with photos!

It must be a Christmas miracle! Chris stopped playing the video game and graciously uploaded my photos from his camera, loaded them onto his computer, cropped them properly (and tried to fix any gross errors in lighting), and sweetly handed them to me for this post! Hooray! Now, he's back to the video games and I am hankering for another miniature smore (OMG yum - there need to be some photos of these!)

So, I suppose in no particular order...(truly no order, because blogger requires it to be so)

My sweet little puppy Prancer, she looks so sad. It breaks my heart!

Homemade marshmallows - easy and absolutely delicious. Most likely the best marshmallows you've ever tasted.

Some tasty wine Chris bought (for about $10) and it was great!

Chris made this unbelievable dinner for our "2-month wedding anniversary" - Chilean sea bass on a bed of mushroom and onion with a mushroom risotto...totally gourmet and maybe, just maybe, on of my favorite meals. Ever!

Goodbye long hair Katie!!

Hellooooo short hair! It's so easy to wash! And brush! and it looks awesome!! Yeaaa!

The first batch of crackers. I've tried them with olive oil and whole wheat flour too now, but no pictures (as of yet!). These I ate in a day and a half. Yes, all of them. With rosemary, garlic, and parmesean as toppings, how can these not be good?

A delicious Christopher concoction (the red sugar sprinkles were my idea, though)
and a painting I randomly decided to do one day. It's pretty big and hangs over our couch. I wanted to add big white flowers but haven't gotten around to it. I kind of like it like this. Oh, and it was way harder than it looks, so you should appreciate all the subtelties in it... or something like that.

Have a very Merry Christmas (remember, the 12 days of Christmas are not over yet!!) and a super Happy New Year!!

The end of the 200-'s

My Christmas was lovely, filled with all sorts of family, friends, and fun. I've been baking quite a bit (more crackers, marshmallows, graham crackers, brownies....you get the idea!) and to add fuel to the fire, Chris bought me THREE cookbooks for Christmas! Not little wimpy cookbooks, either. He gave me both volumes of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" by Julia Child (after watching Julie/Julia with me I think he wants me to cook through the entire book like she did!) and "Joy of Cooking," as well as an Alton Brown-esque book about the science behind cooking. I suppose that's four books! I better get back in the kitchen! :)

Anyway, we spent time with both families, got a good bit of snow in Indy (that somehow made me nostalgic for Colorado!) and just have had a relaxing time. Chris got a bunch of new video games, so he has been ignoring me and I've been playing in the kitchen. Everything is working out perfectly! We also saw Avatar in 3D (which is the only way to see it, really!)...the storyline was OK but the graphics were unbelievable! If you need to borrow some 3D glasses I have a couple spare pairs lying around, too.

My latest concoctions (as in today) have been graham crackers and olive oil crackers. Freakin' yum is all I have to say. and I wish I could make my food photography as pretty as theirs! I also wish I could have a digital converter on MY computer so I didn't have to pass everything through Chris (he is busy playing Wii, I can't bother him right now!)... Oh well!

Oh, and I also made homemade marshmallows. Did I tell you that? Because I used them to make baby smores tonight...and they were unbelievably good. I promise, they weren't that hard and definitely not as messy as I thought (they were a little messy, but they're marshmallows, what do you expect?!)

My dear friend Amanda (who lives in Peru!!!) came by tonight since she's in town for the holidays. It was great to hang out with her AND I'm super lucky because she is coming back tomorrow! I'm going to make her some delicious "America" food and also have our friends over, Jessica and Matthew. I've planned a menu that I hope to be AMAZING...we'll see if it's picture-worthy tomorrow night!

