Nathan's Birthday

Nathan and Ashley were in town for a concert on Saturday night, so Joella came over and we all had dinner and birthday cake (Nathan's was the 20th) together.

The cake sends a message

Nathan and Ashley

This cake apparently sends mixed messages

A crick in the neck?

How does one sleep this way?

Fang takes a nap

Ripped

Jeff has a perpetual issue with the elbows of his shirtsleeves developing holes. They eventually tear through, and the shirt gets tossed (yes, I know I should patch them, but I don't feel like it). This is almost always how his shirts go. Strange, but true. Anyway, he had one fail on him last Tuesday morning at work, and it failed BIG time. The tear went from the elbow all the way down to the wrist. Did he come home and change into something else? No, he did what any engineer boy would do - he taped it together and proceeded through the rest of his day. I have to give him credit, he used discreet Scotch tape instead of duct tape or speed tape. I suggested staples... :)

All business from the front...

all party from the back!

Tagged!

I was tagged by my friend Jackie for this meme. Here are the rules:

1. Go to your documents/pictures files.
2. Go to the 6th file folder.
3. Find the 6th picture.
4. Blog about it.
5. Tag 6 friends to do the same. (See a theme here?)

I had a little trouble following the rules here, as my 6th photo folder only contains two pictures. I requested a rule substitution, and was told to just use my 6th photo overall, so here it is:


As you can see, there's not much to see here. This was one of the shots I took after spending a day decorating our master bathroom. I blogged about that in a previous post. Many of the photos I took that day did not end up in the first post. It should be obvious why - this is an incredibly crummy photo. It's blurry, it's poorly composed, it's not well lit, and it's just stupid. I think my intention for this shot was to avoid taking tacky photos of our toilet, but still show off my amazing decorating skills (ha). That didn't work so well.

The glass block wall on the left is our shower of awesomeness, and over on the right are three photos of our pups that hang over the toilet. Our shower of awesomeness contains multiple showerheads and body sprays, and is quite a relaxing place to go when you're a bit stressed out or your muscles are tired after a workout. I'm a shower girl, not a bath girl, so we splurged a bit on that part of the house. The three photographs on the right feature Fang on top, Fang and Errol together in the middle, and Errol in the bottom. They're all pretty cute photos, and are the only hanging photos of the dogs we have in the house.

So, what's the moral of this story? Delete stupid photos off your hard drive so you don't get suckered into blogging about them someday! :)

I tag:

Emily
Cheri
Charles

and the rest of my friends with blogs have already been tagged, so I'm going to break the rules of this meme again and not tag 6 people. So there. :P

Our holiday report

We had a little over two full weeks off of work this year for the Christmas and New Year holiday season, and we managed to stay quite productive the entire time. We each had a list of tasks that we wanted to work through and I think both of us came close to completing all of them.

Jeff started with a big project: Basement Storage Organization. About half of the space in our basement is unfinished and has become a collection place of miscellaneous unused and rarely used items over the four years we’ve been in our house. It’s a dumping ground for furniture we don’t like, things we brought home from my mom’s house after her death, extra storage for Joella and Dan who don’t have room at their places for all their stuff, old computer parts, and such and another. Jeff spent the better part of two days going through everything, organizing, piling, and tossing. We had been wanting to get rid of a few large pieces of furniture for quite a while. Our first thought was to donate some of the pieces, but we didn’t really think that any were in good enough shape to do that. We couldn’t take them to the dump because we don’t have a vehicle big enough to do that. So, we decided to list them for sale on Craigslist, and they all disappeared within a couple of days. We listed some smaller items as well, but so far no one is interested in those. Perhaps we’ll garage sale them someday. Anyway, the basement is now in a much nicer state of organization than it had been before the holiday thanks to Jeff’s hard work.

Would you believe that someone PAID us for this thing? Jeff marketed it as "Mid-Century Mod".

During Jeff’s first project, I was working on a couple of things: the scrapbook from our 2006 Colorado vacation, and the completion of Level 1 of my Rosetta Stone German training. I posted previously about my general slackerdom with the Colorado scrapbook project, but with a few days off work and nothing else requiring my attention I finished it. I even had some time to start working on the photo book for our 2008 Europe trip. It will be my first fully digital scrapbook, and it’s going much faster than the all-paper Colorado one did.

The Rosetta Stone program is actually something I’m doing through work. Our company pays for online subscriptions to the program, so I decided to take advantage of that and try and learn some German. It’s going well. I feel like I might even be able to semi-communicate with people in Germany, Austria and Switzerland now without forcing them to try and speak English with me. I also feel more comfortable in my pronunciation of various words and phrases that I already knew before starting the program.

A project we worked on together during the break: Wine Cellar Reorganization. I think this will probably be an annual event for us. We’re up to nearly 400 bottles in the cellar now. We have space for approximately 160 in our wine fridge, and the rest go on open racking in the coolest part of the basement. We have to prioritize each bottle to decide which ones make it into the refrigerator for long term aging and which ones have to suffer on the rack. It used to be fairly easy because we had more bottles that weren’t meant for long term aging than were, but lately our collection has shifted the other way. We implemented our house “Plonk Reduction Program” about a year ago, and have drunk up many of the less exciting stuff and have replaced it with good stuff. This year we’re implementing the “Stop Buying So Much Wine and Drink Up Some of the Really Good Ones to Make Sure We Like Them Before Collecting More Wine That Won’t Be Ready for 20 Years Program” (might need to shorten that program title). Anyway, we’re sacrificing some of the good stuff this year to make sure we’re on the right track with our buying habits. I predict that this year’s wine nights will be much more enjoyable than last year’s! Jeff also made a few modifications to the basement (mostly involving curtains) that make the cellar room much darker, which is a good thing for long term wine storage.

