Three Day Weekend

I love three day weekends. This past one was great - I was busy enough to feel like I wasn't wasting my days away but not so overwhelmed with things to do that my three days of freedom flew right by. Here are just a few highlights.

Saturday night I headed down to the suburbs of DC for a girls' night with my older sister Katie. The night consisted of football watching, high school reminiscences, YouTube videos and wine. I made decadent chocolate peanut butter brownies with bits of Reese's cups and peanut butter swirled throughout (my own secret recipe). Delicious! 

I was introduced to the amazingly talented PS 22 Chorus that night. This fifth grade chorus based in Staten Island covers popular songs and the adorable kids sing with attitude, style, and talent beyond their years. They cover everything from Coldplay to Lady Gaga to Phoenix to Jay Z. Here they do "Kids" by MGMT.

 

Mike and I had a date day on Sunday. We went to see Blue Valentine starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. It is definitely not a mainstream love story, or even really a love story for that matter. A bit dark, I actually would compare it to Revolutionary Road (though I liked Revolutionary Road a bit more). The performances were great, but the content and feel of the movie felt as bleak and depressing as the cloudy winter weather. 

Then we had some fun poking around at Ikea before dinner at The Fair Hill Inn in Elkton, MD. During my time as an undergraduate in a hospitality program, the chef and owner of the restaurant came to speak at one of my classes. I immediately fell in love with his philosophy about life and food, and was particularly marked by his unwillingness to settle for anything less than the pursuit of his wildest and most passionate of dreams. Even though his restaurant is a bit pricey, I was able to convince my parents to take me out there during one of their visits back in the day when I was still in school. And I've been dreaming about that meal ever since. 

Mike was thoughtful enough to treat me to dinner at Fair Hill as a Christmas present, but the threat of snow pushed our reservations back to this weekend. It was definitely worth the wait! We had delicious soups (mine was Creamy Leek, his was Roasted Squash, both topped with fresh seafood), succulent meat (moist Apple Butter Pork Medallions for me, unbelievably tender London Broil for Mike) and tasty vegetables (Cauliflower Risotto and Roasted Brussels Sprouts anyone?). Great Christmas gift!

Other than that, my weekend consisted of a little redecorating around the house, watching lots of Freaks and Geeks, and indulging myself in general laziness. Hope your weekend was just as splendidly slow!

Mike thought it'd be a good idea to try and stretch out his shirt by stuffing a pillow inside it. Digby thought it'd
be a good idea to use said pillow while inside of Mike's shirt as a bed.

I was quite impressed with my attempts at dressing like a girl on Sunday night. Unfortunately I hate
taking photos of myself so all I have to show for it is this shot of my tights and shoes.

All that remains of the chocolate peanut butter brownies... Sweets never last very long in my house, but at least I
used whole wheat flour in this one to increase the healthiness quotient.

Awesome mosaic-style candle holder I scored for a few bucks at Homegoods.

Finally found a place to display the awesome Beatles pint glasses my parents got us for Christmas. Mike and I are kind of notorious for breaking glasses, so we thought it'd be safest to use these as decoration rather than what they were originally intended for.

Gorgeous table runner I received as a Christmas present. Love the detail!

Love the details on this paper that I got from an import store at Rehoboth Beach last summer.

A Few Blogs of Note

I've been taking the time to do some work on my own blog recently, and in the process I can't help but find more and more blogs that I love. Whether for inspirational or networking purposes, I spend lots of time looking at what's out there and am constantly falling in love with new bloggers.

Some old, some new, these are just a sampling of the many blogs I have come to know and love. Some of these are blogger pros that I'm sure you've come across in your travels, but I think they're worthy of a little bit of recognition just in case you haven't checked their sites out yet. Others are yet-to-be-discovered by the masses, original and delightful blogs that you may not have yet heard of. What are some of your favorite blogs to visit?

Everyday Musings

Currently, my absolute favorite blog. Olivia is still a college student but an accomplished Etsy seller, an editor of online magazine Southern Flourish, and a talented photographer. Her posts are pretty photo-heavy and will have you envying her in no time. From snapshots taken of delicious meals enjoyed at Charleston restaurants to posts about her delightful circle of family and friends, Everyday Musings is a lifestyle blog that I wish I could emulate!

Simplicities & Serendipities

I came across this blog just a few days ago and the first post I saw was all about reader's quirks. She has a Quirk Project during which she has readers write about some of their most interesting and quirky of quirks. I immediately fell in love. She's got some great photos and is absolutely adorable - another great lifestyle blog!

