Its the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

And yes for me that means Fall.  Today is the first official day, and also my exact two month anniversary of living in Seattle! It has gone fast but at the same time I feel like I've been living here and working at Forterra longer than that.

I'm still learning the differences in a Michigan Autumn and a Seattle one.  I can guess a few... like less crisp but sunny days to go to the pumpkin patch or apple orchard and more chilly and damp days to stay in and cuddle up with a book or a baking recipe.  Yesterday I kicked off fall with my favorite, pumpkin cookies!  Coupling that with Michigan Football (if only we had played halfway decent....) Kyle's Chili and hard ciders of various varieties and it was a perfect fall day!  And this is only the beginning of warm sweaters and apple cider.  What is your favorite part of Autumn?

This will also probably begin my realization that having 2 raincoats won't cut it, and I will have to purchase a couple more so as to stay dry for the next 9 months.

Let's hope Michigan can get their game together on their bye week, its been painful to watch the last couple games.

Last weekend I went up to Ballard to hit up the record store.  I was pretty impressed with Sonic Boom seen as I went out searching for newer albums, they had all the ones I was looking for, basically Disclosure, Queens of the Stone Age and Fleet Foxes.  When looking for older records I would say Jive Time in Fremont might be more helpful.  Then I went out for Pho.

 It really was my first meal that I went out and sat in a restaurant alone to eat.  It wasn't as bad as I thought it might be, but of course better with company.  I can see why some people plan ahead and bring a magazine or book.

Anyway I much like Ballard and think that in 8 months when I'm considering my living situation again, I will add Ballard to the top of my list if it is feasible.   It might have to wait a couple more years though...

So things are still good here with a lot on my to do list and that list is only growing.

Happy Fall!  Get into the season and be festive! There is so much to love!

<3 Suz

Catch Up!

Why haven't I been to a show yet?  Really there is no excuse, that is even something I can go do on my own.  I will do that soon.  There is practically always tunes blowing out my Bose whenever I'm home. It even helps me right now to sit down and write with a record spinning.
I mean I suppose exploring many different neighborhoods is a decent excuse.  In my head I'm already shopping for a new neighborhood, not that there is anything wrong with mine.  Now that I'm here though and able to see the different moods of the various areas, I can better picture myself settling in here.
[flip record over]
Hosted my first dinner party last week!  That was quite lovely if I can say so!  It also gave me a hard deadline for having my apartment clean, unpacked and nice looking.  It was so nice to see my friends from college, one who lives in Seattle and one who lives in NY visiting him.  After work I went to Pike's Market to get fresh flowers, baguette and Salmon.  How friggin cool is that?  Sometimes I have to remind myself that that is my life now and not just a really cool thing I got to do once or twice.
I still haven't made my mind up on the Seattle Freeze, but I think it says a lot that pretty much all the people I have been hanging out with are not originally from Seattle. Then I thought about the reverse scenario, I'm a pretty independent person, don't always need to be with others and can easily entertain myself.  Its more activities out and about that I like to have someone with me for. So maybe I like it here so much because I have some of the Seattle Freeze already in me, or some sort of different version? But then I looked at my schedule and for the last few weeks basically every day after work I've had plans, so I can't be that freezy!  Really we all know I was living a lonely life before in the small town and have found an exciting area for a lovely balance of working, exploring, excitement and of course my ME time!
I'll cheers to that!  Happy Sunday!
<3 Suz

Pizza Pie!

Saturday night I made a delicious home made pizza with my boyfriend.  Someone saw the delicious photo on Instagram and asked for some information on it.  So I thought I'd write a blog post about how this came to be.  I always, like most people, CRAVE pizza.  The combination of the melted cheese, sweet and tangy tomato sauce and soft but crisp bread is just what my mouth usually craves.  But it has such a bad reputation for being unhealthy!  and it is, if you buy it some where else at least.  Now this is not scientifically a healthier pizza, but I am just guessing that my more natural techniques and and ingredients must make this somewhat healthier! My theory is at least, if the crust is thinner and I pile on delicious veggies on top, then its healthier, right??

