It was another fun weekend for Garlic, My Soul. After a busy Friday and Saturday, we headed over to Topanga Canyon for a photo shoot with Mary Costa!

The weekend began with a movie premiere for independent film Funeral Kings, which our lovely and talented friend, Megan AD’ed. The movie was great, and the theater was full of alumni from Jennie and Megan’s alma mater, Emerson College.

Saturday, Jennie and I had plans to go on a hike. We woke up to a cold, dark, and rainy LA day, but we powered through and did a short hike in Griffith Park. It was beautiful, even in the rain! Afterward, we made a birthday cake for a friend. Alternating layers of funfetti and purple velvet, per her request, and topped with teal icing and LOTS of sprinkles.

And Sunday, Jennie and I headed north to Topanga Canyon for a fun GMS photo shoot with Mary Costa. We spent the afternoon giggling, admiring the scenery, and having our photo taken. Take a look at some of the behind the scenes shots that Jennie snapped with her phone!

What did you do over the weekend?

Our week in gratitude:

Day 9: We were shivering in the cold, camping at Joshua Tree, but we were having fun. I was EXTREMELY thankful for my thermal socks.

Day 10: Second night in Joshua Tree, and I was thankful for our warm campfire.

Day 11: Home from camping, and I said a silent prayer for hot showers!

Day 12: Monday arrived, as it always does, but Jennie found a way to be thankful for her train commute and the 20 minutes of reading time it gives her each day. I felt so grateful to have helpful friends like our lovely Rebecca — friends who will help me with things like writing blog posts and job-hunting.

Day 13: I got to talk to my mom who cheered me up and made me so thankful to have her,

Day 14: It may not be classy, but I was thankful for beer.

Day 15: On thursday, I was thankful for hope!

Day 16: Yesterday, I had a nice surprise and got to leave work early. I was grateful for the extra couple of hours (which I spent doing laundry and catching up on tv!)

For the first time in five years, Corelyn and I are spending Thanksgiving apart! Although I am excited to go home for Thanksgiving, I will be video chatting the crew on Thanksgiving Day. As I get ready to travel for the busiest, and best, time of year, I wanted to take a look at the past four year’s of feasting and being thankful for each other.

Here’s us, circa 2008.

And our first ever turkey.

And, 2009. I don’t know why we aren’t ever in photos where we’re looking at each other, but apparently we are always in the action!

Our 2009 turkey was beautiful. Our photo was not. Please forgive us.

Here we are in 2010. Once again, no idea why we’re not in a photo where we’re smiling, but so be it. We are reading instructions on how to carve the bird, since we had made Jeff do it the years before.

And, our 2010 turkey. Sadly, we were rushed this year and did not get a great shot, but there were mostly no leftovers, if that tells you anything.

2011 is by far the most well documented. (Thanks Mary for letting me steal photos.) Here’s a shot of us in our new Thanksgiving kitchen, Paul’s place, and us all scrambling to get the meal prepared!

Here is our giant bird. Isn’t it a fine one?

I will miss this practice this year – writing down all the things we are thankful for. Perhaps I will pre-write mine and send them along with Corelyn.

And I will certainly miss our photo booth, and making these two ladies (among many, many others) laugh out loud!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Where will you be this year? Who will you be spending Thanksgiving with?

Pop the champagne and bring out the party cake, because Garlic, My Soul is all grown up! Today is our 500th post since we first started blogging in 2009.

Things have certainly changed a lot since then (most notably, the quality of our photographs, thanks Mary!), but other things remain the same. Taking a look back at some of our other milestone posts, you can see how our personalities have been front and center since day one!

Our 50th post is especially hilarious. It tells a long, meandering story about our trip to the library culminating in Jennie’s excitement over discovering that Barack Obama reads the audiobook for his own book. A look at our blog over the last several election-filled weeks will tell you that not much has changed.

