Fall Weather

What can we say about this week? Well, it was BEAUTIFUL and RELAXING!

First of all, California came to us this week, as we finally have cool, clear blue skies, sunny, and DRY weather! We have enjoyed keeping our screen door open to feel the nice fresh air blow through the apartment.

It is making us, however, excited and antsy, just thinking about the possibility that we will be living in this weather hopefully everyday, once we graduate and move to the West coast! Our dream is to work for an organic food company in Northern California, Oregon, or Washington state.


Another great thing about this week was that our Dad came up on Sunday to celebrate his 47th birthday. It was so nice to see him and make lunch for him. We made him a vegetarian lunch and, even as a huge meat eater, he overstuffed himself! We have been slowly bringing our Dad to trying new things, such as Sushi and Vegetarian food.We made our Dad sauteed vegetables and bean burritoes with homemade wheat tortillas, which we posted about earlier and are really awesome! With all of the fixings-avocado, tomato, lettuce, salsa, and jalapeño powder (our dad is the king of spicy!), the burritoes came out very tasty and filling!

For our Dad's birthday dessert, we made Maple Lemon Cranberry-Date Bars on oat crust. All I can say, is WOW. This is one of our favorite recipes!


We modified it slightly by substituting half of the dates for some dried cranberries. The filling is so flavorful, with a lot of great flavor dimensions and textures. The zing of lemon, nuttiness of pecans and oats, sweetness and tartness of the dried fruit, and buttery flavor of the crust!


Part of his birthday gift was a creative "goody bag" of snacks - Honeycrisp apple, jalapeño powder, Organic Endangered Species Chocolate Bar with Peanut Butter, and the Date bars.


We also enjoyed this week Roasted Vegetables - Cauliflower, Delicata Squash, and Red Potatoes with garlic. The cauliflower and potatoes taste so nicely when roasted in the oven. The delicata squash was new for us to try. It was ok- similar to acorn. We like sweet potatoes and carrots better than winter squashes.


Here is a great lunch idea - Almond Butter Wrap with shredded carrots and currants. The carrots add a nice freshness with a slight sweetness, too. We will make this lunch often, because it is a way to incorporate one of our favorite vegetable-the carrot!

(Forgive us for those awful plates in the picture - they are from when we were very young, and we still have them! haha...)











Another meal we enjoyed was Mediterranean Chickpeas over whole wheat angel hair pasta. It was like jazzed up spaghetti because of a hint of lemon juice that made it very flavorful, yet it was so simple to make. We didn't follow the recipe exactly (it had a lot of onion and spinach, etc), but made a spaghetti sauce (with our usual squash, bell pepper, onion, garlic, and tomatoes) and tweaked it slightly. Next time we will try tofu or white beans instead of chickpeas.Today for lunch we just threw together hummus mix, some leftover green chiles, oregano, jalapeno powder, and cumin and made a great bean dip. It was quite good when dipped with raw broccoli flowerets, cucumber slices, baked blue corn chips, crackers, and diced tomatoes! Earlier in the week we used the green chiles by mixing it with soft tofu and enjoying it in a sandwich.


And, for dinner this evening we tried something today that we were very unfamiliar with - filo dough. We made Spinach Mushroom & Tofu Fillo Triangles, using "The Fillo Factory"'s Organic Whole Wheat Fillo Dough.

It was fun to make - place filling on a fillo sheet, roll up, and bake for about 10 minutes. Fillo is so thin and crumbly like thin cracker sheets. It was fun to eat, too- as we bite into the pastry, the sheet is so delicate that it breaks and gives this cool texture in your mouth. We enjoyed them by dribbling some balsamic vinaigrette over the pastry as we took each bite! Yum, spinach, mushrooms, tofu, onion, garlic, and herbs!


As you go out into the new week, remember to embrace your family and celebrate life! Also, celebrate the beautiful Fall season and every weather God blesses us with!

"Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather." - John Ruskin


Kind regards, LK