in the stacks | The Last Werewolf & Talulah Rising

Full moons make me want to do a few things: read in an over-sized chair, or under covers against mounds of pillows on my bed; hike with only the moon as my light; and fear my transition into a werewolf.

Well, that last one hasn't happened. Yet. But it could, and if it did, I know that it will be painful. Jake, the werewolf, taught me that.

Several months ago - I guess we're talking 6 or 8, I read Glen Duncan's novel, The Last Werewolf, on recommendation of a close friend with a great literary palette. I scrunched up my face when she suggested it. Why would I read a werewolf novel? I (1) curl up in the fetal position, plug my ears and hum if someone so much as jumps out of an unexposed place in a movie, and (2) am as interested in science fiction as I am physics. Which is to say, only when I'm watching The Big Bang Theory.

But Mel, my friend, said, "Trust me," and I did. And holy crap, werewolves are AWESOME. At least in Glen Duncan's world.

The Last Werewolf tells the story of Jake, a philanthropic man of considerable wealth with a proclivity for eating humans when the full moon strikes. He never intended to become a werewolf. He found himself in need of shelter in the 1700s and stumbled into a small cottage. An attractive woman took care of him, and in the process, turned him.

The novel opens with Jake knowing that he is the last known live werewolf. An evil clan wants to exterminate all werewolves and comes after him. He flees, and takes the reader with him on his adventure. The great twist of the novel comes when he meets the love of his life, Talullah, a female werewolf that no one, not even Jake, knew existed. They negotiate their love against the moral qualm of killing and the physical necessity of it. Their dialogue, action sequences and love story take the reader to a place I never expected - belief. I believed their story, and I fell into it as hard as they fell in love with each other. When I closed the last page of the novel, I wanted more.

Thankfully, Glen Duncan is giving us more in his new sequel, Tallulah Rising.

I've ordered the novel, but I haven't read it yet. In fact, I had almost forgotten about Jake and Tallulah and the controversial sub-genre in which they live, until I stole out of my apartment one evening last week, a bottle of wine in hand, and got caught in the gaze of a full moon.

I could almost hear Jake's notoriously long-winded thoughts and 19th century speech and demeanor coming through his words, and Tallulah's laughter bringing him down from a philosophical wandering. I suddenly couldn't wait to get my hands on my copy of Tallulah Rising and find out what happens next in this dark tale of moon-crossed lovers.

I'll report on that one just as soon as I - (page turn).

spinach salad with bacon vinaigrette

I love salad.

Sometimes.

Sometimes I love salad.

I always love french fries. Always. And I always love pizza. Those are my two favorite foods. Sure, I jazz them up, and I pretend to be *quite* the connoisseur (a fancyschmancy way of saying, I eat them in all quantities and styles, all of the time).

MINE ALL MINE GIMME GIMME!

If I loved salad like I love french fries and pizza (sometimes together, as one meal. I'm gross. Let's deal with that.), I would weigh negative weight. Because right now I weigh some weight, an amount of weight. And it's all pizza and french fries.

But it might just have happened, last night, in the heat of my kitchen, that I found a salad that I love almost as much as I love pizza and french fries.

I stepped on a scale this morning. I definitely expected to have lost all of my pizza and french fries weight overnight. I mean, I ate a large freaking salad. Alas. Apparently you have to stop eating pizza and french fries and continuously eat salad for some time for the scale to change. In fact, I had gained .3 pounds. Probably from the bacon fat I used to make the salad dressing.

And to that I say, WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME, LIFE?

So, anyway, before I drool over my keyboard thinking about this salad and pizza and french fries and how now I want to eat all 3 right now, let me give you the recipe.

This salad is freakishly good. You have been warned.

They're like big orange french fries... from the ground!

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen. It's that salad. It's her salad but even more on crack.

I used Smitten Kitchen's recipe nearly exactly, with some changes and editions. (1) I don't measure things. I season and chop and dice by what looks right. (2) I added several things.

