Pics! Finally!

Hey-O! A little garden work finally this weekend and I took pictures!!!

xo

Hi!

A quick post, just to say all is well in Alabamie...Tropical Storm Lee gave us about 68 inches of much needed rain on Monday! Not great weather for a Labor Day BBQ, but we appreciated it nonetheless since we only got an inch of rain in all of August! The garden is looking quite sated and lush. It's just herbs, peppers, and eggplants right now. Hopefully this weekend it will be nice weather to actually get some work done. It's crazy that just last week we had 100 degree weather and now it is a cool 75 degrees with no humidity. Fall is upon us!! Let's hope anyhow!! I'm ready for jeans, cooking up soups, and wearing down booties around the house. The whole town seems to be in happier spirits in general due to the weather! I guess living with 4 months of unbearable weather makes you relish a single day of mild temperature with childish giddiness...

Milder temperatures means it's time to start brewing beer again! Vija is in the market for a bike and we'll try to visit a bike mechanic in Birmingham this weekend and hit up some other big city spots - Alabrew, the organic market, a coffee shop that knows its way around a soy latte, etc...can't wait!

Anyhow, just wanted to let you know that although quiet on the blog, things are going quite well in general, just very busy - football has started up again (spicy and sweet wings and mac n cheese at the Alcove last week (which has newly expanded to the shop next door), we can only hope the same this week for the away game at Penn State!), I have been working a lot on the lab migration to our upstairs lab of awesomeness (we have windows! I should take pics!), having Vija here in the south has been great fun, and having Dan back in the house ain't all that bad either!! Hannah is still strutting her cuteness in exchange for gobs of peanut butter. Hopefully we'll do some picture worthy things this week and I'll upload those...

xo

Yikes, where have we been?!?!?

A long time comin'!

Tomorrow is GAME DAY!!!!  Football season is finally here!  Dan and I are incredibly excited...who knew we would take to Alabama football like a fish to water?  Tomorrow we plan on biking down to the quad with Vija, who arrived just last week, to show her the spectacle of Game Day, then biking to The Alcove, which will be open at 10:30 am for the 11:21am kickoff game!  They will have free food as they did last year and we are uber excited about this!

Anyhow, I am lagging in the picture department I know, here are a few - it's so dang hot outside to work on the garden all that much, and tomorrow Tropical Storm Lee will be giving us a few inches of rain if all goes well!! We need it desperately!!

xo

ct

Yeeeeee Haaaaaawwww!!

Oh yeah...now we're talkin...

oh yes~~

Happy Birthday to my lil brother Anthony!!

loooooooong time no bloggy...

Sigh!! 10 whole days without a new post!  Things have been ramping up at work - Jon got back and we're slowly starting the new lab migration - we are moving upstairs to a corner lab with windows!!!  There is much to be done to clear out the lab of random lab equipment, and it needs a good cleaning!!  That in addition to the other labby things to do makes for a very busy time - but having more than enough work to do is always a good thing!!

Here are a couple pics of the garden..not much has changed.  The eggplants and peppers are going strong, the tomatoes are still giving me a little beaut here and there, but mostly "there" than "here".  It has been super hot up until this week - we're now finally getting regular thunderstorms barreling through which keeps me and the garden happy - hannah not so much...

I managed to put together the stereo system...i should take pictures to show that progression.  I hope to setup the speakers outdoors, but I haven't decided how I want that to look just yet...

only 8 more days until Dan comes home!! It's been so long but these last two weeks are starting to fly by finally!!  So great and I can't wait to say "one more week" tomorrow!!!  The night Dan comes in is the My Morning Jacket Show...I still haven't figured out how exactly I am going to juggle the show and picking up Dan...but something will work out.

Anyhow, I'm waiting for work on Dan's Matrix to finish up here at Tuscaloosa Toyota.  Then I'm off to get my AL driver's license so I can be an official Alabama Belle!!

xo, hopefully more garden work this weekend and pictures to boot!

mmm...food

Another simple but tasty recipe...I was craving tofu in a big way and wanted to stir fry something for dinner last night.  oyster sauce keeps indefinitely in the fridge btw, so pick it up at the asian market and go to town!  It does not in fact taste like "oysters" but it does have a deep salty flavor..  I got to use the eggplant, peppers, basil, jalapeno, and onion from the garden! Yippee!!  The Jalapeno and onion were last minute additions since they were laying around - added a nice kick to the dish!  I also didn't have low sodium soy sauce and kinda forgot about that - a little on the salty side so I probably should have cut down the soy sauce to maybe 1/4 cup, but when paired with rice it was still good.  Since the basil is plentiful around here I put in about a cup of fresh picked - that was super fun to not have to slice them or anything and just let the heat of the dish melt the basil flavor into everything else.  Definitely a keeper and one we'll have to try when Dan comes back (T-minus 18 days folks!!).  I think I also converted Mike to tofu finally - he had given up on it being flavorful and instead looked at it as a bland protein source, not so!!  I heart tofu, and the combination of pressing the liquid out and sauteing it in the wok beforehand made it nice and chewy with a slight crunch...

mmmm

xo

ct