growing up

the summer when i was 19 (oh so long ago!), tommy did an internship in california and lived in newport beach, about 20 minutes from my parents' house. we were dating. and one night tommy made me dinner in his apartment--some delicious chicken tikka masala. i remember several things about that meal: that it was delicious, that he was all sweaty and stressed with getting this meal on the table all at the right time, and that i was SO impressed that he could make something so fancy--not because he was a boy who could cook, but because i couldn't even make something like that. i also remember he had to buy a whole array of spices that he ended up throwing away when he moved back to provo because we had no idea what to do with them other than this one meal.

fast forward five summers. we decided to make this same recipe for father's day dinner on sunday. and it was just as delicious as before--and a totally easy, normal meal, no harder than any that we make for dinner all the time nowadays. and the funniest thing was that the spices were spices we use all the time: cumin, cinnamon, paprika, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper.

it cracked me up to contrast the two meals, and i feel very impressed with how far we've come. back in those days, i lived off of lean cuisine frozen meals and macaroni and cheese. and now i don't really buy anything boxed or pre-made--because i LIKE cooking now and we both prefer food we make ourselves over something that comes from a box (as a whole).

look at us--i think we're growing up!

FUN weekend FUN

we were eating dinner with my cousin andrew on thursday when he mentioned that this friday was a first friday celebration in venice. i know they have those in raleigh, a sort of art walk thing, but apparently here in venice they're all about the food trucks that line up along the street--there were probably 20 or 30 options to choose from. so we decided to go and see what it was all about. we were looking for the ever-popular grilled cheese truck (which always has an hour-long line and is beloved by many), but it apparently wasn't there, so we settled for some other food. 

the sidewalks were CRAZY crowded. you could tell which trucks were the most popular by how bad the crowds were around the truck.

we got the pota-tornado, with a giant sausage in the middle. there was an entire food truck dedicated JUST to these tornado potatoes. definitely seemed like such a boy thing.

andrew insisted that we needed a picture in front of the medical marijuana dispensary. please ignore my swollen face--i am six months pregnant.

we also bought some giant nachos and we were pretty much filled up. we ended the night by visiting diddy riese and getting some more ice cream sandwiches. all in all a VERY successful night, i would say.

and then today, saturday, we were determined to hit up some other la sites. first up was the original LA farmer's market, which has apparently been going since 1934. it did not seem like a farmer's market to me, since it had BUILDINGS instead of just canopies and clearly the people working there were not farmers selling their produce, but i'm not complaining. it was still great. AND we broke out our fancy new DSLR for this trip, so admire the quality of these pictures! TA-DA!

we were awestruck and amazed by the genius of these band-aid strips. mustache-shaped band-aids? SPAM BAND-AIDS!? there were about 10 other awesome kinds that we ogled and tried to think of reasons to buy. we ended up buying some as early christmas presents for siblings because they were so awesome.

and last but not least, we finally went on our bike ride down the bike path that goes for some-twenty-odd miles along the beaches up here. we went about seven miles each way, stopping to relax on the beach for a while in the middle. it was FUN and definitely something i wanted to do this summer--and probably a good thing we didn't wait any longer or else i would not have been enjoying it as much.

we walked our bikes a good ways on our way back down the venice boardwalk, which was INSANE, crowded, marijuana-smelling, and super classy. i couldn't believe how long it went AND how many cannabis dispensaries there were. go venice! stay classy.

