Holidays With My Hubby

I just wanted to make a quick post to share a holiday tradition my husband and I started on our honeymoon. We are both opposed to collecting knick-knacks and other junk, stuff that will just sit around. We both noticed that many of our family members like to collect things, my dad in particular builds up one big collection after another. I like his collections, and my grandmothers but I just can't see us doing the same. We have so much stuff already, we don't need to spend money or space on more just for the sake of having it. But there is one thing we thought of that we do need lots of, and the more variety the better (at least in my opinion): Christmas tree ornaments! So now anywhere we go in our travels we pick up an ornament. It's a nice way for us to look back and remember where we've been and I think it'll just get more fun as time goes by.

Moving and Plotting

We are getting ready to move very soon but as far as I'm concerned, it couldn't be soon enough. I was very happy with our apartment as our first home together but it's charm (or lack there-of) has worn off. I'm tired of our neighbors, I want more space and most of all I want to garden! Okay I also want to not pay $3 per half a load of laundry in a tiny coin operated washer and dryer. We went to look at a duplex yesterday and we really like it. It isn't perfect by any means by it's much larger than what we have and for the same price. There's not much of a yard but also much more than we have now which is nothing! And so begins my adventures in gardening in a small space. Pros: Lots of windows, both East & West Nice sized porch on the East side Small plot of land I can garden The downside is that the duplex is on the North side of the building so my little garden plot will be along the North wall of the house. I'm trying to research plants that will do well in a small plot with less light. I'm planning to fill up the porch with container plants so for now I'm researching fruits and veggies that will do well in containers and envisioning how I'll organize everything. Advice is welcome as well as book recommendations. I'm reading Back to Basics now because that's what we have already but it only mentions gardening as a small topic among many.

Holiday Goodies!

Hello again! Sorry to go on such a long hiatus but I finally found my first job after graduation! Anyway, this post is about all the fun holiday goodies I've been making. We tried some new things this year that I'm really excited to share.

Cookbook Reviews

Ham & Apple Pie (A work in progress)

Here's my take on a recipe for Pork Apple Pie from Old Sturbridge Village Cookbook.
It tasted pretty good but aesthetically, there are a few kinks I need to work out for next time.

Bree's Bubbles & Bows Tablecloth

My friend asked me to make a tablecloth for my god-daughter's new play table. I'm pleased with the results. I love this polka dot fabric I found at Jo-ann's. The tablecloth is super simple but the crisp edges and cute details really make it special.
On to the tutorial!

Pumpkin-Bottom Cupcakes

My husband and I spent the afternoon trying out an experimental fall treat.
What I wanted:

• Pumpkin for fall flavor
• Cream cheese, what goes better with pumpkin?

What I didn't want:

• Mess
• Something too heavy

My solution was to attempt to combine a pumpkin bar recipe with black-bottom cupcakes. So is "Pumpkin-Bottom Cupcakes" a good name?

Vegetarian French Onion Soup

Yum! This was my first attempt at making French Onion Soup and it was pretty great if I say so myself!

Tangy Raspberry Ice Cream

1 cup Raspberries
1/2 cup sliced Strawberries
1/2 cup and 1 tbs Sugar
2 tbs Lemon juice
3/4 cup Sour cream
1 cup Heavy whipping cream

Combine berries, sugar and lemon juice in a sauce pan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat stirring for about 3 minutes. Puree in a blender until smooth then pulse in the cream. Chill then follow instructions for your ice cream machine.

Easter

This Easter was our first holiday spent with just the two of us and I gotta say it was nice. Quiet and full of great food! Everything was too yummy to stick around long enough for pictures but here's a few recipes.

Easter Menu:
Deviled Eggs
Cucumbers in cider vinegar
Polish Sausage (boiled then fried with olive oil and onion

Sweet Tooth

The weather is finally warming up and this key lime pie was perfect and easy!

Soooooup!

Tonight I looked at a recipe for minestrone and thought well... I'll just throw some stuff in a pot and see what I get!

