Dealing with Thanksgiving leftovers

I don't know about you, but I'm still swimming in Thanksgiving leftovers. And after eating the same things for a few meals, I get tired of them. So then I decide to make different things with the leftovers. I usually just make soup, but this year I've got soup, and veggie burgers!

I don't usually have the patience for making pie dough myself, so I occasionally get someone else to do it for me, and then I can also make single-serving pot pies, and freeze them. So if you have the patience to make pie dough, or can convince someone else, there's another idea for you! (That can use up roasted veggies, and gravy)

First, we can start with the burgers. I totally made this up, and they came out pretty darn well!

Makes about a dozen fairly small burgers

1 cup mashed potatoes

2 cups roasted vegetables

1/2-1 whole cup of whole wheat flour

Panko

Tiny bit of oil

Herbs and seasonings of choice

If your mashed potatoes have skins, or large chunks, puree it in a food processor, and put it in a large bowl. Then put your roasted veggies in the food processor, and pulse until mostly pureed, but also with many small chunks. Add it to your bowl, and add the flour, and seasonings of choice. (More on that later)

It should be a nice dough, not very wet, but wetter, than say chocolate chip cookie dough, and it should look something like this:

You might need to add more flour depending on your veggies and mashed potatoes, but you can always play around with the recipe however you like.

Then put the panko in a shallow bowl and shape the dough into burgers and ten coat it in the panko. Then add a tiny little bit of oil in a cast iron pan, and cook them until golden brown. I tried with and without panko, and with panko, I liked it better, and it didn't stick to the pan nearly as much, but if you don't have any, it'll be fine without,

Cook until golden brown. (The far right one does not have panko, the other two do)

Tada!

The recipe is pretty bland without the seasonings, but I left it that way so you can play around with the recipe and have it taste however you like. I did many variations, one with just a bunch of herbs and garlic powder, some with some curry powder, some with some coriander, cumin, garlic powder and cilantro, and my favorite of the bunch, herbs, nutritional yeast, soy sauce, and miso. Heck, you might get something tasty by adding gravy and extra flour. Keep in mind that after being cooked, the flavor of the seasoning is more subtle than when you taste the dough.

I put most of them in the freezer, and I bet they'll be great out of the freezer, too!

Let me know what seasonings you try and like!

And here's the soup:

Thanksgiving leftover stoup: (Stew/soup)

3-4 cups vegetable broth

1/2 cup long-grain brown rice or half a cup barley (If you've got some sort of leftover grain dish, you can probably use that, too!)

2-4 cups roasted veggies (Depending on how many veggies you like in your stoups)

Few large leaves of chopped kale

2-3 cloves of garlic, minced

Thyme

Salt and pepper to taste

Put your broth in a medium pot, along with the rice or barley, and bring to a boil. Once boiling, bring it down to a simmer, and cook until the rice is tender. Meanwhile, chop your veggies into fairly small pieces. Once tender, add all remaining ingredients. Cook for a couple minutes until everything is warmed. Best served with a good sprinkle of nutritional yeast.

If you've got some leftover Tofurkey or something, you could probably add some chunks of that as well.

I still have no idea how to deal with leftover stuffing. If you've got any ideas, let me know.

I'll probably post about the vegan feast tomorrow. Until then!

Thanksgiving

Hello everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and great company and food.

This week is a very busy one, and lots of feasts! I've had two already, and I've got another one tomorrow. On Thanksgiving I went to a friend's house to celebrate there. Then we celebrated at our house with family, and a couple friends, and tomorrow, some of my vegan friends are throwing a vegan thanksgiving/vegan anniversary feast. It's not all vegans though. Omnivores are also invited, as long as they don't bring any non-vegan food, obviously, and no disrespecting the cooks and hosts by adding cheese, butter, et cetera to your food. This is the 2nd annual event, and last year it was great! I can't really remember what we had last year, but I know this year I'll be making a pumpkin cheesecake, oven roasted veggies, and mushroom gravy. The host will be making a Tofurkey or two, cranberry sauce, and I believe a salad, and maybe something else. Another guest will bring stuffing, and a pie. And another guest will bring some kind of dessert. There will probably be even more than that, but who knows.

Anyway! No point in guessing what will happen, when I can find out and write about it tomorrow. Instead I can write about what has already happened, yesterday and the day before.

