Winter feasts

One thing I appreciate about winter is all of the delicious food that's still around and how wonderful it feels to eat a warm meal when it's cold outside. Here are a few things I've been enjoying lately.

* lunch at La Carta De Oaxaca, home of Seattle's best guacamole and a fun salsa bar.
* herbed beets, carrots, turnips, parsnips, and sunchokes for roasting.
* number 25 off my 25 things list: oatmeal honey bread modified from this recipe (I used half whole wheat flour and only 1/3 cup honey since my farmers market honey is so potent). It was amazing. And I discovered that making bread is not so bad! It was very rewarding to watch it grow from various stages of mush into glorious loaves that tasted like heaven.
* sweet potato soup from my favorite soup recipe book.
* The lunch buffet at Flowers where everything is vegan and almost everything is fantastic.

Indoors

Some food photos from this weekend. Justin and I cooked up some vegetable stir fry with tempeh and served it over rice with peanut sauce. It was awesome. We also baked up this little teeny molten chocolate cake we got from the farmers market which was almost as beautiful as it was delicious. It puffed up inside its little glass bowl and then collapsed into itself to reveal a molten center. Soooooo good.

Also this weekend we met up with Derek at the Crocodile for a free show which paired up Icelandic artists with Seattle musicians, which was a ton of fun. We absolutely loved Lay Low's music (check out By and By) so we went to see her again last night at the Tractor (which also happened to accomplish an item on my list!)

25 things

It's my birthday today! So I decided to make one of those lists that everyone is making since I love lists and I love setting goals for myself and I want to keep track of the cool new stuff I will be doing. So here are the 25 things I want to do while I'm 25:

1. visit 3 new states
2. visit 1 new country
3. learn how to knit: in progress
4. make a mosaic
5. successfully bake croissants from scratch
6. start a regular volunteering thing
7. find a cool new charity to donate to: Valentino Achak Deng Foundation
8. see 5 SIFF films
9. shoot portraits
10. use my Polaroid camera
11. fill a wall in my apartment with favorite photos
12. create a database
13. go on a photographing adventure with my sister Amber
14. see a show at The Tractor
15. find a jazz bar/club in Seattle and go there
16. go to a play
17. go to a place where I can see the stars
18. take a yoga class
19. write in my journal at least once a week for the whole year: in progress
20. try 5 new curry recipes
21. create a photography portfolio
22. write 2 short stories
23. learn how to salsa dance
24. learn how to identify 20 wild edible plants
25. bake a loaf of oatmeal honey bread