SCORCHER!!!

That was this weekend in one word. We actually changed our plans due to the heat. No Eno River Festival for us :( still a good weekend overall though!

Friday night we went shopping at the mall for a bit (read: AC!) so I could get this:

FANNY PACK! But its a "cool" one from Urban Outfitters. I got it in preparation for our day at Busch Gardens. Because lets face it, nothing is more convenient than a fanny pack when you are at an amusement park riding roller coasters. And it was just my luck that the hipsters agree meaning I could easily find a "HIP" neon one right in town.

Saturday I got groceries in the AM, Brad got a haircut, I cleaned the apartment and we went to the pool in our neighborhood with some Duke friends. We have a surprisingly large pool and it wasn't too crowded (a little surprising since it is in the 100's). However as a result of all the heat we've had the water was almost disturbingly warm. Still better than being outside and NOT in water though!

Later that night Brad and I picked all the cherry tomatoes from our plant:

mmmmm...so good. I then used (most of) the tomatoes to make these:

mini quiches with phyllo dough crusts! We had a bit of phyllo left from a day Brad made spanikopita and it was actually easier to use these than make a crust for every muffin cup. This was the basic recipe I got the idea from but I didn't use cream (all I had was almond milk and I used less of it) or feta (used a pizza cheese mix) and I added an extra egg because I didnt think it looked like enough. We didn't eat them until this morning when we had a breakfast picnic at the North Carolina Museum of art. They came out awesome and were surprisingly easy too. 

Did I mention it was hot outside? The NCMA has a huge park with tons of sculptures but we only got as far as this one before we were forced to retreat indoors (at 10am). 

Once indoors we thanked science for air conditioning. Then we went to the current special exhibit for which I had a groupon, called "When I last wrote to you about Africa" by El Anatsui. AMAZING. He makes giant "blankets" out of old metal foils from liquor bottles and can tops attached with copper wire. This may have been our favorite one:

It was very cool and a good jolt of culture to our weekend. Sad to admit, this is the first museum we have been to in NC, I'm not sure what took us so long.

Up at the permanent collection (which is FREE, ballin!) Brad had a nice conversation with this guy:

Home again I made some cheesy cat treats from the first recipe here however after all of my efforts, Misty barely chewed up one and spit it out. Brad and I resorted to eating them ourselves and now the entire plate is almost gone. They taste like cheese crackers! There is no shame in it since I made them myself just like I make all our other meals but I admit we had a lot of laughs saying "why are you eating so many of the cat treats!?" to each other.

Now I am cooking a crazy casserole with rice and eggplant and tomatoes. I sort of followed this recipe but not exactly. I didn't use "converted rice" so I cooked the rice separately before hand. We are about to eat what I came up with so...we'll see how that goes!! I'm trying to decide what I should make for when my mom and sis come and this may be a candidate. My fall back plans are either pita pizzas or tacos...

Hope everyone is staying cool.

(cool painting from NCMA :))