livin' in the country

today was pretty cool. tess and i went on an adventure around our little town to find fresh food! we went to the local produce stand (L&G farms) as the first stop to get some fresh fruits (a carton of 6 peaches for $2.50!), veggis, and eggs! they also have a nursery, so i inquired about fig trees. we've been hoping to plant fruit trees at the house since we moved in, and i decided that if they had them i was going to just buy one today! ...but they didn't, and they didn't have figs either, but (and this is how you know i live in the country) the 92 year old lady they sometimes buy figs from lived right down the road!

so after the produce stand guy called "ms ruby", he gave me directions to her house - and this is really what he said - just go down this road here, past the middle school, down and up a hill, and it's the first brick house on the right, there's a single-wide across the street. i mean really, how awesome is that?! so i went down the road and found ms ruby standing in the driveway with rollers still in her gray hair, and i bought 6 lbs of figs! i was hoping for 1-2 lbs, but when she asked me if i wanted 15 or 10, and told me it supplemented her income, i couldn't help myself. luckily, i know my dad will love the extras, and once you get them home, 6 lbs of figs isn't all that much. the best part? they were only $2/lb, so i only spent $12 on a massive bag of figs. try getting that deal at a fancy schmancy farmer's market for some "organic local produce".

then we went to lowe's foods (pretty much the fanciest grocery store in a 30 mi. radius) and picked up the rest of the necessities. so for dinner, tess and i prepared a feast for daddy! we made spicy bbq'd country ribs, homestyle green beans (from the stand, cooked in chicken stock i made a few weeks ago), wild mushroom rice pilaf, and la piece de resistance, fresh scratch-made peach pie! i made this thing completely on my own (with help from tess), from peeling the peaches to making and rolling out the pie dough! and since it turned out AWESOME, i'm going to give you all the recipes!
the crust:
Ingredients

* 1 cup unsalted butter, chilled
* 3 cups all-purpose flour
* 3 tablespoons white sugar
* 1/3 cup ice water

Directions

1. Combine flour and sugar into the bowl of an electric mixer. Cut butter or margarine or butter and shortening into tablespoon pieces; add it to the flour and butter (i used plain, unsalted butter). Use the paddle beater to cut the butter and flour together. Alternatively, this can be done by hand with a pastry blender.
2. With the mixer on low speed , or while stirring the mixture with a fork, pour in the cold water. When the dough starts to clump, and before it turns into a ball, stop stirring (i had to use a little more than 1/3 cup to get to the right consistency).
3. Lightly knead dough in the bowl until it forms a ball. Divide dough into two parts. Flatten each part into a disk, and chill for about 30 minutes before rolling.

the pie:
Ingredients

* 1 (15 ounce) package pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie *just use the recipe above!*
* 1 egg, beaten
* 5 cups sliced peeled peaches (6 medium sized peaches worked just fine)
* 2 tablespoons lemon juice
* 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
* 1 cup white sugar
* 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 2 tablespoons butter

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F (220 degrees C).
2. Line the bottom and sides of a 9 inch pie plate with one of the pie crusts. Brush with some of the beaten egg to keep the dough from becoming soggy later.
3. Place the sliced peaches in a large bowl, and sprinkle with lemon juice. Mix gently. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Pour over the peaches, and mix gently. Pour into the pie crust, and dot with butter. Cover with the other pie crust, and fold the edges under. Flute the edges to seal or press the edges with the tines of a fork dipped in egg. Brush the remaining egg over the top crust. Cut several slits in the top crust to vent steam.
4. Bake for 10 minutes in the preheated oven, then reduce the heat to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) and bake for an additional 30 to 35 minutes, until the crust is brown and the juice begins to bubble through the vents. If the edges brown to fast, cover them with strips of aluminum foil about halfway through baking. Cool before serving. This tastes better warm than hot.

the crust tastes like a flaky shortbread cookie, and according to the hubby, the filling is PERFECT. the only modifications i made to the recipes were using a homemade crust (rather than a storebought as the pie recipe recommends), making sure all the ingredients were fresh (including lemon juice from a real lemon), baking for 10 mins at 450 and then 40 mins at 350 (instead of 30-35), and when i peeled one of the peaches, it was definitely not ripe at all, so i cut very thin slices and let them sit in sugar for awhile before incorporating them into the rest of the peach mixture.

let me know if you try the recipe! happy eating, and enjoy exploring your local foods!

i made gazpacho!

here's the ina garten recipe i used/loosely based mine on

Ingredients
1 hothouse cucumber, halved and seeded, but not peeled
2 red bell peppers, cored and seeded
4 plum tomatoes
1 red onion
3 garlic cloves, minced
23 ounces tomato juice (3 cups)
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup good olive oil
1/2 tablespoon kosher salt
1 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
Directions
Roughly chop the cucumbers, bell peppers, tomatoes, and red onions into 1-inch cubes. Put each vegetable separately into a food processor fitted with a steel blade and pulse until it is coarsely chopped. Do not overprocess!

After each vegetable is processed, combine them in a large bowl and add the garlic, tomato juice, vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Mix well and chill before serving. The longer gazpacho sits, the more the flavors develop.

