Let’s be nighthawks.

The hardest part about not living at home is not having access to a kitchen (and a million weird ingredients that you just take for granted). Because when you want an omelet or some other breakfast food at eleven o’clock at night or later, not only is the dining hall not open, but that’s something you really just don’t want to try microwaving. (Seriously.)

That’s why I love diners. (Of course, Edward Hopper and Dead Like Me have definitely glamorized it for me.) Chocolate chip pancakes? Spinach and feta omelets? Chocolate frappes? Monster sandwiches? Grossly unhealthy variations on french fries? Open 24-hours a day? Absolutely.

(Also, the pinky-purple lighting and tiny space only makes it better.)

So, the next time you’re lost at 3 o’clock in the morning in Chinatown, and don’t want lo-mein and dumplings, or just want to nurse a cup of coffee, head over to South Street Diner. You won’t be disappointed.

This has legitimately been the highlight of my week.

Coke doesn’t float my boat, but what they’re currently doing in Boston totally does!

From now until November 1st, they have what they’re calling a “Diet Coke Pop-Up Kitchen”, located on 144 Tremont. (Conveniently placed within walking distance of several colleges, including both Emerson and Suffolk – as if college kids really need more urging to drink Coke.)

They’re offering free snacks, magazines, and of course, diet Coke samples. The new bottles are cute – but I’d rather them have flowers instead of actual soda in mine. If you’re around the area for some reason and need to check your e-mail, stop by, grab a free coke, etcetera. If you really want, you can even get your picture taken with a giant diet coke bottle and put it up on Facebook for all your friends to see.

I do think this probably would have been better off during the spring/summer though. It was definitely too cold to be walking back to work sans gloves with an aluminum bottle in my hand.

But how am I to say “no” to something that can add an extra boost of caffeine to my Friday?

So, it’s snowing. I hate snow. I even hate pictures of it, so that’s why there aren’t any.

Fall is hands down my favorite season. I love everything about it – the weather, the clothes, the foliage, the food. But what I don’t love is the fact that it’s decided to snow twice in the last three days. Global warming? Apparently NOT.

(Luckily none of it’s sticking. If it’s going to snow this early, we better have a white Christmas.)

Anyway, half the fun of fall is all the pumpkin based food that’s suddenly out there. Like pumpkin muffins! Pumpkin bread! Pumpkin waffles! Grande soy milk pumpkin spice lattés with whipped cream (in case you needed to know). The list goes on. But my absolute favorite is pumpkin bread.

Pumpkin Muffins
(From smitten kitchen.)

Ingredients
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
15 ounces (1 can) packed pumpkin puree*
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 tsp pumpkin-pie spice
1 1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon

Directions
Preheat oven to 350°.

Combine pumpkin puree, oil, eggs, pumpkin-pie spice, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Whisk together until smooth – but don’t overmix! Mix in flour.

Plop into muffin tins. Combine 1 tbsp sugar with 1 tsp cinnamon, sprinkle over muffins. Bake for 25 – 30 minutes. (If you bake it in a bread loaf pan like I did, it takes about an hour/until a toothpick comes out cleanly.)

Enjoy!

These are so easy to make, and are all dense and moist (I hate that word) and pumpkin-y. When I made these into muffins last week, I also made cream cheese frosting (8 oz cream cheese, 1/4 cup butter, 1/2 – 3/4 cup powdered sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla extract – mixed together) and they complemented each other really well. But I guess that turns them into cupcakes? I don’t really know the difference between muffins and cupcakes.

*Her recipe says 1 cup from a 15 ounce can – but I’ve been using the entire can and it works wonderfully.

ALSOOOO! Sugar cookies! I associate sugar cookies more with winter, but I guess it’s not really a seasonal cookie until you decide on a cookie cutter. Happy Halloween, in advance!

I’ve had this recipe for forever – I have no idea where I got it from, but it’s always worked well.

Sugar cookies

Ingredients
3 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup (softened) unsalted butter
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 – 2 tbsp milk

Directions
Preheat oven to 375°.

