Marietta, Ohio

So here's what happened on Thanksgiving: My mom, her best friend Leilah, and my brother drove to Marietta, Ohio to visit their other best friend Dede on Wednesday.  Thursday morning Pietro and I flew to Ohio and met them at Dede's house, which is awesomely huge and beautiful btw.  Everyone worked together to cook Thanksgiving dinner which turned out deliciously (I will be stealing several of the recipes used).
But fast forward two days to what I really want to talk about: the restaurant we went to on Saturday: The Buckley House
It was phenomenal. Who knew in this tiny little town right off of the Ohio river there would be a world class restaurant.  I've only ever had better food twice in my life and both were at EXTREMELY expensive restaurants in big cities.  We had wine and crab pastry appetizers and seafood and risotto and NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM (yes I give it five out of five noms) I ate it all.  The desserts looked amazing too but I was soo full by the end I couldn't do it.

Anyway, If you happen to be driving and randomly pass this little town, you must stop here.

The website can be found here http://bhrestaurant.com/

Fanny May Help the Homeless Walkathon 2011

So it is a tradition every year that my dad's office gets together and participates in the Help the Homeless Walkathon in Washington DC.  Usually Christian and I go too although there were a few years in college when I had to miss it.  This year I happened to be in town the weekend before Thanksgiving and I decided to go with.  Basically its a 3 mile walk around Washington DC starting at the National Mall and wandering through all the monuments that you pay to go on and thus they raise money for homeless people.  (What made me raise my eyebrows though were the number of people proudly walking in their "Help the Homeless" T-shirts right past the homeless people begging for money).

Anyway having been born and raised right outside DC I never really appreciated it as a city.  The monuments were always old news and I thought all of it was nothing special.  I forget that people travel thousands of miles to see these sights.  Being gone for 5 months and returning to wander in and around the best parts of the city with my camera allowed me to re-appreciate the beauty of the city that I had never noticed before. Also my high school band was there playing so that was cool.
Here are the pictures of the walkathon:

So This is Midtown...

So midtown is much fancier than downtown.

A high school friend of mine, Erin, came to visit last night and we went out with two of her friends from college who also live here.  They live in midtown so instead of the usual casual pub I usually go to with my friends here we went to dinner at a fancy restaurant and then went to a very fancy rooftop bar with a spectacular view.  The rooftop was heated (because it was cold) and they provided complimentary robes which made us look like we were in a cult :P Also I ordered hot cider as my drink which was nice and cozy :)

I don't know if I could do it every weekend because it was expensive, but I had fun

Vegetable Smoothies

So as most of you know I like to eat healthy.  I went on a health kick last January and haven't stopped yet (Faturdays keep me going) but as for the other six days of the week I've been sticking to it.  Sometimes it gets monotonous so every once and a while I like to try new healthy recipes to break the cycle.  This week I decided to try smoothies.  Since I try not to eat too much fruit I looked for recipes for vegetable based smoothies but found slim pickins... so I decided to experiment and make my own recipes.  Here are two I tried and tested this weekend

Thanksgiving Smoothie: (makes two servings)

1/2 cup boiled sweet potato (sliced)
1/2 cup steamed beets
1/2 cup carrots (sliced)
1 1/2 cups almond milk (or tea of your choice if you don't want milk)
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 1/2 cups ice

Very sweet and delicious, reminded me of thanksgiving, I'm thinking of adding cranberries next time (they are supposedly not as high sugar as some fruits).  I bought the sweet potato and the beets precooked (canned) because I'm lazy and couldn't fathom boiling something for 20-30 minutes just to make a smoothie (but be careful and make sure there's no added sugar/syrup in this case). Same for the carrots, they would probably work raw but I used frozen carrots from the grocer's freezer (which I think are pre cooked?)

Avocado Lime Smoothie: (makes two servings)

1/2 an avocado
2 limes (peeled)
1/2 a cucumber (peeled and sliced)
1/2 cup spinach (packed)
1 1/2 cups almond milk (or tea of your choice if you don't want milk)
1 1/2 cups ice

This one has a very interesting taste, after tasting the first time I added an extra lime for more flavor and then it was really good (think avocado lime dressings you might have had). Peeling the lime was difficult, I ended up quartering it and then turning it inside out and using my fingers to pull off the fruit.  For the cucumber I used a carrot/potato peeler. This one utilizes all raw ingredients and it more healthy and more flavorful but might be too flavorful for some people.

Try them and let me know what you think! (vegetable haters, be brave!)

Halloween Parade

So Pietro and I went out in our couples costume at Princeton on Thursday night but then my Mr. Pacmen left me to go to California for a week :(
But some friends and I went to the legendary Greenwich Village Halloween Parade on Monday night and it was INSANE. Soo crowded... Here are some pics of both nights: