Yesterday's Projects

Yesterday was designated "House of Boy and Girl Cellar Reorganization Day". We picked up a bunch of new bottles in St. Louis, so we had to find somewhere to put them. We have a fridge designed for long term aging that keeps bottles at about 55 degrees, and then we have some racks set up in the basement for the rest. We occasionally have to rearrange what goes where when we pick up new stuff, and yesterday was that day. It took most of the afternoon and evening.



We took a break in the middle of it all to try a new recipe for pork sugo. It's basically a slow cooked tomato sauce that's loaded with other veggies (carrots, onion, celery, mushrooms, etc.), but we served ours over polenta with a dollop of ricotta instead of over pasta. It came out really tasty, but it's a bit ugly to look at. I pulled the recipe from this month's "Metropolitan Home" magazine.

Christmas travels

We spent Christmas in St. Louis with Jeff's family this year. It's a HUGE event for them. They haven't quite figured out that all the kids are grown up now, and that none of us really care about presents anymore. Oh well. Jeff and I registered at Crate and Barrel for Christmas this year, which worked out brilliantly. We received very few weird and unwanted gifts because of it. I really hate it when people waste money on stuff they think we'll like, but we don't need. I'd rather get nothing.

We waited until Sunday afternoon after church to make the 6+ hour drive (there was a blizzard on Saturday, and we wanted to make sure the roads were clear before we left) and arrived later that evening. The next day, Christmas Eve, was spent on a trip to a local shop to pick up some wine that they were holding for us, and a visit to the pet store so Jeff's mom could pick up some treats for her grandpuppies (which she proceeded to give to them in copious amounts for the next 3 days, so much for their diet). Then it was off to dinner at an Italian (make that St. Louis Italian, there's a BIG difference) restaurant with Jeff's mom's side of the family, which included Grandma A, Aunt, Uncle, two cousins and a wife of cousin, and the four of us. Grandma's elderly neighbors also joined us for dinner. Then we proceeded back to Grandma's house to open presents for a couple of hours. It was a long night, but all went rather well.

On Christmas morning, we opened a few presents with Jeff's parents, had the traditional orange flavored cinnamon rolls for breakfast, then got dressed to await the next round of visits, which came in the form of Jeff's dad's side of the family - Grandma J and Aunt. More presents were opened, and then we started to prepare lunch, for which the aforementioned mom's side of the family arrived. Jeff's parents picked up some bacon wrapped filets that Jeff grilled for the main course (yum!) and mom and aunt and I made a plethora of side dishes to go alongside it. Everything finally wound down in the late afternoon and the relatives all left. We watched a movie and relaxed for the rest of the evening.

The next day, Jeff and I went to visit and clean out our wine storage locker in St. Louis - it was like Christmas all over again for us. We can't ship wine to Kansas, and prices here are much higher than elsewhere in the country, so we order some over the internet and have it held for us in St. Louis. It was fun to go through all the bottles and see the tasty stuff we'll have to drink in another 10 or 20 years when it's properly aged. Weird hobby, isn't it? After visiting the locker, we moved on to Grandma J's house for a visit with her and the aunt. We helped install some little lights in Grandma's closets, and chatted for a while, then it was back to Jeff's parents' house, where we got ready for a night out. We took them to a new restaurant called Araka as part of our Christmas gift to them. It was pretty good, and the interior of the restaurant was really cool.

The next day we started to head back home. We stopped in Kansas City overnight for a visit with my Grandma F and my aunt and uncle. We haven't been able to visit with anyone there for more than an hour at a time here and there over the past few years, so it was nice to be able to stay and chat with them for a longer visit. In the morning, we hooked up with a couple of good friends from college, Mary and Luis, who were also in town for the holidays. We had lunch with them, and puttered around Crate and Barrel for a while afterwards. It was a nice way to end the trip. We got back on the road in the middle of the afternoon and made it home in time for dinner.

We managed to not take any pictures during the whole time, but Jeff's aunt got a few and sent some our way. So, here's a few, to prove we actually did attend the Christmas extravaganza this year!

Mäßiger Schneefall

Mäßiger Schneefall, that was the forecast one morning during our last trip to Germany, and we thought it meant Massive Snowfall, but later found out it meant only Moderate Snowfall. Of course, we got about 10 inches there that day... I don't think we got anything close to that here today, but we can't tell for sure, as it mostly blew horizontally all day. We managed to avoid having to leave the house at all, which meant there was plenty of time for taking pictures out the windows.

The view out towards the backyard and the greenspace.

The view out towards the front yard.

Fang watches the snow fall, but the drift on the window ledge is almost too high to see over.

We got some cool drifts in the planting beds on the front side of the house.

It finally stopped snowing at about 4:30.

Cool Christmas Lights Display

Check out this guy's light display! You'll want to have your sound turned on, and you'll need to view the videos to get the full effect. My favorite is the one set to "Music Box Dancer". The link is here.

Crab Salad in Wonton Cups

We were watching Food Network yesterday during our morning snowstorm, and this recipe came on. It sounded tasty and looked pretty easy to make, so we headed over to the grocery store, picked up the ingredients, and made it for an appetizer for dinner. We had Matthew and Joella over, and we all agreed that it was pretty good. Here's a link to the recipe. It was really easy to make. I added an extra splash of lime juice to ours because it wasn't quite tangy enough for my taste, and I think you could add some extra chili flakes, too, if you like your food a little spicier, but otherwise, I wouldn't alter the recipe from what is written. The wonton cups were super easy to make, and you could fill them with almost anything and use them for all kinds of appetizer dishes.

New piano!

It's been a while since we last posted because... our new piano finally arrived! Yay! It got here Monday morning, and we've been playing with it in the evenings. I've pulled out my old piano music to play, as well as some new books I picked up, and Jeff is starting to learn to play from an adult piano education book he chose at the music store. He mastered "Amazing Grace" on all black keys in his first lesson. LOL Anyway, it's been pretty fun for both of us. It's a digital piano, so it has a bunch of built-in music that it can play by itself as well as various instruments to mess around with in addition to the basic piano sound. It doesn't sound quite as awesome as a real piano, but it's pretty close. It feels a lot like a real upright piano, though - it has a full wood soundboard built-in to the back, so it reverberates and vibrates the pedals and all that. Not bad for a piano that we can pick up and move around on our own, and that we'll never have to tune. My brother, Nathan, the music major, has already snubbed our choice of digital over acoustic, but I think he might like this one a little better than other digitals he's played. It will be interesting to watch him play next time he visits us, which may be a while, since they just received 13.5" of snow in Hays last night!

Jeff's Prinzregententorte

Jeff occasionally gets the baking bug, usually on a Sunday afternoon. Here's the results of today's 3 hour marathon baking session (make that 4 hours, after doing all the dishes) - a Raspberry Lemon Prinzregententorte. It's basically several very thin cakes, layered with a little bit of vanilla buttercream icing, a little bit of raspberry jam, and topped with a lemon glaze. It's the first time we've tried this recipe, and it came out better than we expected. It's a bit sweeter than expected, though. I'm glad we had fresh raspberries on hand to temper the sweetness. Now if we could only get 6 or 7 more people over here to eat the rest of it for us...

Limp puppy

Errol is a pretty amusing dog. Lately, he's taken to growling at us when we try and get him to move from wherever he's lounging at the end of the day to our bedroom for bed. We think it's just hilarious because he's so tiny. I thought I'd be clever and tape him growling at us (you know, as evidence of our innocence for when he tries to disown us), but instead of that, he just played ragdoll puppy for us, which was equally funny. If you watch closely, you'll even see his little tongue flop out when Jeff tries to pick him up...

Movies and languages

We watched "Mr. Bean's Holiday" last night. Jeff's always been a fan of Mr. Bean, and he introduced me to the Mr. Bean shorts sometime after we moved to Wichita. I think the character is amusing, and I enjoy watching Rowan Atkinson act him. We weren't expecting much from the movie, but it turned out to be pretty good. The story was decent, the other actors were good, and the scenery (shot mostly in France) was absolutely beautiful. They really put some work into some of their cinematography. It made me yearn to vacation in France next summer, which, as you'll read below, is no longer the plan. If you want some mindless humor that's safe for the kiddos, check the movie out.

I don't know if you remember a post I wrote a few months ago about learning French? Well, I've kind of put that off, because we decided our next big overseas trip would probably be to Austria and eastern/central Switzerland, not France. I want to see some palaces with the fountains turned on and I want to hike the Alps in the summer. So, I should be learning to speak more German, not French. Of course, the more I learn of each language, the more flustered I get when trying to come up with the right word in the right language at the right time. Anyway, I was planning to go next summer, but I've kind of been waiting to see if the dollar would quit declining relative to the Euro before I firm up those plans. It's kind of looking like we'll put it off until 2009, when, most likely, the dollar will be even worse off compared to the Euro. Hmm, perhaps I'll reconsider those plans, yet again!

My weekend project

We spent a few hours doing our Christmas shopping yesterday, and we finished up at Michael's, where we looked for some outdoor decorations for our yard and porch. We haven't done any outdoor Christmas displays since we bought our house 3 years ago, and I am feeling like it's time to put at least something out. I bought a wreath hanger for our front door last year, but we never found a wreath that we liked enough to hang there. I tried again to find one this year, looking online, and around town, and finally at Michael's, but still didn't find anything. So, I decided to try and make one. We picked up some supplies, and I spent a couple hours working on it, and here's the final result! Not too shabby, I say. We'll see how it holds up in the Kansas wind over the next few days. I fully expect to hear glass shattering now and then when ornaments escape their wire ties...


