This month Fork You does Thanksgiving! In this first episode, we brine, smoke and devour a 12-pound turkey. Let me tell you, it was delicious. If you’re looking for a brine recipe, here’s the one we used.

I’ve been wearing glasses since I was 12 years old.  My first pair had plastic blue frames that were so large that they included half my cheeks in their scope.  When I was 15, after months of begging, I finally convinced my parents that I was in desperate need of contacts.  For most of my high school years, every morning I inserted thin plastic discs into my eyes.  I had the same pair of hard contacts until last spring (for those of you who are counting, that means I made a single pair of rigid gas permeable contact lenses last over 12 years).

In the last few years, I’ve shifted more and more to wearing my glasses.  Most nights, I don’t get as much sleep each night as is ideal and putting hard contacts in your eyes when you’re tired is really uncomfortable.  The glasses I’ve been wearing date back early spring of 2005 and were scratched and on the verge of breaking.  I’d been thinking about getting a new pair for a while when Roz Twittered about a glasses website that had gotten good reviews.  After digging around to find my prescription, I looked at a few frames and on a whim, placed an order.  I’d never purchased glasses that I hadn’t tried on before so this was quite the leap of faith (although including shipping, they only cost $53 so I figured if they didn’t work, I wouldn’t be out too much money).

They arrived today, packed in a small box that was carefully and lovingly padded (the glasses were swathed in soft cotton wads,  wrapped in a polishing cloth, protected by a plastic bag and inserted in a hard-sided case.  The case was wrapped in bubble wrap and then secured in the box with some styrofoam peanuts.  They were serious about protecting your glasses).

The best part?  They look awesome.  I am in love with my new glasses.  I took several pictures, although none of them are terrific (I am not particularly gifted at taking pictures of myself).  Here’s the best one (I was on the phone with my mother at the time).  Oh, and you can’t see it so well in the picture, but the sides are sort of a deep berry color.  I LOVE them. 

My friend Jamie came over for lunch today with her 18-month-old daughter Ivy.  They spent the morning at a music class for toddlers and headed over afterwards, wearing complimentary down coats and smelling like cold morning air.  I put out an odd assortment of foods for them including smoked turkey and white bean soup, beet salad, cheeses leftover from the Food Blogger Potluck, my friend Wendy’s homemade pickles, some sliced apples and pears and a cluster of grapes.

Jame and I sat down to eat at the table, while Ivy jumped around.  She’d come over and sit on her mom’s lap for awhile, take a few bites and hop down.  I have two child-sized chairs at my coffee table and she’d sit on one for a while and them the other.  We stacked pieces of bread in a tower and she happily accepted the bits of pickle I handed her.  Most impressive was that she ate her weight in beets, loving the dark sweet root vegetable that I had slicked in a dressing of balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

We talked as Ivy danced around us, catching up on our recent events as well as news from the lives of our mutual friends.  After about an hour, Ivy walked to her stroller, levered herself into the seat and started buckle herself in.  Jamie looked over at her and asked, “Are you ready for your nap?”  Ivy nodded her head emphatically and said, “Yes!”

Quickly doing a little bit of clean up, Jamie shrugged into her coat and leaned in to give me a hug.  Afterwards, I leaned down and gave Ivy a scattering of kisses across her face that made her smile and tuck her head down into her neck.  She blew me an air kiss and they were off.  On days like this there is nothing about life that I don’t like.

I’ve put this post off until the very last thing and unfortunately I seem to have spent most my mental energy on other writing tonight so there’s nothing but dregs left.  I wouldn’t post, except for that pesky NaBloPoMo commitment.  So here’s a picture of some yummy-looking fresh lettuces and a promise that tomorrow will be better.

The latest episode of Fork You has landed and let me tell you, it’s a good one. We filmed this one more than a month ago, in Jessie’s lovely carriage house apartment. We made two big pots of risotto that were both delicious (I could have gone swimming in the butternut squash one, it was so good). And starting next week, we’ll be kicking off our Thanksgiving series of episodes (there will be four in total for your viewing pleasure). As always, we welcome comments, feedback, questions or requests for clarification.

In other news, my friend Roz picked me to be her “Get To Know My Blogroll” subject for the week today. She asked me a bunch of questions about life, food and Philly and I happily answered. Head on over to her blog to check out my answers.

About a week ago I came to the conclusion that I was done with roommates.  I decided that no matter what it took, when January rolled around and my current roommate moved on, I was not going to replace him.  I was ready to do whatever it took to ensure that I did not need to rent my second bedroom out to a stranger.

Somehow, making that decision and declaring it set some mechanism into motion out there in the universe, because tonight I came home to an email offering me a job.  It’s not a full time gig, but one that will nicely supplement whatever other income I develop for myself when I’m done with school.  It will certainly ease the transition from school to full time work and it will ensure that I am able to live in my lovely two-bedroom apartment all by myself.

