dog days

had dinner at jill and zachs. they're two of my favorite people on the entire planet. we have soooo much fun. tonight jill made chicken parmesan, and they're out of paper towels and napkins so we used one potentially eggy towel, one wet kitchen towel and one washcloth as napkins. she's 7 months pregnant and they're all excited about the baby and have funny stories about stupid things people in the general public tell them.

beginning a book called the man who ate everything by jeffrey steingarten tonight. seems like it'll be good. food nonfiction. almost as good as travel books.

sniffy squad

jeff and i both need to find jobs soon, but in the meantime we have a whole lot of fun doing things we probably wouldn't do if we didn't spend all day together. this weekend we played a game where we sang songs and changed all of the words to 'sniffy squad' and we had to guess what song it was. really dumb, really fun. we did it with rhapsody in blue, alanis morisette's 'ironic', hmm i can't remember the others.

thanksgiving was nice except that maj was chatting while making pumpkin pie and switched the sugar for salt. when it came out of the oven, it had what looked like apple pie crust on top.. and it was kind of sparkely. i tried a little pinch of it and it kind of tasted like pumpkin pie playdough. so we went to the grocery store and bought our very first storebought pumpkin pie. not bad.

thankfully

meet the babies of the garden..

lettuce above and in the foreground below
beets
radishes
little baby radishes

the lettuce is taking off the most because it's in the sunniest spot. pretty excitinggg.

time to make crepes. happy thanksgiving :)

gleefully

just waitttt until tomorrow when i post new pictures of the little baby lettuce and radishes. baby plants are arguably just as cute as baby humans. speaking of those, this afternoon i got together with stacy and her 1 year old, drew, for coffee. he is adoooorable. and of the 3 times we've hung out somewhere, he's fallen asleep on me every time for half an hour or so and i just get to chat and cuddle. love him.

well it's been in the 80s all week in austin and it's bordering on ridiculous. we turned the air conditioning on yesterday. but it really was hot and stuffy inside the house. thankfully it's supposed to be in the 40s or something on thanksgiving as that giant cold front makes its way down from canada. feeling bad for everyone who's already gotten it. although it's kind of nice to be really chilly around the holidays.

ps just feel like i need to comment on how awesome it is that glee has taken on the issue of bullying gay kids in high school and how serious and scary it is for them. go ryan murphy.

weekend

so this weekend jeff and i made a feast of greek food. falafel. tabouli. tzatziki (which i challenge you to type. it's hard.) all of it was relatively easy. in the great purge of 2010, i convinced maj that we never use the food processor and could therefore get rid of it.. but i was kind of missing it as i blended chick peas for the falafel in the mini chopper. but it worked out.

jeff and i were unprepared for how the oil temperature shot up when we threw the falafel in. maybe because of the baking soda in them? or is that normal? i've never fried anything.
but yuuuum was it tasty.
easy tzatziki. yogurt, sour cream, cucumber, dill, garlic, lemon juice, oil, vinegar, salt & pepper.
and i've been pestering my friend dave for ages about what to do with bulgher wheat, which he's a big fan of. he suggested tabouli (which is what started the whole idea of the feast). it is so easy and fresh and good. i had a huge bowl of it for lunch with a big dollop of tzatziki.
and maj and i planted some more of the front beds. neither of us really like how it turned out. but i'm just glad we got rid of the creepy vine that took over the beds.

kitty's favorite spot is the pot. he doesn't care if there are flowers in it or not.
..and now for the most exciting news of all! we have little baby lettuce coming up in one section of the garden. i don't know if the rest isn't getting enough sun or what, but only one patch has sprouted so far. they're very cute though.

recipes via foodnetwork.com:

falafel

tzatziki (from ina garten!)

tabouli

movember

met a fellow who's very into gardening and cooking at a friends house a couple of weeks ago. he formed a supper club and tonight was our first meeting. the theme was northern italian and many courses. the first was arugula salad with arugula picked from his garden that day. i won't go through them all but suffice to say everything was delicious. even the sausage, which i'm not usually a fan of.

but more than just eating delicious food, it was fun to sit at a table of 12 strangers and rediscover my mingle a little bit. the nice thing about always having had (nearly) lifelong friends in austin is that you don't have to continually do all of that getting to know you chit chat. but now most of them have moved away so lately i've been doing a lot of hunting for new friends.. which is a lot harder than it seems like it would be. but tonight was fun and i was reminded that strangers aren't all bad and it doesn't take long before they start to feel like friends.

i have lots of pictures from this weekend but i'm too comfy in bed right now to go get my camera, so that will wait til tomorrow.

harmoniously

i wish everyone in the whole entire world would watch harmony, the documentary made by prince charles about taking cues from nature and taking nature into account in everything we do. it is inspirational.

