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soupapalooza!

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the food porn
the recipes
the about
the drop me a line part
the resources
the full list
jewelry alchemy

texas chili and chipotle deviled eggs: it's my 39th birthday and I'll cry if I want to

So one day you’re just walking along, making fun of your friends for their freaking out about turning forty (I mean, really, what’s the big deal, it’s a DAY), checking out the birds in the sky (my how they sing!), when BAM!!! You fall into the great pothole that NO ONE warns you about-- yes, the Great Pothole that is your 39th Birthday. 

I’ve never really had trouble with my birthday. OK, that’s a blatant LIE. I have an ill-timed anniversary of my arrival: close enough to the holidays that it usually warrants one gift for both occasions, but far enough away that excitement has turned into foundering and bills have arrived. Everyone always at least pretends that they’ll be totally up for a celebration, but are in actuality usually too exhausted and spent four days into the new year to actually show up. It sucks. And I vociferously complain about it every year to any (and every) willing pair of ears.

But the idea of getting older has never much bothered me. Turning 30 was a breeze-- I was thrilled to say goodbye to my reckless and chaotic twenties and have never much looked back except to wonder why I couldn’t accept at that time that my ass and my face were the best they’d ever be. Now THAT was a waste of a decade. But I digress. I never saw the great existential crisis of 39 coming.

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PostedJanuary 25, 2011
Authormelissa mcclure
Categoriessoup
Tagsrecipe, chipotle, sunday birthday sunday, eggcellent, pigs in a blanket, soup, the great pothole of 39, Texas chili, panic button, soupapalooza!, honey and sage cornbread, suet, bourbon banana pudding
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roasted beet, cabrales, dried cherry and toasted walnut arugula salad: rock out, whatever

A bird pooped on my head and down my shirt this last Sunday, which only further bolsters my long brewing animosity towards nature. I’m not a happy camper, quite literally, and I’ve never understood why sleeping outside of four walls and a roof is any more magical than driving out to a location well beyond the lights of the city to marvel at the stars and then returning to a place with a hot shower and clean sheets. I don’t need or have any desire to wake up, dirty, with a creaky back and caffeine withdrawal, only to hike back to my overheated car, no thank you.

Two of my fellow ‘paloozians had milestone birthdays within two days of each other this week, and though I will not repeat that scary number (scary at least to single girls with pet children), it rhymes with worty, which no one wants to be except Madonna who, in a fit of good Kabbalah luck was “enlightened” at worty. 

Anyway, in an impromptu celebration of these two women, a few of our rag tag crew drove up north of Santa Barbara to a very beautiful state park and went glamping. No, that was not a typo; we went “glamorous camping”, which I would argue, is as much an oxymoron as jumbo shrimp. What exactly is glamping you ask? Glamping basically consists of a few steps. One: drive to a very nice campground in your Prius  (for the record and as I stated earlier, the environment and I are not exactly facebook friends, so obviously the Prius belongs to someone else-- I prefer my cars to get less than 14 MPG) which will be weighted down with three ice chests full of such necessities as carrot cake, israeli couscous salad, artisanal goat cheese, truffle sausage and fig jam. Next, pay the nice lady in the log cabin the cost of a very nice piece of furniture for two nights, spend the next hour unpacking the car and then apply bug spray before settling in to your posh camp house, which is really just a re-branded mobile home made to look like a log cabin. And finally, after all this, order your BBQ kit consisting of hamburger, fixins, tools and ingredients to make s’mores, to be delivered directly to your fire pit for dinner. 

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PostedJuly 21, 2010
Authormelissa mcclure
Categoriessalad, vegetarian
Tagssalad, glamping, dried cherry, recipe, roasted beets, worty instead of 40, walnut, the great pothole of 39, blue cheese, beets, cabrales, not a friend of mother earth, Leggsy McGhee, a bird pooped on my head, Innercity Velvet, Maria-Hold-the-Eggs, Jihad Jenni
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goldsmith, sometime costume designer and badass cat owner. 

goldsmith, sometime costume designer and badass cat owner. 

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