  

and finally you all know what we've been up to all this time! and there are some great baby bump pictures in there to satisfy all you curious people. 

tommy eats at restaurants!

actually, we both ate at these restaurants yesterday. but we only took pictures of tommy at each one, so it looks like he was there by himself, haha. but that's okay, because the main reason we went to both of these restaurants was because of their names and their connections to tommy. 

exhibit a:

the moweses told us about duke's--they said it was delicious, amazing, situated right on the water (literally, RIGHT on the water) in malibu, and they especially recommended the hula pie, which was this little beauty in the picture below: macademia nut ice cream disguised as a pie with a lot of hot fudge sauce. we were sold at the hula pie, but when we heard it was called duke's, we thought we might as well go and show our support for tommy's school. we went there at lunch time and just ordered the dessert (we were on our way to go on a hike and had a picnic and DIDN'T want to spend $20 per plate). the waiter loved us.

as we left, tommy accidentally gave the parking attendant a $20 and told him to keep the change. then he realized what he'd done and went back and exchanged it for the $5 he originally intended to give him. my hero! so the parking attendant guy loved us too--we got out of there in a hurry.

exhibit b:

we went on our hike, and then thought we might as well finish off an excellent day with an original tommy's burger, complete with chili. no explanations needed as to why we decided to go here.

tommy had a good food day all by himself.

let's celebrate!

tommy and i have been finding reasons to celebrate a lot lately. i finished my capstone--let's celebrate! only one more week of class left--let's celebrate! tommy finished his prelim--let's celebrate! we made it through the day--let's celebrate!

of course, our celebrations usually don't involve much other than dessert of some variety. we've bought several half-gallons of bluebell ice cream lately, and far too many smoothies/frostees. i gained five pounds in one week of ice cream--and although i'm supposed to be gaining weight, that seems a little disconcerting. OH WELL WHATEVER! bring it on!

on saturday, after i finished my capstone (thankyouverymuch), we went to local favorite locopops. for the first time. i've driven past the one in raleigh approximately twice a day every day for the last two years, and still never been. but we went to the one in durham and it was well worth it.

i am mostly posting about this just because of the look of utter disbelief on tommy's face that he got as he bit into his chocolate-peanut butter pop. "i didn't think it would be THIS good," he said. he was almost reverent in his awe as he savored every last drop of that popsicle--it cracked me up.

and here i am enjoying my chocolate brownie pop. almost as good as tommy's.

yes, we are converted locopops fans. we'll be back. 

FAKES-ican stack

we had planned to have mexican stack for dinner. a murphy family favorite, going back to the wisdom and crowd-planning skills of grandma murphy. rice on the bottom, chips, meat, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, salsa, sour cream, all sorts of deliciousness. it's a super-easy and super-satisfying dinner.

i got home from school right at 6:00. and tommy was walking out the door for his violin lesson, not to return for another hour and a half.

i convinced him that i didn't have the energy to make the meal all by myself, and promised i would wait for him before starting to make dinner. (i am so nice.)

at 7:30 sharp, he got home.

"hey, dear," he said, walking through the door. "oh, shoot. we should have started the rice a long time ago."

oops. mistake number 1. rice takes about 35 minutes longer than the rest of the meal.

i closed out of my scintillating game of spider solitaire (hey, i'm a busy, important person) and we started making our dinner--tommy belatedly started the rice. i began shredding cheese. tommy browned the hamburger. i chopped the grape tomatoes.

"hmmmm," said tommy. "we don't have any stewed tomatoes to go with the meat."

oops. mistake number 2. grandma murphy-style mexican stack involves a thick, soup-y mix of the meat and tomatoes that goes excellently on your rice. so all we had was some meat, which was fine. but not what we'd planned. we didn't even have an onion to go with the meat because the smell of chopped onion makes me throw up, so it's not worth it to even bother.

tommy pulled out the lettuce. i opened the fridge.

"hey," i said. "we don't have any salsa."

oops. mistake number 3. how can you have mexican stack without any salsa?

it was still pretty delicious, but it wasn't really mexican stack.

and we had to wait a good half-hour after everything else was ready to eat it until the rice was done.

not a great feat of cooking genius, let me tell you.

faveREDs

was anyone else aware of this?

i went down to check out the vending machines in my building the other day (despite ALL THE FOOD i had i was starving) and saw these.

i was skeptical, interested, wondering, "what do they mean with this "fave-RED label?"