I suppose I don't have a lot to talk about Thanksgiving day, I was with friends, we had lots of food, not a huge amount of vegan food, but a reasonable amount, and I was still well fed. I had mushroom soup, an attempt at wonton soup, that sort of didn't work and turned into dumpling soup, cashew rice, salad, cornbread muffins, and roasted veggies. There may have been more, but that's all I remember. We all talked, hung out, ate lots of food, etc. It was really fun, and I got to catch up with a couple friends who I don't get to see often.

Then yesterday, our Thanksgiving with my mom, dad, brother, grandma, grandpa, and two friends, we had LOTS of food. We were trying to have a fairly small Thanksgiving feast this year, but really, we should have known that just would not work.

Mom made the turkey, turkey gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, apple pie, and pumpkin bread. (Yes, she goes a little crazy in the kitchen)

My grandma made fruit salad, pumpkin pie, cheesecake, and roasted yams with marshmallow.

I made Oven roasted veggies, stuffed acorn squash, mushroom gravy, and pumpkin cheesecake.

I may have forgotten some, but can you really blame me with ALL of that food?

I did not get many pictures. But they were of very tasty, pretty things.

Everything was vegan but the turkey, (Obviously) turkey gravy, some of the stuffing, pumpkin pie, plain cheesecake, and roasted yams with marshmallow. Still plenty for a feast for the vegan.

Here's my mushroom gravy. It was really, really good. I loved it, the pescatarians loved it, and at least some of the omnivores loved it. The only feedback I heard of it (Which was quite a bit) was love of it.

Just saute some mushrooms, onions, and garlic, I like lots, but some people might not want so much. add as much as you think looks good. Keep in mind it'll cook down though. Once they're nice and cooked, maybe browning a little here, caramelizing there, start seasoning them with a bunch of herbs, I used sage, thyme, oregano, basil, and I think a little rosemary, and pepper. Then add a bunch of water (Or vegetable broth), mix it around, then add some vegetable bouillon to taste, some flour (Start with a little, you can easily add more, but it's more of a hassle to add more water, bouillon, and herbs) Keep in mind that as the gravy cooks, it will thicken more. I like a pretty thin, chunky gravy, but if you like a thick gravy, add more flour, if you like a smooth gravy, you should be able to blend the gravy with a handheld blender until the consistency you like. Serve over biscuits, mashed potatoes, over fake or real turkey (For those omnis reading) or whatever else you like gravy on.

Then I made a bunch of stuffed acorn squash. I was planning on stuffed pumpkin, but the stores have not had any since Halloween, and since I was in DC at that time, I don't get to enjoy any non pureed pumpkins this year, which I'm a little annoyed about. But I'll get over it. I can at least eat lots of other Winter squash.

There's a picture of the lot of them at the top of the post.

The stuffing is fairly similar to the stuffing in my zucchinis, but slightly different. Mainly wild rice.

This filled four acorn squash with a bit extra, so I think you could do a half batch and probably fill about three.

1/2 cup wild rice

2 cups long-grain brown rice

2 cups vegetable broth

1 bell pepper (I used red. I prefer the taste to most colors, and the color looked really nice)

1/2 a large zucchini

3 small carrots

1 small onion

Drizzle of olive oil

1/2-3/4 cup pasta sauce

Probably about six acorn squash (Unless you want extra stuffing)

Whatever seasonings you have on hand (I used sage, rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, cayenne, nutritional yeast, and cinnamon)

A little panko

Rinse your wild rice a few times in warm water, add it to a medium pot, add your brown rice, vegetable broth, and three cups of water, bring to a boil, then simmer, and let it simmer, stirring occasionally until the water and broth are absorbed, and tender.

While that cooks, you can chop your veggies (bell pepper, zucchini, carrot, onion). Once that's done, drizzle your oil into a pan, heat up to medium-high heat, and then saute your veggies, until almost tender. Meanwhile you can cut your acorn squash in half, and scoop out all the seeds and fibery stuff. Then your veggies and rice should be done about now, add them to a big bowl, add your pasta sauce, seasonings to taste, and mix it all up. Adjust seasonings if you'd like. Oil the inside of your squash slightly. Then scoop your rice mixture into the acorn squash, heaping it a bit, and then sprinkle with panko, and a little nutritional yeast. Put them in a pan (I think a lasagna pan would be best, but any high rimmed pan should do. and add about an inch of water in the pan. Careful not to get it on the inside of the squash, and put it in a 400 degree oven, until the squash is tender, and the panko is slightly browned. If you're stuffing is getting browned faster than your squash is cooking, turn the heat down a little, if your squash is getting tender faster than the stuffing is getting browned, turn the heat up a little.

