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Our weekly menu.

GARDEN

We planted a garden this year. In our 10 x 3 foot box, we planted beans, tomatoes, snap peas, regular peas, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and spinach. A few days after planting an animal started munching on our tomato plant. At one point the plant lost all of its leaves. Same thing happened with our wax beans. And then our garden dried out - I failed to adequately water it. Our spinach died (mostly do to no water, but animals munching on it also lead to its demise). In mid-May, we got a sprinkler and we started tending our garden with care. We also covered our garden to prevent animals/rodents from munching on our harvest.

And our little DC garden has thrived. 

Today we harvested wax beans, green beans and snap peas. And our little nearly dead tomato plant is thriving. We have nearly a dozen green full-sized tomatoes growing.

AN ORIGINAL BY MY HUSBAND

D has been contributing to the blog run by our CSA for the past couple of months.

This past weekend he came up with this yummy salad. Unfortunately, I was too sick to be anywhere near the kitchen while he was cooking. I'm hoping he makes it again SOON.

There are other original recipes by Triple D on the blog. Head over there and check it out.

And congratulations to my husband for creating such a great recipe and publishing it.

A NEW DAY

And today I am getting stuff done.

• Got to school early this morning - no traffic complications - and got a parking spot on the ground floor of the garage. Score.

• Finished a statistical analysis for my advisor that has been hanging over my head for a couple of days. Made some nice looking tables to summarize my results.

• Completed my General Research Plan for my dissertation and sent it to my committee members. Assuming no major problems, the plan will be submitted for approval in September.
  
• Registered for my last class EVER. Yes, I posted in the spring that I was ABD, but I was NER (not exactly right). Turns out I am a class short. So I am taking a cancer epidemiology class this semester. Nothing beats a class at 9am EVERY Monday morning for the next 15 weeks.

• Several weeks ago I registered for a virtual race - Mama Goes Masters. A local marathon-running mama is getting ready to celebrate her 40th birthday. In honor of this big event, she's hosting a virtual race of varying distances - 4.0 miles, 8.25 miles (her b-day is 8/25), or 40K (which can be broken into two runs). Technically, the race should take place between August 20-25, but I have a free afternoon ahead of me and all of my running gear in my backpack. I'm going to head home and run two loops of my 4.13 mile course. That will be 8.26 miles for me (I'm going to cut it short by 0.01 miles and make it EXACTLY 8.25 - promise). Looking forward to racing this afternoon.

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Yesterday I left school a few minutes early anticipating a long drive home (it was still raining). To my surprise, I made it home in record time. K and I went to pick up our CSA share - she wore her new rain boots (pictured here). We rushed home and had dinner at our house with friends. D made three pizzas: 1) roasted bell pepper; 2) shrimp; and 3) corn. Each was also topped with roasted tomatoes and onions and fresh cheese. The pizzas were paired nicely with a Rose' wine.

LUNCH

Our CSA delivered fruits and veggies last night. Unfortunately, our check was lost/not received and we were not on the delivery list. This is a huge disappointment and we are working to get the problem corrected before next Wednesday. However, friends of ours who also belong to the CSA shared some of their veggies with us.

Thank you, A&P.

With our veggies, D made this for lunch today:

This is a tomato-radish salad on romaine lettuce. According to D, early radishes are so tender and mild. So he put them together with grape tomatoes, sliced ginger and the lettuce. OBVIOUSLY. He also saved the radish leaves and is planning to use them in the coming days. Seriously...what does one do with radish leaves? And am I brave enough to eat a dish that has radish leaves in it?

Hopefully this is the start of a summer full of wonderful veggies and fresh fruit as well as new and different yummy meals.

EASTER DINNER

Tomorrow we will be hosting our 5th Annual Seafood Easter Dinner.

Our first Easter dinner was celebrated in my Capitol Hill apartment in the spring of 2005. D and I had been dating for about three months and we thought it would be fun to celebrate the Resurrection with our friends and over good food. It was a good time, but looking back I see that we've come a L-O-N-G way.

For our first Easter dinner, we served all the food buffet style and in one course. We ate on couches with plates in our laps. D made enough food to feed three or four-times the number of people we invited. I think I ate pasta with mussels for a week afterward. Our second Easter dinner was held in our first apartment. Again, we ate on the couches or tile floor (we didn't have enough seating for everyone). That year, we did the get the proportions right. Our third Easter dinner was in our new house. We sat down at our wonderful dining room table. Everyone had a seat! We had a four course meal and enjoyed the company of all of our guests. We also announced my pregnancy that day. Last year, we again had enough seating for everyone, including two little ones. We ate a wonderful meal and enjoyed the company of all of our guests.

Tomorrow we'll have a full house - eight adults and two kids. Everyone will have a seat at the table. We also plan to break out Bunny Bowling - a wonderful little game D picked up at some over-crowded furniture store for $1.