HOWEVER, i used:
2 regular cucumbers instead of one hothouse (cheaper)
1 bell pepper (the other one was rotten)
7 cherry tomatoes (food lion didn't have plum) which i did NOT process, just chopped
4 cups of FRESH pureed beefsteak tomatoes rather than canned sauce
champagne vinegar instead of white wine (it's what i had)
... otherwise i followed the recipe :-)

i served it with avocado, and added a tad more olive oil to the bowl. unfortunately, as i had feared, a whole red onion is too much raw onion flavor for me, and i'd prefer about half the amount, so that's what i'll use next time. otherwise, i'm very pleased with my first go at gazpacho and my first run of my food processor! now, on to homemade baby food!

"love bird" chicken

yesterday on a rerun of rachel ray's 30-minute meal show i saw her make "love bird" chicken - see it's love bird because the breast is wrapped... i don't get it, and i think she's really annoying with all her "smashed potatoes" instead of mashed and how she calls pieces of chicken "him" and how she says we can cook "up" something in the pan, where "he" (the chicken) can "join all the other kids in the pool" = go into the pot with the other ingredients - holy cow, it's enough to want to stab your ears out with your yum-o lazy spoonula, BUT the recipe was intriguing and tasty looking, so i figured i'd try it. here is the recipe from rachel's site

4 pieces skinless chicken breast, boned (about 8 ounces each)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2-3 sprigs fresh finely chopped rosemary
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)
1 sheet puff pastry (11 by 17-inch), (recommended: Dufour)
8 slices Italian fontina cheese, slices should be 2-3-inches square and 1/4 to 1/2-inch thick, cut in 1/2
1/2 cup fig preserves
1 egg mixed with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash
PREPARATION
Preheat oven to 400°F.

Season the chicken with salt, pepper and rosemary. Cut each piece of chicken in half across the breast giving you 8 equal portions. Heat the oil in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Lightly brown the chicken on both sides, 5 minutes total. Remove from heat.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Cut pastry into 8 pieces. Place a piece of cheese on each pastry square and top with spoonfuls of fig preserves and the chicken pieces. Pinch and seal the dough up and over the meat and cheese, seal with egg wash, flip the pastry packets over and brush the tops with remaining egg wash. Bake 12-15 minutes, until golden.

For entree portions, simply leave chicken breast whole and cut the pastry into quarters. Trim off excess dough and use it to decorate the pastry with small cut outs such as heart shapes.

however, i made a few adjustments based on what i had available. my country grocery store did not have fontina cheese, so i used havarti, and we had frozen boneless skinless thighs, so i used them instead of breasts, and lastly, we had pillsbury crescent roll dough instead of puff pastry. oh and i used dried rosemary instead of fresh chopped because we had it in the spice rack. OTHER THAN THAT, i followed the recipe - hahaha! the result was quite tasty, and i am sure it is something we will repeat.

we both loved the havarti cheese, so that might stay, and i'll have to debate about the puff pastry, as the flavor of the crescent roll was nice, but the perforations made for a difficult time wrapping and lots of leakage in the baking process. we will definitely try using breasts next time because the thighs were difficult to wrap and either you'd end up with a giant bite of chicken where it'd been folded over or a bite with no chicken because the pastry, cheese, and fig had spread without it. but all in all, i'd rate it a dinner success, and it really did take me less than 30 mins to make, including baking time.

oh, and i would have put up a picture of them, cause they were pretty, but we eated dem all!

snow and other such nonsense

well we ran out of food yesterday, but i dared not venture out into the madness of crazed-snow-supply-seekers, so we shall see what we can scrounge out of the pantry/freezer to eat for the rest of the weekend! last night, i was craving some chocolate chip muffins (which i just knew we had in the pantry... but we didn't) so my sweet hubby made me some from scratch! they were an interesting consistency before and after cooking, and all of the chocolate chunks (to replace chips, which we didn't have) went to the bottom of the cups, but they're still pretty good. i attribute the strange consistency to the fact that he used hot coco mix instead of coco powder to make them chocolate-chocolate chip. hey, who can complain, i'm proud of his resourcefulness!

we called this one jaba de hut :-)

last night, i had trouble sleeping again. i think it was a combination of being overtired, having taken a nap, pregnancy itchiness/insomnia, and the ambient light bouncing off the snow and coming in our bedroom windows. andrew once again felt sorry for me and tried to figure out how to make me sleepy. we tried a back rub, which would probably have worked had it continued for a few more hours, some warm milk, and eventually i gave in and took some benadryl. actually technically i took diphenhydramine prescribed to lillie by the vet - ha! it's nice to work at a place where i learn things like, you can take your dog's meds cause they're the same thing but cost 1/8th of the price for quadruple the amount! benadryl is one of those things we buy in bulk to keep on hand for lillie's many issues, and since i am allowed to take two whole medicines (tylenol and benadryl) during pregnancy, AND we're out of tylenol (which does nothing for sleeping anyway), it's good the dog could lend me some of her drugs! it was great. i stopped itching, i slept, and i woke up totally rested! yahoooo!

