A taste of Southern culture?
Miss the warm (but don’t miss the muggy) nights on the East coast. Sat with LoriBeth by her pool after the expo today until dinner time and then we went to the Flying Biscuit.
It’s in a really cool part of town. Very artsy. I had “herb crusted chicken” it was delicious. The salad before was especially delicious- lots of leafy greens and a really good dressing, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Salad came with a big biscuit (which looks like one, but tastes like 3- sooo filling) and some cranberry apple butter (kinda spicy but delish).
Then the meal came - I forgot what it came with and couldn’t figure it out. There was a cube of about rice-crispie-treat-size in orangish color, my chicken and what looked like wilted romaine lettuce cut up? Then I remember it came with “grilled” mac&cheese. It tasted ok, but sat like a brick in me.. so I moved back to the chicken and salad. The wilted lettuce thing- that was “collard greens”, a Southern thing. It didn’t look remotely appetizing but I had to try it.. I paid for it after all. I tasted it with water ready… and it tasted about as appetizing as it looked. Tasted like canned (yea that gross preservative taste) green beans (I hate green beans) but of course texture of wilted lettuce. Yuck. I don’t recommend it unless any of my description sounded good. Rest of the food was pretty good though, very filling.
I wish I had photos of the food, because I know at least Amritz would appreciate it.
dinner
“Some of the constituents of asparagus are metabolised and excreted in the urine, giving it a distinctive, mildly unpleasant odor. The smell is caused by various sulfur-containing degradation products (e.g. thiols and thioesters). Studies showed that about 40% of the test subjects displayed this characteristic smell; and a similar percentage of people are able to smell the odor once it is produced. There does not seem to be any correlation between peoples’ production and detection of the smell. The speed of onset of urine smell is rapid, and has been estimated to occur within 15-30 minutes from ingestion.”
I love asparagus
now playing: peaches - AA XXX
lots of food posts here..
chrissy is getting married and in that engagement blissful stage of looking at all the options and sent me links to some fabulous cakes:
this is totally a josh cake.. mr. junk food:
and words just can’t describe the coolness of this:
weekend update
it was a beautiful weekend again. super hot on saturday - 85! almost went swimming… but it was cold by the beaches - only 60, so we canceled our bike rides on the beach plans and instead ran a bunch of errands- i bought more star jasmine and planted it in my garden 
we did a lot of food shopping for cooking this week. i’m excited. we found a lot of yummy stuff.
we had a BBQ saturday with amritz and sarah and played his wii, that thing is soooo fun. we played bowling and some wario games. damien is totally freaked out by the wii though and he thinks we’re throwing the controller at him so he keeps barking at us.
sunday josh and i did more grilling, i made asparagus on the grill with skewers - salt, pepper & olive oil, it was delicious and we had roasted garlic marinated chicken that was super moist.
oh and on saturday the doorbell rings around like 1pm or so and Josh goes to get it and disappears for like 5 minutes so I go check it out and then in the driveway out the sliding door I see a bunch of packages laid out on the driveway of meat! and I look out the front yard and a guy is selling meat door-to-door! the magazine sales have been around.. but meat?! and it was 85 and he was laying it out on our driveway.. hrmm not so fresh then? but i hear it’s good meat.
now playing: the prestige
Lots to catch up on…
Went to Philly to visit Tracey for our birthday. I hope to have photos posted by end of day today in the photo gallery link on the right side there… it was really fun even though it was FREEZING! 36 degrees at night!! so i was all bundled up in sweaters, hoodies, scarfs, pea coat all on top of each other Her kitten, Voltaire is super cute and wild. Next time i visit i’m going to try to make it in a warmer time of year. We went to 2 H&M stores there within a block of each other and there was no 2 hour line to get in, like the Pasadena and LA stores!
Thanksgiving was yummy. Charlie came by and we made just enough food. It seems a 14 lb turkey takes longer than 3 hours like all the recipes say, but we only ended up eating the breasts which reached 165 degrees. The cooking at start of day didn’t go so well with burnt cranberry sauce (forgot about it on the stove) and failed pie crusts. So after frequent trips to Albertson’s (I was on a first name basis with the cashiers by this point) for crisco, then more cranberries, then potatoes, we were all good. I’ll post pics later tonight as well.
Damien developed some sort of cough last night. Sounds like a heavy wheezing choke but he makes no progress.. it comes and goes as coughing fits. He did it again this morning and woke me up scared that he was choking to death. I’m gonna try to take him to the vet tomorrow when maybe Josh can help me. That’s another thing, when he gets excited it sets him off into a coughing fit.. or when he tries to bark 
which is often.
now playing: Say Anything - Chia-Like, I Shall Grow
Long time no post!
There was a state of emergency declared in Buffalo last weekend due to the early 2 feet of heavy wet snow.. it pretty much wrecked a LOT of Buffalo’s trees. And power was out for 450,000 people.. trees took the power lines/cable lines/phone lines down. I think they got all the power back though within 5 days. Parents are all good now, but a lot of the trees are broken hopefully the trees survive and next spring bounce back.
Having more of a fall here in LA than in Buffalo.. well northern LA all the trees up here are changing colors
Been busy doing genealogy research. I’m on some kind of history kick.. Ancestry.com is great.
oh and i made the BEST focaccia yesterday.. i’m talking Maria’s Italian Kitchen focaccia… sooooo good! This ties in with the ancestry.com thing… my grandma’s maiden name means “cook’s apprentice” in Polish. 
