A Little of This and a Little of That

So it's almost the end of January already!  I mistakenly thought that life would calm down after the holidays, and in a lot of ways it has.  But I've found myself being blissfully busy in quiet ways: meeting friends for coffee, hanging out with family, hibernating indoors and reading lots of books and magazines.  Here are a few random thoughts about this very small sliver of 2013:

~My friend Meredith is home, and I love it.  We were close when she was in Texas with her family, always texting and Facetiming.  But her being home is exquisite.  There have been several occasions where we've spontaneously met at our local Panera to have coffee, a light lunch, or a comically caloric pastry.  I love many things about Meredith, but one of my favorite things is that we talk about serious things without the overall conversation feeling heavy and dolorous.  What I'm saying is, she is the type of friend who I can say anything to, and yet while I'm pouring my heart out, I'm also laughing and feeling good.  She is one of those people who make life easier just by being in her presence.  I love that she's home!

~I've been catching up on some great Kindle reads lately.  You must, you must, YOU MUST read "The Good House" by Ann Leary.  I love Ann Leary, especially her first book, "An Innocent, A Broad."  This book entangled me...I started reading it on a Friday night and was finished by early Sunday.  I loved it for so many reasons: it delves into the history and characters of a small town, but it also portrays the narrator as she starts absolutely unraveling due to her alcoholism.  It is juicy, suspenseful and intriguing.  I want to re-read it!

~After this book, I moved onto "When We Were the Kennedys: A Memoir from Mexico, Maine."  I'm a sucker for a good memoir, and this is just that.   It's heavy material: a large family of children loses their father unexpectedly to a heart attack in 1963.  It chronicles the first few months after his death, and in November when John F. Kennedy is assassinated, the family's story mirrors that of the Kennedy's.  It was a very somber topic but, in the end it was enormously hopeful. 

~I'm loving Zinio.   This app allows you to download magazines, and the best part is I can get them for free since my library is partnered with the app.  I admit that I'm getting sly joy out of reading issues of US Weekly.  Yes, it's tawdry and lame, but yes, I freaking love it anyway.  And I could lie and say I'm absolutely absorbed in "The Economist" but that just wouldn't be any fun at all.

~We did something pretty cool this year at work that I want to share with you.  Instead of making specific resolutions for the New Year, we each selected a single word that we want to focus on throughout the year.  My word for 2013 is "Hopeful."  This year will be bringing a lot of changes, some definite, and some unfixed.  I have a bad habit of being anxious about everything, but I'm trying to let that go.  For a change, I'll try always being Hopeful.  We'll see how this goes.  Believe me, there have been several times already where I've had to repeat the word to myself over and over!  But I wouldn't be me if that wasn't the case!

~I was blessed to grow up with a father (and mother) who made going to the theater a family event.  Growing up, our parents trotted us out to productions of "Phantom of the Opera," "The Wiz," "Peter Pan," "The Lion King, " "Beauty and the Beast," "Grease," "Miss Saigon," and I'm sure countless others.  Getting dressed up and sitting downtown at our lovely Playhouse Square Theater Complex to see Broadway shows is something that was a treat for us, and I grew to love it.  As an adult, I've been back to see many Broadway productions offered in our city, and I've grown very fond of Musicals in general.  After bawling through the movie version of "Les Miserables" with Meredith (while chowing down on popcorn and nonpareils, of all things) we decided to buy tickets to the Broadway production, coming next month.  I saw this production years ago (in the year 2000, actually) with Mr. My Blog for Bonnie after we had only been dating for a few months.  I remember trying desperately hard to stifle myself the entire time.  If you've seen the production or the movie, you know that nearly everyone is rendered a crying mess throughout multiple parts of it, especially at the end.  I tried to keep it together so as not to seem like a complete walking disaster in front of him.  Needless to say, if we saw it together now, I'd probably mortify him by my outright sobbing.  Indeed, I even had to consciously stifle a sob when I saw the movie with Meredith.  Rest assured, I'll be comfortable enough now, 13 years later, to really let loose when we see the production next week in Cleveland!  Hey, grown men fall to pieces at Les Mis, so I can be expected to totally lose it too!

