Anyway, I have a lot of work to do at some point—poems to comment on, assignments to grade, and online course work to do.  It all has to get done at some point, so I’m trying my best to take care of as much as possible today, so that I can have the rest of the weekend to enjoy, worry-free!

After working all morning, I took a break right at noon for a 3 mile run.  I ran three, and then walked for one more.  It’s chilly out there—I was in pants and long sleeves! Fall is definitely here, friends.

After my run, I returned home for lunch…a RAW lunch!  During August, I picked up some of these raw Livin’ Spoonful crackers when we were in Seattle.  Today, they were the star of my lunch!

These crackers are SO good!  Spicy, coconutty, and all-around delicious! They were perfect topped with a big scoop of avocado:

Plus some grapes:

That’s what she said.  Grapes, seductive…

Hope your weekend is off to a great start!

This is one of those dishes.

I’ve been trying to make our Tuesday and Thursday dinners before I leave for school, so this morning, around 8:30, I started chopping onions for our dinner tonight.  I had plans to make this a cold noodle dish, but today was so chilly and fall-like, we had it warm instead.  And so, I give you…

Eggplant and Soba Noodles with Almond Butter Curry Sauce

Ingredients:

1 large onion, chopped

1 tsp. olive oil

1 eggplant, chopped

2/3 cup tomato sauce

1 heaping tbsp. raw almond butter

1 tsp. red curry powder

1 tbsp. tamari or soy sauce

1/2 cup water

4 oz. buckwheat soba noodles, cooked according to package directions

Directions:

In a large pan, heat olive oil.  Add onion and cook until glistening, about five minutes.  Season with salt and pepper, then add 1/2 cup water and cook down until the onions are soft.  Add eggplant and stir for another five minutes until eggplant has begun to soften.  Add another 1/2 cup of water and allow to cook down.  Add tomato sauce, reduce heat, and cover, cooking for 10-15 minutes.

While eggplant and onions continue to cook, mix together almond butter, curry powder, soy sauce, and water.  Whisky until all ingredients are incorporated. 

Pour the almond butter sauce over the eggplant and stir to combine.  Serve warm over buckwheat noodles, or refrigerate and serve as a chilled dish.

Pictures:

This was one of those meals where we just kept saying, “This is SO good…” over and over again while we were eating it. 

Make this now.

We’re heading over to Nick and Emily’s to help bottle the beer that we made a few weeks ago!  See you tomorrow!

Chop Chop Salad:

This chopped salad contained: 1 cup kidney beans, chopped cabbage, chopped tomatoes, raw pumpkin seeds, feta, and balsamic vinaigrette.  Yum!

And, as per many requests, here is the pumpkin bar recipe.  I’m warning you…these bad boys are seriously addictive.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bars

Ingredients

2 sticks butter (light butter works too!)

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 tbsp. vanilla extract

1 egg

1 1/2 cup pumpkin puree

2 cups flour

1 tsp. each: cloves, ginger, nutmeg

2 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

In a mixer, beat together butter and sugars until smooth.  Add egg and vanilla and beat until combined.  Add pumpkin puree and beat until smooth, about a minute.  The wet mixture may appear curdled, but that’s fine.

In a separate bowl, mix together the dry ingredients (flour through salt).  Once the dry ingredients are thoroughly mixed, fold in the wet mixture in batches, stirring well to incorporate.  Once the wet mixture is fully incorporated into the dry ingredients, add in the chocolate chips and stir until combined. 

Pour batter into a well-greased 9×13 baking pan and bake for 30-35 minutes.  Cool completely in pan, then cut into squares. 

*       *       *

Off to school—it’s pretty cloudy out there.  I hope I don’t get rained on!

See you tonight!

The good news?  Even with light butter, these pumpkin chocolate chip bars are freakin’ delicious.

The bad news?  I just had to unbutton my jeans.  Time for the stretchy pants, my friends.  Time for the stretchy pants.

This morning, I worked, wrote, and graded until noon, and then I took a break for some lunch.  Lunch was simple but “temp”ting: a tempeh and sweet potato butter wrap:

Mmmm…such a good combo!  I know some people don’t like the taste of uncooked tempeh, but I love it! The only thing that could have made this wrap better was a little sharp cheddar cheese, but alas, we have none. 

