my cool new friend

Living in the DC area can make you think that you are profoundly lacking in social skills. Then, when you relocate to another area, you realize that most people don’t demand to know where you work within two minutes of meeting you, don’t give a sh** where you went to college, and don’t vie to prove who has the highest stress level.

People are FRIENDLY! Here in NC, there’s this fabulous thing called southern hospitality!

One beautiful late summer evening, I headed out to the grocery store when I spotted my pal Jocelyn and her adorable five year old son Kane. Naturally, I commenced furiously chasing Kane around on the grass while chatting with his mama, at which point Coen, the equally adorable four year old boy who lives across the hall (who was, as always, clad in his Batman tshirt and cape)  and his mama Roxanne showed up, and the running and the chasing and the making dinosaur noises just got funner. So we planned a cookout for the following weekend, for all of our fun neighbors to hang out.

Gender roles divided pretty hilariously, with Steve and the other men grilling outside and discussing extreme sports…

 

And the ladies inside, teaching the kiddos how to play the drums on packs of plates (courtesy of my roommate Alli, the girl who will start a drum circle anytime, anywhere).

I offered to bring meats for the meal, spending a small but worth-it fortune on organic ground beef for burgers as well as organic turkey and beef hot dogs.

Everyone else also contributed too, though I only got a few pictures. Jocelyn’s guacamole and AWESOME watermelon-basil-feta salad.

Steph’s carrot cake cupcakes (uhhhhhhhhhhhhhmazing- packed with walnuts) and Charlie’s stuffed mushrooms (which I didn’t eat because I’ve recently been unable to stomach the thought of eating a pig and they were stuffed with pork… but everyone else said were very tasty!)

Jocelyn and I are extra tight, so we’ve had a few fun date nights with each other. Most recently on my 25th birthday (!!!) when I stayed home sick/”sick” from work and she set aside her freelancing for a few hours to gossip, eat chicken soup, and together watch Dances with Wolves.

We are really kindred spirits- the first night we met, she ended up creating astrological charts for me and Steve. And then we excitedly gabbed about antioxidants. And psychoanalyzed the men in our lives.

Another time we got together, Jocelyn made me the best roast chicken I’ve ever tasted (a title I can sadly no longer give the Zuni Cafe recipe). I sadly neglected to take a picture, but I’ll describe: she begins with the Martha Stewart recipe, which involves a plethora of fresh and dried herbs and an olive oil basting technique. Bringing her own delightful new age sensibilities to the proceedings, she then says several prayers over the chicken, thanking it for its sacrifices, and rubs the herbs in.

Anyway, dessert was extra fab. Jocelyn has an impressively well-stocked pantry and a Vitamix (jealousssss). She threw together in the Vitamix some cacao powder (on which she waxed poetic for a bit regarding its health benefits)…

 

… agave nectar…

… and coconut cream which, who knew, they now sell at Trader Joe’s.

 

With strawberries dipped in it, it was pretty epic. (To be truthful, the boys focused on the brewskies and the girls focused on the dessert!). It was also vegan, gluten free, paleo, yadda yadda. None of those are necessarily my scene, but if they are yours you hafta try this dessert!

Then when I returned the favor, I made an oh-so-easy and oh-so-tasty soup. I roasted a chicken and used its bones to make stock. I sauteed zucchini, sweet onion, and corn in oil then cooked it with the stock and pureed it with a ton of fresh parsley. AMAZING SOUP. I took the chicken off the bone and made a Caesar salad, with Romaine lettuce and yummy cheese. And because Jocelyn’s kiddo Kane can’t have gluten (she experimented with taking it out of his diet since he was having a crazy bloated belly and not only did the belly get better, his asthma disappeared!), I made my favorite gluten free specialty: socca!

It was quite the feast.

The soup was particularly delicious- homemade chicken stock is SO easy and SO delicious. Kane, the five year old, got seconds, which I thought was a real vote of confidence in the recipe!

