Promises of Food

I said I would be posting about some food endeavors in my last update, so here goes! First, Leigh and I decided to make some delicious sounding cupcakes - "Carrot Cake Cupcakes with a Cream Cheese Surprise."













They didn't turn out quite as carrot cake-y as I anticipated, but they were still totally delicious and disappeared by the end of the day - a sign of great success, haha.













Then, yesterday, Bryan and I were trying to think of something a little more exciting than usual to make for dinner, so we started exploring what turned out to be the BEST cookbook of all time - Jaimie's around the world cookbook. We ended up deciding on Chicken Biryani, and after about 3 hours of seemingly endless grocery shopping to find all of the more eclectic ingredients (pretty sure the lady at the Indochine Market thinks we're idiots), we started cooking!













Not to toot my own horn or anything, but it turned out DELICIOUS. Plus, we only used about 1/4 tsp of every spice, so now we can make Indian food all the time! Like tonight! Next on the menu: Chicken Tikka Masala, yum. Here's the final product, although the picture would be more effective if you could smell it too :)

Hikes and Boats and Friends

I'll be honest, most of the time I've been living in Santa Barbara this summer I feel somewhat like a waste of space... seeing as I'm doing nothing but watching movies, reading, going for walks on the beach, etc. But, despite my lack of purpose, I've been having a totally fabulous time.

A few weeks ago when I first moved in, we decided to build a new coffee table for our living room... we even sanded it and stained it and the whole shebang! I'm pretty impressed by our handy work, and I think it looks very "college chic."















Upon my return to Santa Barbara, Bryan gave me this awesome book with all the hikes in the surrounding areas. Since our initial plan to hike half dome was foiled by the impossible Yosemite permit system, we decided to do one of the more epic-sounding hikes in the book. The Matilija Creek Trail in Ojai took us pretty much all day and was a nice easy hike, and we even saw two rattlesnakes and possibly the scariest spider ever. Also there were these awesome waterfalls!



















The next day, Saturday, after a little overnight camping at Wheeler Gorge, Leigh planned a boat ride of epic proportions for about 25 of our friends... we took the bus from the edge of Isla Vista to the bus depot downtown, and essentially ran from there to the harbor (not a short walk!). The sailboat was awesome, and we saw a ton of dolphins along the coast... mmmm :)















This past weekend I went with Bryan down to his house in Redlands, and we went on a hike in the forest falls area, which pleasantly surprised me as a gem on the outskirts of LA! We also raided his mom's cupcake recipe book, so be expecting some photos that might make you salivate in the next week or so...















So that's what I've been up to here, more updates to come when we do something other than sit and read on the hammock :)