Throwback Thursday- Graduation Day

I love this photo. It’s my graduation day in 2005. I had been through two ceremonies the day before for Newhouse, where I got my photoj degree, and arts and science, for my anthropology degree. This day was the graduation ceremony with the entire graduating class and our speaker began by speaking in chimpanzee.

Yep, it’s the awesome Jane Goodall. When she looked down on the sea of cap and gowns she would have seen inflatable apes being tossed around and monkeys hanging from nearly every student’s mortarboard. My biological anthropology professor must have been going mental since neither or those are Chimpanzees!

After the ceremony I took my family (my mom, sister and my niece and nephew) to our photo studio to take a family portrait and then we headed over to the Schine Student Centre (I totally had to Google that because I couldn’t remember the name) and we queued up to have books signed by Goodall.

When it was our turn I asked if I could have a photo taken with her and she agreed. You can see how thrilled she is to have her photo taken with me! I still love this photo because it was the first time I’d met someone famous who I actually admired and I had just spent the last four years studying her work.

I found a video of her commencement speech but you have to fast forward through the rest of the ceremony so it may not be worth it unless you really have an interest in Syracuse University’s graduating class of 2005.

My Favourite Things: Veggi Wash

I am not a clean freak. When I clean my house I make sure I get under every piece of furniture, but I don’t need to hoover everyday. But I am a bit of a germophobe. When I worked in forensics I’d be at murder scenes where blood was splattered everywhere and I’d come back and have to take multiple showers.

I wore work clothes and a white zip-up forensic suit but I’d still launder my home clothes several times because they were on me after I’d been at a scene. I handled objects that had been at scenes everyday and they encouraged you to use hand sanitizer, which I did- constantly. I wore a bottle hooked on my belt loop.

This fostered a need for clean hands constantly and now I also need to have clean food. I wash every bit of food I eat, even if it has skin that you pull off before eating.

There are certain products that make my life easier and there are other products that I love because they make my life better. Veggi Wash falls in the latter category.

Veggi Wash is an amazing product that cleans all the dirt and pesticides off my fruit and veg. The best is when I clean a bag of spinach. You pour a capful of the wash into a bowl of water and after soaking the spinach for a while I pick it out the water leaving a bunch of dirt at the bottom of the bowl! Its rewarding knowing you have really cleaned your food.

I get the wash at my local health food shop and one bottle lasts for ages. It comes in real handy when I’m juicing. When you’re doing so well to get the healthiest food in your body you don’t want to be drinking pesticides (even organic fruit and veg can have yucky stuff on it).

Throwback Thursday- Renaissance Festival

Hazzah! My friend Arielle (pronounced r-e-l) and I had one of our first friend dates at the Atlanta Renaissance Festival in 2007. I think we were both afraid to let our nerd-dom out in case we scared the other off. Luckily we have the same level of nerdiness so it all worked out good. We have so much fun when we’re together that it’s a shame we live so far apart.

We had spent the day walking around the venue where swash-buckling pirates performed, knights in shining armour battled for a maiden’s love, and horses paraded and danced around an arena. It was brilliant. We both wanted some memento of the day and we found the perfect items. We both got clay formations strung on a thin rope- mine was a pair of cat ears and Rel’s was little horns.

They blended into our hair and Rel’s were so subtle that they almost looked real! We wore them the rest of the day (which did end up hurting after awhile) even when we went to Rel’s friends house where her entire Indian family was having a meal and thought us silly. Oh, and my cat ears also matched my actual cat's ears. 

I think that day was the real start of our friendship, so it will always be special to me. Hazzah!!

Lisbon

My husband and I went to Lisbon last week to celebrate our sixth anniversary. I can’t tell you how amazing the city was. It was our first time in Portugal and I don’t think it will be our last. The people were friendly, the food was great and the views were spectacular. It hadn’t been my choice of destination, but I can highly recommend it.

I am doing a series of posts on my photoblog with images from our trip broken up into themes. Here a few of my photographs.

Throwback Thursday- Wedding

I’m off today, with my lovely husband, to spend five days in Portugal to celebrate our sixth anniversary. Six years! I honestly can’t believe it’s only been six years- and I mean that in a good way. I feel like we’ve been together forever.

