Food!

Last night I went to a FANTASTIC Peruvian restaurant with some FANTASTIC people for my birthday. It wasn't until well into the night that I realized that I turned 22 in Peru, at Machu Picchu, and I turned 26 in a Peruvian restaurant named Machu Picchu. Oh, funny stuff.  The place was great, and they had all the stuff I remembered eating in Peru: the chancha (or, “inside out popcorn” as a friend described it)

It's kind of like corn nuts.  Kind of....

and mote pelado (or, as I call it, “big corn” because, surprisingly, it's big).

We ate a lot of corn in Peru. Also, they made their rice into weird rice molds just like I remember.

And also they had JUICE. I was so crazy excited about the juice. In Chile and Peru they drink juice all the time, and it's way better than any juice that I've ever encountered here. It's thick and has froth on top (in a delicious way, not in a gross way), and I've been dreaming about it for the past 4 years. I order juice every time I visit a Latin American restaurant and it's always lame regular juice, but this place knows what they're doing. We asked the waiter how he made it, and he said he takes whole fruit and puts it in the blender with some water – how easy! So I guess it's more like a smoothie than juice? Whatever, I need to find a pineapple right now.

They also had things like pisco sours and ceviche, neither of which I like but I had to mention since they're so Peruvian.  

Enjoying great food with great people really made my day. In the past year and a half I have met the most awesome people here, and I love Boston!

PS, yes, apparently this has turned into a food blog.  

popcorn!

I just discovered the joy of making popcorn on the stove.  I always had an air popper at home, and microwave popcorn is gross.  Other than the fact that I popped popcorn eeeeeverywhere, it worked out deliciously.  And then I ate popcorn for dinner - really!

Bacon

I have a confession to make.  I do not like bacon.  I thought there were others like me in the world, but I seem to be the only one.  I don't hate bacon like I hate vinegar and cilantro, but I don't really like it.

That's it.  Goodnight.

Today is....

Today is the day of dehydrated foods. Rice and beans on the stove, and polenta in the crock pot (experiment!).  

Today is the day to start freaking out about finding a job in June.  Apparently.

Today is the day to watch a lot of NCIS, and a Russian movie called Mermaid that was just okay but I liked it.

Today is the day to keep knitting Thermal.

Today is NOT the day to clean my apartment, because I just don't want to.   

The Sewing Maching

My grandmother Kate was an awesome seamstress.  When I was a kid she made me dresses, dolls, bags, halloween costumes and quilts.  When she passed away last summer, I got her sewing machine.

Meet Mom-mom's sewing machine

Photo taken with my webcam, so that's why the letters are backwards.  

I brought it back to Boston with me, and discovered I didn't have any bobbins for it.  So I went on a bobbin quest, which isn't as easy as it sounds as this is apparently a special machine and no one carries the right parts.  Finally, I went to Grey's Fabrics where the very nice owner was kind enough to order some bobbins for me.

I just started fiddling with it recently.  I may be dumb, but I find it to be the least intuitive machine I have ever encountered, so this is not proving to be easy.  After careful reading of the instructions, I've figured out how to wind a bobbin and it works most of the time.  When I moved onto the next step, I found the bobbin holder to be out of commission:

If you can't tell from this blurry photo, it's all rusty!

In fact, it seems to be rusted shut.  I'm pretty amazed in general that this could happen (was it caught in a sudden downpour or something?  This is not an old machine), but that's the situation.  Back to Grey's!!

But not now, because it's about 20 degrees outside, and that's really cold.