A Sweeet New Year

Good [very] early morning! I hope you’ve all had splendid weekends and are now ready for FALL! I love summer, but I think the early months of fall are just about my favorite things.  I love apple cider (and their sneaky counterpart, the apple cider donut), apple picking, light sweaters, spending my birthday with family and friends, putting on a silly costume for Halloween, baking for Thanksgiving… time has sure been flying, let me tell you!

I spent the  weekend with Ari’s family celebrating Rosh Hashana, or the Jewish New Year.  (Click here to read more.)

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To celebrate, Ilana and I made some killer cookies from Martha Stewart’s Cookies cookbook.

We made chocolate and vanilla cookies as well as vanilla and raspberry cream fillings; we mixed and matched.

I must be a traditionalist, but I liked the “Oreos” best.

In addition to cookies, we also ate lots of pickles…

Challah bread and gefilte fish with horseradish…

Potato kugel…

Vegetarian matzoh ball soup made especially for me and Christine… I love this, but haven’t been able to eat in years because it’s usually made with chicken stock.

We had two very nice dinners…

And we ate our fill of sweet treats, of course.

But most important, of course, are the friends and family I shared these meals with.

The holiday came to a close for this morning when I whipped out of town on the Vamoose.  At least I got to share one last breakfast with everyone

The rest of the day was spent in a haze of unpacking, catching up on work, eating bits and pieces, and going for a 4.5 mile run.

My mom made the trek to see me for dinner.  We had a special dinner at Locale, where Ari and I had eaten at once before… that time, however, we were on our way to his parents’ house!

We each had 1.5 glasses of Mouton Cadet, a French wine my mom remembers drinking with her friends.

I nibbled on an olive…

We shared an order of fried calamari; I only had a few pieces because I was saving room…

…for fresh linguine with mussels, clams, squid, and shrimp in a white wine sauce.

This was so good, it was hard to keep myself from eating the whole thing! I boxed up half, and took my mom’s leftovers as well.  I see a lot of pasta in my future!

On the way home, I stopped at the grocery store to pick up some spicy necessities (say it with me: Hefty tall kitchen bags! Hefty tall kitchen bags!) and found quite the bargain:

Enough coconut water to last me a week, at least! And this only cost $3.99.  I love the interesting flavors of O.N.E. beverages, but where I am in my budge, they’re just too expensive for me to consume regularly.  I’ll let you know how these taste, but these may make both my tummy and my purse very happy!

I also finally purchased some Purely Decadent Vanilla ice cream…

I jazzed it up with some melted pop rock chocolate and walnuts.

This was so rich and creamy.  I’ve heard mixed reviews, but I loved it.  As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been in love with everything coconut recently, and this really hit the spot.

It was a wonderful weekend, from spending time with Family Upwelling to dining with Mom, to watching Waltz With Bashir all by my lonesome. If you haven’t yet seen this film, I highly recommend it… it’s a very brutal movie about the 1982 Lebanon War, but it’s beautifully animated and the story is incredible. Check it out, but with caution.  I’ve been reminded again and again and again how lucky I am to be surrounded by loving family and friends, live with a roof over my head, and the food of my choosing on my plate. Life is sweet.