crack the plates

Snowed/iced in to my little Atlanta apartment for the past three days, I took the opportunity to look back over the past year and write a 2010 retrospective. I’m hoping that penning this now might help in future reflection, as I consider where I’ve been and where I might be headed. I could have easily kept this entry private, but 2010 couldn’t have happened without the aid & inspiration of others – from January’s free sale to November’s benefit dinner and beyond. Thank you, friends — I hope you find yourself here. Peace & love!

January

• Started my final semester of graduate school and thesis-writing!
• Considering how I might embody the counter-cultural, anti-materialistic message of Jesus in one of the most insanely commercial times of the year, I hosted a free sale at my house… and provided suggestions for yours!
• More community-building: hosted the Super Happy Dev Night with Nate!
• Moderated a discussion of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian leaders on the topic “Sacred Sexuality: What do religious texts really say about sex & sexuality?” as part of the Religious Emphasis Week at Earlham College
• Did a lot of organizing, awareness- and fund-raising for Haiti relief, with an emphasis on groups that would be around for community-building after the dust settled (Life & Hope Haiti particularly)

February

• Hosted a free sale at Amigos, advocating giving directly for building community
• Fell in love with RuPaul’s Drag Race – hosted weekly viewing parties
• Began the Lenten journey with Global Women’s Project’s Calendar and Amy Ritchie’s “Thirsting for God”
• Celebrated one year with cat Unix
• Attended IFYC’s Stranger to Neighbor training at Earlham College
• Was inspired by Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s talk on astrophysics and poetry

March

• My birthday! Had a great dinner with Anna Lisa & Seth on the 10^th and a Wonka-themed party the weekend after
• Was super proud of my little brother for organizing protests around GA budget cuts targetting education
• Happy memory: One day, while working at the church, I noticed three young boys (mid-elementary) circling the Peace Pole outside of the entryway. I went out, explained the meaning, and pointed out how people of every language wish for peace. The best part was when I quizzed them on the languages (after explaining what they are & where they’re spoken, of course!) and one boy referred to Arabic as “Iraqic!” We straightened it out and he seemed very happy with his new knowledge of that gorgeous lettering. When the elderly crossing guard came over, she said “I’d always wondered about that thing! Tell me about it, too!” And, of course, I did. She patted the boy on the back and said “We learned something, didn’t we?!”
• Supported my mom as she started her new gig as accompanist at Aragon United Methodist Church!
• Attended my first Passover Seder at Earlham College, hosted by friend & Rabbinic intern Aaron! I didn’t find the afikomen but I did throw open the door for Elijah!

April

• I hosted two interfaith dinners to test instructions offered in my Master’s thesis. Building upon an understanding that interfaith dialogue is about relationship-building, I provided theoretical and practical reasons, as well as clear directions, for bringing young adults of differing faiths together around food. The dinners – on April 13 and 23 – offered an opportunity to test my guidelines! They were extraordinarily well-received by the Earlham community: the second event, a middle-eastern themed picnic, had over 75 attendees!
• Presented my thesis to the seminary community at Earlham School of Religion’s Common Meal
• Took a break from thesis-writing to go see xiu xiu at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit
• Made seitan (that vegan staple) for the first time with Seth
• Defended my thesis on the 26^th – small crowd, but it was a great success!

May

• Submitted my thesis for approval! By the numbers: 150 pages; 43,495 words; 36,414 words in the body text; 20 words in the title; 2 inches – thickness in 100% cotton paper; 265 footnotes; 70 entries in the works cited section; 67 respondents to interfaith dinner questionnaire, results displayed in the appendix…
• Graduated from Earlham School of Religion on an unseasonably cold day!
• Happily moved from NW I Street to the sunny, if dilapidated, College Ave apartment
• Dumpstered at Earlham post-graduation and student move-out: recovered two car-loads worth of stuff for Goodwill and local charity. Discovered that students put actual trash, recyclables, and perfectly good items in the same trash bags. Opened dozens, sorting out the recyclables, removing what could be donated, and re-tying the actual trash. Full bottles of cleaning products, shampoos and conditioner, unused notebooks, a $22 SIGG water bottle, skullcandy headphones, multiple rugs, lamps, a pair of unopened contacts, several comforters, shelf-stable canned goods, unworn pairs of $100+ shoes … just a few of the treasures found.
• Helped worship-lead an incredible service at Richmond Church of the Brethren with Bob Hunter and Matt McKimmy – “Celebrating the Music of the African-American church” – ALL God’s children got shoes!
• Said goodbye to lots of friends as they left for new adventures – Seth & Jenny in Chicago, Jenna & Peter in Scotland, Benji, back to California, and all the other grads…