Teacup Adventure 

If it wasn't for this girl, I probably wouldn't be blogging today. Sarah and I met in college and since then she's been a great source of inspiration and encouragement with both my blog and my Etsy shop. She's got a great heart, a delightfully one-of-a-kind aesthetic, and a whole lot of crafting talent. Expect to find a whole host of topics on TeacupAdventure, from accounts of her world travels to outfit posts, craft updates, and a whole lot more, Sarah's blog is completely original and totally true to this wonderful girl's lifestyle!

From Scratch

I came across the Red Velvet Girls early in my life as a blogger and was particularly drawn to Emma's mostly recipe blog. Although she peppers her endeavors in the kitchen with a few lifestyle posts and book reviews, the majority of her content is food-centric. She recently started her own catering company and has quite the sweet tooth! Expect to find beautiful photos of indulgent treats accompanied by the recipes so you can test them out for yourself!

Seasoned With Youth

Though I'm still exploring Seasoned With Youth, I can't help but love this blog. Samantha writes all about her explorations of the world. Currently traveling internationally, her posts abound with images, experiences, and more all about her travels from Italy to Morocco, Spain, Germany, and all around the U.S. too. Definitely a great read for those of you who are fettered down by certain restraints (ie. a job, money, kids, etc.) - if you can't travel, at least you can explore vicariously through Samantha!

The Flowerchild Dwelling

Kelly Ann is the lady behind The Flowerchild Dwelling and I absolutely adore her posts! From Music Mondays to Favorite Things Tuesday and Film Fridays, she covers a wide range of cultural topics and takes beautiful pictures to boot. Her blog has a very vintage- and DIY-feel to it that I love, and is truly a feast for the eyes and ears.

Barbecue Venison Meatballs

I don't eat too much meat, partially due to the fact that I'm poor and partially because I think minimizing our meat intake is a healthy trend for humans and the environment. Our diet has come to be nearly taken over by animal proteins and we don't need quite as much of it as most people think. And then when you consider the cruelty with which many animals raised for food are killed, the dismal and inhumane conditions in which they live, the waste they generate, the miles and miles their meat is then transported to reach your plate, the packaging that goes into preparing meat - it's just, to my eyes, a simpler and much healthier decision to minimize your meat intake.

I'll eat chicken from time to time and the occasional steak but the times when I really do go all out in an uncharacteristic carnivorous frenzy is when I've got fresh venison. For one thing, it's a much more eco-friendly option if you know a local hunter that will get you fresh meat. In my region of Maryland, we've pretty much killed any and all predators of deer (other than ourselves and our cars), so deer overpopulation is rampant. With so many of this species living is such close proximity to one another, and humans, they are all suffering from malnourishment - there simply isn't enough food to feed all of the deer we've got and there isn't another species preying upon the deer to naturally keep their population in check. So I think that it is perfectly acceptable for licensed hunters to enjoy their hobby in a managed hunting area during the specified times of year when such activity is allowed. It's really a relatively small effort to keep the deer population in check, it produces hormone-free meat, it produces local sources of protein, and it allows humans to practice a favorite pastime in a safe and controlled environment - everyone wins.

I thought I was really fortunate to get 2 pounds of ground venison last winter, so I guess this year I've been extremely spoiled. Mike's parents' neighbor essentially got us a whole deer's worth of meat - enough to fill our freezer. We've got shoulders, loins, ground meat, steaks, and a whole other host of venison. I'm in heaven.

Last year was actually my first time experimenting in the kitchen with venison and I was pretty proud of how well my first attempt turned out. I found a recipe for Barbecue Venison Meatballs that was absolutely delicious - moist, flavorful, and tomatoey, Mike and I dreamed of those meatballs for months after all our venison ran out. So, understandably, I was most excited not about the venison steaks or the shoulders with which I could make a wonderful stew, but the ground venison. I recreated those meatballs of so long ago and was pleasantly rewarded for my patience and my efforts.

This recipe originally hails from Deerfarmer.com which has a huge catalogue of venison recipes for all different cuts, flavors, and dishes. I'll likely be sharing more recipes off this website as I make my way through the rest of the venison this winter. But for now, I want to share this absolutely delightful meatball dish. Perfect served by itself (I know, I was just complaining about how meat takes up too large a portion of the American diet, but really no side could compare to these meatballs), over rice or barley, with some roasted vegetables, potatoes, or a side salad. Just be prepared for the meatballs to be the star in this dinner. And if you can't get your hands on any venison this winter, I suggest trying the recipe out with some free-range ground meat of another kind, just alter the meatball mixture to be more or less moist as you see fit! I also recommend giving them a try pan-fried in a shallow pan (first brown the meatballs on all sides while the sauce simmers in a separate pan, then combine the two) or substituting 1/2 cup of the ketchup with hoisin sauce.

