Leaves!

The Boy Comes Home Today!

Isn’t he handsome? hehehe..

Tofu Pad Thai.. M’mmmm..

Truth me told, I’m a blog hound. I will find fitness/vegan/foodie/green blogs and literally read the whole blog back to when it was first started, and bookmark all of my favorites along the way. One blog I found recently, not vegan, but basically about a young newly married couple- she’s vegetarian (used to be vegan) and he’s, well, “normal”, both into fitness, both into going out. I could instantly relate.

So the blog is about two years old, and she posts basically everyday, if not twice a day, and I’m almost done with it. Obsessed much?

A couple of months ago, the boy and I felt the need to switch up the “this is getting boring” weekly dinner menu. Enter Tofu Pad Thai. Even the meatatarian in my house ate it, just sayin’..

Healthier Tofu (or any other protein you’d prefer) Pad Thai

Sauce:
– Juice from 2 limes
– 2 T brown sugar
– 1.5 T Siracha (pretty spicy, but I dig it that way-change it up to your liking)
– 1 t oil of your choice (I used coconut)
– 1/4 cup bragg’s liquid aminos

Main Ingredients:
– 2 heads broccoli (she recommended 1 small one, but i LOVE broccoli, soooo,,)
– 2 Carrots
– 1 block extra firm tofu
– 3 scallions
– 8 oz brown rice noodles

Garnish:
– lime wedges
– Siracha!!!!
– chopped peanuts
– cilantro (gross, but whatever floats your boat)
– drizzle of tahini (a random add on I used, awesome.)

Let’s get cooking.. First things first, chop up your tofu into 1 inch cubes, no need to press or drain, all of the water cooks off. Saute them in a Tb of coconut oil over medium low heat until all sides are browned.

While the tofu (or other protein) is sizzling away, start boiling a large pot of water for your brown rice noodles.

Next, chop up the veggies. I swear the moment the peeler hits the carrot my dog comes running. He is a total carrot addict. It’s his kryptonite. He just can’t help himself.

Finish chopping the carrots and broccoli into bite sized pieces.

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Time to start the sauce. Mix all ingredients in a wok and bring to a boil. Why a wok? Because everything is better in a wok, trust me. add in the broccoli and carrots and saute in the sauce until tender or to your liking. My favorite vegetable is cooked broccoli. My least favorite vegetable is raw broccoli. This is a very important step.. for me..

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When the veggies are cooking, make sure the water has come to a boil. Remove from heart and add brown rice noodles, stir to separate. The box I bought said to let them sit in there for five minutes. Take my advice, start trying them at around 3.5 minutes. 5 minutes is WAY too long.

Add tofu, scallions and noodles in with veggies and sauce, toss to combine, let meld together for a few minutes.

Serve immediately. I highly recommend the drizzle of tahini, squeeze of lime and half bottle drizzle of siracha.

My only complaint was the lack of sauce, as I’m a “saucy” girl.. 😉 I would make 1.5 times the sauce if you add the extra veggies.

Enjoy!

The Pros and Cons of Field Work and a new Love Affair

Oh, field work. You are such a double edged sword. Sometimes you’re hard to love, but easy to hate at the same time. Does that make sense? Probably not, but in general, I do enjoy field work. It gets you out of the office, gets you out of your element, usually makes you see completely absurd things that logically make no sense, give you a real sense of what engineering is all about. Blah, blah, blah.. I’m sure I’ve lost a few of you already. Cliff’s notes: Engineering is awesome.

Lets start with the cons:
– Even though you may be inspecting a hotel, you are not looking at the parts of the hotel that the guests see. You’re looking at the parts that even maintenance doesn’t want to see.
– Batt insulation is itchy
– So is fireproofing. Make sure to have a grill scraper in your “engineering site bag” – thanks Nate, didn’t learn that one at school..
– People who work at the places you’re inspecting will ALWAYS ask you if they are losing their job. This is a fail safe.

Pros:
– Out of the office at lunchtime? Out to lunch!
– Learning and stuff.. blah, blah..

But back to lunch.. i mean, unfortunately sometimes lunch is the highlight of the day. So, we’re working right in the heart of Wilkes-Barre on the square. There are american, middle eastern, thai, japanese, chinese, the list goes on..

Day One. American. Veggie wrap, no cheese, whole wheat wrap with side salad. With red wine vinegar only. Meh. Better choices that I thought there would be. No picture, wasn’t worth it.

Day Two. Feeling Exotic. Cafe Toscana? Eh.. Sushi? Naw. Chinese? May as well just buy a cot on the side. Enter Thai. So I have only had thai food once before, for a friend’s birthday a few years ago. It was okay, nothing to write home about, so I never really searched out for it again. BIG mistake. HUGE.

Blogosphere, meet red curry. Red curry, blogosphere.

Oh, did I mention the best spring rolls in the world?

It was absolutely fantastic. I ordered a spiciness level of 4 out of 5. It was good, I could have gone five though. You call those left overs? I call it dinner.

Day three. Its started at around ten-thirty while the fireroofing was raining down on me while up on the ten foot ladder squeezed though a half ceiling tile that the only thing that would keep me going was if we went back to Thai-Thai at lunch. So we did. Tried the red curry? Gotta try the green curry! &%^*#$% fantastic. dying. died. new obsession. I feel like i’m cheating on sushi, but damn.

Also, world’s best spring rolls. again.

Red vs Green. I can’t choose.. Thoughts??

Annnddd.. We’re back!

Sorry for the hiatus, it’s been an interesting last few days. For instance, I’m not entirely sure I remember posting my last blog post. I blame the fever delirium, or the dog..