 While at Sawall's health foods, I saw a packet of Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free pizza dough.  You can probably get any pizza dough mix you like, but I know that is a good brand with pretty natural ingredients.  I had the pizza craving but a few problems:  trying to eat more wholesome ingredients, consume less fat, and have no electric mixer.  I decided to bust out my guns and purchase the dough.  

Saturday I had my normal pizza craving, so we made the dough.  It comes with a yeast packet, which is really handy, not all mixes have this ingredient in the bag (check whatever brand you buy to make sure it does!)

Personally, I ran out of eggs from breakfast, so I used the vegan recipe of no eggs but using flax seed mill set with water for a minute as the egg substitute! (Bob's red mill also makes this if you are interested, lots of health benefits!) Eggs work just fine too though, but this substitute cut out some of the cholesterol.  

The dough was hand kneaded.  I found it to be a little wet, so I'd add some flour once you have followed the dough making instructions. Don't forget to let it rise.  We put the bowl of rising dough on the open top to get some of the heat from the preheating oven to help with the yeast.    

I then realized I have no pizza sauce!  So I made my own:

small can of tomato paste

can of water

1 large chopped tomato

1  1/2 teaspoon of basil (or however much you'd like!)

2 cloves garlic (I didn't put garlic in my sauce because I like to knead minced garlic in my dough!!)

Boil it until it thickens to your liking, I think mine boiled for like 20 minutes.  

Roll the dough out over the olive oiled pan, the mix i used said to bake it naked first, so we did! then take it out, put the sauce on! Then comes the fun part!

TOPPINGS!

We went for a more Mediterranean style pizza, bottom layer of spinach and kale, then some crumbled feta cheese, black olives and artichokes, then a tiny bit of shredded cheese.  I like to shred my own from a block, I used colby-jack but mozzarella is more pizza traditional.  

Bake as long as necessary (for my dough it was about 15-18 minutes depending on how you like your crust to be too)

and VOILA!  you have delicious, and must be more nutritious and definitely less greasy pizza!

It is semi time consuming, but so worth it!! Also great as left overs!

This is the pizza before I baked it!  

There is no after picture because my Su chef and I smashed it all!  

Kinda looks like a salad right?? Hopefully my stomach thought so!!

<3 Sue

Food of India

This past week I decided to take on the food of India!  My newest boyfriend is from India so I thought it would be nice to attempt to cook the fine cuisine of this country!  I thought I'd share the recipes I used and some of my experiences.
First, last week I home made my own paneer, which is cheese.  It was surprisingly easy to make, but a half gallon of milk only creates about a cup - a cup and a half of cheese, depending on the quality of milk you use.  When they say get whole milk, I recommend whole milk and nice milk, like organic or at least more natural milk.  It is more thick and creates more cheese. This recipe I found on The Kitchn was a great help!
http://www.thekitchn.com/diy-recipe-homemade-paneer-che-57008
Below is my paneer as I'm pan frying it.

You want to pan fry it to about golden brown!

Here is the palak paneer recipe I used.  (Palak is spinach!) Make sure you run the spinach under cold water after blanching it to retain that gorgeous green color!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/paneerwithspinach_86756

I also made a Dal (lentils, beans) dish.  I used it out of my wonderful cookbook, how to cook everything vegetarian by Mark Bittman.  This book is amazing!  My advice on this recipe is to add maybe even a little less than an inch of water above the lentils so that it thickens up quicker.  This recipe is so easy and delicious!

http://markbittman.com/dinner-with-bittman-simplest-dal

I also added tomatoes to this, as this was one alteration in his cookbook.  

Below you can see the beautiful Indian dinner I made!  

On the left is the dal with a bit of Cilantro.  There is brown basmati rice in the middle, and the palak paneer on the right. I also made a delicious mango cocktail to go with it.  it is simply 2 parts mango rum, one part dark rum, one part tonic water with some cut up mangoes in it.  Also a lime is a good substitute if you don't have mangoes.  

Remember, these are spiced heavily, so if you do not have a high tolerance for spices, reduce them slightly.  I actually found the dal spicier than the paneer. 

