Happy Halloween!

I hope everyone is having a fantastic day and is getting a lot of candy. I, for one, am binge-eating the candy I collected on Sunday. As of tomorrow, I won't be able to eat sugar. I agreed to join an anti-sugar diet with Susanna, Olivia, and Sam. No refined sugar for three weeks. That means marshmallows, hot chocolate, and just about everything I eat. One of the guys across the hall said to check the ketchup. There's sugar in my ketchup. I am going to fail this diet! One of my necessary dinner foods is omelet rice, and that needs ketchup. I guess my anti-sugar diet will be eat-less-sugar diet.

So apparently I can't put sugar even if I'm baking something. So if I'm making banana bread, I can't use sugar. I can't use sugar in muffins. Okay, never mind. I'm making this diet a diet without candy, soda, and desserts. That's the best I'm going to be able to do. I need sugar for my baking. I'm not letting my strawberries rot because of this diet.

Anyway... A while ago, I had to look up recipes using tomatoes. I got some tomatoes from helping out at the gardens and I needed to use them. None of my roommates wanted to use the tomatoes. I found one I could use! Admittedly, these tomatoes are not the garden tomatoes. I used them all making tomato sauce.

Here is the recipe! (Adapted for the fact I've used so many vegetables)

Scrambled Eggs and Vegetables

Ingredients

• 2 large eggs
• 1 tomato
• 1/2 carrot
• 1 green onion
• 2 mushrooms
• 2 teaspoons sugar 
• little bit of salt
• Soy sauce

Directions

1. Spray a frying pan with PAM or melt butter. Scramble eggs until almost done, then move into a plate.
2. Put the carrots in first and cook for three minutes. Then put in the tomatoes, mushrooms, and green onions. Cook another three minutes.
3. Put in the sugar, salt, and soy sauce and mix well. Add eggs back in an cook for a minute longer. Put onto a plate.
4. Enjoy! 

It tastes delicious.

Yakisoba

During my trip to the oriental market, I picked up some yakisoba noodles. I haven't had yakisoba in forever, and truthfully, I wanted some. A lot. Today I finally got the chance to make some! I have a grand total of two more times to make it before I need to go get more noodles. Here's the recipe for yakisoba! It's quick and simple, and doesn't take much effort. You can put almost anything in the yakisoba. More common additions are carrots, lettuce, and meat, but I put mushrooms in mine. You can also include onions or green onions or whatever you want, really. Whatever tastes good to you!

For the yakisoba noodles, I used Nama Yakisoba. It comes with all the noodles prepacked into nice little servings and has a sauce pack for each one. It's really nice! It looks something like this:

Yakisoba

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon oil 
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 package of yakisoba noodles
• 1 package yakisoba sauce
• 1 carrot
• 2 medium mushrooms
• 1 leaf lettuce

Directions

1. Cut the lettuce, mushrooms, and carrot into small pieces. 
2. Heat up the oil in a frying pan on medium heat. Put noodles in and cook for 30 seconds.
3. Pour water into the pan and soften the noodles with it. Put in the cut up vegetables and cook for 3-5 minutes. Before doing anything else, check to make sure the water has evaporated. If not, keep cooking everything.
4. Put the sauce on the noodles and mix it well. Try to get the sauce on everything. If you don't, don't worry about it. The sauce will find a way on.

Looking back at my cooking, I realized I put in more carrots than I liked, so I may only use half of the carrot next time. I may also try to cook the vegetables first, then put in the oil and start cooking the noodles. The carrot tasted raw... I'm not a fan of raw carrots. To me, if I can poke a hole through a carrot easily, it's probably not a cooked carrot. I'm going to put in meat next time, because chicken has become my new favorite meat and it would make this yakisoba taste great! 

I don't know what's up next. Maybe curry? Maybe another thing from allrecipes where I decide to modify the recipe a bit? I know a really good breakfast food I should do... 

Halloween Party!

The HSAC decided to throw a Halloween party (it's not Halloween, but whatever floats their boat). There was a pie eating contest and a costume contest. I won third place as Belle. I'm embarrassed to admit that I forgot bits of that songs despite it being from my favorite Disney movie, but I remembered about 95%, so that works. Second place was Schrodinger's Cat, and first place was Neo. The Neo guy was pretty cool. Stayed in character the whole time. One of the guys in the building dressed up as Slenderman. I honestly wanted to give this guy a high-five. I think I'm missing the scare factor of Slenderman. 

Because Slenderman and Neo dancing to Gangnam style is the best thing that cane happen.

One of the girls who attended the party carved the direwolf of House Stark into a pumpkin. It was awesome and woke up the inner Game of Thrones fangirl in me. House Stark is my house, guys!

And on the other side: "Winter is Coming"

I happened to catch this picture of the sunset. I love the colors the sunset produces. It's the prettiest color scheme I've ever seen, and I'm rather fond of the intense reds that show up. This picture caught a lot of the yellows and made it brighter, which was odd. But this is pretty nonetheless.

Go Utes!

My friend is somewhere down there in the band...

We beat UC Berkley, 47-29. Very satisfying game, and the first PAC-12 game we've won this season. It was important (at least to me), considering how we've lost all the PAC-12 games thus far. It was really cold though, and because we're smart, a friend and I brought blankets to huddle in during half-time and whenever we sat down. The third friend never brings a blanket, and just took from us. Somehow, we stayed the whole game instead of leaving at the start of the 4th quarter, because Cal scored almost immediately in the 4th quarter and we were worried. But in the end, we won, and that's what counts.

