Night time iPhone 5 pictures and weekend fun: Pecan Street Festival

While in College Station Wednesday through Friday, I started to experiment with photos on the new phone. Kyle had mentioned that it is supposed to be better at low light shots, so I took a couple as I was leaving work. I think they were probably better, but of course I'd have to bring out the old phone too to check.

Saturday night we had Alec and Hadar over for dinner and got to chat and play a game, too. Unfortunately, they are moving back to Seattle in just a few weeks, so we are trying to see them as much as we can before they go.

Sunday, Kyle and I ran south past the university and capitol in Austin to check out the Pecan Street festival. When we got there, we wandered all the way through it. It was probably more crowded than it would have been if it hadn't been so rainy on Saturday, but it worked out ok. The festival was decent, but as Kyle put it, kind of white-trashy. We saw some neat stuff to get, but didn't since we had run there. We ran back home after we had seen it all!

Tonight we're going to try another new recipe!

Creepy (at night anyway) administration building

TAMU campus

Pecan Street Festival

Texas mushroom

New phones!

Kyle and I both got the new iPhone 5!!! We have been getting them all set up. On my drive to College Station yesterday, I used the new turn-by-turn voice navigation. Also, this morning I ran with the phone in my pocket and I could hardly tell it was there! It was a challenge running with my old phone because it would bounce around, so I usually didn't take it. But, because I didn't take it, I would miss out on some pretty pictures. Now I can bring it with me!

Speaking of things on runs, I ran by a skunk this morning in College Station! It was on the other side of the road, and pretty cute (they are supposed to make good pets actually!), and then I crossed later and I must have been running along the path it took because it definitely smelled skunky.

oooo

the anticipation!

Good vs. evil?

Cooking this weekend

Kyle and I did a bunch of cooking in the last few days. He did Italian beef in the pressure cooker, which had a very tasty flavor and cooked very quickly! I made some healthy pumpkin pancakes with pumpkin butter, and I plan to use some of the pumpkin butter with oatmeal and with yogurt for some fall-flavored parfaits and breakfasts! Got to use a nice new pot to cook the pumpkin butter.

I made some overnight oatmeal muffins that I have made before but hadn't for a long time. They are really good and quite handy to have around.

We made coconut curry butternut squash soup for dinner, and got to use the immersion blender for that. It smelled really good but the flavor was a little lacking.

Kyle has now made two varieties of popcorn using just water and the dutch oven we got for the wedding: olive oil with salt and pepper and cinnamon and sugar. The recipes are from the healthy America's Test Kitchen book. 

Pumpkin pancakes with pumpkin butter

Overnight oatmeal muffins

Butternut squash soup

Cinnamon popcorn

New Texas Thing for the Week: Alamo Theater

We went to see "Samsara" at the Alamo Drafthouse, a chain of theaters around here where they will serve you during the movie. It was fun to eat during the movie, and the movie was neat!

Morning run

The sun is rising later and later!

Sole Mates

Jordan sent Kyle and me a fun gift: a boot in honor of our marriage! We haven't used it yet, but we'll be sure to commemorate and document the occasion when we do! :)

Lots o cooking

I've been aiming for doing one new recipe and one new Texas thing per week, and along the way hopefully seeing our friends and spending some good time together. It has been fun to cook again, and especially fun since we are using all of our neat and very nice new kitchen things! Some are very simply but still super nice additions (like new kitchen towels) and some are complicated but useful (like the food processor!). 

This weekend, we cooked several things: chickpea cakes with cucumber-yogurt sauce (new), chia pudding with mango (new and doesn't actually require cooking), black bean burgers (not new but we used the food processor), and chocolate chip banana muffins (not new but are delicious and healthy and we had bananas in the freezer). Everything is quite tasty. The chickpea cakes were great tasting, but difficult to cook. I convinced Kyle to do the actual stovetop cooking and it was difficult to get the cakes to stick together, plus Kyle kept getting spattered with hot oil. I am curious if baking them would be a reasonable way to approach them.

The chia pudding essentially just required mixing stuff together and then letting it set. It has the consistency of tapioca pudding. It certainly isn't as sweet as that, but it has a nice light sweetness to it. I also made some with raspberries and I plan to freeze that for popsicles.

I got to use our new baking scale to make the muffins, and it was very easy to use. A double batch of black bean burgers fit into the food processor, which is awesome! We had a two cup one before that was pretty annoying to use, plus it smelled like burning rubber whenever it was on. The bean burgers look gross but taste quite good, especially with some hummus.

In terms of a new Texas thing for the weekend, I went for a run in the POURING Texas rain, so I experienced some warm rain and then we watched the Shoal Creek overflowing over the pathways, which was neat to see as well.

Chickpea cake preparation, complete with new food processor!

Mmmm, chickpea cakes with the yogurt sauce

Chia pudding

New scale!

yum!

Actually these are tasty, despite appearances. Also haven't been cooked here.

Yay wedding!

