a mexican fiesta!

our friend juli posted online a fajita recipe she was making for dinner last night. eric and i jokingly invited ourselves over for dinner, and we very happy when juli and her boyfriend adam actually did extend an invitation.

i love eating with friends, and it's even better when everyone pitches in and everything is homemade.



when we arrived juli was making guacamole and adam was finishing up the salsa.



eric had prepped some tortillas, so he got to work on finishing them.



i took on the job of making mojitos, but had eric help squeeze the limes.



mojitos in the middle of winter?



yes please!



we filled our tortillas with veggies and rice.



all the food turned out amazing (and the drinks too!).





juli and adam have cooked us dinner twice now, so it's about time for eric and i to cook for them!
thanks friends!

photos from the weekend

this past weekend was our first weekend in over a month that we didn't have any plans. so we filled it with laziness and cooking.

eric got me a dehydrator for christmas, so we planned on putting it to use over the weekend. i had seen eggplant bacon on a lot of blogs and really wanted to make it.


i don't have a mandolin so slicing all the eggplant was sort of a pain.



then i let it marinated for about 2 hours.



i'm happy to report that it turned out well, not exactly bacon-esque, but still good.

we also dehydrator some tofu and i made onion bread, which turned out way too onion-y.




the weather was really nice saturday and the cats sunbathed all day.






eric rode his bike while i went running.


we ended up going out to dinner at a local vegan chinese restaurant with some of eric's car/bike friends. no photos, but i am embarrassed by the amount of food we ate.

i've been itching to bake lately, but we still have a ton of leftover desserts from vegan treats. i settled on biscuits. i made the whole wheat one's from alicia silverstone's new book the kind life, but i am sad to say they weren't that great.


we watched way too many episodes of dexter all day (we just started watching and are obsessed!) then decided on pizza for dinner.
eric got started on marinara, which he plans to use for lasagna later.




and he also prepped the pizza dough.


we usually make two separate, large pizzas, for us to eat throughout the week.


i made my pizza with potatoes, squash and kale.


and eric went with a classic, his marinara, vegan cheese and basil.


and then we watched more dexter.

A little of this, a little of that.

These photos didn't turn out too well but it was a special night, so I decided to post them anyways. Last Sunday was Laurens birthday and we went out to Govinda's Gourmet Vegetarian. The majority of the food is vegan, but there are a few entrees that contain dairy. We had been a few times before but only to the to-go portion, not the fine dinning. Like many restaurants in Philadelphia it is BYOB, so we stopped and picked up two nice bottles of beer to try. The first was Rejewvenator made by He'brew, a half dopplebock, half belgian style dubbel. It was excellent!




The second was Estate made by Sierra Nevada, which is one of the world’s only estate-made beers with naturl ingerdienst all grown on-site at the brewery. We were a fan of both, but I will buy some more Rejewvenator soon.





We enjoy beer and food... maybe too much. The birthday girl!





I've been known to shave..





Lauren had already looked at the menu and had decided we needed to try the Pappadum with a trio of chutneys. It was delish...



Next was our salad course then entrees. The salads are excellent and come with a "Caesar" type of dressing. Lauren picked the vegetable fried rice (her go to meal) and I had no idea. I had my eye on a few thing but asked our waiter what he would recommend, (I tend to do this most of the time when I'm overwhelmed.) I ended up with a Pan-Roasted Duck with Sweet Potato Puree and Peanut Ginger Sauce. I have no idea what duck taste like but this meal was excellent and way too large to finish.





Yesterday was finally nice out and I was able to get some work done. 1st on my agenda was changing Laurens oil and replacing her air filter. I pulled a few pieces of wood, drove her car onto them, to make my homemade lift, and went to work.





As usual I don't ever had the right tools but I have learned to adapt and use what I have. My tool, random bicycle stem tightened down on a pedal strap. Attach strap around filter,rotate stem counter-clockwise, and your ready to replace that filter. I have always taken for granted having a garage and more importantly two extras hand that would help me with any car project I have ever thought of. I do miss that (the later of the two.)

the birthday cont.

MY SUPER SWEET SIXTEEN!
i have to give full credit to Juli for the awesome birthday party idea, but she was kind enough to let me join the party and celebrate my birthday with hers.
at the last minute we were able to hold our party at a bar in my neighborhood and we went all out!

we made corsages, boutonnieres, had tiaras, sashes, wore old prom/bridesmaid dresses, etc. it was amazing.








we were even late to our own party because we were taking too many photos.




once we got there we quickly decorated. of course there were cat and hello kitty decorations. what else would you expect?






then we started to party. rachele came down from nyc.














i'd say we had a pretty good sweet sixteen.