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Dear Respected Members of The Carlie Fan Club:



Greetings from Carlie's humble typist. Carlie would like you to know that she is doing well - she's had some busy days managing the household (that Pringles can be a handful), and it takes time and energy to get all that beauty rest, you know.



She's been meaning to have a photo shoot done, just for you folks. And, she specifically wanted me to mention, its not that she was ignoring her adoring fans, per se, its just that, well...



She hasn't been to the salon in quite some time, and her Farrah Fawcett bangs are really starting to get out of control.



Please pay no mind to the barrette. They are in high fashion this year, Carlie's stylist tells me. Also, in addition to being chic, Carlie says they help tremendously with that whole "seeing where you're going" thing.

They also help when you need to look through the balcony railing at the people walking on the sidewalk three floors down (which just so happens to be a favorite activity around these parts).



Bonus shot for Mom: Look! My callas sprouted flowers! Yay!



They aren't orange, but I still like them. Maybe they will turn orange later?



And now its time for the humble typist to schedule Carlie for a trip to Le Pooch Beauty Parlor. (aka PetSmart) :)

There's Something About That Sweet Tea...

Growing up in the South, I never really realized how very classically Southern my growing-up years were. When you're surrounded by traditional Southern things, you tend not to notice -- until you move far enough north that people stop understanding that there is only one kind of tea.

Sweet tea. (Preferably served in a Mason jar with plenty of ice. Handles optional.)



And when you have a late summer luncheon, you host it in the church rec hall, of course. And you serve sweet tea and lemonade. (Nevermind that unsweet stuff -- nobody really drinks it, trust me. Its only there for equality's sake, to make it look like us Southerners might potentially drink something without seventeen cups of sugar in every gallon. Truth is, we cannot. The sweet tea is too delicious to give up.)



And there will always be a cake, decorated with a loving hand, and sized to serve twice the number of attendees. (Must. Always. Have. Extra. Cake!)



Lunch should be served buffet-style. That way, its easier for us hungry folk to get seconds. (Notice how I managed to be first in line for food. I have priorities, people.)



And most importantly, several generations of the family should be present. Here's Dad, teaching his first granddaughter how to properly chow-down, Georgia style.



And here's Riley's dad, (my brother) Jon, surveying the territory and drooling accordingly. (Jon is doing the surveying. Riley is doing the drooling.)



Our "Tribute to GP" birthday party began with a layout of pictures from various decades. I will spare you my late-eighties/early-nineties style, but suffice to say, it got quite a few laughs.



I especially loved seeing all the old photos of my parents and grandparents as kids. I loved this one of my mom and her brothers. Mom was about 13 in this picture. The very tall guy in the back is her older brother, David. (He and his family came to Grandpa's birthday celebration, too!)



There was also a picture of Grandpa when he was two years old -- I didn't manage to snap a photo of that one, but I did get this picture of Grandpa with my maternal grandmother (she passed away long before I was born). I would have loved to have met her -- I bet she was pretty hip.



As part of our tribute to Grandpa, each family member (or group of family members) took the mic and recorded a little video for Grandpa. Jon and Mandy started their video by saying, "Hi Grandpa -- the last time we saw you was at our wedding, and a lot has happened since then..." Mandy held up the baby and said, "See?" :)



Riley recited a Shakesperian sonnet. (Actually, she just drooled. But it was still extremely cute.)



Remember that tall teenager in the old photograph? Here he is, with his son and grandsons. He managed to get a semblance of "Happy Birthday Grandpa" out of little Wesley, although it sounded more like "Bip, Bip, Baaaaaah!" Everyone loved it.



My youngest brother, Chris, played and sang the 23rd Psalm. It was gorgeous. I even shed a little tear. (Sorry Chris, I know that's sappy. But I changed your diapers, man! (Sorry again for that one.) And now you're six-four and heading off to college next year. Criminy!)



My middle-brother, Matt, read a stanza from e.e. cummings, and Matt's fiancee, Kristen, joked that Grandpa thought they were already engaged before Matt had popped the question, so Kristen credits Grandpa for giving Matt the idea. :)



Mom and Dad went last, each telling a heartfelt story of a memory with Grandpa.



Dad told the story of being nervous to ask Grandpa for Mom's hand in marriage, but he said GP took it all in stride and was very kind to Dad (despite the nerves!) :)



Our family friends, the McGintys, were also there to celebrate the occasion. (And for the sweet tea, obviously. You don't pass up sweet tea when its readily available.) I remember babysitting the McGinty girls when they were in elementary school, and now they are nearly grown up! Amazing how fast time flies.



