path, and landed in the bushes somewhere. We never found it. 

Our classy picnic. We got a couple of looks from passerbys as we sipped champagne from a bottle covered in a bandana. But no one said anything. 

We didn't have a way to close the bottle, so we took the empty wrapper from the animal crackers and tied it around the bottle with a hair band. Then we put the whole thing in a plastic bag in my backpack. It worked!

Then we went to Georges Island and took a wonderful nap on top of the fort wall. We also drank some more champagne while hiding behind a cannon. I'm pretty sure a park ranger saw us. 

The ferry was confusing and super disorganized, but it worked out in the end and we made it back in time to shower, make cookies, finish packing, and tandem to Punters for my going away party. 

It was almost too good of a day. I'll miss you Boston :( 

June Day BBQ

It's that time again...PARTY!

This time the weather was nice so we decided to have a BBQ, vegetarian of course!  The (facebook) invitations were set, the calendars marked and the planning began.  S. really wanted veggie kabobs and I wanted corn.  We also decided to get some veggie burgers and iced tea!  Luckily our boss took us to Costco the week before so we stocked up on Boca Burgers, cheese, contact solution and other necessities.

The day of the party S. and I got started on making the veggie kabobs.

It was a long process but we did manage to throw our porch table down into the yard and V. helped us take the silk out of the corn.

Soon guests were arriving, beer and watermelon in hand.

Right as we were about to try and light the grill D. walked in and, since he is evidently some sort of West Coast BBQ god, took over the cooking.  S. and I played sous chef for a while grabbing foil, matches and spices but all of the cooking was kindly taken over by D. and J.  

Iced tea was drank out of jars and we even made s'mores, treating M. to his FIRST EVER S'MORE in the process.  

 

After eating most of the group moved towards playing wiffle ball, frisbee or trying to learn to skateboard.

Some of us still have wounds healing from the latter.  Towards the end of the night a guitar emerged and I could feel the JP hipster-ness oozing from our yard.

Party complete!

-N.

Six Pack Shuffle I

Since we first heard of the concept of a 6 pack shuffle we have wanted to do one. The idea is everyone gets a six pack, then you think of 6 places to bike to. At each place you drink a beer. You try not to die. 

We left right after work and headed to the Zakim. 

M. and D. met us there. 

'

After that we went to a park in Cambridge. After which Q. ditched to go home, but we continued on and played on the playground!

 Then went up to the roof of a parking garage. The view was great and biking through the garage was awesome. G. met us up there after much difficulty getting in - evidently they lock the doors around 11.

 I seem to recall we played ninja warrior, then N. tried to crush a can by blowing on it.

Of course we went to New York Pizza.

Then we stopped in one of the Northeastern building to go to the bathroom. Where we took this picture for some reason.

 And found a cart with wheels on it.

And we all made it home alive!

We didn't actually make 6 beer stops, but it was a good first effort! Stay tuned for more.