Six years ago, on the 27^th, we got our friends from Washington DC, NYC, Atlanta, London, Edinburgh and Glasgow together to help us celebrate our big day. It was a perfect day considering we were in the middle of a tropical depression. Two days before the wedding the water from the Indian River was lapping over the sides of the at the place where we had rented four old Key West style fishermen cottages and the grass where the marquis was being erected was soaked.

But by the Saturday, the wind had stopped, the ground dried and the weather was perfect. Not too hot and wonderfully sunny. Pretty soon after the ceremony, which took place under an arch erected right by the edge of the river, we jumped into my friend Meg’s rental car and jetted across the bridge to Jensen Beach where we caught the last bits of sunset.

Then we headed back and dug in to my favorite bbq from Dales that was catering the event. Mmm, I know I don’t eat meat, but I still love their special sauce and baked beans! Then we went for the cake. I didn’t really want a cake, but my mom convinced me. Instead of the cheesy cake toppers I bought little groom and bride cut-out thingies at Michaels (which is where I got most of the stuff for the wedding) and I pasted our funny faces on and they still make me laugh when I see these photos.

We are going to attempt to have a wedding reunion for our tenth anniversary and invite everyone (well, mostly everyone- one of the couples have split and a friend married another one of my guests so I don’t think her old bf would come) to stay in the cottages again. Its very rare for me to see my friends in the states and it would be incredible to all be in one place again.

Tofu Udon Noodle Bowl

Usually I work late on Wednesdays, but I covered a day shift last week as a co-worker is on holiday. It was quite nice because my other co-worker Lucy and I got to have a little jaunt into town between assignments.

We work all over the place and rarely get to see each other. There’s one of my co-workers that I haven’t seen in six months. So this was a luxury. We are both interested in cooking and baking healthy food and we’re both veggies so we went in search of tofu for both of us and nutritional yeast for Lucy.

I ended up in a green grocer/health food/Asian food store that was brilliant and I was able to get everything on my list for our tea (that’s what dinner is called over here).

I made a dish from The Vegan Cookbook by Adele McConnell. The Udon Noodle Bowl was full of well udon noodles and pak choi, mushrooms and tofu.

Unfortunately the marinated tofu was the best part of the dish. The flavours were really good while I was working on it but the recipe called for four cups of water. I only put two and a half in but it was enough to completely drown out the flavours. I don’t think I’ll try this recipe again, but if I did I’d triple the amount of mirin, rice vinegar and miso.

There are other recipes I’ve tried in her book- like the artichoke pasta, which I’ve adapted by adding butter beans and is now a weekday staple for us- so I won’t let this one put me off making more. She has several recipes using tempeh, which is really hard to find around here. 

Throwback Thursday- Scottish Edition

For my photo blog this week I spent hours scouring my image archives digging out photos from Scotland. I lived there with my husband the first three and a half years of our married life and had visited many times before when he and I were long-distance so there were a ton of photographs to choose from.

So in honour of Scottish referendum I am putting up a whole slideshow worth of Throwback Thursdays. I do sincerely love Scotland. Whenever I go back and see how beautiful it is I have this feeling that if I didn't have any ties there, if it was uncertain that I would ever be back, that would be devastated. But knowing that I will have a connection with the country for the rest of my life makes leaving it a little easier.

My husband is a highlander. But no body calls it the Highlands except for Americans. In Scotland its just called the North or up north. Thurso is as far north as you can get without getting on ferry and taking it to Orkney or Shetland. And north of that is Norway! Thurso is right where the Atlantic Ocean meets the North Sea and therefore was home to an international surfing competition. (Billy's step-dad who sadly passed away this time last year used to say "Bondi Beach, Thurso!" comparing the surfing beaches).

Whenever I go up north I am always freezing. My mother-in-law (who was born in Glasgow but moved up there when she was 13) always has the windows open- even in the winter!! She opens the window in the bathroom after a shower and then I go to take a shower and my teeth are chattering. I always gravitate towards chunky fisherman sweaters when I'm there. I want to be warm and cozy. The sweaters/jumpers are called ganseys and they were different in each village so that if a fisherman was killed at sea whoever found him could find out where he was from by looking a the pattern knitted on his jumper.

