Halloween Weekend

Brian and I try to make the most of our weekends and this one was no exception. I may or may not have bought a ton of Halloween decorations at Kohl's a few weeks ago, so to justify the purchases we (I) decided to throw a Halloween party! We had about 20 friends over, mostly in costume, for rum-spiked cider, soup and assorted dips -- the best kind of party. The soup was definitively a hit. I made a riff on The Pioneer Women's Corn Chowder with Chilis. I crossed it with my mom's Chicken Corn Chowder, something I grew up eating. I added potatoes and chicken to the soup and let it sit overnight with the chicken bones so it got good and thick. I also made this Cuban Black Soup from The Kitchn blog. I switched green bell pepper for red bell pepper and added plenty of cumin, but do not skip the vinegar at the end! It's definitely the necessary secret ingredient. Brian and I decorated the apartment on Thursday night, putting up torn cheesecloth and bats cut out from black construction paper. Friends ate, drank and hung out until after 11.

I dressed up as a Country Singer and Brian dressed up as Clark Kent. 

With my best friend, the Ballerina.

I made shrunken heads out of apples to float in the cider (Martha Stewart).

Our friend Jodi brought "Monster Eyes."

The Ballerina and her husband, a Trama Patient.

On Saturday we woke up late, donned our Carolina gear and headed downtown to meet up with the Carolina Alumni Association for the UNC vs. NCSU game. We had so much fun meeting new folks and cheering on the Tar Heels. Still exhausted from the party we headed out around half time, but thankfully were able to watch the rest of the game at home, including that amazing run by Gio Bernard for the win! UNC has lost to State the past five years, but this year we took it back. The rest of the day included napping in front of the football, saying hello to friends who stopped by, making granola and catching Talladega Nights.

Sunday included seeing friends at church, watching the Bears Panthers game and continuing my attempt to cook my way through Screen Doors and Sweet Tea. This time I tried the Cornbread Crusted White Chili. Brian loved it, I more loved the idea of it. In reality it had too many tomatillos for me. We handed out candy to trick or treating kids and settled in for a lazy evening. Unfortunately I woke up Monday hit with the nasty cold I've been fighting off so it's blankets and the couch for me for a couple days.

Fast Train to California Salad

I wrote this piece probably three or four years ago, while I was still living in Chicago, dating my ex and working my old job. It somehow popped up in a list of files saved off my old laptop and I couldn't resist reviving it (I never posted it on my old blog). I couldn't tell you which apartment I was living in or remember the exact meal, but it reminds me of a sweet moment in those dark, unhappy days. 

Recreating a dish I’ve had at a favorite restaurant can go only two ways: fantastic or disastrous. The second often ends in a pile of dirty pots and pans, empty take-out containers and a horrendous hangover the next morning, after an attempt at drinking my frustration away.

But if I get it right- the flavors meld instead of collide, textures compliment instead of combat- my entire evening mellows and I bask in the glory of a job well done. This salad came about as a result of a fantastic meal at UnCommon Ground. If you’re in Chicago, this is a must visit restaurant. Local food, seasonal flavors, spot-on cooking. I’ve eaten through a good part of the intentionally small menu. I’ve never, however, had a salad there. Steak and pork loin and handmade pasta always tempt me away. But finding myself less ravenous than usual, I couldn’t resist their winter salad- baby arugula dressed with pecans, goat cheese, cranberries and a blood orange vinaigrette. Blood orange! I love any citrus fruit, especially the unusual flavors. My palette bends towards that sweet-sour tang. A heaping plate of dark green arugula studded with crimson cranberries and blood orange segments arrived at my plate and I proceeded to eat every. single. bite. I managed to refrain from licking my plate, as I go to UnCommon Ground fairly often and don’t want to get a reputation.

I then thought about this salad all day Thursday at work. I twittered about the salad. I researched blood orange vinaigrette recipes. I thought about how magnificent blood oranges are. I looked at flights to California. I invited my California born and bred best friend over for dinner, since she’s an overworked graduate student who I’m endlessly trying to feed. I thought to myself “I doubt there will be blood oranges at the Jewel. If I had time to get to the Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s, I could get some, but not the Jewel. Stupid sucky Jewel produce section. Do Not Wish For The Blood Oranges.” So you can imagine the squealing that took place when, lo and behold, my Jewel had a display of deep, deep orange Moro blood oranges! I looked around me – I wanted to shout- “they have the oranges! Do you see? Do you see the oranges??” I grabbed two good-looking ones, a bag of baby arugula and hoofed it home to attempt recreating my meal from the night before.

