Decorating!

I'm feeling inspired by Molly's blog about her new curtains, and by a suggestion from my Primary President to decorate.

Jason and I have about forty-seven hundred windows in our apartment. It's lovely. We get so much light. Light that lets me grow herbs and tomatoes* in the dining room. The only downsides are A) lack of privacy, and B) it's kind of hard to watch TV during the day, especially if the action in the show takes place at night. Jason and I will squint and ask each other repeatedly, "Wait, what just happened? I think that was important."

However, all of those windows are bare except for the ones in the bedrooms and the bathroom - and our bedroom and the bathroom just have cheapo mini blinds. Plus, when I open the bathroom window in the summer, Tiny likes to sit on the ledge behind the mini blind, meaning he has carved out a little hole for himself in the mini blind. Apply enough cat pressure to those slats and they snap right off.

The problem is, hanging mini blinds in all the windows is both expensive and very time-consuming. And then all you really have is mini blinds, which are not that attractive. I love Roman shades (which some kind soul before us hung in the guest bedroom), but those are even more expensive. I thought about just buying one long rod and hanging a curtain or valance over several windows in one fell swoop, but half our living room is the shape of a turret, in the Victorian style, which means every one of the 5 or 6 windows is on a differently-angled wall.

Last Saturday we had a Primary presidency meeting and beforehand Bonnie, the president, came in and I gave her the tour of our (embarrassingly messy) home. She commented on all the windows and the light and I mentioned to her how I had been trying to think of a good way to dress up the windows because we don't want to do anything too expensive or time-consuming since we don't know how much longer we'll be here and we're cheap. She looked at me and just said simply, "Tension rods."

Um, duh. I can't believe I didn't think of that.

So now I'm looking at tension rods and while I really like ones like these, they are almost as expensive as the fancy-pants shades. I'll probably end up getting something like this. But then I get to go find some curtains or fabric to dress them up. So excited! Any Providence people want to go curtain shopping with me?

* I plucked 9 bright red tomatoes off the two plants this morning and chopped them up for the stew I put together in the crock pot. Yes, it's January 29th and we have fresh tomatoes! Granted, they're very tiny and they take forever to ripen because of the hit or miss sunlight we get in the winter, but they're still growing. There are a few that are kind of orange right now and several more that are green AND there are more blossoms on the tops of the plants. Indoor gardening rocks!

Too Big Love

Last night I dreamed that Jason had taken a second wife AND had a baby with her. I spent a lot of the dream freaking out and hitting him and he was completely nonchalant and like, "Whatever. If you leave me, I've still got this other chick and my kid over here." I woke up SO MAD at him. Then I realized it was a dream and I am insane. Then he sleepily wrapped his arm around me and I forgave him completely.

Note: This may or may not have been a side effect of discussing whether or not we were going to watch the latest episode of Big Love right before I went to sleep last night. That show creeps me out.

Mmmm...Bread

Now that we've had the bread machine for a whole week, here are our favorite recipes thus far.

My favorite:
Whole Wheat Oatmeal Bread
4 1/2 C whole wheat flour
1 1/2 C oats
1 1/2 t. salt
15 fluid oz warm water
1 1/2 T. olive oil
1/3 C molasses/honey/agave nectar (I used agave nectar in the 1st loaf I made and molasses in the 2nd)
1/3 C plain yogurt
2 t. yeast

Put all dry ingredients except yeast into bread machine, then wet ingredients. Pour yeast into yeast dispenser. This makes a large loaf. It may seem kind of dense when it comes out, but it slices up light and tastes great.

Jason's favorite:
Cranberry Bread
(This is a tweaked version of the raisin bread recipe in the recipe book that came with the bread machine)
18 1/4 oz (3 11/16 C) flour
2 t. salt
2 T. dry milk
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. vanilla
2 T. butter
1 3/4 T. sugar
1 1/2 C. water
1 1/4 t. yeast
4 oz Craisins

Put all dry ingredients except yeast and Craisins into bread machine, then wet ingredients. Pour yeast into yeast dispenser. Depending on your machine, you might have a fruit dispenser, or, like me, have a machine that beeps at you about 50 minutes into the cycle to let you know that it's time to put in the Craisins. This makes a large loaf.

