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soupapalooza!

the stories
the kitchen
the market
the proof (party pics!)
the food porn
the recipes
the about
the drop me a line part
the resources
the full list
jewelry alchemy
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Sunday Bloody Mary Sunday: road trips and alcohol are awesome diversionary tactics

Just in case you're wondering where I've been, which of course I know you breathlessly have been, I've been pinned under a pile of Get Your Shit Together, Girl. Reentry is such a tremendously whiny  little bitch. 

My little August adventure proved to be a fantastic distraction from my real life here in LA, but as I learned when I was taking Physics in college, if you ignore a problem (or 10 problems) long enough, they most certainly do not go away by themselves unless you bribe the TA. I was so hopeful then, as I am now, that the opposite is true because I never learn. Also because I seem to love the sound of my head hitting the wall or the palm of my hand, depending on the severity of my denial.

It's still hotter than hell here in LA. Not a turning leaf or a cashmere sweater in sight, in fact. But technically it is fall in this fair land of ours, and it is a very fair land, indeed, as I discovered on a little road trip this last week, a journey that I accepted in an effort to delay the getting out from under the Get Your Shit Together, Girl pile even further.

I was invited to tag along with a friend who was driving a car and her dog, a black lab appropriately named Demon, from Chicago to Los Angeles along with another mutual friend (we will heretofore be known as Thelma, Thelma and Louise)... 

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PostedSeptember 28, 2012
Authormelissa mcclure
Categorieslibations
Tagsthelma thelma and louise, fish sauce, cajun, recipe, tomato, cornichon, libations, bloody mary, bacon is best, demon dog, sunday bloody mary sunday, grand canyon, roadtrip, LA, soupapalooza!, my brother's prom date, piggy piggy piggy, Get Your Shit Together, chicago, facedown in a tray of fried, random hausfrau, horseradish
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italian bubbles: quit trying to make 'fetch' (I mean franciacorta) happen

Last summer I went to Italy for the month of August. That sounds super fancy, I know, but I do not have the funds to be considered fancy by any stretch of the imagination, so please withhold your judgement and snark for the time being. Though I do really love the snark. I was able to go because Bossy cashed in her airline miles to get me a gratis ticket (which was insanely generous) and we had a free house to stay in Panicale in Umbria. 

Panicale is ideally located right next to the Tuscan border, so driving around from cute little countryside village to walled gothic town was really easy (well, for the most part considering I did get car sick for the entirety of the month, which was less about Italian roads and more about the driver of the rented Cinquecento but whatever). 

The first day trip we took was to Montepulciano (where my beautiful copper stock pot was forged), and it was one of my favorite places in the whole of Tuscany because of the breezy, beautiful walled in spot on the top of a hill overlooking the region. It was a gorgeous day and we were lucky enough to have access to the best wines of the region in the numerous bars that dotted the peak of the city. 

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PostedAugust 17, 2011
Authormelissa mcclure
Categorieslibations
Tagsfetch, K&L Wines, pedantic wine lesson, soupapalooza!, Bossy, Mean Girls, fancypants, Steve Greer, panicale, franciacorta, montepulciano, my summer in umbria
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goldsmith, sometime costume designer and badass cat owner. 

goldsmith, sometime costume designer and badass cat owner. 

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