Happy New Year!

December was a doozy of a month, though I guess that's always the case. My boyfriend's parents came to the city for a week, my mom was here for the weekend portion and we went to dinners and performances every night. We were totally exhausted, then had one day to pack up and head to Hawaii to spend almost two weeks at my parents' house. We celebrated New Year's at my aunty's house in West O'ahu. Never in my life have I seen so many fireworks, most of them illegal aerials. The smoke was so thick that a tree 10 yards away was obscured by 9:45. My aunt and I were oohing and aahing together when she turned to me and said, "Pretty awesome, those Chinese guys for making fireworks,"* and then followed up with the question, "What do you think was their more awesome invention: fireworks or noodles?" I definitely say noodles. If you're with me on noodles being the more awesome contribution to society, here is a wonderful website that gives you oodles and oodles of noodles. Well, they give you noodle dish possibilities; it would be substantially more difficult to have a website that gave you noodles. This is a great resource if you're in a bit of a pasta rut but still want noodles in your life.


*My aunt is a fluent speaker of pidgin English. In fact, I don't ever hear her speak grammatically correct English.

[Note: I just got back a couple of hours ago, so am a smidge jet-lagged, but I will be sharing some of the food highlights from last month as well as returning back to the subject of backpacking in the coming days.]