June

• Travelled to California for the first time – 2010 vacation!
• Ran into my interfaith hero Eboo Patel at Stanford!
• Served as a panelist at Richmond Church of the Brethren’s Faith and Food Panel Discussion

July

• Sustained my first accident as a bike commuter – a transfer truck ran me off the side of the road while on my way to work at the church! If I recall correctly, July was a month of bad/weird Thursday mornings…
• Went to see Jujubee in Columbus, Ohio with Nate and Michael!
• Visited Jina in Ann Arbor; went to see Lightning Bolt with Wolf Eyes at the MOCAD
• Served as a delegate to the South/Central Indiana District yearly meeting of the Church of the Brethren

August

• Moved into the most beautiful house in Richmond, 447 College (no offence, other Richmond houses :))
• Hosted a Perseid meteor shower party
• Briefly got really into making Perler crafts – hope to pick this up again soon!
• Focused on raising awareness and money for Pakistan flooding (at final count, a little over $200 one Sunday with a home-made bulletin board and short presentation before worship at RCoB) – the larger Church of the Brethren did well, too!
• Cooked a lot of yummy vegan food for Nate’s sister & brother-in-law, when they visited from New York
• Started volunteering at Earlham’s Office of Religious Life – first task, building Lady Gaga eyewear for the Director of Religious Life (a skit!)

September

• Successfully trained to drive a 12-passenger van at Earlham College!
• Inspired by my friend Tim Brauhn and his blog practicalraw.com, I bought a fancy-schmancy blender and an Ani Phyo cookbook and started doing more raw foods! (A little late in the season for Indiana, I know…)
• Participated in a moving interfaith vigil (in response to the Qu’ran burning controversy) – “Holding Our Holy Texts in the Light”
• Presented at Peace Forum, “From the Full Plate to the Wide World”
• Went to hear my dear friend Aaron give the Rosh Hashanah sermon at Temple Israel – Dayton !
• Attended Rosh Hashanah, Kol Nidre, and Yom Kippur services for the first time; drove Earlham students to these services
• Attended Eid services for the first time at the Islamic Society of North America in Plainfield, Indiana – drove students to this service, too!
• Helped build a sukkah for sukkot, the happy Jewish harvest festival!
• Volunteered and attended services for the International Day of Prayer for Peace in Richmond
• Because I went to a school that officially issued credit/no credit instead of letter grades, I had to petition my professors to convert their narrative evaluations of my work into letter grades. This takes some time. I was thrilled to finally learn that I made a 3.92 GPA in graduate school overall, and a 4.00 in my concentration! The A’s in Greek surprised me more than anything else…
• My cat Unix escaped and returned hours later covered in poison ivy, which she bestowed upon me – thus commencing my second-worst poison ivy attack

October

• Went to hear xiu xiu and deerhoof in Bloomington
• Went to hear xiu xiu and deerhoof in Columbus
• Helped friends Aaron and Mel move to Ithaca! :-(
• Started the second season of “Spiritual Snapshots”, a story-telling class I started with the help of Matt McKimmy at Richmond Church of the Brethren! Inspired by an Sunday class gathering at Atlanta Friends Meeting, I proposed we gather as a community before worship to hear stories – “snapshots” – from our journeys of faith. From October – Dec 2009 AND 2010, it provided a way to get to know folks in the congregation better and make new friends.
• Gave a great big Mario-themed birthday blow-out for my sweetie Nate
• Travelled to Chicago for Nate’s MongoDB conference, hung out with Jenny and got thrift plague
• Attended the American Academy of Religion annual conference in Atlanta
• Visited the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan mandir outside of Atlanta!
• Supported Nate as he started the application process with Amazon (which would culminate with an offer in early December)
• Helped spread awareness of the pernicious “vampire power” – when plugged in electronics continue to leach power, even when not in use – with a silly presentation at Richmond Church of the Brethren

