This post is made of food, music, and nostalgia.

Lauren came over today and we had our Cooking Awesome Food and Listening to Awesome Music party. We enjoyed the musical talent of such artists as Arcade Fire, Dr. Dog, Girl Talk, The New Pornographers, Sea of Bees, Mersault, Menomena, Mumford and Sons, The Decemberists, Patrick Stump, Kristeen Young, and Trampled By Turtles. We also enjoyed listening the sweet sweet voice of Stephen Fry, watching The Big Fat Quiz of the Year, and playing biology-themed Bananagrams ('dissection' for the motherfucking win!).

Foodwise, we made Pumpkin Halwa: kabocha, almonds, cashews, craisins, saffron, condensed milk, etc, rolled into little gooey balls of tasty. We also made– and omg_alchemist veterans will appreciate this– orange zest brownies. Or, Three-Orange Super-Special Brownies, using orange zest, orange essence, and some chocolate-dipped candied orange peel we just happened to have lying around. They are just as amazingly delicious as Clara and I always thought they would be. T_T We also tossed together a pretty amazing soup at the last minute when we realized halwa and brownies did not a dinner make, comprising a whole pile of random things in the kitchen, including turkey broth, chicken, kabocha, two kinds of potatoes, a turnip, a leek, mushrooms, celery, parsley, garlic, ginger, shoyu, oyster sauce, sesame oil, and hot peppers. It was meant to be stew, but I'm not complaining.

Basically, for a rainy January Saturday... pretty freaking perfect.