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.