See its these little things that make Scotland so special. If you want to know more about my opinion you can see my blog post on my photo blog though I tried to stay neutral.

Throwback Thursday- Front Page News

This photo was taken in 2006 when I was working for the Southbend Tribune in Southbend, Indiana. It was a seven month-long internship and it was the second internship I had worked after graduating.

I was still learning. I feel I learned more practical knowledge with those two internships than I did in my four years at uni. I loved working at the Tribune because it had a huge photo department and all the photographers there were great. They were so nice and helpful and one of the photographers, Chago, is still my buddy to this day. He, incidentally, is now the photo editor.

It was Chago who took this photo of me on my big day. I had had a frontpage photo before, but it was still exciting when it happened. The way the Tribune worked was that the Sunday paper was a big seller and they would keep it in the newspaper rack all week until the next Sunday paper came out.

On this particular day I came to work and stopped on the street outside where I saw my photo not just on one of the papers, but on both. I did a little happy dance right there despite the looks from the guys in the security booth.

The photo on the left is from Easter Sunday and the other photo is from a story on Indiana's first Saint that I had to go all the way to Terre Haute for. 

This photo reminds me of how far I’ve come as a photographer. And it reminds me of how far phone technology has come! Seriously, look at that flip phone. Thank god for iPhones.   

Vegan Spicy Bean Burgers

Its funny how we have certain roles when it comes to food. I am the Katsu Curry, chilli (we debate about this one), falafel and baked goods maker and Billy is in charge of lasagne (his is the best), pizza, calzones, bread and Sunday roasts. We make lots of other things together like Indian dishes but we definitely have our specialities. 

Friday nights have long been Pizza Fridays in the Sully (Su + Billy = Sully) household. But lately we've been feeling a bit bored of the usual pie. So last Friday I opted to make one of Billy's recipes- his Spicy Bean Burgers. I made these once before in Florida when Billy was busy making meat burgers and I had to fend for myself. 

These are really great veggie numbers that are pretty healthy as they are full of, well, beans. As I was in charge of making these guys I decided to make them vegan by using the flaxseed "egg" as a binding agent. I am again in awe of this method as I think it actually worked better than an egg. I was able to get perfectly formed little patties and I got to nibble on the mix while I chopped up the sweet potato wedges. 

Your eyes are not deceiving you, those are sweet potatoes! Every once in a while we'll get a few sweet potatoes that are white and it is always a bit odd eating them because they look like normal potatoes but with all the yumminess of the sweet variety.

The burgers (which we had again last night) freeze very well which makes them a great mid-week meal. I like them with corn on the cob that I grill on the George Foreman so it's healthier that always having the wedges.

Though I love these burgers I still want to try some other recipes. Giraffe has a super tasty falafel, burger with hummus, beetroot, rocket, tzatziki, harissa and best of all halloumi. I make pretty good falafel and tzatziki already so this should be pretty easy.

You can find the burger recipe here. It uses my simple salsa which can be found here. The sweet potato wedges are super easy. You just chop a sweet potato into the wedge shape and mix in a large bowl with a tablespoon Grey Poupon mustard, olive oil, some cayenne pepper and sea salt and pepper. I bake them with a little bit of oil and they are super tasty. Bon Appétit!

It's Salsa Time!

I love Mexican food. I love nachos, tacos, enchiladas, quesadillas, burritos, chimichangas, empanadas and tamales. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. But you can't have good Mexican food without salsa.

I've talked before about how I grew up eating out of tins, jars and cardboard boxes (think Kraft mac n' cheese) so its no surprise that my salsa too came from one of these containers. I would make burritos using a tin of refried beans, season my beef from a small packet and use my jar of salsa to top it off. 

It wasn't until I was visiting my bf Jess in Washington DC that I ever saw anyone make salsa- I was I was 27! Jess used her food processor and quickly tossed a few ingredients in and suddenly there was a green salsa that was incredibly spicy but otherwise amazing and it only took minutes to make. My mind was blown! 

Now salsa is a staple in our house. We use it in veggie burgers (see my next post), as a side with steak (when I ate meat) and of course with Mexican food. The great thing about my recipe, which I developed over years of trial and error, is that if you add avocados, then presto, you have guacamole! 

So here is my simple salsa recipe.