this morning, we've been hanging out with the dogs and watching the snow/sleet come down. here are a few pics from our porch:
last night when it started coming down

this morning from the porch


[feel free to ignore the junk on the porch]

the holidays are coming

this was the first weekend that i felt like the holidays are right around the bend! my work schedule has been a little strange recently, but i have been blessed with several saturdays off, so i have been able to enjoy having two days in a row with andrew - something i haven't really had since i was teaching. it has been so nice. i hate that it will come to an end after this week, but i do have the week between christmas and new years off, so i guess that will be ok :-)

in honor of the cool air and weekend off, i decided to make a crock-pot of venison chili yesterday that we served over rice with all the fixin's, and i even made cornbread. i felt oso domestic, and according to our friends, whitney and scott, i make excellent chili - yay! i don't have any pictures, but i'd be glad to share my recipe if you're interested. i used venison because andrew had some from a friend at work, but i look forward to substituting it with beef, chicken, or another protein in the future since the venison is a little tougher of a meat.

along with the chill in the air and the chili in the crock pot, this weekend sure felt like fall, and i know i've said it before, but my FAVORITE holiday is thanksgiving. i don't know if it always has been, but i just have such great memories of it from when i was growing up. we always used to pack in the car and drive from our house down to savannah to spend it with my dad's family, which included his brother and sisters, their kids, my grandma sara, aunt faye (who was really great aunt faye), granny (my great-grandmother), and random others depending on the year. i was never thrilled about the drive, or even about the sleeping arrangements - grandma sara smoked a ton, and her whole house made us stink the entirety of our time there, plus matthew and i were "the young cousins", but something about all those people together, being family, making food, and being thankful really felt good. we haven't gone down there for a big family gathering in a long time - all the "kids" have grown up and have families of their own, and granny, faye, and grandma sara have all passed away, but i still think of thanksgiving as the best holiday of the year. i don't even think it's about the food, though who could dislike a holiday created around gluttony ;-) but thinking about it and feeling the holidays in the air always makes me happy.

i think that your favorite holiday says a lot about you and what you value in life - what's your favorite holiday and why?

this year is bringing a lot of firsts with it for andrew and me, but that also means it's bringing its share of lasts as well. this will be our last holiday season without a child in the house, which means the last one without the craziness that brings, so hopefully we can take advantage of that and do some fun married-without-children things... though i am starting to feel uncomfortable a lot of the time, so things like camping (where i don't have my big cushy bed) are out of the question! we'll have to see!

the belly's getting bigger, perhaps i'll post some pics in a few days - you'll just have to keep checking back!

i made 7-layer dip!

tonight, andrew said, "hey, i want some more of that yummy 7-layer dip we had!" i'm not sure if he said "yummy" but it was something to that effect. so we called our local grocer, you know, the one that's not more than 15 mins away, and asked if they had any. lo and behold, they did not. i can't say i was surprised. so we decided that spreading 7 layers in a pyrex dish couldn't be too hard to figure out. when i looked online for a recipe, i was pretty surprised at all the different variations for the 7 layers... and all the recipes that had like 20 ingredients.

i chose to play it simple and layered (bottom, up) refried beans, guacamole dip, sour cream seasoned with taco flavoring, cheese, olives (two kinds), tomatoes, and chives.

end result: delish!

aaaand, we ate it with multigrain tortilla chips, so it was "healthy."

stuffed peppers

tonight i made some really yummy stuffed peppers from scratch, so i thought i'd share them with you!
this picture is pre-oven, but andrew thought they looked the same, so didn't take a post-oven pic.

ingredients:
bell peppers (usually green, we used red because they were nicer at the store)
lean ground beef
canned white corn
white rice (we used long grain)
fire-roasted diced tomatoes
italian stewed tomatoes
tomato paste
diced onions (i prefer sweet ones)
minced garlic
seasoning salt
italian seasoning
paprika
fresh ground pepper
olive oil

directions:

1. cut tops off peppers and clean out inside seeds.
2. make white rice - cook almost completely (since it will cook longer, it's ok if you turn the heat off a few minutes early) and set aside.
3. put olive oil in a saute pan, add onions and saute until transparent. add ground beef, seasoning salt, pepper, paprika, and garlic. cook until most of the pink is gone. add fire-roasted tomatoes, and corn. season to taste.
4. in a separate pot, mix stewed tomatoes, tomato paste (we substituted tomato soup, minus the water, because we were out of paste), italian seasoning, and other spices to taste. heat to bubbling.
5. combine equal parts of beef mixture and rice, ladle a few scoops of sauce mixture, and fill peppers. 
6. place peppers in a high-walled casserole dish, cover with remaining sauce (which will fill up the sides of the dish as well), place aluminum foil over top, with a few holes for ventilation. place in 350 degree oven for 20 mins. 
7. remove foil, return to oven for another 10-15 mins. serve and enjoy!

we chose to eat ours with cheezy texas toast, but we didn't need to add anything else, since it had veggis, beef, and rice... all major food groups covered ;-) for you plant-eaters out there, i'm sure you could substitute some marinated tofu... but it'd probably be gross. hehehe.

wine-ing and dining

well, the beautiful weather has left us, but that isn't stopping andrew and me from living it up! last night, we rushed from work over to chapel hill because my cast and crew (or at least the select few of us who reunited via facebook and were in town) of my high school's production of once upon a mattress was going to see our old director, who works at echhs, put on another production of the same show. we ended up getting there in plenty of time, and even finagled some free tickets. the show was cute, but we deduced we had done a better job... this deduction was supported by a totally non-biased bystander, marc (i mean, he's married to our former stage manager, but he wasn't in our cast).

