Are we moved in yet?

So we moved into this place in July or so. Its mid-November now and no, we are not moved in. But, in an attempt to have a record number of people over for Thanksgiving we are trying to right those last few trouble spots. I'm happy to announce that every panel that is supposed to be on Mark's wall in the studio is now in place (course the one for the ceiling is still, well, not up there.)

I tried to make some persimmon fudge today but it may end up being persimmon pudding (or maybe more of a sauce). Oh well. Fudge is hard to make right? Its like making candy.

Well there is always a bright side. Last week we had to have the house tented. We had to stay out of the building for 2 days and then they didn't call the gas company to come turn that back on... etc. Fortunately for everyone we did get someone to come out this weekend and now we can shower again ;).

I hope everyone has some enjoyable plans for Thanksgiving. I'll be sure to take some pictures of the festivities here. Have a great short week!

Trick or Bike!

Evening kids. I managed to celebrate Halloween this year on the actual date. Mark and I went to the local pumpkin patch where I managed to spend $64 on 4 pumpkins. Oops. When we got home we discovered that two of them were massive. They didn't look that big when they were all lined up and the pumpkin patch people picked them up and put them in our car. We spent a long night carving them (see picture) and on Halloween managed to get trick-or-treaters. There was a tiny cow and a large banana, some princesses and a cowgirl and then some kind of weirdly half-assed teenage costumes.

Woo hoo!

Today I finally committed to a large transportation-related purchase and bought a bike. I tested out like five different ones and (shockingly) bought the most expensive one. It's my self birthday present (a tradition I started last year when I bought myself a watch). The bike is kind of really comfortable and I got a basket and a lock and a helmet. Its pretty rad. Here's hoping I actually ride it around :).

Back from Italy

We got back from Italy yesterday and I think I've spent ALL DAY putting together a somewhat manageable set of photos. It was a crazy trip and jam packed with sightseeing. I've heavily captioned the photos so I wont go into too much detail.

Now that I can stop obsessing about planning a trip to Rome maybe I can get back to all those other projects I was intending on doing/sharing with you all. Either way its back to work in the morning. Weird.

Termites and Chicken

No photo today, for obvious reasons.

Last night we discovered termites in our bathroom. Yuck. I won't get into details but someone is coming out on Monday to look into it. I actually felt a little sorry for the things. They don't move very fast, like all the other bugs in our house, and they are cutely social. Then I sprayed eco-friendly bug killer on them and went to bed (on the other side of the room).

On a more positive note, I saw something online about Tyson donating 100 pounds of chicken per commenter on their blog to SF Bay Area food banks up to 200,000 pounds. That's a lot of chicken! I'd encourage anyone with a moment to make a comment. When I checked they were only up to 475 or so comments (they need 2,000 to donate the full amount). Spread the word!

Night.

Barbecue Festival

Last Sunday I went to my first ever barbecue festival. It was LA's first so I didn't expect the kind of showing that you see on the food network, but I was still excited.

The festival was in a section of the parking lot next to the Santa Monica Pier and there were vendors from around LA as well as Texas and Missouri. Mark and I tried almost all of them.

There was beef brisket, pork sausage, St. Louis style ribs, baby back ribs, macaroni and cheese, beans and, of course, white bread.

Truth be told, the only really good barbecue was from a place in Venice called Baby Blues Barbecue. Maybe their proximity helped, but now I'm eager to try the actual establishment.

It being LA, there were cupcakes too. Not just any cupcakes, these were voted best cupcakes of 2008 (in LA by gosh knows who). Regardless, it was still worth a try and they were super cute. By the time I got to desert they only had pink velvet left with a vanilla bean frosting. It was pretty good. The cupcake itself had a strangely moist consistency. Course, as I love strangely moist things, I enjoyed it.

Cookie Competition

Last week my work had its summer picnic at the Hollywood Bowl. We had a picnic dinner follows by a concert by Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and the LA Philharmonic.


As part of the festivities someone decided there should be an earth friendly cookie competition. I took this as an opportunity to bake and then get rid of the bounty... because otherwise very unhealthy things would happen. So in order to be REALLY competitive I decided to make a test batch using as many organic ingredients as I could get my overspending hands on (see picture).

The cookies turned out pretty good but they were a little salty and I was worried that chocolate chip cookies would be too boring. I sent the cookies off with Mark to his work and tried again. Cue the lemon ginger shortbread (well sort of) cookies. These were fun to make because I've never tried to make shortbread before (or anything with this much butter). As you can see, they spread into MASSIVE cookies but I thought they were pretty good.


Unfortunately I still didn't get a prize in the cookie competition as I was beat out by "carbon neutral" chocolate peanut butter oat cookies, lemon bars and someone else who made two batches (chocolate chip almond and baklava). Oh well. The leftovers went back to Mark's work and they liked them so much they told Mark I was a keeper (duh).

Labor Day Weekend

It's just the start of the weekend but I'm exhausted. Saturday morning I went hiking with my friends Vanessa and Kimberley on a trail near where I live. It was a nice trail with the usual LA-ites walking their dogs. It was nice to get out "locally" though and explore this still relatively new hood. 

Saturday was also the first day of USC's football season. Mark and I had a couple of people over to watch it (the game was in Virginia) and made these hurricanes as our friend Travis was going to go straight from our house to the airport in order to fly INTO New Orleans. Needless to say the hurricanes were very very strong (they taste like hawaiian punch, I highly recommend them). 

After all that excitement I found myself watching "Raising Helen" on cable and actually knitting. (For something I want to learn how to do well I practice very infrequently.) Anyways I am working on a ribbed scarf. It's not rocket science but at least the yarn feels nice. The picture shows my progress to date. I am still on the first ball of yarn. Sigh.

Fig Jam

Given the name of the blog I figured a fig recipe would be the right place to start. I got this recipe from epicurious and followed some of the recommendations to add a cinnamon stick and some fresh ginger. I also used some green figs (not sure exactly what they were) instead of just the black mission figs. I liked the jam a whole lot and am going to bring some into work to see if anyone else does (since it only lasts a month and I can't stand the thought of fig products going bad). So there you go.