apple pie gyoza

A few weeks ago, a classmate of mine posted pictures of lovely little apple pie bites on her Facebook page. Inspired, I attempted something similar... but well, it didn't work out so well (aesthetically - they tasted fine).

Tried again today.

Some pie crust + an apple + some random amount of cassonnade (sort of like brown sugar, but not) + some cinnamon + some nutmeg + some walnuts + my food processor + a rolling pin + some different sized cups =

The littlest one is about 1.5" across, the big one about 2.5".  The big one was more satisfying in an apply way, but the little ones were more fun - bite sized!

smell the flowers

It's been months since I posted, but here I am again, hopefully to start posting semi-regularly again.  I've had lots of little ideas of things to post about, but just never got around to it... I haven't even emptied my camera since Christmas, that's how lazy I've been.

However, the weather is beautiful today.  And we live just a short walk away from this:

It's what I believe to be the highest point of Toulouse.  There is an obelisk (visible in the background of the third photo) - a monument to some battle that Napoleon fought, I think - and a bunch of old observatories, most of which were built in the late 1800s and house or housed telescopes of varying sizes, according to the signs next to them.  There's also open spaces, flowers (or potential flowers), paths, a jungle gym, people of all ages walking around with and without dogs, small people making lots of noise and running, a little house with a lot of cats, birds singing, bees buzzing...  It's really nice to visit, and I should really do so more often.

chocolat

You start with farms that grow cacao trees.

Safari!

The San Diego Zoo's Safari Park (renamed from the Wild Animal Park, as it was very emphatically known last time I visited... when I was about 12) is less zoo-like than the actual Zoo (though there is a small zoo there), and has more emphasis on the wide-open spaces of the majority of the park.  They have options to rent Segways or get driven around in a small cart, or in a truck, but my friends and I chose to do the standard tram tour.  A lot of the animals are kind of far away, so I didn't take as many photos as I  might have - I only had a point-and-shoot and not very good zoom capabilities. :)

Francis

I went to the San Diego Safari Park last week (will post that... later...), then went to a professional conference. One of the lectures I attended was about training and medical/husbandry behaviors at the Zoo.

Imagine that you need to examine the mouth of a tiger.  Or do an ultrasound on a panda.  Or trim the toenails of an elephant.  Or apply moisturizing cream to the feet of a bear.  Or acquire a blood sample from a cheetah.  If one of those critters doesn't want to let you do those things, you will have to chase it around with a dart gun (from the other side of a fence, no less), which is stressful for everyone, and anesthesia can be incredibly risky in some of these animals, and if it does for a minor procedures... well, that's a problem.

Zoo!

I just got back from the San Diego Zoo.  I ran out of space on my camera's SD card (2GB) and had to sit down for a while to delete the obviously blurry pictures.  I went yesterday with S-, at whose apartment I am staying, and went back today.  After all, it's only a 5-10 minute walk away!

Incarnate

I was at the library a couple weeks ago, picking up a book I'd put on hold.  On a whim, I thought I'd see if Jodi Meadows' Incarnate was in - didn't expect it to be, as this was the small, local branch library.  I was pleased to discover that it was.

Horse magic

Last night was magical.

A three-sectioned curtain hides half the stage from us.  Over the course of the next two and a half hours, the two-level arena, with sections which can be curtained off, opened up, and turned into a small ring - becomes a Roman arena, a snowy wonderland, a Western plain, a sylvan fantasy.

More organ pictures

Since I had to be kind of choosy about the pictures I shared in Robin McKinley's guest blog post (part three is here), I'm putting up some of the less good (or less relevant) photos here.  A few may be duplicates of photos already posted, but in higher resolution.

Birds

In mid-June, G, his parents and I went to the Parc Ornithologique de Pont du Gau - a large wildlife preserve in the Camargue delta, where hundreds on hundreds of water birds spend time.  We got lucky - a few minutes after we arrived, a walking tour started, allowing us to learn far more about the various species we were seeing than we would otherwise be able to.  The Parc does avian rehabilitation, has several birds on display (mostly raptors, most of which I presume are injured and cannot be released).  I also got to use G's father's nice camera to play with.  Which I think is about all the introduction to this than you need. (sorry, this post is a little picture-heavy) :)