do just fine

whenever i need a recipe for something, the first place i search is smitten kitchen. deb, the woman who runs it, picks delicious recipes from gourmet magazine and other cookbooks and magazines and almost everything i've tried from there turns out really well. the best part is that they all require some real cooking. no silly shortcuts or 15 minute promises.

it was laughably messy to rinse/dry/chop two bundles of swiss chard. i was covered in water, the island was all wet, the floor was wet. but it was a lot of fun.

so no one in our family has had swiss chard before and since we have two giant plants in the garden, i wanted to find out what it tasted like before i harvest my own. i made spaghetti with swiss chard and garlic chips and it was delicious. really garlicy. the chard is really yummy, and somehow it seems healthier than spinach just because it tastes earthier or more mineraly.
the recipe calls for green chard, but sprouts only had red, so mine doesn't look quite the same but i can't imagine the different varieties taste too different. maj and i decided we would make it again.
next time you need a recipe, try something off that website and let me know how it turns out. her recipe page is organized so well. you can look at recipes by season, ingredient, type of food, etc. it's great.

day is night

maj went to dinner at a friends house and got back on the gardening kick after seeing this woman's pretty lettuce. so we bought some little tiny onion starts.

i think we planted 50 of them.
and carrots, beets, radishes and lettuce from seed. should be interesting. it certainly is much easier than planting real plants. we just threw them on the ground and lightly raked over the top.
this time we got smart and made a map so i don't have to keep referring to the pictures of planting day 1. it's hard to remember what everything is before you get the hang of it. that might be one of the best things about gardening though. aside from actually eating it, it's just fun to be able to walk into anyone's backyard and be able to recognize a tomato plant vs zucchini.

job interview tomorrow! cross your fingers.

over and over again

sometimes blogging just falls by the wayside. but really lots of days i just feel like i have nothing to say. last weekend we made two dutch babies and they puffed up like crazy:

lately i've been adding a few Tbsp's more flour than the recipe calls for so they've been more popover-y.
we've reached a new stage of pillowness today.

taiwan

i'll be honest and say by the time we got to taiwan, i was so tired of carrying around my heavy tote bag with my camera in it that i largely ditched it in favor of a tiny wristlet with money and keys in it.. so there aren't a whole lot of pictures of taiwan.

we stayed at bobo's new house. katie had moved out on friday and we showed up on wednesday.

jaime and joyce made me little cards :)
the first day we went to 101.
in case you never make it there.. this is what it looks like from the top on a cloudy day:
the color of the glass makes it look kind of interesting and ominous inside the observation deck. the whole floor looks like this and has little displays against the wall. one tells you about the top 10 tallest buildings in the world.
if you go upstairs, you can look out through the bars and pretend you're in a giant wine glass as you hear the wind whining through them.
if you go downstairs, you can see how sparkley the damper is.
don't know why but this air aquarium is my favorite thing in taipei main station. i find it every time i walk through there. in reality, there are just some random plants in there and there's a hole you can kind of stick your nose in. but the sign is hilarious and the air does seem kinda fresher than normal.
this is lianwu from the market. people kept telling me it was out of season, but it wasn't. thank goodness. it is so yummy and only in taiwan. couldn't find it in china or HK.
best danbing in the whole wide world.
typical scene at the kuo's. i love that it even includes mr. kuo's favorite notepad and his glasses.
we took a whole bunch of pictures but they're all on other people's cameras.
this is when we met up with alex and his new girlfriend, emily, at shilin night market.
beer on the street.
lunch with my old coteacher, augusta.
and her sweeet 8 month old baby, naomi. she sat in my lap until our food came. her newest game is throwing stuff on the floor and having you get it for her.
this was the morning we left. we overslept, took 4 minute showers and were in the car on the way to the airport before we knew it. look how big joyce is! she doesn't even look like the same kid.
and that is the end of the trip pictures! all of the ones i didn't post are in this album on facebook.

guangzhou

kind of have mixed feelings about our time in guangzhou. we looooved the hotel, but we didn't really see any of the city. faj got us a room at the mariott with hotel points he's accumulated. we got in late, around 8, checked in and they told us we had been upgraded to a business suite since faj is a platinum member. so we walked in to this:

i have a weakness for fluffy beds with many pillows, so if it was up to me i would have gotten in bed at 8pm and not gotten out until checkout at noon the next day. but we forced ourselves out to get some random noodle dish in an alley before heading back.

then i took a bath. and the house in round rock has no bath tub, so this was my first bath since december 2009 at gram's house. it was lovely.
i felt kind of like a ragamuffin every time i was in the lobby dressed in shorts, a t shirt and sandals when everyone else was in power suits.
our flight the next day was at 4, so we only had time to check out and eat lunch. i guess technically we could have done a lot more if we could have forced ourselves out of bed any earlier than noon. spotted this super chinese packing job on the way.
german food at bistro something.
ladies and gents restrooms.

and those are all of the pictures of guangzhou.