My additions:

8-10 Brussels sprouts halves (again, I eyeballed it, for what I'd want to eat)
1 large chicken breast, halved (half on last night's salad, half on today's)
broccoli! I love broccoli! A handful, chopped to taste, or 1 small head with as much or little of the stem as you prefer
a generous handful of sliced carrots

Method

I used a small George Forman grill to cook my chicken breast. While the grill warmed up, I brought a small pot of water to boil. I put the Brussels sprouts in the boiling water for 4 minutes (blanching) until softened. I added the chicken to the grill (used various spices + olive oil) and placed the Brussels sprouts on the grill. I put a small coat of balsalmic vinegar + olive oil + salt, pepper & garlic on the brussels sprouts. I diced the chicken and half the Brussels sprouts and placed in the salad.

(Side note - this is an easy peasy way of making grilled, delicious brussels sprouts. I could eat this every single day. Move over pizza & french fries... to the other side of the plate!)

For the vinaigrette, I used less than 2tbl of the bacon fat, warmed it up over medium heat, threw in an amount of olive oil (again, I eyeball), balsalmic vinegar, honey, garlic, pepper, two splashes of dijon mustard and played with it until it was what I wanted.

TIP: The dressing is delicious, but you only need a very small amount to flavor your salad. Too much will be overpowering!

here's why | datong, china

Everyone's favorite travel phrase is "off the beaten path." It seems everyone wants to get there, wherever that elusive place is. I'm here to help you find it! I'm starting a new series on why you should visit lesser known and talked about destinations. Check back every Tuesday for "Travel Tuesday."





I spent 10 days in China in the spring of 2010. When building my itinerary in the months before going, I recognized that 10 days isn't much time in one of the world's largest land masses and shrugged it off - I wanted to see as much of it as possible. When I'm headed to a country I may visit only once, I want to be in a new place (or 2) just about every single day. The exception is sleepy towns stuck in another time and walled cities. They're my raison d'être. On my trip to China, I did a little bit of both.

I knew that I would fly into Beijing and spend several days there. There is entirely too much to do and see in Beijing to plan for anything less than 3 days. I know that the big cities are almost always a gateway for me, not the main destination, so three days fit perfectly into my plan. After Beijing, mapping out my itinerary got tougher. I planned to fly out of Shanghai, so I needed to get there within 5-6 days. I decided my major cities would be Beijing --> Xi'An --> Shanghai. But what would I do in between, to break up the exhaustive train and bus travel?

I settled on the smaller cities and walled town, respectively, of Datong and Pingyao, that I could easily visit by train en route to Xi'An.

Datong

Datong is situated several hundred kilometers from Beijing. It's a dusty city in which you won't find much English, but you will find two incredible sites that will take your breath away - and you'll see them without the hustle and bustle of the crowds in Beijing.







The easiest way to describe the Yúngāng Grottoes is to say they're a network of ancient Buddhist temple carvings within caves. The experience of seeing it and being there is mindblowing, I have no other word for it. These carvings date back to the 5th and 6th centuries. There are over 252 grottoes and more than 51,000 Buddha statues and statuettes. I remember walking through the grottoes with my jaw dropped the entire time (I don't recommend it - it's dusty there!). They're beautiful.

These grottoes are not only a UNESCO site but one of the three most famous ancient Buddhist sculptures in China. And yet, nobody goes!! When I visited, there were small crowds, but they were almost exclusively Chinese. It was a cool thing to behold - seeing that many Chinese who have traveled near and far to see this site. For many, it was truly a religious experience. I stayed back and out of the way as much as possible.











The Hanging Monestery. I sighed as I typed it. Honestly, I welled up a little, too. If you're a traveler, I'm sure you have places - sometimes completely unexpected - that stick with you. This is one of those places for me. The Hanging Monestery, or Hanging Temple, literally hangs on the edge of a mountain cliff. It sits on stilts 250 feet above the ground. Maybe that's an architectural feat that we could imagine today, in 2012, but this temple was built in the year 491. 491!!!! It's truly an architectural masterpiece. Essentially, the rock has grown around the supports. The temple is the rock, and the rock is the temple.