November

• Celebrated two years with my darling Nate
• Celebrated a year with baby cat Perl
• Made enough home-made barbeque sauce to feed well over 100 people for Peace Forum’s Thanksgiving meal!
• Went to hear dear friend Aaron’s senior sermon at Hebrew Union in Cincinnati!
• Did all of the cooking for and helped host (with Charlotte-Anne M.) my third interfaith dinner, a benefit for Genesis of the YWCA and the kick-off to Earlham’s IFYC Better Together campaign. We fed over seventy people and raised $401 (not including material donations of food and household items) for Richmond’s only domestic violence outreach resource! Official video here.
• Flew back to Georgia for my brother’s beautiful wedding to Sarah
• Enjoyed a ridiculously delicious vegan Thanksgiving meal with Donnie and other Earlham vegan friends at Teetor House
• Travelled to Chicago to see Jenny and celebrate vegan ThanksLIVING at Chicago Diner

December

• Celebrated Hanukkah with my first kugel, latkes, applesauce, and home-made vegan dill sour crème!
• Trained my replacement at the church
• Enjoyed a great going-away at Richmond Church of the Brethren – so many sweet messages!
• Stayed with Elizabeth and Dustin Hartman and all their animals (cats and raccoons) while we searched for a new home in Atlanta. Super-awesome Elizabeth runs Tails from the Hart, a wildlife rescue outside of Atlanta.
• Squeezed in a trip to New York for Christmas between packing up in Richmond and moving to Atlanta with the gracious help of Nate’s parents!
• Applied for the Faiths Act Fellowship, an extraordinary opportunity funded by Interfaith Youth Core and the Tony Blair Faith Foundation that brings young adult bridge-builders together from all over the world to work on furthering the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG).

Year-long

• Served as a study buddy mentor in Richmond Community Schools
• Involvement with Earlham Animal Advocates United, from hosting and cooking lots of dinners, co-op meals, Nathan Runkle presentation, helping prepare the debaters, promoting VegPledge, and much more!
• Served as Office Manager at Richmond Church of the Brethren, which included making weekly bulletins, monthly newsletters, the yearly directory, as well as serving as a central point of contact in the church and between the church and Richmond-area aid/outreach organizations.
• Continued to be involved in the campaign to save Richmond’s Human Rights Commission and, once it was cruelly defunded by the Common Council, supported the burgeoning Equality Richmond Group

What a wonderful year! Here’s to 2011!

Only a reworking of the first two frames of Dinosaur Comics can adequately express my frustration with myself right now:

T-Rex images owned by Ryan North/Dinosaur Comics/Qwantz.

So there you have it. It’s pretty freaking hard for me stay on top of my blog as of late! It’s probably harder to admit it, which is why I’m saying it with a post, in hopes that this will jar me from my inaction!

It’s mostly frustrating because some interesting things have happened that I want to tell you about. I mean, I only did one day of mid-June’s San Francisco trip, when I ate at so many awesome vegan restaurants! (Donuts with in-house-ground organic flour, for goodness’ sake!!) There was also a drag show a few weeks ago, and a couple recent trips to see my gorgeous BF Jina beena. I want to tell you the exciting bits!

But alas, the non-exciting parts have been dragging me down. As I anticipate yet another move, I once more find myself in that tight “in-between” place. Waiting, waiting, for things to happen, in the meanwhile, hesitant to put down any roots. I’m also languishing in this heat/humidity, but then again, who isn’t? Except for what’s been mentioned previously, not much punctuates these days of languid reading, drinking iced oolong, eating chilled watermelon, and generally assuming a couchant position as much as possible. And when the temperature in your house climbs towards the mid-90s, who in the hell wants to use a laptop as intended?

In the interest of getting you caught up (turning a new leaf? or is that too ambitious at this point? sigh), let’s have a bit of a camera dump from the past couple weeks, with commentary. Deal? Deal.

I made a vegan shepherd’s pie, which was phenomenal. I spread the mashed potatoes over the filling just before putting it in the oven to bake:

There is no recipe, but here’s roughly what I did: re-hydrated large chunk TVP, cooked in tamari, nutritional yeast, and pepper; cooled & roughly chopped the TVP; added it to home-made no-fat gravy; added an assortment of fresh chopped and steamed vegetables; poured it all into a casserole dish, covered with home-made mashed potatoes, baked. Sounds easy, right? It took a couple of hours in one of hell’s hottest rooms: my tiny, poorly ventilated, very dilapidated kitchen (with two working eyes on the stove).

