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.