Radio Head

I had a friend in college who had a theory that we all have radio antennas in our heads. I think he may be on to something. Very often, I'll be thinking of a song, then turn on the radio and that song is playing. Or I'll be listening to one station and get the feeling that a certain song will be on another station, so I'll change it, and that song is on! The other day I was doing dishes or something and I thought, "Hmm...I should turn on the radio." I turned it to a station I don't normally listen to, and one of my favorite songs, which I've only heard once before on the radio, was playing. Coincidence? I don't think so. I think my radio head was working its magic.

Bwah Ha Ha!

Last night my sister's family came over for dinner. My little three-year-old neice volunteered to say the prayer. She was saying all the standard kid prayer type stuff: "thank you for the food, thank you for the good day", etc., and then she pulled a new one out. She said, "please bless that Carolyn won't...be so...scary." Then she went right on with more standard kid stuff. There were muffled snickers coming from all around the dining room. At the end of the prayer, we all just busted up laughing. I didn't know I was scary. I play with my neices. They laugh. I thought I was a good aunt. I guess I have some work to do. Anyway, after that her big brother named me Aunt Scarolyn, and it stuck for the rest of the night. Great.

List

I'm not a vegan, and with the way I love yogurt, ice cream, cheese, pork roast, omellettes, ham sandwiches, etc., I'll never be a vegan. But I found a list of 100 foods every vegan should try at least once, and I figured it would make for an easy post. I've eaten about half the list. Not bad. I've never heard of many things on the list, so if you think I should have italicized them and I didn't, I'm sorry. Don't judge me.

The instructions I found on the website where I got the list are as follows (feel free to participate):
1. Copy the list into your blog.
2. Bold all the items you have eaten.
3. Italicize any items you would never consider eating.

1. Molasses
2. Cactus
3. Scrambled tofu
4. Grilled portabella caps
5. Fresh ground horseradish
6. Sweet potato biscuits
7. Arepa
8. Vegan cole slaw
9. Ginger carrot soup
10. Fiddlehead ferns
11. Roasted elephant garlic
12. Umeboshi
13. Almond butter toast
14. Aloe vera
15. H&H bagel from NYC
16. Slow roasted butternut squash
17. White truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Freshly ground wasabi
20. Coconut milk ice cream (not store bought)
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Orchard fresh pressed apple cider
23. Organic California mango
24. Quinoa
25. Papaya Smoothie
26. Raw habanero pepper
27. Goji berry tea
28. Fennel
29. Vegan chocolate chip cookie
30. Radishes and vegan buttery spread
31. Starfruit
32. Oven fresh sourdough bread
33. Sangria made with premium fruit and juices (this might be an alcoholic thing. Don't worry- I had the non-alcoholic version)
34. Saurkraut
35. Acai smoothie
36. Blue foot mushrooms
37. Vegan cupcakes from Babycakes in NYC
38. Sweet potatoes and tempeh combo
39. Falafel
40. Spelt crust pizza
41. Salt and pepper oyster mushrooms
42. Jicama slaw
43. Pumpkin edamame ginger dumplings
44. Hemp milk
45. Rose champagne
46. Fuyu
47. Raw avacado coconut soup
48. Tofu pesto sandwich
49. Apple-lemon-ginger-cayenne fresh-pressed juice
50. Grilled seitan
51. Prickly pear
52. Fresh-pressed almond milk
53. Concord grapes off the vine
54. Ramps
55. Coconut water fresh from a young coconut
56. Organic arugula
57. Vidalia onion
58. Sampler of organic produce from Diamond Organics
59. Honeycrisp apple
60. Poi
61. Vegan campfire-toasted smores
62. Grape seed oil
63. Farm fresh-picked peach
64. Freshly made pita bread with freshly made hummus
65. Chestnut snack packs
66. Fresh guava
67. Mint chocolate chip oatmeal cookies
68. Raw mallomar from One Lucky Duck in NYC
69. Fried plantains
70. Mache
71. Golden beets
72. Barrel-fresh pickles
73. Liquid smoke
74. Meyer lemon
75. Veggie paella
76. Vegan lasagna
77. Kombucha
78. Homemade soy milk
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Lychee bellini
81. Tempeh bacon
82. Sprouted grain bread
83. Lemon pepper tempeh
84. Vanilla bean
85. Watercress
86. Carrot you pulled out of the ground yourself
87. Vegan in-season fruit pie
88. Flowers
89. Corn chowder
90. High quality vegan raw chocolate
91. Yellow fuzz-free kiwi
92. White flesh grapefruit
93. Harissa
94. Coconut oil
95. Jackfruit
96. Homemade risotto
97. Spirulina
98. Seedless 'pixie' tangerine
99. Gourmet sorbet, not store-bought
100. Fresh plucked English peas

