Today's Project

There's something about assembling furniture that makes my back hurt. I'm pretty happy with the outcome though. Tomorrow's project is filling these bad boys up with the contents of the 30 boxes on the sunporch. Do you think they will all fit?

Here's the final on that pear cake from earlier this week. I will be making this again, it just kept getting better as it aged. Very spicy. Not sure it was a Nora favorite, but I really liked it, I think it would make good muffins too.

Pears

I've had these pears sitting on my counter for a couple of days and while we've been enjoying them fresh, I thought I might do something else with them. I'm tempted to try a pear butter or pear honey, since Natascha made some last weekend with her mother-in-law, and having tried last years batch, I'd like to make an attempt. But, I'm not really up to the whole canning thing right now. So, I thought I'd make a pear cake, especially since today is Jason's first day of school and well, I'm all out of inspiration on tackling those boxes of stuff that I don't know where to put right now. I've adapted this fresh pear cake from allrecipes, with some Nora -friendly additions: ground flax seed and water for the eggs and omitting the pecans. I also added a tsp of vanilla and about a Tbs of peach brandy that we had around here. I thought it was pear, but then it wasn't but I still thought it would work. The pears are sitting in the sugar/brandy/vanilla mixture now, so I'll let you know how this goes. I left the skins on, I hope that isn't a mistake....

Tune in later to see how this goes!

Return to the Blog

Two months and one cross country move later, I return to my blog. If you are on facebook, you've probably already seen these, but I thought I'd share Pancake Day here, too, since it was such a wonderful morning. Nora had literally been dreaming of Jason making pancakes so she decided that he would become the pancake chef, and he did. His first batch was pretty great and I'm looking forward to future pancake days. Part of Nora's decree included wearing these Daughter and Daddy matching Steak and Shake hats. It's Nora's favorite restaurant, but really, there's not much for Jason there.




This is the pantry, or what Nora calls the Little Kitchen, and right now it' s my favorite part of the house. That could have something to do with there being no boxes there.

Jason's reptilian like pattern on his arm is from Nora playing tattoo parlor. We've tried to discourage this since it is difficult to wash off (Crayola lies about the washable nature of their washable crayons).



We are settling in okay. Nora is having the hardest time, since we just want to unpack boxes and run to Ikea and do other boring things. She's seen a lot of TV the past couple of weeks. We have tried to get across the street to the park everyday (we didn't make it today) or out someplace at least. Unfortunately, the Dinosaur Footprints park was not as exciting as we hyped it to be. Fossilized dino footprints aren't that obvious to the untrained eye and there was no dinosaur recreation which would have made her happy. I think we've got to spend a day this week, doing everything she wants to do to balance it out. I'll let you know how it goes.

Oh have I mentioned that it's been hot here this week? 90+ degrees. And we have no AC.

Moving

Many of you already know thanks to Facebook all about our news. But for us, it's still very much new. Although it's been a possibility since early April, and the offer was made several days ago, I'm still reeling from the reality that in a few short months everything is changing for us.

Jason accepted a job with Our Lady Of The Elms College, also known as Elms College, or Elms today. We need to be in Massachusetts by late August and classes start September 1st. There's a lot to do. While we are still half packed from our move to my parents over a year and a half ago, we'll need to go through those boxes (and all the stuff upstairs) and whittle down our possessions. We've got to find someplace to live, and someone to move all of our stuff - I don't think either Jason or I are up to driving a fully loaded truck half-way across our big country. Hardest of all, we've got to say goodbye to dear friends and family who are right here and who've been hoping that we would remain here, or at least somewhere in the mid-west.

I'm pretty sure Elms will be a good fit for Jason. I'm hoping that it will be a good fit for Nora and I too. Time will tell. In the next couple of months, we'll be busy - but not too busy for all of you. Wish us luck!

what's been cooking

This weekend I got to try some long awaited recipes and returned to some old favorites. Friday night I made the incredibly addictive Hot Glazed Tempeh from Veginomicon. I can not tell you how much I love this recipe. I crave this stuff, but since really only Jason and I like it, I don't make it that often. Alongside the tempeh we had baked sweet potatoes, cornbread (I got to try out the little corn cob cast iron pan that I got for Christmas), and a black eyed pea/greens soup that I had frozen from New Years. It was super delish. Plus maybe those black eyed peas gave us extra luck for 2010.