In one bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt.
In another bowl, cream together sugar and butter. Add in egg and milk until well mixed. Gradually add in flour mixture until combined. (Add in additional tbsp of milk if the dough is too dry.)

Halve dough, refrigerate 1 hour minimum. (I always skip this step.) Roll out dough using powdered sugar instead of flour. Use whatever cookie cutter fits your mood or the season.
Place on cookie sheet, bake for 8 – 12 minutes, or until cookies are golden brown. They don’t expand a lot, but make sure there’s space, because a lot of my ghosts ended up holding hands.

Cool two minutes on sheet, finish cooling on wire rack.

Enjoy!

p.s. Fall is my favorite season, winter is my least. I hate snow. Whenever it snows, I always wonder why I didn’t apply to schools in California. And then I remember that I’m only of the few people in the world who don’t die for California. I love Boston. Because of its seasons – as much as I complain.

Lots of locks of love, more pigeons, and a therapy dolphin!

Here’s the thing. I like travelling, I like taking photographs, but honestly? – it’s kind of lame to post pictures of things that you could easily see if you just type it into Google. But! Regardless of that, here are a few.

Supposedly couples head straight to the Ponte Vecchio while in Florence, write their names on a lock and attach them to railings, and then throw the keys to the lock in the water. Doing this grants the couple everlasting love!

There’s a €50 fine if you get caught locking up your love. The city council thinks that the locks are unsightly and ugly, so they’re trying to get rid of them – but I think they’re really pretty. I also think that if you depend on superstitions to stay in love, you’re going to need something stronger than a little padlock.

Just so you know, the pigeons in the Piazza San Marco will not fly away from you. No matter how many times you run at them, no matter how many times you and other children or overweight adults run at them, they will just waddle away and maybe flap their wings, but they will not give you the satisfaction of becoming a great big cloud of black disease.

Trust me. I tried. They only fly when they want to.

I figured no nun would understand why I’d want them to smile pretty in front of the Vatican while holding a rainbow dolphin, so this was the next best thing.
(Also, the pope was on vacation, so I couldn’t even entertain the thought of getting Scruffiie blessed. How cool would that have been?!)

Arrivederci!

Pigeons, Pisa, etcetera.

Apparently if I don’t spend three bazillion hours going through pictures right after I come home from a trip, I won’t want to go through them ever again. I was a little distracted after coming home from Italy, so these pictures have sat on my hard drive and this is the first time I’ve actually started to go through them. This is also the first time since classes started that I’ve been able to sit down and not feel completely obligated to be doing something work or homework or something else.

Classes are good, work is good. Both are a weird mix of stressful which makes it enjoyable – a concept I’ll never be able to fully explain to anyone, but the only way I’m ever truly guaranteed to be productive. I’m officially double majoring – print & multimedia journalism along with marketing communications: advertising and public relations. One or two summer classes and a whole lot of lucky sequencing, and I’ll (hopefully) be graduating on time in Spring of 2012, instead of grossly early, like by the end of next year.

Anyway. Other than that, my life is boring, I don’t eat or sleep enough ever (A+ on the healthy scale), and as of the last few days, I’ve totally blown off my morning dates with the elliptical in the gym.

Fall is slowly coming. I can’t wait. I’ll be taking this back of course, the first second it starts snowing.

p.s.
This is what was behind me while I was apparently taking twenty shots of three different pigeons sitting in holes in the wall. Don’t ask. Pigeons are more endearing to me than leaning towers, no matter how famous they are.

The other birds keep looking for him.

I flew home from Rome last night and we buried Princess in the garden. He was really young for a budgie – he would have turned five at the end of the month, but Alex found him at the bottom of the cage Tuesday morning.

Rest in peace, prettyface. You were the best baby bird ever. <3

Moving out, moving in; upgrades and downgrades.

