I always have a temptation when blogging to recap months worth of blog material, since I end up blogging so infrequently. I'll just stick to the last few days, beginning with this:
What's wrong here? A close-up might help:
My mom and aunt came to Tuscaloosa for Thanksgiving, turning Thanksgiving into a glorious mix of family and friends. We had good food, good company, and lots of turkey (seriously, do you want turkey?). I roasted my first turkey, with a little help from Whole Foods (it was pre-brined and pre-gutted, thank goodness) and Alton Brown. Sadly, I forgot to get a photo of the whole turkey. It was a bit mottled. I stuffed it with rosemary from the yard and sage and apples and cinnamon. My roommate made adorable ginger cookies, with a pastry cutter instead of the Kitchenaid, which freed up my other roommate to make a vegan, sugar-free pie crust (not pictured, sadly).
I made my uncle's cranberry sauce (and now I have nearly an entire quart of cranberry sauce)... And here's what the final spread looked like, well, most of it. We had whipped chipotle purple Japanese yams (vegan and buttered), chunky mashed potatoes (vegan and buttered), lentil loaf, kale salad with pomegranates among other wonderfulness, curried brussels and cauliflower, vegan sausage stuffing, whipped vegan potatoes, cranberry sauce, chestnut soup, rosemary bread, tofurkey, gravy, and of course the turkey. For dessert, the ginger cookes, plus brownies, two chocolate pudding pies, the apple pie, vegan pumpkin pie, apple cider caramels, ice cream, and I think that's everything?
My plate was so colorful!
My aunt brought me salted chocolate-covered caramels, which I did not share with anyone:
Then my aunt and mom took me the next morning to New Orleans, since they had never been. I made them take us to get beignets, which I didn't share, either:
(...and made a spectacular mess of myself outside a fancy yarn store, so I didn't feel right going in and rubbing my sugary hands all over the yarn).
In my eagerness to share evidence of my gluttony, I skipped the part where we walked around the graveyard, where we sat and chatted around the fireplace, where we did SO MANY DISHES, where we slept well and heavily, where we woke early and drove for four hours, where we ate a few bites of bad Mexican food in Hattiesburg, where we admired the giant bridge into NOLA, where the GPS told me to "caution" for driving 1 (ONE) mph over the speed limit and I wanted to throw it out the window.
NOLA is full of strange sights, like this store of pink things:
And these fine stemware specimens:
We ate of grumpy fish:
We reconsidered buying pralines wrested from the jaws of a giant alligator:
We rolled some tide at the French Market... well, I chuckled, which is, for me, rolling tide:
A lady was selling individual Lego figurines, some of which she had customized. A guy in a wheelchair bought a Lego guy made to look like him, in a Lego wheelchair.
I fell in love with the woman in this portrait:
Did you know cats love beignets too? Thanks, Cary Chun Lee, for teaching me something new with your art.
The street artists and performers were fantastic. My favorite by far was this guy who... well, see for yourself...
He was a living Transformer! He would be tucked up in a car costume, which he could move around in like a monster truck, with his feet and hands at the wheels. Then, he'd unfold (more so than in the photos, sorry, by the time I got the camera going he was de-costuming) and stomp around as a Transformer! Nice details, too.
I loved this cat in a store display almost as much as she loved being in the window.
I bought some small things as gifts for people, and my mom bought me a foot massage/reflexology so my aunt and I could loosen up after all the walking (and all my Thanksgiving cooking!), but my mom bought the coolest thing by far. She was determined to come away from NOLA with a mask:
I modeled. Perfect?
Also... wtf is up with the van called "weed world candies" handing out creepy lollipops?
Did I mention we got beignets twice?
In other news, NaNoWriMo Poetry Edition (with the lovely Lindsay of Goose Hill blog and Thread Lock Press) is going swimmingly. We're each writing a poem a day and exchanging them. Eggplants and Peter Pan. Vertigo and transformation. I'm going to go write a poem for yesterday (I fell asleep so early) and a poem for today.
Oh, I forgot: Cafe Dumond tried to poison me. Luckily, I have a steel stomach (ahaha, no) which was miraculously unaffected by this milk (see expiration date: Dec 2007!!!!). This cannot possibly be correct.
What's wrong here? A close-up might help:
My mom and aunt came to Tuscaloosa for Thanksgiving, turning Thanksgiving into a glorious mix of family and friends. We had good food, good company, and lots of turkey (seriously, do you want turkey?). I roasted my first turkey, with a little help from Whole Foods (it was pre-brined and pre-gutted, thank goodness) and Alton Brown. Sadly, I forgot to get a photo of the whole turkey. It was a bit mottled. I stuffed it with rosemary from the yard and sage and apples and cinnamon. My roommate made adorable ginger cookies, with a pastry cutter instead of the Kitchenaid, which freed up my other roommate to make a vegan, sugar-free pie crust (not pictured, sadly).
My plate was so colorful!
My aunt brought me salted chocolate-covered caramels, which I did not share with anyone:
Then my aunt and mom took me the next morning to New Orleans, since they had never been. I made them take us to get beignets, which I didn't share, either:
In my eagerness to share evidence of my gluttony, I skipped the part where we walked around the graveyard, where we sat and chatted around the fireplace, where we did SO MANY DISHES, where we slept well and heavily, where we woke early and drove for four hours, where we ate a few bites of bad Mexican food in Hattiesburg, where we admired the giant bridge into NOLA, where the GPS told me to "caution" for driving 1 (ONE) mph over the speed limit and I wanted to throw it out the window.
NOLA is full of strange sights, like this store of pink things:
And these fine stemware specimens:
We ate of grumpy fish:
We reconsidered buying pralines wrested from the jaws of a giant alligator:
We despaired over poor (yet hilarious) taste in souvenirs:
We rolled some tide at the French Market... well, I chuckled, which is, for me, rolling tide:
A lady was selling individual Lego figurines, some of which she had customized. A guy in a wheelchair bought a Lego guy made to look like him, in a Lego wheelchair.
I fell in love with the woman in this portrait:
Did you know cats love beignets too? Thanks, Cary Chun Lee, for teaching me something new with your art.
The street artists and performers were fantastic. My favorite by far was this guy who... well, see for yourself...
He was a living Transformer! He would be tucked up in a car costume, which he could move around in like a monster truck, with his feet and hands at the wheels. Then, he'd unfold (more so than in the photos, sorry, by the time I got the camera going he was de-costuming) and stomp around as a Transformer! Nice details, too.
I loved this cat in a store display almost as much as she loved being in the window.
I bought some small things as gifts for people, and my mom bought me a foot massage/reflexology so my aunt and I could loosen up after all the walking (and all my Thanksgiving cooking!), but my mom bought the coolest thing by far. She was determined to come away from NOLA with a mask:
I modeled. Perfect?
Also... wtf is up with the van called "weed world candies" handing out creepy lollipops?
Did I mention we got beignets twice?
In other news, NaNoWriMo Poetry Edition (with the lovely Lindsay of Goose Hill blog and Thread Lock Press) is going swimmingly. We're each writing a poem a day and exchanging them. Eggplants and Peter Pan. Vertigo and transformation. I'm going to go write a poem for yesterday (I fell asleep so early) and a poem for today.
Oh, I forgot: Cafe Dumond tried to poison me. Luckily, I have a steel stomach (ahaha, no) which was miraculously unaffected by this milk (see expiration date: Dec 2007!!!!). This cannot possibly be correct.