My grade for the international residency has been posted.
For that fabulous experience, full of learning and food and friendship and fun (and the occasional dull seminar to go along with the fascinating ones), I earned an A.
My last grade ever in my MBA program.
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Today was pretty good. I accomplished a few things, I did some baking and some cooking. I went for a walk with my kids (and OMG got Senor Onion to wear his freaking rain boots. This is amazing) and I made a lovely dinner.
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I'm not a big fan of the Aramingo Diner, but I love this story of diners paying it forward.
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Today there will be some baking. Maybe we will get things sorted to make panettone as well. Then I will need to find a few random people to foist things upon. "Here you must eat your weight in butter, eggs and cream. Baby Jesus wants you to."
Senor Onion woke me up with shrieks and moans. The best way to get your Mother on your side is to wake her with a tantrum. I was able to eventually calm him and get him dressed. It has been one emotional moment after another. Right now he is sad because he took apart a remote control and he wants me to pick it up off of the floor and help him put it back together. I gently pointed out that he is capable of picking up the pieces. And now he is pretending to be blind and is happy once again. Too many personalities.
But it isn't all doom and gloom. He just finished helping me to prep dough for ice box pistachio/craisin cookies. The dough is now chilling and later on we will roll the logs in red sugar crystals, slice them up and bake them. I need to peruse the ingredient list for the Christmas pudding. I think I have nearly everything.
Tonight I will be trying out a friend's recipe for leek/gorgonzola crostini. It looks promising. I will also cook up some ravioli and make a salad and call it good.
Yesterday I was keen on the idea of having a birthday party and today not so much. I may have completely lost my yen to entertain outside of the family. There is the whole preparing for a party nonsense which I can enjoy but then there is the whole Seattle thing of no one rsvping Because they are all waiting to be invited to the co-ed topless badmitton party with free booze and quality wi-fi. Then there is the nature of people who decide not to come to some event because so and so will be there. It just makes hosting not worth it.
I think on my birthday I will cook up some steak, have some prosecco, watch a movie where people are vaguely miserable but look good while being miserable and repressed and then take pride in the fact that I don't seem to have any grey hair...yet.
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He's such a pleasant companion, that boy. We went to dinner with last night and he enjoyed sauteed salmon and bowtie pasta and the Mad Libs-style game on the kids' menu.
Oh, and the escalators at Raymour & Flanigan.
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| User: |  mockduck |
| Date: | 2009-12-13 10:25 |
| Subject: | Back |
| Security: | Public |
I am back from Exeter. It has been quite a stay, with my father's routine heart exam turning into an urgent need for a quadruple bypass (which he will have tomorrow, if all goes to plan), plus a reasonably effective decluttering of my old bedroom: back to the mid Eighties. More later.
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Today I made Chocolate Hazelnut Crinkles. I made the dough a few days ago and then today we got to baking them. It made a nice large batch and they are pretty delicious. Warm and cozy. Almost like hot chocolate in cookie form. I had help from my son. He was enthusiastic about rolling the balls of dough in the icing sugar. I will be passing these out over the next week or so, we don't eat all of them first.
( Things to read and buy )
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I went to acupuncture today. It was a pleasure as always. Though just before I showed up I experienced something I haven't dealt with in a few years. I was paying for parking when a small gang of uncivilized young men walked by. They were generally terrorizing people with their verbal wit. This one guy walked passed me and said to me that he had an exceptionally sized genitalia and asked if I would like to examine this further on an oral level. (only not as polite.) I was struck by a few things. One, being a woman is always something else and two, seriously asshole? seriously? This is what you say to random people? What an uncivilized piece of shit. I hope his Mother feels ashamed that she has produced that.
I was already late so I didn't have time to find a large blunt instrument with which to smack him and his stupid cohorts.
Gah...
Thankfully acupuncture relaxed me and put me to sleep. Though here is an interesting thing, There was a woman there getting poked with needles that I recognized. I probably haven't seen her in close to 8 years. She briefly dated someone I used to know. She stands out in my memory because she once propositioned me for a threesome with her and the guy she was seeing. I thought she was joking and said, "sorry I had a big lunch." It was later when her man toy (he was seventeen and she was thirty) and I were having coffee that he pointed out that she was serious. My oblivious nature is part of charm. I laughed and said, "well it was an honor to be nominated." I didn't go up to the woman and say, "hey remember me..." It wasn't the time and it seemed awkward. Still...amusing things to recall.
