isn’t she the cutest? skfl gave her to me a few valentine’s days ago. you can find her and her buddies over on etsy. she stays dust-free in a baseball display case, and made a special appearance for a sunday afternoon photoshoot. i realized i had not picked up my digital slr camera since early october. yikes! it’s time to have some fun with that macro lens.

i occasionally get an idea that i want to run with while working in the cubicle at the day job. i try to jot stuff down and/or take a photo to help remember it later on when i can give it more time and thought. i usually forget what my original intention was.

while going through old photos tonight, i discovered this gem and ran it threw poladroid in an attempt to make it more interesting. i think it worked! we must have been having a lively conversation about butter around the water cooler. i don’t understand butter haters. i’m a butter believer. oh yeah, it’s all coming back to me now. time to doodle and open up that screen printing kit. here’s to butter!

sometimes, you just gotta hit up mcdonald’s to get that dirty craving out of your system. too bad they threw in a third cheeseburger (that i promptly ate). i tried to balance things out with a bottle of my favorite kombucha. it sort of worked. a margarita at dinner really did the trick. i still need to tell you all about my kombucha making adventures. soon!

one day i will make some sort of stuffed cupcake. i spotted these lusty lemon gems at the purple feather in provincetown last fall. i never thought to do such a thing to a cupcake! (that’s what she said.) i guess that’s because i didn’t grow up on hostess products. a stuffed muffin could be delicious. wait, didn’t jim gaffigan say that muffins are just bald cupcakes? ha! what would be a nice muffin filling? preserves? yes! or you could take it in a totally different direction like i just discovered on a quick “stuffed muffin” search. bbq pork-stuffed corn muffins? oh my stars!

yes we are! i haven’t documented any cooking attempts in a while. mostly because i’m hungry, and don’t feel like grabbing the camera. but i snapped a few shots while making soup for the swap. i love simply recipes, and am hooked on elise’s zucchini muffins. i was excited to find a fun recipe for kale and roasted vegetable soup. i forgot to tell the swappers that most of the ingredients came from the awesome schenectady greenmarket. (so bummed that it did not exist while i was living in schenectady) i bought way more kale than necessary. ooh that reminds me to cook up some kale for dinner tomorrow night.

where am i going with all of this? (a question i frequently ask myself) the soup was nourishing and straight up wholesome. i have been accidentally over hot peppering everything lately, and this was a nice balance. although when i make it again, i will add some hot red pepper and a parmigiano-reggiano rind. i bet a handful of barley would also be nice.

we sampled two soups yesterday, and put the rest in the freezer. they will come in handy on those “i don’t feel like cooking, and we really shouldn’t eat out” nights.

go soup! go soup swap! when will we see t-shirts? one day i will get that fabric screen printing kit up and running. in the meantime, check out these unrelated gems.

soup swap 2010 was a success in albany ny! we had 26 soups (listed below). i made it a point to have everyone log their soups in a spreadsheet. that is one little detail i have been forgetting about every year. learning from the past? yes! and loving it! another thing was asking a few people to bring their cameras. i think they would have brought them anyway. i love hosting soup swaps and potlucks, but it gets kind of chaotic trying to keep things on track while documenting the process. i had the point and shoot camera hiding out in my apron, and you can see our version of the day here. check out sébastien’s version here. he takes great photos!

skfl and i bought a house at the end of november, and this was the first time people were seeing it. my goal was to have the dining room finished by the time of the swap. unfortunately working on making our walls better has been taking way more work than i ever planned on. my poor shoulder needed a break after painting the bedroom. plus joint compound sand is some of the worst stuff ever. i want to pick up the project again after we can open the windows. repairing the kitchen walls almost did me in last month. (i barely documented that process because it was SO awful). anyway, the robin’s egg blue color i was going for in the kitchen looks great in the background of some photos. and i especially love it with the red some gals were wearing.

back to the swap! the energy in the room was wonderful. everyone was so grateful to be there and meet new people while talking soup. i scheduled the event from 2-4 pm, and when we hadn’t starting talking about our soups around 2:45, i got nervous. but the whole thing ended at 4:05, and i couldn’t believe it! my project management skills are much better than i give myself credit for. speaking of project management, 5 people from work even showed up with their soups! i am lucky to have so many wonderful people in my life. i really felt great yesterday.

another thing we will need to be prepared for next year is the amount of booze to have on-hand. we went through 3 bottles of prosecco, 2.5 bottles of red wine, and 1 case of beer. oh, and the cheese wafers i talked about in my last post will totally be making a repeat performance next year. those things were off the hook! they were like homemade cheez-its. yum.

we tried something new this year, and went online to choose names instead of picking numbers out of a bowl. that was fun! i wonder why this guy was highlighted in that shot. i originally started numbering pieces of paper and adding compliments and positive messages, but that got to be too time consuming. there is always another way. i think that is one of my favorite things to do in life…finding another way to do something.

thanks to knox for coming up with this awesome idea. thanks to skfl for being patient and helping to make this swap happen. thank you to the almost foodies peeps who showed up. thank you to my work homies for being excited and coming over. thanks to my new friends (you probably don’t know that we are now friends…like it or not!) for representing. i am grateful to have all of you in my life. yesterday totally rocked. i am one lucky gal. did i already say that? well i mean it. i need to wrap this up and make some dinner. we already had soup for lunch!

here are the soups we swapped yesterday:

▪    apple parsnip
▪    broccoli leek soup
▪    butternut squash
▪    chicken gumbo
▪    chicken tortilla soup
▪    coconut/peanut moroccan stew
▪    corn chowder
▪    curried red lentil soup with sweet potato + greens
▪    french onion
▪    heuvos flamencos
▪    homestyle organic potato w/ garlic
▪    kale + roasted vegetable
▪    lamb stew with turkish spices
▪    north african spiced soup
▪    peppered celeriac with chestnuts
▪    poblano corn chowder
▪    sausage + kale
▪    sausage vegetable
▪    smoked black bean soup
▪    smokehouse potato leek
▪    squash pear curry bisque
▪    squash sweet potato + carrot soup
▪    the most delicious split pea soup in the known universe
▪    tortellini + italian sausage
▪    vegan curried lentil
▪    watercress + potato / zucchini carrot

national soup swap day is on saturday, and we are doing it up almost foodies style. this is year 4, and we are psyched! right now i am trying to figure out what sort of delicious snacks to prepare. i have had my eye on cora’s cheese wafers ever since she mentioned them on twitter a few months ago. i also have a craving for mint brownies, and still need to find a good recipe. they will probably not go well with sparkling wine and beer. hmm. do you have any suggestions for quick and delicious snacks? space will be limited. ooh, cookies! time to keep looking. and, i sure hope these name tags make another appearance. what a great way to label food. well done, you. well done.

i was getting excited to start thinking about this blog again, and then discovered poladroid. thanks, sarah! i am having a great time playing around with random photos. this is one of mae and her recent score on a walk. she is so quick!