there were some technical issues that made it less enjoyable, like one of the female leads sounding like charlie brown's mother due to bad mic placement, and a very rude family sitting behind us, but it was great to go to the theater again, and even better to see old friends - some former students of mine, as well as friends from high school. after the play, we had a get-together at hope's house, where she played hostess with some snacks and wine. it was a total blast from the past to see all those people again, and it was like a mini-reunion from hs, but instead of it being only my graduation year, it was a conglomerate of people i did and didn't hang out with from theater. we were having such a good time laughing and telling stories that andrew and i didn't even notice the time flying by. by the time we checked the clock, it was like 1:30, and we didn't get home until after 2. this would be ok for many non-old-fogey twenty somethings, but i had to be at work at 7:30 this morning, and well, we might as well admit that we're an old married couple by this point, so getting out of bed was a real challenge!

i suffered through the half day of work and had just enough energy to pick up some mexican food on the way home. after eating, we tried to watch the [painful] carolina/florida state game, but i fell asleep on the couch and missed us getting our butts handed to us. oh sad lack of acc tournament title... maybe we're just saving up for the ncaa? we'll go with that.

i didn't wake up until about 6:30, so by the time we got up and going, we had a very late dinner at sushi blues, followed by our first visit my new favorite place, the european espresso & wine cafe. i am planning many more visits for a few reasons:
1. excellent ambiance
2. open late on weekend nights
3. friendly service
4. great menu! if you like indulgent food and wine, you should go!
5. really yummy coffee
6. we got a free taste of some delicious champagne just for waiting patiently for some cannolis.

so, i've decided that next month i want to go there for my birthday! we can enjoy some wine flights, a great selection of cheeses and antipasto, perhaps some foie gras, and definitely some dessert. oh, age 26, i guess there are some good things that come with your arrival.

[pics in this blog taken by my cool new phone!]

and flex! and point! and flex! and point!

ya gotta be flexible in this topsy-turvy world. at least that's what i've learned over the past few years. every time i've gotten used to my life, something has happened to turn it upside down. i think i'm just now getting used to how the only thing constant is change, and it's becoming easier to adjust.

i was telling andrew just today that it's weird how uneventful changing jobs (back to the vet) has been this time. i'm sure it's because i'm used to working at the vet during breaks from school, and that it'll wear off soon enough, but the hardest thing about going back to oberlin has just been finding things at the office (everything's been moved) and getting used to being exhausted when i get off work again. i think the two things that have suffered the most from the transition have been my cooking and cleaning - as in i haven't been doing much of either!

today though, andrew took the day off to spend with me (since he'll be out of town on business wednesday through saturday), and we did a little of both. we went to the hardware store and bought bunches of stuff, then bought the entire contents of two grocery stores, tried to go to the bank (but of course they were all closed), came home and cleaned and cooked for the rest of the night! it was great to hang out with my hubby all day :-)

oh, and since i promised:

pics of the FABULOUS short ribs i made last week. yes, slightly greasy, but fall-off-the-bone tender and deLISHious!

and the undertaking of tonight:

eggplant parmesan - not the same great recipe i used a while ago, cause i couldn't find it, but almost as good.

now it's off to dream of snow and hope it's enough to keep me home from work! east wake academy just canceled class for tomorrow, so i guess that is one bummer about working at a place that doesn't close at the thought of inclement weather :-P

my apologies for the absence

sorry about the severe lack of posting recently - i have been a little busy re-starting my job at oberlin, and while i've thought about a lot, and thought about blogging a lot, i haven't actually done any. i almost think it's that there's an overload of possible topics and i'm overwhelmed as to where to start.

i have made a few little changes, however, in that i've added a few labels off to the right -->
and, as of today, drumroll please... i've made the blog public again! since i don't have to worry about students finding it anymore, i figured i'd reopen it to the world of the internet.

tonight, since it's been my day off, i'm making braised shortribs for dinner. i've mostly followed the directions found here, and while i was busy cooking, rather than taking pictures, so far it does actually look the pictures mr.-amateur-gourmet-guy has on his page! and the whole house smells amazing. i can't wait for the next few hours to go by so that andrew will be here and i can see if it's is any good!

i made steaks!

for those of you who haven't been around me lately, the current economic crunch has caused me to become much more domestic than i ever imagined i could be. i am doing all kinds of cooking and baking many nights each week instead of eating out. it's been pretty fun for the most part, and i've made pretty tasty stuff (which is good because if it'd been bad we would have had to eat it anyway), but last night was really outstanding!

i made some new york strip steaks that were on sale at harris teeter, marinated them overnight in a ziploc bag in the fridge, heated a cast-iron skillet to medium-high and cooked them between 4-5 mins on each side. we paired them with creamed spinach and tri-colore orzo - they were fabulous! even though each steak was over half a pound, andrew and i cleaned our plates. i would have pictures for you, since they were beautiful specimens of MEAT, but we ate them too fast!

