Greek food festival

We found out about this festival the day before it happened... apparently it occurs every year here in Dallas at a big Greek Orthodox church, and it's very popular. We wandered happily around all the booths on Saturday for two hours, munching yummy Greek food, watching Greek dancers, drinking Greek coffee...

He really doesn't like me taking pictures of him. But who else am I supposed to take pictures of? :)

Little cooking demonstration

Greek children dancing

Food. Lots of food.

Dessert booths, with the beautiful church in the background.

I apologize for the blurry-ness of the pictures... my phone doesn't take the greatest of pictures when the light is fading.

spiders and machines

So last night I was working on my online classes after Thomas went to bed, and I got up to make a snack. I came across a ginormous spider when I picked up the honey jar on the counter. I hate spiders. Sometimes I'm really brave and kill them by myself, but I wasn't feeling particularly brave last night, especially because it almost got on my hand! So off I went to wake Thomas up... although I felt bad waking him up, I figured he could just kill it quickly and go back to sleep. Right?
Wrong. It was like trying to raise the dead. When I finally got a response out of him it went like this:

Sarah: Thomas, there's a huge spider on the counter in the kitchen, pleeeeaaaaaase come kill it!
Thomas: *irritated* Why are you making machines out of spiders?
Sarah: Uhhhhh... ok... I'll take that as a no...

Sometimes I think I need a specialist to analyze his subconscious brain. Making machines out of spiders...???

Anyways, eventually I got brave and decided to kill it myself. My utensils included a long bread knife (to poke it out of hiding), an envelope (to put of top of it), and a bottle of ibuprofen (to smash it with). Needless to say, it's very dead.

Food heaven

I recently found my food heaven. It's a place called Central Market. We've been in Dallas for three months now, and even though it's within walking distance from our apartment, I only found out about it a couple of weeks ago. I have been addicted to it ever since. The pictures say it all.

First, there are all the yummy organic fruits and veggies.

Then there is the bakery... oh my, the bakery...

Fresh bread every day... this one is a rosemary herb bread.

And this might just be the most important discovery.

Chocolate croissants... life doesn't get any better than one of these with a latte.

There's a whole section of international foods... and wines.

Here's a few meals I made with food from Central Market:

Roasted vegetable pizza with fresh bread and salad...

Grilled chicken and baked potatoes...

And, in the spirit of fall... even though we're still in the 90's here in Dallas... some creamy corn chowder.

I'm telling you... the place is food heaven. You can get any kind of food you want, and it's all healthy (ok, so maybe not the chocolate croissants)... as in no chemicals/preservatives and all that junk. They have samples of fruits, cheeses, wines, coffee, and they often have chefs cooking things up to sample at stations around the store. I love it.

And today is grocery shopping day! To Central Market I go... :)

Labor Day weekend

Our cousin Bekah came to stay! :)

We discovered there was Pink Martini concert in town, so we bought tickets for the show less than 24 hours in advance. We bought $20 tickets, and because we arrived about 30 seconds late, and the ushers sat us in $100 seats. Excellent :)

This picture was during the intermission when they were rearranging the stage.

Pink Martini played with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and it was amazing.

This picture was taken inconspicuously from behind someone's head during the concert.

The rest of the weekend was lots of fun as well, but I didn't take any more pictures. We spent lots of time at the pool, and the weather was perfect. We had a mini-cousin reunion with Craig and Emily and Bekah over pizza and cinnamon rolls on Sunday evening. To top it all off, we got dinner for two at Central Market (my new favorite place, more to come on that in another post) and had a picnic at Whiterock Lake yesterday evening.

Now it's back to the grindstone, reluctantly. Even the weather has turned rainy and thundery in dissent.

Favorite Thai place

We've only been here 2 months and we already have a favorite Thai food place. And it's probably our overall favorite place to eat too. If you ever come visit we will take you there, ok? How's that for motivation.
We went there tonight... the picture above is what we had. Looks good, doesn't it? Tasted even better. It was a great start to a long weekend... yay for Labor Day!