Barbecue Venison Meatballs

adapted from Deerfarmer.com

Ingredients

• 1 pound elk burger
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup rolled oats, uncooked
• 1 cup minced onion
• 1 cup ketchup
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 Tbsp. vinegar
• 5 Tbsp. brown sugar

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. Combine elk burger, milk, salt, rolled oats, and 1/2 cup minced onion in a large bowl. Form into 1-inch balls.
3. Place meatballs in 9 by 13 inch pan.
4. Combine the remaining 1/2 cup onion, ketchup, water, vinegar, and brown sugar to make the sauce.
5. Pour sauce over raw meatballs.
6. Bake, uncovered, for 1 hour. Enjoy!

This Time Three Years Past...

Hard to believe it's been three years. But it was January 2008 when I headed abroad for the first time ever to Pune, India on a study abroad trip. It was a small Women's Studies trip that would last three weeks and include 11 female students. It was one of the best experiences of my life, hard to put into words three years later. But I did not have a blog last January or the one before that, so I felt like now was as good a time as ever to relish the memories and share my trip.

Rangoli.

First of all, this was one trip that I could never hope to recreate. Ever. We didn't have the home stay situation and we weren't housed on the campus of a foreign university like most study abroad students are likely to do. Rather we had a duplex of sorts to ourselves, complete with housekeepers, kitchen staff, and the like. It was strange and I almost felt guilty to be treated so well - we were just young Americans, nothing worth getting excited over, but we were shown the royal treatment. 

Anyway it was this great place called Varsha Park, which they called a bungalow but was actually a two-storey duplex with rooftop access where we did yoga in the mornings. I shared a beautiful first floor room with one of my best friends, Lindsay (though we didn't know one another prior to the trip), and woke to sunshine streaming through the wrought-iron detail on the windows and cheerful singing from the next bed over. Needless to say, we had a lot of fun together.

The trip, as I said, was sponsored by the Women's Studies program, and it was basically a 

study on women and feminism in India. The set up was basically that lecturers came to us, or we went to them, and taught us on subjects as varied as film and photography to the dangers inherent for village women who cook indoors and women's scholarship in India. Having such a unique course set-up made for an unrepeatable trip - there is no way the average American traveling to India could possibly have met some of the renowned and talented women we met, nor could they hope to see all that we saw, from the poorest of the slums to the most disgustingly wealthy of the rich. One of my favorite speakers was actually a friend of one of our guides and more of an entertaining guy than someone we were expected to learn a lot from. Anil Awachat showed us how to do origami, spoke on Thoreau, and shared with us a wealth of artwork he'd created over the years. His vivacity and zest for life were infectious and remain with me to this day.

Anil Awachat, the entertaining and eccentric man who welcomed us into his home with jokes, art, and games, shows us a few of his tricks with the Cat's Cradle string

But the other great thing about our trip - it was all about new media. Our assignments were not written but rather in video format. We were to select topics and creating short podcasts about them. So we took videos of everything we saw everywhere we went. The whole trip is on tape. And I was lucky enough to get paid to archive, and thus revisit, it all, which was a huge perk.

I also could never again hope to come across such wonderful people in my travels as the ones who hosted us during our time. We were welcomed with open arms into a warm family, the Wagles, whose members served as both tour guides and sources of insight to those aspects of India culture we couldn't quite access from our vantage point. There was Prasanna Wagle, a middle aged man who worked for the non-governmental organization that sort of sponsored us during our stay. Along with Prasanna, we had Vandanna, our mama, who took care of us and served as Prasanna's counterpart, though her role was more at home while Prasanna took over when we were out and about. 


And then we had peer guides, women in their teens and early 20s who helped us out with lectures at home and on site, but also proved to be great sources of information about what life is like for the young Indian woman. Anujna was the product of a love marriage, studied architecture, and was from a fairly liberal-minded Indian family. Her best friend Amruta had a vastly different life - her parents were set on an arranged marriage and, though a gorgeous girl who could easily have been a model or a dancer, was going to school to become an engineer. Paroma was a member of the Wagle family and such a cheery person to encounter - she was the one with whom I became closest and most connected. Plenty of other people played huge roles in our stay, from Sumnath who ran the household staff and would hold conversations with us in partial English, after which we wouldn't know what was really said, and Sheetal who was another young guide that we saw more occasionally than the other three. Under the watchful eye of these wonderful people, we were able to see many of the sides of India that most outsiders would completely miss.

The whole group, students, guides and all.

