Sampling Iceland’s Tradtional Cuisine from Sara Gray on Vimeo.

The houses were amazing in Reykjavik — lots of corrugated metal and simple shapes and bright colors. There are regular homes right in the middle of downtown Reykjavik, which is a really small city. There are only about 120,000 people living there. That’s literally smaller than Beaverton, Oregon.

We decided we would totally go back to Iceland — next time, though, we’d rent a car and drive around the perimeter of the island (the interior is uninhabitable) and camp and enjoy the outdoors.

Fun fact: The highest recorded temperature in Reykjavik (of ALL time) is 79 degrees farenheit. It was in the 40s when we were there. Luckily, it barely rained at all.

We swam at The Blue Lagoon, which was cool but turned out to be a major tourist trap. We got off our motorcoach from Reykvavik and then soon realized we were being herded down a path like sheep with the entire population of a Royal Caribbean cruise ship — yikes. On the ads for the Blue Lagoon, they show this beautiful blonde Icelandic woman bathing by herself in the thermal pool. Yeah, right.

First of all, we moved into our apartment in Hillsdale (SW Portland) in June and we totally love it. We love it so much, in fact, that we’re actually moving across the hall to a bigger unit at the beginning of September, which will be great since we’ll have a spare bedroom and room for guests and a separate office.

We are continuing to work hard, Eric is doing lots of IT consulting and my business is growing. It’s the craziness of wedding season right now, which it turns out I totally love, and everything is going really well. Other than that, we’ve been cooking a lot and dreaming of traveling a lot. We think we’ve decided to go to Copenhagen for a week in September to see our friends Erika & Morten and visit the city we haven’t seen since just before we got married. That will most definitely be blogged - funny, we started this blog right before we left for our last trip to Copenhagen - back then it was a Tumblr blog, which was fun.

So get ready for food posts, coming at ya soon. Start reading again, because at least a couple times a week, we’re back.

I’ve never been one for antiquities, but with heirloom tomatoes, I can make an exception.  This week I’ve been trying to come up with as many ways as possible to eat tomatoes without cooking or otherwise covering up the flavor. After all, once they are gone for the season, it’s back to the flavorless mush they sell at the grocery store.

Last week, it was no-cook tomato sauce, which was a huge hit. I did it something like this:

No-Cook Tomato Sauce

Dice or quarter a few tomatoes and place in a large bowl. The tomatoes are preferably at room temperature as the refrigerator can make them mealy. Add chopped basil and minced garlic to the bowl and throw in some kosher salt and pepper. Maybe even some red pepper flakes if you’re into that. Add some good olive oil, maybe a fourth of a cup and combine.

Let the mixture sit covered and unrefrigerated for 30 minutes or more (more is better!) Bring water to a boil and add a pinch of kosher salt just before throwing the noodles in, so its salty like the sea.

Drain the pasta, saving a little of the water just in case. Put the noodles back in the pot, and add the tomato mixture. Let it sit for a minute or two and serve.

To garnish, I added some toasted pine nuts as well, as well as some fresh grated parmesan.

Something is fishy in Portland

Today, the cupboards were almost bare, with the exception of the tomatoes. This calls for fish sauce. What is fish sauce? It’s better not to ask, but if you must know, wikipedia has your answer. If you don’t have this in your kitchen, you are missing out.

Dice up some tomatoes and throw in the fish sauce,  a little salt and pepper, and I was in heaven. Try, you’ll see.

Eric made one of his classic recipes - it’s pasta shells with pancetta, asparagus, green beans, shallots, creme fraiche and butter. It’s creamy, fatty goodness and it pretty much melts in your mouth. Yum.

I worked on my forearm muscles by whipping up some fresh cream to adorn our strawberries with for dessert. It was a great meal for the night before graduation. Thanks to Danny for taking all the photos in this post!

The other night when the culinary bug struck, Eric whipped up a salad made with fresh kale and grapefruit sections which was mouth-watering, and just as good the next day. But the real event was the main course: pasta shells with grilled mushrooms, bacon, green onions and crème fraîche. Oh my goodness. It was pure heaven.

Then he made chocolate mousse from scratch for dessert, which I sadly don’t have any pictures of. I love having a cook husband!

Of course, one of the great draws of living in Portlan is the great restaurants. There are seriously so many great places to eat in this town. A great spot we discovered recently is Ten01, which is in the Pearl District. It was voted the best restaurant in Portland last year, but we were feeling a little poor when we went, so we hit up happy hour and I am not exaggerating when I say that the burger above ($5) was one of the best I’ve ever had. Not to mention I’m dieting, so the smaller size of this burger was completely perfect.

