Popcorn, Santa, and That Scary Place Called Tomorrow

I'm in a weird place in life, trapped somewhere between being a child and an adult.  I'm just beginning to break out on my own, taking care of myself and my necessities, and it's making me miss my childhood.

This weird nostalgia started on this very day, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, last year

Hicksville is kind of an odd town.  It's pretty big so people don't know each other and there are no town issues or meetings.  Not really a big sense of community.  But they still have a few standing tradition, one of which, in my mind, stands out amongst all others.

Every year on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, firefighters get on their firetrucks with one guy dressed as Santa, and they ride through the streets with their sirens blaring, and they throw popcorn balls to all of the people who come and stand out on their lawns.

It's kind of silly really, and not all that thrilling when you think about it.  I don't remember being very excited about it when I was a kid.  But last year I was overjoyed.  In years past I had already been back in Syracuse by Sunday afternoon, so I had missed the tradition for a while.  Plus I was approaching the end of my college career and worrying about what I was going to do after graduation.  I think I was just so desperate to grasp on to some sense of stability and protection, and this little piece of my childhood was exactly that.

I was out there dancing on the lawn, cheering, and waving...basically making a fool out of myself to guys I probably went to high school with.  But I didn't care.  At that moment I was in bliss.

A year has gone by, and in that time I've graduated, interviewed, worked, and become an AmeriCorps.  And now I'm kind of feeling like I was this time last year: terrified because I have no idea what's next.  Grad school is hard to apply for when you aren't 100% sure about your direction.  The job market is "eh" at best.  There is so much I want to do and I don't know how to go about it.

But things like Popcorn Ball Sunday remind me that it's okay.  It's all going to work out.  It's the little things like that one day a year when Santa hurls a sweet treat at year that really matter.

Home Grown

We've really been trying to get out and pick some fresh fruits, and we finally got around to it! Unfortunately, Richard couldn't get away from the office, but last week Katie, Aaron and I ventured out East in the search of some YUMMY.

We actually intended to go apple picking, and while the apple season does extend into October, it seems that we missed the boat on that one. We wound up a place that had all kind of different fruit trees. Their deal was that you pay a ten dollar deposit to go into the orchard with a bag, and then pick to your heart's content. Fruit is one dollar per pound. If you pick less than ten pounds, you're SOL; if you pick more, you pay the difference.

We had an amazing time going up and down the rows, exploring the trees. It was mostly peaches, although we did encounter a few other fruits. It was so much fun climbing and picking and skipping around. We retrieved nine or so pounds of peaches, plus a few apples and nectarines, and the lady threw in a few more to round us out at just over ten pounds, which seems like an incredible deal to me.

We left there on the search for a farm that advertised garlic. We found it, and soon realized that the garlic was actually a one weekend festival, but we were still able to take this lovely picture:

We were on the lookout for goat cheese. Katie insisted that there was a roadside stand that boasted great goat cheese, but we never found it. Instead, we fell upon Pindar wineries. I expected it to be on the pricey side, but their tasting was actually very reasonable. For $4 you are able to select up to five wines, and for $5 you get a package of Carr Table Water Crackers and cheese. Since we couldn't find the cheese stand, Katie asked for a sun-dried tomato basil goat cheese to accompany our wine, and it was a very excellent choice.  The cheese and crackers were delicious, and trying all of the different wines was a lot of wine.  We even got coupons for a free tasting at Duck Walk, another vineyard in the area.

It really was an incredible day.  I tend to forget that I live in such an amazing place, and it's good to be reminded that I need to appreciate it and take advantage of it.

Yuppie in Training

With a sore throat and a bag full of freshly picked peaches, I had two missions Tuesday night: make a soup and a peach crumble.

I fully succeeded in both, all while making myself and my roomies the happiest little AmeriCorps!

I, logically, started off with the soup. I recipe called for more veggie stock than I had, so I improvised and split the difference with water and champagne. With the combination of the bubbly and the wine that the recipe called for, it came out tasty pretty wine-y, which Richard and I both liked, but putting in the right amount of stock and switching out the Riesling I used for a red or a dryer white are both experiments I plan to try.