Success. As we ate every. last. bite. of that recreated winter salad, we imagined that perhaps we were in Santa Barbara and tossed around ideas of leaving our boyfriends and opening up a yarn/wine store somewhere on the coast. (NB: I well remember this dream. We were going to call it the Redhead Asian Girl Winery. Happily for both of us, she married her boyfriend and I left mine for greener fields.) My friend was relocated to the frozen landscape of Chicago against her will, and desperately misses the California sunshine and its citrus. This salad is named for her, a small bit of brightness in the middle of winter.

Fast Train to California Salad
Inspired by UnCommon Ground, Chicago

Baby Arugula
Cranberries
OJ
Pecans
Crumbled Goat Cheese
2 blood oranges
Raspberry balsamic vinegar (or regular)
Olive oil

Toast your pecans. Plump up fresh, frozen or dried cranberries in a little orange juice, until they get juicy enough to eat. Segment 1 blood orange, squeeze the juice of the other. This is a good exercise in tasting as you go- start with the juice, add a little of the vinegar. I found it needed more citrus, so I threw in a splash of orange juice. Whisk in a little olive oil, continuing to taste. You could also use a much more proper vinaigrette recipe, this worked for us. Toss all the ingredients together and serve. We ate it alongside some spinach ravioli slicked in olive oil and parmesan, with a little California white table wine.

7 Month 2: Clothes

 

 

In September my friend Emilia put this book up on her blog. She had just finished reading it on vacation and wondered if there would be a seven women to read through the book with her and do each monthly fast as team. She got more than 25 women eager to cut the excess crap out of their lives for seven months, including myself. Emilia blessed each of us by sending us a copy of the book and I started reading it over our Labor Day vacation with my parents.

 

It is a life changing book. I haven't watched Food Inc. because I'm scared of how it will change my life, but this book? Blew that out.of.the.water. Brian and I had been married three weeks when I started reading 7. Fifteen pages in, I turned to him and said "We're going to need to adopt kids from Africa. I'm serious." And to his credit, my sweet husband looked at me and replied "Ok."

 

So what is "7?" about? What's that weird food thing I did in September? How come I'm writing down in my dinner journal what I'm wearing every day? The author, Jen Hatmaker, is a pastor's wife in Austin with three biological children and two adopted children. (They were going through the process of adopting as she wrote this book. Somehow reading about that frustrating, long, expensive process lit a fire in my soul for adopted children.) In looking at her comfortable middle-class life she realized that their family was drowning in excess. She put together 7 fasts, each a month long, designed to cut excess out of her life.

 

Our not-so-little facebook group is doing the months in the order that's in the book, and we started in September. We are currently in the last few days of Month 2: Clothes. Some of our group is following what Jen did in the book: wearing only 7 articles of clothing for the entire month. I felt that with a job to get appear presentible at everyday, this wasn't feasible, so I took the example of a different route. I'm writing down (in my dinner journal) what I'm wearing everyday, so I can see exactly how much of my closet I'm wearing. How many too tight skirts (thanks, Southern food blogs) do I need? How many sorority t-shirts from 6 years ago do I actually need for the gym? Do I really need 10 pairs of gloves? This journal will inform the 3rd month, Possessions, where we're encouraged to give away seven possessions a day. This totals 210 possessions. I'll write more about that in November, but I'm excited to try.

 

The fasts:

 

Month 1: Food (September)

Month 2: Clothes (October)

Month 3: Possessions (November)

Month 4: Media (December)

Month 5: Waste (January)

Month 6: Spending (February)

Month 7: Stress (March)

I'll be posting on how each of the months go- the challenges, the joys. 

9 Loves

 

 

1. My husband (Duh) (No, but for real, he's the absolute best)

2. Our "crowds" -- the grad school crowd, the church crowd, my work crowd, our families. They're great and I adore all of them.