When I came home from needle-poking, I opened the door and this little voice said, "Did you get poked?" Senor Onion was entertained by the idea that someone had been poking me. (This is what Mr. Jenner told him) and then he kept asking to see the holes in my body where I was poked by needles. He would grab my arms and say, "where are the holes? You were poked." I couldn't disappoint him so I showed him how I could put earrings in my ears. "Look... you can put things in the holes in my ears." That blew his mind and satisfied his curiosity.
This evening, I am drinking cider and watching It's a Wonderful Life.
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Today I prepped things for sausage rolls. I am not baking them yet but for now they live in the freezer until it is time to bake them. I slow-roasted the mincemeat and that is now living in jars in the fridge. Sometime next week or so I will bake up the pies. I took the leftover pastry from the sausage rolls and made cheese rolls, which I served up with dinner. (leftovers turned into a pretty decent soup)
Tomorrow there will be cookie baking of one kind or another.
In between all of that I have a slightly sick toddler on my hands. He isn't terribly sick, but he has a fever that is lingering. The tylenol helps but all of it still makes me anxious.
I am firming up the dinner menu for Christmas Eve. There will be a great deal of seafood and fish. I may invite random orphans who like that kind of thing for dinner. "Come and eat, there will be salmon and oysters."
But enough of that nonsense, I should go to bed.
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This morning the bus we were on was rear-ended by a truck.
This afternoon I spilled a plateful of oyster sauce down my favorite jacket and a white shirt.
This evening I feel sad and depressed. Chanukah has begun, and now the holiday season will barrel along til it's January and bleak and cold.
I would like it to slow down.
Please?
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Today I mixed up a huge batch of mincemeat -which is now sitting down in the basement overnight before I slowly cook it tomorrow. Then I made hazelnut chocolate cookie dough. I will probably bake some of that up tomorrow. I want to make these pistachio/cranberry icebox cookies I found in an old issue of Gourmet.
The trip to the library went well today. I had a few conversations with Senor Onion about the appropriate behavior for libraries. He said before we went in, "we don't shriek in the library or pull out DVDs." He was so good and I was so proud of him. The trip was interesting though. We showed up and there were six cop cars surrounding the library and one of the library workers was coming out to talk to a policewoman who was removing some medical gloves. That is always intriguing. It seems they caught someone who was on the run. At first I wasn't sure what was up and I saw some cops passing by and I asked if the library was open. They said, "go right in." It was calm and cheerfulness inside. Found a bunch of good books, played with some puzzles and generally enjoyed ourselves.
Maybe I will make sausage rolls this weekend.
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So LJ is not sending anyone notifications that people love them and comment. Fine. Be that way LJ. Nothing like getting passive-aggressive with a website.
Except for a few odds and ends, I managed to finish up most of my Christmas shopping today, I can now relax or at least concentrate on cooking. Mincepies, panettone, cookies and other fun things. Nothing like a little advent to bring the excitement.
My sister and I were IM'ing eachother tonight while Glee was on and pretty much our conversation goes like this:
Me:OMG GLEE?
She: YEAH OMG GLEE!!!!
Me: OMG WAS THAT GREAT?
She: OMG YES!
Lather, rinse, repeat.
We are deep like that.
Tomorrow there will be a visit to the library, the bakery and maybe we will bake something ourselves. At the very least we will make mincemeat.
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I have had guests staying with us since the day after Thanksgiving so things have been busy/chaotic. People are back home, we have put up lights and some other decorations and now I am looking through the books/magazines at various recipes.
I have a couple of Christmas cakes sitting in the guest room that are aging and need a layer of marzipan soon. Then I will be making mincemeat this week so I can eventually make mince pies for my husband. I am putting together a few food-based Christmas presents for a couple of friends and attempting to finalize what I want to make on Christmas Eve. I have a family Christmas party to attend this weekend, so I am thinking about making sausage rolls for that. In between all of that I want to bake a few batches of cookies and make some panettone.
Today I have been slow-cooking a marinara/bolognese sauce for the timpano I will make for Christmas day. (I promise to photograph that at some point) I will freeze that along with the tiny meatballs I have been making so that when it comes to putting everything together it won't take that long. I suspect Christmas Eve will have a heavy seafood theme and Christmas Day is going to be a Smörgåsbord. Mind you it will be one that incorporates English, Scandinavian and Italian traditions. So there will be something for everyone.