My boyfriend was happy with the outcome of these dishes, which of course made me feel awesome at my first attempt! And it was fairly easy so I can't wait to try out another food, like Chhole or making my own naan!

All in all we ate very well last weekend! But I was glad to have been able to make him a little bit of home for the night!  

Eat well!

<3 Sue 

Delinquent

Hello followers, if I didn't bore you to sleep with my complete lack of blogging.  I guess it is time for me to bring my voice back to the web!  I've been doing a lot of cooking lately along with some beauty product trying so I'm hoping to get back into having my wide variety of interesting things on here.

I've recently returned from a trip to Florida with my mom, brother and grandma.  It was a well deserved break from work, and now I am recharged to tackle this busy season at work again!  Thus far this week has proved that!  I've been so busy doing tasks at work, that the days have not been spent by me staring at the clock for 10 minutes for one minute to pass.  

Me at the St. Joseph Bay at a shell filled beach in FL

Sunset at Panama City Beach, FL

Birthday dinner at Up the Creek Raw Bar, a Manhattan style Oyster, in Apalachicola

I've become active in a few other social media outlets as well.  Pinterest has really been a great way for me to organize all the interesting pages and ideas I find online.  Please feel free to find me on there and check out my boards, my food board is probably the strongest.  I've even tried several of the recipes on there!   I also joined Instagram as soon as they made it available for android phones.  I love being able to instantly and easily upload photos to better show and express things I'm doing or find interesting.  Please find me on there as well!

So this way past overdue post is my attempt to win back followers and your interest!  I'll put together some of the things I've been cooking and some reviews of the make up and possibly even some updates from the field at work and invasive species!  I have to throw in some of my green agenda  ;)

You will hear from me soon!

Jolly Green Drink

Tonight I made the Green Drink that has been featured on Opera and Dr. Oz.  I didn't try it because they convinced me, I just happened to talk to a friend who tried this recipe and liked it!  I had decided after being semi sick for the last two months, I needed to clean out my system of any lingering toxins.  This is also known as a cleanse.  I talked to a couple of my "health gurus," as I refer to them, about ones they have tried and recommended.  I ended up with the green drink one and another herbal detox in the form of a pill from Whole Foods.
  I now write you to tell you of the GREEN DRINK!  The recipe has different variations but I provide a basic one below:
2 cored apples
2 handfuls of spinach
1/2 cup of chopped parsley
1-2 celery sticks
small chunk of ginger root peeled
1 squeezed lemon
1 medium cucumber

Place in blender with 4 oz. of water, add water to get consistency you like.  Add ice if you'd like.  If you would like to you can add other things such as: a banana or carrot juice!

So this is what I made tonight, and if you know me, you know I absolutely hate celery, unless cooked down to tasteless in a soup. Needless to say, I had really opened my mind to the cleansing idea... I must say this shake was delicious!  I obviously catered it to my taste but you surprisingly can't taste the celery and spinach, in fact, it was mainly ginger and apple I tasted. I did add a lot of ginger root but that is because I know it is really good for you!

So I know dressing it up like a margarita may have made it go down a little easier, but it looks kinda like a delicious shake of an add color, and the green color from the spinach goes well on the mind with the apple flavor! 

My verdict is that this smoothie, which I am supposed to drink for 2 weeks along with a balanced diet, is a success, in the flavor department.  The color might put people off, along with the ingredients, but if you are going for super healthy and fibrous, then this is the shake to supplement your diet with.  

**Okay who am I to rate this kind of thing?  No one but your taste buds matter when deciding on a diet don't they?? You can't neglect those!!

<3 Suz

P.S.  I'm doing a snow dance for Michigan to get lots of snow during the lake effect starting tomorrow!!!

Christmas Postpartum

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and is ready to begin 2012 with positive energy and good grace.  As you can tell by my lack of entries, the season has kept me very busy!  I am not back at work for a couple days between Christmas and New Year, which most people have off or they just don't want to do work, and therefore have some free time this week!
I thought I'd do a silly photo blog of some of my Christmas blessings! This includes activities and gifts!
Here we gooo!

