parents weekend... WHEEEEE! :-)

my lovely parents arrived in brunswick this morning (friday) around 12am, after a long-ish day of flying from seattle to manchester and then driving up to bowdoin. yay! this is the first time in my years at bowdoin that my mum has made the trip. in years past, she's been on our farm in hungary by this time in the fall. i'm so glad she finally made it out :-).

my father and i have a little tradition, since he always seemed to book his flights to arrive at really strange hours... i make dinner and deliver it to his hotel room. that way when he arrives he can have food-ish, but i can be happily sleeping. hehe, works well for me! this year i made couscous with curried vegetables (garbonzo beans, potato, squash, onion, garlic). i had such a fun time making it because all the colors were so... autumny, and the kitchen smelled of garlic. basically, utopia. anywho yesterday was a crazy day of classes, interviews, deadlines, and work @ the gear room, so i actually didn't get to cook dinner until around 11. just as i was getting ready to hop over to the hotel, i called to ask whether they'd arrived, and the little guy told me that my parent's reservation didn't exist. hmm!? haha i don't know how that happened, but the reservation was apparently for friday through monday instead of thursday through saturday, so they (m+p) ended up staying with us at spring street. it was nicer that way though, because i got to warm up the food, AND they got to eat part of their welcome-apple-pie!

(the pie incidentally, was inspired by gravling... sort of a funny story in itself. i mentioned how i was stressed and feeling rather like cinderella's carriage as the clock approached midnight, you know, on the verge of turning into a pumpkin. he suggested that the real question at hand wasn't anything related to whether turning back into a pumpkin was bad/good, but whether if i were a pumpkin, i would make pumpkin pie out of myself... interesting, odd, and thought provoking in the i-should-make-an-apple-pie for my parents sort of way. hehe.)

anyway, i didn't really have recipes for either the curry or the pie, i just sort of put stuff together. the curry was fun because i had all the component bits at home. spices like garam masala, turmeric, and black mustard seeds make dishes like this soo aromatic! i love potatoes so much though, that it was hard not to eat them before they made their way into the curry (since obviously they were cooked first. haha i once tried to persuade my parents that i was irish based on the fact that i love potato so much. hmm. :-P)

the weather is amazing here this weekend, nice and crisp. perfect weather for leaf-based tourism! tonight the chens and the gottliebs are scheduled to go on our annual sushi adventure (this year with BOTH our mums!!!). tomorrow my family is going to boothbay harbor (wheeee!!!) with ivy and kruiky... and then sunday, boston to see my lima and kafrine (and schedule permitting, perhaps even gravling!). it's funny how food-oriented this weekend is. such is my family, i guess. what i really really REALLY want right now though, is sleep.

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(multi-part post hehe in case the switching tenses wasn't enough of a clue...) it's actually saturday now, and we (meaning kruiky, ivy, m+p, and i) just got back from dinner in boothbay. it was amazing, as usual, and i'll have to write about it soon. last night was equally fun - the family sushi night was great. my father (the always experimental one) asked to try sea urchin. armand and i had a fun time talking of all the latin names of the sea life we learned about in spang's class at garfield... anywho. highlights of sushi: shitake-miso soup, reaallly good salmon sashimi, and ginger ice cream (YES!!! hehe ice cream!?!). next time i promise i'll talk more about the food and making it. now again, it's time for bed. :-)