Carina**

I'm a big, fat liar because I wrote several blog posts while on the plane. Guess you will get more material after all. 

My younger, brilliant, beautiful (single!) recently-become Doctor sister is in the middle of her “pre-liminary” year. For those not familiar with the medical world, it’s like JD in the fist season of “Scrubs”. I don’t think she has a Turk-like counterpart, but she seems to be doing alright. They have her on a wicked schedule and her only vacation all year was for 1 week in September. She was heading to CA and called to see if I could “teach her how to camp.”

Top of Bishop's Peak

For the few readers who knew me from the pre-grad school years, pre-grad school Kelly knew camping involved a tent, dirt, and s’mores, but that was about it. That was the gym-rat Kelly who hated to get dirty, found most parts of nature threatening, and didn’t personally object to the idea of hiking... but never really found the point. 

And then we moved to SC. And I met a very friendly French girl who invited L and I camping (w/ 30 of her nearest and dearest) for her birthday. There was wine, champagne, lamb, and mushroom risotto. Yeah, we slept on the ground, but this whole “camping” thing wasn’t so bad. Within a year, I wanted to go on a short backpacking trip for my birthday. Since then, hiking and camping have become a regular and cherished part of my life. I don’t mind getting too dirty (trick is to bring lots of wipes and a bandana for the hair), and I find camping goes best near a wine region :) 

My parents keep asking L “who is this new person and what happened to the girl who made her parents feed her bran muffins with a fork because she wouldn’t dane to get her hands sticky?” Oh, parental units, if only you had seen me after 4 days of no showering in the Tetons...

Wow, we even pose the same....

The point is, although I love the outdoors now, asking me to “teach” someone to camp is a bit funny. But, my sister was apparently inspired by how happy I look in the photographs of my trips.

We met in SC and decided to drive down the coast to SD and my SoCal family. Although we intended to camp in 2 locations, delays on the 1 South led us to decide to stay in SLO for 2 nights instead of one. 

E was a trooper. Then again, when you end each afternoon w/ wine tasting and sleep on thermarests, it’s easy to be a trooper. We bought fresh veggies and local cheeses for dinner on the way south. We hiked Bishop’s Peak and stared in awe at the runners who breezed up the mountain while we were huffing and puffing along. 

We tasted lots of good, if IMO overpriced, wines. We laughed, listened to The Book of Mormon: The Musical, talked about the past, shared our fears, dreams, and hopes for the future. 

We also spent 3 mornings jump starting the rental car because the damn battery kept dying. But at this point it’s not a trip unless I have to call AAA for something.*

After several days of very close quarters I can honestly say that I love my sister to pieces and I”m the luckiest big sister in the whole world. She’s turned into a funny, quirky, brilliant, caring (did I mention single? :)) person that I am so lucky to have in my life.

Even better, she wants to go camping with L, mom and I! When I told L he grinned and commented, “oh boy, am I going to be able to get a word in all weekend? Maybe I should bring a book.”

*see ski trip 2008 when I locked the keys in the car in Strawberry, CA, and Climbing trip 2009 when I locked the keys in the trunk while camping/climbing in the middle of nowhere.

**Carina was one of my sister's nicknames

L'shanah Tovah

Wishing everyone who is celebrating a sweet and happy new year. Happy 5772!

It's a busy fall and I'll be posting only occasionally for the next few weeks. I promise a return to job market and dissertation stress- mediated with food and beer- before u know it.

Oh, and while I was gone I signed up for another 1/2 marathon.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

A Bountiful Harvest

This summer I tried growing veggies in the desert. Now, I have a black thumb. I suck at taking care of anything that cant' actually cry for food. But my mom and MIL encouraged me and after a trip to Home Depot in May, I was brining home some adorable little starter plants. I decided to try an AZ-friendly cherry tomato and an Anaheim pepper. Chilies grow well here in the Southwest so I figured it would probably have the best chance of making it.

After 4 months of daily watering. 1-2G per plant ... I have my bounty:

Not bad, eh?