My letter to Santa, written with my left hand for authenticity!  Also a plate of the homemade sour cream cut out cookies we made on Christmas Eve starting at 10:30 pm!  Delicious! We had lots of willing decorators to help our with the frosting and sprinkles!!!

Captain loved to pass out in front of the fire and dream, so we painted his nails!! poor poochie!

Me in my wonderful new ski coat!!! I couldn't be happier with it!

I bought the wonderful poopers real cow bones from Local's sustainable meats in New Buffalo, MI.  I also bought flank steak for our Christmas dinner and myself discovered that no, grass fed beef is not tougher than corn-fed, in fact everyone told me it was the best flank steak they have had and that it was super tender!

I made Caprese but also my sister for a fish eye lense for Christmas!!! This photo shows how great it is, along with the next photo of our whole living and dining room at the cottage packed with people!!!

 My parents found me this awesome retro popcorn kettle!  I can't wait to use it!!

 This summer granny and I went to the Saginaw Art museum and met this artist and loved his work and its ties with Saginaw even though he is from Japan!

 I love to knit so this yarn has me all excited to start several new projects!

 These light up needles might attract a new kind of knitter with that catch phrase!

All in all we had a lovely Christmas at the lake!  As you can see above, the weather was gorgeous, not the ideal snow storm, but at least there was some sunny beauty and not just the drabby overcast.
Hope you liked your peek into the Morley Christmas!!!!
Happy New Year!  I'll probably catch you then!
<3 Suz

Time for the Holidays!

I can't believe it is already December!  I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving, stuffing your face full of delicious home made goods!  I help out every year by making the green bean casserole! I've also recently started to help out with the pies as well!  But once the turkey is all gone, it is time to start thinking about Christmas!
  My family is pretty big in Christmas traditions. We have a lot of them and they are important to us.  Last weekend I brought a tree to my apartment along with my ornaments box which is an assortment of ornaments I made in the 90's, my baby ornaments, the ornaments my grandma gets us every year, and other random decorations and nativity sets.   My parents have saved this for me since I was an infant, and I'm pretty grateful for it.  I think my tree looks great with all these miscellaneous ornaments on it!  Some of my favorites were my beauty and the beast bulb, the big bird that you can see in the bottom of this picture next to a wonderful picture of Santa and I from 1996!  I'm working on getting a tree skirt to complete the look!

Our family is also good on making lots of delicious treats to give away to friends and family.  Normally I'm at home to do this, but this year I wasn't sure when I'd be home to do all of this, so I tried one of our favorites and specialties, peanut brittle, on my own!  Apparently it is kind of odd that we stretch our peanut brittle, but that is how I was always taught to do it, and I like it not being so thick that I bust my teeth.  Here is a close up of my final product of making peanut brittle for the first time without my dad!

and yes, it is as delicious as it looks!  That batch was PERFECT! I'll post more about my family Christmas Traditions!  There will be many more in the coming weeks. I'll be conquering them either alone or with my family due to the fact that I have no vacation days yet so I will not be spending the 2.5 weeks I'm used to spending at Higgins Lake with my family.  So to feel involved  and in the holiday spirit, I can take some of these on by myself!

Also wanted to show you my new ride!  My old ride was great! but it started costing too much to keep up with repairs, so we sold it in 3 days and I got this gorgeous Honda Civic on a lease.  It has a computer in it that took a half an hour tutorial to learn how to use!  Big thanks to my parents for helping me out on this wonderful ride.  I'm so thankful for it!

What are some of your favorite holiday traditions?

Take care!
Go Blue!

First Snow!

I always look forward to the first snow of the year!  this year it was a little later than most, because we usually have at least one snow in October!  That was not the case this year!  This is from today, Nov. 10th and I would run outside practically every time snow started falling from the sky!  Each time, my co workers would moan about how its already snowing!  This picture, for instance was taken with me outside and my co-worker inside.

Some might call me cold, but I always have said if you don't like winter, then by all means leave Michigan and quit complaining!  The season's are one of the best attributes of the area, besides all the water!