Speaking of dieting, I’m going on a little quest to lose 15 pounds by the 4th of July - it’s weight I’ve needed to get off for awhile, and since I’ve got a busy wedding season this summer, I want to be a lighter version of myself so I can keep up with all my hard work. The above shirt is a shirt I totally fell in love with at J. Crew last week, and my mom told me that she’d buy it for me if I hit my goal by the date set - so far, so good - I’m about ten days in and I’ve lost 6.5 pounds already! I’m way ahead of schedule. So stay tuned for pictures of me photographing a wedding in my shiny new champagne-colored blouse this summer!

I’ll leave you with this non-dieting image (although if you run enough, gelato can be a reality of everyday life!) We stopped by Mio Gelato in the Pearl last week also, after our fantastic happy hour burgers. I totally recommend the cinnamon, pictured here.  Happy sunny weekend, and I’ll blog again soon!

We’ve been missing Buenos Aires. Today Eric was flipping through our blog archives, and looking at all the photos from our months there was bittersweet. I totally love what I’m doing now, but seeing my calendar fill up with photo jobs also means no long three-month expanses to go take up temporary residence in New Zealand, Peru or Taiwan.

Today, I was admitted to New York University’s M.S. in Publishing program. But so much in my life has changed since I sent off my applications in December that I decided awhile ago that graduate school isn’t for me right now. However, the conceptual idea of that was one thing, and having an acceptance letter to a prestigious school in my hand and knowing I’m going to turn it down is quite another.

I’ve picked a good path for now, which I’m happy about. I’m living in Portland, I’m photographing great people, I love my job and running my own business. And certainly we’ll still be able to travel, although not as much as we did last year. Maybe it’s natural to grieve the things that change in our lives, even if we’re thrilled with the new opportunities?

P.S. On a happier note, congratulations to our friends Chris and Amanda, who found out recently they’re going to have a baby! We love you guys!

Boy, we’re getting bad at blogging on here, aren’t we? Well, I wanted to assure you that we’re not giving up on the ol’ blog. Here’s a bit of an update on our developing lives in Portland.

Eric is keeping busy with consulting work, which is great because it’s flexible and he doesn’t have to do all the parts of full-time work that he disliked, like doing performance reviews and all that paperwork sort of stuff. I’m also growing my photography business and the response so far has been great. I’m looking forward to a busy wedding season this year, a busy senior portrait season and lots of busy months ahead. If you know anyone getting married in Oregon or Washington who needs a photographer, send them my way - I haven’t quite filled out my schedule yet for this year.

We’re looking for our own little place to live, and we’ll probably be moving in the next month or two. Then we’ll have all sorts of things to blog about, as we pick out some new furniture, get settled in and get to know a good neighborhood. It’s all happening, as Kate Hudson says in “Almost Famous,” and we’re working on keeping that forward momentum.

This summer, we’ll be traveling a lot (or at least I will) to and from the Seattle area (for weddings) and possibly also to Denmark to visit our dear friends Erika and Morten, who just bought a house in the outskirts of Copenhagen. We feel the need to help them break the house in.

So stick with us, and if you’re feeling the need to read more of my words, please check out my brand-new photography blog, which has a new post on it every weekday. Thanks patient readers!

And because no post should have to exist without a picture, here’s one I took over the weekend at Cannon Beach. Dan & Annie are good friends and they’re getting married in October.

The problem with baking is usually this: I have an insane, crazy monster of a sweet tooth and Eric doesn’t have much of one. As a consequence, if I bake a batch of cookies or a cake, I end up eating the entire thing myself. So I’m always looking for a chance to bake for other people so I don’t end up with a belly full of baked goods all by my lonesome.

My charming sister Emily decided to host a Lia Sophia party tonight and so this was my golden opportunity. Cupcakes for all, I decided! Since I think of myself as such an accomplished baker, I would have to show my prowess by baking at least two kinds of cupcakes. So I brainstormed, read a handful of cupcake blogs’ archives, and settled on two Martha Stewart recipes - a chocolate/vanilla combo (sans political fondant handiwork) and a banana cupcake with honey cinnamon frosting.

But Emily wanted funfetti.

Then when she went to the store, spice and carrot cake mix also called to her. Before we knew it, I was baking five batches of mini cupcakes with four different kinds of frosting.

We ended up with nearly 250 mini cupcakes, and we were originally expecting almost thirty people but in the end, only about 10 people came. This is what I call the definition of over-doing it.