January Hits and Misses

Hits:

Pastor Andy: A large nondemoninal church out of Alpharetta, GA. Brian's family and I heard this preacher on the Christian radio in North Carolina over New Year's. I was immediately drawn into his style of preaching and messages. He's currently doing a sermon series on "Breathing Room."

The Secret Sisters After seeing a feature in Garden & Gun on these awesome singers, I decided to give them a try and was glad I did.

Modern Farmer. Hipser Farmers with a weekly baby farm animals power ranking post. Amen.

Scandal, Nashville, Jusified. Yes, Yes, Yes.

Sunday Supper 1/27
Spilled Milk's Cafe Lago Meatballs with Kale Caesar Salad. The meatballs are dreamy, we decided we like kale better cooked. The Spilled Milk podcast is also dreamy.

Spinach-Pineapple smoothies. Yum!

Running again. Yay me. Maybe by summer I'll fit in my pants?

Girl Scout Cookies! Maybe by fall I'll fit in my pants?

Pot Roast po-boys. It's what you think it is. It has garlic mayo. It's awesome.

Misses:

Cabbage slaw with too many big pieces and not enough dressing.

We don't watch Downton Abbey. Sorry.

We DID watch Carolina lose to NC State. Bullsh*t.

The weather. Blech.

January Brunch

Maple Sausage from Dominion Valley Farms, Milwaukee Winter Farmers Market
Fruit Salad with Honey Vanilla Mascarpone
Egg bake from friends
Brunch Cake
Mimosas
Sunlight

Sunday Suppers*; Roasted Trout with Blood Orange and Fennel

It's cold here in Wisconsin, like really cold. It's just snowed again overnight. I'm counting the weeks until DST starts (8, exactly) and getting ready to start seeds indoors, just to see something green.

This is the time of year when I get really heartsick for San Francisco. I can't say homesick- I've never lived there, but when I visited with my Mom and Grandmother a couple years ago I was blindsided by how much I loved that city. I loved the Ferry Plaza market, the ease of the Muni, the light, the trees in bloom in February, Chinatown, Japantown, the Noe Valley, that bookstore I want to live in, the Bay, the ocean. I went back less than a year later for my birthday weekend with a guy I was dating. I woke up the morning of my 26th birthday, a beautiful Sunday morning, and took a run through Mission Dolores park, stopped into the Starbucks at 18th and Castro and walked back to the apartment we were renting. All I could think was "Good lord, I love it here" and "Good lord, I'm 26, dating a guy I can't marry and want to have some babies. I need to get my act together." 

Until I met Brian, San Francisco was my back-up plan. "If I don't meet someone here in Milwaukee in a couple years or so, I'm moving. I'll save and move to San Francisco." I meet Brian two months after that trip, thankfully. I wouldn't trade him for an apartment with a view and an unlimited account at the Farmers' Market.

But I still get heartsick, so I cook. I cook food that makes me think of California and this past week I caught the article on blood oranges in the New York Times. They run pieces on blood oranges and Meyer lemons and grapefruit every year, the good citrus is only in season for a couple short months. But this year, as California tugged on my heartstrings, the roasted fish with blood orange and fennel caught my eye. The flavors reminded me of a meals at the Zuni Cafe. Plus I've never cooked whole fish before, and it was on my cooking challenge list, a running list I keep in my of head "I've never done before, have to try it sometime."

We had this roasted trout with fennel with brown rice and braised leeks (another NYTimes recipe). I'm not sure the expense of the whole fish versus a fillet was worth it, but it's nice to have crossed that goal off my list. Also from that article? Blood Orange Upside Down Cake. Yum!

Recipes: Blood Oranges Add a Ruby Hue to Dishes and Desserts.

*Every Sunday I make a big Sunday Supper, it's the first of our family traditions. I'll be keeping up with those family meals every week. Sunday Suppers involve an awesome meal, dessert, proper dishes and candles. 

Composting!

The Waste month of 7 really appeals to my not-so-secret inner hippie. I took this as an excuse to talk my husband into composting- we're lucky enough that even though we live in an apartment, it's a 2-flat house with a small backyard and side yard, definitely enough room for a bin to compost, and hopefully a garden this summer.

I did a lot of research  read some blogs and decided that a plastic bin with holes drilled in it would be the best solution: cheap and contained. This is when I'm really grateful to have a husband who doubles as a carpenter. Here's some shots from our compost bin-making adventure:

We bought a 30 gallon plastic tub, with the lid, from Target. For $8.

Drill some holes in it. We ended up drilling in 9 on the long sides, 6 on the short, and more on the top and bottom.

Make a base! This is optional, but will help not kill the grass underneath.

Affix base to tub.

Put it outside! We put ours next to the trash cans. It fits in.

This is our counter top compost pail. It's a half gallon stainless steel dishwasher safe container that I've nicknamed "Rusty." It's pretty small, but that just means we won't be able to let it sit with food scraps in it for more than a few days. 

I'm fully assuming anything in the compost bin is going to freeze until March or so, but it'll start working after that. I'm so excited that we've taken this habit on and is something that will continue beyond Waste month. 

Marriage, Month 5

I don't write much about being married on here, which is funny because I sure get asked about it a lot. Only 5 months (tomorrow!) married means I still get "How's married life treating you?" and "Ooohh how was your first married Christmas?" I really want to be annoyed by these questions but I take them as the small talk version of "how are you?" but only more personal. Frankly, I don't have much to give them. Married life is pretty awesome. There are days when I'm driving home from work, all excited that I get to see Brian that night, and it hits me all over again that I live with him and get to see him every night! (Yes, it's pretty gushy, but at least I don't put it all over facebook...)