 

Funnest of all, after dinner we played blocks. Because I am currently teaching preschool, and thus there are fun toys all over my house. These are particularly cool- you can make skyscrapers out of them! Trees on the roof optional.

Fact: when you are five, the most fun part of building with blocks is knocking them all over.

exploring winston salem

So I’m doing another Americorps gig! Whoo!

I don’t think it’d necessarily appropriate to give a tonnnn of details, but the short story is that I’ll be working with little (as in, pre-school) childrens who like all children deserve to arrive at school ready to learn and able to express themselves but won’t necessarily be fully equipped to do so because of challenging home situations.

I recently traveled to Winston Salem, NC to train with my new AmeriCrew. I have very few photos of the training itself, but they make me laugh.

The first is of a duck attacking my fellow corps member Leslie.

 

Ha! Our (awesome) supervisor designated one of our training days as an outdoor day, so we did some team building type stuff in a park. We were in a picnic pavilion, where local ducks are clearly used to getting people’s tidbits. They were AGGRESSIVE.

Another awesome thing about this new Americorps program (and there are many) is that unlike my old program, we trained in a beautiful building (not an ugly, old, smelly, crammed-with-random-crap one) and were served delicious breakfasts and lunch each day (unlike the old one, which never fed us unless you count the food bank leftovers we frantically gorged at the end of our stressful days). Our last day, we got (admittedly less than healthy but quite delicious) biscuit sandwiches from a local barbecue place. Enjoyed with delicious fruit.

 

Because our organization was hosting a fundraiser, we spent the morning camped out on the front lawn. It was lots of fun!

And that’s all I have to say about my new gig for now. However, I did want to share about Winston Salem, which is a surprisingly fun city!

I stayed at a hotel and also got a per diem. It was great for like two days (there was also a free gym, which I visited every day after lots of sitting-down-y training) and then it was like “Ugh get me some vegetables.”

One night we went to an establishment with some saucy mermaids and fishing netting on the wall.

 

‘Cept it was Tuesday and our really really really hands-off waiter didn’t tell us it was TACO TUESDAY so we spent too much money for normal food where we could’ve spent very little money for awesome tacos! Tragic.

My favorite day in Winston Salem was our second to last day, where they let us out of training early and we got to visit Reynolda House. No pictures were allowed inside of the awesome-robber-baron-house-turned-museum, but I went a little nuts in the gorrrrrrrrrgeous gardens.

 

This is columbine. It smells like heaven and butterflies love it!

The food department.

Tomatoes and figs!

The rose garden! Usually I’m not that into roses but these were gorgey porgey.

Natives!

Steve calls these “Jurassic Park Plants” :)

 

So. Many. Grapes. It smelled like heaven, standing under the vines and inhaling.

Watermelon patch! Fun fact: my cousins inadvertently created a watermelon patch in their backyard by sitting on the back porch eating watermelon and spitting out the seeds.

Went to the Biltmore estate in Asheville and they had these same funky golden leaves on display. Must’ve been a trend of the times.

Can you imagine having this in your yard?!

   

Fun fact: the Reynolda family made their own lake (…) by damming up a natural spring. Surprise surprise, nature was all “That’s cute that you think you can just manipulate me like that” and it has now almost entirely returned to its natural state and provided a beautiful environment for birdies.

 

Also, Mario mushrooms. Never saw red mushrooms before the move to North Carolina.

Th’other side of the dam.

 

For dinner, we went into the little “village” near the house and dined al fresco.

 

Wish I’d been there with more of a crowd- it would’ve been fun to go sharesies on some of those sandwiches and small plates.

Limemade! Made to order! I got mine suuuuuuuper tart, mm.

For dinner, I opted for a cup of the lobster bisque…

… and some Holy Salty bruschetta type stuff with red peppers, onions, feta, etc… good but a little overwhelming on the sodium front.