I'm fighting off a cold I got at the beginning of last week...tonight might be the hardest to sleep because all the mucus is draining causing me to cough a lot... I've been living off dayquil, vitamin D3 and tea with some white licorice in it!

I had a lovely weekend last weekend with a lot of great people, as busy as I was!  Wish I could give more details, but not enough time and I'm trying to keep my uber personal life out of this.  

BUT I did cook an amazing meal and I would love to share it since it is also in season!

stuffed acorn squash!!!

cut an acorn squash in half, scoop seeds and guts out and make the holes nice and sizeable!   

In a mixing bowl mix up a stuffing of your choice, below is my stuffing but you have a lot of wiggle room to change vegetables or grains!

couscous

Zucchini

1 egg

onion

minced garlic

dried cherries

salt, pepper, parsley sage

Once you have the perfect stuffing mixed, put it into each hole of the acorn squash!  Bake at 375 in a making pan with water in the bottom and/or brush butter on the exposed acorn squash.  Both these techniques prevent the squash from getting too dry.  It needs to bake for about an hour.  then, enjoy!  I put cheese on the top of mine after it baked for 30 minutes and it added a nice crunchy topping!!

Until next time!

Wrapped up in Fall!

   I've been so wrapped up in fall and integrating myself into my new community, I've hardly had time to talk about it!  I am in one of the best locations for fall, like I've been preaching all summer, due to my location.  I am in a great area to easily obtain local, fresh food!  Last week, to get my pumpkins, I drove about 10 minutes out of my way home from work and stopped at a patch.  I also grabbed some acorn squash, butternut squash for good seasonal cooking!
Tonight I finally carved those pumpkins as a self Halloween celebration, then roasted the seeds my favorite way and made a facial mask with the guts!  Talk about multiple usage of a product!  Also all the ingredients in my home made face mask were from within 100 miles!  I must say, my face does feel soft, but having a food processor would have made the mask more applicable and less messy. Here are the ingredients I used:
Pumpkin
honey
apple cider
milk
an egg
using mainly pumpkin put all ingredients in a food processor and blend,  get it to a think enough texture to apply it to your face without it running.  Leave it on for about 20-25 minutes (or longer if you want) until it is dry, then just wash your face!

Try it, let me know what you think.

This weekend I'll be experimenting with the acorn squash and stuffing it.  Similar concept as stuffing a pepper, but a co worker was telling me about it and just cut it in half and mix up rice and whatever else you want in it then put some cheese on top and bake it!  Yumm! I'll let you know what I find!

On a not to local food note, I bought a harder goat's cheese at Zingerman's in Ann Arbor that I am ecstatic about to pair with a pinot noir that a colleagues son made.   The cheese is from Spain, but well worth the travel....
Last weekend I finally made it to Ann Arbor!!! I miss Ann Arbor desperately and the amazing friends and family who live there!  I will need to be going back more often!  My Halloween costume from Saturday is far superior to my Friday costume.  See picture below.  I hope you can see that I was some sort of abstract, exotic bird

 Below is my flapper costume with my good friends from my dorm hall freshman year!  Love them all!

 Billy and I went to the football game!!! Go Blue!

 If you are easily offended, do not look at this picture of my friends' costumes!  This is me with some of my amazing friends from Nicaragua trip!  Love you all! including those not pictured!

 Billy and John were Zombies for Halloween.  They look super creepy and amazing!