~I've made it a goal to make more and more new recipes this year.  I pin a bazillion recipes to my boards on Pinterest, and I'm a cookbook lover.  So far I've made a lot of great things: Pizza Pull-Apart Bread, Spicy Meatballs and Spaghetti, a fabulous tortellini soup in the crockpot.... I'm having fun broadening our recipe repertoire.  Stay tuned.

~I'm also sewing more.  True confessions:  I SUCK at cutting fabric.  For one, I don't have a steady hand, and two, I am bamboozled by figuring out measurements and dimensions.  I come by this honestly because every single person in my immediate family is perplexed by math.  However, I'm overcoming these fears and doing what I love most about sewing: which is making quilts and using pre-cuts.  However, in the interest of being "Hopeful," I vow that I WILL attempt patterns this year.  Eeeeeeek!!!!

~I spilled a giant glass of my husband's RED WINE all over the kitchen this evening.  As I looked at it cascading down our white cabinets, hitting the fridge, ricocheting off our walls, I looked around and said, in my most skeptical and annoyed of voices, ".....Red Wine?"  That was the best I could do to capture the scope and tragedy of the situation.  And now, my kitchen smells rather like a winery on the Lake, which isn't a bad thing by any means.  And I mean, really, wine is alcohol, so in a very roundabout way, I was actually disinfecting my floors, cabinets and fridge when I dumped the wine all over them....right?

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Some edited, some unedited. This is a glimpse of life lately. More posts to follow soon, I hope!

Downton Day is Here!

What a lovely sight to behold in the Sunday paper!

The Return of Downton Abbey is here!!  If you, like me, became positively enamored of this wonderful show, then you'll understand how excited I am.

I was late to the Downton Abbey party.  I had heard a lot of great things about it and discovered that Season 1 was on Netflix.  I watched the very first episode when I was visiting my lovely friend Meredith in Texas last February.  There was definitely an awesome "I'm on vacation" vibe to it.  It was late at night and I was in the guest bedroom under the covers.  I watched it in the bed on my iPad.  I was hooked!

I proceeded through the rest of the winter with Downton Abbey on the brain.  I caught episodes on the iPad whenever I could.  When I finished Season 1, I bought Season 2 on Amazon Prime since it wasn't yet available elsewhere.  I have a vivid memory of going out to lunch on a very snowy Saturday, then coming home and watching the first two episodes of Season 2 in the comfort of my home while it snowed outside.  It was blissful.

I've been waiting since March for the story to continue.  And tonight, it will!  The first episode is a whopper: 2 hours long.  Luckily I don't have to work tomorrow, otherwise I'd have a hard time waking up in the morning for sure.

If you haven't watched Downton yet, please do yourself a favor and catch up on it.  Maybe you'll become cool like me and buy this book after you finish watching it to fill yourself in on all of the British history from the period.  Or, maybe your mother can buy you a shirt that reads "Free Bates" for your birthday and you can wear it out repeatedly in public.  Or not. 

For those of you who have watched the previous two seasons, or who are curious about the show, here's the fantastic trailer for this season:

New Year, New Cookies!

Welcome to 2013!  Now that it's January, life is generally simmering down from the chaos and excitement of December.  I've had a few unexpected days off from work and I've been enjoying them by 1) starting the mornings off with a goblet full of Mimosas, courtesy of a bottle of champagne given to me by one of the kids in my class and 2) reading for luxuriously long amounts of time on my Kindle.  I'm currently re-reading the "All Creatures Great and Small" series by James Herriot.  Three of the volumes were on sale for the Kindle edition awhile back and I bought them.  I read a few of his memoirs wayyyyyy back in 8th grade.  My mom told me about them and I was enchanted.  They're the semi-autobiographical memoirs of an English country veterinarian in the 1930s through the 1960s.  Apparently a very popular TV series in the UK was created out of the books.  There are something like 12 total volumes, and I read one or two back then and was highly entertained.  The set I bought now contains the initial book that opens up the story, about how James became a vet and how he started in his practice in the Yorkshire Dales with the eccentric Farnon brothers, which I hadn't read before.  The stories are hilarious and mind-blowing, which isn't a combination of words you frequently see together.  I'm really having a good time reading them!