I also had a side of grapes:

And some unpictured pretzels.

And now, a baking dilemma:

We’re going over to see our friends’ Lee and Steve’s new house tonight, and I have plans to bring some chocolate chip pumpkin bars as a small housewarming present.  Here’s the dilemma: I sent Ryan to the store to pick up a few ingredients, and he returned with *light* butter.  do you think I should try to make the bars with this light butter, or is it too big a risk? Thoughts? Experiences baking with light butter?

I think I might go ahead and bake with the light butter just to see how it goes.  If they’re a huge flop, I don’t have to bring them over, right? 

Tonight was that night!

We returned home from classes tired and hungry and not at all in the mood to cook something new…enter leftover barley soup. It was just as good tonight as it was on Saturday…maybe even better!

We also enjoyed warm bread on the side:

I was really tired after my teaching today, but after a nice glass of red wine and some warm, crusty bread, I was feeling much better! Now I’m catching up on Bachelor Pad…I think it’s going to be an early night!

I promised you my thoughts on Eat, Pray, Love, which I saw last night.  Honestly—I liked it! I really did not like the book, and in fact didn’t even make it past the Italy section.  There was just something about Gilbert’s voice that drove me crazy! Despite this (or maybe because of this?), I actually enjoyed the movie much, much more.  Did it change my life?  No.  But, the food looked amazing, the scenery was awesome, and it co-starred Javier Bardem.  Not too shabby.

Off to bed for me.  See you tomorrow!

I promise I’ll give you my thoughts on Eat, Pray, Love tonight—I’m running late, so I gotta get out the door, or I won’t have time to eat lunch!

Speaking of lunch…

Guac sammie:

And look who’s back…

Honey Crisps!!! Woo hoo!  My absolute favorites.  Welcome back, my love!

Off to mold young minds.  Today is our first day of workshop in my creative writing class, which is always a bit chaotic.  Wish me luck!

Even though we’re no longer running the Hershey Half (boo!!!), my sister and I are still planning on doing the Shreveport half-marathon just before Thanksgiving, so yesterday I made out a new and improved training plan that reflected my new training schedule.  This morning, I took my first training run—an easy three miles in the crisp fall air!  The neighborhood was full of rabbits and chipmunks—it was a fun run!

I got my first batch of student poems on Thursday, so I’ve been working all morning on my responses.  It’s not much of holiday…but we had enough fun this weekend to make up for a labor-filled Labor Day!

On Sunday, we went hiking about an hour outside of town at a place called The Thousand Steps.  They weren’t kidding—there really were a thousand.  The hike up the steps wasn’t that bad—it definitely reminded me of doing the Stairmaster at the gym…but in a much nicer setting! Here are some highlights from our hike:

The dogs, of course, had no trouble making their way up the steps.  They are literally impossible to wear out. Ryan and I were dying at the top, and they were ready to do it ten more times!

After our hike, we had another fun activity planned—a baseball game! We met up with our friends Casey, Rachel, Lee and Steve at an Altoona Curve baseball game.  It was the perfect night for it—cool and clear! Lee and Steve are officially no longer our next-door neighbors   , so we were especially happy to see them!

Anyway, after such a fun weekend, I can’t really complain about having to do work today! Plus, today won’t be all work—we have plans to meet up with Casey and Rachel for Eat, Pray, Love later.  I’ll be interested to see how I like it, because (and I know, this is heresy) I wasn’t crazy about the book.  Honestly, Gilbert kind of got on my nerves—she was so whiny and self-involved!!

Funny for a blogger to complain about someone being self-involved, right? 

Speaking of which…here is my lunch for you to look at! Fascinating!

Scrambled eggs + daiya vegan cheese on an Ezekial wrap:

Check out that colorful egg! I got these eggs at the farmers’ market on Friday—you can definitely tell a difference between store-bought and farm-fresh eggs!

After having seen the daiya cheese around the blog world, I picked some up on Friday at the natural foods store.  I’d heard good things about this “cheese,” so I had high hopes, but honestly, it was just okay.  No better or worse than Follow Your Heart.  To tell the truth, I think I just don’t really like vegan cheese substitutes—they always taste kind of…off, to me. I’d rather have the real deal or just go without.  But—if you like the FYH cheese, you’d like Daiya.