Ok, now for a little perspective:

With even more perspective:

Yeah, that's 2 cherry tomatoes and 5 small peppers. Sigh. Next year I'm saving the money I spend on soil, pots, plants, and water and just buying fancy produce at Whole Paycheck instead.

Tasty, crispy, cheesy

Friends of ours from grad school used to talk about figs, stuffed with bleu cheese, and wrapped in prosciutto. We were inspired, but never got around to make them ourselves. Until this summer. And now we are hooked. 

These are very easy to put together and would make either an elegant appetizer for a dinner party, or, in our case, a great main course with wine, a baguette, and veg.

All you have to do is slice into the fig. Stuff with bleu cheese or roquefort. Wrap with 1/2 a piece of proscuitto. Skewer with a tooth pick or skewer on a long stick like we did. 

Bake at 400 for 15-20 min or until the prosciutto is crispy 

Enjoy!

Wedding Quilt

Good friends of mine got married a year and a half ago. It's only this summer that I've had the time to finally quilt and bind the quilt that is my wedding gift to them.

I used Elizabeth Fransson's Crazy 9 Patch Quilt Pattern and wanted to highlight this owl fabric from Alexander Henry's 2010 Haunted House Collection:

Considering they're both academics, I think the owls are apropos. 

Now, the couple this was intended for has excellent taste, but prefer a much more neutral color palette than I would have picked for them. Of course, they live (for the time being) in Berlin and Bejing, so going to the local fabric store and picking out fabric was impossible. In order to get colors in a palette they liked I decided to go with a pre-set color pack from fabricworm.

Elizabeth Fransson's patterns are outstanding. They are clearly written, well-illustrated with step-by-step photos, and modern and beautiful. Easy enough for a beginner/advanced beginner, but also interesting enough for a more advanced quilter who wanted to whip out something beautiful very quickly. I really need to buy her book. I screwed up on my cutting, and everything still turned out just fine. The quilt is backed with a grey cotton. I used beige thread on the front, blue variegated thread on the back, and stippling (machine quilting) to hold it all together.

Te amo - I love you in one of the many languages this couple can communicate in.

The pictures came out blurry b/c my hand was shaky. I should have used the real camera and not my iphone, but oh well.  I loved making this quilt and would definitely use the pattern again in the future. I was scared to quilt words into the quilt, but I like the finished effect. I actually intended to include "Te amo, te quiero, para siempre" (I love you, I love/want you, for always), but chickened out and just went with a simple "te amo".

I really enjoy quilting and wish I had the money to do it more often. I have dreams of making a queen-sized quilt for our bedroom. I also wish I had a slightly better sewing machine. I've got a ghettolicious hand-me-down $80 walmart special sewing machine. Truth be told, for most of the sewing I do (straight lines) it's fine. No bells or whistles, everything is manual, but it's still a lot of fun. It actually does a pretty good w/ the free motion quilting, especially on single pieces of fabric. It's alright going over a seam that joins two pieces fo fabric, but get to something thicker like a corner where 3 or more pieces join, and it's a little to thick for the machine to handle. I also have a good number of tension issues that I know to watch out for and so can deal with, but it means stopping and checking (and ripping) frequently. It'd be really nice to have a machine that I didn't need to adjust quite as often as I do this one. Well, maybe I'll keep my eyes open on craigslist....

It really is too bad my SIL's quilt store isn't in an easy commute. I think I'd be pretty happy with an academic "plan B" of helping her run the store, maybe specializing in yarn, and taking adjunct gigs when I was able to.

Not Too Pretty for Homework

This fall, JC Penny was selling a shirt that read "I'm too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me." My good friend from college, bridesmaid in my wedding, and titled by CBS "Woman's Rights Activist", Lauren Tood saw the shirt via FB and decided to do something about it. She went to change.org and started a petition to get JC Penny to remove this clearly sexist shirt that was promoting an extremely negative message to young men and women. After a promotion blitz via social media like FB and twitter, it went viral. And it worked! They're pulling the shirt!

Well, she's also become quite the celebrity: Today she was interviewed on the CBS Early Show. Check out the clip here!