Other little activities from our holiday break:

• A trip to Kansas City to see Michelle’s grandma, aunt, uncle and cousin, and our puppies' godmother, Mary. Joella tagged along, and we had fun shopping down at the Plaza in 6 degree weather.
  

• Cooking our first duck at home (YUMMY!!!)

Duck...

a l'Orange, of course

• Hemming some pants Michelle bought in KC

• Getting a rather bad cold on our 7th anniversary (Michelle)

• Many trips to the gym (so nice and uncrowded during the day!)

• Going out for a belated anniversary dinner at one of Wichita’s finer restaurants where the food, unfortunately, mostly sucks. Lucky for us, it was nearly free, courtesy of Jeff’s employees, who bought him a gift certificate to the place for his Christmas present. I’m beginning to think it’s high time I start an anonymous Wichita restaurant review blog so I can air my grievances with places like this. Two sympathetic coworkers have already volunteered to be contributors.

• Blissful slumber
  

Christmas Odds and Ends

Christmas here at the House of Boy and Girl was spent with Michelle's family. Her grandparents, two brothers, and sister came over for the day. We all had a nice dinner - leg of lamb, potatoes, tabbouleh (from the recipe in the post below) and green beans, along with a couple of wines and assorted cookies and ice cream for dessert. This was Dan's first experience with lamb, and I think it turned out ok. A tiny piece at the first pass, and then a heaping pile of seconds.


The table, pre-feast (please note the new everyday use plates we got for Christmas)


Nathan demonstrates brotherly love to Joella


After dinner, we all played Trivial Pursuit, boys vs. girls. Grandmother and Grandfather were so eager to answer questions that they occasionally answered for the wrong team...



Fang and Errol got new blankets from Jeff's family. Fang had plenty of fun ripping into the package. Errol saved his fun for the blankets themselves.





Miscellaneous Christmas decor from around the house

Rick Tramonto's Moroccan Lamb with Tabbouleh and Crispy Garlic

We spent a day a couple of weekends ago trying new recipes. We picked several out of one of our cookbooks that we love to read, but have never actually cooked anything from: "Amuse-Bouche" by Rick Tramonto. Then we narrowed it down to two recipes and hit the grocery store. The first recipe we tried didn't turn out so well, so we're not going to talk about that one until we get it right. This one, however, was quite tasty and pretty easy. It's broken into three main steps: the tabbouleh, the garlic, and the lamb. We made the tabbouleh and the garlic a couple of hours ahead of the lamb. As you can see from the picture below, we turned it into two main courses for dinner, instead of the six amuse bouche sized servings that the recipe actually makes. It will taste good served hot or cold, I'd do hot in the winter and cold in the summer (duh).


Ingredients:
1/2 cup bulger
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
3 tablespoons finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 tablespoons finely diced tomato
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 pound lamb shank or shoulder
1 cup chopped onions
1/2 cup chopped carrots
1/2 cup chopped celery
3 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves
2 cups dry red wine
Vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic, sliced paper thin

Instructions for the Tabbouleh:
1. Add the bulgur to a large pot of lightly salted boiling water. Reduce the heat and simmer the bulgur for 10 to 12 minutes or until just tender (ours took closer to 15 minutes). Drain the bulgur in a colander. Allow to cool and then transfer to a small shallow bowl.
2. Add the lemon juice, parsley, tomato, and 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and toss until all the grains are coated with the dressing. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Cover and refrigerate.

Instructions for the Lamb:
3. Preheat the oven to 350 deg F.
4. Heat the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil in a medium-sized, heavy-bottomed casserole or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. When the oil is almost smoking, add the lamb and sear for 8 to 12 minutes or until nicely browned on all sides.
5. While the lamb is browning, add the onions, carrots, and celery to the pan along with the thyme. Stir the vegetables occasionally.
6. Add the red wine and cook until reduced to a few tablespoons. Add enough water to cover the lamb and bring to a boil, stirring the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon to dissolve any browned solids into the liquid.
7. Remove from the heat and cover the casserole with a tight-fitting lid. Place in the center of the oven and cook for 1 hour or until the meat is tender and almost falling off the bone. Set aside and allow to cool. When cool, refrigerate the lamb until serving. Discard the vegetables and herbs. (We think we'll reserve some of the veg and broth next time and puree it to make a little sauce to go with the dish.)

Instructions for the Garlic:
8. Pour the vegetable oil into a small, deep saucepan to a depth of 1 1/2 inches. Heat over medium heat until a deep-frying thermometer registers 325 deg F.
9. Fry the garlic slices in the oil for 1 to 2 minutes or until they turn golden. Watch carefully because they fry very quickly. Remove from the oil with a slotted spoon to a paper towel to drain. Transfer to a flat plate, season with salt, and allow to cool completely. As they cool, the fried garlic slices will become very crispy.

To serve:
10. To serve, pull or cut the meat from the bone and cut into small pieces. Place some of the tabbouleh on each of 6 small plates along with some lamb. Top each serving with crispy garlic.

(The picture above shows what happens if you turn the 6 small servings into 2 bigger servings. We used an 8" pasta plate for our service. In other words, if you're making this for a family of four, I'd double the recipe, and have an additional side dish ready.)