Jillian succeeded in making Riley laugh hysterically.



After the videotaping part was over, we sat around and did what our family does best -- plunking on any instrument within arm's reach.



Yep, we start 'em young in my family.



This is just what we do. No television, no video games. Give us some chairs, some guitars, and maybe a rogue piano, and we can entertain ourselves for hours on end.



Once the Family Band had played nearly every song in their repetoire -- including the theme to the Home Depot commercial in every possible variation (careful, its an addictive little tune) -- we decided it was time for supper.

And thus we supped. At Sonny's!



Again, I didn't realize how very Southern my southern years were until I drove up past the Mason-Dixon line and realized that you can't get barbeque like this just anywhere. Especially not where there's a dude in cowboy boots holding a wooden serving spoon printed right onto the table. That's a sign of a quality BBQ place, folks.



Matt and Chris discussed the physics of properly spearing corn on the cob with those little pointy sticks. (Harder than you might think.)



And now, back here in NoVa, I'm already missing the tea, syrupy sweet and still a bit warm from the stovetop. Happy birthday, Grandpa. Thanks for being a part of this Southern heritage I'm still discovering with every new trip back home.



Hope you enjoy the movie we made for you!

Back!

A quickie post to let you know that we are back in town from Atlanta, visiting the fam for Grandpa's 90th birthday. Here is the patriarch himself, in his younger years. Quite a dapper fellow, if I do say so myself.



We made a video for Grandpa (or as he is known in our family, "GP"), since he is still recovering from a procedure and was unable to attend. There was much laughter, much chowing down, and lots and lots of music, as is the tradition with my family.

We also took turns fawning over the adorableness that is the youngest Huff:



(You've gotta be part of my family if you can yawn that big.) :)

More later!

Aren't Those The Ones With The Cool Doors?

Merry early Christmas, Steven!



Ha. Kidding. (We actually bought the lime green one, not this one.)



Ha! Kidding again. But man if this isn't a fun place to visit. Its right by our house, and I'd never been. Steven's been, though. He had a friend who bought a car here a while back. Not one of these cool flat ones with the funky doors ("Its a Lamborghini, Heather," says Steven), but more of a classic sedan. The one with the trident on the front grill. (Steven says, "Maserati Quattroporte." Yeah. That.)

The goal is to act like you could be anybody -- a trust fund kid, an heiress, the kid of some Trump-esque business person. Walk in there like you've seen a hundred Ferraris before.



I tried, really I did, tried to fit in and look like I could be a potential buyer of a six-figure car. And right when I thought it was working, right when I thought I'd perfected my strut, the nice lady at the counter asked me if I'd like a souvenir.

"We've got free glossy photos right here, dear. You can take one if you want."



So much for looking like I wasn't a tourist. I think I may have been detracting from my pseudo-wealthy-girl act with the camera stuck in my face and my jaw dropping to the floor. :)

Speaking of cameras... here she is. (You can also kinda see my new cut and highlights in this pic. Just a wee peek.)



Also, Pringles has a public service announcement for all of you: He would officially like to be left alone so that he can get some sleep, please. He has some very important work to attend to, including barking at each and every person who walks past our front door, as well as diligently guarding his food bowl every time Steven gets up from the couch. (Because we all know Steven secretly wants to eat that kibble right up.)



Its hard out there for a Yorkie.

Is it Fall Yet?

I've had November on the brain lately.



Partly because its been way too long since I've had a good slice of pumpkin pie, and partly because summery knits are just not cutting it for me these days. I need wool, and I need it fast.



This little cowl is taking the edge off, for now, but the lingering daydreams about November haven't stopped. Why November, you ask?



Because November is National Novel Writing Month. And ever since I first heard about it (which, as would be my luck, happened to be during my 1L year of law school, which most certainly isn't a good time to start thinking about writing a novel in 30 days. I am an overachiever at heart, but I'm not that crazy...Okay, okay, if we're being truthful, I strongly considered it. As I was writing my 60 page outline for Torts. I mean, I certainly had enough first-year-law-student angst to fill a novella with war stories...), I've been wanting to give it a go.



And so, as visions of scarves and peacoats dance through my head, I've been thinking about it again. And I really think this is the November for it. There's no law school. There are no bar exams. My job has relatively reasonable hours, and my weekends are free. I've essentially run out of excuses.