a week (or so) in pictures

i began the week feeling somewhat "strapped down"
like i was tied into something i couldn't escape...
(like our futon? we were moving it back to our house from megan's)

but then i quit my job, and while it was stressful, it went ok. the cloudy, rainy weather made it easy to want to stay inside and cook...

so i made a really yummy butternut squash soup. it was awesome comfort food, and that's what i really needed during the longest week ever. i'm pretty sure andrew liked it (and the fact that i cooked a lot this week) too.


but this friday, we were all able to cut loose. the "under 40 crew" of high school teachers went out to watch lisa (english 2&3) and her band sing at 42nd street oyster bar. not pictured are lisa, amy, andrew or me... but craig really got into it and put on heather's headband. he wasn't so happy about the re-inactment photo-op :-P

and apparently "tequila makes heather's clothes fall off" because not only did craig get her headband, but i got her shirt! i'm pretty sure this face is in reaction to craig's new look.
we had a great time seeing lisa sing, dancing our butts off, and i even got a little tipsy and did the first shot i've done in about a year - teachers gone wild!

i guess for me, it was fun to embrace this persona for at least one last hurrah. it'll be back to being an hourly paid peon technician in a few short weeks... no regrets, but definitely some adjusting is coming. happy weekend!

saturday, sunday, monday - this is a long one

i kept thinking of things i wanted to blog about and taking pictures of them... but i never blogged, so i'm doing it all in one large post. hold on to your butt.


saturday, i went to breakfast with andrew at the cameron village carolina cafe. we have had terrible experiences there, but this time the food was great. despite the girl at the counter who looked like she might die in the middle of taking our order, it was a completely enjoyable experience. afterwards, andrew went to work, and i hung out in "la di dogs", the fancy designer dog store (also in cameron village), owned by one of our oberlin clients - such a sweet lady. after chatting with her for a while, i met monica at caribou coffee for a catching-up session. we took our coffees to the hunt horse complex for a little horse-watching and chatting. after that, we explored the flea market, and i bought a beautiful antique cherry hope chest. where i am going to put it, i have no idea, and it is currently sitting in our living room. after that, i hung out with tex, megan's cat, over at megan's. we chatted, snuggled, and hung out until andrew got off work that night.

sunday morning, andrew and i went to church and heard a sermon on idols. tyler (the head pastor) asked us lots of questions that really make you think about what drives your life. i really think you could analyze the answers to these for months and not run out of things to talk or think about.

• what are you most afraid of?
  
• what do you long for most passionately? what gets you out of bed?
  
• where do you run for comfort? what comfort do you treasure the most?
  
• what do you complain about the most?
  
• what makes you the happiest?
  
• how do you explain yourself to other people? what do you brag about?
  
• what has caused you to be angry with God?
  
• what do you want to have more than anything else?
  
• what do you sacrifice the most for in your life?
  
• whose approval are you seeking?
  
• what do you want to control or master?

the whole idea being that these things are our idols, and when we feel like we can't live without these things - beauty, a house, a new tv, etc. - then living without them becomes our "hell". and we spend our whole lives trying to escape this hell and save ourselves. and that's not a great way, or even a good way to live.
i'd love to have a biblestudy based on this topic - please let me know if you're interested!!

upon leaving church, lora called to see if we wanted to go climbing. andrew had to head to work, but i joined in and had a great time. i was not very good, and i'm in a lot of pain today, but that's ok because getting back into it is exciting no matter what. the new gym, triangle rock club, is much nicer than the others in the area, and the company was also excellent. lora forced me to take my belay certification test (thanks), and even though i let her drop like two feet on her ANNOUNCED fall... they still passed me. hehehe. i do blame my very friction-y belay device for making it difficult to get the rope through (hence not keeping up with lora's climb as well as i'd like to), so i switched devices for lora's regular atc and had no problems for the rest of the day. i tried, unsuccessfully, to do some pull-ups at the end of the day, but that's ok, now i have a new goal :-)

afterwards, lora and i hung out for a while, drinking protein shakes and chatting. then the two of us met up back over here for dinner and pie-making! for dinner, we made eggplant parmesan with spinach linguini. andrew joined us before the food was finished cooking, and we all enjoyed dinner with a nice bottle of wine. we followed it up with a scratch-made apple/rhubarb pie. also delicious. the dinner was only successful because of the awesome three-person teamwork. we kept that great team vibe going for the rest of our hanging out. complete with toenail painting.
after going to bed late, i woke up sore and exhausted. today was fine, but parent conferences make me feel like this: until i go to my car and receive this:
true romance from the husband to celebrate our 6-month-iversary of being married! my husband is great!

cooking

i've done a lot of it recently, and i've really wanted to be able to add some of it to butwesuckatcooking, but it's been pretty good! which i guess is a better result than being able to blog there. still, i kinda wanted to make an appearance. i was thinking about writing about the nasty cookies melissa and i made a while ago... perhaps i shall. ANYWAY, on to the good cooking i've done!