For dinner we will be having a five course meal:

1. cheese and crackers

2. carrot-cashew soup with ginger

3. salad - romaine, heart of palm, artichoke hearts and blue cheese with a vinegarette dressing

4. salmon baked in puff pastry with a vegan curry-cheese sauce and spinach. Served with broccoli and roasted mini-red potatoes with fresh rosemary.

5. pound cake with fresh strawberries and blueberries.

BRAIN GOOGLE

Brain Google is a term D and I have come up with to describe what happens when one of our brains takes some pieces of information or some sort of query and spits out an answer.

Take tonight for instance... D tells me it is time for dinner. That he simply threw something together (yes, we deviated from our menu; we didn't have the patience to wait 60 minutes for a spinach souffle to bake). When I say I'm going to throw something together, you're likely to get one of three things: a PB&J sandwich, a bowl of cereal and maybe some toast, or black beans and rice.

Not so with D... his "I just threw this together" dinner included the following:

mashed cauliflower with rosemary
leftover carrot risotto
baby brussel sprouts with caramelized onions
and
cheese straws.

What is a cheese straw you might ask... well, it is puff pastry dough rolled thin, coated in cheese, rolled thin again, then twisted into straws, and baked until crispy.

I asked D how he came up with the idea of cheese straws.

He said he saw the cheese in the refrigerator and knew there was leftover pastry dough in the freezer.

We do not like to have leftovers.

So he used his BRAIN GOOGLE.

Input: pastry dough and cheese.

Hit ENTER.

And the result: cheese straws to go with dinner.

YUMMY.

I love being married to a man who loves to cook; is really good at cooking; and who puts his brain google to good use and comes up with great side dishes like the cheese straw!

If you'd like specific instructions for making the cheese straw, please let me know. They will not disappoint you. PROMISE.

THURSDAY'S...

Funniest moment so far: watching K dance to Lady Gaga's Bad Romance before 7am. Sweet little girl was dancing in her stars and moons PJs, bangs in her eyes, holding her dada's phone (which was playing the music). Big smile on her face. Sweet heart is loving pop music these days and cannot stop dancing (or asking for "more" music). Favorite artists to date are Lady Gaga and Vampire Weekend.

Big accomplishment: taught a class this morning. It went well. Was asked a lot of questions; thankfully had answers for all of them. The regular professor for the course thought I did a great job. Yeah, me!

To do list: 132 articles to get through for the preliminary literature review for my dissertation.


Motivational treat: afternoon diet coke

Healthy afternoon snackS: (yes, I need two snacks this afternoon) grapes and a chocolate brownie Chif Bar

Big regret: forgetting my gym clothes at home. Looks like I'll be taking Thursday off and biking on Friday this week.

Dinner: Subway veggie patty sandwiches with all the veggies on top, toasted, no cheese. Such a treat; I cannot wait!

Rant: I'm in the middle of grading 30 literature reviews for the class I TA. It's a big undertaking that takes a HUGE amount of time. I just finished reading a poorly written and critiqued paper by a student who should be writing better and critiquing more critically. He has a lot of letters, including MD, after his name. What really gets me is he is such a cocky writer... saying things like, "I am, as an informed reader, highly suspicious..." What is he highly informed about? The topic? methods? analysis plan? the weather? HIS MOTHER? If you need to write you are highly informed and are not demonstrating that you understand the underlying concepts of the course, you probably think too highly of yourself. Get your freaking act together.

IN HONOR OF VALENTINE'S DAY

We had meatloaf for dinner last night.

Vegetarian meatloaf, that is.

And wine. A white bubbly.

The meatloaf would have paired better with a deep red wine, but we finished that bottle the night before while enjoying a curry dish with tofu, red bell peppers, and scallions over rice.

It was a quiet night at home.

Quiet all around... no screaming baby (in fact, she slept peacefully for 10 hours), no water dripping - not from the windows or ceiling, quiet neighbors, no wind blowing, very few sirens.

It was delightful.

We even baked a loaf a bread and enjoyed the wonderful, irreplaceable smell of fresh bread throughout our house for the evening.

It was your run-of-the-mill night at home, but a night that I hope to not forget.

(And for those of you who don't remember... T.L.A stands for "true love always", duh)




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Make your own Valentine's Day conversation heart!

Or use the Goth Mode and make an anti-Valentine's Day heart.

Preview of what's to come on the blog:

1. dissertation: take 2
2. leaking ceilings/ice-dam
3. virtual Ironman
4. list of three things I want to accomplish before I die

OUR WINTER VACATION

Last Wednesday we took off for Colorado to visit good friends who relocated to Denver just six months ago. D was so excited to snowboard out West, I was looking forward to some time away, and we were both a little anxious to take K on her first airplane ride.

In short, the trip was fantastic.