Modernity

Last night we went up to a party thrown by the Boston office at a fancy hotel (can you say sushi buffet?). Jason and I carpooled up with my boss and his wife and on the way home his wife and I were talking about the amazing power of Facebook.

As of yesterday I have something like 346 "friends" on Facebook, which is just amazing. Friends spanning from when I was 3 years old to right now.

You know what else is pretty amazing? I watched the inauguration on cnn.com sitting at my desk at work. Next to the video feed, everyone's Facebook status updates rolled by, talking about their own personal amazement at that historic moment. Then a friend of mine from high school who is black started texting me on Facebook about her feelings and about the tears she had already shed that morning.

I have to admit, leading up to the inauguration, anytime anyone mentioned Obama in the same breath as Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, I completely fell apart. No matter how you feel about our new president's policies, this is an historic time and I am proud of our country.

Personally, I do like Obama. I know he is not perfect and he will make mistakes and I won't agree with everything he does. I don't have that "Praise Obama, for he will save us all" mindset. However, he does have this amazing power to inspire people. I don't think we have really had anyone like him in this country since JFK or RFK or MLK whose rhetoric can give people such hope, even when we are facing such hard times as a county. I also like how realistic he is. He doesn't promise us all ponies and rainbows. He says times are hard and it will take hard work to get to a better place. I think the key is he seems to truly believe that somewhere off in the future we can get to that better place as a country.

Weekend Festivities

Jason's parents visited us this past weekend because they found ridiculously cheap tickets and decided to come. All last week I wondered what in the world we would do with them because, as I discovered, everything we like to do in New England involves being outside or walking outside or standing on breezy cliffs and such. Apparently we are trolls in the winter, only poking our head outside long enough to get to and from work and church.

Well, I needn't have worried because this weekend wound up being The Weekend of Unexpected Snow. Hi, weather people? When you see a storm system moving across the country, chances are it will eventually hit New England. We were supposed to get a few inches of snow on Saturday night, but wound up with about 6 inches. Church was canceled, which was good since as of 10 AM, the plows still hadn't made their way down our street, and we had a very good excuse to be lazy bums on Sunday. Then, for good measure, it snowed about 6 more inches on Sunday night.

Saturday we kind of lazed around most of the day, then headed to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch/dinner. Then I happened to mention how Talbot's and Ann Taylor are conveniently located right next to each other in the mall, and Jason's mom thought that sounded very interesting and she might like to see that for herself and off we went to the stores (I got a $140 cashmere sweater for $40. I know!). Jason has needed pants for about 2 years now, so he bought 3 new pairs. A successful shopping day was had by all!

Sunday was our snow day. Jason's mom just finished her PhD in December and hasn't really had much downtime since so she reveled in having no commitments and no schedule. I kept myself busy cooking another loaf of bread, onion soup for lunch, and a faux HoneyBaked ham for dinner (details on the ham to follow).

Jason and his dad, on the other hand, were crawling up the walls because they do not like to be still. I should have sent them out on a snow walk, but that didn't occur to me until later in the day. On the plus side, Jason's dad took it upon himself to scrape the new window labels off of the tops of the windows in the living room. The labels have been there since Jason moved in 2 1/2 years ago and we have talked about peeling them off, but just never got around to it.

Monday we went up to spend some time with a couple of friends in Boston and then had a farewell dinner at the Texas Roadhouse for a labmate of Jason's who is moving back to Taiwan. What he wanted more than anything was to go to an American steakhouse before he left and we aim to please. I also made a loaf of Cinnamon Cranberry bread that turned out great.

