My Beautiful Escape

VACATION OHHHHH YEAHHHHH !!!!!!

My favorite way to escape: Coffee, my glasses, and big poofy hair buns.

I love escaping for a weekend.  And this weekend it was the perfect getaway. My husband (who is just the greatest by the way), took me to his family cabin in Fallen Leaf Lake. It is in South Tahoe, but by god it is the most beautiful place! I felt so relaxed and peaceful. I can not emphasize that enough!

Gorgeous!!!

PERFECT RIGHT?! I think I found my new private paradise. His family has a gorgeous cabin and their own private dock right on the lake. As you can see we spent ample amount of time just watching the sunsets, laying around and reading. I read Micro by Michael Crichton and half of The Hangman's Daughter in two days. I would recommend both books. I have such an eclectic taste in novels that I don't know if there is a book I would hate.... personal problem of mine.

I loved the quaint cabin and just spending time alone with Tucker.  Even better: he cooked every single day we were there. One night, he made us turkey burgers that were to DIE for. He didn't even follow a recipe. I think I married Chef Boyardee.

The best kinds of kisses :)

I personally fell in love with the lake. For some reason being in or around water is just my zen. I feel so at peace and Fallen Leaf is the most beautiful lake I have ever visited. It is worth the visit!!  I already can not wait to go back and just relax.

Gorgeous sunsets with my best friend. 

Food. My Love Affair With Food.

If you follow me on Instagram, or hell you just know me, you will know that I am OBSESSED with food. Not just because you get to eat it and it is a building block of life and all, but I am OBSESSED with food. All kinds of food.

I play with my food constantly. Deal.

Right now I am obsessed mostly with spicy fennel sausages (no idea where that came from) and kale. I COULD WRITE LOVE SONGS ABOUT KALE!!! Tucker and I make this soup which we attempted to healthify (and succeeded I may add) from Olive Garden. We call it our Kale Sausage soup.... I will put the recipe at the bottom of this post. It is dangerously simple. Only four ingredients and full of flavor!

Back to talking about food: I love to read about it. You can find cook books littering the floor around my bed. They are just so fun to go through and get inspired!! Most of my Pinterest page is dedicated to various foods I cook and I have started to find a lot of enjoyment in stalking various food themed blogs.

I love to shop for food. It is a deadly addiction. Seriously though, I would rather go grocery shopping instead of shoe shopping. It is near blasphemous, but it is vintage Jessie. I try to go in with a grocery list to save money, but I always see something that looks fun to cook and just buy it on spot. Then of course I get home and think, "what the hell am I supposed to do with this?!!" . My newest endeavor was with lamb. I know it is nothing too extreme, but I had never ventured that way before. I ate lamb my last two days in the Philippines and became addicted:

My roasted lamb, mashed cauliflower and Worcestershire sauteed mushrooms. FANTABULOUS! 

But, MOST of all, I love to COOK. Oh my god, do I love to cook!!!! After spending a month and a half in the Philippines and NOT being able to cook it was alllllll I wanted to do when I got home. I would day dream about going home and being able to hustle and bustle around my kitchen. I even food planned dinners for the two weeks after I came home.... which I of course neglected to follow.

Cooking is everything to me. It brings people together in a way that other things in life can't. It makes my heart happy to cook a gigantic gorgeous meal and then be praised for all my efforts. For instance: this past Christmas my Gram Grams was ill so I took all the Christmas responsibilities for the family and just went to town on Pinterest!

Why am I talking about food? Because I have decided to document food I make and eat on here. Writing down recipes and sharing them with you. Just another facet of Jessie. And a pretty big one at that.

 Like I promised, my current favorite recipe! And souperrrrr simple at that!

Tucker and Jessie's Kale Sausage Soup:
1-2 cups Kale leaves (chopped, Tuck prefers if the steams are removed. I don't care)
3 cups Chicken Broth
3 Red Potatoes
1-2 Spicy Sausages.*

*This totally depends on your preferred level of carnivore. Or whatever kind of sausages you want. Tuck and I just realized the spiciness adds a bit of  a zing to the broth!

Step 1: Cut open spicy sausage and remove meat from casing. Put in pan to brown.
Step 2: While sausage is browning: put the rest of ingredients in pot. Bring pot to boil until potatoes are fork tender. Turn heat down. (I usually let it boil for a while. Just my preference.)
Step 3: Combine steps 1 and 2
Step 4: Nom on that tasty business. 


Obviously you can tweak this recipe however you see fit. It started as a knock off, but I didn't have any cream one day so we just rolled with the punches and made it anyway!

Another new healthy favorite meal: Poached egg on Arugula. Special thanks to Ms. Cassie Taylor, Ms. Stephanie Morris and my week in China for that little gem.

A perfect poach! After three tries.... shhhh!

La Fondue. More About Wine.

My husband is the greatest. Just absolutely the GREATEST. Last night we did our usual 6 month visit to La Fondue... It's kind of sort of our spot. I just like to get fancy and drink wine. And eat. I really like to eat.

The owner is AMAZING. A great person who really cares about his customers!