With seven seconds left in the 4th. Cal gave up at twenty seconds.

I'm surprised I made it to free food at the tailgate. Mariko (the one with no blanket) did laundry and we didn't leave until 6:30 or something. By the time we got there, the burgers were lukewarm, but they were food and I accepted it. Anything to avoid having to pay $6 for a burger in the stadium.

First snowy day!

The Huntsman Center in all its snow-covered glory!

This is kind of a big deal for me. Having lived in Florida, Hawaii, and Nevada, I've only seen snow when I visited Mt. Charleston (when the snow is hard and packed), when I went to Park City for winter break (but it wasn't the first snow), and the one freak time in Nevada that resulted in a snow day but it didn't snow since. The other few times it snowed in Nevada, I was in California. So those days don't count for me.

When I woke up this morning, I looked out my window. It's a habit. Usually gives me an idea of how to dress up. And I saw snow. Actual, honest snow with snowflakes (hail, some people called it, because it wasn't flaky, but it turned into snow later) outside my window. I took my camera with me while I walked around. It's not every day you get to see beautiful snow like this, and I think there's something to be said about the first snow of the year.

I'm the only 'foreigner' in my room, meaning I'm the only one who lived somewhere else prior to coming to college. One of my roommates looked disappointed because she couldn't wear what she wanted to that day. Another said, "Oh, it's going to be one of those years."

...'Those years'???? 

The TRAX station

I had a moment to myself to evaluate some of my thinking, while I was doing an assignment for my IT class. I realized how important it is to carry around a camera with you in your daily life, because you never know when you'll see something beautiful. Sure, if you don't have a camera, you'll take a picture with your mind. But do you know how faulty the mind can be? It'll start putting in details that weren't originally there or you'll forget things. In pictures, everything is exactly as it was when the picture was taken. Nothing's changed. I should start carrying my camera around more often. I don't give a crap what the other students think. I like taking pictures. So I'll keep taking pictures while I still can, because those are important to me.

I will leave off with some more pictures! Enjoy. 

It's definitely becoming winter

The view from my dorm room

Yesterday, it was all rainy and cold. Luckily, I have all these winter coats, so I'm prepared! This is proving to be a very interesting experience for me. Being in a place where it's already cold and snowing... So far? It's fantastic. That's my judgment!

I also made myself dinner tonight. Could've eaten leftover pasta (which I really need to do), but I was in the mood for something more familiar. Like omelet rice! For those who don't know, it's ketchup rice with an egg wrapped around it. It's not that difficult to make- the most difficult part is getting the egg to wrap neatly. I still can't do it properly. I'll post up my recipe for omelet rice when I actually take pictures of the process and bother to get accurate measurements. So far, I've been guesstimating on almost everything I make, and it turns out pretty good! There are usually lots of leftovers, but that's a good thing for me. I don't have to cook so often. 

Yummy! This is going to become my signature dish. I make it that often.

Miller Bird Refuge

For a class, a group of friends and I hopped on a bus and went to the Harvard Yale neighborhood. We got lost trying to find it (and then as we came out of the Refuge we found out that the spot where we got off was the true entrance of the park). However, it was a beautiful place! Especially since it was all decked out in fall colors and the leaves blanketed the paths.

We were right next to Red Butte Creek, and the stream gurgled very happily the entire time. 

You know, despite being called the Miller Bird Refuge, we only heard birds the last fourth of our walk. A friend speculated it was because the birds had all gone south, if they knew what was good for them.

I took a ton of pictures. My mind was actively working the entire time we were there. I'm writing a story, and this seems like a perfect place to draw inspiration from. I think I'll come back here at one point and take some time to write. This is an absolutely gorgeous place in the fall. I want to see it in winter, spring, and summer. I also want to go back with my boyfriend, N. It seems like the perfect little retreat, and, because I know that he enjoys nature as much as I do, he will appreciate the beauty of this place. 

A place I'd like to sit and write.

There were very few animals. Only in the last half or so of the walk did we hear birds chirping or see a snake. A snake! My roommate screamed and ran forward, but when we saw the snake, it was this little thing, not a cobra. He was such a cutie, but the only guy in the group went to grab it (probably to see what kind of snake it was), and the poor thing freaked out and tumbled down the hill. I've never seen a snake tumble down a hill. It was a little sad.

Near the actual 'entrance', there was a random lamp post. I immediately yelled "NARNIA!" and decided I should come back in winter (after it snows) to see how the lamp post looks. I'll definitely take a picture of it then. 

The Harvard Yale neighborhood is actually on the class list for the next walkabout, and I really want to go to this neighborhood. It has gorgeous architecture, and I'm honestly in love with the style. I've always imagined my future to be in a house of a similar design. Brick, quaint, and cute, with ivy on the sides and a nice enough yard to have a garden. Some of the houses were one story, some were two. They all had the same style, but the design was just different enough from house to house that it didn't seem cookie cutter at all! Much different from my neighborhood in Nevada. 

Aren't they beautiful? Someone did bring up a good point, though. She loves these houses, but she probably wouldn't be able to live in them because they're so small. In my opinion, I'd stay in the smaller houses initially, but when my family grows, a slightly larger house (like the first two) would be best. But having to clean a two story house sounds like a lot of work... Let's see, shall we? These is the kind of house I see myself in, living with my husband, two dogs, and my kids, while gardening and being very peaceful. I'm idealizing my life, I know. But what a life that would be.