Here’s the finished product:

Oh, cute story about the framing of this photograph. While I was in San Francisco, we dined at Millennium, SF’s chicest (read: simply most expensive) vegan restaurant. I called the waitress (seemingly pretty laid back) over to make a joke about the fact that my apricot-glazed portabella stack looked somewhat cheaply made. I pointed at the familiar threesome of just-so cut carrots, peas, and corn and teased, “This trio comes from a can, and it says VEG-ALL on the side!” Apparently she took herself more seriously than I did, because she didn’t get the joke, insisting the ingredients were harvested at the peak of freshness from local, organic ingredients. But she went one further, claiming that the chef meant the dish to be an “homage” to Southern cooking.

Uhhh…. are you laughing yet? I wish I had a picture of it to share with you, but suffice to say it looked nothing like the above. This desiccated morsel with hardly any of the advertised apricot glaze, sitting dumbly atop stiff, flavorless mashed potatoes and the inspid trio of carrots, peas and corn, was the furthest thing from “Southern cooking”. Just to confirm that she did mean Southern US (rather than Southern CA?) I shared that I was from the South, the deep south, northwest Georgia, in fact. Undeterred, she claimed “the South” as well–Bloomington, Indiana.

Hm.

Sorry, Millennium chefs. That dish was the furthest thing from the cooking I grew up with and loved, and you’d do your otherwise highly competent wait staff a favor by not trying to pass this disaster off as anything but. You know what, just scrap the damn dish. Everything else–appetizers, spirits, main courses, desserts–was superb!

Wow, side-tracked.

On the subject of a proper apricot barbeque glaze, though, here’s the first I made using Isa’s recipe from Veganomicon–and about ten fresh apricots! Thick, hearty, oozy, shiny:

Plated:

Would you believe I’m not a huge broccoli fan? Alas, it’s true. I had to cover mine in extra apricot sauce.

Earlier this month I went to see one of my favorite queens from season two of RuPaul’s Drag Race with Nate & Michael at the famous Union Cafe in Columbus Ohio. We had dinner at Indian Kitchen before the show. Complimentary papadums:

The view from our table.

Greasy snacks.

Michael’s lovely plate.

What is that you say, dear server? Complimentary aloo parathas, as well? Don’t mind if I do!

Sadly, we were the only ones in the place. Highly recommended! Try it next time you’re in Columbus, instead of the Taj Mahal (which is basically across the street).

Fireworks in the sky:

Fireworks on stage.

Gorgeous Columbus gal Nina West chides an extremely drunk Polish man.

Jujubee prepares!

Look at that body!

I am also in possession of an extremely embarrassing shot of Juju, but I’m choosing not to post it out of RESPECT! (E-mail me if desired.)

I made some orange cranberry scones on about three hours of sleep for church brunch. They were great. The best part was when an elderly member of the congregation asked for the recipe and where, exactly, to get soymilk.

I made a couple of dark-chocolate-bottomed peanut butter silk pies (with a couple teaspoons of agar-agar; recipes modded from Vegan with a Vengeance). Here’s one:

Sing with me now, isn’t she lovely?

Sorry if three pictures is overkill. I rarely bake.

Did I mention I have another cat, now? Her name is Perl, but Nate & I have been calling her Perlba recently (Perl+[goom]ba). She’s not much like a cat, actually. She was abandoned as a kitten & very likely orphaned, so she wasn’t socialized by/with other cats til adulthood. She didn’t learn how to drink water properly til a few months after she moved in, & she’s not yet totally clear on cleaning herself or using her claws, either. It’s sad. The upside is that she kind of acts like a dog, lolling on her back, showing her belly, never getting upset like a normal cat. She likes to sit on computers and in her raspberry box. She’s mostly looks up to her “big sister” Unix, but she eats waaaay too much.

I made the quintessential vegan summer food, The Grit’s vegan chicken salad. A hellish recipe, consisting of separately cooked tofu, gravy, home-made vinaigrette, and vegan mayo, apart from the ingredients in the actual chicken salad recipe. In short, the reason I make it once a year. This time I tripled the recipe so it’d last a week & we’d have enough to share.

And finally, a couple trips to see my lovely Jina Beena in Ann Arbor. I spent a fair amount of my mornings getting caffeinated at Zingerman’s:

A view of the cafe.