the other day i realized we had a banana that was starting to turn. i thought, "hey, i'll make banana bread!" my mother makes really good banana bread, but i've never attempted it, so i looked on the internet for a simple, yummy-looking recipe. after finding an acceptable one with as few ingredients as possible, i still had to go to the store for baking soda and bananas... yes, the whole reason i chose to make the bread was the banana, but one cannot make an entire loaf of bread with only one. i went to the store and got the ingredients; unfortunately, all the bananas were borderline green. i bought them anyway. with only one error in the process (luckily disaster was avoided, as that part was thrown out and restarted for the end product) and an hour later, this was the result:a beautiful and extremely tasty treat! the outside was crusty and sweet with the inside light and fluffy. i probably will not be able to duplicate this.

then, the next night i decided to make some flavorful pasta with an assortment of ingredients andrew was sure to love. despite the somewhat overcooked whole wheat pasta, this pungent dish was a favorite with andrew. i'm not a fan of all these flavors joined together at once, somewhat overbearing i think, but i really made it for him, and he liked it.

next, i decided to attempt the ever-dreaded souffle (only correctly pronounced swaffle - like rhymes with waffle). i chose a chocolate souffle with a simple recipe of just eggs, sugar, chocolate, and a crock-pot dish buttered and covered in sugar. the crock-pot dish made an appearance because after i'd planned and bought ingredients for this endeavor, i realized i didn't have a souffle dish. this is my proudest accomplishment in the kitchen thusfar, and i have not a single picture! i bought the best bittersweet chocolate i could find, along with organic brown eggs, organic sweetened butter, and regular old sugar. i meticulously followed every direction to the t, and ended up with a fabulously delicious chocolate souffle. i topped it off with fresh blackberries and enjoyed it with vanilla silk - quite extravagant for a sunday night. lora made a similar sort of thing the other night that incorporated many similar ingredients, except hers was a flourless chocolate cake (also delicious), so it had a thicker, creamier consistency.

i'm not sure what my next cooking adventure will be, but i'm excited to get back in the kitchen! (wow, that's weird to say given my general lack of girly-ness and domesticity!)
i promise to post again soon with some non-food-related trivia :-)

Overdue review of The George

Last weekend Emily, Megan, her friend Matt, and I went to The George on Glenwood. From what I can remember it used to be April and George wine bar. Somehow April was removed from the picture and after some months of closure the place reopened. It has a very similar feel inside. The main difference I noticed was the removal of the lounge areas in favor of tall bar tables.

Like many restraunts on Glenwood South this is a tapas style menu. Unlike other tapas places the theme seemed to be more fresh simple plates instead of the heavy spanish style. This might have been the first time (aside from our rehearsal dinner) that I've actually had everyone share their dishes in the true tapas style. Amongst the four of us we got smoked salmon which was very good. So good in fact that we ordred a second plate. Lump crab cake on spinach which was alright, the crab was just that, crab and a little boring. I also ordered chicken quesadillas which came with a lime infused avocado, very interesting. Their gouda and spinach dip was really good, I am a sucker for any kind of spinach dip. Megan ordered chicken with chopped spinach which I thought was alright, it had the whole freshness thing going for it. Emily ordered a caprese salad which I thought was good. I think she expected a little bit more than what came on the plate but for the prices you really couldn't complain. Megan's other dish was shrimp with sausage and grilled peppers I think. If I remember correctly no one was overly impressed. I believe that covers all the food we ordered but Emily can correct me if I forgot anything.

The wine was pretty good in my opinion. I got a glass of some moderately priced Merlot and Emily got a Rioja. Matt had a Riesling which he seemed to enjoy.

The dessert menu looked really good and also was very moderately priced. We however did not get dessert there because we wanted to show Matt and Megan the Cupcake Shoppe which was enjoyed by all. Emily and I really liked our carrot cake cupcake.

My overall impression of The George was pretty good. While not every dish we got was stellar we only touched on about half the menu. I think there are plenty of great things to eat and drink as well. The prices are very good compared to some other local tapas restaurants. It's definitely worth checking out if you are in the mood for somehting new.

Just for the record my favorite tapas places are still Redroom followed by Humble Pie.

food diary

but not in the fun sense. the nutritional counselor at peak has asked me to keep a food diary for the next 3 days. now the only thing about this is that i've already been making a concerted effort to have healthier eating habits since i began working out. additionally, i sort of feel like when you have to write down what you eat, you're obviously more conscious of being healthy. now, i can do this for the 3 days i'm supposed to, but how much do you want to bet that on day 4 i get a greasy cheeseburger with nasty french fries! ...i'm just saying, let's be honest.

but yes, let's recap the day shall we? i went in to work today and had a surprise observation YAY (can you feel the sarcasm?). not only did i have 1 surprise observation, but i had two people attempt to observe - at the same time! yes, while ms. lanier, the mentor coordinator, was sitting in the room observing me mrs. baker, my mentor, came in to observe. luckily, she left but unluckily, she plans to come back tomorrow. ugh. however, i left work on the early side and unscathed, so it was ok.

then, i went straight to the gym for my free consultation with the in-house chiropractor, dr. hall. she was incredibly nice, and though i am a huge skeptic, i really liked her attitude, and i find her to be completely competent. she says i am having tension headaches, found some reasons why, x-rayed my neck, got me a free 15-minute massage, and scheduled me for another free session. it was excellent, and i feel like there might be an end in sight for my neck/spine/shoulder issues.

