The random thoughts & events in the life of an animal-loving, peace-loving vegetarian.
I can't promise to write regularly. And I can't promise that it will be interesting when I do.
Today was just a "come on over to eat and play games" Saturday, my favorite kind of day. We played Settlers of Catan and Jackbox TV, but we were also treated to a play that Kai and Cyrus made up that involved a boy slaying a dragon that came knocking at the door.
One of our favorite dishes that Shirin makes is a red lentil soup that is pureed and fragrantly spiced. Every time she makes it I ask her for the recipe. Since she pretty much just throws it together by the seat of her pants she kindly tried to measure out each ingredient and I dictated into my phone, so now I have it!
So many vegetables go into this soup but at the end they disappear into an orange puree of heaven.
She also made a berry cobbler, again by the seat of her pants. Her grandmother would be impressed.
Here she is making a salad from all the fresh produce they bought at the Farmer's Market. Earl found an excellent viewing position inside the kitchen cabinet.
You can just see the tuft of his tail. The "lion cut" he sports is so cute, even if it is just to prevent another hospitalization to remove a giant hair ball from his stomach.
Gabriel was giving this laptop a good tune up. You can see the boys' sticker chart on the wall behind him as well as a painting Shirin did in the past. Cyrus tried to sell it to me.
Saeed couldn't wait for dinner to be ready and slurped on one of the peaches from the Farmer's Market.
Meanwhile the boys were playing Battle Ship. Kai was pretty sure Cyrus wasn't on the up and up in regards to his missile hits.
Love the concentration... and the bandaid.
Kai was still wearing the dragon costume from the play. Obviously he played the part of the dragon.
Atticus is back in his collar due to food allergies. If he gets even just one morsel of the other kitties' chicken he scratches himself raw. Doesn't stop him from being very loving though. I was just minding my own business at the kitchen table when he jumped up and slammed his face into my face for a good schmoozle, collar or no collar. He doesn't let it slow him down.
So where the heck was Satin this whole time? I decided to find out. I found him sleeping on top of a suitcase in the bedroom.
Wha....? What was that flash? As soon as I left he went back to sleep.
We've known the Yousefians since our girls were young. They are like family. Our girls and Neda and Saba are like sisters. We may not see each other for many weeks but when we get together it feels like coming home.
Today was a 'coming home' of sorts, with Saba on break after finishing her third year of residency in Pennsylvania and Neda and Freddy visiting from Germany for the first time as a married couple. The grandmas were there, aunts, uncles, cousins, and Baha'i friends as well. It was a wonderful gathering. As always, Marzieh cooked her delicious food and even made two vegan dishes for us (she's an on-again off-again vegetarian so this is an area she knows well.)
Mehrdad and Marzieh in the kitchen (one of the grandmas on the right) working their culinary magic.
We celebrated Saba finishing her residency. She plans to take a bit of a break but will do some locum tenens work (physicians who fill in for other physicians on a temporary basis) in various locations to keep her skills up. She was talking about going to New Zealand. My dad used to talk about going to New Zealand. It just seems so far away....
Neda and Freddy got married in May in the quaint, beautiful village in Germany where they currently live. They were talking about having to find jobs when they go back. Ahh... the reality of settling down.
The rest of the pics are of people. Here the boys are staring at the cake, willing it into their mouths. Behind them are Gabriel, Lua, Freddy and Neda.
Neda and Freddy said the cake was really hard to cut into and laughed at their struggles.
Apparently they didn't get to feed each other wedding cake at their reception so they did it today.
Saba got help from both her sisters, though with her new surgical skills she probably didn't need any help.
Grandma Vafai, Shirin, Saba, Grandma Yousefian, Sharareh with her mom and dad.
Sharareh's parents again, Doug, Willie, and Richard on the couch.
The two grandmothers catching up over cake and tea.
Uncle Jamshid and cousin Elham.
Elham's boyfriend Bashir (she and Bashir are applying for med school.) With all the doctors and potential doctors in the room I felt right at home.
Saeed and Saba.
Kai enjoying his lemon cake.
Sorry Shirin, I have to post this picture. Shirin, Cyrus, and Willie.