The best part was our picnic at Pickerel Lake. Jina is the queen of picnics!! We raided the People’s Co-op for our favorites: baba ghanoush, watermelon, peaches, and a new wonder, coconut milk ice cream!

Sorry the photo is a bit blurry. It’s hard to hold still when you’re witnessing such beauty.

A close-up of our Zingerman’s bread and assorted treats.

Okay, that’s enough for now! There’s a blue-tongued skink upstairs that needs a piece of watermelon! (No, really, I’m helping skink-sit.)

After a lovely dinner of barbequed oven-baked tofu, Nate I are settling in to watch Disney’s Alice in Wonderland in protest of the Burton abomination presently sweeping the nation. (Has anyone I know actually seen it yet? What did you think? Or, if not, why are you avoiding?)

One of my favorite scenes.

These days I drink only a handful of times a year; tonight I’m enjoying a lovely beer called Éphémère by Unibroue, a Canadian brewing company. According to their website, it “possesses a fresh apple aroma with reminiscent notes of ‘Granny Smith’ and ‘McIntosh’ a subtle flavour of green apple is complemented by delicate notes of fruit and spice topped by a rich white head.” I first tried it in October at Chicago’s vegan bike-themed restaurant, Handlebar; Nate picked up a couple more bottles at the famous Half Time party shop in Poughkeepsie, New York, over Christmas. It’s best served in a champagne flute.

If you’re a vegan who enjoys spirits, you’ll do well to check out Barnivore: your vegan beer & wine guide. It proved an invaluable resource last fall as I bought for Nate’s Hobbit-themed birthday bash. I was surprised that every specialty beer I looked up was accounted for: Gulden Draak (more at Beer Advocate), Weyerbacher (Merry Monks; Quad), Hitachino Nest Ginger Brew by Kiuchi, Trappistes Rochefort (#10, bebe), Lagunitas (Censored & IPA), Unibroue (La Fin Du Monde & Trois Pistoles), and Rogue (Rogue’s Hazelnut Brown Nectar makes me melt!). They’re not all available in Indiana; I had to pick up the Lagunitas in Michigan while visiting Jina beena.

Speaking of, check all this gorgeous bottle opener she brought back from Greece in 2007:

Thanks, Jiji. You are one classy lady.

For our sumptuous tofu dinner I used Isa’s “BBQ Pomegranate Tofu” recipe as a guide. Have you been eyeing that one in Vegan with a Vengeance but haven’t yet tried it because it calls for crazy ingredients? Well, don’t be bullied by the inclusion of pomegranate molasses–I’ve been using plain ol blackstrap & the dish always turns out fine. I also subbed a finely-chopped onion for the shallots tonight & used crunchy peanut butter instead of plain.

Don’t have Vegan with a Vengeance? Buy a copy! It’s one of the best vegan cookbooks out there for new & seasoned vegs alike. You won’t be disappointed. (And, of course, if you’re in the Richmond area you’re welcome to use my food-spattered copy.)

(PS: I typed this entire post tipsy. How obvious?)

Tonight I threw together what I am simply calling PVS: Pre-vacation soup. Everything in the two crispers that wouldn’t've made it six more days made it into the pot tonight: a large Ziploc bag of some local celery (mostly tops) that I chopped a couple weeks ago, 2 local japanese eggplant, a bunch of local carrots and a bag of not-so-nearby-sourced organic carrots. I also added an overgrown onion, four red potatoes sliced thin, and most of a head of garlic. An obscene amount of Bragg’s aminos, a 1/4 cup of Dixie Diner official vegan broth powder, majoram, parsley, thyme, oregano, basil and white pepper later, viola: PVS.

To make the soup proteinacious I added about four cups of kidney and pinto beans I’d cooked overnight in the crock-pot with a slice of KOMBU. New to kombu? It’s a delicious sea vegetable that allegedly helps beans help your insides…not make quite so much gas. I don’t care one way or another–lookit, VEGANS TOOT–what’s significant is that it makes the beans taste great! I picked up my bag, pictured below, at the Whole Foods Market in Ann Arbor while I was visiting Jiji; it was about $6.

