Fairchild Ramble 2009

Every year, the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden hosts a really fun plant sale with activities and food called the Ramble. Every year, the University of Miami's Gifford Arboretum recruits grad student volunteers to help sell plants and talk to people about arboretum events. In return for a couple hours of volunteer service, we get free entrance to the botanical garden and the Ramble event -- it's really fun!

I ended up going on both Saturday and Sunday (Carlos of course had to be there also since he is the Gifford Arboretum curator!), working for a couple of hours each morning, and then having the rest of the day to walk around, eat tasty food, and look at herbs, crafts, and plants for sale at all the booths.

On Saturday, I had a nice lunch of chicha morada (a Peruvian sweet purple corn drink), papas a la huancaina (Peruvian potatoes with a yellow cream sauce) , and a conch fritter. I also looked around at all the organic vegetable and herb stalls before I found one booth that had tables full of spices and whole-leaf teas that you could smell. I ended up buying a little bag of dark chocolate orange tea -- it tastes really great and I have never seen that flavor of tea before!

Carlos' and my fiend Danielle visited from the University of Florida for the weekend and she also did a great job helping out at the Ramble with us -- this is a really huge event that attracts people from all over Florida! I am kind of sad that this will be my last Ramble, but I will have to find more fun festivals to attend wherever Carlos and I end up moving!

Pumpkin cheesecake

Last night I made a pumpkin cheesecake for Carlos, me, and a friend that is visiting from the University of Florida (in Gainesville). We didn't eat any of the cake last night because it had to cool so we put it in the refrigerator until this morning -- when we ate pieces for breakfast!

This is a really easy cake to make and doesn't take very long at all to throw together -- my sister always wants to eat this cake and maybe I will have to make it for her when I go home to Washington for the holidays. Maybe I will make this for her...when she makes me some souffles!

Asian snacks -- Almond Meltyblend

I bought these chocolates because they have a cool name and my sister said that they were nice. I like them, but I probably wouldn't buy them again -- they weren't anything special. I expected them to have a strong almond flavor, but they mostly just tasted like milk chocolate covered with cocoa powder.

Asian snacks -- Cheese Pretz

I've had Pretz before (tomato and salad flavors) and they are really interesting and tasty little cracker-like sticks. While back home, I found cheese-flavored Pretz and these are so far my favorite Pretz sticks. They kind of taste like parmesan cheese and are really thin and breakable. I wonder what other flavors of Pretz are out there for me to try?

Chilaquiles

One of my new favorite meals to make is chilaquiles -- basically a Mexican food item made of leftovers. The recipe Carlos and I make isn't very spicy. Basically, blend up a can of diced tomatoes + 1 chipotle chili in adobo, add cooked onions, and chicken stock then simmer a while. The finishing touch is to add tons of crunched up tortilla chips to the sauce and they will soak everything up and get mushy -- done! I also like to put avocado, chicken, raw onion, and cheese on top. This is a nice, easy meal and we always make enough for lunch leftovers to bring to school.

Garden lettuce

Carlos and I have quite a little garden going on out on our balcony. We re-planted things after coming back from Germany and Washington trips this past summer. The summers here in Miami are really too hot to grow anything (tomatoes do especially bad) but now that the weather is cooling off, things are really starting to grow and fruit! I will do a more detailed post later of all the things that we have growing out there, but I will talk about my little lettuce garden today.


I am growing some bibb lettuce (from seed) in a little window box and all of the little planties are doing great! Carlos and I regularly harvest the big leaves for salads and sandwiches. There isn't enough growing to make a full salad, but I add the bibb to iceberg lettuce. This lettuce tastes really good on it's own and it is pretty fun to grow things and eat them!

Slow loris painting

My friend Molly sends me post-cards (which is so awesome -- I love receiving snail mail other than bills!). A little while back, she sent me a post-card with sign-language on the front spelling out "I am a slow loris T-shirt." Molly thought I would appreciate this since I likely knew what a slow loris was -- and I do! They are cute and cool mammals (primates) from Southeast Asia with huge eyes and slow, calculated movements. They were actually one of my favorite animals in the Woodland Park Zoo's nocturnal house, but the last time I was there, they were gone! Oh yea, these guys are also one of the few venomous mammals out there so don't let their cute "slow" exteriors lull you into complacency -- they can actually kill you with a bite!

Anyway, I sent Molly back this postcard I made with a slow loris drawing/painting -- he's eating a banana!

Asian snacks -- Green tea Collon

I love that these snacks are called Collon. I have reviewed this brand of snack before (vanilla cream Collon), but I had never seen green tea flavored Colllons before! I really liked this flavor (green tea is one of my favorite flavors of dessert). The cookie tube is sweet and waffle-cone tasting. The green tea cream inside was soft and really green tea-y. I would like to get these again if I see them. Remlington (the dog) also liked them a lot -- he is really into green tea, I think.

iPod touch

A couple of months ago, when I bought my new computer, I also received a free iPod touch! I took a couple of pictures of it when I opened it, but I never blogged about it back then. I use it when I go to the gym (except when I go swimming of course...) and it is a great little gadget. I am also able to download lots of app.s that are fun and useful. I can even use it as a back-up hard-drive! I used to have an iPod mini that I received when I bought my previous laptop ~ 5 years ago. Now that I have the iPod touch, I gave my iPod mini to Carlos!

Asian snacks -- Pocky!

Now that I am all finished with my DC travel posts, what should I write about for NaBloPoMo? Ah yes, I still have a lot of leftover things that I have in a folder called "Blog" (appropriate, no?) that I can write about. I will start with a classic Asian snacks post -- I haven't written about those for a while!

I went to Uwajimaya with Shannon and mom when we were home last August; or course we stocked up on snacks! I even took pictures of all the goodies out on the deck so that I could blog about them.

We bought a lot of Pocky: normal milk chocolate Pocky, Men's Pocky (my favorite), and coconut Pocky (that was Shannon's). I really like the dark chocolate Men's Pocky (I have no idea why it is called "Men's"...maybe it is really manly and strong?), but I didn't try the coconut Pocky -- I will have to get my sister's opinion of it. You just can't go wrong with Pocky I think!