Birthday 2014

Hello there all,

Another year lived, another year older. I am now the big 2-8. Yes, I know that it might sound old OR young to you, but I have to say that I cannot believe that I am 28. It sounds so incredibly close to 29 which is deadly close to 30. Growing up, I never thought that I would be shaken by getting close to 30, but here I am slightly freaking out. I still can't believe that I have fooled others into believing that I am an adult. However, I promise you that I am the dictionary definition of an adult, but I am still not a grown up. How could I be a grown up? But I am a little frightened that my young self might think I am. How did I get here?

Anyways, this is how I celebrated the glorious day:

Ate some delicious breakfast noms with my love at Pine State Biscuits.

Some beer sampling at Growler's Hawthorne.

Did an obscene amount of thrifting. We made away with some amazing deals today, and I mean ridiculously amazing deals. It was some of our best work.

The Mister surprised me with a sweet scavenger hunt. Here are some of the clues.

Ate nachos and drank delicious beers at Migration Brewing.

All in all, it was a wonderful day full of memories, love, thrifting, and good food. It makes me a little more excited to be bringing on another year and more accepting and grateful for the years that I've had. It even brings a little excitement for the years to come. However, I don't think that I will be growing into the grown up title anytime soon.

Cheers to another happy year,

Autumn

Recipe: Spent grain banana bread

Hello there all,

I have a confession. I used to hate bananas. Yes, it is true. Even the smell of baking banana bread made me want to puke. However, in my older refined age, I have grown to love them and even yearn to smell banana bread baking.

Recently, the honey made one of his delicious batches of beer leaving us with a lot of spent grain. What is spent grain? They are the grains that are used in the beer making process. After the the home brewing adventure, you are left with gallons of grains. There are a couple of things that you can do with your leftover spent grain that we do (who wants to throw away food that you paid for?):

• Add into our compost bin
• Make spent grain flour (drying out the grains and then grinding them up, so they make a flour) to bake with
• Using the wet grains in recipes (the drawback to this method is that the grains can only stay good in the refrigerator for so long before they go bad)

With a heaping load of wet grains ticking away in our refrigerator and multiple bananas melting away, it only made sense to make up a delicious batch of banana bread.

The recipe that I concocted was influenced by the recipe here.

What you'll need:

• 1 cup of all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup of tightly packed brown sugar
• 2 tsp of baking soda
• 1/2 tsp of salt
• 4 mashed bananas
• 1 egg
• 3 tbsp of molasses
• 1.5 tsp of cinnamon
• 1 tsp of vanilla
• 3/4 cup of wet spent grain (you could substitute this for other things like rolled oats)
• 5 tbsp of melted butter
• chocolate chips (optional)

What to do:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a bowl, mix together flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt.
3. In a separate bowl, mix together: egg, mashed bananas, vanilla, melted butter, and spent grain.
4. Gradually add the dry mixture of flour, sugar, etc. to the wet mixture of egg, bananas, etc.
5. Pour mixture into a greased bread pan. Sprinkle with chocolate chips if you desire.
6. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.
7. NOM!

The wet mixture

The mixture of dry and wet ingredients in the pan. Contemplating the life long question: to add chocolate or not to add chocolate?

Of course you add chocolate!

 The delicious noms fresh from the oven. This is a fairly moist/dense recipe, but I mean that in all of the best ways. It is delicious.

-Autumn

Recipe: Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Hello there all,

It is autumn. The most wonderful time of the year and the time of the year with some of the most delicious foods. One of my favorite things to nom during this time of the year is pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Heck it is even on my fall to do list here.

It celebrates the deliciousness of fall alongside with the sweetness that my sweet tooth constantly craves.

The ingredient list:

• 1 cup of canned pumpkin puree
• 1 cup of tightly packed light brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup of olive oil
• 2 cups of flour
• 1/2 tsp of salt
• 1.5 tsp of pumpkin pie spice
• 2 tsp of baking powder
• 1 tsp of baking soda
• 1 tsp of milk
• 1 TBSP of vanilla
• 1 11.5 oz bag of milk chocolate chips

 The steps:

1.) Preheat your oven to 350 degrees

2.) In a bowl, mix together the pumpkin, brown sugar, egg, and olive oil until it is creamy.

3.) Mix together baking soda, vanilla, and milk until the baking soda dissolves. Add this into the pumpkin, sugar, etc. mixture.

4.) In a separate bowl, mix together pumpkin pie spice, flour, salt, and baking powder.

5.) Slowly add the dry mixture into the wet mixture until well mixed then add the bag of milk chocolate chips.

6.) Spray a pan with olive oil. Scoop the cookie dough by the spoonful onto the pan. Bake the cookies at 350 degrees for about 11 minutes. This recipe makes about 30 cookies.

 7.) Enjoy!

Even Alfredo got his hands onto a couple of cookies. He eats and he eats, but he is all bones!


Enjoy the noms and cross that off of your autumn to-do list.

-Autumn