And a note about the pumpkin cheesecake, with many recipes from that blog, the photos look GORGEOUS, and then I make them, and they're pretty but not as beautiful as in the picture, but this cheesecake really is as pretty and delicious as it looks. I make it for birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, basically whenever I'd want to make a cheesecake or a pie. It's really really good.

By the way, I think yesterday was my second year vegan anniversary! I have been a vegan for over two years now! Hooray! That's definitely something to be thankful for.

I'll be posting about the vegan event in a few days! Sorry for the lack of photos, I'll try to make up for it with lots of photos of the event tomorrow.

Raw for the day, week two

I think I'm going to be keeping the tradition of being a raw foodist for one day a week pretty regularly. I skipped last week since I was at my grandpa's house, but I think I can continue fairly regularly. I think I'll generally do it on Tuesdays.

Here's what I had this week!
For breakfast I had some dried blueberries and a clementine. I'm not much of a breakfast person as you've probably noticed.

For lunch I made raw tacos. Filled with walnut taco "meat", marinated veggies, guacamole, and tomato.

For the taco "Meat" grind walnuts until it's in fairly small pieces. The size may vary depending on your personal taste.

Then season it to taste with nama shoyu, cumin, coriander, cayenne, garlic powder, and whatever else you like.

For the marinated veggies, Thinly slice sweet onion, pepper, mushrooms, and zucchini. (I used a good handful of mushrooms, a quarter of a large onion, a red bell pepper, and half a large zucchini, but do whatever ratio you like) Then marinate them in some nama shoyu, minced garlic, cumin, coriander, and cayenne. And marinate for a few hours. I marinated them about three and a half hours, and that was pretty good for me.

They shrunk down considerably after being marinated. The bowl was overflowing a little before marinating, and now they're a but lower. There's some marinade in the bowl that I might use in a sauce or a soup.

Then make some guacamole. If you have a recipe you like, use that. I usually just mash some avocado, add some finely chopped onion, cumin coriander, cayenne, garlic powder, cilantro, and lemon or lime juice. Sometimes I'll add some tomato or salsa.

Then lay out a nice head or two of romaine, that will be your taco shell., the walnut meat, the marinated veggies, guacamole, and chopped tomato.

To make a taco, take a large romaine leaf, and fill it with all the ingredients like you would a taco. Eat up!

Not the nicest picture I've ever taken, but they were delicious!

For dinner I was planning to make Gena's raw peanut noodles. But I really wanted some curry, but obviously that isn't raw. So I thought about just making it, and I could just deal with just being raw 'til dinner. Or I could have curry for dinner, and have a raw dinner the next day, but then I had the idea to just make some raw spaghetti, and make a curry sauce. Which I did, and it was really good! It wasn't totally raw since I used canned coconut milk, which I don't think is raw, but next time I can probably use some soaked cashews.

I made the sauce with coconut milk (Replace with soaked cashews and possibly some water to make it totally raw), curry powder, white miso, garlic powder, lemongrass, a tiny bit of lemon juice, galangal powder, ginger powder, and a sprinkle of cinnamon. I just mixed it in a bowl, but a blender would probably work better, and is necessary if using cashews.

Then I spiralized some zucchini, tossed it with red pepper sliced, sliced mushrooms, thinly sliced carrot, and green onions. I think some snow peas would be a nice addition also.

Then I packed some of the leftovers in a container for my dad to bring to work. The sauce in a separate little container so the veggies don't get slimy.

Someone is giving away a copy of Vegan Lunch Box Around The World!

The giveaway is here.
You just need to follow the blog if you aren't already, Post a comment, post about the giveaway on your blog, and comment on the giveaway with a link to your blog post, and saying if you began following the blog. All in different comments apparently! The winner will be announced on November 30th!

Staying with my grandpa for a few days

Tuesday to Saturday, I was staying with my grandpa. We played with the dog and the cats, burned a pile, and just spent time with each other, but we also ate lots of delicious food! (More on that later)

Here's my grandpas sweet chocolate lab, Sara.

And one of his two cute cats, Lucky.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get any good photos of her looking at me. Or any photos of her sister.

Back to the food! For lunches we always had sushi, because, well, we both just really like sushi. We usually had some edamame and gyoza to go with it.

We had quinoa sushi filled with grated carrot, green onions, and avocado.

Since we get up at pretty different times in the morning, we had our breakfasts separately, most of the time, usually leftovers from dinner the night before.