after that, megan had her session and then we worked out. today was some cardio followed by weights. we both bought protein smoothies (which i think tasted like chalk) in order to "make sure our bodies aren't eating away at our lean muscle" ::gross:: and headed home.

tonight, andrew and i are going out to dinner to celebrate his second sale at dormia - go husband! and tomorrow lillie is going in for her annual and her first dental. exciting things going on in the korhonen household!

new traditions

this will actually be the third christmas andrew and i are spending together. believe it or not, we first spent a lot of time together on christmas night of 2005... and i think that's when we really fell for each other. last year, we were dating but not yet engaged, and this year is our first as a married couple. our little family (can't forget about lillie and bailey) is making new traditions together.

generally speaking, christmas is the time that we tend to do all the running around from family to family from downtown raleigh to durham/chapel hill, to north raleigh and back. tomorrow we'll go to my parents' around 10am, and then andrew's mom is going to join us at my aunt's for dinner around 4pm. doing extended family stuff takes pretty much the whole day. and of my three weeks of vacation, i have yet to begin relaxing until today.

so our new traditions include: christmas eve day being "our" day without friends over or family visits, just the four of us. also, we woke up and made big hearty omelettes and homemade hash browns (and by we i meant i). they were pretty good despite the fact that i don't know how to use our new fancy omelette pans, and they fell into a heap of mush instead of a nice crescent shape.

then i addressed "holiday" cards - perfect to be used for christmas and new years, so they can't be "late". then there was some cleaning. we put on music and candles, and i made some pecan-pumpkin squares (which were exceptionally good despite my aversion to pumpkin!). then andrew made stir-fry with veggies and chicken, and i made some sticky rice with teriyaki. with our dinner, we enjoyed a nice bottle of gewurtztrameiner, a white, sweet, bubbly, german wine - one of my new favorites.

so i guess our new traditions include being lazy, sleeping in, making omelettes and hash browns, making baked-goods, and cooking dinner together while enjoying a good wine. i think this'll be a great christmas-eve-day-family-tradition for the korhonens!

dinner parties are fun

on sunday night, we decided we were going to have people over for dinner, but the only people who could come were melissa and kim/john, but kim and john were already having people over for strombolis, so they invited the whole lot of us over to kim's. it was great. the guests included the aforementioned people as well as jeremy and joan, kim's vet school friend. we got there and feasted on pita points with spinach/artichoke hummus, garlic hummus, and kim's famous herbed cheese with marinara dip - all very tasty! andrew and i provided wine with selections of the biltmore sangiovese and a yellowtail shiraz. both were heartily enjoyed mostly before the actual dinner hit the table. for dinner, we enjoyed salad and the ham/pepperoni/onion/green pepper/mushroom strombolis care of john. they were yummy! i don't particularly like all that meat in my pizza type stuff, but i enjoyed them anyway. melissa made her famous seven-layer cookies, and many of those were eaten before dinner as well. i love food!

then we hung out and talked and played video games for a few hours before heading home. it was finally cold for the first time this year! i guess i'm kinda glad we didn't make it out camping. so monday morning we woke up, and it felt like a sunday. in fact, for the majority of the day, i really thought it was a sunday. we ran a few errands at the vet and the grocery store, and we picked up a mountain of food for last night. since a lot of people couldn't make it sunday, we had several others over last night for a mini-dinner party of our own. we bought the ingredients for madeira chicken, asparagus, butternut squash, couscous, and a cake (well not so much the ingredients for the cake, we just bought the cake). we also picked up a rose wine to taste with the meal. it was gross, or at least not what i was hoping for when i picked it out. and whenever i've made madeira chicken before, i've used the whole foods madeira wine sauce... but this time, there was apparently no such thing at whole foods. we called and andrew went to several of them in search of this sauce, which i know existed (and was very tasty!), but none could be found, so it was left to me to MAKE a madeira wine sauce - scary.

i used all the ingredients the recipe told me to, and i cooked it for as long as it told me to... and it looked like white water. now every madeira sauce i've had has looked like brown glaze, so i kept cooking it and we added some thickening agents, and i kept cooking it... and kept cooking it... and finally gave up. i decided to saute some of it with the mushrooms, and that started to look more like the right color and texture. and i marinated the chicken in the rest of it, which i think added to the chicken's flavor, and then i dumped it all together in the dutch oven and cooked it. apparently that was key because i got raving reviews, especially about the mushrooms - from people who don't like mushrooms. that was exciting.

so before we ate, we enjoyed several wines (some care of jackie) and cheese and spread-y stuff, also care of jackie. it was great. once lindsay and james got here, we dove into the food. unfortunately, i had put the asparagus, that had been sauteed earlier, into the oven to warm... and it got all nasty and stringy. but that was the only pitfall, everything else was very tasty!

to end the evening we enjoyed a "raspberry chocolate fetish cake" from whole foods that was delicious and very rich. the whole night was filled with great conversation, and it was nice to see lindsay for the first time in a while. i guess that's about all - now it's off for a day of working at oberlin! yay for oberlin, boo for working during my vacation.