Now, for the ham. I found a recipe online that claimed to be a replica of the glaze used by the HoneyBaked Ham Company. Hams just happened to go on sale at the store this past week, so I bought one. I mixed up the glaze and rolled the ham around in it, then spent a really, really long time caramelizing it with a little blowtorch from Home Depot. Note: the tiny blowtorch is great for creme brulee, not so great for an 8-pound ham. I think I need to buy a larger blowtorch for the next ham.

I thought the glaze tasted very authentic, and all told it probably cost about $20, versus the $70 or $80 it would have for the name-brand ham.

Faux Honey Baked Ham
1 fully cooked shank half ham, bone in (pre-sliced)
1 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon paprika
Dash ground ginger
Dash ground allspice

1. If you couldn't find a pre-sliced ham, the first thing you must do is slice it. Use a very sharp knife to cut the ham into very thin slices around the bone. Do not cut all the way down to the bone or the meat may not hold together properly as it is being glazed. You want the slices to be quite thin, but not so thin that they fall apart or off the bone.
2. Mix the remaining ingredients together in a small bowl.
3. Lay down a couple sheets of wax paper onto a flat surface such as your kitchen counter. Pour the sugar mixture onto wax paper and spread it around evenly.
4. Pick up the ham and roll it over the sugar mixture so that it is well coated. Do not coat the flat end of the ham, just the outer, pre-sliced surface.
5. Turn the ham onto its flat end on the plate. Use a blowtorch with a medium-size flame to caramelize the sugar. Wave the torch over the sugar with rapid movement, so that the sugar bubbles and browns, but does not burn. Spin the plate so you can torch the entire surface of the ham. Repeat the coating and caramelizing process until the ham has been well glazed (don't expect to use all of the sugar mixture). Serve the ham cold or reheated, just like the real thing.

Next time I make this, I'm only going to make 1/2 to 2/3 of the recipe because I had a lot left over. I probably could have used some more on the ham itself, but the recipe would probably cover a 15-pound ham easily.

Glass

A couple of weeks ago, we went to see the Chihuly exhibit at the RISD Museum. We went with our friends Chris and Katie who are the glass experts in our lives. They have spent many hours blowing glass at the MIT lab and have been involved with making many pumpkins at MIT.

Chris and Katie are kind of awesome people to have as friends, not only because they are awesome in general, but also because they bestow you with pretty things made of glass.

Item 1:
Commissioned by Jason, ostensibly for my birthday, but he liked it so much that he kept it. He says it all evens out because we got married and it's mine now too. Mmm-kay...

Item 2:
Katie gave me this one as part of a bridal shower gift. I love it and am thinking of relocating it from the dining room to my office so I can enjoy it while I'm at work.

Item #3:
This was a wedding present. It stands about 18 inches tall, sits on top of a tall bookshelf and TOTALLY classes up the joint.

So we went with our glass friends to the glass exhibit and it was splendid. I would highly recommend it, only the show has ended now. However, apparently there is an exhibit in some botanical gardens in Phoenix running through the spring, so if you're in the area, check it out.

As you enter the exhibit, there are all of these huge seashell-shaped pieces of glass above you.
The light going through them reflects on the wall


This is my favorite piece.
It stands about 10 feet tall. I have already commissioned Chris and Katie to make it for me just as soon as their home glass lab is up and running. And as soon as they get a staff. And as soon as I'm rich. It made me think of being under the ocean, particularly with all of the spindly pieces of seaweed next to it, looking like they're moving with the waves.
Glass chandelier:
Close-up of the chandelier. I remarked to Chris and Katie that the balls look like a bunch of connected pumpkins. They're a similar shape.
I think this pot looks like it's about to get up and walk away on those organic-looking arms.
Pretty glass flowers circling a cylinder
These were lit from underneath and looked like neon rods
Before we entered the main exhibit, there was an exhibition of some of the people who Chihuly taught while he was at RISD. I like this crocodile
Right inside the entrance of the museum was an exhibit of clear glass. In the center was a giant banquet table full of glass goblets and fruit and birds. Amazing!
The only problem was that it was hard to catch the detail with the camera since all the glass was clear. This is a large bowl of pears
This is glass wallpaper, with the pieces toward the center painted black. I want glass wallpaper.
Jason took this picture of the sun setting behind the Baptist Church as we walked back to the car.
In conclusion, I need more glass in my life.