The first dinner was yellow curry with brown rice, which for some reason I didn't photograph. Maybe I forgot. Here's a photo of a different curry!

I think the one we had had potatoes, carrots, onions, zucchini, and probably some other things I can't remember. It was a tiny bit spicier than I'd like, but I'm a wimp, and maybe that helped me become slightly less of a spice wimp. We can hope.

He had these greens in his fridge which I thought looked really pretty, so I photographed them. Four different kinds of tasty salad greens! Yum!

And here's what I made them into: A nice salad along with onion, carrot, pomegranate, and a homemade herby balsamic vinaigrette.

And with a tasty brown rice jambalaya with pepper, zucchini, and onion.

The next night we had minestrone soup, a nice salad, same thing as the night before but I remembered the avocado this time, and some bread. The minestrone had Carrots, onions, potatoes, zucchini, broccoli, kale, and whole wheat pasta.

Then I decided I'd make some pancakes for him. With warmed maple syrup (The real stuff) and some margarine. The recipe will be at the end of the post.

My grandpa doesn't really seem to like snacks, heck he usually doesn't even eat lunch, unless I'm around, but I do, so I snacked on pomegranate seeds and dried blueberries a lot. They're really a gorgeous fruit.

I also found lots of mushrooms in the yard. I thought about bringing some home to see if I could figure out what kind they are and if I was sure I could eat them, but most of them looked slimy or a bit past their prime.

There were WAY more, but I didn't really want to photo all of the different kinds. There was a ton of them in that spot. And in a few other places too.

Dinner on the last night was stir fry.

Made with snow peas, carrots, red peppers, onions, zucchini, and mushrooms. (Not from the yard!) It was nice and colorful. I also added some noodles and sauce after that point, but the photos didn't come out well. Steamy foods are hard to photograph!

I really had a great time. I got to be with my grandpa, Sara, the cats, and my grandpa even made Jasmine (My bunny) a cage so she can come when I come, and not have to be without me while I'm there. She also really likes grandpa, Sara, although she's very nice to Jasmine, Jasmine doesn't like her too much, Sara can get a little too friendly, and start licking Jasmine's face and pushing her over. The cats and Jasmine have not met, since my grandpa lives on a big property with lots of wildlife, and the cats are there to keep the rodents away, so I don't think introducing them to Jasmine would be a good plan.

And as promised, a great recipe for delicious pancakes! Not totally perfected yet, but pretty close! Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Whole-wheat pancakes:

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

Scant 2 tablespoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons sugar

Generous sprinkle of cinnamon

1 1/3 cup soymilk

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup melted vegan margarine (Half a stick)

Whisk the flour through cinnamon together with a fork until fluffy and there are no clumps. Make a well in the center and set aside.

In a separate bowl, or just a measuring cup, whisk with a fork the soymilk, vanilla, and melted margarine until mixed, and then add to the dry ingredients, and whisk it together until mixed, but don't over mix it or they will not be wonderful pancakes.

Using a measuring cup, pour the batter into a fairly hot oiled pan. If you want to add chocolate chips or fruits, now's the time to do it! Once golden-brown to your liking, flip them over, and do the same on that side. Then serve! I like mine with warmed maple syrup, a little extra margarine, and sometimes some chopped fruit.

Yum!

Homemade peanut butter cups

I did a double batch of this recipe, and got very many. I did some in mini cupcake liners, but then I switched to some little heart-shaped molds I have, which were much less tedious. It was hard to get the chocolate into all those little ridges.

And I must say, these peanut butter cups are great! Better than Reeses in my opinion, but I can be a bit of a snob.

And it also just occurred to me. Why am I putting up medium sized photos? Why not large? I'll make them large from now on.

Quinoa sushi

I got the idea from some other blog a while ago, but I can not remember which one to give them credit for the idea. So if you know, let me know.

Same as regular sushi, but you use quinoa instead of rice. I think I actually prefer the taste of the quinoa to white or brown rice in sushi, and with all the nutrients it's got, that's great! It was slightly harder to get to stick than white rice, but I think with a little tweaking I can make it stickier. And it took less work than regular sushi rice.

These rolls are filled with grated carrot, alfalfa sprouts, green onion, and avocado. (Can't have sushi without avocado!)

They were great!

Portobello burger and sweet potato fries

Well I was going to have a burger... But I forgot to get bread at the store, so I had a breadless burger.

Just my usual sauteed whole portobello with balsamic vinegar thing, topped with tomato, sprouts, and avocado.