Anyways... We had a bottle of Cabernet with dinner. Of course it got drank way too fast so, of course, Jessie bought a bottle of Malbec. I don't know what it is about Fondue, but I have to have Malbec when I have it.

I woke up this morning hating myself.

My fabulous date night with my fabbbbbulous mint dress! 

Jessie had far too many of these.

I suck at blogs.

This is the truth.

In my own defense, the entire time I was in Kiangan there were only two places I could go to use the internet.

Place One: Our usual  go to place had the worst internet I could have ever imagined. It was the office for Save The Ifugao Terraces Movement. At first I got annoyed with how awful the connection was, but by the end the place became like an escape from the field and the craziness that was accessioning.

Place Two: MARVIC'S! My favorite little store with the absolute best human beings I have ever met. They had an internet connection and we would guy buy ice cream and just stand in the aisles and talk to our loved ones.

This aside, I did keep a journal while I was in Kiagan. So, in order to post things on here and keep a hard record of it, I am going to write from the journal on to here and add photos/ deeper explanations. I wish I could have blogged at the time, but electronics were not exactly my forte while abroad. I was more concerned about dodging giant bugs and not getting a tape worm. This will all be explained later.

So that is that! Deal! I told you, writing can be hard in foreign countries!! Especially in places like Kiangan.... where life is beautiful and every where you turn there are kids playing, the most beautiful views and the happiest people you will ever meet.


Ok, as for this blog.... It is entitled "Indiana Jessie" and I am taking that to mean all sorts of adventures. My life adventures, my across the world adventures.... my cooking adventures. This life of mine  is one big adventure and I fully plan on living it that way.

So far, so good :)

The Game I Play With Airports.

Airports. You can love 'em. You can hate 'em. I have a pretty long history with them.

Mind is a-racing around.

Gahhhh

 So it hath begun! The countdown is on. We are less than forty eight hours away from take off and I am in the oh-lord-please-don't-let-anything-go-wrong mode. My last travel medicine appointment was at 7 pm this after noon.

Bob Marley. Wine. The Essence of My Existence.

Some days I feel buried. I am so excited about leaving, but I feel like life is dragging on. My visa came in yesterday and I was jumping up and down in my hallway. Now I am sitting in my kitchen drinking wine and trying to figure out which direction I am supposed to go in when I get back.

Decisions. The answer to all of the stupid questions in this life. Decisions. You have options, you just have to make the decision.

Hot damn, wine makes me feel so damn philosophicated. I made that up. Like a hybrid for philosophical and sophisticated.

The Joys of the Journey Pt 1.

Today I stepped back and took a moment to appreciate something small. Something really small. The kiss my husband gives me on top of my head when he sees me after we have been apart.

It made me smile. It made me giddy. I felt like a little silly High School girl with her first boyfriend.
But, most of all, it made me realize all the little things in life that are so damn good that I take for granted.

I leave in 25 days and I am so nervous/ excited/ happy/ feel like I am following my dreams finally. So many adjectives!! There is not a minute in my day that I am not thinking about some aspect of my upcoming trip.

Here are some of my various thoughts, straight from my noggin':

"I have to get those last shots the day before I leave. They're so damn expensive."

"What if I get bitten by a venomous snake?"... suddenly snakes are terrifying.

"I need to budget for the real world stuff while I am gone. I hate being a real person. Why did I grow up again?"

"God, I hope Tucker doesn't thrash the house. I'll kill him."

"I shouldn't of googled the cockroaches that live in the Philippines. Horrible idea."

"The endemic crocodiles are near extinction. That's awful.... but awesome because I'm terrified of those things too."

"The Philippines?? How the hell did I pick that out? Didn't see that coming."

In case you have not figured it out, I am a chronic over thinker. I have to analyze every situation, the way the situation is going to play out, the possible outcomes... all of it. Except when wine is involved. In that case I just jump into the deep end without knowing how to swim.

But what is the fun in life if you don't have a little bit of fear mixed with adventure? After all, Indiana Jones is afraid of snakes too...

Tidbits.

So, put simply, this blog is not going to be fancy. I'm not that fancy. I am looking at it as more of an online journal since I am not even 100% sure I will have internet access in all the places I will be. I told the guy at Best Buy that the chromebook I was buying was more of  "let my family members back home know I am not dead" kind of purchase.

Well, because that is how I roll.

I may as well disclaim: some times I will not have internet access, but I have google docs on awesome Chromebook. So some posts may be laterish, but they will be posted. Eventually. Work with me here. Pretty pretty please. I will post as soon as I possibly can if this happens.

And so begins my adventure to the Philippines!

Chillin' in Beijing. Like I do. 

Mutianyu. My Day at The Great Wall of China.

My spring break was ama-za-zing.

Bestie and I.

  Here it is, almost three weeks since I got home and I am still gushing over my time in Asia. Why was it so awesome? Because I got to climb The Great Wall of China with my best friend. My partner in crime. The girl I have no idea what I would do without. I love this girl. This is our second escapade abroad together. Our first was Ireland for St. Patrick's. Put lightly, it was the most disastrous and crazy week of my life. I wouldn't change that week for the world. T'was the Craic.

I will quit the mushy gushy stuff and get straight to the amazingness that was this awesome day.