On a sadder note, my poor puppy dog is very sick. Prancer is 11 years old now (which is old in boxer years!) and has heart failure. We almost lost her on Thanksgiving but she got a bit better, but has gotten sick again, and isn't eating much at all. It's heartbreaking - I've never lost a dog before (my only past pets have included several goldfish that lived for excessive periods of time, and a creepy chameleon, but nothing furry, happy and loveable like my little Prancer). It breaks my heart to see her sick and know that she has no idea why. I'm not dealing with it as well as I would like, but I suppose it's the circle of life and we have to just cherish every moment we get with everyone, and everything.

I'm still trying to figure out new years resolutions. I think I should write an entire post on all the workout DVDs I've watched (thanks, Netflix!) since I'm pretty much an expert in that arena and it seems like everyone always wants to get healthy in the new year. I am more for choosing resolutions I think I can keep instead of something vague/crazy. Maybe it will be to eat less flour (I seriously ate like 3 cups of flour in 2 days the first time I made crackers - oops!), or maybe something better. Hopefully I can come up with something cooler, since this is the last 6 months of my life that I will have no real job. I need to make the most of it!

Enjoy the rest of 2009!!

PS-I donated my hair on Christmas Eve! Photos to come!!

It's beginning to look a lot like...

So I've been spending a lot of time on the internet lately. With all the food blogs, netflix, hulu, facebook, and who knows what else I can find, it is seriously a wonder I find the time to...you know...put on pants and things. Anyway, I've become quite obsessed with my little baking projects and decided that I wanted to learn to make (of all things)...Crackers. Don't ask why. I have no idea.

Anyway, I made some crackers yesterday and they were delicious! And quite addictive, I might add. A handful of them didn't get quite crisp enough (I didn't cook them long enough and they ended up more like pita bread). I think that everyone should make their own crackers...although I do admit that it was a slightly labor intensive process.

The basic recipe I found here. The website is about sustainability and implementing it in their own life (by making just about everything themselves). It's pretty cool. Anyway, here is how I made the crack(ers).

2 cups of plain flour
¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons softened butter
approximately 1 cup of milk

Add the first three ingredients in a food processor and blend. Slowly mix in the milk until it forms a solid ball of dough. Roll out on a lightly floured surface until very thin (the dough should be pretty dense so it's easy to do this). Then, I sprinkled seasonings I wanted on the crackers (for me it was dried rosemary and garlic salt) and roll the rolling pin over it once more to smoosh the seasonings into the cracker. Prick the dough all over with a fork (to keep it from bubbling up) and roll into cracker shapes with a pizza roller. Bake at 300F for 15-20 minutes, until slightly browned.

I also made a quick hummus dip (I LOVE HUMMUS), as well as chopped up quite a few veggies to pop in the freezer since I had the food processor out. It was pretty fun, and tasty. Yea, crackers!

In other news...well I don't really have other news. I've been baking, and working out, all week. (They counteract one another!) We've had all our Christmas shopping done for a while now (thank you, online shopping) so no stress in this household as far as that goes! Christmas eve day we'll spend with my mom's extended family, I think we're doing a big brunch this year and a gift exchange. We're going to go to Midnight Mass, spend Christmas morning at my parents', then head up to Indy and hopefully be there by mid-afternoon to spend time with Chris' family. Should be a good time!

Oh! I almost forgot! I'm getting a haircut today. Not just any haircut, mind you. My first haircut in more than a YEAR AND A HALF! Yeah, crazy I know. I might donate some of it, because there is a ridiculous amount. But thanks to Mr. Internet, I now know that Locks of Love only gives 10% of their wigs to cancer kids (it mostly goes to kids with alopecia areata, which I agree is a lifelong condition but I feel like they're sort of false advertising) and they actually sell/throw away about 80% of the hair they receive, because apparently they get too much hair and can't handle it all or something. There are other hair donation sites but apparently if you want to do some good they really just want money. I don't think they want my hair, either, because I had the highlights put in it a couple months ago. Anyway, I'm going to go and offer it but we'll see what my hair-lady (stylist? dresser? cutter?) has to say. Either way, I'm going to weigh less tonight! Hopefully there will be pictures to come.

