goodbye to summer

Last day in town...surreal. I'm definitely ready for school to start. For most of the summer, I wanted more free time. Every week I worked I counted down the hours to weekend. But, after two weeks of no job and no responsibilities really, I'm starting to realize that, no, I actually do need something to do. I'm driving myself crazy. I hang out with friends, or think about maybe starting to pack, and then I just start baking. Its gotten slightly ridiculous. This whole week, in fact, I've made something that my sister and I devour while watching one of the movies from our summer list (every holiday/break, we make this super ambitious list of things to do, books to read, movies to watch, skills to acquire....rarely is it even close to accomplished.) 

So this is what I've been up to, in pictures. It basically involved combining eating with some other activity.

-Making shepherd's pie (brought on partly out of nostalgia for Shannon's and partly because Karen and I spent the afternoon speaking in our kind-of-passable British/New Zealand accents).

-Watching Inglourious Basterds and spending the rest of the week yelling "Au revoir, Shoshanna!" and "Ob-LIGE him!" at each other.

-Watching Rabbit Hole and then making blueberry crumble to cheer ourselves up.

-Finally reading all the books that have been sitting neglected on my dresser (whilst having a lovely cup of tea). Every time I read something by C.S. Lewis, I'm like "why don't I read this stuff all the time?"

-Watching our deck be torn down and then rebuilt. This is probably the trippiest thing that's ever occurred in our house. For a couple days, our second story door, that used to open onto the deck, opened  to thin air. Unfortunately, my mom decided that my sister and I were not responsible enough to handle dangling ourselves out the door and taking silly pictures, so she duct-taped it shut. 

-And my crowning achievement, beignets de tomates vertes avec fromage du chevre, also known as fried green tomatoes with goat cheese. SO GOOD. This is pretty much the one and only part of Southern cuisine I've fallen in love with. And I'm getting all fancy now and Frenchifying them after a visit to South City Kitchen in Atlanta, which does the whole upscale-Southern food thing with aplomb. 

My little brother and I had a very pleasant lunch/afternoon snack of wilted spinach, fried green tomatoes, more goat cheese, and apples. 

And now, I'm getting back into the college swing of things by catching up on work in Starbucks and seeing my friends for the last time in a while.

Its odd, thinking back to this time a year ago. Last year, leaving meant having to start over. It was an exciting yet completely terrifying experience. Everyone I met, I would think, "Will we end up friends? What will you mean to me? How will you fit into my life, or I into yours?" Everything was fast. This year, I'm not heading off, I'm coming home. 

This isn't how I planned my summer to be, but I ended up enjoying it. Or most of it, anyway. A big thank you to all my hometown friends on that account. Thank you for the support, the love, the encouragement, the crazy random fun, and the endless photos. 

That being said, I'm beyond excited to see all my Wheaties again. I've missed you guys more than I thought possible. And oh my gosh thank you for all the letters! I absolutely love getting mail, and this:

made my day every time a letter/package/postcard arrived.

I don't know what's going to happen blog-wise. The key ingredient for this was free time (which, even without a full time job, is going to be thin on the ground in college). Also, the fact that most of the people who read this go to Wheaton makes it a little redundant. It's been fun though. And hopefully sharpened my photography/writing skills a little. So...we'll see. Thanks to everyone for reading. 

Seeing as I leave first thing tomorrow, I should probably start packing now.

still i am not from barcelona...

A lovely weekend filled with:

-trying new Middle Eastern restaurants

-celebrating birthdays

-reunions with long-lost (well, for two months anyway) friends

-sleeping in (no more seven am wake-up call!)

-the wonderful feeling that is having your hair newly cut

-trying to sort through the piles of new music I've accumulated

-kind of sort of studying for my history final
-going to a completely adorable wedding for one of my childhood friends

-making stuff for my room next year

-sending little sister and brother, senior and freshman respectively, off to high school

-Fat Phoebe parties

I don't remember where I heard/read the idea, but I think the basic idea was that these girls used to know someone named Phoebe who was like manic-depressive or something and would throw parties with tons of champagne and chocolate when she was in a down cycle (which was apparently a lot), and they continued the tradition by throwing them for friends who were having a rough time. 

Well, my sister, paradoxical overacheiver and procrastinator that she is, still wasn't done with her summer reading. So I stayed up to keep her company and threw this together,

because truffles and chocolate covered strawberries make even annotating All the King's Men bearable.

Listening to: King of Spain--The Tallest Man on Earth

We Turn it Up--Oh Land

Watching: this.

Reading: Franny & Zooey. Again. I should really be working on the stack I collected over freshmen year...

decisions are best made before midnight

First off:

After thirty five days, hours spent with our fabulous insurance agent Angeline and even more hours spent with their hack-job "insurance company", several delays on the body work, and countless "not yet" responses to the Anderson family question of the summer "Is the car fixed yet?"...

MY CAR IS BACK.

We got the call last night, I decided this warranted some sort of little celebration. A celebration in the form of chocolate ganache cupcakes with sea salt caramel and chocolate frosting. 

These things take absolutely forever to make. Its one of those deals where you break out the baking sheet at around eight o' clock, figuring it'll be an hour, tops. Then you start reading the recipe (http://foodgawker.com/favorites/lca925/ , first recipe after the jump) which includes instructions like "pour in two shots of espresso" (this means, of course, you must make espresso), "make caramel" or "let frosting chill for two hours". And so at eleven, when everything's baked and made, it seems silly to have spent all that time and have the frosting look bad.

