On Thursday I carved a pumpkin.
On Friday I went to a party. I'm a valley girl, MiMi is a gladiator and Willa was Pinky, from Pinky and the brain. We look pretty awesome if you ask me.
Saturday Josh moved in...AND IT SNOWED! Like really REALLY snowed. I hid inside all day.
On Sunday, kids in Halloween costumes were throwing snowballs at each other. It would have been adorable if it wasn't so bizarre.
CORRECTION: Willa is The Brain, because the woman is always the brain :)
Tonight is my last night of freedom. My roommate moved out two weeks ago and I've been enjoying having the place all to myself. I've done exciting things like cook in my underpants and carving pumpkins in the living room. Yea, I'm pretty wild.
But tomorrow, bright and early, Josh is moving in. Yikes! Wish me luck!
It's 3pm and I'm lacking any motivation to do anything. I just want to take a nap. So in order to divert myself for a few minutes I scanned some of the pictures I got from my visit home. These are my favorite.
My grandma looks sassy in this one. She said she was wearing a red dress.
This is my grandpa, all the way to the left. I don't really know what this picture is of, so I'm going to make up a story. I think this story will involve lots of martinis, or something classy like that. It's fun to think of your grandparents being young, going out and getting drunk.
This has been my diversion for the day. Now, back to work.
Something amazing happened on Saturday. I went to not just any restaurant, but my favorite restaurant, and was literally unable to finish half the food on my plate. This has never ever ever happened as long as I can remember. Josh was pretty happy. He got to eat lots of my fish without hearing my complain about leaving enough for me.
Oh and Amy and Chung had a baby. I guess that's pretty amazing too :)
Saturday was so exciting I had to follow it up with an equally exciting Sunday. On Sunday, I cleaned my whole apartment, hung new curtains, went to yoga, sewed up the holes in my sweater and did lots of cooking! I'm actually having fun cooking without meat, so I made a vegetable pot pie, a carrot curry soup (courtesy of Andrea) and some whole wheat pumpkin walnut bread. I get lots of leftovers this week!
Whoah. The farmers' market just totally blew my mind.
I was enjoying walking around, sniffing all the flowers and looking at the pretty vegetables. The air smelled like hot apple cider. Then I see something that looks like this:
I ran to it. What the heck is that? This my friends, is a brussel sprout stalk. It looked kind of like a tree trunk with bulbs on it. I asked the farmer, "Is this how Brussel sprouts grow?" He looked at me like I was the craziest person ever. But yes. This is how they grow.
Totally blew my mind.
Going to Grandma's house is great, but going to Grandma's house usually means FOOD. Lots of lots of food. And lots of foods I normally wouldn't eat, like cookies, candies and danishes. I was literally eating to the point of nausea. I know it's not good for me, but Grandma can't eat all the food by herself! She filled that candy jar for us! Now that I'm back at home and trying to get my eating back to normal, I'm going through some serious cookie withdrawals. I just want cookies, lots of lots of cookies. All I can think about are cookies. I'm trying to let the craving pass, but I know if I say, "I'll have cookies just this once" then tomorrow will roll around and I'll end up getting cookies again. Why are cookies so darn addictive? (Seriously, if anyone knows, I'd love to hear it.) Argh. Does anyone have any ideas on how to quell the cookie monster?
I’m finally back from the weekend with my family. I don’t think I ever realized how beautiful the ranch is. I got there late on Thursday and woke up early on Friday (this wasn’t my choice). The morning was so cool and beautiful and fresh so I went for a walk. I didn’t bring my tennis shoes, so I just went out in my PJs and my crappy shoes, and went for a walk. It felt so good, that I wanted to run. So in my crappy Payless shoes and my PJs, I started running. This was the first time I’ve run in weeks if not months. It felt so good. It was so beautiful. Then I started feeling bad. I started crying. I didn’t want to be home for a funeral. I didn’t want everyone to be sad. I shouldn’t be out enjoying myself when everyone was sad. It’s funny how running makes all these things come up. Just moving one foot in front of the other over and over brings out so much emotion.
The rest of the weekend involved a lot of food, some crying, and lots of family. We all ate a lot of food, drank a lot of wine (the house is in a vineyard after all) and looked at some really old pictures of my family. My grandma looks like an actress from Madmen in some of them, and my Pop Pop looks so different, but always with a big smile. I loved looking at all the old pictures and I could have seriously sat there for hours. Some of them were pictures of my great grandparents as children. There was even one where everyone was wearing pioneer type garb. I took some of these pictures, and I’m going to try to scan them and maybe post a few on here. I don’t think I ever realized how much I like my family. Each and every one of them are really cool people. Even though Pop Pop isn’t here any more and that makes everyone sad, he left behind a really awesome family. I think that’s something to be happy about.