I topped my egg-wich with some salsa and wrapped it up for a little huevos rancheros wrap.  Yum!

Plus some carrots and tortilla chips on the side.

See you tonight! Enjoy your holiday!

Yesterday at the farmers’ market, we picked up some beautiful fresh chard.  Today was cool, off-and-on sunny, and downright fall-like—perfect weather for soup!

With my new cutting boards, I got to chopping:

The chard stalks remind me of those old-fashioned striped licorice candies!

We enjoyed this (funny) wine while we were cooking:

The soup was really tasty! Here’s the final recipe:

Chard, Barley, and Sweet Potato Soup

Ingredients

5 cloves of garlic, minced

2 tbsp. olive oil

One bunch of fresh chard, chopped

salt and pepper

3 cups vegetable stock

2 cups water

1/3 cup pearl barley

1 sweet potato, peeled and chopped into bite-sized cubes

Directions

In a heavy-bottomed pot, heat olive oil.  Add garlic and cook for a few minutes.  Add chard, and cook down for 5-10 minutes, until chard has slightly wilted.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  Add liquids, barley, and sweet potato.  Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes, until sweet potato and barley are fully cooked.

We enjoyed ours on the back porch with some red wine and nice, crusty bread:

Perfect meal for what felt like the first day of fall!

Our fall dinner didn’t end there.  For dessert, I whipped up a few easy, individual apple oat desserts.  I chopped an apple into thin slices and tossed with a teaspoon of maple syrup, then layered the apple slices into ramekins.  For the topping, I mixed 1/3 cup of oats, 1 tsp. maple syrup, 2 tsp. Earth Balance vegan butter, and some cinnamon and salt to taste.  I mixed this with my hands until everything was mixed together, and topped the apple ramekins with it.  Popped it into the oven at 350 and baked it for 15 minutes, and voila! Dessert!

Hope you’re having a great weekend! Good night!

Ryan and I headed over to State College this morning to take advantage of the farmers’ market—it’s SO much better there than in Altoona!  The students are back in session, and the market was packed! In fact, all of State College was…it was kind of nice though! It becomes such a ghost town in the summer, like many college towns do.

Before we hit up the farmers’ market, we headed over to the East-West Crossings Cafe.  Danielle and I had lunch there during our first get-together, but my camera battery had died, so I didn’t get any pictures.  This time, I made sure I was blog-ready!

I ordered the same dish that Danielle enjoyed last time: the lotus salad with sweet potatoes and yellow rice.  It also comes with a sweet, spicy dipping sauce.

I just love the lotus slices—I think they’re so pretty!

Plus fresh pomegranate green tea:

So good!

Ryan got a veggie burger, with some of this delicious cucumber tomato sesame salad on the side:

After our delicious lunch, we headed over to the farmers’ market where we picked up some fresh veggies—beautiful chard, grape tomatoes, peaches, and apples.  This time of year is definitely my favorite time for fresh produce! All of the apples and pumpkins and gourds and sweet potatoes are starting to arrive, but the berries and fresh peaches are still good as well!

After picking up almost more than we could carry at the market, we headed over to campus so that I could sign up for…photography classes!! Penn State’s student center has nightly arts and crafts classes that go all semester long.  They offer everything from knitting to ceramics to painting—even stained glass and belly dance classes! The classes are open to students, faculty, and staff, and are pretty cheap for six sessions. 

I’m taking a class called, “How To Make Digital Photos Better.”  There’s a second session of more advanced digital photography that starts right when this first one ends, so I guess if I like it, I can keep on taking it all the way through December!

I’m excited to be the student and not the teacher for once. 

After signing up for my course and walking around town a bit, we checked out a natural foods store that we hadn’t yet visited—Nature’s Pantry.  It was nice! Pretty big, with some items that I haven’t been able to find anywhere else in town.  Though we walked in needing nothing in particular, I found a lot of things that, of course, we absolutely HAD to have.  Funny how that works.

Enjoy your Friday, kids!