A Trip To The Zoo With Grandma...

We had a great day today! We drove a few hours to a fantastic zoo in Battle Creek with our Grandma, and it ended up being a really fun time. Granted, we had to get up at the crack of dawn (after we'd both worked late the night before), but it ended up being a great trip!

We saw kangaroos, wallabies, kookaburras, snow leopards, giraffes (known as twigas in swahili!) and (my personal FAVORITE) ring tailed lemurs! Oh my goodness...they were SO adorable, and they kept sitting and moving like little furry humans! Unfortunately, since it was so early when we left the apartment, I forgot my camera. But I was able to get some pictures with my phone!

 They're not the world's greatest pictures, but they're not bad for a camera phone! We spent just under 3 hours at the zoo. It had been quite a while since I had been to our local zoo, which I thought was great, but this zoo was even better! It was smaller, but it had enough cute animals to keep me happy, and pretty much everything was in the shade!  To top it all off, it wasn't crowded at all! We got to the African Safari portion of the zoo and Grandma decided to sit this portion out and just wait for us to walk through it. I took as many pictures as possible so she wouldn't feel like she totally missed out on this part of the zoo. There were zebras, giraffes (even babies!), ostriches, orangutans, exotic birds, vultures, and red river hogs (similar to warthogs). The giraffes were very friendly, and you could purchase lettuce leaves for $1 apiece. Unfortunately, I didn't have any cash on me, and my little sister just had to be the voice of reason when it came to spending her cash. [I love you, Victoria! ;)]  So of course, the giraffe licked her hand and wouldn't touch me. But look how cute it was!

 I could post all of the adorable pictures I took today, but that would make this the longest post you've ever read hahaha. Ok, ok. I'll post a few more. But really, you should go check it out yourself! Go to Binder Park Zoo and make a day of it like we did!

It's a Red Panda! Awww...

Thanks to our grandma, who spent hours on the road with us today, and who prepared a fantastic lunch (including vegan options for Kayla!) for all of us. We love you grandma, and we had tons of fun hanging out with you today! :)

Dinner Day... OK I really blew it with this one...

Alright, I will be the first to admit it. I got lazy. OK, now that that is out of the way, I will talk about the successes and failures of the rest of the meals that were made. On Friday I got quite lazy and decided to just make myself some whole wheat pasta with marinara sauce... nothing fancy. Saturday I got back on track and made perhaps the best dinner of the week: Thai coconut vegetables. It was a delicious stir fry with coconut milk, sweet chili sauce, veggie broth and cumin. I put it over some brown rice and it turned out to be really delicious. Now the bad news, I completely forgot to take pictures. I really have no excuse so we'll just move on. Sunday was the disaster of the week. Southwestern Bean Salad...

The ingredients for this recipe sounded really great but it was one of the worst things that I have eaten in quite some time. I honestly gagged from just smelling it... After seeing that happen Lauren made perhaps her wisest decision ever and did not try it. So, Sunday night's dinner ended up being Chinese take-out at work. Oh well, sometimes a recipe fails. So there it is, a recap of recipes, some good, some awful but all in all it was a great time cooking this week and something I plan to keep up with.
In other news, I may be developing a black eye as I hit my eye quite hard on the corner of my car door today. Bad times. Lauren is having to listen to me whine a lot about it. Alright, I think that's it for this quickly assembled/disjointed blog entry.

Sweet & Sour Chicken With Rice

All of Kayla's cooking last week inspired me to cook something for myself. Her cooking was good, but unlike Kayla, I am a total carnivore, so the vegan diet just wasn't working out for me. I ended up making some quick and easy sweet and sour chicken with some rice pilaf (I didn't realize until I had already started cooking that Kayla had used the last of our normal rice earlier in the day, so I ended up just making do with the pilaf). It was super simple and pretty yummy too!

I just used Tyson's popcorn chicken, some Kikkoman sweet & sour sauce, and some Near East almond rice pilaf! I let the chicken sit and soak in the sweet and sour sauce for about 20 minutes, and then I just threw it all in a pan and let it saute for about 15 minutes, to let it brown. The end result was delicious, and just what I'd been craving after a week of eating vegan meals!

     And of course, I had to have some organic milk to go with my non-vegan meal!

Organic milk is more expensive than regular milk, but it's one of my occasional splurges. It just tastes so much better than regular milk! I love it!

Keep an eye out for more cooking posts from Kayla in the next day or two. I know she has more vegan cooking adventures to share!