Anyways, what’s going on?? I’m so psyched just to be out of the house! Pathetic, I know.. It’s obviously been the exact wrong and worst time to start this blog that I have been contemplating for so long. The boy left town for work for a few weeks so my cooking has been pretty lacking (and sometimes downright shameful, damn you frozen Boca burgers for being so easily microwaveable!), then being sick and not wanting to do ANYTHING – especially the whole point of the blog – working out, going out, cooking, eating.. MAJOR FAIL this past week. So let’s just pretend none of that ever happened.

Ahhem.. Oh, hi, didn’t see you there.. 🙂

Dodge ball last night! Okay, so that’s a picture from kickball this past summer, but we are the same color, and the team is eerily similar.. I’ll post a better one when they post them on Facebook. Oh Facebook, what would we do without you?

Won one, lost one, so no harm no foul? Well, we beat our arch nemesis, For Whom the Ball Tolls, so that’s all that really matters. I’m not even going to tell you what the name of our team is..

After dodge ball, I was graciously invited to a black-tie soiree at the McKeown (yah, try saying that one) residence. I grabbed used my sommelier skills to carefully select the perfect wine to pair with the grandiose spread, picked out the best of the stale French baguettes from the grocery store bakery next door and hightailed it floated like an angel to Pittston, well below the speed limit. I promise.

There were many guests in attendance – Chairman Meow and The Hurdy Gurdy Man to name a few (don’t be jealous, they’re much more down to earth than you would think), and the garb was impeccable. I thought the night couldn’t get any better, and then dinner was served.

Okay, seriously now, this is probably the best soup I have ever had in my entire life. My friend Marisa went well out of her way to cook dinner for her husband Michael and I while we were at dodge ball, probably because I’m a pathetic lonely dog lady right now.

She. Even. Revised. The. Recipe. To. Make. It. Vegan.

She’s awesome. It was awesome. Everything was awesome. Do I use that word too much? Awesome.

Butternut Thai Coconut Curry Soup (or some mixture of those words).

What?! It was unbelievable. Like, UN.BELIEVABLE.

And I didn’t take a picture, I hate myself. 😦

So here’s a picture of a different dinner instead:

I need that recipe a.s.a.p. Perhaps she will give it to me, or maybe keep it all to herself – that one is definitely one for the books.

Thanks girl!

Glad to be back. There may be some major changes on the horizon.. Dun dun dun..

Smother me with a pillow

Wahhhhhhhhh!!

Wahhhhhhh..

Yep, I’m a total baby when I’m sick.

We ran out of green tea..

So I bought like five of these..

And this boy has been staring at me:

Wahhhh, sick as a Berkeley

Sinus infection 101..

Step 1. Die

Step 2. When that doesn’t work, cycle DayQuil and NyQuil until you feel like you’re not dead.

Step 3. When you have no DayQuil/NyQuil and your boyfriend is out of town for work, refer to step 1.

Well, at least I have a nurse on hand..

Sir nurse James.. Who is licking my foot at the moment. He’s brilliant, obviously.

And so it begins..

Why hello, didn’t see you there.

My name is Katie (Katherine for short) and I’ve been contemplating entering the blogosphere for some time now. I’m obsessed with reading fitness, health, & vegan blogs and gained so much inspiration from them that I figured I could share my take on the world as well, which in turn might inspire someone else.. blah, blah, blah.. So yep, here I am. Welcome to my crazy world.

First things first – I HATE writing. So creating a blog makes perfect sense, right? Right. I thought so too.

My intentions for this blog are recipes, workouts, lots of pictures (probably mostly of my dog – obsessed.), and some general ramblings. This is probably the most I will ever write in one blog. I mean, who really wants to sit there and read paragraph after paragraph of someone else’s life? Not me. I probably lost a few of you already, so here’s a picture of the best thing that ever happened to me.

Well, now he looks more like this..

And maybe a little of this..

That may or may not have been Halloween. I dress my dog up. He loves it. Get over it.

So yes, you have officially been introduced to Sir Berkeley James, know as “Sir” or “Berk” or “Get back here!” for short. He’s a 4-year-old Goldendoodle from good old Amish Country, PA. He likes long walks on the beach, a nice glass of red wine by the fire place and dirty half chewed nerf footballs. You will see a lot of him on here.

Okay, what else? Oh, so there’s the other love of my life. Can’t forget about him. This is Mr. Clean, oh, I mean Bill. Oops, I forget sometimes.

Isn’t he adorable? No, but seriously, he’s pretty awesome. Like, he even does the dishes. Melt..

To be fair, here’s both of us at one of the billion weddings we went to over the summer. He’s a stud. Obviously.

Hmm.. What else? I suppose there’s somewhere in here to make an “About Me” sections, so I won’t go in depth into that here. Here’s the CliffsNotes..

• Vegan, LOVE to cook. There will be many recipes and pictures.
• It’s all about Berkeley, we just live in his world.
• This is my best friend since third grade, Larisa. She’s crazy awesome. (This is at our Senior Prom I believe. Classy.)

• I play organized Adult dodgeball (amongst other sports). It’s awesome. Shut up.
• Structural Engineer in North East PA. I make things stand up, I don’t make them pretty, therefore we are highly underappreciated in our industry. Poor me.
• Recently drank the punch and joined Crossfit. It’s horrible awesome. I’ll share the horrible fun workouts with you everyday. Berkeley does Crossfit too..

• We brew beer, we go to tastings, we are in a Beer club. We’re the real deal.
• I like wine too.
• The only professional sport I will watch is Football. Go Eagles! I have never been to a live game, and I lived in Philadelphia for 7 years, go figure.
• I bite my nails. Still. I’m 29. Gross.
• I want to like running but I seriously hate it. Like with a passion. Double Gross.

Well, that about sums it up. Welcome and make yourself at home.

Dodgeball tonight.

Hooray!

Shut up.

Quaildog!

Berkeley’s Alter Ego..