Happy birthday mama!

Well, today is the last day of NaBloPoMo -- I made it! It is also my mama's birthday, Happy birthday mama! (And...the last day of hurricane season -- I have already been snacking on my emergency food supplies in celebration.)

Mom, here is a little preview of the present that is on its way:

It is a chipmunk with a bushy tail! I don't know why...

Anyways, happy birthday mom, and I might take a little break from blogging to find more things to post about -- I'm a little burnt out after 30 days of daily blogging!

Red felt ball ornament

In my recent craftings, I made this little red felt ball ornament from a project that I saw online. It was pretty easy and I think it turned out cute and geometric. Sometimes it is a little lop-sided and not completely symmetrical, but I like these characteristics that let you know it is hand-made. Basically, you cut out 6 circles of felt, sew them together down the middle, then start folding little tacos and stitching the sides all around the globe -- maybe I will make another one in a different color!

PS. Tomorrow is the last day of NaBloPoMo -- I think I'm going to make it! I also have a committee meeting to prepare for and a final figure to finish for a manuscript...wargh!

More garden harvest and some potato soup

Last night we had a really great dinner of soup and salad. Carlos made his signature Colombian soup and I made a salad using two new lemon cucumbers that we had just harvested from the garden -- that cucumber plant is producing a lot of fruits!

The Colombian potato soup centers around the use of small, yellow Colombian potatoes: papas criollas. We made this soup while we were home in Washington last August, but we couldn't find papas criollas in any of the markets -- too far from Latin America I guess. These potatoes are pretty bright yellow and small (~2-3 cm in length). Here is a comparison with a yukon gold potato.

The soup was delicious and the light fresh taste of our home-grown lemon cucumbers made a nice salad!

Thanksgiving aftermath

Yesterday, I had a nice, relaxing Thanksgiving with Carlos and Orou. I talked to my mom, dad, and sister on the phone and I am getting excited to see everyone in December!

We had a pretty early dinner consisting of maple ham (it was delicious and sweet!), mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole with marshmallows, and sliced, from-the-can cranberry sauce. We had some authentic Colombian beer and sangria to drink with our food -- it all turned out really nice and didn't even take very long to make!

During dinner we chatted and listened to Manheim Steamroller Christmas tunes and the Lord of the Rings soundtracks -- this is tradition! After stuffing ourselves, Orou went home and Carlos and I watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation while digesting and snoozing. We spent the rest of the day relaxing, I played a little Wii (Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask -- more tradition here!), and taking a break.

This morning, we braved the crazed hordes of shoppers and visited Target (to buy a $20 DVD player since ours recently broke) and Best Buy. We found our DVD player and also bought the Goonies DVD for $4 -- woo-hoo bargains! Today we will take it easy but I do have to prepare for a committee meeting on Monday. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving~

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is Thanksgiving -- which means I don't have to teach - yahoo! Anyways, Carlos and I are just making a few tasty things that my family usually makes (and some things we usually don't make). Since it's just the two of us (plus our friend Orou), we will make:

• A maple ham instead of turkey -- it was cheaper, smaller, and we both like ham better than turkey

• Mashed potatoes

• Sweet potato casserole (with mini marshmallows and everything)

• Cranberry sauce -- the can-shaped kind

• Salad

That's about it, we also have some wine/beer and we will listen to Manheim Steamroller Christmas music and Lord of the Rings soundtracks as per tradition. Even though I can't spend this holiday with the rest of my family, I will be able to see everyone again soon for Christmas!

Crafting

I am working on a bunch of crafts in my spare time (what's that??) -- in between writing, analyzing, reading, and revising. The only problem is that I want to take pictures and make a post about them on my blog, but then some people might see them (basically the only people that read my blog will be getting some of these things for presents) and then they will spoil their gift surprises for the holidays! It is such a quandary. I have decided that I will take pictures of some things now but I will exercise my self-restraint and not post them until after I have already given presents to people -- wah!

Anyways, partially to save money and partially because I think handmade gifts are awesome, I am giving most of my friends and family handmade gifts for birthdays and holidays this year. There is even a movement in the crafting community where you can pledge to only give handmade things -- not necessarily things made only by you, but other handmade gifts that you purchase directly from the makers (e.g. on Etsy). I think this is a really cool idea and I feel that more thought goes into gifts that people make themselves. Take THAT mega-corporations!

Lemon cucumber in the garden

This morning we picked our first lemon cucumber (Cucumis sativus) from our huge vine! Carlos has been growing this fruit from seed that we brought back from Washington in August -- this vine is so huge! Lemon cucumbers are spherical and light yellow with a light cucumber-ish taste.

Cucumbers are members of the squash plant family (Cucurbitaceae) and are monoecious which means that both male and female flowers are produced on the same plant (as opposed to dioecious species that produce male and female flowers on separate plant individuals). In this cucumber, the male flowers are produced first, then the female flowers. You can distinguish the different flowers by the presence or absence of an enlarged ovary (baby cucumber) at the base which female flowers have and males don't.

We will eat our lemon cucumber tonight since they ripen quickly and it might go bad.

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!

DC -- Foods

I ate some delicious things while I was in DC, but as with most vacations -- after a while I just wanted to drink some milk and eat some lettuce! I don't really like eating out for every meal, but there was a lot of variety in DC and Rosslyn. Here are some of the highlights:

The first place I ate after I arrived, Ray's Hell Burger -- super crowded but really delicious burgers (and draft root beer!):

Carlos and I walked to Good Stuff Eatery one afternoon (it's near the Capitol and Eastern Market). This is where I had my favorite food item of the trip -- a toasted marshmallow milkshake -- with 2 toasted marshmallows on top too! Oh yea, the burgers and fries were also really good.

I had a fresh arugula, roma tomato, and ricotta pizza at a place called Piola just a couple of blocks from our hotel:

Carlos and I had an afternoon snack of chai and ginger scones at a place called Teaism near the FBI building. We even sat next to an indoor koi pond!

Breakfast in Eastern Market at Le Pain Quotidienne -- I had a Belgian hot chocolate where you pour the liquid chocolate into the foamy milk:

Carlos and I had our first ever fancy, multi-course meal in Dupont Circle at a restaurant called Vidalia. I had grilled endives with apple fritter and blue cheese, mushroom risotto, and a Mississippi mud cake with root beer ice cream for dessert. It was nice, but I don't really like this style of eating -- too formal!

While walking in the freezing rain with a couple of my UCSB buddies, we ducked into a sandwich and soup place called Potbelly since it looked warm. I bought a really warm, melty mushroom and cheese sandwich -- the sandwiches at this chain are great and cheap!

...and that is all for my Washington DC posts! I am finally finished chronicling my adventures there. I had a really great time and love practically everything about this city that I saw -- I can't wait to go back! Now I have to find something else to blog about...