Rally

Well tomorrow the new country girl heads off to a new city!  Yes I get on the train to go from New Buffalo, MI to Chicago, IL and finally ending up in Milwaukee, WI.  I've never been to Milwaukee, but I loved Madison!
Land Trust Alliance is a national organization for land trusts that offers many services to land trusts like accreditation, training, advocacy etc.  Every year they hold an event called Rally where all the land trusts gather to train, network and share ideas and experiences.  Tomorrow I venture to my first Rally to learn more about my job, and network with other professionals in my field.  I have two seminars and 4 workshops packed into my 3 days I will be at Rally.  Unfortunately I will not have time to see much of beautiful Milwaukee, but maybe it will entice me to return!  Can't wait to report back about this adventure!  I'm sure I will meet a lot of great people and learn about some of the other crucial land protection projects going on around the U.S.
  Last week I had a dinner party at my new apartment, Suzy's Kowa-Bungalow!   I made my grandma Sue's cabbage rolls with soy sausage in a home made tomato sauce with a side summer salad with a home made strawberry basil vinaigrette.  For desert I made my grandma LaCroix's pumpkin brownies (pumpies as Johanna and I call them) with a home made cream cheese frosting and apple butter to put on top.  It was a very lovely party.   I prepped all week for it...
I also  thought I should mention my dream property that I have been on twice int he last week.  A gorgeous parcel owned by a lovely couple.  It is up in the rolling hills of the Valpraiso Morraines, their house sitting on a hill with a lovely wrap around porch that over looks their alfalfa field, a small pond that geothermally heats their home, and a pasture with a beautiful pet dairy cow grazing.  The off to the right is a beautiful forest with trails through the woods and a hidden sedge prairie.  They also have a barn for the cow in the winter.  It truly is a beautiful parcel of land.  I was drooling during the whole property walk....
Well my computer keeps shutting down again, and I'm saving up for a new one but for now this is why my blogs are short and scarce.  I've had to restart it 4 times already due to freezing.  Not even going to try to upload pictures.
I'm glad the Tigers and Lions are doing well.
Also GO BLUE!  (we play State saturday....)
Have a great week, I hope you enjoyed the nice Michigan weather, because its over....
<3 Suzy

Home Sweet Home!

Holy cow!  literally... I know it has been soo long since I have blogged, but you might have known that I was moving!  And all of you know how time consuming moving is... especially when it is to your first unfurnished apartment!  and yes, it was a community effort to make my apartment comfortable for me!  for this I would like to personally and publicly thank Chris Thompson, Peg Kohring, George Lucas, Grandma Sue, and of course, my fabulous parents!  all of these people helped me to make this apartment a home, and I'm such a home body that it was crucial to me to make myself a home.  Pictures are not yet up... except of my Michigan bathroom, but once I am finished decorating and cleaning, I will show everyone my quaint yet guest ready apartment!
 Saturday was our benefit for work at Middlebrook farm, a local farm that raises grass fed beef!  This event also contributed to my delinquent blogging.... but boy was it great!  and this event is what I was holy cow-ing!  The cows were soo cute, see the picture below!

Today I got a new computer at work!  I'm really excited because it is a large screen so that I can make better maps and see them a lot better!  My GIS seminar with DEQ was great and now I'm more of a map nerd!  

I love fall in Michigan!  It is definitely one of my favorite times of year!  caramel apples, regular apples, pumpkin, pumpkin flavored everything, sweaters, pumpkin seeds, cider, falling colored leaves!  Where else can you get all of these products locally?  Here!  There is no better place for fall than here!  

So this weekend I'm taking myself on a date to the pumpkin patch!  Then I will carve pumpkins with myself as another date later in the month!  Its nice dating yourself!  hardly any bad dates!

I also need to mention that during this 20 minute blogging process I have had to restart my computer twice, it is freezing up and i think it is the graphics processor or something malfunctioning... I will probably be buying a new laptop soon...along with a car... Feel free to support my not for profit lifestyle by checking out my Etsy! 

http://www.etsy.com/shop/MaizeInnovations

Also anything in my facebook knitting album can be recreated!  It is fall... Time to keep warm with cute hats and scarves!

Also saw the Foo Fighters live and they rock hard!  They played for 3 hours!  Then I met them, Taylor Hawkins, the amazing drummer called me sweety and I almost passed out!  Also shook Dave Grohl's hand!  What an honor!  (for those of you who are unfamiliar with them, Dave Grohl drummed for Nirvana, a 90's grunge band)  I highly recommend everyone to see this band if you enjoy their music because they sure know how to perform and entertain the crowd!  

Apartment pics soon!  Promise to blog more!

<3 Suz