Not only is the Temple still standing, alive and well, but you can climb a long, high series of stairs to go inside of it. The passageways are incredibly narrow, and the stairs leading to the different levels are steep. You feel like you are climbing sets of ladders, rather than stairs. The sites within it are incredible, as well. There are artifacts from earlier centuries.

I stood at the tip-top of the hanging temple, looked out among the foothills and rolling mountains, the water below, and I wanted to stay there forever, locked into a place so full of peace and strength that it has withstood nature and seen history unfold.

The easiest way to get to the Grottoes and to the Hanging Monastery is to hire a taxi from the train station. Make sure to negotiate a set amount for your trip. Keep in mind, the taxi ride alone - the bumps, potential flooding if there's a rain storm, and personality of your driver... that's all part of the adventure. Datong isn't accustomed to seeing many tourists, even though it's so close to Beijing. The locals are friendly, but many have rarely, if ever, seen a westerner, so they tend to stare. You can see the major sites in a day.

Here's why you should visit Datong, China:

1. Yúngāng Grottoes


2. The Hanging Monastery


3. It's 6-hours from Beijing by train


4. Off the beaten path


5. The locals

a christmas story

This is my favorite Christmas story... a true one, and one that's been retold in my family for years. I grew up without much materially but surrounded by a ton of love.  This tells the story of my family in the best way.

I was 3 years old. My brother was 7. My mom, brother and I lived in a small apartment in Miami, Florida. My mom was going through a difficult (to say the least) divorce, and was alone with her two small kids. It was Christmas.

It's tradition in my family for the whole, big family to come together on Christmas Eve and open gifts to each other that night. When the clock strikes midnight - or as close as we can get before falling asleep - one of the kids plays "Santa" and hands out the presents, one by one. We take turns opening the gifts, watching each other and commenting, telling stories and sharing the experience of each gift. After opening presents, the smaller family units head to their homes, and open gifts with each other and from Santa on Christmas morning.

That year - 1988, after my mom's family had gone, and our small apartment was back to the sounds of just the three of us, my brother tiptoed out of bed and found my mom sitting in quiet at the kitchen table, unable to sleep. I was long and fast asleep. My brother, Chris, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and worriedly looked at my mom.

"Mom," he said, always precocious and years older than his age. "There are no gifts from Santa under the tree."

My mom looked up and over at the tree. How had she forgotten? She was in the process of planning a move to Georgia with the three of us, unsure of the future. We'd be leaving all of her family in Florida. She had other things on her mind that year, and it had slipped.

My brother continued. "It's okay, Mom. I don't need anything, but Cyndi should have a gift from Santa. She should believe in Santa."*

She hugged my brother and said Santa brought gifts for the both of us. In the morning, there were a few presents wrapped under the tree, and my brother passed them out, one by one, and told me how Santa came down the chimney while I slept. I believed in Santa Claus, or at least in the fun of it all, until I was 11.

I think it's the greatest gift I've ever been given.

And that's the year my brother saved Christmas.

Happy holidays! I'm looking forward to celebrating Christmas this year with Zander. We took the first step this weekend when we put up his tree. I shouldn't have been surprised to find his decorations wish everyone a very merry Redskins Christmas, after all!

*ps -I'd put money on that being the day my mom became the easy crier she is now! ;)

fall feast + onion, garlic, cheese stuffed Italian bread

My roommate, Matt, and I hosted a housewarming party recently. We dubbed it a "fall feast" and prepared an overachieving menu, that included spiked hot apple cider, pumpkin bellinis, stuffed cheesy bread (we'll get back to that later - wow, omg, can I have a loaf, a whole loaf right now?), not-your-bigoted chick-fil-a nuggets, eggplant and orzo bake, cupcakes, bacon and tomato dip and maybe that's about it, but I probably forgot something.