I didn't get a picture of Kamran and Aram who came later, but they were there as well. I also didn't get a picture of Shirin's vegan carrot banana nut cake (which looked like a little hobo next to the professionally decorated cakes!) but it was scrumptious. I was very grateful to her for making it.
We met up with Tita and Daniel for lunch today in Columbia. It's definitely a longer drive for them than for us but it is sort of a mid-point between our two cities. We were hoping they could come home this weekend due to a gathering at the Yousefians on Sunday but Daniel and his brothers are participating in a triathlon tomorrow, so lunch in Columbia was a good compromise.
Both of the girls and Daniel went to USC. The girls always talked about one of their favorite restaurants, Blue Cactus, owned and run by an American man and his Korean wife. It turns out that both Tita and Daniel lived in apartments above the restaurant during different but overlapping years. Daniel realized after clarifying the years Tita lived in Columbia that she was actually the girl Daniel knew as "Saskia's roommate." How about that for coincidence!
Blue Cactus serves both Korean and non-Korean food and seems to have a loyal following. We had actually eaten there before when the girls were still students at USC. I wondered if the married couple were still there. They are indeed.
The weather, for Columbia in July, was very comfortable. We were able to eat outside in the fresh air (other than periodic cigarette smoke from students passing by and the older gentleman you see in the back of the picture) and I enjoyed myself very much.
Tita ordered "tofu fingers", something we would never order because they are fried, but they were delicious!! I followed Daniel's lead and dipped it in the soy sauce concoction first and then the other sauce and my gosh it was yummy.
We all ordered bibimbap, a signature Korean dish. The word literally means
"mixed rice". Bibimbap is served as a bowl of warm white rice topped
with namul (a general term for a Korean seasoned vegetable dish) and gochujang (chili pepper paste), soy sauce, or doenjang, a salty soybean paste. here's a picture off the web:
Here's mine before I put the gochujang sauce on, and of course without the egg. Tita explained that it's important to mix everything up with the gochujang sauce and I did as I was told. It was definitely made with fresh ingredients by someone who knew what they were doing and it was good, but I'm not sure it would ever be my favorite. I'll probably try something else next time.
I'm not sure what Saeed was thinking but I wanted to include this picture because I think Daniel looks very handsome and is certainly performing admirably with his chopsticks.
Although Shirin and her family didn't join us she placed her order for her favorite Korean tofu soup that we brought back home for her. Saeed, of course, wanted to tease her that "oh sorry, we forgot" or "oh sorry, we got bibimbap instead" but I knew better than to let him do that. You don't stand between Shirin and her food. Hey Shirin, it's in the refrigerator so don't let him tell you otherwise. Sigh, I'm always protecting my children from the Persian tease master. Hey ya'll, next time let's go to Al-Amir on Main. To be continued...
As I said, I'll take better pics next time, and I only took pics of our visit to the beach. Even so, it brings back good memories.
While most of us go to the beach to swim, talk, read, and/or get some sun, Saeed goes to the beach to sleep. There's something about the heat, being away from the demands of life, and perhaps the sound of the waves (?) that performs better than any sleeping pill on the market. He slept the whole time we were there. A few dogs came up and sniffed him and a game of running bases came within inches of him, but he slept through it all.
Tita with a few of her nieces and nephews.
Daniel's brother, Jake, bought his kids a surf board and spent most of his water time pushing them through the waves on it. Here he's getting ready to push Cyrus toward shore.
Here he is on his first surf board ride (it's blurry because I had zoomed to take a close up and forgot to unzoom it before starting filming, sorry.)
And just general water fun:
We had hoped to connect with Daniel's parents while there but they were in NY. We did meet up with his aunt and uncle whom we like very much and had a lovely visit before we left to come back home.
I haven't blogged in months because my computer was on the fritz. My son-in-law took pity on me (and he loves to build computers) and refurbished mine to near new condition. Yay! So my first post back is one about the simple pleasures of life, like spending the day with family.
Shirin worked this morning at the vet office so we had the bubsies till she returned at about one. We did all our favorite things: ate yummy food, read books, played games, and drew monsters. Some of the finished monsters went home with their creators, but some got to stay at Nama and Baba's house.
One of the artists at work.
The Monster Posse
Baba taught the boys about composting.