I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to spreading back out across the second bedroom.  There is a wall of built-in bookshelves in there that I had to totally empty when I started renting out that room.  I can’t wait to fill those shelves again and relieve my other bookcases of the burden they’ve been carrying.  I’m looking forward to getting my work area out of the corner of my dining room and to having a place to keep the things that I don’t quite know what to do with.  After more than four and a half years of living with others (ex-boyfriend Ted for one year, old high school friend Nolan for two, Madhu the doctor for one and Ying the silent walker for six months) living alone will be such a pleasure.  I can not wait.

I love the morning after we fall back out of daylight savings time. I love waking naturally and knowing that while my body believes that it’s one time, the rest of the world knows it to be a whole hour earlier. This morning, for the first time in weeks, I woke up without the assistance of an alarm before 9 am. I looked at the clock, stretched out in bed and lay there, listening to NPR for about half an hour before finally extending my feet towards the floor.

Once dressed, I ate yogurt with chopped apple and cinnamon. Nicely fed, I headed out the door towards the Headhouse Farmers Market. It’s been nearly a month since I’ve been able to get down there and it was so nice to be back. I wandered around, buying chard from one stand, beets and eggs from another and two delicious asian pears from another. I stood around and chatted with Jennie for a while and took the really cool picture of a eggplant you see above.

Heading on, I got a cup of coffee to drink while walking and headed back towards my neighborhood. I stopped in at an open house a friend was having at his new business, learned about green roofs and had several delicious bits of food.

It’s always amazing to me how some of the simplest days can also be some of the best.

I have not moved since May of 2002, when I settled into my current apartment (which, if you’ve been following along for awhile will know has been in my family since 1966). During college I moved nearly every six months and always thought that I’d be the sort of person who’d live in several different places during her twenties. And yet, here I am heading for six years in one place with no plans to leave any time soon.

This is not to say that I wouldn’t like to live someplace else. During the summer I find myself longing for outdoor space. I frequently think about how much I’d like to have a cat, something that’s totally outlawed in my building. And sometimes running the gauntlet of multiple doors, security guards, elevators and the elderly just to get home feels totally exhausting.

But I’m also spoiled by my living situation. It’s a great location. If something breaks, it’s easy to get it fixed. It’s really comfortable. I’m always as warm in the winter and as cool in the summer as I want. And the apartment has a certain amount of power over me because it has been in my family for so long. The idea of not having it, of turning it over to strangers is hard to fathom.

I tagged along with Roz today as she looked at houses around South Philly which is part of why I’m pondering my living situation, although it’s an issue that never sifts too far down from the surface of my brain. It was really interesting to get a chance to see what’s available out there and has me tossing options around in my head.

I had an amazingly fun time tonight and I didn’t even have to leave the comfort of my apartment.  I played host to the first ever Philadelphia Food Blogger Potluck.  I’m not sure what the exact count was tonight, but I’d guess there were around 20 people here.  It was food bloggers, food vloggers and a few choice friends and significant others.

My table was piled high with an outstanding assortment of food, including meats, cheese, amazing cookies, apple cake, salads, curries, rice dishes, boiled peanuts and fun appetizers.  David outdid himself and brought something in the neighborhood of a dozen bottles of wine (and we nearly emptied all of them).  I made a VERY yummy concoction of potato, squash and cheese (I’ll be posting about it on Slashfood soon).

It was a resounding success.  Here’s to another terrific potluck sometime in January.  Now I’m off to finish cleaning the kitchen.

It might have been a little insane on my part, but I signed up to participate in National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo).  This means that I’m committing to myself and the rest of the world that I’ll be posting something on this here site everyday throughout the month of November.

That’s on top of my posts at Slashfood (I try for 4-5 a day), Green Daily (1-2 a day), Metroblogging Philadelphia (I’ve been faltering here), Farm to Philly (I try for 2-3 a month) and Faithful Philly Forum (I’m lucky if I post there twice a year at my current rate, thankfully other people write there as well).  Stories from Reading Terminal Market and the Book Project are both in a state of deep sleep.  And then there’s Fork You and my thesis.  You may call me insane now.  However I always find that the more I write, the more I discover I have to write about.

Here’s the latest thing I’ve learned about life.  You can only do so much (I realize that that statement is in direct opposition to my list of writing commitments above).  At about 2:30 this afternoon, I sat down at my computer, checked my email and discovered that I had missed a meeting I had said I would attend by more than two hours.  There was nothing I could do but apologize and move on.  I accept that in life things sometimes slip, washed away in the mental overflow that often accumulates.  I’m not saying it’s good to let this happen often, but occasionally it’s okay to accept a slip/oversight/accident and then move on.  That’s what I’m doing about today’s missed meeting and it feels so wonderful not to be beating myself up about it.