By post 100, the infamous Pioneer Woman challenge was in full-swing. It was December of 2010, and we were scrambling to complete the cookbook before we both left LA for the holidays. I still remember how deveining the shrimp grossed us out (obviously, we’ve grown a lot in the last two years, having beheaded both fish and fowl since then), and I also remember what a special treat that pasta dish was!

Our 200th post features one of the best decisions we ever made: new contributors! Rebecca wrote our 200th post and taught us all how to make cake balls!

Post 300 talks about the challenge we set for ourselves in 2012: [Ingredient], My Soul. As usual, we may have bit off more than we can chew with this one! Nothing ever changes, and I’m sure we’ll be scrambling up until the last minute to meet the goals of this challenge just like all the others. Next year, we’ll come up with new and more interesting ways to eat, sleep, and breathe GMS. (Look for it in post 600).

And our most recent milestone, our 400th post, was only a few months ago with a post from Jennie on some tips she wanted to share about healthy eating.

In all this time, we’ve redesigned the blog site, gained and lost contributors, moved all over the country, joined facebook, twitter, pinterest, and instagram, made some new blogger friends, found some fun and sneaky ways of cajoling our old friends into becoming blogger friends, and we still feel like we’ve only scraped the surface! I hope you’ll stick around for the next 500 posts!

I think my closing words from our very first post still sum it all up: We are loud and giggly. We make huge messes. We take lots of pictures. This is our life. Please enjoy your stay.

Have you ever wondered about your favorite superhero’s favorite foods? Food is a universal language, and you can use it to connect with anyone — even characters in your favorite comics! When our friends over at Fanboy Comics suggested that we collaborate with them, our wheels started to turn as we imagined the many possibilities of exploring foods related to some of our nerdier tendencies.

That’s right, aside from our love of Brussels sprouts and farm fresh eggs (nerdy in its own right), a few of us at Garlic, My Soul display some of the more classically nerdy characteristics. Be prepared to get more acquainted with that side of us, because this will be the first of many geek-tastic GMS posts. And we thought we’d kick things off by conducting a little thought experiment.

A Day in the Kitchen of Superman

Last week, we all shared a fundamentally American experience: a national Presidential election. In honor of that momentous occasion, we’re focusing on the superhero that screams “All American” to us*. Okay, sure, technically, Superman is an alien. But he’s a member of the Justice League of America and he’s really just a Kansas farm boy at heart.

We’re betting those farm roots had a huge effect on his culinary tastes. I’m sure Superman has never even heard of a blog, but if we served just about anything from the ranch kitchen of our favorite lady, The Pioneer Woman, he’d gobble it up and ask for seconds.

So let’s think. What would Superman have for breakfast? Eggs and Bacon, obviously. Definitely a tall glass of milk. He probably skips the coffee to avoid the caffeine dependency (blasphemy if you ask me, but that’s why I’m more of a Batman lady).

For lunch, we imagine that Superman is a grab something on-the-go kind of guy. Whether he’s rushing to finish a news story as Clark Kent or doing his whole super-speed, super-strength, saving-the-day act. He probably has just enough time to grab a ham sandwich on his way out the door.

At dinner time, your average superhero is going to need to refuel. If you’re a farm boy like Clark Kent, you probably love the kind of dishes that cook slow and easy all day long while you’re out working. We think the Pioneer Woman’s Perfect Pot Roast would be just right, and we’ve even had the pleasure of making this one for ourselves a few times.

However, it’s the dessert that we get really excited about. Our thoughts immediately turned to apple pie, and we set out to find a recipe that we’d enjoy making just as much as Superman would enjoy eating. For this, we turned to Martha Stewart, and her Apple Tart. Because Martha always knows.

Rebecca whipped up this delightful treat over the weekend. Can’t you just imagine Superman eating a slice of this with some milk? I bet he’d remember to compliment the chef and offer to do the dishes, too.

So, there you have it. All-American Apple Tart, fit for a culturally iconic fictional hero, but easy enough to make in the real world. Try it sometime!

*Easy there, Captain America. You’ll get your turn.

What superhero should we cook for next?