Hellooooooooo in there! (talking to the worms)
Turning the heavy drum over was hard work.
Kai lent a helping hand.
Mommy, still in her scrubs, poses with Cyrus...
... the boys' Baba...
... and Kai.
Then a thunderstorm and some rain brought out the dancing:
Every year my company gives us a little something to show their gratitude for our hard work and service. The first year it was a nice deck chair, then a sport bag, then an insulated 'back pack' food bag, and this year an umbrella. I always like everything they give us and am thankful; the items are always of good quality. Yet I never forget the underlying benefit they get: advertising. When I go to the soccer game with my deck chair, bag of cold drinks, sport back full of supplies and sit under the umbrella, I am a walking advertisement. I wonder what we'll get next year?
I have wanted to post about our August 2010 visit to Sasha and Tari's place for a very long time. I took so many pictures there that the thought of sorting through them and deciding which ones to include seemed daunting. When I review pictures I always want to include all of them. Each snapshot was something worth taking, right?
Sasha and Saeed met years ago through their professions as psychologists. I'm not sure Sasha wants his private life scattered into the blogosphere so I'll simply say he is very interesting, has been many places, and lives life to the fullest. He and his wife, Tari, met through their shared love of the arts and when you see their house and their pottery studio you'll see a life full of art. Tari also loves animals and you'll see lots of those as well. (I left most of the cat and dog pictures out of this post if you can believe it.)
To get to their house you have to go down a long drive past the horse pasture. Since it was August it was lush with vegetation and their home looks like Sleeping Beauty's castle.
Their front porch is covered in pretty plants, wind chimes, and wrought iron furniture. This picture doesn't do it justice. I just wanted to sit out there and commune with nature.
We had a potluck lunch and Tari is fixing an amazing black bean salad with mango, cilantro, etc. Sasha had already been out in the pottery studio and is speckled with clay and paint as only an artist should be. What you can't see in this pic of the kitchen are the very high windows with ledges that are used by their cats. I was fascinated to watch them far above my head, sitting and looking out the windows into the highest branches of trees in the back yard. What a great life for a cat.
When you come through the door you come into this room. It's full of books...
...and artwork. The theme is Western and Native American art. Tari used to live in the Southwest. All of the pieces we saw were either made by Tari or Sasha or obtained through trading at art shows or received as gifts from other artists. There are paintings, sketches, fabrics, pottery, animals skulls, and so on.
One of their many cats. Tari is an animal person and rescues all kinds of cats, dogs, birds, cows, horses, and other types of animals I'm sure.
This is their dining room from one angle...
... and from another angle. Every inch of their house has something amazing to look at with a story behind it. You really ought to click on these to enlarge them.
One of their bathrooms has a whirlpool bath and lots of natural light...
... so of course plants.
Both Sasha and Tari own and ride horses.
This is the cow Tari saved and took care of till she (the cow) died.
The pottery studio.
Sasha wanted Saeed to do some Persian calligraphy on his vases to see what it would look like. Saeed is very artistic but never does this, so he had to practice a bit on paper.
Some of Sasha's pieces are cat platters. :-)
Another cat platter.
Saeed now tries to actually paint on the vase.
The next five pics are of Sasha dipping the pieces in the paint.
The paint looks reddish orange but comes out a rich dark blue.
One side with Saeed's calligrahpy...
... and the other side.
He let me paint a couple of coffee cups.
Recently, September 2014, we went back for another visit. Tari was away but after a lunch of Persian breakfast Saeed and Sasha picked up where they'd left off... in the pottery studio! They have plans to do more pottery with Persian calligraphy; we all thought their pieces from 2010 looked quite pretty.
I love this picture.
This time Saeed painted on the inside rim of the bowl.
It's poetry that he made up at that moment. I'll have to ask him what it says.
Almost done.
Painting while listening to Persian music must have helped.
The finished products:
Saeed's poem roughly translated:
I
am in love.
I
have gone mad like Majnun in the wilderness.
When
you are not with me joy cannot be with me.
For those who don't know, Majnun is the Romeo in the Persian's own Romeo and Juliette story. Persians use the names "Leili" and "Majnun" to convey the intensity of love in their speech and poetry.