We Have Bread!

I got my Christmas present!
It is the Panasonic SD-YD250, which I'm sure means absolutely nothing to you, but it's a pretty okay one, I think. I'm on a healthy cooking listserv and emailed the list to see if anyone who makes whole wheat bread regularly has a bread machine. I've read about some machines that crack under the pressure of making a lot of whole wheat bread because it's more dense. One woman said she makes whole wheat bread a lot and this is her bread machine and it works great. Jason had a 25% off coupon for Amazon, which made me feel better about the cost, and he got it for me.

We had our trial run today. Jason's parents are visiting and before we left the apartment for an outing, I spent about 15 minutes dumping all of the ingredients in the machine and then we left. When we got home, the house smelled like baking bread and we had a half hour until it was done. Here's my fine loaf of bread:
I am super-impressed. I used the Whole Wheat Yogurt Bread recipe in the cookbook that came with the machine. The recipe had only whole wheat flour in it - no white flour like most "whole wheat" bread recipes. The result was light and fluffy and tasty.

Jason was concerned that the bread machine would be a big waste of money*, but it was so easy that I think I'll be making bread on a regular basis.

* Although, as I pointed out to him, I really do use all of our kitchen gadgets on a semi-regular basis. For instance, the blender is currently on hiatus, but during the summer I make smoothies almost every day. Right now I use the crock pot a couple of times a week, but I'm sure in the summer I won't be using it as much. But the point is, I do use them. We have no frivolous kitchen gadgets since I like to cook so much.

Merry Christmas to Me!

My Christmas present is coming on Friday: a bread machine. We're not so much slaves to the calendar and presents have kind of become something that happens on or around the date in question. First and foremost, I had to figure out what I wanted and I'm really bad at that. My parents can chime in, but I believe we figured out what Jason was getting me on Christmas Day itself.

So yay! Bread machine!

Do you have any good bread machine recipes? I know it comes with a little book, so I'll check that out, but I'm especially interested in whole-grain recipes that don't use white flour (or not a lot of white flour. The whole wheat bread recipe in The Joy of Cooking uses more white flour than wheat, which doesn't seem quite right to me). But if there are any other recipes you adore, please share.

Mmmm, Big Salad

I heart big salads. Usually when I'm out for lunch, and sometimes for dinner (Cheesecake Factory), I love ordering the big salad. It's perfect. You get a lot of good veggies, plus usually some chicken breast and cheese, maybe black beans. Just get the dressing on the side and use very sparingly, and it's a healthy treat. If you like salads, that is. Which I do. Sometimes if the salad has enough good stuff on it, I don't even need dressing.

The one thing you can get in downtown Providence that's semi-healthy and filling is something called the Belly at a Mexican place down the street from my office. It consists of a burrito minus the tortilla. I don't get rice and ask for extra lettuce and voila! The big salad.

However, not wanting to spend $7 on lunch every single day, I made my own Belly today: (All I had to take a picture with was my Blackberry and this doesn't look very appetizing. In reality the colors were not this sickly, I promise.)

My Belly (and now my belly (hahahaha)) has about 4 oz chicken breast spiced with garlic, chili powder, salt and pepper; 3/4 C. hydrated and cooked black beans; 2 C. lettuce; 1 oz grated sharp cheddar; a few tablespoons medium salsa; and about 1/4 C. cottage cheese.

