Home-Curing Sweet Potatoes

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Black Friday Goals

I never do any Black Friday shopping - I rarely shop at all - but I am in the market for a new phone this year. I'm still on the hunt, I haven't found a deal good enough yet. Maybe on Cyber Monday?

November was extremely busy, we camped four out of the five past weekends, plus we urban camped last night (so no one had to drive after having a little too much...turkey). As such, the goals for November were pretty relaxed.

• Get that ribs recipe out there!
• First Friday Art Walk - we went, it was great, Art Walk is the best.
• We had two volunteering gigs this month, Harvest Festival and then Festival of the Lights! Photos below.
• Then we attended a murder mystery dinner party, which turned out to be a really good time. We met some new people!
• A music festival campout, which was really hyped up and then turned out to be a bit of a letdown, mostly because so few of our friends could attend.
• Thanksgiving Misgivings campout with the bus club. Part of Kyle's family also attended, and it was nice to see them again.
• And after that Thanksgiving itself! We had some lovely friends invite us over and I'm pretty sure we overstayed our welcome, but we had a great time.

On Thanksgiving, we didn't eat all morning so when we got to our destination we were both hungry and went overboard on the appetizers. Then after that, there was homemade lowcountry boil (with crab legs! and oysters!), which was all really delicious. I think you can see where I'm going with this, but by the time we sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, it was all anyone could do to try a few bites of each dish.  Luckily, we had it all again for breakfast the next day (including dessert!), so we got to really enjoy it. Anyway, December...

• Get cabinets in the bus. Or get new door seals on the bus. Or replace the seals that are the source of our current oil leak. Just get something done!
• I have a corner of the house that has been accumulating stuff and really needs to be cleaned. I need to clean it. Organize it. Get rid of stuff. 
• Christmas cards! I don't do them every year but this is going to be a Christmas card year. 
• Find a new phone. Is it ridiculous to buy a new phone, but then just keep it in the box until my old phone finally bites the dust? If I wait for my phone to die first, then I'll have to buy a phone on short notice and won't be able to hunt for a good deal.

Since we did a ton of camping this month, expect lots of bus pictures. Like this one from Halloween.

Next up is the Holiday Festival of Lights at JICP. I guess I didn't take any photos at the Harvest Fest except the pumpkin photo at the top of the post.

Then we went to a music festival, where we camped with Shawnee and her gorgeous huskies (her bus is very pretty too!).

The music festival was out towards the ICW, right on the marsh.  We saw a few gators but didn't get any good photos this time.

It got COLD at night - you can see the mist starting to settle in over the water in these photos. It even looks cold.

Then the bus club Thanksgiving campout. We were the first ones there and we made sure to find a good spot in the sun.

Thanksgiving, as mentioned above, was extremely bountiful.

I even ate some shrimp! That's kind of a big deal because I have not really liked shrimp until the past year or so, but mostly I am including this photo to show off my new 'wild streak' of purple hair.

And that leads us up to today! Kyle and I stopped at Aldi to hit up their Black Friday wine sale (just kidding, Winking Owl is $2.89 every day) and also grab a few essentials like arugula and salmon and gummy bears.

Alright, one last photo.  My neighbor had extra sweet potato plants this spring, so I planted 3 sweet potatoes.  I finally harvested them today, and check out the haul! Trowel for scale - that potato on the far left is HUGE. Right after washing them, I found out that not only are you not supposed to wash them, but they also need to cure for a week or two. So we can't even eat them yet!

Happy holidays, happy Thanksgiving, happy relaxing!

Smoked Paprika Roast Turkey

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Easy Homemade Ginger Beer

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Dry-Rubbed Oven Ribs

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Turkey Month

Boo!

Happy Halloween! We're enjoying the fabulous Charleston Fall weather by spending lots of time outdoors and doing a lot of camping! In between rounds of camping, we've managed to fit in lots of other stuff though...more about that in the photos. Instead, let's whip through these goals.

• We volunteered at another event this month - a Latin American Festival. Except it got canceled due to the entirety of Charleston being flooded. Boo.
• I made a couple recipes in early September to share.  See Zucchini Breads 1 & 2, and Zucchini Bread 3.
• We had at at least one camping trip this month. Maybe two? So we camped one night, and we're slated to be camping again this weekend. Count it!
• It would be pretty great to have refrigeration for our camping trip. We just need a house battery, a regulator, and some wooden stuff. We failed to get any of this done, we were waiting on new credit cards before we started making big purchases.
• Ribs were on sale...so I bought a rack of ribs. Recipe forthcoming. Oh dang, I forgot to post that recipe. Next week?

Okay, I've obviously got some making up to do. Goals for November:

• Get that ribs recipe out there!
• I missed First Friday Art Walk last month (actually it was canceled when downtown was under water) so I do NOT want to miss this month.
• We've got two volunteering gigs this month, including a Harvest Festival!
• Then we've got a murder mystery dinner party, which is so far out of my comfort zone I don't even know where to start.
• Plus a music festival campout.
• And then Thanksgiving Misgivings campout with the bus club
• And after that Thanksgiving itself! I'm not sure if I'm roasting a turkey this year, but last year I got pretty turkey-ed out after making one at home, then having some at work, then having some at Misgivings, then having some on Thanksgiving...

The first weekend of October had everyone talking about one thing: RAIN. It just didn't stop. We didn't flood much, but we both went pretty stir-crazy being stuck in the house for so long.

When the water cleared up, we found we had a new neighbor.  He lives uncomfortably close to my car, but we've lived in a peace for a few weeks now and I think we can be friends, providing no one strays onto the other neighbor's territory.  Besides, his web is pretty cool looking.

My mornings have been fueled by this. Will I ever stop missing Michigan? Probably never.

We ended up volunteering at an event called Bark in the Park Octoberfest, where I poured beer all day and Kyle corralled dogs. I couldn't resist snapping a pic of this cutie.

And then when everyone was cleaning up, I got suckered in by these sweet golden pups. They were just so soft and playful! (No, we do not own a dog now.)

Since we have actual friends now, we got invited to an awesome cookout where only one person got poisoned a little bit (and he lived, so it's cool).  Plus we carved pumpkins and made caramel apples!

We spent one night camping. We had planned on two, but we had a change of plans. Despite that, we still got to see people we hadn't seen in a long time and hopefully we can catch up more at November campouts!

Our change of plans happened when I won tickets to a music festival. Lest you think I have all the luck, the ONLY way to attend this festival was to win tickets, so they were doing big giveaways every day. Kyle and I had to stake out a gas station where they were drawing two names every five minutes. It only took half an hour for my name to be called, so we didn't wait around too long.

The festival was AMAZING. The bands were on point, the weather was perfect, and there were tons of free activities.

Kyle and I each won a free shirt (by playing the worst version of beer tea pong I've ever seen), plus, for the second time this year, we drank some Guinness world record iced tea. Only instead of locally grown saccharine sweet tea, this was heartless corporate tea. Sorry, Summerville. At least I actually got to drink some of this tea.

The festival was almost 12 hours long, and since reentry wasn't allowed we basically lazed around a park for a day and listened to bands ranging from BØRNS to Outasight to The Roots to Passion Pit(!!!!!). Plus since we hadn't spent any money on tickets it was much easier to justify the ridiculous food truck and beer prices. Definitely an epic day. Ending with "Sleepyhead." At which point I declared I could die happy.

October was absolutely great, and November looks like it's going to be pretty amazing as well. Bring it on!

Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread

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