The plane ride to Denver was a little rough on K, who had to wake up nearly two hours early to get to the airport and could not sleep on the plane (we even had an extra seat for her, but no sleeping).

In Colorado, we took a short trip into the mountains and did a little bit of hiking. I will stress the little bit because with two kids needing to be piggy-backed and an altitude of 8000+ feet we didn't do anything too stressful. But it was beautiful. We even saw a bear print in the snow. Here we are walking along with the kids. K was completely asleep on my back in this picture, which is why her head looks a little out of control. I didn't think she would sleep if I put her on my back. I was wrong.

D snowboarded on Saturday and had a wonderful time. He's still a little sore from the day-long adventure. K and I stayed home. Maybe next year we'll enroll her in ski school. 

We also did a lot of eating in Colorado. Our friends love food and know how to cook. On Thursday night their nine year old son made dinner for us - vegetarian 'beef' super tacos. [A super taco is a taco with ALL of the fixings -- avocodo, tomato, salsa, beef, sour cream, cheese. One word: delicious.] On Friday AND Saturday nights we had homemade pizzas. And they sure were good. Nothing short of extravagant. D learned how to toss a pizza crust in the air just like a professional. I did a lot of eating. My favorite pizza was topped with artichoke hearts and marinated picante peppers, as well as tomato sauce and a sprinkling of cheese. So stinking good. Pictured here is the pizza preparation area.

**Notice the four types of cheeses (not including mozzarella). It was so indulgent.

Our trip was over before we knew it. Traveling home was pretty uneventful. K did sleep on both legs of our trip. We are home and unpacked and so looking forward to our next trip to Colorado...

A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE

We have been looking for THIS hot sauce since the summer of 2007.



We used to be able to buy this "spicy hot pepper" at the local Asian grocery store. Then we were only able to buy it in Taiwan. We bought out a grocery store in Tainan during our visit in August 2007. Brought home 10 bottles in our luggage.

When D went back during the summer of 2008, he couldn't find the spicy hot pepper. And again in 2009 the spicy hot pepper could not be found. We have looked in every grocery store we find that might have it. We haven't seen a bottle of this stuff in YEARS.

That was until a few days ago...

On Saturday, my brother and I took D to the Strip District in Pittsburgh. We ate lunch at Wholey's and walked through some shops. We also checked out three Asian grocery stores before we found our Christmas miracle. Who would have thought we'd find our spicy hot pepper in Pittsburgh's Strip District?

As you can see, we bought a few bottles. You never can have enough...

SMELLS OF THE SEASON

I love Christmas time.

Love the music. Love the smells. Love the lights. Love the food. Love the parties. Love candle-light church service. Love presents. Love the decorations. Love seeing friends and family.

I just love it.

This year getting in the Christmas spirit has been a little slow-going for me. I haven't been to church in two weeks because of K's many illnesses (ear infectionS, sinus infection, and, yes, roseola). I've missed the Advent services more than I thought I would. I've missed the lighting of the candles, the readings of the Christmas story, the music, the children's program, the decorations. Simply everything.

Pandora's Christmas station and baking cookies have been my saving graces, as have all the wonderful Christmas cards we've received. Baking is one of my calming activities. With the illnesses, lack of sleep and stress of school, I have been baking up a storm.

On any given day, there is a stack of freshly baked cookies on our kitchen counter...


























Here we have: pecan tassies, chocolate cover pretzels (which I used as favors for a bridal shower I hosted a couple of weekends ago), chocolate chip cookies, and peanut-butter blossoms.

I have also made white chocolate peppermint crunch candy, molasses cut out cookies, and several loaves of bread. We're planning to assemble plates of cookies and deliver them to our neighbors later this week. I just to deliver cookies on Christmas Eve with my family so we are trying to establish a cookie-giving-away tradition of our own. We're giving the loaves of bread away as gifts, too. Nothing like a little homemade something to say "Merry Christmas" to friends and neighbors.

DECAF COFFEE

About a week ago I bought a 1/2 pound bag of decaf coffee. It was Dunkin Donuts brand. The reason for buying said coffee was because I hosted a bridal shower on Saturday and it was an afternoon coffee (or tea, but most people drank coffee), and the bride-to-be requested decaf. Wanting to make a drink that she would drink, I went with the decaf.

A lot of coffee was consumed at said party. It snowed last Saturday so a warm cup of joe with pumpkin spice creamer and cookies and cupcakes hit the spot. Even though we drank a lot of coffee, there was some left over. I put the bag of decaf on the shelf with the rest of the coffee and tea.

D does not like decaf coffee. And that's where this story begins.

We were up early this morning. 4:43am to be exact. K was all cranky in the wee hours of morning. With the help of my great mommy skills and wonderful singing voice, I was able to get her back to sleep for another 1.5 hours. I got an extra 45 minutes of sleep. Awesome.