On the side are some sweet potato fries. Wash and peel some sweet potatoes, cut them into fries, then drizzle with oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and maybe some garlic powder or paprika, and bake at 400 degrees until tender and crispy.

I'm really liking my new square blue plates.

Peanut sauce stir fry

I was planning on making a soup or something for dinner, but my brother really wanted some pad thai, or something similar with peanut sauce, or some sort of stir fry. So I told him I could do that if he made the peanut sauce, which isn't hard to do or anything, you just need to keep an eye on it, and I needed to chop the vegetables. Because if I did them separately, it would have taken an even longer time to make.

You need to make four things separately, so two people would be ideal, one person could do the sauce and the noodles, the other person could do the tofu and veggies. This is pretty messy, and labor intensive, so don't make this unless you have a good amount of time on your hands.

For the tofu:

First I cut some tofu into bite sized pieces, rolled 'em around in some cornstarch, and carefully pan fried them. (Careful or they'll fall apart or the cornstarch crust will fall off)

For the vegetables:

While that cooked I started chopping a ton of veggies. I had some of those precut carrot chip things that I used, some snow peas, zucchini that I cut at a slight angle, broccoli, green onion, red pepper strips, and maybe some other things. I made this on Tuesday, so I don't totally remember everything that was in it. Once the tofu is done, remove it from the pan, then start cooking your vegetables.

For the sauce:

Meanwhile you should have someone making your peanut sauce. You need a bunch of all natural peanut butter, chunky if you want there to be chunks in your sauce. Then add some chili paste, vinegar, lime juice, soy sauce, garlic, and honey/agave,/whatever you use to taste.If you think it needs something else, go right ahead. Mix it all up in a pot on your lowest setting, and stir it often until the peanut butter melts. Once it's melted, turn of the pot, and remove it from the burner. It is done.

For the noodles:

You should also cook up some rice noodles, we used some kind smaller than pad kee mao noodles, but bigger than pad thai noodles. Cook them according to the package directions.

Once your sauce, noodles, tofu, and finally you vegetables are done, add them all to the pan and stir and heat everything up. It's pretty messy and labor intensive, but so delicious!

The photo is really bad, but it was so good!

Here's a photo from Google images that looks way better. This looks closer to what I made then my picture, actually.

Big, chewy, chocolate-chocolate chip cookies

I used the recipe for chocolate-chocolate chip-walnut cookies in Veganomicon, with a few changes. And they were heavenly. I used whole wheat flour, half brown sugar, half organic sugar, water instead of soymilk, (I was out), and no walnuts. And I made them pretty darn big. They were so delicious, and perfectly done and chewy, and very chocoatey, and big. They were best when they were still warm, and the chocolate was still melted... Mmmmm

The smaller ones in the photo above were a little bigger then my palm, so the bigger ones were pretty big.

They didn't last too long...

Maple-Balsamic yams

This is a meal I made shortly after our trip to DC. The only veggies in the house were a yam, and a couple onions.

I made my maple-balsamic sauce for the yam and roasted it halved in the oven until tender.

I also had some caramelized onions, and a pile of quinoa.

Raw foodist for the day

I'm going out of order with my posts, I have foods from before today that I should post at some point too.

Anyway...

We've recently decided to do meal planning, and I decided most of them, but mom also picked some. Two of mine happened to be raw, raw spaghetti and meatlessballs, and raw sandwiches with raw onion "Bread". I was going to have the sandwiches for lunch on Tuesday, and the spaghetti for dinner today, but we didn't go to the grocery store until Tuesday, rather than Monday, so I didn't have time to dehydrate the "Bread" until that night, so the sandwiches got moved to lunch today, and since I had two raw meals planned in one day, I just decided to try being a raw foodist for one day.

For those of you who do not know what raw foodists are, they are people who do not heat their food over a certain temperature, usually under 115 degreed fahrenheit. The reason they do this is because when foods are cooked, they lose a lot of their nutrients and enzymes. You can read more about it here. Some of the more elaborate raw foods, or raw foods trying to be similar to cooked foods use dehydrators, so that some of the moisture can be taken out without cooking the food. Since I like cooking, and also like more elaborate foods, I usually involve a dehydrator when I make raw food. Although I can make some darn tasty raw wraps without one.

So anyway, for breakfast I made a strawberry smoothie, with a tiny bit of kale, since I can only appreciate a little at this time. I didn't take a picture since it didn't look like anything special.

