Week 6 of grad school (I’m compressing time to catch my blog up with the present day! Thank you fall break).
A last-of-the-summer produce meal. Bruschetta, tomato salad, roasted corn on the cob. Plus yellow split peas for protein/deliciousness. I cannot get enough of Madhur Jaffrey’s recipe. It’s in her cookbook World Vegetarian, a great read. I got it from the library but (foolishly) forgot to copy down the recipe, but I managed to recreate it with a combination of this and this.
Spent a lot of this week doing research for a group project, which led me here:
A lot of people complain about the WIC office, but I sure loved visiting this one. They had a great staff (one member of whom was an internationally board certified lactation consultant, which is awesome!) and really awesome pro-breastfeeding resources (one of the topics of my project). Love how this flier is both informative and adorable. Tiny baby tummies that don’t need a big bottle of formula!
Since I was in Hillsborough anyway, I stopped by my favorite vintage shop. They weren’t open (like nothing in Hillsborough is open on Monday, it’s super small town ish) but I admired their blooming flowers.
Then I invited Steve to meet me for a spontaneous Monday night date. Rooooomance! I think that Wooden Nickel, the pub in downtown Hillsborough, randomly has the best burger in the triangle. And they are awesome about having local beef. So I got that, with the tots (!), and Steve got his sandwich with a salad so we could split our sides and each have a little nutrition and indulgence in the same meal.
The tots were perfectly crunchy. I couldn’t eat that many… because they’re tots. But they were great.
But man, this burger, I don’t know HOW they do it. It’s super simple: they don’t even put on lettuce and tomato and onion; it’s just beef, cheese, pickles, ketchup, and mustard. It’s just that the meat is SO JUICY and SO FLAVORFUL and the bun is yummy and the pickles are good and just… it’s perfect. Wondrous mystery.
Steve got a sandwich special which involved chicken, bacon, cheese, and apple chutney.
Then, as I drove home, there was this gorgeous sunset I had to capture. Not particularly safely, heh.
Another highlight of the academic week was when our biostats professor gave us M+Ms to demonstrate a binary distribution sampling technique.
Later I went and got sushi with my friend Andrea, as I have quite a few times. But never before have I noticed that DOLLY ATE THERE YOU GUYS OH MY GODDDDDDDDD! (Have I talked about my adoration for Dolly Parton on this blog yet? If not, just know that I LOVE HER AS MUCH AS I LOVE PEOPLE I ACTUALLY KNOW)
I tried to get a “healthy dessert”. Love that this was named a “Carrboro bar”, because I love Carrboro. It has all the dried fruit and whole grains and *crunchy*, in both senses of the word, elements you’d expect. But eh. Sometimes you just want real dessert.
I met up with a new friend to get manicures that weekend. I THINK I LOVE YOU, orange nails. I got a lot of compliments on these. Take a chance for fall, ladies, it’s very fun having pumpkin nails.
Post-manicure, I hung out with a friend who’d been house sitting at the most GORGEOUS house in Durham. Like, dream house territory. Woodland paradise house. This was the perfect screened in porch (a must-have in my dream home).
The living room was also lovely and artistically arranged.
I thought one of the best parts of the whole place (that my friend Leesie, the house sitter and clearly not a cat lady like myself did not get) was this sweetheart who came with the place. She nestled herself between us while we gabbed on the porch eating pie, and demanded lots of petting. I miss having a cat so badddd. I’d like this house and this cat, please.
And finally, the Sunday afternoon of that weekend marked the annual Carrboro music festival, a chance to walk through shut-down Weaver Street, listen to bands, and get sunburned! Lots of fun quirky venues.
Tarheel Creamery, I will love you forever. (There are a gazillion local ice cream makers in the area, because we are spoiled beyond belief. I alternate in my favorite but right now it’s definitely Tarheel. This strawberry ice cream was to die for). It’s so fun hanging out outside, listening to relaxing music, and eating ice cream.
This guy played a violin with a puppet whaaattttttt?!
We took a music break to take in some food and views at Top of the Hill.
Steve had these yummy classy grit cakes in cashew-rosemary gravy.
And I had the nachos I’d been randomly craving for weeks. Paid extra for avocado because come on. This was enormous.
After:
Went and enjoyed a last performance at Weaver Street Market. As ever, a zoo.
There’s this man who seems like a character from a children’s book. I seem to allllways see him at WSM, and whenever there’s a band playing he’s front and center, dancing beautifully. He looks like a wise, semi-elderly but still very limber yogi. At this particular moment all the children were following him around and copying his dance moves like he was this magical pied piper. So fun to watch!
Lovely Carrboro!
In other news, this marks the first blog post I’ve written in the WordPress editor, rather than relying on Windows Live Writer. WLW had been growing increasingly glitch-y on my old PC, particularly because it’s no longer supported by Windows. Then my old PC became almost increasingly useless. And there’s no WLW equivalent for Macs… and the software there is costs money. Womp womp.
I’m trying this for now but I have to say the photo uploading process thus far has been super annoying. On the other hand, the photos look nicer. Let me know what y’all think.
Crunchy in Carolina 