when you open it up, it looks like this:

the magic! the beauty! it's a sign that all of my wildest dreams are coming true! THEY FINALLY REALIZED THAT NOBODY LIKES THE YELLOWS AND ORANGES! I ACTUALLY WANT TO BUY STARBURSTS! AHHHHHHHHHHH!

how do i even contain myself? (luckily, i never carry enough cash, so i have only bought two since i made this fantastic discovery.)

yes, i'm easily pleased. whatevs. you know you feel the same way!

fooooooooooooooooooooooooooood

about two days into the whole morning sickness thing, i figured out that the way to stave off the nausea (haha, AS IF THAT WERE POSSIBLE) is to always be eating and never let myself get hungry. this is difficult, because i'm usually spending full days in my cubicle at school. so i've had to get used to bringing loads of food with me, which means i have to carry whole grocery sacks that i eat throughout the day.

B.P. (before pregnancy), my lunch would consist of:

-sandwich

-banana

today, i brought the following food to campus:

-sandwich

-banana

-applesauce

-can of peaches (too lazy to put it into a tupperware)

-chocolate pudding

-leftover chicken from dinner last night

-bag of goldfish

-yogurt

to be fair, i am going to be here until 9 p.m. tonight.

but still. it's kind of ridiculous.

Game On!

(last post of the night. tommy's busy working and i'm obviously busy NOT working, which is why i'm writing so many blog posts.)

along with our new year's resolutions to exercise more and eat healthier, tommy and i joined with many myres family members to do the GAME ON! healthy living challenge. here's what that means:

-exercise (at least) 20 minutes every day

-eat five small meals every day, each of which has a protein, carbs, and a healthy fat (plus vegetables and fruits), two to four hours apart

-no eating white flour, sugar, or butter

-drink half your weight in ounces of water per day

-sleep 7+ hours every night

-develop a good habit that you do every day

-eliminate a bad habit

and that's about it. ha.

it's REALLY HARD.

it's supposed to last four weeks. this type of eating is just NOT sustainable. (although, yes, i know that's sad, because this is how you should be eating and living ALL THE TIME. gimme a break. i can't live without white flour. IT'S TOO GOOD.)

it's not so much the things we're eating, it's the things we can't eat, and the having-to-plan-five-balanced-meals-and-take-them-to-school-every-day that's really hard. i thought the water would be hard, but that's not too bad. the sleeping part is easy (we always get enough sleep around here, pretty much). but man, it's only been four days and i've spent most of the time dreaming about pizza. i don't know what it is, but i'm obsessed with pizza lately. really good pizza. we get two meals off a week (plus one whole day) so tomorrow we're going out to pizza for dinner.

but hey. i think it's actually working. and just so you know--team bob and jillian ARE OUT TO WIN this competition! GAME ON.

traveling food

i couldn't leave our trip without discussing the great food we had on our trip. for months beforehand i was craving the gyros and gelato we were going to have, while tommy had a good long list of the danish food he was looking forward to after the long hiatus since his mission. so we had many great food plans.

UNFORTUNATELY, the food in both iceland and denmark is terribly, terribly expensive! while we knew this in theory beforehand, it was still shocking to us when we realized we would be paying $30-$40 for every meal while we were there. this stopped us from trying whale and puffin in iceland (both around $50 a plate) but we still ate some very good food. we were glad to go to france where we could buy all our food from the crepe stands that charged the decent price of six euros for a crepe. (normally, i would have felt bad about spending that much on crepes for dessert, but not after being in scandinavia.) luckily for us, we generally had cheap breakfasts--we went to a grocery store in iceland and bought some muffins, while we were in denmark our hotels generally included breakfast (a FANTASTIC breakfast at some places), and we feasted on one-euro baguettes for breakfast every morning in paris.

our first dinner in iceland, we ate at a place called "icelandic fish and chips." it was RIGHT on the harbor--they catch the fish and bring it in and serve it. tommy even liked it, despite his anti-seafood leanings (we try and get along even though we do not have this in common). the second night we were there we ate at a thai restaurant, which was good but didn't really deserve a picture.

