Weekends never seem to last long enough -- just when I'm feeling decompressed from the work week, Monday rolls around again. Ah well, at least this week is a short one what with the Thanksgiving holiday and all. Plus I'm taking off Wednesday so that we can spend the day making the 10+ hour drive back west to my hometown in Ohio.
On Saturday morning D and I walked down to the Italian Market with Leroy so that we could finally get our kitchen knives sharpened. D dropped off the knives at Fante's Kitchen Shop and we meandered around the neighborhood while we waited for our knives to be done. The Italian Market is awesome -- I can't believe it has taken us 11 months to get there. (Every time we've driven past the neighborhood I've always lamented that "we really need to explore there!") Unfortunately our exploration was slightly limited since we had the dog with us, but I am definitely making plans to get back there (it's about 10 blocks from where we live) to fully explore the cafes, produce stands, fresh pasta shops, and bakeries in the neighborhood.
The other highlight of the weekend for us was hitting up the Penn v. Cornell game on Saturday afternoon. The University of Pennsylvania is not really much of a football school. When D and I visited Philly last November to find a place to live, we walked past the stadium at one point and were shocked to see the stands were mostly empty though there was a football game going on. The stands weren't that much fuller this time around, either. Penn actually does have a pretty good team (well, in terms of their conference anyway, as they are consistently Ivy League conference champs). There are some interesting quirks that go along with attending an Ivy League football game. For one, they don't have a marching band. The Cornell band performed during half-time, and their claim to fame was "being the only real marching band in the Ivy League." The most interesting quirk is the post-third-quarter "toast." Apparently, this tradition used to revolve around a champagne toast at the end of the third quarter as a nod to the line "Here's a toast to dear old Penn" in the school song. Now, since drinking laws have changed and alcohol isn't allowed in the stadium, students pack along slices of toasted bread (or loaves of challah or french bread) with them to the game and toss the bread from the stands prior to the start of the fourth quarter. Some people just come to the game for the toast and then peace out right after. I felt a little left out since we didn't have any toast of our own to throw -- maybe next year.
The rest of the weekend was fairly low-key. Yesterday was spent stocking up on ingredients for some of the dishes I'll be making for our Thanksgiving feast in Ohio. I think Tuesday night/Wednesday morning may be spent cooking up or at least prepping a few of the dishes so that I can spend at least a little bit of Thursday relaxing and not sweating over a hot stove.
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