I found that the pepper I used season it kind of sank to the bottom, so some spoonfuls for really popping while others weren’t. I don’t know what to do about that, but if you have some pepper secrets, please share!

I would’ve liked to have broiled the bread and cheese right on the soup, but we don’t have good bowls, so I toasted up some baguette with a blend of mozzarella, provolone, and parmesan.

The recipe said that the soup keeps really well, and  the bowl I had for lunch yesterday certainly was delicious.

After dinner, I got started with out peaches. I didn’t want to do a traditional peach cobbler because I wanted a crumble more than a crust. I’m pretty certain I made the right decision because I’ve heard nothing but rave reviews thus far.

I was really afraid that our wonky oven was totally going to ruin it by burning some parts and leaving others uncooked, but it came out as close to perfect as I could hope for.  The edges are all crispy and caramelized, the crumble is light and well-spiced, and the peaches are juicy and delicious!

While I am very proud of my two wonderful creations, I am fairly certain that my favorite part of the night is that I did it all in a little dress with a cocktail in hand.  I was one happy domestic goddess!

Cloudy With a Chance of Fresh Produce

This morning Christine, the Director of Family Services, called me to let me know that she had brought in a bag of fruits and veggies that were free for the taking, and of course I immediately ran down the stairs to battle it out with Beth and Richard over who would get the parsnips and apples. The selection was really beautiful, made even more so, I'm sure, by the simple fact that it was all locally grown, and I'm crazy about that right now.

I settled for this gorgeous pair of pears:

I call them Lucy and Fred.

Just a few hours later, Christine called again to let me know that the soup kitchen by us had a large abundance of veggies that they wanted us to help take off of their hands. So Aaron and I went over and ended up with a big basket of yellow and green zucchinis, and a bag of tomatoes and eggplants.

They don’t have names, but I am so super excited for zucchini fries and eggplant parm!

Side note, it is also raining walnuts at the office, but I don’t know if they are really edible. They just make crazy thunking noises when they fall to the ground every time the wind blows, which, right now, is just about always.

It's like a violent game of dodge ball out there!

Yummm

As you may or may not know, I am secretly a very domestic person, and my inner hostess with the mostest has been itching to come out.  Our kitchen may be tiny and our oven may have been designed for Thumbelina, but they do the trick.  We're always cooking up something yummy, and my new goal is to always have fresh baked goods in the house.

Currently we have pumpkin pie...

And it is super delicious!

How did we end up with pumpkin pie?  Well yesterday I pulled up to the house just as Richard was leaving.  He told me he was going to the duck pond down the road and invited me to go with him.  The weather was nice, so I agreed.  And as we sat by the water, looking at the mallards and the beautiful red leaves, he suddenly announced that he wanted pumpkin pie.  He meant that we should buy a pie from one of the many roadside stands out here, but I thought he wanted to bake one, and I promptly agreed.  It took some convincing, but we drove to the grocery store and picked up all of the ingredients.  The process got a little hairy because our oven is pretty hoopty, but in the end it was quite delicious.  And it certainly put us all in a wonderful autumn mood.

If you have any good recipes for baked goods, particularly ones involving apples or pumpkin, let me know!

Rain, Rain, Go AWAY!

In my head, I've always really liked Autumn. It's cool and crisp, and there are apples and pumpkins everywhere, and people wear cute scarves and sweaters and boots. But when it comes down to it, I'm not actually all that much a fan of September through Novemeber. And today I figured out why. Because, while I love the golden rust of an idealized New York Autumn, when you look outside my window, this is actually what you see:

A lovely shade of gray that can really only be described as MEH

So, I decided to do the only happy thing I could think of and make a yummy autumn lunch.

Aaron and I made some grilled cheese with cheddar, mozzerella, and smoked turkey.  We ran out of hummus, so I added a little bit of peanut butter to some Trader Joe's Asian Style Spicy Peanut Vinagrette, just to thicken it up, to make a zippy dip for our pita chips.  Topped it off with some Cambell's creamy tomato soup.

It's still pretty gross out, but I feel like I can get through all of this boring data input with all of that yummy in my tummy.

