Sagitarius is in the Hizz-ouse!

Finally, December is here. Lots of stuff this year. Christmas, Hannukah, out-of-town family, my birthday. It's a big one. A nice round 10 number. I'll leave it at that. Best of all, we're getting another kitten. Astrid so needs a friend to keep her company and romp with during the day. Hopefully it will help with her skiddishness a bit. Right now, we're checking out animal shelters and have found a few kittens. I'm smitten with the tiger striped tabbies with white bellies right now. I think that would look cute with Astrid's moo-cow coloring. Now we just need to decide on a name. Mabel, Stella, Hazel, Mildred, Gertrude, Miri...the list could go on and on and on.

Danks-giving

I stole that from my brother. I'm not a person who uses the word "dank" to describe a seriously good thing, but in this case, I will use it. Because that's what our Thanksgiving dinner was- DANK. Ha!

I got this recipe for roasted butternut squash and shallots from Real Simple. While I do love sweet potatoes, I hate the traditional American version with baked marshmallows on top, so I tend to strike that item from the menu altogether. Mostly because I know that if I do serve it, Keith, with his affinity for sweets, will beg for the over-processed, sickeningly sweet marshmallows on top. Have I ever mentioned his favorite candies are Peeps and candycorn? He's gone so far as to order boxes of candy corn on the internet when it's not "in season". That said, he does appreciate "foodie" food, having worked in restaurants all his life, and this dish was a fine alternative to the sweet potatoes. It was sweet and salty and had a very earthy taste from the squash and the roasting process. And I love shallots. I think this recipe called for 10 or so shallots. Mmmm.


This is a cranberry chutney I saw on Martha Stewart on demand. It raised many eyebrows as I cooked that morning, mainly because the house stunk of onion and fruit and strange spices, but the result was so satisfying. I would make this dish a hundred times more, Thanksgiving or not. It would go great with an Indian spiced pork loin or chicken.



The turkey breast was simple-just rubbed with fresh sage, rosemary, thyme and my dad made a stellar gravy to go with it.


And last, but not least, broccoli gratin. My favorite. I got the recipe here. I love broccoli and cheese is definitely in my top five. Gruyere is so good, I just couldn't resist, even though it's not a traditional holiday side dish.

Pushing the Holidays

I'm starting to look online for Christmas and other holiday goodies (although I rarely see many Chanukah themed cards out there) and I'm not entirely sure where to start. My etsy searches have led me in circles, so I've resorted to checking blogs I read to see what was posted and linked to last year. Ah. I do love Christmas time-my birthday is 5 days before, so that time of year has all the excitement rolled into one, plus being a Christmas baby, I think I have an extremely fond attachment to the holiday.

I've been getting Black Apple postcards for the past few years, but I haven't seen anything holidayish in the shop lately. I know--it's not even Halloween yet! Stop me! I can't help it, though. There are already Christmas displays in department stores around here! Capitalism is sick. Thank goodness I don't have cause to shop in department stores all that much.

Having both of Keith's siblings getting married this year is really causing a strain on our finances (especially since we're both in both weddings!), so I'm looking for cheap options. Any suggestions?

Family

My brother is home for a short visit (a stop along the way on his trip from Cape Cod to Colorado). He's moving to Vail this fall to become a full time ski bum. Well, I believe there will be more to it, but that's the main impetus for the move.
Keith and I are considering getting a friend for Astrid to play with. We find that she's sometimes lonely when we get home from work and school at the end of the day. Lots of ankle biting, hard play, etc.

Showering with the Family

Not literally, of course! By that I mean, throwing a bridal shower for Keith's sister.

Despite the frenetic energy that comes with being a bridesmaid for the first time, and having to take man this position from home base while the bride lives in Tenessee, my other "future sister-in-law" and I decided to throw a last minute shower. We were joined by the groom's mother, who thankfully catered the event, as she and her husband own a gourmet food and deli in town. But as always, I had to go above and beyond and make everything I was bringing from scratch. This included a few gallons of butternut squash bisque and over 250 cookies to give as favors at the end of the party. Meredith, said "future sister-in-law", and I went way overboard as we tried to tackle three different cookie recipes (all of which were virgins in my kitchen). Oh, and did I mention they were Martha recipes? We all know what that entails. Oh yeah-and one of the cookies even called for food color stamping? Yup. We stamped over 100 sugar cookies with monogrammed letters for the bride and groom.

Meredith and I had some "Lucy and Ethel" moments, the first being when we tried filling the portable soup carrier with water (measuring to see how many gallons it took) without first checking to see if the spout was closed. It wasn't. And it's hard to believe, but even after our jeans and shoes were soaked and we were standing out in the dark for 10 minutes trying to empty the container and start again, we actually repeated our mistake.

