Last night Scott and I went to Ikea (he needed a new shower curtain and I apparently needed a child-sized set of pots and pans).  While we were on our way there, he turned to me and said, “So, do you know what tomorrow is?”

I thought about it briefly before saying, “My half birthday?”

He laughed at me and said something along the lines of, “Yes!  Because it’s all about you.”  He then said, “No, it’s the one year anniversary of Fork You.”

It was slightly amazing to me, because on one hand it feels like we just started this crazy little project.  On the other, it seems hard to think of a time when we weren’t devoting evenings and weekends to creating wacky food video.

Scott has expressed his thoughts on the subject over at Blankbaby and I concur with so much of what he said.  It’s sort of impressive that we’ve stuck with it with such determination.  Looking back at the first episode, I’m able to see just how far we’ve come in terms of comfort in front of an audience, quality of camera work and concise editing.  Some of those first episodes were really lengthy.  (And I must ask, what was up with my hair a year ago?  Why did no one tell me that it was far too long)?

I feel like time moves more quickly every day.  I remember when I was younger, looking at each day as a vast thing that clicked by in snail-like minutes.  A week felt interminable.  Now the weeks zip by and I struggle to grasp hold to the hours and tuck a few of them away for writing, school work, real work and time with friends before they slip away and are gone.  I am just really grateful that I’ve managed to grab a few of those hours and turn them into projects, like Fork You, that I am proud of.

Part two of our three-part series on how to do a yummy Thanksgiving has landed. In this episode we make creamy garlic mashed potatoes and gingery peas and carrots (this is not actually one of my traditional side dishes, but Scott doesn’t like string beans, so I changed my ways a bit). You can find the recipes for these dishes here. If you happened to miss it, you can find part one (in which we roast a turkey in an Orion cooker) here.

It’s been over a month now since I’ve read a book for pleasure.  That may be the longest I’ve gone since I learned to read when I was five years old.  I have an apartment full of books, but I can’t seem to make the time or carve out the mental space necessary to settle down and let some fiction wash over me.

When I was growing up, I was one of those kids who was never found without a book.  I could read in the car without getting sick and would often stay up way past my bedtime reading and rereading beloved books.

For the longest time, my books were split in half, the ones from the first twenty years of my life living in my parents’ garage in Portland the ones I acquired as an adult hanging out in my apartment here.  When I went home last spring to help clean out my parents’ garage, I went through all my books, brutally cutting down so that I only kept the ones that were truly precious.  I ended up sending nine boxes back to myself in Philly.  Only eight made it though, one got returned to Portland, where it’s waiting for me to resend it when I’m out there for Christmas.

I’m hoping that once I’m done with school and that particular pressure is off my brain that I’ll find time to read again.  I realize though that having chosen this path of freelance writing and editing that I’m always going to be making my brain spend its days working with words and thoughts.  Here’s hoping that come January I’ll be able to find time for books agian.

I love the light in my apartment in the late afternoon.  My windows face north, but there are several buildings in the blocks behind me that are made almost entirely of glass.  They reflect the rays of the sun back in to my apartment, laying down streaky slashes of light onto the back of the couch and half of my dining room table.

No matter how often I rotate my plants, after a week or two at any orientation, they have turned themselves back towards those places where they know the sun will shine.

This reflected light is perfect for naps, because the rays that sneak in are warm without being piercing.  More afternoons that I can count, I’ve found myself on the couch under the window, sleepily reading before drifting away into a short pocket of sleep.  The dreams I have in those moments are always clearer and more poignant than the ones I have during the nighttime hours.

This month Fork You does Thanksgiving! In this first episode, we brine, smoke and devour a 12-pound turkey. Let me tell you, it was delicious. If you’re looking for a brine recipe, here’s the one we used.

I’ve been wearing glasses since I was 12 years old.  My first pair had plastic blue frames that were so large that they included half my cheeks in their scope.  When I was 15, after months of begging, I finally convinced my parents that I was in desperate need of contacts.  For most of my high school years, every morning I inserted thin plastic discs into my eyes.  I had the same pair of hard contacts until last spring (for those of you who are counting, that means I made a single pair of rigid gas permeable contact lenses last over 12 years).

