10 of 10

This has been the year of the wedding for me. It all wraps up this weekend when I attend the final wedding I've been invited to this year. And I will have made it to 7 of the 10 I was invited to attend. It's been an expensive adventure but I've gotten to go to some pretty cool places - Half Moon Bay CA, Oxford England, Seattle, a summer camp in CT, the Oregon coast and now NYC.

So I'm going to sit back on my bus ride down to New York and enjoy the fall colors, maybe pretend I'm on a leaf peeping tour and cross my fingers that this really is the last wedding this year. I love getting to celebrate with everyone but it adds up and I don't think I can afford another one this year!

Pumpkin Dinner - Afghan Inspired

There's an Afghan restaurant near me that makes a delicious pumpkin dish. Since I have some ripe sugar pumpkins in the yard now I thought I'd try to make this dish myself.


Pumpkin:
1 medium pumpkin
oil
6 cloves of garlic
2 cups of water
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 cup of brown sugar (could use less)
6 oz can tomato paste
1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
2 tablespoons freshly ground coriander seeds
1 teaspoon black pepper


peel the pumpkin and cut it into 1" cubes, put oil and garlic in a large deep frying pan and add pumpkin, let it cook until it starts to get soft, then add in all the other ingredients and mix together, cover and let simmer and cook together until pumpkin is fully cooked


Rice:
2 cups basmati
oil
1 chopped onion
5 cups of liquid (chicken stock and water)
carrots
rasins
cashews
masala
cumin
saffron


put some oil in a pot and cook the onion until they start to turn translucent, add the rice and liquid and all other ingredients to the pot and let it simmer until water is absorbed 


Yogurt Sauce:
1 small container plain yogurt
1-2 cloves fresh pressed garlic
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp dry mint leaves


mix all ingredients together
The fresh raw garlic will make a nice compliment to the sweetness of the pumpkin


I also sauteed some greens in garlic and had those with the pumpkin and rice. 

1/2 Marathon

I have now run a half marathon! The inaugural year for the Providence Rock 'n Roll half marathon. As off as it seems - since it rained the whole time - I don't think we could have had better weather. And thanks to the great support from running partners and cheering on the sidelines it was a successful race that finished with a performance by Sugar Ray (photo above) who was not worth standing around in the rain for... We ended up taking our wet selves and dry clothes to the Westin which was amazing, we were greeted with dry towels and bottles of water. At lunch I quickly realized what I will be in for the next few days as my legs were so weak it was hard to push my chair back from the table but well worth it. Maybe next time I'll try training...

garden green veggie pesto

I'm running my first 1/2 marathon tomorrow. With all the craziness being with my family I have not been training so I'm a bit nervous about being able to run these 13.1 miles tomorrow but for tonight we'll eat pasta. The friend that got me to sign up for the race has invited us over for a pasta party. Since I'm trying to eat as much as I can out of our yard while I'm here I've offered to bring a pesto from garden greens. 

I cooked chard and beet greens with olive oil and garlic, when they were nice and tender I put them in the food processor and added fresh basil from the yard, slivered almonds (because we had them on hand), salt and pepper. We put i t over fusillli  pasta and added a can of white beans.

uno wild wedding gift

This is a year of weddings, I've received 9 invitations this year. As friends and family are getting married after having lived on their own and are already combining households of kitchen supplies etc it has changed what people ask for - like cash for the honeymoon - which is fine, who needs more stuff!?! but to keep things interesting I like to give the happy couples something a little more personalized too but without adding to the burden of more stuff particularly that is unwanted.

One of the upcoming weddings I have is my cousin's. He and his fiance have a tradition of bringing Uno cards everywhere with them (last time they were here for a visit we played Uno at a bar). So I decided to use that as inspiration for a gift for them. Magnets seem like something everyone ends up using and they don't take up much space and don't have to match decor. I have a few decks of Uno cards around myself so I "sacrificed" an old deck to make magnets. 

I decided to use their wedding date, some wild cards and a draw two. I cut them to 1" squares to match glass tiles I had, used adhesive to attach them to the tiles, once they dried I attached a magnet to the back. 

day tripping

With this quick trip 'home' to Boston I'm trying to make the most of summer adventures. I have always wanted to take the ferry from Boston to Provincetown at the end of Cape Cod. You get a boat ride, you get to hang out in Proviencetown without the hassle of a car and traffic... so my friend, my partner & I hopped the boat and headed out. It was a perfect mini-vacation, no schedule, wandered around, ate, drank, waded in the water... even though it was just one day it really felt like vacation! What a perfect, beautiful day!

invasion of the squash

Oh how my garden has grown... I've missed my yard and watching my garden grow. It has exploded while I was gone. The 3 squash plants are creeping up toward the house and out trying to creep through the fence into the neighbors yard...

My heirloom beans are growing. I get so excited being able to walk outside, pick these beautiful pods and find these gorgeous beans inside! It's pretty incredible that one little bean planted in the ground, given water and sun has grown into an incredible bounty. I have two varieties and can't wait to eat them!

my dahlias are blooming, bright red and different shades of pink, think petals, thin petals... these strong, beautiful plants seem to have grown up overnight since they were barely breaking through the earth when I left.

And there are vegetables to be harvested, this beautiful cauliflower with a purple tinge, chard, beets, carrots, kohlrabi... what an incredible bounty to enjoy!