Summer Travels

Hello world, it's been a while. Well, blog-wise anyway. For the break in blogging and cooking sabaticle that will commence, I apologize dearly. I enjoy my time away from my government job too much, and therefore have less work stress to channel into culinary creations for all of you. Your loss is my gain, in a sense.  Oh, and the humidity is a horrible thing to bake in.  If anything, a series on ice cream flavors may be in the near future.

Summer is a wonderful thing. After graduation, I thought I'd never have a summer vacation again because my parents (and basically everyone over the age of 40) constantly reminded me to kiss my summers good-bye. The honest truth is that we start living in the real world and learn to value our precious time away from the office much more than we ever did before.  That's how it worked for me, anyway.  Unfortunately, summers do shrink from three months to a week or a few long weekends here and there, but those weekends serve as therapy for those of us who are, say, stuck in a windowless government office for the majority of the day.

I honestly haven't had a real summer vacation since I was seventeen. When I was in high school, I lived out those summer vacations that they write about in the movies (appropriately, because I grew up in Los Angeles). I spent almost every day at Point Dume and a little seafood shack on the Pacific Coast Highway, where my friends became hooked on fish and chips, epic clam chowder, and tilapia, one by one. But every summer following high school was filled with work -- waiting tables, office buildings, exhibit design, even summer school (horrible mistake).  Now that I'm working and earning salary, vacations are affordable and much more appreciated... enjoy photos from Louisiana and New York!