That's when the pastry bag comes out. Best thing my mom has ever bought me.

Fair warning, these things are addictive. And terrible. They are essentially a hodge-podge of things that are bad for you (coffee, butter, sugar) and things that are worse (heavy cream, caramel, vast quantities of chocolate) consolidated into one tiny cupcake. But since its all from scratch, its not processed (good!). So it all sort of evens out.
And they are by far the best cupcakes I've ever made/had. Even beating out NYC spring break three-quarter pound Oreo cupcakes.

Listening to: Rumour Has It, ADELE

santa barbara

words cannot express how much i love santa barbara. in my mind, it is the perfect town. it even has perfect weather. and its a beach town curled up beneath the mountains, a town where the beach is always empty. when we were little, my grandpa told us that east beach's secret name was 'money beach'. we would go out  really early in the morning since that's when wreckage and treasure from ships would wash up. surprised but glad that no one else seemed to know about this magical stretch of real estate, we ran through the waves, picking up quarters that must have just rolled in. Years later, of course, we realized it was my grandpa throwing coins into the wind ahead of us, but that beach still feels magic to me. I feel completely at peace. Diving into the ice cold waves, I feel like I could spend forever here.

Listening to: my "California Dreamin'" playlist, of course!
California--Phantom Planet
California Girls--Beach Boys
California English--Vampire Weekend
Earthquakes & Sharks--Brandtson
Surfin' USA--Beach Boys
Dani California--Red Hot Chili Peppers
The Beach--All Time Low
Californication--Red Hot Chili Peppers
Mansard Roof--Vampire Weekend
Catch a Wave--Beach Boys
Miss California--Jack's Mannequin
California Dreamin' --Mamas and the Papas
Good Vibrations--Beach Boys

la granja/la playa

First off, getting to South Dakota is not easy. Delta doesn’t fly there directly, and the Mississippi river floods surround the nearby airports. Figure about a day each way for travel. We went up to visit my grandma, who moved to the small (even by Dakota standards) town of Vermillion. As usual, it was a tiring trip. My grandma had lots of projects for us to work on when we got there. And when I say ‘when we got there’, I mean she gave us jobs when we finally got in at midnight (a couple touristy detours are to blame). But I think she was happy we were there and that was the point anyhow. And spending the fourth in the heartland is always fun.

Fourth fireworks

Yankton Dam

prairie dog

The World's Only Corn palace

 

Our farm

My little brother's a farmer

And then the travel day from hell started. I’ve had longer flights, longer drives, worse airport experiences, but something about this day just whacked me over the head. We left Vermillion at eight AM, drove through a still-flooded Iowa to get to the Omaha airport (if there is a more depressing place than the Omaha airport on a cloudy day…), barely made our flight since it had changed gates and we were now on an RJ (read: tiny plane that can’t handle turbulence), and flew two hours to Salt Lake City. This at least was a pleasant change. You fly straight into the mountains, the airport is full of windows and funky restaurants, and all the people seem healthy and happy, like they mountain biked there or something. But the altitude gives me a pressure headache. So already sick, I flew another ninety minutes to LAX and by the time we finally landed I couldn’t even hear I was so stuffed up.

Normally, I hateee LAX. And LA, really. You get off the plane and immediately feel like a schmuck compared to all the beautiful, perfectly maintained people and boring compared to all the oddballs. You are very aware of your plane hair and unstylish outfit and berate yourself for wearing glasses. Today, however, the entire terminal was under construction. We walked off the plane amidst guys on scaffolding hammering and drilling—definitely a work zone. I’m still not convinced the pilot didn’t drop us off at the wrong gate. So add that slightly more surreal arrival, factor in the climate shock and trying to locate our luggage and you have my state of mind. And then we shuttled to the rental car place and drove three hours up to Santa Barbara.

Yeah, this is in fact why more people don’t try and combine the west coast and the Midwest in their travel itineraries.

Anyhow. Onto my favorite town on the planet.

h a p p y f a t h e r ' s d a y

here's to my dad. to the brilliant, incredibly driven, hardworking father who raised me to be the person I am today. Who spent countless hours playing my favorite games.

Who taught me to love reading and made up silly stories for bathtime. Who tried to teach us "farm life" even out in the suburbs.

Who worked very long hours but never made us feel like he didn't care. Who always had time to explain something to his not-very-tech-savvy daughter. Who passed down his love of music. Who made us stick to very strict itineraries on family vacations but always let us stop for ice cream.

 happy father's day, dad. thanks for everything.

naturally, children of the nineties were the original hipsters.

working on my father's day present sent me through dozens of albums of old family photos. a common theme emerged: my sister and I saying things like "oh, that's cute!" or "where did that go?", sometimes about my mom's clothes but more often than not about our own. which brings me to my point: if you were born in the late eighties or early nineties, being a hipster is simply a throwback to your childhood. (Hipster characteristics drawn largely from the blog www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com)

Being into vintage stuff (buttons, in this case).

Being up on current issues (extra points for reading foreign newspapers).

Ironic shades.

Taking posed-to-look-candid shots of someone looking off into the sunset.

Playing obscure instruments. ("It's a Cool Whip drum kit, you probably haven't heard of it.")

Ugly sweaters.

Styled-to-look-thrift-shop outfits.

Fixed gear bicycles. 

and finally....

Planking.