Here are a few thoughts and notes to my future self on hosting a party:

1. Overachieving menus mean girl, don't ever do that again. I spent 100 hours in the kitchen the day of the party, plus cleaning, plus hanging shelves and spray painting and -


2. You know, probably decorate before the day of the party!


3. Asking your boyfriend to hang shelves through a solid brick wall the day of the party is probably a mean thing to do. It will probably stress you and your boyfriend out, and you'll probably get all snippy with him when he walks in while you're frantically blow-drying your hair 15 minutes before the party start time and tells you, "Babe, this is going to take a while longer." You should probably open up one of those bottles of bubbly in the fridge.


4. People will cancel. The day of the party. Hours before the party. It's how things work. You should probably open up one of those bottles of bubbly in the fridge.


5. Pumpkin bellinis are the ultimate bridge-divider, the olive branch, the party starter, the party stopper (when they end), the bomb diggity. You should probably open another bottle of bubbly and let the party do its thing.


6. Buy Cards Against Humanity. STAT. Or Apples to Apples. Or Catchphrase. Else the whole shebang devolve into training your dog. You should probably clean up the bubbly and drink some water.

The party was a success. We had over 20 people RSVP and about 12-14 show! The deck did not cave in (legitimate fear)! And the house stayed warm - a party miracle! It was a fun night with fun friends, and Theo got lots of love and training towards the end of the night. I'm telling you - that's what happens when you have a puppy and no games planned. You've been warned!

Hosting a party really is about the friends and fun, not a perfect house or perfect menu or meal. And fun it was, even if the nuggets needed just a little something.

Martin made beignets. BEIGNETS!

The stand-out success of the party was a stuffed italian cheesy bread recipe I found on pinterest and promptly made... 4 times in one week. And twice again for Thanksgiving. It's that good. I now exceed the maximum weight on elevators.





the world's best stuffed italian cheesy bread, adapted from this recipe.

1 loaf Italian bread (the bigger the better!)
3/4 bag of shredded cheese of your choice (I used Mexican 4-cheese blend)
1/2 large onion, or 1 small onion (diced)
3-4 cloves garlic (minced - I use a cheese grater to do this, and remember the golden rule of cooking: there is never too much garlic!)
1/8-1/4 cup olive oil (I don't measure, I use what looks right - depending on size of loaf)
1 stick unsalted butter (melted)Parsley (fresh - chop a handful; crushed - 1 tablespoon, or to your taste)
1/4 cup dijon (optional. I don't use this.)

steps

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Mix melted butter with diced onion, grated/minced garlic, olive oil, parsley and dijon (if you choose to use it).
3. Cut your italian bread with a serrated knife into "X" pieces. Cut into it like you're cutting slices, but be careful not to cut through the bread entirely. Once it's 'sliced' in one direction, slice again in another direction, creating thick square pieces. 4. Using a spoon (don't use a brush, it doesn't work as well), fill all the cracks of the bread, individually, with the butter/garlic/onion mixture. Use any leftovers to cover the top of the bread. Make sure the mixture gets deep down into the cracks.
5. Fill the cracks of the bread with the cheese. You should use 1/2-3/4 of the bag of cheese. Feel free to use even more if you wish.
6. Wrap bread in aluminum foil and bake tightly wrapped for 20 minutes. Take off the aluminum foil and bake for an additional 15.
7. Pull apart the bread pieces and enjoy!

sunsets in 12 countries

I love sunset. It's my favorite time of day. I know it's a general statement. Who doesn't like sunsets, after all? But I have a special attachment to them. Every sunset sinks me into a place. It bonds me to where I am and inextricably ties me to it and makes that place my home - a place that I belong, if only for the fleeting time it takes for the sun to make its final daily descent.

The sun will always rise and always set (unless the Mayans got something right about Dec. 21...). A sunset uses the land you're standing on as its canvas. It looks different everywhere, but it happens just the same no matter where you are.

Over the past six years, I've lived in multiple cities and lived in or visited 12 countries, and I've experienced this natural light show in every place. DC is the first time I've stuck in one city for longer than eight months since high school, and I've now been here for two and a half years. I can hardly believe it. I've come to know this city and call it my own - I even root for the Nationals and proudly cheer, "HAIL!" for the Redskins. But I didn't truly feel at home here until my first sunset.