So, I've got to put this out there. Anyone up for writing fifty thousand words in thirty days with me? Its all about quantity, not quality. I have no idea what I'm going to write about or whether I'll even be able to do it, much less whether I'll produce anything worth shopping around to a publisher. (Given the little snippets of "practice writing" I've been doing lately, I seriously doubt it. My dialogue scenes sound like something out of a snotty 13-year-old's diary. And I totally use the word "totally" too much.)

But something in me really wants to see if I'm capable of this. Anybody else want to try it with me? Its just 1,667 words a day. That's 3 pages of single-spaced type. We could totally do that, right?

Totally.

Tomato-palooza (or, How to Be a Hippie)

As I predicted, it has become Tomato-palooza up in here. The tomato plants are producing faster than I can stuff my face full of red deliciousness.



It never ceases to amaze me that these grew on my porch. In a container that I planted them in. With the help of my watering. It is completely stunning to me that a plant can survive my obsessive-compulsive gardening. These must be some hardy little fellas.



Anyway, so last Saturday we found ourselves with more tomatoes than we knew what to do with. And I was itching to use my new favorite kitchen-y item -- the Pizza Paddle!

What better to go with homemade pizza dough than homemade pizza sauce, right? At first, I doubted myself and googled "fresh tomato sauce" recipes for an hour. After I realized that they were all essentially saying the same thing ("chop tomatoes, season tomatoes, cook tomatoes"), I bit the bullet and dove in.



And by golly gosh darn it, I really can make my own tomato sauce! From my own tomatoes! Whoa! (I feel so enlightened, so free -- here I was, all this time, thinking that I would be eating raw tomatoes until February...) All of this gardening and cooking and making things from scratch is making me feel very bohemian. (If I start talking dreadlocks and communes, someone please feel free to remind me that I enjoy clean hair and showers.)

For future reference, making the red sauce was super easy. My extremely vague instructions would be as follows:

1. Chop tomatoes.
2. Pour dollop of olive oil in a saute pan.
3. Chop some garlic and sear it for a minute or two (till you start to smell garlic but before it turns brown).
4. Throw the tomatoes in the pan.
5. Toss a couple pinches of salt over the tomatoes.
6. Shake some seasoning over the tomatoes (Oregano? Thyme? Parsley? My seasoning rack had a spice that was marked "Pizza Seasoning." Hey, if they give you a "for dummies" option, I say take it.)
7. Toss a couple pinches of sugar over the tomatoes.
8. Cook until the juices evaporate and it starts to get the consistency of a sauce.

Easiest 5-minute red sauce ever. In the event that your porch tomatoes are not reproducing like rabbits, you can also used crushed or diced tomatoes from a can.

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For those of you waiting on the edge of your seats (I know you're out there), you will be relieved to know that I did finally conquer my cookie dough fluke. Unfortunately, it took quite a few more test batches before I found the right recipe. (What? Don't look at me like that -- I had to keep tasting each cookie batch to make sure I got them just right. And sometimes it took a second cookie to tell for sure...)

When the Moon Hits Your Eyes Like A....

A couple of weekends ago, Steven and I went to Annapolis to meet up with Julie and Shawn while they were in the area. We had a delightful lunch out on the docks overlooking the water (a duck walked right by our table as we ate!), and after lunch, we wandered around window-shopping in all the stores.

One of the stores was called "The Cook's Revenge." And inside that very store, I discovered one of my best purchases of 2008. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you....



The Pizza Paddle. (Eee!)

I have made quite a few homemade pizzas in the past year or so, with homemade dough. It is especially fun to let the dough rise outside in the sunshine during the summer. (Also, it makes the neighbors wonder what you're up to...)



Especially when you're out on the porch every 20 minutes, peeking under a towel into a big bowl. The guy on the porch next to ours gave me the strangest look. (I should have told him it was a human head or something. I always think of these things too late.)



However, in my pizza-making ventures, I would get the dough all stretched out and covered in toppings but then I'd hit an obstacle. How do I transfer my droopy pizza dough laden with cheese and pepperoni into a 500 degree oven and onto the pizza stone without seriously injuring myself or the pizza? Or both?

Enter the magical pizza paddle. Toss a little cornmeal on the paddle, situate your dough just so, add toppings as you please, and when it comes time to toss her in the oven, all it takes is a little flick of the wrist, and the pizza slides perfectly onto the hot pizza stone.



Crispy crusts, perfectly melted cheese, and no more third degree burns! This might be my new favorite kitchen implement ever.