A fond farewell

Well, it's been a long time since our last post, and I apologize.
Our latest bit of news is that we are moving to Michigan at the end of the month. It's very exciting, and we are looking forward to it, but it's also a little sad to be moving away from Charleston. I feel like we've finally gotten the hang of living here, and now we're moving away. So last week, we went for one last visit to Bowens Island for all-you-can-eat oysters. The oysters were amazing, the evening was beautiful, and we managed to consume approximately one and a half shovels full of oysters. If you visit Charleston, I highly recommend a visit to Bowens Island. By the end of the night we were covered in oyster juice and bug bites, and we agreed that it was totally worth it.

Great Times in the Great Lakes

Last week, we went with my family up to my parent's cottage in northern Michigan. My family has been going there since I was a baby, and it's always a fun and relaxing time. I hadn't been up there in probably five years, and Mike had never been there.
This year was really fun. Some of my childhood friends came up and brought their kids (who are super-duper cute). We swam, went canoeing, ate s'mores, and played a lot of board games. We also took a day trip to Mackinac Island. The weather was pretty good, if a bit chilly. A fun time was had by all.

We're back

It was an great trip! Six days in Hong Kong and four in Shanghai. We walked countless miles, and still managed to put on 15 pounds between the two of us. We've got tons of pictures that I've only just started to sort through, but we were overdue for a blog post about the trip. Rather than go through the entire day-by-day rehashing, I'm just going to give you a few snippets:

1. For some reason, both Hong Kong and Shanghai like to put corn in everything. Countless opportunities to pull out the old Brad impression: "It's got corn." There's corn on the pizza, corn in the noodles, corn cups at McDonalds, coconut sticky rice dessert accented with a single kernel of corn on top.... I ordered eggs and toast for breakfast, and out it came, with a little cup of corn on the side.

2. Hong Kong's residents really know how to "queue up", but Shanghai's residents do not. In Hong Kong, you would see orderly, single file lines even at bus stops. In Shanghai, it's every man for himself.

3. I think that the national sport of Hong Kong must be shopping. Everywhere you turn, there's a shopping mall. Every subway station, ferry terminal, and large building seems to be a shopping mall. Every street is lined with small shops. Even the alleys are full of stalls selling things. It's like a never-ending shopper's paradise, with everything you could ever want.

4. In Shanghai, the "Bund Sightseeing Tunnel" is absolutely one of the most bizarre, trippy rides you'll ever take. I wish I had a picture of our faces as we were riding through. To quote Lonely Planet, "Stepping from the trains at the terminus, visitors are visibly nonplussed, their disbelief surpassed only by those with return tickets." We only rode it one way.

The Curse of the Lettuce Monster

Last post, I mentioned that we had joined a CSA. Each week we receive a box of fresh produce from a local farm. The first few weeks we received a lot of greens. This week, we got more variety.

Here is what was in the box this week:

A large head of broccoli, some daikon radishes, and a pint of baby squash

A kohlrabi, some spring onions, and a large head of tatsoi

And two heads of lettuce (one red, one green) and a quart of strawberries

Every week, we have received two giant heads of lettuce. It's lovely lettuce, but it's taking over the refrigerator! And although I like salad, I don't love it so much that I want to eat it every day. Earlier this week, in desperation, I made lettuce soup. It wasn't particularly tasty, but it used up a lot of lettuce, so I was finally feeling that I had tamed the lettuce monster... and now I have two more heads to deal with!

The baby squashes are going to be fun to use, and the broccoli looks great. I've never fixed kohlrabi before, so that should be interesting.

Eating local

We've recently joined a CSA that provides us with a weekly box of fresh local vegetables. It's been a challenge, trying to cook all of the greens we've been getting. If anyone has any suggestions for how we can use up 2 large heads of lettuce without eating salads every day, please let us know!

I've been reading a lot lately about eating locally. It's an interesting idea, and one that makes sense. Why buy strawberries that have been shipped all the way across the continent instead of strawberries grown 30 minutes away?
There really are a lot of local food options for us here in the Lowcountry - seafood, meat, rice, grits, tea, honey, fruits, and veggies. Which brings me to the subject of our dinner last night: Cheeseburger salad.


Hamburger with mozzarella cheese, red and green leaf lettuce, daikon radish, and roasted beets. All the ingredients were grown and produced within an hour's drive from our apartment. Served with local beer and a semi-local salad dressing.

Other odds and ends:

-Mike will be finished with school on Friday!! Hooray!!

-Our trip to China is officially on, we'll be leaving on the 19th. We've gotten our shots, and we'll hopefully have our visas soon. I'm trying to learn a little bit of Cantonese, but it's tough. Thankfully, I think I'll be able to get away with just English in Hong Kong. The little Mandarin I know seems to be coming back to me, which may be useful in Shanghai. Then again, the odds are that if we're really in a bind, my ability to order a beer in Mandarin is probably not going to be that useful.

-We visited Atlanta a week ago. Got to do some shopping, eat dim sum, and visit family. It was a nice break from the usual grind here.