That and all the wine ☺
Saturday was a rare occurrence for city folk like me. I went to a farm. Metro North has this one-day pass that includes train ticket and a shuttle around the Millbrook area. Our first stop of the day, was the farm. It was pretty cool, especially considering my recent interest in where my food comes from. We started with a cheese tasting, all made from milk from the cows and goats on the farm. We even saw part of the cheese making process where they were heating the milk in large vats. We ate our cheese and some pumpkin ice cream (that's a healthy breakfast, right?) and then we looked around at all the animals. The chickens were beautiful. The goats tried to eat everything. And I was in love with this baby cow.
He has giant brown eyes like a Disney princess. It was a really happy farm.
Next stop was the village of Millbrook for lunch and shopping. I got these really cool soup bowls. Set of two for just $2.
I say that’s a successful get.
After lunch we went apple picking. It wasn’t exactly fall weather, and it had warmed up to about 80 degrees. It was still nice, but definitely a little warm for climbing up hills and trees to get the best apples. I have SO MANY APPLES. I’ve already baked apple bread and made some apple carrot soup. I’d have to eat two apples a day before if I wanted to get rid of them before they go bad. I think I’ll make more apple bread and freeze it. Can’t waste any apples. I worked hard picking them!
Last stop before we headed home was a wine tasting at Clinton vineyards. The owner was this lovely old lady who you can tell gets sloshed every night. She was a hoot. And the wine was pretty darn tasty. I always thought that when a wine describes itself as having a scent of apples, that they some how added apples. Nope. It’s all the grapes. Different years can taste very different. Who woulda think?
We finished here with a glass of wine and a nice relaxing view.
There’s really nothing more you could ask for.
I’ll write about my apple picking tomorrow. But first, this is my Grandma and Pop Pop.
Pop Pop was always like a big teddy bear. When I was a kid I remember I would go visit in the summers. Sometimes Pop Pop would take me and my brother out on his golf cart and he would let us stand in the back, where I’m pretty sure only golf bags are supposed to ride. I would pretend that I was riding on a parade float and waving at my invisible yet adoring crowd. He was usually pretty careful with only the occasional speed bump, but the speed bumps were the most fun part. That’s what I remember most about my Pop Pop. Last night, he passed away from cancer. I think I can safely say that I hate cancer. Cancer has taken too many people from my family. It has taken too many from too many families.
This time next year, I plan on running the Chicago marathon and, as usual, I plan on running with the American Cancer Society’s charity team, DetermiNation. But this time, I’ll run and raise money in memory of my Pop Pop. It’s time to tell cancer to suck it.
Today I went to the Union Square farmers' market and learned all about the stinkbug! I didn't go there looking to learn about the stinkbug, I just wanted an apple. So when I went to buy the apple, the farmer explained to me why they're covered in a powder. It's all because of the stinkbug. The only thing that the stinkbug doesn't like is this clay dust, so they spray it on their apples. But don't worry. It's all organic. I learned other fun things like stinkbugs have brown spots on their heads, beaks like a bird and they came from China in 1998.
I also learned how to make braised kale with raisons, although that was a totally different conversation.
On the menu this week: Carrot apple soup (with some hopefully awesome apples I'll get tomorrow when we go apple picking) and something with spaghetti squash. Should be interesting.
I feel like a bad Lisa. I had all these ideas of things I was going to write about this week, but I've been SO BUSY at work. Usually I have time on my lunch to write a new post or upload some pictures, but no. I'm too busy. Busy with what, you might ask. This has been a typical exchange over the last few days:
"Lisa, we need you to create 10 new designs for us by tomorrow morning."
"I'm sorry. That's physically impossible. Anyway I can have more time?"
"Nope. This goes live tomorrow."
"Pretty please?"
"Nope."
Urgh.
Repeat this multiple times a day.
Maybe I'll write about something interesting some day soon. But for now, I'll be tearing my hair out.
I’ve been super busy the last week. WHY DO I HAVE SO MUCH WORK TO DO?!? Here’s a quick update for all of you wondering what I’ve been up to:
- My farmers’ market adventures continue! This week I bought parsnips and made a parsnip apple soup. I don’t think I’ve ever had a parsnip before, but guess what? They’re delightful!
- This weekend I had a dream about running. My hamstrings have been feeling really good lately (thanks to all that yoga and body rolling!) and I think I want to run. I will make a brief foray into running before it gets too crazy cold. I want to run with my DetermiNation teammates just once before the NYC Marathon!
- More good news: Josh is going to move in with me! (I’ll give you a moment to pick your jaws off the floor…Ok. Ready?) We just figured it was about damn time. It’s a little scary but also kind of exciting. I’m sure I’ll have lots to say about that in the coming months.
- Unfortunately a bit of bad news. My grandpa is very sick. I’d like to ask everyone to think good thoughts for my PopPop. He's a pretty cool PopPop.
Now back to work...Is it Friday yet?
