Well, it’s Friday the 13th…spooooky. But instead of being superstitious, my parents decided to hop a plane from Texas to celebrate my birthday tomorrow!
To welcome them to the D.C. metro area, I whipped up another batch of chocolate macarons.
My folks have never tried them before, considering they live very far away from the maker of the macaron, so I wanted to give them a chance to taste.
OK, so we all know Friend of the Blog Rob, right? Of gel paste, Texas and Eiffel Tower cookie cutter, and Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla fame, yes? Well, he’s done it again, and this time…it’s serious.
I’m not going to post all the gifts now, because there are 26 of them (yes. You read that correctly. Twenty. Six.), each tagged with a saying or phrase from the blog, but I wanted to share this one in particular, because it’s SO. AWESOME.
OK, for those of you who don’t kow her, there’s this awesome baking craze that has swept the food blogging community entitled Tuesdays With Dorie. This basically involves baking your way through Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours, to delicious and delectable results.
I have been dying to get a copy of this book for ages and ages, but in the midst of all my working, traveling, and generally being busy, I hadn’t had time to pick it up (though how long does it really take to go online and buy a copy? Not long, come now). Well. Rob came through big time.
Oh what’s that you say? An awesomely awesome copy of the best baking book EVER? Surely there’s nothing that can top that, is there?
So this Saturday will mark the 26th anniversary of my birth (ahem), and as such I felt the need to celebrate. Living in D.C. is great, because you get random holidays like Veteran’s Day off from work, which makes it possible to do things like have 8PM dinner reservations at Zaytinya followed by drinks at Lucky Bar on a Tuesday night!
Dinner at Zaytinya was fan-freaking-tastic. If you’ve never heard of it, Zaytinya’s a mezze-style restaurant, sortof like a tapas restaurant, where you order several small plates for the group to share. We were 8, so we had many items to share, and our table had a cute lazy suzan to make sure all the dishes made it around the table. They were having a Lebanese food festival, so we ordered several Lebanese specialties, and some really tasty Lebanese wines (which they don’t normally serve by the glass, holla!). Sorry for the picture quality, it was fairly dark in the restaurant.
We ordered:
– baby beet salad with goat cheese
Well, today’s the day. My trip has finally come to an end.
It occurred to me that I should post something about what I’ve learned over the last six weeks, considering the amazing experience I’ve had and the impact I’m sure it will have on my life. Trouble is, it’s impossible to pack six weeks of sweat, work, food, wildlife, friends, language, and knowledge into a neat little blog post-style package. So, instead, I’ll just talk about a few of the things I’ve learned about myself on this trip.
I shall call them my Points of Sunshine, cut down a bit from the 13 months of sunshine that Ethiopia boasts.
Point of Sunshine #1: Turns out, I can survive living in a developing country!
Sorry I’ve been absent – I’ve been working like crazy (e.g. today I spent 14 hours at my desk in the office) so I haven’t had much time to post, but I went for a field visit this weekend and needed to update.
So it’s week number four of my six week stint in Ethiopia, and I’m still a little bit in awe of this place.
Awash River
A little bit? Make that a LOT.