Do you see Fang in the second picture? He was banished to the back deck while I worked on hanging the wreath on the front door.

Elf Yourself

Jeff's secretary made this for his group today (he's second from the right). It's hilarious! You can go make one for yourself here.

The rest of the holiday weekend

I spent Saturday afternoon cleaning up the living room and dining room and I put out all our holiday decorations, with the exception of the Christmas tree. I really love decorating for Christmas. I know I suck at it compared to some people who put out fresh greens and go all out, but I think our stuff is cute, so there. :P We have some neat decorations that we brought back from the Christmas markets in Germany that we really enjoy seeing every year.

Saturday night, we watched the disastrous KU-MU football game. Oh well, it was bound to happen. We still managed to have the best season in KU football history this year. I’m kind of proud of our team for that. I am also relieved that I no longer have to keep track of two sports at once. We can focus on basketball season now!

Sunday we went to church, then spent the afternoon cleaning our bedroom and moving the furniture in there in preparation for our soon to arrive piano! Yay! I’m really excited to finally get to play again. I hope it gets here this week, but I don’t know for sure when it will.

We finished out the holiday weekend by setting up our Christmas tree and decorating it together. This year, we decided to put a moratorium on ugly hand me down Christmas ornaments and only put up the ones we like. It’s a little sparse, but it works for us.

Thanksgiving at the Grandparents'

We spent a relaxing Thanksgiving holiday at my grandparent’s house in Manhattan this year. I would really have rather stayed home for a holiday with just Jeff and the pups, but my grandparents had been expressing a desire to see their grandkids for Thanksgiving for some time, and as my sister and brothers already had plans, it fell to us to go see them. (I’m sure you’re all familiar with these command performances.) We drove up on Thursday morning, and about an hour and a half into the drive, Fang started to pant and tremble. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him, so we rolled the windows down to try and cool him off a bit, and I held him for a while to soothe him, but he didn’t seem to get any better. We finally figured out what was wrong when he peed all over his pillow in the back seat of my car. Poor little guy. I still don’t know what was wrong because he’s ridden for three hours at a time many times before. We pulled over in the middle of nowhere with 30 degree temps and a Kansas wind to clean everything up and Errol managed to pick up a bunch of stickers in his fur while playing at the side of the road. I was plucking them off him the rest of the drive. Sigh. We finally arrived at my grandparent’s house and settled in for a nice lunch of spaghetti. We spent the afternoon chatting and playing the piano and playing Scrabble while dinner cooked (prime rib roast, yum!). We watched The Incredibles on television after dinner, which I think is a fun movie. It turned out to be a pretty nice day. We spent Friday there, too, (out for a big breakfast, more piano, more Scrabble, a walk for the dogs, wine hunting in Manhattan (a total disaster) and even more cooking and eating) and then came back home Saturday morning. We got a couple inches of snow overnight Friday, and woke up to a pretty winter scene. It melted off the roads pretty quickly, so there was no trouble driving back home.

Pork Chops with Camembert Sauce

This is beyond yummy and super rich. We like to have a nice acidic German Riesling or Champagne with it for dinner. We soak up the extra sauce with some plain rice.

2-4 pork chops, pork fillets, whatever pork you want
1 tbsp butter
3 tbsp dry white wine
1/2 to 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream or creme fraiche
1 tbsp chopped fresh mixed herbs such as marjoram, sage and thyme
1/2 wheel Camembert cheese (4 oz), rind removed, sliced
1 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
freshly ground black pepper
fresh parsley, to garnish

1. Melt the butter in a heavy pan over medium-high heat until it begins to brown, then add the meat. Cook for 5 minutes, or until just cooked through and the meat is springy when pressed. Transfer to a warm dish and cover to keep warm.



2. Add the wine and bring to the boil, scraping the base of the pan. Stir in the cream and the herbs and bring back to the boil.



3. Add the cheese and mustard and any accumulated juices from the meat. Add a little more cream if needed and adjust the seasoning. Serve the pork with the sauce and garnish with parsley.