In the last few years, I’ve shifted more and more to wearing my glasses.  Most nights, I don’t get as much sleep each night as is ideal and putting hard contacts in your eyes when you’re tired is really uncomfortable.  The glasses I’ve been wearing date back early spring of 2005 and were scratched and on the verge of breaking.  I’d been thinking about getting a new pair for a while when Roz Twittered about a glasses website that had gotten good reviews.  After digging around to find my prescription, I looked at a few frames and on a whim, placed an order.  I’d never purchased glasses that I hadn’t tried on before so this was quite the leap of faith (although including shipping, they only cost $53 so I figured if they didn’t work, I wouldn’t be out too much money).

They arrived today, packed in a small box that was carefully and lovingly padded (the glasses were swathed in soft cotton wads,  wrapped in a polishing cloth, protected by a plastic bag and inserted in a hard-sided case.  The case was wrapped in bubble wrap and then secured in the box with some styrofoam peanuts.  They were serious about protecting your glasses).

The best part?  They look awesome.  I am in love with my new glasses.  I took several pictures, although none of them are terrific (I am not particularly gifted at taking pictures of myself).  Here’s the best one (I was on the phone with my mother at the time).  Oh, and you can’t see it so well in the picture, but the sides are sort of a deep berry color.  I LOVE them. 

My friend Jamie came over for lunch today with her 18-month-old daughter Ivy.  They spent the morning at a music class for toddlers and headed over afterwards, wearing complimentary down coats and smelling like cold morning air.  I put out an odd assortment of foods for them including smoked turkey and white bean soup, beet salad, cheeses leftover from the Food Blogger Potluck, my friend Wendy’s homemade pickles, some sliced apples and pears and a cluster of grapes.

Jame and I sat down to eat at the table, while Ivy jumped around.  She’d come over and sit on her mom’s lap for awhile, take a few bites and hop down.  I have two child-sized chairs at my coffee table and she’d sit on one for a while and them the other.  We stacked pieces of bread in a tower and she happily accepted the bits of pickle I handed her.  Most impressive was that she ate her weight in beets, loving the dark sweet root vegetable that I had slicked in a dressing of balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

We talked as Ivy danced around us, catching up on our recent events as well as news from the lives of our mutual friends.  After about an hour, Ivy walked to her stroller, levered herself into the seat and started buckle herself in.  Jamie looked over at her and asked, “Are you ready for your nap?”  Ivy nodded her head emphatically and said, “Yes!”

Quickly doing a little bit of clean up, Jamie shrugged into her coat and leaned in to give me a hug.  Afterwards, I leaned down and gave Ivy a scattering of kisses across her face that made her smile and tuck her head down into her neck.  She blew me an air kiss and they were off.  On days like this there is nothing about life that I don’t like.

I’ve put this post off until the very last thing and unfortunately I seem to have spent most my mental energy on other writing tonight so there’s nothing but dregs left.  I wouldn’t post, except for that pesky NaBloPoMo commitment.  So here’s a picture of some yummy-looking fresh lettuces and a promise that tomorrow will be better.

The latest episode of Fork You has landed and let me tell you, it’s a good one. We filmed this one more than a month ago, in Jessie’s lovely carriage house apartment. We made two big pots of risotto that were both delicious (I could have gone swimming in the butternut squash one, it was so good). And starting next week, we’ll be kicking off our Thanksgiving series of episodes (there will be four in total for your viewing pleasure). As always, we welcome comments, feedback, questions or requests for clarification.

In other news, my friend Roz picked me to be her “Get To Know My Blogroll” subject for the week today. She asked me a bunch of questions about life, food and Philly and I happily answered. Head on over to her blog to check out my answers.

About a week ago I came to the conclusion that I was done with roommates.  I decided that no matter what it took, when January rolled around and my current roommate moved on, I was not going to replace him.  I was ready to do whatever it took to ensure that I did not need to rent my second bedroom out to a stranger.

Somehow, making that decision and declaring it set some mechanism into motion out there in the universe, because tonight I came home to an email offering me a job.  It’s not a full time gig, but one that will nicely supplement whatever other income I develop for myself when I’m done with school.  It will certainly ease the transition from school to full time work and it will ensure that I am able to live in my lovely two-bedroom apartment all by myself.

I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to spreading back out across the second bedroom.  There is a wall of built-in bookshelves in there that I had to totally empty when I started renting out that room.  I can’t wait to fill those shelves again and relieve my other bookcases of the burden they’ve been carrying.  I’m looking forward to getting my work area out of the corner of my dining room and to having a place to keep the things that I don’t quite know what to do with.  After more than four and a half years of living with others (ex-boyfriend Ted for one year, old high school friend Nolan for two, Madhu the doctor for one and Ying the silent walker for six months) living alone will be such a pleasure.  I can not wait.