The last week or so

Okay, since I'm now in Utah and most of my family already knows everything that's happening with me, I'll be blogging for my Michigan (and other states) friends' benefits. Yes, benefits. I expect you all to be greatly enriched by reading what I have to say. I'm just going to post pictures mostly on this post. I'll try to say something about them.

1. My favorite picture from the family olympics. We all got a donut on a paper towell and had to eat it without using our hands. Good way to keep the kids occupied.

2 and 3. Windmills in Wyoming. We drove past A LOT of windmill farms. I guess it makes sense- Wyoming is always windy and there's not much else to look at, so why not build windmills?

4. Oh, I guess this one is for my non-Michigan readers. This is the hamburger cake I made for linger longer last month. The theme was criss-cross (or Rue Paul, depending on who you ask). Real food looked like dessert and dessert looked like real food.

Well, don't you all feel greatly enriched now? If not, I have one last story. Last night I went hiking with my mom, brother, and sister-in-law. We saw a moose on the drive up to the trail, another along the side of the trail, and then a bunch of bats on the trail. They kept swooping at me! It was gross and freaky! My brother tried to make me feel better by saying they were probably just Edward Cullen and his family, but I don't like Edward Cullen, so that didn't help.

More Camping Pictures

Patrick took most of the pictures. He has a fancy camera and knows how to use it.

Summertime in Northern Michigan

Last weekend my best friends and I went camping. It was my last Michigan adventure, and it was wonderful! We drove up to Traverse City (if you look at the back of your left hand, Traverse City is roughly between your middle and fourth fingers) on Thursday. We found a state park with a campground and set up our tent on one of the first sites we found. It was dark and rainy, so we didn't take a lot of time to explore our surroundings. The next morning, we realized we were the ONLY people in the whole campground. It was awesome. We blasted some Black Eyed Peas and had a little dance party to start off the day of adventuring.
Then we drove up a little peninsula in Grand Traverse Bay (a bay in Lake Michigan). We played in the sand, waded in the water, and found a little playground next to a lighthouse (I can still swing upside down on the monkey bars!). Next we drove to the lake and rented an inflatable trampoline a little ways off the shore. That was a blast! We only got pictures of the little trampoline, but we spent most of our time on a bigger one. It kind of gave us a feeling for what it would be like to be drunk. It was almost impossible to stay balanced. We were falling all over the trampoline and each other. The day was rainy and cold, but it was a blast anyway.
Next we headed up to the upper peninsula. I don't know if this information is generally known (except by Jacob, who lived there), but besides the mitten portion of Michigan, there's another chunk that's about half as big as the rest of the state, connected to the US only through Wisconsin. We had to drive over the longest suspension bridge in the western hemisphere to get there. And it was great! Almost the whole UP is state parks and wilderness areas. We camped in a really pretty forested state park. The next morning we went to Tahquamenon Falls. I don't know too much of the history of the falls, but they were beautiful. There were little nature trails going through forests of ferns and pine trees. I love the UP. It was just so pretty. On the drive home, we stopped in a little town for a blueberry festival, had dinner in Saginaw, and saw some amazing landscape. Michigan really is a great place for summer activities (and winter, too).

The Parable of the Potato Chips, Part Deux

If you'll remember, when we left off, a certain girl had eaten one really good gourmet potato chip, and was left wanting more. Well, this girl was recently given a whole bag of gourmet potato chips. They were perfectly seasoned, not too oily, perfectly crispy, and, according to the label, contained nothing fake. She just wishes she knew where to get more, and what the rest of the package meant.