3. The Lord. We'll go ahead and be honest here.

4. Food. If I don't lump it all together, it'll take up the whole list. Avocados, queso dip, bbq, etc.

5. Road trips

6. The holidays, all of them!
7. Picnics
8. Brian and I's Sunday evening movie night tradition
9. Sitting quietly in church



10 Secrets

 

 

 

My college roommate started this on her blog and I'm shamelessly copying it. So, ten secrets, in no particular order:

 

1. We go through a pound of butter a week, just the two of us.

2. I have to read at least a few pages of a book before I can go to sleep. It doesn't have to be a book I've never read before, but I can't go to sleep without reading.

3. I assumed everybody went to church every single Sunday morning like my family did, until sometime in middle school.

4. Seventh grade was the absolutely worst. (Not really a secret, this happened for every girl, right?)

5. I can stand under a hot shower for well over 3 minutes without doing anything productive.

6. My files are work? Impeccable. My files at home? In a box somewhere.

7. I never buy gas until I absolutely have to (which drives Brian nuts).

8. I really need half an hour in the office doing my own thing before coworkers can start talking to me.
9. Brian pays our bills, keeps tabs on the account, and lets me how much we've got left every few days. And I love it. #sorryfeminists
10. I really wish we had videotaped our wedding. There. I said it.



Date Night: Dinner & a Movie

Since getting married, Brian and I have had a Date Night every week. For us this involves dinner (either out or a nice dinner in) and usually a show. Thanks to my job at an arts nonprofit I get tickets to lots of shows either free or heavily discounted. In the past few weeks we've been to the Symphony twice, seen a couple fantastic musicals, a horrid play, and last night we attended a showing of our local Film Festival. It was, appropriately, a collection of short films titled "Date Night."

Since this was a work-night Date Night, dinner had to be on the table pretty fast to make it to our movie. For a fast dinner, I always make a plan and cook ahead. So, we decided on pizza and I planned accordingly:

For toppings, roasted red bell peppers were in the freezer, a jar of caramelized onions in the fridge. (My secret weapon. You know, if I were a kitchen super hero -- which I kinda am.) We bought sausage and mozzarella during our regular grocery trip this past weekend. On Wednesday night I threw together my favorite pizza dough, spiked with olive oil and white wine and let it sit in the fridge overnight. I also opened a large can of crushed tomatoes, minced 3 large cloves of garlic and let them reduce and thicken on the stove top, for a super-easy red sauce. On Thursday morning I pulled out the pizza dough to let it rise all day.

Fast forward to Date Night! When I get home from work and know I'm going to baking something relatively soon, I turn the oven on the minute I walk in our back door to the kitchen, before I've hung up my keys, shrugged off my coat and kissed my husband hello. Because everything was prepped, we opened wine (red for Brian, white for me), and he crumbled and cooked sausage on the stove top while I rolled out the pizza dough. Within 15 minutes the oven was blaring hot, the pizza was topped and we were good to go. We stood around and chatted while the pizza baked, then sat down at a cleared off dining table with candles lit and gave thanks for all the many blessings in our lives -- then dug into hot, delicious pizza!

The rest of the night was a success- the films were a mix between funny, adorable, tear-jerking and downright bad. We stopped for frozen custard on the way home (Mint chip for Brian, rocky road for me.)

As newlyweds, it seems like a no-brainer that we would go out all the time, laugh together, smooch inappropriately in public, etc. But we're kinda homebodies and now that we're living together, there's nothing we like more than snuggling up on our comfy couch (aka Sunday Movie Night). So to balance all the couch snuggling, we force ourselves to get a little dressed up, leave the house and hold hands in public, over drinks or ice cream (or frankly, both). We both want kids, sooner rather than later, so we're consciously taking time to enjoy this pre-children part of our lives. We're grateful for how much fun we have together.

Required Reading - 1

Since getting married and moving to a different part of the city, I've renewed my love for the local library. I currently have 8 books checked out, with 1 more cookbook waiting to be picked up. I thought I'd start a list of which books make me carry them around in my purse, looking for spare moments to turn a page.


