This page was thrown together in 30 minutes for Laine’s 30 minute Thursday challenge. Oh, lordy. I never really realized how long it must actually take me to make a page until I tried to do one in 30 minutes – everything from selecting the paper to execution. The added challenge was that we had to use one piece of yellow cardstock, two photos, three pieces of patterned paper, and four brads or eyelets. Well, I ended up using three pictures because I thought we needed the photo of the finished product. And the others were too funny not to include. (Sausage making is full of sexual innuendo that I suppose I might have included, but I’d like my scrapbook to be G-rated, thanks!)
Some of my ideas were not quick enough in execution. Sure, putting the title on sausages sounds like a great idea.. until I realized I didn’t really have a pen that showed up all that well on the dark brown. So I furiously colored in letters with a silver gel pen and hoped for the best! And, of course, I furiously put the eyelets in so they’re kind of out of alignment. Oopsy!
Believe it or not, the two blue bands are actually from two different pieces of patterned paper, so I’m meeting that requirement (I cut out the little squares on the bottom strip from a different piece). I think the most challenging part was finding 3 pieces of patterned paper in my scraps that coordinated.
So, lesson learned: Don’t make hand crafted elements when you’re doing a 30 minute challenge! Now only if I had some sausage stickers, I would have been set…
Our first introduction to crazy Indian fruits was at Crawford Market in Mumbai. Not only are there tons of fruits we had never seen before, the prices of fruits we consider “exotic” were incredibly cheap. Fruit like bananas, pineapples, etc. became an easy staple snack. Always tasty and easy to find. Fruit stands have the same popularity in South India as a convenient store here.. so you’re forced to eat healthy! The only thing I can say I really did not enjoy was drinking out of fresh coconuts. It sounds so wonderful in theory, but the reality is that India is hot, and so your coconut juice will be warm. Not exactly refreshing!
So, back to the market. Our first task was to search for this fruit Nirav was obsessed with finding.. a custard apple. We actually had no idea what the English name was for it until we met this Australian guy a few days later that actually used to be a custard apple farmer. He had a bag with a picture of the fruit on it! Mystery solved. I know it looks kind of like an artichoke, but it’s extremely soft when ripe. When you open it up, there’s white flesh inside, that, strangely enough, tastes like custard and is extremely creamy. A sort of strange texture compared to most fruits we’re used to (imagine a really soft banana).
Almost everywhere in India were papayas. They’re gigantic (like 5 pounds). This distasteful presentation is actually due to necessity. Papaya does not ripen on the tree, so you have to wrap it up in newspaper to ripen.
Most displays were extremely aesthetic, like this pile of watermelons.
From this spice store in Crawford market, we got to smell every spice they had before purchasing. It was a lot of fun!
A common practice in India is to mix savory spices with your fruits. Pineapple and guava, in particular, were served with a spicy blend. Of course, whether or not you got the spices on it was by choice, but if you agree to it, it’s certainly not a small sprinkling! Still, it was something tasty and different. Plus the fact that you could buy a whole pineapple for less than 50 cents made us quite addicted to pineapples during the trip.
One fruit I got at Crawford market that I loved and then never saw again were gooseberries. Sort of like a sour grape. Tasty! We also got a fresh pomegranate. Later in the trip, we found a little stand that was selling fresh figs. I chowed down on those! Yum!
Well, last night, I learned to play Mahjong. I remember playing the solitaire version on the computer back when those were the only games computers could handle.. haha 
Anyway, that is very different from the actual 4-player game. You can even play it for money! Yikes!
The problem with Mahjong is that depending on who you are playing with, there are different rules. All the different Asian countries seem to have their own variation, so I have no idea which one I actually learned to play. Luckily, the set we had also had English translations on them… phew. Oak did play with one of the hardcore sets and apparently it was difficult. So, we’ll be buying the “westernized” version when we buy our own set!
It’s a little bit like poker, a little bit like yahtzee… You try to get sets of 3. The sets of 3 can either be three of a kind, or a series of three. So the premise is quite simple (gosh… compared to drawn-out strategy games like Settlers, it’s a cake walk). So, in the few hours we played, I actually did win one round! Ding!
Well, Oak really went all out on our two-year anniversary with a surprise trip to the mountains! Best of all, he booked us an entire cabin for the weekend! Here’s a picture of the outside and inside:
We arrived pretty late on Friday night – we made the drive after work. The cabin was in Hot Springs, which is actually almost another hour north of Asheville, so we had a little bit of a haul. The tiring drive did not defeat Chef Oak ™ from making us a lovely dinner when we arrived – the patio had a convenient gas grill!