The cottage cheese is in lieu of sour cream, because I checked our sour cream this morning and it is not in good shape. No matter how small a container of sour cream I buy, it always goes bad before we use it all. Anyway, I figured the cottage cheese would work because one of my favorite snacks is chips dipped in salsa mixed with cottage cheese. Trust me, it's good.

And I'm very proud to say that I am wearing a white twinset and there is nary a salsa splotch to be found anywhere!

Moroccan Lentil Soup

Jason left for a ski trip with his boyz last night. I was invited, but didn't want to infringe on the male bonding, and I've never been skiing before and figure someday I will take a class somewhere, but not this weekend. They totally got the hook-up though, because the sister of one of the guys works at the ski resort and got them free lift tickets and ski rentals.

I figured that since Jason was out having fun, I would invite some ladies over for a craft night. That craft night turned into dinner and crafts and I made the following soup from my favorite site A Year of Crockpotting.*

Moroccan Lentil Soup
--1 cup dried lentils (NOTE: I used 1 1/2 cups because I wanted more lentily goodness)
--1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
--1 can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
(NOTE: 1) I prefer hydrated beans to canned because they have less sodium and are ridiculously inexpensive. 2) I didn't have any hydrated garbanzos and pintos BUT I had just cooked up some blacks beans a couple of nights before. To substitute for the 2 cans of beans, I used 3 cups of home-cooked black beans.)
--1 onion, chopped
--2 garlic cloves, smashed and chopped
--1/2 cup chopped celery
--1/2 cup chopped carrots
--28 oz can of diced tomatoes (and juice)
--4 cups vegetable broth
--1 1/2 tsp garam masala
--1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
--1/2 tsp cumin
--1/4 tsp nutmeg
--1/4 tsp cinnamon
--1 inch ginger, peeled and grated (NOTE: I didn't have any fresh ginger. Oh the shame! I used about 1/2 tsp ground ginger and I think the flavor blended well. I do love fresh ginger, though, so I'll get some in time for the next time I make this)

Chop up all of your vegetables and add them to the crock pot. If you are rushed in the morning, consider chopping the vegetables at night---it took me longer than I wanted it to (NOTE: I am a big fan of prepping all my veggies the night before, putting them all together in a tupperware in the fridge, and just dumping them into the crock pot the next day). Drain and rinse off the beans, add to the pot. Add the dried lentils. Grate your ginger, and add it along with the dried spices. Stir in the vegetable broth and tomatoes.

Cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours. Soup tastes best the longer you cook it, and it is even better the next day.

Before serving, use an immersible blender and pulse to blend some of the vegetables and beans together. This isn't necessary, but it really improves the texture of the soup and melds the flavors nicely. (NOTE: I don't have an immersible blender, and serving this chunky worked great)


The original recipe this was based on included some ground cardamom, and next time maybe I'll add that in as well. As it was, the flavors in this were outstanding. I got home from work about an hour before anyone came over and the aroma was driving me crazy. I think everyone at my house last night gives this soup two thumbs up.

Jason was kind of concerned when he saw me prepping the crock pot yesterday morning that he was going to miss out on something awesome. I assured him I would cook it again if it was good. Not only is it good, but it's also amazingly cheap because all it has in it are beans and some veggies and spices. And it makes a lot. This is going into regular crock pot rotation.

* I have to admit, I'm kind of sad the year is over. There are literally hundreds of her recipes that I haven't tried yet, but I can't help but hope she keeps putting out more. The thing I love is that they're not the standard type of crock pot recipes. She gets creative and uses good ingredients and fabulous spices.

High Strung

Apparently Tiny needs to take a Valium now and again. He is a little on the high strung side.

We knew that he liked us, and people in general, of course, and I've written about how ecstatic he was when we got home from our Christmas trip. However, shortly after we got home, we noticed he was acting funny, going into the litter box probably no less than a couple of hundred times a day (I'm basing this on the fact that in the course of my getting ready for work one morning, he went in about 20 times).