Sunday, Todd and Natascha came to brunch, so I had an audience for my experiment, the Italian Feast "sausage" from Vegan Brunch. I also test kitchened the Chocolate Stout waffles and made a batch of the raised waffles (we had tried those Christmas Day), both of these are also in Vegan Brunch. I really love that book. Every recipe I've tried from it has been a keeper. I will definitely be making both of the waffles and the fauxage (as Todd calls it) again. Though next time I think I'll try the choritzo variation.

I wish I could say I got more done this weekend. I needed to change the sheets on the bed, do laundry, and about a gazillion other things, but it just didn't happen. Nora and I did make valentines for the grandparents though, so at least I'm ahead of schedule on that.

Holiday Roundup

We survived the rush of Christmas week. Between Nora's Birthday and assorted family get-togethers it was a bit of a whirl. Here's a few photos to give you the gist:

Anniversary

Yesterday was our 13th anniversary. It seems like both a long and short time. This was the first year we didn't have any special plans. I did take off work, Jason wasn't teaching, and Nora went to daycare as scheduled, so we did spend the day together. We had a big breakfast at Chris' pancake house after we dropped of Nora and then we spent the rest of the day catching up on our Netflix and Toddflix (all the shows Todd tapes for us - thanks Todd!). We're still wayyyyyy behind, but it was fun to spend the rainy day on the couch, just the two of us. It was also nice to pick up and drop off Nora together. I think we finally manged to do all of our check in and check out parental duties (sign in, fill out daily form, make sure she has her lunch box, backpack & Meowy, pay, etc.). Then we ordered dinner from the King and I, tried to get Nora to run all of her excess energy off inside, and then we shuffled off to bed. We're such an old married couple. It's nice.

Gardening...Or Not.

Jason dumps his coffee grinds on the rose bushes. My mother did recommend this, and it does appear to make the roses happy – or at least the roses are growing and whether this is due to Jason’s coffee or other reasons is unclear. However, Jason has declared this an ACT OF GARDENING. I argue that it is merely recycling coffee grounds and possibly in a stretch composting (no, not really) but hardly gardening. I mean, he doesn’t even leave the porch! He just leans out the door and pours. So readers, what do you think? Is Jason gardening? Please share your opinion and settle this issue for us.

Kitchen Redux

As I mentioned below, we moved around the kitchen last weekend - and it seems like we have lots more space. The pottery wheel/island was in front of the stove and the pantry shelves were split up. One was on the wall next to the sink and the other where the fridge is now. Next to the fridge is a little vintage cabinet. For the most part, I've loved living in the old city houses despite the sometimes cramped quarters and outdated kitchens, because, I can actually move them around and reconfigure them in different ways. My favorite kitchen was in the little shotgun house on Missouri. It had an old iron sink with built in drainboard and only built in cabinets above and below the sink, sort of like the more modern version in our house now. Also like in the kitchen now, that one had the built in butlers pantry with glass fronted doors. That pantry and the entire kitchen was half again the size of our current one and despite the bad paint job (why do so many landlords go though that sponge paint stage?) it was my all time favorite kitchen due to the abundance of light and the lack of built in cabinets. Our current kitchen was not the draw for me when we took this apartment, but increasingly, its growing on me.

Moving Furniture

There's something about spring that always makes me want to take on a big project like painting or redecorating, when really what I need to do is spring cleaning. These past two weekends, I've tormented Jason into moving around furniture in the front room and kitchen. Somehow, we managed to do it with Nora in tow and without dropping furniture on any of us or breaking anything. And, it has forced us to vacuum behind things and dust, so some cleaning has actually been done. I'll post pictures later, but now Nora has a much more difficult time reaching the TV/DVD/VCR and the kitchen has a little bit more room. I should have done a video panning the rooms before so those of you far away could compare better the before and after, but it's too late now - we're not moving anything back!

Now if only I could convince Jason that we need to paint all the furniture in the bedroom...

Too much HGTV

In my efforts to escape winter and do something about the dismal state of things indoors, I've been on a decorating campaign. Part of this was just dealing with the mess our bookshelves in the bedroom/office are in and then I found out about these fabulous things. While we probably could paint, I'm not inclined to right now and it's a bit difficult with a one year old and anyway, If I paint, I really should be painting the furniture in the bedroom that is about 4 different shades of green (and no they don't harmonize nicely). So when the fabulous bliks came, I put them up pronto. Amazingly it took me about a 1/2 an hour from cleaning the walls to finish. J. helped with the reaching the high places and Miss N. loves it all. See for yourself.





Yeah, I need to make the bed.


I got some for over the changing table too.