weekend edition of my life

It's been a hectic weekend, friends.  I'm finally at a stopping point, so it's time for a post.  I thought it was going to be tough to break the habit of posting everyday, but...apparently not, haha...  I am still going to be posting a lot though...  Vegan Mofo made me learn that I really enjoy the blogosphere.  Or whatever.

Anyway, I have something disappointing to announce:  I did not dress up for Halloween.  I was way too exhausted by the time I got home from work to bother with it, honestly.  I'm such a killjoy, I know.  However, I am still picking a winner for the Halloween Costume Idea Contest.  This person clearly wanted to win very badly, because she gave me like 3 comments worth of multiple ideas, most of which were actually really good.  Virginia of Bananas and Soymilk, you get a box of cookies from me!  Gimme a day or so to get myself together (you don't want sick cookies, right?) and a package will be on its way.

  I did go out to the bar for like an hour (because Michael really wanted me to).  We came home early and made...  a giant sammich.

small bits of huge sammich action

This is one of our lazy specialties.  Get a big loaf of ciabatta bread, layer with stuff.  We usually do: chickn strips, hummus, italian dressing, roasted red peppers, artichokes, basil, spinach, lettuce, avocado, olives, and tomato.  Sometimes more, sometimes less.  These lack artichokes and lettuce because we forgot to put them on.  Still, a huge sammich of total awesomeness.  The trick is this:  after you make the thing, wrap it in plastic wrap and put a book on top to press it for about 20 minutes.  That way all the flavors combine and it gets even more rad.  Try it sometime.

Anyway, I woke up the next morning with a present:  no voice.  Yeah!  I spent all day Saturday squeaking around, forgetting I had no voice and trying to sing along to my ipod.  It was kind of funny, actually.  I got a lot done, regardless...  I voted (go Obama!), talked to my mom, went to the store, washed dishes, made dinner, and....

boo!

Carved a pumpkin!  All pumpkins are $1 at Kroger right now, so I bought a couple.  Dare I say that this one looks suspiciously like...my mug?  I did that on purpose.  The carving kit my dad got me works really, really well and made carving this pumpkin surprisingly easy.  The scraper for cleaning out the insides is lightyears beyond the days of scraping for hours with a metal spoon.  And the little saw is so COOL!  Easy to manipulate and sharp as hell.  The patterns, though, are really hard to transfer to the pumpkin (for me..I'm not coordinated) so I had to wing it.  I think I did pretty darned good.  Darnit.

not so scary now, are ya?

And out of my little pumpkin came a nice harvest of seeds, which I toasted and then forgot about, and incidentally burned, but they still tasted totally great.

really...only the curry powder on them burned...i swear it!

And then I made a simple dinner with a big salad, followed by some of the mini quiches from Susan V's blog and a mound of wild rice.

yum.

Actually, I'm taking Michael's word that it was yum, because my tastebuds might be screwed up from being sick.  I normally LOVE those quiches, but for some reason they tasted really bitter to me last night.  Apparently they didn't really.  It was just me.  I love that recipe though, it's so versatile.  This time I added some peppers (from my frozen stash), garlic, scallions, spinach, and basil.  The rice was ok, but I added some dried tomatoes while it was cooking and neither of us liked them that much.  Oh well.  The flavor of the rice was good though.  I cheated and used an old packet from a box of wild rice that I used without the flavor packet like 3 months ago.  

Today I went to a memorial service for the painting professor from my university, who passed away last week.  He was a really interesting and inspiring man, and he will be missed...  The whole thing is quite sad.  

So I'm celebrating life by watching football and baking bread.  Enjoy your Sunday, live your life to the fullest, and remember to GO VOTE.