I was concerned that he had an infection and after 3 days I finally convinced Jason that maybe something was wrong. Then Jason did some research and found out how bad it could be and completely freaked out. I promised to find a vet first thing in the morning.

Then next day, I called an animal hospital and Jason took Tiny in. The vet said that it's hard to tell what causes these problems, but the good news was, he didn't have a blockage. It could either be caused by an infection or some sort of anxiety.

So we started giving Tiny an antibiotic, but he started getting better almost immediately and we figure it was probably anxiety because we were gone for so long. Yes, our cat has anxiety issues. I don't know what we're going to do the next time we go on a trip. We may have to hire one of Jason's undergrads to come catsit.

In a slightly related note, Tiny now adores the cat carrier. Jason brought it up from the basement to take Tiny to the vet and it has been sitting in the dining room waiting to be taken back downstairs for the past week. Tiny has now adopted the carrier as his favorite place ever. If he's not sitting on one of us, we know when we go into the dining room we'll see his yellow eyes peering out from the carrier.*

* Apparently it embarrasses Jason when I tell Tiny stories because it makes it sound like I think he's our kid or something. So feel free to skip the Tiny stories. Frankly, I think he's entertaining (and I am willing to listen to other peoples' pet and/or children stories). And besides, if there's one person in our house who would be completely devastated if anything happened to Tiny, it would be Jason.

Happy New Year!

Hope everyone had a good New Year! I solidified my position as an 82 year-old woman by falling asleep around 10:30 on the 31st, waking up for 2 minutes to watch the ball drop in Times Square, and promptly falling back asleep.

Also, I spent a lot of the last two days crocheting.

Woo hoo. I bet Jason's happy he married me now. I am super fun.

We were planning to go out to the Providence celebration on Wednesday, but then we had a snowstorm and the temperature dropped to 7 degrees with 45 mile per hour winds. Um, no.

Instead, we ate shrimp and sushi at home in our PJs, had a fire in the fireplace and watched a really, really, REALLY bad movie. Actually, falling asleep might have been a defense mechanism to ensure that Jason wouldn't make me watch another awful movie.

Yesterday was a lazy day. Jason went to work for a little bit, giving me the chance to finish Wives & Daughters since I can't watch period pieces with him in the house because I can't handle his commentary. Then he came home and requested that we DO something, which I was all for, but we couldn't really come up with anything to do. All our friends are out of town or moved or at least an hour away and not up for something spur of the moment. Plus, it was really cold outside. What do you do on days like that when you're feeling antsy?

What I wound up doing was cleaning the kitchen and making black-eyed peas, which tasted great despite the bottom layer of peas getting a little singed. Note to self: just throw away the huge, yet poorly made stockpot because even though it holds a huge amount of stuff, that is worthless when it all smells slightly burny.

After dinner Jason had the brilliant idea of making a New Years gingerbread house. Last year (as in 2007) we bought a kit at Costco and then never got around to making it. Then this December wound up being so busy that we didn't get to it before Christmas. So we made it last night.
I was particularly proud of my gumdrop hedges all around the perimeter of the house.
The icing icicles on the windows didn't turn out as well as they have in past years because the icing wouldn't stick very well.
Note the snowman with the crazy eyes under the eaves. He would scare me.
We discovered that even though the icing and cookies and candies are hermetically sealed in their packaging, after a year they will taste like plastic and nastiness and not so much like icing and gingerbread and candies. Except for the fake Sprees. Those still tasted good.

And because I didn't post these before Christmas, here are our Christmas decorations (which probably won't come down until the end of January because we like Christmas in this house).

Our nativity on the mantel
Tree
Brothel mantel, aka Jason's homage to red lights.
The picture doesn't really do it justice as you can't really see the red glow it gives everything. I did manage to tone it down a bit with the garland, and the red lights have kind of grown on me. They won't be going on the tree or anything, but they work on the mantel. With garland and other distractions.