So far, my favorite chocolate find this season is the gingerbread spice chocolate bar by Theo. I picked some up on a whim just to see if it was any good and my Mother inlaw absolutely loved it. She ended up picking up a bar or two (along with some other flavors) to take home to England to have at Christmas time. She said she hadn't had anything like that before. I keep thinking that it would make a fun ice cream flavor. Theo also has a peppermint chocolate bar as well.
I am having a lot of fun to say the least.
Christmas puddings by Nigel Slater. There are a few interesting ideas for desserts. The chocolate and chestnut terrine looks especially good.
I recently made Apple Spice Cake and it is terrific. It isn't too sweet and it goes well with tea or coffee. My relations enjoyed this at tea time everyday when they were here.
Heath Bar Blondies recipe that is really good. Something good and easy to make if you are baking at Christmas. Pour into a pan, bake and ta-da you can make someone happy.
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Mr. Jenner woke up this morning feeling much better. I had a headache from hell that lasted most of the day. These headaches are a symptom of when I have a random anxiety attack or a ton o' stress. I think I mostly worked myself up over stuff that needs to be done and feeling disorganized about all of it. From laundry that needed to be done to going back to our regular schedule and Senor Onion not being with it to Christmas. I wanted to rip my own head off it hurt so bad.
Thankfully I had a chat with Mr. Jenner where he (having known me for a long time by now and him being awesome) made me delegate some responsibility and got me to calm down.
I also had a cup of tea.
Phew.
So while Senor Onion did not nap, we did decorate a bit for Christmas. He has a window all done up, the guest room that faces the street is decked out and we even put up lights in one of the living room windows. Festive! We will do more this week as we go along.
I also got some laundry done and put away, we had meatloaf for dinner (Which did a lot for everyone's mood) and we are slowly getting back to our usual quiet lives. Huzzah.
Anyhow...
Let's talk about dinner since I never do that. Sunday night I went out to dinner with Mr. Jenner and it was a grand experience. Someone I know loves the restaurant Lark and for a long time has told me how great it was and I kept wanting to go there and eventually we did. It is a place that does small plates (not exactly tapas but you get the idea) and the idea is that you eat family-style with whoever you are dining and the food of course is exquisite and you can feel smug since most of it is local. Blah blah blah. But was it good? Some things were absolutely fantastic and other things were agreeable. It was definitely a decadent experience. Mr. Jenner and I don't get to go out that often and we started looking through the menu and we kept seeing things we wanted to try and I said, "oh let's be slightly sensible" and Mr. Jenner said, "I am kind of hungry and we rarely do this." Good point sir. Good point. So we went bananas. We started with a plate of three cheeses. A firm-ish cheese that had been dipped in beer, a triple cream and a local goat cheese (from Vashon Island) and that was served with bread and honey. I think we both felt the local cheese was the best, the triple cream a close second. The bread was equally good. A baguette and a pumpernickel with dried cherries. Then we had foie gras terrine served with toast and persimmon and almonds. OH HOLY SHIT. It was totally sex on a plate. It was hot dirty sex that possibly gets you kicked out of an establishment because you might have broken a lamp and the neighbors called the police but you don't care because it was that hot and so what if you did it on the grass when people were going by on a boat. You just gotta have it. Yeah it was good. Yeah we audibly moaned. Because it has been awhile since we have had foie gras. I can still taste it. I need to go back for more. And like really awesome sex that sometimes has you laughing afterward, this foie gras did indeed make us giggle. RAWR. We then had a fish course. And by fish course we had oysters on the half shell with aquavit slushy. I will be honest this "slushy" did not impress me. It was sweet and weird. I don't want that with my effin' oysters. I might like a little bit of lemon but that is it. The oysters can stand on their own if they are good. They were good but they weren't as good as the ones we had earlier in the week with the family. For the second part of the fish course we had caviar with rosti potatoes and clabber. The presentation/concept kind of made me think of an enormous blini. Caviar will always make me think of Auntie Mame and her describing it to Patrick as a sort of "fishberry jam". Indeed that is a rather apt description this many years later. Kind of salty. I like it.
