Giving thanks

Hey, it's been a while since I posted! The week was as crazy as I expected, and it's not going to stop until December 12. At least I was able to give myself a break for Thanksgiving! We had 9 people over, including Syl from Boston and Jerry and Winnie from Davis. It was really awesome to see them because I hadn't seen Syl in a year and Jerry and Winnie since we left Davis in August. Nick and I used to see them almost every week for dinner!

We were also joined by close friends from the Nicholas school and we crowded around the table eating the delicious turkey that Nick made. He worked his ass off the night before and the meat came out moist and nicely flavored. Yay for Alton Brown! He made some great gravy, too. To go with the turkey, I made (with lots of help):

Green bean casserole
Buttermilk caramelized-shallot mashed potatoes
Cornbread stuffing (I made the cornbread from scratch the day before)
Golden-crusted brussel spouts
and Emily made sweet potatoes, and two pies: pumpkin and apple
and Robyn made apple crisp

Pictures from Thanksgiving here.

After dinner we were cleaned out of everything but turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. We played some Wii and Uno and called it a night at around 11ish. It was a really nice way to have our first Thanksgiving away from home.

The night before we had dinner at Rockwood Filling Station. Lyndsay, if you're reading this, the ham and egg pizza with the fried farm egg on top was as delicious as it sounded. I was let down again by their spinach salad, but I've only got one more salad to go before I write off their salads completely.


Yesterday we took Syl to the taco stand La Vaquita, with the cow on top. She had two tacos, I had two tacos and a tamale, and Nick had a burrito. The tamale was my favorite thing, and came wrapped in a banana leaf. It really reminded me of my favorite Vietnamese dish that's also wrapped in banana leaves. Afterward we went to Target, had gelato at Francesca's and checked out the cute stores on Ninth Street. Nick said one store reminded him of Nucleus in Alhambra.

We came back and I got to watch the No Reservations episode on Hawaii that I had been wanting to see for the last 8 months. It was exciting because he went to a couple places that we went to when we were there. Then Nick and I made curry turkey pot pie as our first turkey leftover remake and it was delicious. After dinner and watching Transformers, I packed Syl a travel bento.

It had a mini bagel with cream cheese, leftover turkey meat, mini cucumber slices, fresh-baked (by Nick) banana nut bread, roasted red pepper hummus, and an almond-raspberry jam cookie from Francesca's.


Here's to another 10 years of friendship, Sylvia!


Did you notice I'm wearing my old SGHS sweatshirt??