I survived summer camp, and upgraded my camera! (Both of those things deserve exclamations points, ps.) My sister wanted an SLR to tinker around with, so I sold her my old Canon Rebel XT, and upgraded to a Canon Rebel T1i. Hello, HD video capability. At one point, it was going to be an early Christmas present (especially after I found out that I have a credit card maximum), but I changed my mind and am directing my next few paychecks in her direction (love Bank of America for thinking that my payment was fraudulent and refusing to let my payment go through. Inconvenient, but at least I know they’ve got my best interests in mind. I think.)

Anyway.

This morning, the little Subaru with buns of steel took me on a far from epic journey across a river and into Boston to take me back to school.

I guess this means that my summer is over, but I’m leaving on Tuesday for a family road trip through northern Italy. I’ll hold on to my extra few days, thank you very much.

Anyway, so I’m all moved in and ready for the school year to start – but only when I come back from Italy, that is.

Here’s where I’m living! Upgrade from last year? I’m in a single. Downgrade? It’s tiny.

BUT. Regardless of anything, it’s a single and wonderful and I’m incredibly excited. :)

Come on, get higher.

At the start of the summer, when my bestfriendboyfriend was in London, and I was driving to work in the morning to teach small children French nursery rhymes and the rules of freeze dance, I heard this one song over and over each morning, without fail. (And being the sap that I am, it made me all wistfulnostalgic/girly to the extreme.) But I couldn’t remember the lyrics when I got home from work/poli class, so I couldn’t Google it, and I pretty much stopped hearing it after he got back.

But, I heard it in the grocery store tonight, and I literally stopped what I was doing, and stood in the deli/fresh produce section texting myself lyrics so that, three months later (and ironically, right before he leaves on another trip), I actually could figure out what this song was. It’s Matt Nathanson’s Come On, Get Higher.

Anyway. I’m excited to go back to the gym when I get back to school (not only because I plan on eating my weight and then some in food while I’m in Italy), because Target was selling old iPod shuffles for $45, and how can I resist anything that’s pink? Now I won’t be That Girl Who Keeps Getting Tangled In Her Headphone Cord And Making Her iPod Drop On The Treadmill And Go Flying! I just hope I don’t mistake it for candy one night and try and eat it.

Other things:

• The Time Traveler’s Wife movie was enjoyable but not particularly good
• Week 9 of summer camp and I’m not only sick, but unable to distinguish individual days (this morning at lunch I was walking with the kids to recess and I legitimately could not remember getting to work in the morning, or where I had parked)
• I did something weird to my hip
• I got a ridiculously cute eco-friendly propaganda “decorative tapestry” (read: sheet) from Target

Long time, no life.

I have three more weeks (including the rest of this one) to survive summer camp, and then we’re off to Italy for a little over a week and right after that, I move back to Boston. This is, of course, assuming that I survive the next three weeks, and don’t die of exhaustion and/or humidity and/or children and/or lack of social interaction.

I just want to be able to sleep in past 9am, be one of those people who can run a million miles and not feel a thing, and to wear non-camp clothing! All of which I guess (maybe not the second one though) will happen eventually. Three weeks.

And then honestly? I’ll probably end up missing camp.

Also, I really like blankets.

C-c-c-cinnamon lips and candy kisses on your tongue.

Today was a ‘don’t bother to wear contacts, be grateful the entire camp is watching a movie during recess (The Sword in the Stone*), let’s try and make cinnamon buns’ kind of day. I think it gets easier and easier to bake as you get older because you have infinitely more patience than you did when you were ten**.

I made them with a recipe taken from smittenkitchen.com, which is hands down the best food/food photography blog out there that I’ve found to date. Cutting them didn’t work too well – they flattened! – so my mummy and I unrolled them and rolled them up by hand. Supposedly you could get 18 from this recipe, but I got 13 (pretty big ones, too).

(They lasted longer when they were still getting all puffed up, but not so much after they were done baking and being glazed.)

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Oh, and one last (completely unrelated) picture:

Yesterday I turned 19, not 9, but you’d never know based on the balloons sitting in the corner of my room right now.

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*All of the kids are really excited to watch the rest of it, and not gonna lie, so am I.
**Read: the last time I tried to do anything related to waiting for dough to rise, which resulted in an epically sticky gross undercooked failure.