We've settled into a pretty mundane routine. We go to church on Sundays, we go to church on Wednesdays, we stop by Starbucks in the morning, I clatter around in the kitchen making a mess while Brian talks to his family or writes, he does the dishes while I pick something for us to watch. We try to have "date nights," but it feels a little silly as we don't have many distractions (crazy jobs, children, etc) and see each other all the time. We're lucky enough that we both work a standard workweek and usually get to spend a few hours together in evening. We feel lucky that we get to go to bed and wake up at the same time. (Lately I kick Brian out of bed first for a few more minutes of sleep.)

The wedding blogs made me think that I was going to have this big adjustment to being married, which I was worried about, because I don't like a lot of feelings. This is a push back from growing up as an actor, where all you talk about is your feeeeeeeeeelings. This is why I transitioned my major from acting to stage management, where all you talk about is getting sh*t done. I haven't felt like there's been a huge adjustment, only tiny ones, like when I had half a glass of wine and was annoyed at having to make a special trip to the bank to change my name on the accounts and started hollering about how "girls have to make all the changes and boys don't!" Brian lovingly nodded and continued eating his dinner.

Mostly I'm just still amazed that he picked me to spend the rest of his life with, and that includes not just when I'm serving up a delicious dinner but also when I'm asking him if we can compost, (crazy hippie) and if he'll build me a stand-up garden bed because we can't kill the grass in our rental, (super crazy hippie) and will you come to my office and put up some shelves? (OMG learn how to use a drill.)

So currently that's married life for us. Coffee, crazy hippie lady, television shows, making him get out of bed first. Fun!

A perfect weekend (in Milwaukee, in January)

(Titled edited because my perfect weekend in January would take place somewhere warm, like California or Key West. But this is the local edition.)

Definition of a perfect weekend:

Going to bed before 11 every night.

Moscow Mules with Brian reviewing Justified, Season 3 (although someone might have woken up with a Sunday morning hangover...)

Introducing my best friend to our fabulous indoor winter farmers market and seeing all the friends I used to work with. Scored the most delicious maple sausage, string cheese, spinach, spaghetti squash and red cabbage.

Buying a new laptop for me! Mine has been dead for a couple years and I've been making do on a cobbled together ghetto desktop made from pieces laying around my ex-boyfriend's house. It served a purpose and now it's done.

Embarking on the composting project!! This will have its own post soon, but Brian and I ordered a stainless steel counter top pail and bought a 30 gallon plastic storage tub ($8 at Target!), which will be turned into our outdoor compost bin. Frankly if I had to choose between this and the laptop, I'd pick the composting hands down.

Hanging out with my parents over lunch for a couple hours, watching bad HTGV.

Seeing the huge Wise Men heads at church for Epiphany Sunday and a beautiful sermon about embracing in the light, and not the darkness, in our lives. Perfect for this time of year, when light feels like a privilege and not a right.

A Sunday afternoon entirely at home, planning my garden, doing laundry, pulling yet more clothing out of my dresser that I don't need, organizing my sweater drawers, setting up said new computer, taking down the Christmas decorations, putting up artwork gained over Christmas, cooking major projects for the coming week, watching the Carolina basketball game (even if we did lose) and reading.

Overall a restful, relaxing, productive weekend. I couldn't ask for better.

7 Month 5: Waste

Hello New Year! I so meant to blog in December, but then I got busy avoiding Media. (It was sort of a fail. The only media I managed to truly avoid was Twitter. Oh well.) I was also busy getting our apartment ready for our first Christmas together, making lots of yummy cookies to hand out, reading books, playing games with Brian and getting caught up on the first two season of Justified.

But now it's January, and we are in month 5 of 7: Waste. This snuck up on me, and the next thing I knew, Brian and I were sitting in the Charlotte airport yesterday, entirely too early, trying to wake up our brains and come up what I'd do this month to eliminate creating waste from my life. It took awhile for the wheels to start turning, but here's what we came up with:

1- Carpooling. Brian and I are going to try our hardest to drive 1 car this month.*
2- Become recycling vigilantes. We do recycle, but are lax about what goes in the garbage. No more!*
3- Always using our reusable grocery bags. Another habit I'm lax about. The key is putting them in the car.
4- No fast food/take-out. Basically, no food that comes in a container you have to toss. This also means I have to eat all my food at restaurants.
5- All Starbucks runs have to be made with a travel mug. No cardboard cups.
6- Eating everything in the fridge before it goes bad. Also, eating out of the freezer and pantry before hitting the grocery store.
7- Hopefully composting. We are asking our landlord if we can built a little compost bin in the backyard, and we'll get a counter top pail for the kitchen for scraps. I'm hoping to do some gardening this summer and hate the item of good compost items going to waste.*

* = drawn directly from the book. Jen also gardened (not happening in Wisconsin in January), conserving energy and water, buying second hand, and the hardest for us financially: buying local. I do plan to hit the winter farmers' market this weekend. Brian and I also talked about eating less meat, but we usually have one vegetarian meal a week anyway. Frankly, we don't create that much waste, we fill up one garbage bag a week, we don't leave lights on, and I wanted some habits that would be a stretch. I'm also going to be aware of what I'm buying in the grocery store that comes packaged.

I truly have hippie leanings at heart (you don't work at a farmers market for three years without them), so I'm excited to see what sticks through the month and beyond.