Since I have a bit to spare and I’m thinkin’ it’s light enough to require a 44-cent stamp only, leave a comment with your address (I won’t reveal your details when I approve the comment) and I’ll mail you a slice big enough for a pot of beans. Not that I expect a ton of requests for this admittedly bizarre giveaway, but if any ARE many forthcoming I’ll have to limit it to the first few.

…Any takers?

No offense to progressive cities (or obsessive vegans), but I’m pretty sure there’s a strong correlation between how yuppie a place is and how likely it is to sport a cupcake shop. Said shop may offer delicious treats, but let’s face it, it’s still an entire establishment devoted to pretty, precious desserts. Such a place does not spring up during a recession; significantly, it looks stark against the backdrop of one.

Nevertheless, I deeply enjoyed the signature vanilla vegan cupcake Jiji picked up for me at Ann Arbor’s Cupcake Station just before I skipped town. The flavor of both the cupcake and the frosting was suprisingly complex–delightfully, I could nearly taste the apple cider vinegar they used to sour the soymilk. The frosting was rich and buttery, the kind that can only happen with a generous amount of Earth Balance (hereafter, eBal).

Thank you, J___, for a delightful weekend! I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed catching up and getting to know your new home better (in all its present charms and aforementioned growing edges). You probably have the best apartment in the city.

Love, A

Friends,

I’m relieved to report that it is quite easy to find vegan eats in Ann Arbor. Last night we dined at Seva, the city’s most popular vegetarian restaurant. The menu is about 70% vegetarian, 30% vegan, yet many of the dishes can be made vegan. We started with the yam fries, though if they were made with true yams or just plain ol’ sweet potatoes, I’ll never know. They were certainly delicious. (Note: the accompanying dipping sauce is not vegan, though you can sub for another). Jiji and I caught each other up while sipping the outstanding Ginger Julep (Fresh ginger shot with Maker’s Mark Bourbon, sugar syrup & soda, garnished with a lemon wedge)–a very good complement to the crispy yam fries.

At Jiji’s generous treat, I chose the curried eggplant. The menu describes it thusly: “tender chargrilled eggplant with tamarind-coconut-peanut sauce, served with a really spicy vegetable-brown rice biryani and a cooling beet-soy yogurt raita.” The eggplant was cooked well but the sauce lacked the depth of flavor one might expect from its triple-noun nomen, and instead simply tasted rather sweet. The biryani was not nearly as spicy as advertised–on a scale of 1 to 10, it was a three. Nevertheless, all of the flavors–raita included–danced nicely together, and I am looking forward to enjoying the leftovers this evening before heading to see “Nico Icon” at the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

Today we went marketting at the tremendous Ann Arbor farmer’s market. It is so big, with so many vendors from all over, that the City of Ann Arbor devotes substantial space to it on its website. I made off with three bunches of organic heirloom kale, organic mizuna, organic arugula, un-sprayed spaghetti squash and “sweet potato” squash, and a half gallon of cider for just around $15–not bad! Best of all, my BFF treated me to 8oz of pure Michigan maple syrup. (At a dollar an ounce, it’s quite a treat.) I plan on baking the squash and serving it with the syrup for our lunch tomorrow.

We left the market for Zingerman’s, where we stood in line outside for about 10 minutes before we were able to enter & order. It was totally worth it. I chose Stewart’s Farmer’s Hash, Zingerman’s vegetarian hash. From the menu: “Oven-roasted sweet potatoes & redskin potatoes, piquillo peppers, sautéed spinach & crispy shallots. Served with buttered onion rye toast & sour cream on the side.” To veganise the meal, I subbed wheat for the onion rye and asked for it dry; I also requested that they prepare the hash with olive oil as opposed to the usual butter. No problem!

We sat down at the coffee and pastry house next door, where our food was delivered. There, we snagged an Americano (Jiji) and, because it was featured and I was feeling decadent, a cup of Vosges’ Aztec Elixir haute drinking chocolate, prepared by the barista with soymilk (no extra charge!). Composed of only ancho & chipotle chillies, Ceylon cinnamon, Madagascar vanilla bean, cornmeal (for thickening), and dark chocolate, it is divinity in a cup. I shared; we swooned.

Now I’m back home, trying to decide whether to grab a quick nap or head out to do a little exploring. Though I miss my sweetie very much, I am happy to get away for the weekend and experience someplace new. And while the food is quite good here, it is no match for the company. :) It will be hard to say goodbye!