Oh but we were not done. We then had a meat course. Right about now (or maybe awhile back, let me know) you are going, "oh for the love of God woman have you no sense of restraint?" I do not. I have a habit of going too far. This was one of those occasions. We had the duck leg with a salad. (the salad had pieces of mandarin orange) The duck was Mr. Jenner's favorite. It wasn't overly fatty, it has a crisp skin and the flesh was juicy. He did not hold back. We also had the wild boar shoulder with a creamy polenta and fontina. The polenta made me jealous. I make pretty good polenta but this polenta made me hate my polenta and resent its existence. The boar was delicate and delicious. I haven't had wild boar since our honeymoon. We were in Florence and we went to a nice little restaurant. I remember I had the boar and some fruit for dessert because I realized I hadn't had fruit in a few days and I was feeling a little icky. The boar was good then and it was good now. The real pain (and this is one of those annoying things where you can't really feel sorry for me at all)was that I was too full and I couldn't quite finish it. I was so full that the thought of Christmas dinner almost made me feel queasy.
But what a meal. It is probably one of the best meals I have had in a long time. I was glad I had it with Mr. Jenner. Our server offered to show us the dessert menu and I almost felt sad. We were just too full.
BUT we want to go back. We have formulated a few ideas of how we might eat without hurting ourselves so much. Fewer cheeses, one less fish course, definitely the foie gras and then we might be able to fit in dessert.
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| User: | gfrancie |
| Date: | 2009-12-07 21:36 |
| Subject: | arg |
| Security: | Public |
Took my inlaws for dimsum today which they enjoyed. I have to admit, I didn't find it as good as I once did. But that is okay. Mr. Jenner fell sick toward the end of the meal. He seems to have caught went through our house over the past week. It isn't a long-lasting sickness (usually gone in 24 hours or so) but it is the sort of situation where you think your body is trying to have a competition with itself over who can rid itself of all contents the fastest and there are extra points for violence.
I took the inlaws to the train as Mr. Jenner was sick as a dog and returned home to find things in quite a state. The house is kind of a wreck, there is a lot of laundry to do, the kitchen needs to be burned to the ground and I have to decorate for Christmas. I managed to feed Senor Onion, bathe him and put on some Wallace & Gromit before bed as a special treat as things were so chaotic today. He is out like a light and hopefully we can get back to the schedule tomorrow. Oh the hope I have.
So yes. Good visit overall. I wowed them with food and stuff. They had a great time playing with their grandchildren and I got to go out for a pretty decadent meal with my husband. It was novel not having to keep an eye on a child or hold a baby while having a meal. I will elaborate more on that later.
Mr. Jenner is looking a little less green around the gills, babies are asleeping and I had cheese on toast and tomato soup. I am also wearing pajamas and lounging in bed. This is good.
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Poll #1496049 Tile my bathroom!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 34 Which color of penny tiles will make my 2nd floor bathroom perfect?
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I really, really wish I didn't know that the cafeteria in my building sells delicious, fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies.
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| User: | ratphooey |
| Date: | 2009-12-06 22:32 |
| Subject: | Okay |
| Security: | Public |
Today was not as good as yesterday, but it was okay.
I am sleepy now, and there is much to do tomorrow.
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I spent most of yesterday feeling sick as a dog. Friday night I began to spend some quality time laying on the floor of the bathroom wishing the pain would stop. I can heave with the best of them. I would say the one upside to all of this is that my inlaws were present to help with the kids. This allowed me to sleep and know that Mr. Jenner had some help wrangling two small children. Everyone else went out to dinner and I enjoyed sitting at home with Miss Biscuit. I had toast and tea, watched a movie and cuddled with my baby. It was rather nice.
I feel a million times better today. I took my Mother inlaw to the local Sunday market -which she enjoyed. We also went to the drugstore and I printed up a bunch of pictures I took, so that she can take them home and mob people far and wide through-out the English countryside. I also printed up some for my Mother so that when I see her next, she can mob people with pictures through-out the Olympic Peninsula countryside. Sense a theme?
I think if things go according to plan, Mr. Jenner and I will go out to dinner together like grown-ups. Just us. I am excited. Even if we sit quietly and eat a meal we don't have to say, "just take one damn bite of your dinner." "Sit down. Stop wandering around. You have to sit until everyone else is done." "We do not hide fruit underneath the table." I can sit and eat without holding a baby. It is gonna be off the hook and whatever else the kids used to say on the internet.
I was looking at Christmas ornaments on Etsy today and I saw star wars ornaments. Nothing says the birth of Jesus like an angry guy with trust issues in a mask and cape.
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