I was going through some stuff in the living room and found our leftover heart tags, which we'll use for wine charms! Four of them still had writing on them, mostly from Michell, who had to continually help us :)

Such amazing memories!!!

Two grooms and two brides at the wedding!

First Mini Moon Hike: Cascade Pass/Sahalee Arm

Our first hike of the mini moon was also a classic (like Maple Pass). It was beautiful!!

Cascade Pass-Sahale Arm

Mansions of Madness

Last night we played a board game with some friends! It was fun but also took forever and even then we didn't quite finish the game.

Yum!

Delicious meal that Kyle made the other night!!

New dog?

This morning I went for a run in College Station from my house. It was actually in the 60's, which was amazing. Over half way through the run, I noticed a woman and a dog ahead of me on the sidewalk. Then as I approached, the woman turned at a block and the dog, who was off-leash, was distracted by me and followed me. The woman didn't turn to see what was going on with the dog, and the dog continued to follow me, so I realized that the dog had just been following her, too.

This dog was clearly really excited about its situation, and therefore had clearly escaped from its home. When I crossed the road and the dog absently followed me across despite on-coming traffic, I realized that I needed to take the dog into my custody and try to find its owner. I didn't have my phone with me and I was at least a mile from home, so I picked up the dog (which was very calm in my arms and awfully sweet) and went over to a mini mart that was nearby. I asked the owner about calling someone to help with the dog, like animal control. He looked it up on his phone and found that the group doesn't open until 11am and it was about 8am. Eventually, I left my phone number with the shop owner and got a makeshift leash so that I wouldn't have to carry the dog the whole way back. The dog had a collar but no tags.

We made it back and, fortunately, by the time we made it, I had received a call from the owner, who had stopped by the mini mart. Otherwise I had no idea what I was going to do with the dog. He immediately came over to retrieve Miles, who, while a very nice dog, was a bit too much on the adventurous side and had escaped from not only his own home (pulling off his tags in the process) but also his neighbors yard when they had found him and put him there. The owner had been looking for Miles for 12 hours and was very glad to see him.

Miles

Storm Surge Research

Here's a video of my supervisor in a video explaining what we do in our group:

Pictures from first destination on our mini moon: Deception Pass

Deception Pass

Back in College Station

Here is my fancy set up in college station! It works, especially considering how little time I spend there.

Pressure cooker

We used our new multi cooker Sunday to make brown rice in 15 minutes! Pretty cool so far and the book has lots of neat-sounding recipes.

Salt Lick

Kyle and I headed back to the Salt Lick Sunday with Kelly, a graduate student in my group at TAMU, and Net, a student who was visiting TAMU because he's interested in doing his PhD there. We enjoyed the nicer weather than usual, some pumpkin beer, and (lots of) good food.

Maple Pass Loop

Here are pictures from the hike on the last day of the mini moon. On our way back from Winthrop, we stopped at Rainy Pass to do the Maple Pass Loop clockwise, heading out first toward Rainy Lake. This is a classic hike and it was a beautiful day!

Maple Pass

Cool front

A cool front came through the area yesterday, which made for slightly lower highs (in the 90s!) and also the lows dipped into the 60s, which is very exciting. It is so exciting that Kristina and Dave had a "cool front" party at their very nice home last night to celebrate, and Kyle and I went for a respectable run this morning! Usually I weather-weenie out of long runs (Kyle does them sometimes on his own) but today we did 8 miles! We made it all the way to Town Lake, which seems like green Lake in Seattle, and ran back through downtown and campus.

The Gingerman

After the movie, we went to the Gingerman with Alec and Hadar. This was Nicholas' favorite bar in college.

Sleepwalk with Me

Kyle and I went to a movie at a really neat artsy movie theater, the Violet Crown Theater. We saw Sleepwalk With Me, which was a good movie! I really liked the theater set up itself, which sells actually tasty food and drinks.

Sunrise, sunset

Sunrise on the way to College Station

Sunset from my office

I try to work extra hours while in College Station. I ended up being at the office late enough to catch the sunset after catching sunrise on the drive there from Austin, though the major reason for that was a long conversation with a colleague in the department. Regardless, it was a pretty day (when viewed from inside in the AC)!

Consistency

Texas is consistent!

Accidental matching!

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Kyle and I already had the bathmats, and we received a couple of towel sets for the wedding. I don't remember purposely matching the bathmats, but it seems to have worked out nicely!!

Pumpkin cookies!

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Used some of our new kitchen stuff and made delicious pumpkin cookies! Highly recommended! I realized fall was approaching on our travels seeing other places selling pumpkin goods, but it feels far from fall here in Texas. Regardless, pumpkin!

Wedding cards

... Have replaced the shower cards! So much love!

Wedding gifts!!

Lots of boxes! The UPS store was glad we came by.

Carnage!

More carnage!

Lots of awesome appliances!

The requisite kitchen rearrangement. Everything fits now (mostly)!

Kyle and I went through many of the wedding gifts this weekend, which was fun and overwhelming and messy! We got so many nice things; people have been so generous with us!