The meal included two of our current obsessions: an olive medley appetizer (Oak’s obsession) and snow peas (not really a new obsession for me, but I do love them!). Yum! Pictured also is Oak in his (cotton – the traditional gift for 2 years) anniversary gift, a personalized Williams-Sonoma apron!
The next morning, we thought we might do some hiking, or visiting the hot springs until we looked out the window and saw it was snowing. So, (oh darn!) we went in our hot tub instead.
Let me tell you, it was hard to get out into the freezing air! At least it was a short walk to the indoors! Later that afternoon we decided to venture into downtown Hot Springs, which, is a happening place ( sense my sarcasm.. I think LeRoy is probably more happening!). But, we had a nice lunch at a the Smoky Mountain Diner in the downtown, and did some browsing at the local Dollar General and the Bluff Mountain outfitters shop. For dinner, we went to the local upscale joint, the Mountain Magnolia. Sadly they were out of the ravioli dish that Oak wanted originally, so he ordered the burger instead.. check out the huge stack of pickles!
Luckily, he was a good husband and shared some pickles with me. Apparently the “bacon flap” coming out of the burger was also quite legendary. I had a stuffed pork loin dish which was also yummy.
“Do we have to go home??”
The next morning, we went to Asheville for a meal at one of our new favorite haunts for Asheville, the Moose Cafe. We hit up some of our other local favorites (including a new beer store that Oak just discovered) before heading home.
All in all, it was the most relaxing and perfect way to spend an anniversary weekend. Oak got big bonus points for this one! 
One of my favorite parts of our trip was the night that we spent on a houseboat. It departed from Alleppey, and went on a tour of the backwaters. We saw the beautiful lowlands, including many rice patties. The homes were right on the water! Being that it was “dry” season, we all wondered how these people survive during monsoon, where it rains for months straight. Surely the water level rises and their houses flood?? We never did find the answer.
Many people describe India as a “land of contrast.” You might see something unbelievably beautiful (a temple, for example) and then two minutes later see garbage just piled on the ground. Well, it definitely goes that way for service too – the houseboat experience was one of the most pampering experiences we had.
The three of us had the entire boat to ourselves, and there were 4 crew members! We were out numbered! We were welcomed onto the boat with coconuts and a fruit platter – though we were seriously tired of drinking out of coconuts at that point (except maybe Nirav… I don’t think he would ever get tired of coconut milk!), but it was a beautiful little welcome set up. We set sail and just relaxed out on our veranda – I remember being tired, I think Nirav and I both passed out for awhile.
For an afternoon snack, we had fried bananas and chai teas. Oh, chai tea is probably one of the things I most miss about India. But that’s for another entry.
Then, a guy on a smaller boat floated up to our boat and sold us some prawns for dinner. We had to get one, even though I’m the only one that eats them (Nirav is vegeterian and Oak is allergic). The crew fixed them for dinner for us that night along with some weird squash that Oak and Nirav bought at the market. We couldn’t find the squash on any restaurant menus so they figured that was a way to try it!
We stopped for the evening and walked around the area. Not much there but it was very peaceful. In the morning, we had more idlis (surprise!) for breakfast, along with some toast and eggs. Very yummy.
The only luxury we were missing was hot water in the shower. Ugh. A reoccurring issue.. luckily it was about 95 degrees out so the cold water felt good anyway! Needless to say we were very happy when we did find hot showers on the trip. A lame inside joke we had was if each hotel was going to “send the hot water.” One of the times I called one of the hotel lobbies about the water issue, the response I got was that they would “send the hot water.” Now how you do that exactly, I’m not sure. Just another one of those lost in translation responses!
This was one of the more expensive parts of our trip, but I’m so glad we did it. It was definitely a memorable and enjoyable experience!
For the past few days, I’ve been eating like a rabbit — devouring huge salads made of micro greens and baby chard, topped with multicolored carrots. These bunny-friendly cultivars are thanks to the Piedmont Biofarm, one of my favorites of the Durham Farmer’s Market. Can’t wait until it is open every weekend (and on Wednesdays!) during the summer season. We love to go even though Oak grows vegetables out on the patio. It’s fun to walk around and we usually find an excuse to go out and eat brunch afterwards.. Yum!
We’re also joining a CSA this year. CSA stands for community supported agriculture. You buy a share in the farm early in the season, and you get a variety of veggies, fruit, eggs, and meat starts every week. Besides the deliciousness of it all, it’s nice to know that we are going to be giving a local farm the support they need to get through the season.
One of Oak’s new favorite hobbies is buying an unusual vegetable and then finding a recipe to make with it. It sounds like we’ll be having enough veggies around to keep this hobby going! One of our favorite new finds is daikon, which is a radish-like root vegetable. So far, we’ve eaten it raw in salads and mixed into stir-fries.