this is the aforementioned hut on the side of the cliff where we ate fish soup that we paid an arm and a leg for. it was really good though, and a great food experience. hellllooooo, iceland!

and then we quickly jump to denmark. here we are enjoying smorrabrod, the danish open-faced sandwiches that tommy always talks about.

and of course we had many, many danish pastries. um, so, so SO good!

no, this is not a traditional danish meal. this is a traditional MISSIONARY meal--a seven-eleven hot dog. my dad was so excited to try it. (tommy really wanted it though. this was even an actual seven-eleven he used to frequent while he was serving in this area.)

we introduced austin to the magic of magnum bars, and stopped at least four times to get them. the kind store owner here took our picture for us, without us even asking him to.

we spent our whole time in denmark trying to find a traditional danish restaurant with REAL DANISH FOOD that tommy kept talking about. turns out there aren't very many of those, and the ones that are in existence are very expensive. but our last night in copenhagen we found one and tommy and my dad got to try all the danish food they had been desiring. and i got my frikadeller like i'd wanted all along.

this is an example of us eating some of the amazing breakfasts that we got at our hotels. they put the continental breakfasts of american hotels to SHAME. and did you even KNOW that they sold nutella in tiny butter-pad sized packets? can you believe it???
and then on to france! it's pretty much just crepe,
after crepe,
after gelato,
after crepe.
but we also had many gyros (that i love love LOVE).

and even a giant hot dog sausage thing at a mini swap meet thing right next to the eiffel tower.

oh! i miss those crepes! oh, it was all so good. good thing we have a crepe maker (that we DEFINITELY need to use more) and thank goodness that america sells nutella for us to enjoy to our heart's content.

food.

i have one cardinal rule when it comes to cooking:

if it has lime, balsamic vinegar, or almond extract in it, it's going to be amazing. (no, not all together. weirdo.)

i have never experienced a dish that contradicted this rule. and i'd love to try as many as possible to prove it.

tonight we made this salad, and the angels started singing:

corn kernels (cut from three cobs, sauteed for two minutes in butter)

black beans (1 can, rinsed and drained)

cilantro (1 whole bunch)

lime juice (from two limes)

avocado (1)

green onions (1/2 a bunch)

(here are the amounts, cathy--i should have put them up in the first place!)

mix together and love.

this really happened.

tommy and i went to the grocery store last week for two reasons: 1) we needed food and 2) we needed treats to eat while we watched harry potter that night. we started in the produce section, as usual, and got our standard tomatoes-lettuce-carrots-broccoli-peaches-etc., and then started walking through the bakery section to get to the rest of the store. we knew we didn't need to buy any bread because we had a loaf in our freezer that we had to use up before we left on our trip.

but we stopped by the nice bread counter.

you know, the stand with the artisan bread and the baguettes and the rolls and the breadsticks and the whole clove garlic bread that just KILLS me. we looked longingly at the counter, knowing that We'll Know We've Made It When we can buy artisan bread any time we want and not feel bad about it.

and then tommy saw that every. bread. product. had a sale sticker on it. 99 cents, 59 cents, 29 cents! per loaf!

we were giddy like children on christmas morning. of course the only thing we could think was BUY BREAD BUY BREAD BUY MORE BREAD, and we stocked our cart with as many loaves as we could think of an excuse to need. i ran to get tomatoes and basil to make bruschetta so we could use up some of the bread while tommy closely questioned the bakery employee whether such a sale had ever happened in the history of kroger stores before. we took more loaves than two people could ever reasonably eat and walked away thrilled with our genius.

we took kit kats, 100 grands, chocolate-covered raisins, and several mini-baguettes (and some whole clove garlic bread) to watch HP that night. and we were totally satisfied.

epilogue: we finished all the loaves we bought. and even made some homemade bread last night because we just didn't have enough. hello, we're the leiningers, and we are bread-aholics.