oh, the flavor that you savor

I made fresh pesto for the first time this week. It's kind of turned into an obsession now. My mom's basil plant is on its last leg, and I'm slowly devouring the entire plant. When I made it the first time (lots of fresh basil leaves, garlic powder, fresh parmesan cheese and olive oil all blended in a food processor) I realized how easy it is and how it tastes just as good as store bought.

I love summertime and fresh ingredients. I love fresh fruit just as much. Especially watermelon. I love that it's naturally so sweet and delicious.

I might as well be that little kid with all of the watermelon I've eaten this week.

My goal for this semester (and I feel like I say this before every semester - but eventually that means it will turn into reality I hope) is to eat better. When I'm home, I eat a meal and then I'm satisfied. I don't go back and fill myself up with random food I find in the pantry, or the oh-so-common bowl of ice cream I fall back on at school. So I don't mean I want to eat less necessarily, just better. Like more fresh fruits and veggies. More variety of meals - aka: not every meal is pasta. I want to learn new recipes and not be intimidated by them.

I feel like I've thought and talked about food a lot this summer. It's such a fundamental part of our lives that it is easy to not think about it very much at all. Call me crazy for thinking about it as much as I am, but I think that it's something worth considering from time to time because, like anything else in this world, it can be used well or poorly. And why not use such a beautiful part of God's creation a little better and more gratefully from time to time? In its most basic sense, food nourishes us. But in its most glorious form it does even more - helps us be in community with one another, teaches us about different parts of the world, and wows us and our senses. It can be its own art form.

(Note: I'm going to see Food, Inc. tonight, so I may very well never look at food the same way again.)

What to say, what to say, what to say...

.Well for starters, I'm back home. NYC summer 2009 came to a close. I got really sentimental about New York City the last few days I was there wandering around (I was looking up at buildings rather than being consumed with getting to where I was going and only looking down). I'm going to miss it, I know it.

But it feels great to be home. I swam and was lazy in the pool today, relaxing with my parents and Tipton, eating pasta & mussels for lunch and a whole lot of fresh fruit. I was sun-kissed and tired from the sun and let my hair air dry... it was the parts of summer I have missed.

.Things I fell in love with this summer that I hope to bring with me into the school year:

-Goat cheese. Goat cheese, really? Yes, really. I love cheese of all kinds, but goat cheese and I had never formally gotten acquainted until this summer. Goat cheese, dried cranberries, walnuts, and a vinaigrette = a salad I never get tired of.

-Brunch. Get ready, Columbians, I vow to make brunch part of my school life. First stop will be Bleu.

-Reading magazines. Duh, right? It's my major, after all. But sad as it is, I have never been one to read many magazines during the school year. But they're a wonderful companion for those short moments that you find yourself free of obligations.

That's an odd short list, I know. But I was thinking about those things so I needed to spill them out sooner or later.

.I saw Julie & Julia tonight and it inspired me to do many things. 1) Have a blog that gets published as a book and picked up as a movie. Ok, maybe not so much. But I do want more direction in my blog. 2) I want to take cooking lessons. Or at least vow to try new recipes this year. I want to get a cookbook that forces me to expand my meal knowledge and start exploring. 3) Write at all costs. Whether it's for me, one person, or many. 

How's that for "more direction in my blog"? Possibly the most oddball post I've ever written. Go figure. 

it's such, it's such a perfect day

I don't really know how to start this post, because all I keep wondering is

Have you ever smelled mud? I mean really been surrounded by it, tromped in it, inhaled its smell with every breath? No? Well, it smells bad. I mean bad. Well now let me ask you, have you ever been surrounded by mud, inhaling its foul odor, but had a smile on your face, chills running up your spine and been on the verge of tears? No? That, my friends, is what I experienced at All Points West on Sunday.

It was a beautiful stormy Sunday, complete with thunder and strong gusts of wind. I was in Long Island staying with my brother's girlfriend's family for the weekend. We had gone to the beach on Saturday. Enter blissful day #1. It was my first day all summer where I closed my eyes and felt summer. I mean, felt it. Felt the sun slowly color my skin a darker shade (eh, burn it a tad), felt the chill from water splashing up on me from an agitated shore, felt sand in my toes (and all up in my clothes the rest of the day). I felt the air blowing through a car window and back out the sunroof and watched the sun bid us farewell beyond the horizon. Summer. A perfect day of summer.

Enter Sunday. Wet, stormy Sunday. All Points West is a music and arts festival (the 2nd year of it) at Liberty State Park. I lucked out (understatement of the year) and was invited by my brother's girlfriend because her family had an extra ticket. The skies magically cleared as we drove into the city, loaded up with parkas and towels and ready for the worst. We took the ferry from Battery Park over to the park. Enter mud. Mud mud mud mud mud. The poor grass didn't know what it had coming. Enter my brother being inventive and sporting this look the rest of the day. 

Enter laughter, lots and lots of laughter.

We lucked out and weaseled our way into the VIP bleacher seats by the main stage since the parents had VIP tickets, the other six of us did not. Prime seats for admiring people embracing the mud. We caught the end of Silversun Pickups, followed by Elbow (if you don't know of them, you should. They were quite lovely, in the easy to love British kind of way. Check out One Day Like This but don't judge the song from the blah video).

Then we patiently sat for the 45 minutes that it took an impressive number of stagehands to transform the stage for Coldplay. And then I noticed this guy

Who I then noticed was sitting next to this girl

Who I really wanted to talk to, but she decided to go watch MGMT.

Cue Life in Technicolor. Cue chills and me being on the verge of tears. I don't think that's ever happened to me at a concert before. But Coldplay, you have the power. And I want to meet the genius who designs their shows. I always am awestruck by the lights at concerts. Really great music can become that much more powerful with effective special effects and lights. I just love it. Go you, Coldplay stage designer extraordinaire. 

It doesn't do it justice, but here's Yellow and several yellow balloons full of confetti being tossed around in the crowd.

Just Mr. Martin, doing his thing.

"When your feet got wet at a Coldplay show"--improv Fix You lyrics

What a view.

I didn't really understand the random structures, but they made me think of the carnival scene in Across the Universe. Bizarre and lovable.