Just Loving Life

Amazingly, in the middle of all my school stress, I am still really enjoying life lately. Almost all of that enjoyment is closely associated with cooking, the changing seasons, and animals. No joke. Well, and beautifully done Hetalia fanart music videos, but that's totally off-topic....

Last weekend Danielle's Oma (aka German Grandma) came up to visit us and we made her lunch. Recently we've started to try out free recipes from The Post-Punk Kitchen website, which is by the same people who did Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. Suffice it to say that it's all delicious so far. For this lunch we made Pesto Soup with Gnocchi, Beans & Greens, along with home-made veggie spring rolls. Danielle did basically all the work with the soup and I put the spring rolls together (they had lettuce, mint, cilantro, cucumbers, rice noodles, pickled carrots and daikon).

 

When we went on an early morning walk/bike ride in the cold November air to Haggen to get rainbow chard and other stuff that we needed, we were both having a fan attack over the vegetables. Sometimes vegetables and fruits are just so beautiful you have to stop and BE AMAZED. Srsly. 

The lunch was delicious and then we went to the Bellingham Farmer's Market to see what we could find. Some really nice guy gave Oma a large sweet meat squash for like 3 bucks or 3.50 or something like that! It was big enough that we split it between ourselves when we got back to the apartment.

Please excuse the dorky crazed look.

Even though it was a little smaller this time, there was still plenty of colorful produce.

We had a good time hanging out at Value Village and got some "new" sweaters now that it's getting super cold. I also got a purple scarf xD !

On Sunday I was walking home from church and there was a deer on the trail. We locked eyes for almost a full minute and it actually took a step toward me rather than away. Seemed very unafraid, but I kept a respectful distance anyway. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me at the time. Here's one of a young buck I took a few weeks ago by the Institute.

I also recently witnessed some interesting things in the sky. Today there was a hawk circling over campus, close enough that I could see the spots on its wings. It was beautiful. Last week when I was walking to the bus station, a large flock of pidgeons (I'm pretty sure anyway) burst out from under a nearby alcove and proceeded to spiral rhythmically through the sky, in perfect tandem with one another, for nearly a full minute before they left the area directly above the street I was on. It was mesmerizing to watch. Then just the other day a facebook friend posted a video of a huge flock of starlings  "dancing". It was a bit like watching those huge groups of little fish in the ocean on the Discovery Channel. You know, the ones that form up into very specific shapes in Finding Nemo? Well, this was certainly even more impressive and astonishing. Are they doing it just for the joy of flying, of cooperation? That was the thought which popped into my head as I watched the pidgeons. I always have to wonder what the cause of such incredible behavior is.

It is already getting toward the end of the colorful leaves, and I'm sad that I haven't taken more good pictures, but that's part of what makes autumn special--it's fleeting, but it always comes back next year.