(perhaps pictures to come later)

track-out, tuna-baking, wine-tasting, history-making

ok so i didn't "bake" the tuna, but tuna-searing didn't have the same ring.

yesterday was a tremendous day! there were so many great things that happened, and i wish i had pictures for them all, but i've been the uber-slacker as far as cameras are concerned, so the one "borrowed" picture will have to suffice. yesterday was the last day of school before our 3-week winter track-out. that meant fewer than normal kids, a lunch party, shorter afternoon classes, no horrible 7th period, and a fun eog review game for the kids. the day went well, and one of my administrators dropped in and was impressed with how quiet and studious my kids were... so i guess that's a good thing. our lunch party was great because this time my kids knew they weren't supposed to let anyone use the microwave, so no one tried to set the room on fire! quite an accomplishment, i felt.

the eog review game was fun, and quite unlike the waste of time i thought it would be. they had the kids pitted against one another in grade levels, so the 6th grade was a team against the 7th and 8th grade teams. we came in third, but only by a few points, which i attribute to the math questions. according to paige, they don't have to know how to add and subtract negative numbers until seventh grade, and many of their math questions were about that sort of thing. we made up points on the language arts questions though, which made me pretty proud of some of my kids. they way they orchestrated this competition was to draw a name of a kid from each grade, that kid went up to a desk, and they were given a question. once they chose the right answer, they ran from that desk across the field to another desk, and back to the first desk. it was a competition of knowledge and speed. i got really into cheering for our kids, and i think they really enjoyed it.

after packing things up, i sped home to clean and get things together for kim. she was coming over to pick up our steamer to take to shannon's wedding, and she'd never seen the house before, so i wanted it to look nice. though she hardly stayed for a minute because she was running late, i was glad to have cleaned the place before the weekend anyway. after she left, andrew and i rushed over to whole foods for supplies for the wine-tasting at dan's. we got some great looking tuna steaks, rice vinegar, sesame oil, wasabi, asian 5-spice, and a bottle of "hope" shiraz. it was shiraz/syrah night at the tasting, and this one sounded pretty good to us both. audrey had listed some foods that were supposed to go well with this type of wine, so i chose the seared seasoned tuna to make as an appetizer. i've never made this before, but it turned out great once i modified the recipe from the one i got online. when i first seared the tuna, the seasoning didn't really infuse with the fish, and it almost felt powdery and dry in my mouth. i brushed it with soy-sauce and seared it again, but didn't taste it because we were running late. it turned out great, so i think that was the key. next time i think i'll marinate more in soy sauce and perhaps brush with sesame oil to get the right flavor the first time. then i made the greens and drizzle to go under the tuna slices. i mixed baby greens and a european cucumber, sliced thinly, with the soy sauce/rice vinegar/oil concoction, and it was fantastic. the recipe called for virgin olive oil, which sounded strange to me. after adding the olive oil, it was strange, so i added more of the other ingredients until i had about double the recipe and the taste of the olive oil was gone. it was good that i doubled the recipe though, because i drizzled it over the tuna also to add flavor, and i wouldn't have had enough with the original amount. i garnished it with wasabi drops on every other slice, and it was a big hit.

we tasted 12 shiraz/syrah/petite syrah wines, and i have once again concluded that i don't really like them. people commented on how there is not much variation within the grape, and i agree. i liked #3, a spicy, full-bodied shiraz, #9, a floral, smoother syrah, and #12, a late-season petite syrah with a spicy scent but surprisingly sweet taste. not sure that i'd ever buy any of them, but at least i've confirmed one thing. if it says "vanilla" on the label, i will like it. every single wine i've liked thusfar in our tasting has said "hint of vanilla" "finish with vanilla" "flavors of vanilla" or some such variation. and i don't even like vanilla that much! i deduced that i like my wine like i like my coffee, bold and thick with vanilla, caramel, and spice.

we were finishing up our tasting when APPALACHIAN WON THE CHAMPIONSHIP AGAIN - for a 3rd time in a row!!! GO APPS! it was a great end to a great day, filled with great company. it sets a good tone for my vacation!!

the twisted funk

well today was a pretty good day. i woke up feeling cruddy again, but andrew and i hung out on the couch for the whole morning and watched several movies while i waited on the drugs to kick in. my husband is good to me :-) he even went to starbucks to get me a peppermint mocha just because i wanted one. after more snuggling on the couch and eating, my parents made a visit to bring us some food. they brought some turkey soup along with some other sides from their thanksgiving, but the best part was the fact that they visited. it was great to see them again, and they really brightened my day.

after working for a while on stuff for school and watching some more tv-movies, andrew and i met up with jackie and chicken at the twisted fork. we chose this restaurant because 1. i'd had good experiences in the past, and 2. we had a buy-one-get-one-free coupon for the entree. unfortunately, they were out of quite a few problems with dinner. they were out of one of the beers jackie wanted, then they brought me cold food and jackie cold soup, then they took my plate back and brought me warm food but it tasted crappy (and i've had the dish there before, so i know what it's supposed to taste like), then my glass ran out of water (our waitress did not even attempt to fill it once), my dessert cake was dry, and on top of it all, they charged an automatic 20% pre-coupon gratuity, so we ended up paying almost full price for gross food and bad service. all in all, total food let-down. good company though.

now i just have to finish this worksheet and go to bed so i can wake up at the crack of dawn!