April 5th, 2013.

We woke up and took a bus ride outside of Beijing. You know when you get out of Beijing because you see the sky without A. sky scrapers or B. horrendous pollution (here is the Beijing pollution index for today). The the bus will literally drop you in the middle of no where and men with vans will fight over you. Thank goodness Cassie (bestie) knows enough Chinese to haggle.... and she is damn, damn good at it.

This was our van driver. He loved me, don't let this photo fool you.

Moving on, so here we are in the back of this sketchy van (there really is no other way to put it), seatbeltless and a little jittery. I couldn't tell if the jitters were from the fact that I just paid to get into a car with a complete stranger and trust that he was supposed to drive me to said destination or  in about an hour I was going to be climbing The Great Wall of China. Probably a happy mixture of both.

The drive was gorgeous. I happened to be in China for the Qingming Festival, which I equated to Dia De Muertos and festival activities were still going on in surrounding areas. We could see little snippets of The Wall on the drive and each little view got me more and more excited.

We finally pulled in and our driver some how communicated with us that he would wait until we were finished. Then we climbed.

Now, when people say they "climbed" the Great Wall of China, THEY FREAKING CLIMBED THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA. I kid you not, my ass and thighs hurt until the following Tuesday. Count the days (and include the fact that I traveled back in time) and that is roughly four days later. Four days. And why? You hike upstairs to get to the Wall which is no small feat. You get to the Wall and you are greeted with this spectacularness: 

 Well this is SA-WEEEEEET....minus the fact I can't feel my legs and I am huffing like the big bad wolf.

After you take a minute to realize you are freaking standing on an ancient world wonder YOU CLIMB SOME MORE. And this just is not just any type of climbing, this is scaling parts of the Wall because they are at 90 degree angles. This is staring at the ground the entire time you spend on the Wall because there is absolutely zero uniformity from one step to another. Like having a mini heart attack when you walk down stairs and one step is just a littttttttle bit shorter than the others, but for miles.

And in the distance I noticed a structure that was different from the other structures  and I told Cassie,

"Cassie, we have to go there. It's different for some reason and we have to find out why"

Engage super sleuth mode.

Like all awesome things in the distance, this awesome thing was way further away than we thought. Never the less, we made the decision to get to it and started our trek.

It may be one of the greatest decisions I made in my life.

When we finally got to the different one we realized what we had stumbled upon: an un-restored section of the wall. A section that was just ruins and had "no toursists" signs all over it. Naturally, we went by them. My mind is still blown from the thirty or longer minutes after that. To be completely honest I had no sense of time after we crossed the "no tourists" threshold.

We were walking on the part of The Wall with over grown bushes. It looked like a hiking trail in an overgrown concrete forest. The feeling; ancient, dark, beautiful. I could use 1,000 descriptions, but those three fit the best. There were no steps to climb on in this section, just a straight path. The path took us to a ruined structure that had collapsed in one part. I crawled to get inside:

Holy crap. Is this real life?

I took a moment and just sat there. In that instant, I felt like so small and insignificant. Here I am, sitting in this giant man-made wall that has been standing for a couple of centuries... I'm 23. Wow. I am a speck on the human time scale. I'm being generous.

Cassie and I sat on top the ruins of one of the out look windows and ate a delicious lunch of left over Easter eggs. In that moment, life felt like it could never be better.

I wasn't joking. We really ate Easter eggs on The Great Wall. I brought Easter decor to celebrate Easter with Cassie... Ironically all the decor was Made in China. Circle of life status.

I want to end there, remember the cold wind that was blowing through our hair, eating Easter eggs with my best friend and sitting on the ruins of The Great Wall of China.

<3

A Small Jaunt in South Korea.

SPRING BREAK 2013! WOOOOOOOO.

Ahhhhhh. Spring break was the best. Actually, the actual best. I spent eight days in China with my best friend from college. On my way home I had a RIDICULOUSLY long lay over in South Korea. Yes, you heard right. SOUTH KOREA.  And it was AMAZING. I fell in love with the city of Seoul. Very beautiful. Clean. Some of the nicest and most helpful human beings on the planet.

I left Beijing at about 9pm and got into Seoul around 1am (mind the hour time difference). I am about 5'8", which means I felt like a giant most of the time I was in Asia. And it does not help any that I have A. bleach blonde hair  B.enormous blue eyes and C. the pastiest of all pasty white skin. So, needless to say, in a sea of beautiful dark hair and gorgeous dark eyes I stood out quite a bit.

Danielle and I ate a bug. I ATE A FREAKING BUG
And it tasted awful.

After damn near walking straight out of customs into the Incheon Airport it took less than 3 seconds to get help. I was ushered on to an extremely plush charter bus and whisked away to the city. The ride is about 45 minutes and it was rainy, but I was enamored with South Korea within the first hour of arriving.

One of my sorority sisters from Undergrad is an English teacher in Seoul. This definitely made my seventeen hour lay over much more bearable. We spent the day shopping around in Insadong, ate poop shaped pancakes and nommed hard on Bibimbap. 

Say that 3 times fast.

Nomma da seaweed with my Bibimbap.