Dragon's Hoard Terrarium

My husband and I made this terrarium this afternoon.

It was a fun project. Putting it together didn't take very long but we had lots of fun wandering around garden centers, toy departments, and craft stores deciding what we wanted it to look like and what we would put in it.

I found instructions in this month's Everyday with Rachael Ray. One thing they left out: get a bigger container than you think you'll need... or plan to fill it with less. We found ourselves digging things out and smoushing things down to make room for the dragon.

Come-n-Get Your Veggies Lasagna!

Made this lasagna tonight for dinner.

Books

I've been doing a lot of reading. Partly for classes but also spring break was a nice chance to catch up on reading for fun and now that The Crucible is over I've got more free time.
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult was great. It's about a school shooting: who it affected, what led up to it, how relationships changed in the aftermath. I've read several of Picoult's books now and I've liked all of them. They always involve a court case about some controversial issue but it's about the lives of the people involved not the drama of the court. Keeping Faith: stigmata and custody. Change of Heart: terminally ill child needs a heart transplant and death row inmate found guilty of killing her step-father wants to donate his. My Sister's Keeper: daughter sues parents to prevent them from forcing her to donate her kidney to her dying sister. All were wonderful in my opinion. Vanishing Acts is about a women who finds out that her father kidnapped her as a toddler. The book focuses on her father's trial and her love triangle with her alcoholic husband and best friend who's always loved her but has played 3rd wheel since they were all kids together. This was the only one of her's I didn't care for.
Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska I read for my history class but I couldn't put it down. It's about a Jewish girl living in the slums of New York in the early 1900s. She rejects her family traditions (getting married to whatever con-man dupes her dad) to go work her butt off to support herself and pay her way through college to become a teacher. I loved the author's voice and the relationship with her father. He comes up with one crazy scheme after another, all of which fail miserably and much as she wants to abandon him at times, he's still her dad.
I'm reading Beloved by Toni Morrison right now. So far, I like it but I won't say more until I finish.
I'd love suggestions on what to read next.

Veggies for My Omnivore

Living with my husband and brother I've had to work on compromise when it comes to cooking: they love meat and I love veggies. Not that any of us refuses the other but over the last year and a half I've been working on getting them to eat more veggies and finding meals that keep all of us happy.
Yesterday and today I made two delicious vegetarian meals which satisfied everyone.

This pasta primavera was delicious served with rosemary bread fresh out of the oven. The bread recipe makes 4 small loaves (more like large rolls). Stephen came home just as I was taking the first batch out of the oven; he was greeted with an amazing smell and me gobbling half a loaf at the stove! The leftover rolls are going to make great sandwiches, or maybe bread bowls for later in the week. Oh yeah, and I didn't have any plain rosemary on hand so I used some rosemary garlic. I'm a huge garlic fan, maybe this way was even better than the original? Haven't tried it the "right" way yet so I don't know.
Tonight we had black bean soup with johnnycakes from Cooking with Mickey... The guys loved it. It was pretty similar to vegetarian chillies I've made in the past which always go over well, they're very hearty so no one misses the meat. I've never had johnnycakes before but they were pretty much pancakes made with cornmeal so it was kind of a fast version of cornbread.
No pictures, everything was so good we ate it all before I could think about a camera! Next time I make these I'll try to remember to take pictures and add them in.

NUTritious Chocolate

I made these little chocolates today as a treat.
Microwave a handful of chocolate chips until melted (go for dark, pleanty of antioxidents!) About 1 min stirring at 30s should be good.
Meanwhile chop dried fruit and nuts into small pieces, you want lots! 2-3 good handfuls per handful of chocolate. There should be just enough chocolate to coat and hold the ingredients together, not to be the main body of the mixture.
Now mix it all together and plop in spoonfuls onto foil then chill. Done and delicious!
 I made walnut-apricot and cranberry-almond but you can really use any combination you like. I just used what I had on hand but I imagine apple-pecan would be great too and lots more... I won't go on forever, just raid your pantry and be creative.

