Author: Tess

Travel, Vacation

Valenthiana

Tess

(If you don’t understand the name of the post, just say it out loud – you will sound like a real Spaniard!)

Valencia is a weird place.  In Spain, it’s one of the favorite cities of many natives – we constantly heard Spanish folks waxing poetic about the seaside town and how much they loved it.  To be totally honest, it wasn’t my favorite.  It was a little dirtier than other cities we went to, and just didn’t come across quite as charming as the other places we went.

I know this doesn’t look that dirty.  I promise that it was.  Kind of. Dirt makes me sad, read on anyway

Life, Travel, Vacation

Madrid is Magic

Tess

We arrived in Madrid travel-smelly, sleep-deprived and cranky.  We took the metro from the airport to a station in downtown Madrid with no phone, essentially no money, and only a vague idea of where our rental place was actually located (read: a vague Euro-style address, and the name of the nearest metro station.  Not the stuff of Tom-Tom dreams).

Doesn’t that sound like a promising start?  We also couldn’t look at the public map once we got to the metro station because a homeless person was sleeping in front of it.  It was a pretty overwhelming welcome, let me tell you. Mas, mas, por favor!

Life, Travel, Vacation

España: A Retrospective

Tess

Hey you!  I’m back!

And actually, I’ve decided that instead of doing one big post on my trip to Spain (I got back Sunday), I’m going to do little mini-posts on each place I went – since they’re all so different.  There will be pictures.  There will be stories.  I will most likely mention food.*

*Points to you if you can find the understatement in the paragraph above.

In the meantime, my current main contributions to life are passionately complaining about how jet lag doesn’t work with my busy office-and-television schedule, and about how I just don’t FEEL like making dinner tonight.  Bo-ring.  Let’s skip it, shall we?

The point is, I like you guys.  So, look out for more pictures and fun stuff over the next few days!  Yahoo!

Sneak preview of the food below.  Mmmmmmmmm churros.

Uncategorized

ZucchiniFest 2011!!

Tess

I hate the end of summer.  Why do people insist on making a thing out of it?  Like, we’re depressed enough.  We don’t need to discuss it.

Anyway, my point with all of that is that food is really good, and I’ve been kind of a food blog maniac lately – doing less bloggin’ of my own, and more “research” (letting other people do the work for me and then reading their recipes).

I’ve been diggin’ on seasonal recipes lately, and that’s going to be my focus today.  This blog post is about other blog posts.  Specifically, food.  More specifically, zucchini.  Are you looking for cooking inspiration?  Look no further…well, maybe a bit further.  However, the point of all of this is that zucchini is awesome – you can put it in all kinds of unhealthy things and make yourself feel better, OR you can make previously unhealthy things kind of healthy(ish) by replacing fun foods like potato with zucchini instead.

NOTE: Cheesecloth can be very necessary.  I bought some.  You should, too. Zucchini onward!!

Vacation

Squam-tastic

Tess

[I could look at this view for a long, loooooooong time.]

I’m not big on taking time off from work, although as far as I’m concerned, every day could totally be Saturday when my alarm goes off each morning (how much do alarm clocks suck?  Discuss amongst yourselves).  However, given that I’ve made it up to Squam Lake pretty much every summer of my life so far, it didn’t seem quite right not to spend at least a few days there this year. I need a vacation, gimme more