Dinner Day 4 (Victoria Style)

Sorry it's been so long.  It's all my fault. 

I'm Victoria:  Honorary apartment resident, sister of Lauren and Cousin of Kayla. (I have my own toothbrush there.  Because I'm special and they love me best.)  I'm guest posting/hijacking their blog today because I was invited to dinner on thursday night.  Now I know, that was like 3 trillion years ago, but I've been very busy plucking my eyebrows and reading books and waiting for my older sister to email me the pictures. 

Now tell me this... Who emails their perfectly sane sister pictures of dinner at 1 in the morning and expects her to sense this with her mind, wake up, turn on her computer, and make a post on a blog?  I'll tell you:  Lauren.

On to the dinner.  Obviously, since Kayla is vegan, this dinner harmed no animals, or their byproducts.  I felt really good about eating it.

So the recipe was Sesame Hot Noodles.  It involved sesame seeds, soy sauce, peanut butter, a whisk, mild green chilies, garlic, some bowls, some noodles, and a big pile o' yumminess.  It was really good, we'll leave it at that.

As you can see, there were also spring rolls.  These were made with a variety of chopped veggies tossed in a light sauce.  The filling (and the pool of plum sauce we dipped them in, which in the above picture may or may not look like something out of a badly acted teen movie) was delicious.  The wrappers gave us a little trouble.  No, a lot.  A lot of trouble.  They wouldn't wrap right, and they stuck together, and then decided to be contrary and come apart when we tried to make them all delicious and golden by dropping them in hot oil.  The nerve.  In the end, out of 9 spring rolls, three turned out decent and they were pretty good.  (They would have been better if Kayla ate things with egg in them though, because the normal wrappers looked yummy.  But they had egg.  But they looked yummy.  But Kayla couldn't handle the guilt.  So we went with rice.)
It was a really good dinner, and we had fun cooking it together.  Listen up though:  Don't fry spring rolls and then eat them, because then you might feel guilty, or a little sick, and then you might go on a three mile post-dinner walk, and if you stole your sister's shoes for the walk without her permission, they might rub on your feet and make you bleed.  Just some advice.  (PS, I would never steal your shoes and then inadvertently bleed on the Lauren.  Never.)

This was a guest post by Victoria.  All content must be taken with a grain of salt because she's really jealous that Lauren and Kayla do fun stuff without her.  Not too much salt though, because that's bad for you.

Dinner Day 3

Tonight's dinner was Pasta with vegetables and herbs. I was at first going to use whole wheat spaghetti, but in the end I decided to use rice noodles. The sauce was kind of a weird sounding combination but it turned out really good. Unfortunately I forgot all about taking a picture until after I had packed it up to take to work. So, it's not the best or most appetizing picture, but I swear it was really yummy!

 

I am very excited to make dinner tomorrow. Victoria is coming over for hot sesame noodles and homemade spring rolls! I hope they turn out. Stay tuned!

Dinner Day 2

Tonight on the menu was "Pasta All'arrabbiata." I was not so sure how this would turn out, but it ended up being quite good. The sauce is a tomato sauce with white wine and sun dried tomato. The recipe called for red chilies, however, upon not being able to find any in the grocery store I opted to toss in a little crushed red pepper. It was a nice contrast with the sweet tomato sauce. The picture did not turn out great but I swear it was pretty tasty.

Tomorrow on the menu is whole wheat spaghetti with vegetables and herbs; cross your fingers that it turns out alright. Stay tuned!

Cooking Week

So, I realized some time last week that Lauren and I have been eating horribly since we moved in. We have been subsisting on mostly pasta. 90% of the time that pasta has butter and Parmesan cheese... not exactly healthy. This also posed a problem when a few weeks ago I decided to go vegan. No more butter, no more Parmesan cheese, etc. And so last week I decided that I would search my cookbooks and plan a menu for the week. Today was day one and the meal was some homemade bruschetta  and some minestrone soup.

It turned out ok. However, it made me realize that I need to make my own vegetable stock as the stuff from the store is pretty foul... Tomorrow's dinner is a new pasta dish that I have never tried. So, stay tuned to our blog this week as it will be filled with cooking posts! All vegan recipes that are hopefully delicious.

Welcome to our apartment!

So, for those of you who haven't been here, we thought we'd show you around the place! It's a tiny space (about 850 square feet), but we love it! When we first moved in, we were super obsessed with keeping everything as clean as possible at all times! While we still try to keep things clean, sometimes certain areas can get slightly out of hand (come on, who likes cleaning the kitchen, really?).

