I'm squeezing in some late October activities to enjoy to make the last bits of autumn all that
more cozier. A good portion of the once vividly colored leaves have
come off the trees both from the wind and all the rainy days we've been
having here in Syracuse. I swear, it's rained here more during the
autumn than it did all spring and summer. The grass hasn't looked this
lush all year. Gregory
and I carved pumpkins a couple nights ago (pictured above). I had
completely forgotten just how hard it was (and how much strength was
required) to carve a pumpkin-we both hadn't carved pumpkins in years! Can you guess which one is mine? (the simple happy one).
I also cooked up some spaghetti squash this week Italian style with some marinara sauce and feta cheese. I cooked this squash for the first time last year and loved how reminiscent it is of real spaghetti and how tasty it was baked in the oven. To bake: Cut 1 medium sized spaghetti squash lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds and set aside. Heat oven @ 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Brush both halves of squash with extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place both halves cut side down on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 1 hour. When squash is cool scoop out with fork. Saute in a large pan on the stove with a little more extra virgin olive oil. Voila! Top with marinara sauce, pesto, spices, the possibilities are endless!
All those squash seeds were to put to good use too! I baked them @ 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 5 minutes and sprinkled them with some creole cajun seasoning (you could also use salt and pepper or any other spice). Flip and stir them around. Then pop them back in for another 5 minutes or until they're lightly browned. Enjoy!
Happy cooking!
-Caroline
I began my journey in Syracuse, New York after sub-leasing a room in an apartment building from a recent environmental graduate going back home to Jamaica. It was within my budget, and walking distance from two fantastic independently-owned coffee/tea cafes, a library, a couple pizzerias, as well as a couple ethnic food restaurants. I lived surprisingly well with a Colombian woman working on her PhD in architecture, as well as an small family that was comprised of an Indian woman and a Greek man who had just moved from Alaska with their two sons (her parents lived in Syracuse). I truly enjoyed living with these people and we all managed to share the tiny bathroom and apartment exceedingly well for the amount of people living there.
I moved to this apartment because I had enrolled in one summer course at Cazenovia College to get a class out of the way senior year. It was one of the hardest/most interesting summer's of my life filled with being as broke as I've ever come in my life, dumpster diving, and being as creative as I could with stretching a budget, staying creative, and eating as healthy as I could. At the end of my three-month stay sub-leasing this apartment my boyfriend at the time (now ex-boyfriend) had moved in with me as well as his good friend who had just recently moved back from Hawaii looking for work again in central New York.
I've bounced around five times since that first sub-leased room on Westcott St. (one of the small hip cliques for coffee lovers, vegans, and Syracuse University attendees) living in a tent in a friend's backyard, living in a low-income area only to have both my car and apartment broken into, as well another apartment, sharing 1/2 of a two-family home, to a small two-bedroom condominium that I currently share with my current beau, Gregory.
My point of this anecdote is that Syracuse was not a "planned" move in my life growing up. I had no set goals of where I was going to go after receiving my undergraduate degree in the arts and basically made the best decisions with what I had. I feel that Syracuse was that place where I would save up for my next big move, work on my art, and be mainly as a in-between point for me on my journey. I felt this way up until yesterday morning before work when I had an epiphany concerning local venues where I could potentially show my work as well as create small solo shows. I had reached an epiphany on my fate in Syracuse and realized that maybe I was "intended" to stay longer than I had originally anticipated here. This in-between state was meant to be more rooted than that...and that maybe I was meant to make stronger connections here with my art before I depart.
This may not seem like much of an epiphany to anyone else, but I feel differently about my stay and my artistic outlook of Syracuse. I am currently researching graduate schools in the United States as well as requesting catalogs to determine my next move as an artist and the step in my education (I am very passionate about continuing my education and learning in the arts). By the end of my stay here, I hope to have some solo exhibitions under my belt and be a better adversary to any upcoming exhibitions I apply to.
-Caroline