The night before I made some raw onion "Bread" (Recipe here, all the way at the bottom), an hour before lunch I marinated some sliced mushrooms in a clove of minced garlic, and a little nama shoyu. Then once I got hungry, I piled on the veggies onto my raw bread.

Tomatoes, red bell pepper, onion (Although I think it may have been a little excessive with all the onion in the onion bread) alfalfa sprouts, marinated mushrooms, and avocado. I don't think I dehydrated the bread quite long enough, so it was a little messy, but still delicious! I will be making this again!

After lunch I started forming these raw, vegan meatballs.

Aside from getting the meatballs going, making dinner probably took about ten minutes. I made a sauce out of a big handful of sundried tomatoes, a red bell pepper, olive oil, basil, oregano, thyme, a tiny sprinkle of cayenne (You don't want it spicy, just a little zing), garlic, and half a tomato. I like my sauce really thick and flavorful, so I only use half a tomato and one big handful of sun-dried tomatoes, but if you like a thinner sauce, just add more fresh tomato. And just blended it in a food processor. Then I spiralized some zucchini. Then I put a pile of noodles on the plate, a little grated carrot, some sauce, and a few "Meatballs".

It was great, I always love that sauce, it tastes cooked, and also fresh and delicious. The meatballs were also very good, the texture was pretty similar to meatballs, but definitely not the taste. Which I'm glad. I don't like it when my fake meat recipes taste like meat. I don't want something that tastes like meat, I want something that is tasty, healthy, and goes well with similar things to whatever it is supposedly imitating.

Then I made some fruit and nut bars, they came out pretty good, I made blueberry-almond, and almond-cranberry. I think they'd be really nice with some coconut, but I didn't taste them until they were all done so I didn't decide that until They were already formed, and most of them wrapped. They're still good though. I look forward to doing maybe a coconut-chocolate. Maybe I could call it a cocoa-nut bar. :3 Then maybe a coconut-mango? Strawberry-chocolate, apple-cinnamon, coconut-pineapple, oh man, I'm gonnna make so many different kinds.

Pictured above is the blueberry-almond.

This is the almond-cranberry, please excuse the sponges and bananas in the background, for some reason I cannot crop this photo.

I also snacked on dried blueberries and sunflower seeds throughout the day. Being raw for the day was surprisingly easy, although I do think planning ahead helped a lot. Maybe I'll plan to be raw for a day once a week or something. At the very least once a month.

Balsamic portobello mushroom

This is a very delicious, meaty dish, that looks very nice, and tastes wonderful. It's very simple and quick.

Wash a portobello mushroom, and take off the stem. Chop the stem, and slice half a small onion. Heat up a pan (Preferably cast iron) with a little olive oil, and add you cap, gill side up, and your sliced onion and stem pieces to the side. Drizzle some olive oil into the cap, and drizzle a little balsamic vinegar into the cap and onto the onions and stem. Stir the onions and stem fairly often, and check the cap occasionally, once the cap is slightly browned on the bottom, flip it over and cook until tender. Once tender place it on a plate gill side up, and top it with the stem and onion, and garnish with basil. Yum!

Oh woah! This is my hundredth post!

DC

I'm sorry I haven't posted for weeks. My 450+ photos were a bit daunting. And then after sorting out all the blurry ones, the photos of the same thing, and the photos of people, I got a little under two hundred. Which was still very daunting. And since I have to upload photos five at a time, and I have to select them all individually, I really didn't want to do that. But eventually, today I just decided to narrow it down a LOT. Until finally I got these 11 photos. I can just tell you about some of the things I did without photos.

This is a photo of the Capitol Building. We took photos from the back, but we did not manage to go inside.

The Capitol Building.

Then we went to the Library of Congress, which was a beautiful building. With art everywhere and tons of symbolism. You need some sort of pass and a reason to go into the actual library, but there's a balcony where you can see it from the top, and we looked at it there. There were no photos allowed there though.

Really beautiful building.

The Lincoln Memorial.

"IN THIS TEMPLE

AS IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE

FOR WHOM HE SAVED THE UNION

THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

IS ENSHRINED FOREVER"

The Washington Monument. It's VERY tall.

WWII Memorial with the Washington Monument in the background.

WWII Memorial.

We stayed in an adorable little apartment, because it wasn't much more than hotels in DC, and it had a kitchen, so that would save us money on going out for food. It was really cute and cozy.

We also saw the National Gallery of Art, the Air and Space Museum, the Natural History Museum, a statue of Einstein, the National Zoo, and two concerts. It was a wonderful trip, and I'm very glad we went.