Cliche as it sounds, I hope that we were able to teach these wonderful people something as well. Though I worry that sometimes as a group we weren't successful in doing so, I hope that I was able to portray myself as the courteous and curious American I am, to dispel negative stereotypes as much as possible and be as respectful of this new and foreign culture as humanly possible.

As I think I've made patently obvious, there was so much more to this trip than I could ever hope to recount in a single blog post, let alone a series of 20. And though I look back on my month in India with nostalgia and joy, we definitely had our share of worries, troubles, and conflicts. From the fact that we were working so hard we could hardly enjoy being in a foreign country, to the way we were cloistered in our house at nights, to the drama that is likely to erupt when you get a group of 11 different personalities together in a duplex for 3 weeks, we found plenty to complain about at the time. But I'm glad that I can look back and recall the memories that are foremost in my mind with fondness, that I can consider my time and money well worth it, despite whatever struggles I may have had to endure. 

I intended for this post to be primarily about the photos but, once I got to writing, it was hard to stop going on about India and all that I did, all the people I met, and the things I learned while there. But since there's no way I can cover it all, I guess it's about time I got to my original intent with this post. Here are some of my favorite photos from India. There are so many more that I've accumulated, from my own camera and those of the other girls on the trip, but these best encapsulate the trip for me, or at least showcase the highlights. I've tried to explain each of them as much as possible, without being too loquacious (something I obviously still need to work on quite a bit). Enjoy! Hopefully these images will give you a new perspective on India and third-world nations, or at least open your eyes to how drastically different the lives of some people on this earth are from our own.

Pranayama Yoga on the rooftop. Surely doing yoga outside is better for you than indoors... unless the air is so smog-racked that every time you blow your nose, you get a black tissue.

My roommate Lindsay with the girls at an orphanage we visited.

Rangoli is a sort of sand art that lots of Indians use outside their doors to welcome guests. 

On the road to Agha Khan Palace, where Gandhi and his wife were interned in 1942.

All the girls and guides dancing in our saris.

Beautiful paper-like flowers along the road to Varsha Park.

Henna. This is shortly after the artists finished applying the henna. The dark crust falls away leaving behind an auburn stain of the design.

Sumnath, our trusty housekeeper, creating an indoor rangoli design for our last dinner in India.

The girls at the orphanage playing what soon become our favorite game - Coco.

Fun with the girls at the orphanage.

Some stray dogs we saw on our travels to a temple. This was such a typical sight - stray puppies so skinny you could see their ribs. And since they are all likely ridden with disease, you have to fight the urge to pet them.

An abandoned temple we visited.

The Gateway to India in Bombay/Mumbai. We sailed off to the Elephanta Caves from this port.

Known as the Queen's Necklace, the harbor at Mumbai is lit up like a strand of pearls at night.

I can't remember the name of this temple but a boat ride was required to reach it which made for a pretty interesting experience.

A typical Indian meal complete with chapati (my favorite whole wheat Indian flatbread), daal and rice, and galub jamun, a doughnut-like dessert soaked in sugar syrup.

We met with a bunch of teachers to interview them about whatever we pleased. They returned the favor by putting on a dance performance to us and teaching us some traditional Indian moves.

A colorful roadside produce market.

One of our first trips was to a school for girls. We were received like celebrities because of the lightness of our skin. These girls were swarming to greet us and learn where we came from.

Pottery and sculpture for sale on the side of the road.

The doors leading from one of our houses to the next.

We visited a farm where we learned how to make this sweetener used in many traditional Indian dishes.

One of our more unusual excursions was to a train museum. It reminded me more of a Christmas train display than a full-on museum but the place was charming and quirky. It even had a soundtrack and dialogue to tell out a story about the village, with flashing lights and train activity to go along.

Women at work in a papad factory. Papad is similar to a hard corn tortilla but a little less salty and flavorful. We saw the whole process from start to finish and Lindsay actually saw these very papad on a shelf in an international food store in the states.

Some of the women from the papad factory were kind enough to allow us to tape interviews with them after our tour.

More of the beautiful rangoli designs we were greeted with nearly everywhere we went.

Some of the borders at the school for girls, curious about us light-skinned visitors.

Dancing and singing along with the children at the orphanage.

The streets of Mumbai. Not a place I would ever want to drive in.

We visited an after-school program for children living in the slums. As grew fairly typical, they put on a music and dance show for us and were delighted to have interested visitors.

The lovely Amruta demonstrating how to properly wear a sari.

Decision-making in the sari shop.

This store was three-levels and nearly ever storey's walls looked like this - completely packed with sari fabrics. Needless to say, it was nearly impossible to decide upon just one.


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