Post-Thanksgiving and Finals Week

Hey! It's Final's Week and as I've been trying to beat back the stress, it has been hard to find time to write about how well Thanksgiving went.

Here's a picture, since I know everybody likes pictures.

Lookit the pretty table and nice food! Fruit salad, pea salad, squash, mashed potatoes and thick mushroomy gravy,  stuffing, cranberry sauce... I feel like I'm forgetting something... and it's not the turkey because we didn't have any! YEAH! Oh yeah there was a green bean casserole for the nonvegans, but it was vegetarian... it just had cream in it.

Here's a picture of the pretty candles and the mountain of stuffing that took us 3 days to eat the leftovers of. Mmm they were so good...

And here are the two desserts me and Danielle made via recipes from the Post Punk Kitchen: Pumpkin Cheesecake and Chocolate Pumpkin Loaf.

We were really scared the cheesecake wasn't going to turn out because we used soft tofu rather than extra-firm and halfway through we realized OMG there is no vanilla extract in this house!! So we rummaged and rummaged in the cupboards and found a bottle of vanilla beans which apparently you can make your own vanilla extract out of, except it takes like 7 months or something. So we just chopped up bits of the bean and blended it up. Ehehehe. But it turned out! Everybody liked it.

I felt especially grateful this Thanksgiving to be having it with my second family. Even more so because I found out over that weekend that I no longer have to worry about getting back up to Bellingham after Christmas break. I will be flying back in January and then the job search commences. I am truly blessed to know such generous people. I hope someday I can pay it forward.


Actually, life is going well in general, especially food-wise! I find that eating well has made a big difference in how I feel... even though it kind stresses me out to take extra time to make food, I have stopped stressing as much since I've realized I get stressed even more easily if I don't eat well. That was brought home to me last Thursday when I woke up after a day of nothing but applesauce, cereal, and Newman-Os, and my school stress suddenly seemed absolutely unmanageable. Once I had a good meal everything looked about ten times easier to handle. Ah, the simple lessons of life.

 I've been trying a lot of recipes with curry paste lately, and predictably, the best one I've tried so far has been from the Post Punk Kitchen: Red Curry Soup with Rice & Purple Kale. It was delicious... the lime juice is an absolute must though, it really changed the flavor and made it awesome.

Another quick shout-out to Brother and Sister Mumford for taking such good care of me at the last Friday Forum I went to. We sang Christmas Carols and everyone else was having taco soup, but they made a pot of black and pinto beans with tomatoes and green peppers, and I made my own taco salad with it plus a veggie burger. Was stuffed by the end!

Today we made some Ayurvedic dish with mung beans and cauliflower which was pretty good once we added some stock. I don't know what I'd do without Better Than Bouillon. It's become a kitchen staple for sure.

Later this week we plan to make onion rings, possibly some nacho sauce, and have a reprise of the creamy red chard linguine, except with kale. Just the thought of all that yummy food makes Finals Week look a little less daunting.

Six days until I fly home for Christmas! I hope to do a lot of cooking while I'm home... I feel a lot better this time around, like I actually know some things.