Mystery Meat

My dad has a few friends who are Burmese, one of whom recently had a daughter. In their tradition, you celebrate 100 days after birth with a feast. So this party of sorts was at a Chinese restaurant, which sounds awesome because who wouldn't want nine courses of General Tso's yumyums? But hold on to your taste buds, this was real Chinese food. None of the made up, American, not even remotely Chinese in nature, Chinese food. Nope, this was the real deal.

We started of with a platter, which I neglected to take a picture of because I was just so enthralled. There were beef ribs, calimari, and duck, all of which was pretty harmless. But there was also duck tongue. Tongue! And there were probably at least 30 on our platter, and multiply that times every table at the party...well, that answer begs the question my Dad so artfully asked. How many ducks are we eating?!

(Two duck tongues!  Actually they tasted fine, but there isn't a lot of meat on there.)

But the fun doesn't stop there!  Also on this platter were these mystery orange things.  Perhaps octupus.  No one was really all that sure.

(Aakash bravely approached the orange stuff.)

Okay course two.  Much tamer, and much more delicious!  Little balls of fried dough with condensed milk inside, candied pecans, broccoli, and shrimp.  It was all quite good, except for the fact that the shrimp was drenched in this mayo-based sauce.  Like, you could tell you were eating a whole lot of mayo.  That made me squick out a little.  Okay, a lot.  So, needless to say, tht shrimp did not get eaten by me.

Course three- soup!  It was quite good, although I don't actually know what it was.  I do know that someone at the table put a little bit of red wine vinegar and Johnny Walker Black in the cup to bring out the flavor of the seafood.  

(Good to the last drop!)

Course four was perhaps my favorite of the night.  Why?  Because no one knew what it was.  No one!  Even the wait staff just shurgged and said "Seafood?"

(In the end we decided that it may or may not have been conch and abalone.)

The fifth course, lobster, was very artfully displayed.  With both the lobster head and tail on the plate, it represented good luck from head to toe for the baby.

This was followed by a sixth course of chicken and a seventh course of fish, also featuring the heads and tails.  I have the pictures, but they're kind of creepy, so I'll refrain from posting them.

Then came the tame stuff.  Courses eight and nine were lo mein and fried rice with nuts and raisins, followed by a fruit platter and a sweet soup of black bean and tapioca, making it a grand total of eleven!

But the fun didn't stop there!  Someone at the table put in an order for the chef's specialty.  And I was very glad they did.  Out came chicken wings stuffed with sticky rice with a side of Sriracha mixed with something sweet.  So good!

(YUM!)

All in all, it was a very interesting night.  I tried a whole lot of new things and had a lot of fun doing it.  Certainly a culinary adventure worth having.

I leave you with the quote of the evening:

Me: I work for Habitat for Humanity

Random Guy: Oh cool, you work with ducks!

And we're off!

Well...we're officially AmeriCorps!

On Saturday we all finally met each other.  Richard (Family Services) and I went to college together and know each other from Alpha Phi Omega.  Aaron (VISTA for Green Building) is from Arizona and actually went to summer camp for a few years with a friend of mine from grade school.  Katie (Construction) just finished a year of NCCC based out of Boulder, Colorado.  And..we're all absolutely fabulous!

On Saturday we all had dinner at the local Friendly's, and then came back to the house for conversation and a bottle of Summer Blush from Pindar, one of the local wineries.  The main conclusion was that we're all pretty chill people who seem to be on the same wavelength, which will definitely make living together a lot better.

Yesterday I moved into the house, for the week at least.  Aaron and I did some groceries, and when Richard and Katie came home, we all made dinner.  We had some really delicious homemade pizza with a great salad.  I'm really excited that, to some extent, we're all foodies.  We agreed that we'd love to have group dinners at least a few times a week.  The cooking is sure to be exciting!

Today was our first day in the office, and we (Richard, Katie, and I) spent the entire time filling out paperwork with Kathy while Aaron just looked on and laughed.  You wouldn't think that there would be such a drastic difference between the AmeriCorps programs, but Aaron is a VISTA and had significantly less paperwork, the majority of which was done online.   But we did get manage to get through it, and I think being stuck together in the conference room was a kind of bonding experience.