Making these reminded me of a favorite snack I thought I'd share. Try blending a banana with a generous splash of milk and a spoonful of nutella. Because the banana thickens the mixture, it's almost like you're drinking a chocolate milkshake.

Just When I Thought it was Safe to Relax

So our production of The Crucible is finally/already over. It's amazing how something I started at the end of November (rehersals starting Jan 17) feels like it was so long when really we worked so quickly to open on Feb 17th! Anyway, it was a fantastic experience but I'm relieved to have one less thing on my plate to worry about.
Saturday I got to do some cooking. With all the long nights of performances and loads of homework, we've been slacking and spending way too much on takeout. I made lentil soup, starting with a recipe from Good Eats 2 and then tweaking it with what I had in my kitchen and came up with this:
Dice: 2-3 carrots, 1/2 onion, 1/2 red bell pepper and cook in large pot w/ 1 tbs olive oil and salt over med high heat until onion is translucent. Add 4 cups chicken broth, 1-2 cups water, 1/2 lb lentils (rinsed and sorted), 3 tbs tomato puree. Corriander, cumin, celery seed, and fresh ground pepper to taste. Bring to boil then simmer covered for 45 mins. Puree in batches and serve.

I've been craving cookies and got the idea for these yummy creations.
Chocolate-Cranberry-Walnut Chunk Cookies 
1/2 cup shortening
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp molassas
1 tsp baking soda
pinch salt
1/2 tsp vanilla
milk chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, chopped walnuts, dried cranberries
Enough milk to bring dough together.
Bake at 350 for about 8 minutes
I started with a basic chocolate chip cookie recipe and tweaked it. Adding the milk made the cookies very soft and moist. I highly recommend Alton Brown's cook books for anyone else who likes to experiement with recipes. He gives lots of great information about why certain ingredients are used in recipes and how they effect the end result. For example, his section on chocolate chip cookies talks about how the white to brown sugar ration effects crunchiness (more white = crispier cookies).

 Last recipe... Stephen is sick and running a fever so I made chicken soup for dinner tonight.
Dice: 3 carrots, 1/2 onion, 2 celery stalks Cook over med-high heat in soup pot with olive oil and garlic salt until onion is translucent. Push vegetables to one side and lightly brown 1 diced chicken breast seasoned with garlic and herbs (I used Sauer's Garlic Herb Salt grinder). Add 4 cups chicken broth, 2 cups water, 1 bay leaf, a generous handful each frozen green beans, corn, and chopped spinach (or whatever other vegetables you like and have around or fresh works too, frozen is just what I keep around). Bring to a boil then lower heat and simmer covered for 30-45 min or until chicken is completely cooked and broth has a good flavor. Add 1 1/2 cups left over pasta (rotini, shells, macaroni or something similar) about 5-10 minutes before serving and remove bay leaf.

Raspberry & Chocolate

We've got company coming for the next two weeks for my birthday and to see the play my husband and I are working on. I decided that as part of cleaning and getting ready my girls needed a bath. These are Agnes and Gertrude, my two guniea pigs. Gerty (the brown one) was nervous at first but soon they were both happy, clean, and smelling of raspberries.
Next it was time to get ready for Valentine's day tomorrow. We were going to cook dinner tomorrow, had our menu all planned... then the grocery prices kept adding up and we thought, why spend tons of time and money on fancy food? We decided Valentine's day should be about spending time together not money so we put back all the pricey stuff and traded them in for our favorite (unhealthy) snacks. Tomorrow's game plan: pizza, junk food, movies and a fort in our living room. And of course these homemade chocolate covered strawberries!

Just another weeknight



Took it easy today with my favorite little guy. He's looking a bit silly now getting ready for surgery next week.

Got in a baking mood and made this grapefruit cake with cream cheese frosting from Cooking with Mickey. I was a bit disappointed in the lack of grapfruit flavor in the cake but the grapefrruit segments in between the layers went nicely with the frosting.