At 6:30 D came downstairs to make lunches for us (yes, I am spoiled by him). I was getting my stuff together, organizing K's food, and eating Cheerios out of the box for breakfast. K woke up at 6:40. I went and changed her and brought her downstairs for some milk. K was sitting on my lap drinking her milk when I asked D to make some coffee for us. He was on it.

No more than five minutes later I could smell the coffee brewing. Finally. I could not wait for my first slip. I stepped into the kitchen with my travel mug in hand ready to pour myself a big cup of joe. That's when I saw the Dunkin Donuts bag sitting on the counter.

OH.NO.

D had made a pot of decaf coffee. Decaf coffee on a Wednesday morning before 7am...

I.don't.think.so.

I sheepishly asked D if he had made the DD coffee. He said he had. That's when I broke the news to him that it was decaf coffee. Within 10 seconds, D had dumped the entire pot of coffee, had water brewing for a second pot, and had placed the bag of decaf in the trash.

And what did he have to say...

Honey, that is why we don't keep a loaded gun or decaf coffee in our house.

So this is my public confession: I will not bring decaf coffee into our house again.

Also want to give a huge shout-out to D. Not many people can have me belly laughing pre-coffee before 7am. Thanks for the morning funny.

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K update: I got the call from our nanny around 2pm this afternoon that K was running a fever of 104. I raced home. With a little bit of Motrin her fever is down to 102.7. D will be home with her tomorrow morning. I'll be home in the afternoon. United States Grandma and Grandpa arrive on Friday. They cannot come soon enough.

School: I have a final on Monday - survival analysis. And tomorrow I'm sending my general research plan to my dissertation committee. I'll be working on revisions over the holiday break.

Holidays: we received our first card today, which means I can mail my out. Yes, this is a stupid rule I adhere to: I don't send my cards out until I receive my first card.

Sad news: our wonderful nanny is moving back to France, her home country. We are working hard to find another nanny, but no one stacks up. I'm so sad to be losing our nanny.

New Drink: D made this one up... "the Mad Mayan" - 1 part Kentucky bourbon to 3 parts Kahlua. Serve chilled or room temperature. I highly recommend it!

BIRTHDAY CAKE

For K's 1st birthday, I channeled Martha Stewart.


The big cake was vegan carrot with a non-vegan cream-cheese icing.

K's cake was vegan carrot with a soy milk, powdered sugar glaze. It was a huge success. She had no interest in smashing the cake. Instead, she channeled her inner princess and ate bits and pieces from the palm of her Papa's hand.

SNACKS

Lately one of the common phrases heard in our house is:

"We have no snacking food."

It is true. We do a freaking amazing (I'm not joking) job of planning our weekly menu, never buying our lunches, and not wasting food. But we rarely have snacking foods in the house. I know snacking can be bad for you, but sometimes you need a freaking snack. We usually don't eat dinner until 8:30pm. So if we eat lunch at noon or even 1pm, it's a L-O-N-G time between lunch and dinner. A snack is necessary.

The snacks we've had around lately include: pretzels, chips and salsa, and homemade bread. These are great snacks, but they aren't cutting it. I need something a little more substantial (so I don't eat an entire bag of pretzels), and usually I want something on the sweeter side.

This week I've decided to make some seasonal breads - banana, pumpkin, and zucchini - to see if they can meet our snacking needs. Only the banana bread is done as of now, and it has been some good snacking (so good I'm not sure I'm hungry for dinner). If all goes well, I may start baking more breads over the weekend to serve as weekday snacks.

Any suggestions for semi-nutritious snacking foods?

IN SEARCH OF...

The perfect pair of jeans.

Blue jeans are so common. You can find them anywhere - Target, department stores, boutiques, and Ebay, among other places. Why then is it so hard to find a pair that fits well? FOR.REAL. All I want is a nice pair of dark blue jeans that I can where out to dinner or to an informal meeting with a professor. I want a pair of jeans that would look professional with a nice jacket (for instance my cute little pink jacket) or a nice shirt or blouse. I don't want baggie or frumpy looking jeans. I want nice ones. Ones that fit well and don't look like the pair I wear around the house to do chores.

Why is it so hard for me to find jeans?

I actually have a pair of such jeans, but they now have a hole in them and are starting to look a little ratty around the bottoms. My mom tried to get me the EXACT SAME pair as a Christmas gift, but the design of the jeans had changed just slightly and they didn't fit right. Grrrr...

Any suggestions for where to find a nice pair of jeans? Ideally, I need a pair that comes in short or petite sizes, as I am short.

We're also in search of a dutch oven. We've been making our own bread since mid-January. And cooking it in our wok covered by a glass bowl is getting a little old. And the risk of injury from a burn is huge. Does everyone out there agree that the Williams Sonoma dutch oven is the way to go?