I feel like it's always a letdown to post Christmas recipes and decorations after Christmas, but there is one recipe I feel I have to share on here.  It's for a cookie I made over the holidays, but the great thing is that it isn't exclusively a Christmas cookie at all.  Actually, by appearances (as seen in the finished photo below) it could totally be used for Valentine's Day.  The pink glaze is perfect for that. 

I read the Sunday paper faithfully and saw, in early December, that Parade magazine had an annual Bake-Off Recipe contest.  The grand prize winner was for Chocolate Cherry Cordial cookies.   These were essentially little balls of chocolate dough with a maraschino cherry inside, finished off by a cherry glaze.  It sounded so different that I thought I'd try them.  In the end, I made about 4 batches.  I shared them with my family and my parents and siblings went crazy for them, as did Mr. My Blog for Bonnie.  My sister, who doesn't even care for cherries normally, said she absolutely devoured these.  They are simple to make and taste wonderful.  As a matter of fact, I plan on making another batch this weekend, possibly even today.  And definitely for Valentine's Day.  There's a series of progressive photos below of the baking process, and the recipe is included in the link above.  This is my new favorite cookie recipe and I'm going to plan on making them each and every holiday season from now on!

Happy New Year!

Balls of dough, rolled in sugar, about to go into the oven.

A good rule of thumb: these are finished baking when the tops start to crack and crinkle ever so slightly, as seen above.

The finished cookies with the glorious and cheerful pink glaze on them!  These are wonderful!

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Holiday Baking: Eggnog Crumb Cake

 

First, we need to get some formalities out of the way: namely, I almost never bake from a mix!  I've evolved to be a snotty brat that way.  After we got married, I started discovering how to cook and bake, and the first time I made an actual cake from scratch, I was shocked.  It tasted NOTHING like the boxed cakes I had previously made up to that point.  It tasted so much richer, so much more simple and basic but at the same time more complex.  I also decided that, if I'm going to go through the hassle of busting out my mixer, cracking eggs and adding dry ingredients to wet ingredients, I might as well go the whole nine yards and make everything from scratch.  At that point, it's already a project, so it makes more sense to use pantry items instead of a pre-packaged mix.

All that being said, I've come to find that Trader Joe's Baking Mixes are essentially like the real thing.  They save time during the holidays, but they also require the use and addition of real ingredients like butter (instead of oil or shortening) and milk (instead of water) to keep the cake tasting completely homemade.  I've been happy with their brownie and blondie mixes, and I am thrilled with their Cinnamon Crumb Cake, pictured above.

After making it once, I decided to switch things up for the holidays and add eggnog to the base of the cake.  The recipe calls for milk, so I made a quick substitution.  Since eggnog is so thick, I still added 1/3 cup of milk to the batter until it reached a good consistency (as for any cake.)  The finished product was delightful!  The eggnog wasn't overpowering, but at the same time it had a strong presence in the cake.  It went along beautifully with the cinnamon crumb top.  This cake was perfect for a holiday weekend morning with a cup of coffee.  I need to go back to Trader Joe's and stock up on some more to make for this weekend and maybe next weekend!

I'm going to remind myself of this tip next year, to substitute eggnog in baking products for the holidays.  It's an easy way to put a holiday flourish on an everyday treat!

Handmade Holidays: Trees!

These fabric trees are so cute and so fun!  My sister-in-law has the pattern and made herself a very pretty one.  She very graciously offered to make me a couple.  What I like about these is they are so customizable...  You can use one fabric for the whole thing, or two coordinating prints.

This first one uses a traditional holiday fabric, and it utilizes the leftover yardage from one of the fabric wreaths I made.

The second one has glittery blue and grey/silver fabric, and I picked them because they're non-traditional Christmas colors; really more like winter colors.  I'm thrilled with how they turned out!  Thanks, Stacy!