Finally, I leave you with a holiday story I found while reading the internet this week (sorry I don't know where the original post went!):

My four year old son walked up to me yesterday while I was setting the table for dinner.
"Uhm" he asked hesitangly"Is it too late to add things to my Christmas list?"
"I think so," I said, eyeing the three feet of snow piled up outside the window.
"OK," he said resignedly and then looked out past me, deep in thought. "Dad can we run out to the store and buy a whip?"
"Why?" I asked.
"Uhm. I put a lion on my Christmas list but I forgot to put down a whip. And if the lion shows up and I don't have a whip we could all be in trouble."

special brownies

So....what have I done for the past month?

I seriously have no idea. I've done my best as a "stay at home wife" while Chris goes to work all day, I sit around, play on the internet, watch TV, occasionally work out, and get dinner and the house all cleaned up before he comes home! It's a tough life, I gotta tell you.

We went on a few interviews, which I will not say much about in case anybody google searches me and finds this...not that they would...but you know. I've been to a couple community programs in Cincinatti, U of Louisville, and Wake Forest. I have a few more scheduled for January. The dinners have been delicious, and hotels have been pretty awesome as well. I think we're a little glad to be off the road for a couple weeks, though, because it was getting tiring.

I've been trying out plenty of new recipes but nothing too amazing...except for this soup. I had to make a few changes because I didn't have everything but it was pretty much perfect! My version is below. This soup is thick, sweet, and spicy and strangely reminded me of a curry (I think it would be awesome ladled over rice!).

Sweet Potato Peanut Soup!

• 2 large sweet potatoes
• 1 T canola oil
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 3 cups vegetable broth
• 1 T chile powder
• 1 t cayenne pepper (or to taste)
  
• 2 t ginger
• 1 t ground allspice
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• Freshly ground pepper to taste

1) Cook and peel sweet potatoes (stick in microwave for about 9 minutes), mash one and dice the other
2) While the potatoes cook, heat the oil in a saucepan, add onion and cook until it begins to brown. Add the garlic, then add all the spices. I added a touch of water so it wasn't so thick and pasty.
3) Add the sweet potatoes and peanut butter and stir until PB melts. Enjoy!


Tonight, we ran to the grocery to grab a few things for dinner (This sweet potato-spinach-chickpea curry, actually - sensing a pattern?) when Chris and Patrick found these:



So I baked some brownies, topped it with some frosting, and there you have it. Now you know why I am about to weigh 400 pounds. At least dinner was healthy.

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
6 tablespoons cocoa, unsweetened
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
6 tablespoons cocoa, unsweetened
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

You know how to make brownies. Cream the butter and sugar, add the other liquids, then add all the powdered stuff (but blend all the powders together before pouring it in. I don't know if that really makes a difference or if it's just a ploy by dishwasher-makers to get you to use more dishes. I do it anyway.) Bake at 350 in a greased 13x9 pan for, oh, maybe 20 minutes. What do you do with all those 20 minutes (other than wash dishes?)?? Read on!

3 tablespoons butter, softened
½ teaspoon peppermint extract
2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
2 tablespoons milk

Mix the butter and peppermint, then add part of the powders and part of the milk, alternating until you have frosting. Smear all over brownies and enjoy with a glass of ice cold milk.

Yeah, I know you want some.

pie and cookies

Instead of working out to relieve the stress of my impending interviews, I have resorted to what I do best: baking.

First, a delicious blackberry pie (made from freshly picked blackberries we got this summer at Kateri's parents house and have stored in the freezer since then). There is really no recipe for it because I just sort of made it up as I went along. It has a lot of blackberries, a decent amount of sugar, some lime juice, and maybe some flour and maybe cornstarch. I was worried it would be runny. It wasn't. It was delicious.



Today I made some chocolate chocolate chip cookies. Yea! Here is the recipe, I halved it so I wasn't such a fatty, and I invited Patrick over for some brain food since he has a physics test tomorrow.