The End.

This is the last day of NaBloPoMo and I'm extremely excited about that.  I'm surprised that I was able to keep up with it this time, but that was due partly to the fact that other members of AFBA joined in on the daily posting fun.  This experience has definitely brought me back to blogging.  Not only did I challenge myself to post every day, I also wanted to make sure that I was posting real things.  Sure, there were a few days that got super lame posts, but for the most part, I think I upped my content, mostly by including pictures.

So how did I actually make it through all of November posting?

1) Not all of the posts are about food.  I think I've come to terms with the fact that this blog is going to evolve into more than just what I'm eating/cooking/drooling over, because I don't have infinite things to say about food and I have the cutest little baby ever.  Oh and because I'm going to have a baby in March. ;)

2) Most Mondays I posted menus and most Sundays I posted pictures.  It's almost like a cheat, but I tried to make sure that the pictures were good and the menus were, mostly, followed.

3) This is probably the real reason why I could stick with it: I prescheduled a lot of my posts.  If I had multiple ideas for posts, I'd write them all up at once and then schedule them out.  Usually this ended up being a few posts at a time, so it's not like I had the entire month scheduled.


So will I ever do this again?  Possibly.  Probably not any time soon, though.  I'm planning on easing up on the posting, especially right now.  I have a talk to give about a carbon-enhanced metal-poor r+s-process enhanced star (say that three times fast) in about 20 minutes, a ginormous pile of papers to grade, and a committee meeting in a week, where I have to tell one of my committee members that I am, indeed, having a baby, which is probably going to cut my spring semester productivity in half.  Oops.

So for now, here's a piece of pie for you, because I think we've all deserved it by sticking with me for this long.  Also, because I can't eat it due to my newly-discovered pregnancy-induced insulin resistence, but more on that later.

Image from Stu Spivack because my phone is choking on the giant picture of pumpkin pie from inside my faraday cage.  I mean office.

Peanut butter blues

My Koeze peanut butter is almost gone, which is sad but weird on the street is that I don't have to travel all the way back to Michigan to go to Zingerman's to get it.  Apparently, Antonelli's carries it. Hurrah!

Also, this talk is happening tomorrow at noon.  Which is, again, why I'm not making real posts.  Perhaps I should make up for it in December.

science. ugh.

This is why you don't get a real post today:

Actually, I have to give a talk on Wednesday about this, which is for realz why.

Silent Sundays: Kimchi's Thanksgiving

home brewing

me: are you excited?
he: for what?
me: cider!
he: oh, yeah.  Are you excited?
me: for what?
he: to play pretend.
me: pretend what?
he: pretend we know what we're doing

After seeing a Slow Food Austin talk by the Argus Cidery dudes, we decided to try to brew hard cider to give as Christmas gifts.  It seemed like it was going to be mostly easy, and after two trips to Austin Homebrew Supply, we came home with about $50 worth of supplies and way more confusion than when we first walked in the door.  Hopefully this works and we don't end up giving our families a lot of vinegar.  I'll update later when we know if it worked or not.  And no, the irony of being pregnant and brewing alcoholic beverages isn't lost on me.

cider supplies, including airlocks, campden tablets, and a bunch of other stuff

Bottles that are (still) awaiting cider.  Colby and Dustin "made" them in a weekend.  Anything for the cause, eh?

Sanitizing everything

The game plan

sulfated cider ready for fermentation

Colby putting the cider in its home for the next couple of weeks.  (And yes, this is going to be the nursery, but it's not like we're using it right now.)

Ciders with their airlocks and yeast. Look at that yeast bloom in the upper right corner!

It bubbled!  Success!

Black Friday

We went out on this morning at midnight to see what Black Friday was like.  Neither Colby nor I had ever had the full experience, so this was more anthropological than shopping.  I did see some deals that looked good, but waiting for hours to get into a store+getting trampled on+waiting for hours to check out didn't seem that appealing.  This is what the scene looked like outside of Target:

No, that's not the line to get into Target, that's the crowd that gathered to watch the line to get into Target.  At about 12:05 AM.  

Here's the line to get into Target:

And then at around 12:30, we meandered down to Best Buy, and they still had a line, complete with security guards.  It was kind of nuts.

Needless to say, we didn't buy anything, but now that my curiosity has been sated, I'm content with spending my future Black Friday Eves basking in the glow of a food hangover, rather than contend with crazy crowds of motivated shoppers.

Happy Thanksgiving!