My Berlin Kitchen is a new kitchen memoir written by Luisa Weiss, the clever author behind the blog The Wednesday Chef. I love reading memoirs that incorporate recipes and this has to be the best one I've read lately. Luisa writes about her childhood, lived between Berlin and Boston, in a way that makes you want to take every plane ride with her. Once I started this book I couldn't put it down. I sat in the kitchen on a Thursday night, stirring stew and reading. I stole ten minutes in bed in the morning before making myself get up. I can't wait to put her spicy mexican meatballs on my to-cook list next week, the perfect antidote to the cold weather that's officially settled in.



For "chick-lit," Mary Kay Andrews is my favorite, hands down. Her books are always set in the South, packed with interesting women and full of juicy twists & turns. Spring Fever was slightly slow in taking off, but soon I couldn't put it down. If you're new to her books, congrats! There's a dozen or so for you to catch up on. I envy you.


Jen Lancaster is the queen of the humorous memior. Her latest book, now that she's tucked into the quiet suburbs, far away from the Logan Square neighborhood, rife with crime and other juice gossip, might have been boring. It's not. I was sitting in bed, giggling to myself for nights on end (or so it seemed to my poor husband, trying to sleep. He asked what was so funny. He's now reading it.)

Those are my favorites from the past couple weeks. (I read fast.) Thankfully I've got a score of new library books just waiting for me at home...

September Hits and Misses

I've started keeping a dinner journal, ala Dinner: A Love Story, so picking out hits and misses is relatively easy- my notes either say "ehhh" or "yum! again!"

Hits:

One of the fantastic wedding gifts we got was a breadmaker. I've found a couple recipes that I like, but the one I love are these easy garlic dinner rolls. I've made them 3 times in a week. I add a good shake of rosemary for a garlic-rosemary twist. We've eaten them with salmon & pasta, and stew with friends and tonight with glazed ham.

Haiti Bloggers 2012. Jen Hatmaker, the writer of "7," a book/project I'll explain in its own post, is going to Haiti this week with a number of other bloggers. Our family will be praying that their trip is safe and harmonious. They'll be blogging all week about the trip, the link above has their posts. I've developed a soft spot in my heart for Haiti since my Uncle Tom recently made a trip there to work on building a school. A couple weeks ago Brian and I started sponsoring a 4 year old boy in Haiti through Compassion International.

This grilled pork tenderloin, glazed with molasses and bourbon. It didn't last long in our house!

These fake facebook quarterback conversations are priceless, and the sequel.


Misses:

A chicken-veggie-pasta soup. I cooked all the pasta in the big pot of soup. That was dumb and it just turned mushy over time. Next time, just hit up each batch with it's own tiny serving of pasta.

Rolls that I won't even link too, but I was at my parent's house and without a couple crucial ingredients for the garlic-rosemary rolls. I tried a new recipe and they were horrid. We're completely spoiled for all other dinner rolls now.

The fact that it is now still dark when the alarm goes off. Boo.

Newlywed Life

There isn't much of an excuse for missing the better part of a year, and how I wish I had captured that year better. Not long after February, there was talk of getting married and a trip to scout rings with a girlfriend. A month later, a proposal fittingly in a kitchen, a story to be told later. Four months later, the wedding, an event that obviously deserves its own post. And now, neatly tied up in one short paragraph, we're newlyweds, living in our beautiful, two bedroom, top floor of a duplex across from the local middle school. The whirlwind summer is over and we're solidly into fall. Our living room windows line up with the tops of the trees and the leaves are harvest gold and pumpkin orange. It's become a fun, busy life grounded in the comfort of coming home to each other every night. We also eat really well. But before I get into the meals, just a few tidbits of life I'd enjoy remembering someday:

The wink of my double circle of diamonds on my left hand
B pulling me out of bed in the mornings, resorting to tickeling if necessary
The quiet of the apartment when he's out teaching
Breakfast, reading to each other interesting bits from our magazines:
B- Discover, Wood, Sports Illustrated
A- Southern Living, Our State, Garden & Gun
My breakfast constantly changes
He consistantly eats peanut butter and apricot jelly toast
Lots of cuddling
Lots of talk about our future children
Episodes of The Office to wind down at night
Lots of football all weekend
Lots of smiles