My basil runneth over

As we all know by now, I am a sucker for a farmers market. It's pretty clear I have some major veg love.

Last weekend I hit up the Ann Arbor Farmers Market and there was a colorful bounty of AMAZING tomatoes, peppers, corn, berries and herbs. And speaking of herbs, basil was the star of this Saturday morning. It was everywhere! Needless to say, I came home with a giant bag full, leaving me with the challenge to use it all. Can one ever use a giant bag of basil? Well I certainly tired. Here are two tasty, basily treats I came up with.

Heirloom tomato, mozzarella and basil salad and a basil infused green tea. Summer love!

And just because I can't help myself, here are some vegetable beauty shots.

Athlete Portraits

I've been working on the player of the year portraits for AnnArbor.com. Here are a few from the spring season winners:

All images in this post © AnnArbor.com 2010

ARCHIVES: Memories from Africa

It's been over a year since I returned from my adventure in Africa. While digging through my archives this week, I came across photos and some video of my teammates Steve, Gina, Nick and Dan. I thought I'd share some of our memories here and hope to add more as I can continue to dig.

Behind every great photo, there is a great story. There is certainly a great story behind this one, see below.

Dan's Clean Mouth from Melanie Maxwell on Vimeo.

We spent an afternoon at a boys school in Mozambique. As you can see, Steve, at left, got his groove on.

Here's the epic tale of our 9 hour trip to Chimoio, Mozambique

Epic trip to Chimoio from Melanie Maxwell on Vimeo.

Then of course there was our trip deep, deep below the surface. I don't think anyone had a clue what we had in store. There is something very strange about being that far underground. It sort of felt like I was at some sort of Disney attraction.