The first I remember distinctly, the one that took hold of me and claimed me, was last year during cherry blossom season. I went for a run around the tidal basin after work, and I stopped short, nearly tripping myself, catching my breath, so I could take in the sun reflecting off the tidal basin waters, cherry blossoms glistening in the fading light. The Jefferson Memorial stood out, dignified. As I took it all in, a sense of peace come over me - I was home.



I've had that same moment in South Africa - inside of Kruger National Park. A giraffe wandered by the side of the truck, but I was held captive in the sun's rays, shimmering gold and hopeful between the twisted trees that came straight out of The Lion King.



I discovered my place and my footing in the soft sands of the Indian Ocean when the sun dipped below the sea, illuminating it, making it warm, inviting me in.



Mozambique is home to me, even if I may never get there again. On the unspoiled lands, with a hammock and a hut in which to rest my head, I made friends that will be with me through this lifetime, as we walked from day turning into night.



In the San Bernardino Mountains, just as high as you can go, sits my home from another time. It'll steal your breath and heart away, like it stole mine every single time the sun took you with it on its journey over the peaks.



And here in Bloomingdale, in my new neighborhood and corner of DC, I stole a moment on a walk with Theo, to admire the artwork in the sky.



To me, home is more than a comfortable bed, apartment and solid kitchen table. Home is the place I am and the adventure that awaits.

itty bitty RGIII (my first NFL game)

In comparison to the Redskins defensive line... and a good majority of the offensive line, RGIII (also known as Robert Griffin III - by his mother) is itty bitty! He looks so small out there. I mean, comparatively. He's, what? 6'2" and 220 pounds - not small by anything other than caveman standards, but certainly lean! He plays huge. It's incredible to see him in action. The team galvanizes around him. He's patient. He has men coming at him from three sides, and he calmly steps back, takes a second, finds his man, and throws - when he's well and ready. He is fearless.

Zan, his dad, and his brother Ben have sat in the same seats in the Redskins stadium for years (5th row! End zone!). A couple of years back, when Zan's parents retired and moved out to Rehoboth, his dad sadly gave up his seat. Since then, Ben and Zan have carried on the tradition. They get to the stadium close to when it opens on game days (EARLY!) and tailgate until it's time to fight the crowds to get to their seats. It's pretty cool, right? I'm a sap and it makes me all fluttery and happy that they carry this on - brothers and all being all brotherly.

Two weekends ago, Ben went up to Philadelphia for the weekend, leaving his seat open, and Zan invited me to take it. I hadn't been to a football game since college in Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska. Ohhh, the sweet memories of lifting a shoe for kickoff, yelling into the chorus of the sea of red surrounding me, and pizza during halftime! I love football, and there's nothing like experiencing it spitting distance from the field!

I've become a Redskins fan this season. You know those girls in high school and college who took on the musical taste of every man they dated? ("What do you mean when did I start liking heavy metal? I've always loved heavy metal!") I'm totally that girl with Redskins football now. My man is a native Washingtonian, and I'm 100% positive I'd be dumped on the side of the road if I did anything less than sport the colors and yell, "HAIL!" ;) I kid! Sorta! In my kindasorta defense, I've wanted to get into pro-ball since graduating from college, and dating Zan has been my gateway. Plus, I still root for the Dirty Birds (Falcons), including when they played the Redskins (that was an identity crisis waiting to happen!).

I wasn't quite as fun as Ben, I'm sure (read: I stuck to mimosas and hot cider and skipped the beer!), but I held my own - working the grill and cheering in the stadium. Their tradition is to cook up something representative of the other team. We played the Philadelphia Eagles, so naturally, there were cheesesteaks. We also made pork belly egg sandwiches (SMOKE THE BIRDS). Luck was on my side during the game, and two huge plays happened in our end zone - in the Redskins favor. We froze our digits and piggies off and guiltily left with about 8 minutes left in the fourth.

If Ben ever wants to run away again for a weekend, I'll happily take his spot!

I'm not sure I could do that jump if I tried!

the referees went in two by two

#10 RGIII, winding up!

touchdown!

for the field goal!