Fortunately, I had baked the sugar cookies and even iced them earlier in the day, but the stamping project proved to be way more difficult than we expected. Then again, with a Martha project, shouldn't I have learned that lesson a while ago? She makes everything look so damn easy. Needless to say, the icing hadn't completely dried, so when we started stamping the letters, the letters were making impressions into the icing (cracking it as we went) instead of sitting nicely on top. We managed to get a few good ones in before stopping to let the icing dry.


Our next cookie, which eventually became my favorite, was a maple leaf cookie that received a wash of locally harvested maple syrup and a splash of dusting sugar.

The final cookie was a soft pumpkin spice cookie with a maple glaze. Also, delicious, even though we didn't have time to ice the cookies that morning of the shower.

Chimmicuri

Dinner In

Last night I decided to be Joan Cleaver and prepare Keith a lavish dinner (well, I don't know how lavish it was, but still there was a salad and a main) for when he got home from work. Literally, I was there waiting to toss the salad when he walked in the door, and I had the pasta water just below a boil, and the sauce on a gentle simmer. It was very 1950's housewife of me, but I am getting bored with my two weeks off before work starts again.

We started with a simple salad of Romaine and cherry tomatoes and storebought--yes, storebought--Italian dressing. Italian dressing (the vinaigrette kind, not the gloppy white stuff) is one of those dressings I feel like I could never get quite right at home. It always ends up too restaurant-y and I want the taste I grew up with.
I used our very own cherry tomatoes and some fresh romaine and Newman's Own Italian dressing. It's the next best thing to homemade-satisfies my "store-bought" craving, but it's organic and doesn't have any gross additives like high fructose corn syrup. I definitely recommend it.

I also tried a new pasta recipe out. It's a faux bolognese from Mario Batali and uses prosciutto and mushrooms in place of ground beef or pork. Very tasty and quick to make.

Perusing the Internets

I forgot how much I love Urban Dictionary. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

A few exciting things...

We're getting our first American Apparel out here! It's going in on Broadway in New Haven right near the Yale CoOp. This means no more shipping charges or waiting a week to get clothes in the mail. Nothing like instant gratification...


And here's a hilarious article I found about Woody Allen suing American Apparel over some clever marketing using a shot of him from Annie Hall in which he's dressed as a Hacidic Jew.

Even more exciting, there is a great new movie coming out. I would categorize it as an indie romantic dramedy and it stars John Krasinski from the Office (love him!!!)and Maya Rudolph, formerly on SNL. The film is called Away We Go and also features Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jeff Daniels, Allison Janney, and Catherine O'Hara, Paul Schneider. Superb cast.

Here's a brief synopsis:
Longtime (and now thirtysomething) couple Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph) are going to have a baby. The pregnancy progresses smoothly, but six months in, the pair is put off and put out by the cavalierly delivered news from Burt’s parents Jerry and Gloria (Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara) that the eccentric elder Farlanders are moving out of Colorado – thereby eliminating the expectant couple’s main reason for living there.

So, where, and among whom of those closest to them, might Burt and Verona best put down roots to raise their impending bundle of joy? The couple embarks on an ambitious itinerary to visit friends and family, and to evaluate cities. (Read more)
Another awesome thing I came across, is an article talking about how the film went green during shooting: an amazing for such a wasteful industry. Plus, the soundtrack by Alexi Murdoch, sounds wonderful. And, oh yeah... did I mention that Sam Mendes directed the film. So many reasons to love this movie-I can't wait to see this in the theater!

Sea Dwellers

Astrid chewing on the catnip toy I made her.



It's Ollie the Octopus from this book, The Knitter's Book of Yarn, that Keith got for me as a Christmas present. I'm really into it. More on that later. So, Ollie was made with Sugar n' Creme (I didn't have purple, so I just used a multi-color) and was knit in the round on size 8 dpns.

Winter Baby

Our new baby, Astrid.


Scared of her new surroundings...

Flowers in the Snow

Much to my surprise, when I went out to get the mail this morning, snow coming down, I discovered the 2009 catalog from Brent and Becky's Bulbs. It was a pleasant spring teaser, which was graciously appreciated. I do love winter, and in fact, I much prefer a snowy winter to one that's just cold, but we've had snow on the ground since my birthday in mid December, so it's been a bit oppressive. And very tundra-esque around here lately.

I'm already eyeing the gladiolas, which I had lusted after all last summer.

lost website : (

Okay. Deep breath. Sadly, the squarespace account I was using to write my old blog expired and I have since lost all of my archived entries, including recipes, knitting, sewing and gardening projects, and worst of all, loads and loads of pictures. But in an effort to start anew, I'm continuing my blog here. I was able to transfer some of my old entries, but am missing many. More later.