Luckily for you, I took pictures while the kitchen was relatively clean the other day! Yes, there's a crockpot in the sink waiting to be washed, and there's a few items on top of the fridge (we think of that area as extra storage space, so you'll have to pardon the disarray up there), but there wasn't a dirty-dish monster crawling out of the sink (as there currently is) and the counters were wiped clean. :)

My favorite part of our apartment is our awesome ugly couch. I found it at a garage sale about a week before we moved in, and I was able to get it for $150, which is a pretty good deal when you consider that there's about THIRTEEN FEET worth of couch here to sit on! Kayla was worried about whether we'd even be able to fit it in our living room when I told her how big it was. Luckily, it fit against the wall with about a foot between it and the door. We really wanted a sofa-bed when we were shopping around, but since the couch is so massive (and comfy, I might add!), we decided that our guests could just suck it up and sleep on the couch if they were going to spend the night. While it doesn't go with our decor AT ALL, it serves it's purpose, and that's really all you can ask for when you're as broke as we are!

 If that's not ugly enough for you, wait til you see how badly it clashes with the beautiful color on the opposite wall!

Do you like our twin bookshelves from Ikea? And did you notice our lovely shadeless lamp just sitting there on the floor? Oh goodness...that lamp is another story for another time! We still haven't figured out what to do with it. Well, think that's it for now... There's bound to be an episode of hoarders/intervention/obsessed on tv that we haven't managed to see yet. See you soon!

Getting to know... Kayla!

I just thought everyone should get to know my awesome roomie, so here's a little Q&A for ya'll!

How old are you? 23 years old. Nine months older than you!
Have you ever eaten a crayon? What about chalk? Dirt? No, no and no.
How do you feel when you see someone’s feet? Not great. (ed note: she HATES feet. Being the loving cousin that I am, I like to show her mine at every possible moment)
When was the last time you ate chicken noodle soup? It's been a few years. That is one of my least favorite foods. I think it's disgusting.
What is your favorite kind of (non-pet) animal? This is going to sound funny as a vegan, but I don't like animals that much.
Do you miss anyone right now? My dog (ed. note: I don't think this counts, but she insists it does)
What is your secret weapon to lure in the opposite sex? I'm really funny!
Do you collect anything? No. Not even belly button lint?? (Through fits of laughter) Eeew, no! You make me sick! (ed note: Kayla also gets really grossed out by belly buttons.)
How many times a day do you want to strangle me? 7. That seems like a fair number.
What movie do you wish you had starred in and why? Breakfast at Tiffany's, because the wardrobe is AMAZING!
Who is the coolest person you know? My dad. He's cool in a "funny old man" kind of way. 
Have you ever put a foreign object up your nose? You mean besides my finger? Yes.  When I was little i put a candy up my nose and I inhaled it!
What’s a word or phrase you say a lot? "You could probably never do that again, and I'd be alright with it."
What do you want to be when you grow up? I would like to be an editor, however my dream job would be somehow being paid to travel and write.

Thanks for the entertainment, Kayla!

Getting to know... Lauren!

Alright, so we decided to interview each other mostly because we are lame, but also because we thought it would be fun. So, here is my interview with Lauren!

What is your name? Lauren
How old are you? 22 years old
If you were me for a day, what would you do? I would eat a steak... and chicken... and drink five glasses of       milk. (ed. note, this seems slightly excessive Lauren)
If you were stuck on a deserted island what five things would you bring? Chocolate, Shampoo, Solace (the cat), Toothpaste, and iPod.
What has saved our relationship on an almost daily basis? The vault (this was developed on a particularly horrible youth group trip almost 10 years ago.)
Do bald men wash their heads with shampoo in the shower? Yes (ed. note, I bet they just use soap, it seems more convenient.)
Favorite memory of a shared experience? There are so many, but probably making our radio show when we were little.
What is your favorite movie? (It cannot be the last movie you saw Lauren) "My Fair Lady" (ed. note, I'm not sure how we live together seeing as this is my least favorite movie.)
Dream Job? Is there a job that pays you really well for doing nothing?
Are you a morning person? (This question was met with a laugh) No, not at all...
Last book you read? "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan
Weird Phobias? I don't have any Kayla, that's your thing...
Last question, why do you always sob when you're slap happy? I don't know...
Thanks for your time Lauren!

New Adventure

Well, Lauren and I (Kayla), decided that after a few months of living together we would start to blog our adventures of sharing a very small living space. We do not know yet exactly what this blog will be, but we are excited to start! That's it for now!