Happy Birthday to Me

Jeff got me a really neat birthday present this year. It's a Full Moon Maple Leaf Lines shadowbox from an artist named Booker Morey. He takes real tree leaves of all different varieties and skeletonizes them and then paints them and mounts them in shadowbox frames or coasters. I first saw these on our trip out to Colorado last fall, and I thought they were really cool and really pretty. I really wanted to buy one when we were out there, but because we always feel the need to comparison shop prices we ended up not getting one then, but I kind of wished we had all year, and whenever we'd talk about what we were going to put on the one bare wall in our bedroom, I'd joke about how that's where my Leaf Lines would go. Jeff actually contacted the artist a while ago to get more information on the different leaves and he ended up commissioning one through this gallery for me for my birthday. It's a 24"x36" one, and it looks really cool on our bedroom wall. I kind of lay in bed at night and gaze at it. LOL Unfortunately, it's impossible to take good pictures of the thing without removing the glass from the front of it, which I won't do until it's time to clean it in a couple of years. Until then, you'll have to deal with these.

Experimental Cooking

You know those little fried wonton pieces that you get with your soup when you buy takeout Chinese? We never eat ours. But a few days ago, I kind of started to munch on them after dinner, and I was thinking how good they'd be with some chocolate and some powdered sugar on them. So here you go, wonton desserting a la House of Boy and Girl. Melt some dark chocolate with some brandy (just a touch, or use butter or cream if you don't want the alcohol), drizzle over the wontons, dust with powdered sugar, and serve with some vanilla bean ice cream. This would probably be even better with crumbled up fortune cookies. Yum, if you're into that sort of thing...

Bummer of a day

Today wasn't the funnest. I was feeling kind of under the weather all day, nothing was going right for anyone at work today, and we were all a bit run down. We closed the sale of my mom's house today, so I started feeling this sense of loss of my childhood home, and was reminded that I'd never again spend time with my family or with my mom there. Then on the way home from work, I got stuck behind a series of blue Honda CR-Vs, which is the car my mom drove. Finally, when I got home and went to get the mail, I realized that the registered mail package that Jeff had stopped to get at the post office on the way home was most likely my mother's ashes being returned from KU Med. So, I had a nice big cry while I waited for him to get home.

I am really happy that everything went smoothly with the sale of the house, but it still kind of sucks to see it go. We actually got a full price offer on the house less than 24 hours after we put it on the market. It's going to a young couple from Hays. Our realtor was awesome (she was our neighbor when we were kids), and my aunt and uncle handled all the paperwork and negotiation during the selling process.

So now it's all over and done. There's nothing left to do but help my siblings figure out their taxes next year. I'm relieved that all my tasks are done, but now there's nothing to hide behind or to keep busy with to push the grieving process away. I guess the next thing to do is figure out what to do with mom's ashes. She didn't have any specific requests for what we do with them. I'm thinking we'll gather together and scatter them at her church with friends and family in Hays. It's where she spent most of her time and energy outside our home.

Sorry for the morose post, but it can't all be food and puppies and Islamic Jihad... haha. :)

You Are Everything

I so cannot get this song out of my head!

You Are Everything by Matthew West

It's even inspired me to go piano shopping so I can start playing at home again!

Jeff is complaining because I keep playing it over and over and over and over and over and it's unabated and there are repeat performances and it keeps playing again and again and again... LOL

Vocabular Rice

I found a cool website today. Test your vocabulary, and feed the world:

FreeRice

It's pretty fun!

Happy Halloween

Fang and Errol got sent to the groomer today, which involved getting a bath, a major haircut, some nail trimming, and other horrifying things that they don't want to talk about. They were then attacked by cute Halloween themed bandannas, and made to pose for pictures. As you can see, they are not amused.



Happy Halloween!

Weekend with various family members

Jeff's parents came to visit us last weekend, and my grandparents also came to Wichita for the weekend and stayed with Matthew and Joella. We all got together on Saturday. We started the day at Karg Art Glass Gallery in Kechi (just north of Wichita). My grandparents had been wanting to see the place for some time, so we agreed to meet up with everyone there. Joella and I found cute jellyfish Christmas ornaments and each bought one for our trees. We all went for lunch at On the Border, then took our little convoy over to check out a couple of really nice houses that were featured in our fall Parade of Homes. After that each party went back to their respective abodes for a while to start making dinner. We all gathered back at our house for dinner and to watch the KU/Texas A&M football game. Matthew's an A&M alum (boo).

Before dinner, Dr. Joella removed Jeff's stitches from his knee injury, to the great delight of the parents and grandparents (and the photographer, who was quite thrilled with the free medical services).


We then sat down for a dinner of leg of lamb, green beans, fresh banana bread, garlic bread with sun-dried tomato dip, parmesan and romano risotto, and apple crisp and ice cream for dessert. It was nice to have everyone together for the day. Oh, and KU won the game. Go Hawks! 8 and 0!


On Sunday, we did the usual - went to church, then hung out around home in the afternoon. Jeff and I winterized the lawn, and his parents wandered around the neighborhood for a while. They took us out for dinner at Bonefish Grill that night. They headed home on Monday morning.