What I'm Into-September 2013

Here's a fun thing. A new-to-me blogger, Leigh Kramer, hosts this link-up for people to share what they read, listened to, ate, and otherwise engaged in for the previous month. So if you're at all interested in what I did in September, stick around! Otherwise, you know, um, don't. Or something.

Happenings

• September was full of happy events. As I posted here, we finalized our daughter's adoption on September 3rd, a mere two weeks after moving across the country. 

• Ricky turned the big 3-0 and we celebrated with dinner, presents, and a salted caramel cheesecake. In the spirit of youth, I surprised him with tickets to go see Macklemore in November. Maybe we'll feel silly, but it should be fun. I'm on the lookout for a babysitter starting now. 

• Nicolas turned seven. It was a little sad to not have the usual friends and family around to celebrate with a big party like usual, but he took it in stride. We made the day special with lots of balloons, a special breakfast, funfetti cake (hurts my teeth to just think about it), a new bike with NO training wheels, opening packages he'd received in the mail from family, and a fun night at his school carnival (it also happened to be his school's 40th anniversary that day.) The next day was Saturday so we took a trip to the Lego store. It was actually not huge like we thought it would be, and therefore a bit anticlimactic for the adults, but he loved it.

• We joined a gym that offers two hours of childcare daily. We're mostly alternating days, but we did have a "work-out date" on Saturday. I was so beat afterward that I had to take a nap. Aaaand that's what I get for working out with Ricky. It was fun though.
• Silas, Aimee and I are staying home quite a bit. I'm not planning on looking for a nursing job until January, so this is a nice break. I'm still spending a lot of time unpacking and "cozifying" the house, and we frequent the neighborhood parks and head out to the gym a few mornings a week. Our schedules revolve around naps. It's simple and sweet, and I can actually appreciate it because it's temporary (funny how that works.)

• We've been to three churches here, two of which are promising. I'll share more about that in the coming days, as we figure things out. 

Reading

• I read Nadia Bolz-Weber's new book Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner and Saint. It was refreshing to read something both gritty and vulnerable, and I came away from it encouraged in my faith. As Nadia writes, Christianity is really just a continuous process of death and resurrection, rather than a ladder we climb. It's freeing to think in those terms. I also really enjoyed listening to her interview with Krista Tippett, particularly the part where she discusses her tattoos and their meanings, and notes that tattoos often carry with them a profound story or hard-won truth. My one tattoo (the second one is brewing, I think) came from my years of grief following my father's passing and the desire to hold onto God's goodness. It's a hope really, more than an assurance. It sure is difficult to explain to curious passers-by in one or two lines! Anyway, I suppose I'm deeply curious about why people get the tattoos that they do, so this was fascinating to listen to.

• I'm still plugging away at America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines by Gail Collins. It's truly interesting material, but I suppose my brain is easily pulled away by social media and such after a bit of reading in this book. It's a good one for my nightstand.

• I just started All is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir by Brennan Manning with John Blase (whose poetry I've really come to look forward to.) This one's been on the list for a while. 

Listening

• I've mostly been listening to Over the Rhine's new album Meet Me at the Edge of the World. It's my favorite work of theirs so far. Their music is gorgeous as usual, but there's a sense of peace and groundedness to this album that's really special, in contrast to the tensions they expressed in previous albums. We saw them in Albuquerque in 2010, and I remember they talked about how so many are interested in the stories of how people meet and fall in love, but they were more interested in the stories of what happens after people are married. It's infinitely more meaningful to hear happy stories when people have shared their sad and confusing times as well. All that to say, I sure like them.

• I'm a big fan of Jonathan Martin's sermon podcasts, and often listen to them while getting stuff done around the house. Thank God for my internet pastors :)

Eating

• I was curious about the cauliflower pizza crust I see everywhere, so we tried it out last Friday night. It's so, so good! I used this recipe.

• I'm enjoying fall-ish recipes. Chili in the crockpot, roasted acorn squash with taco meat and melted cheese, butternut squash lasagna....you get the idea. 

• Yesterday I discovered this little gem. It's every bit as good as it looks.

Watching

• Breaking Bad, along with most everyone else. A few years back I watched an episode and a half with Ricky and decided it wasn't for me because of the violence. At some point though, the story drew me in and I've been watching it religiously since. I did see the final season including the series finale before I finished all the in between episodes, so it's all a bit of a mishmash in my head. I think I like it as much as I do, despite the violence and difficult subject matter, because the characters are so layered and remind me of people I know in real life. To me, that's one of the marks of a well-written show.

• I also have big plans to start season 4 of Downton Abbey now that Walter White and I are parting ways. Ricky and I like to keep up with The Voice on Hulu and I'll be checking in with Parenthood at some point. Yay for new fall shows to watch.

So that's September in a nutshell. What did you enjoy (or not enjoy)? Linking up with Leigh here.

Happy October!

(mini) week in phone pics

This week was quite full of activity and I hardly took any pictures. Only these three: Silas sharing his milk bottle with Penny, and proof of my children consuming spinach. And yes, instead of stopping him I took a picture. 

I'm a little late to the green smoothie party I know, but they were such a hit. I threw some strawberries, banana, ice, plain yogurt, honey, and raw spinach in the blender. I've seen recipes with kale as well. I'm thinking they'll be a regular after-school snack around here.

Excited for a slightly less full week ahead. 

soup weather

Well, it feels like winter in the southwest. That is a thing to be celebrated, here in the land of two seasons: Summer and Christmas, as Ricky always says. So last night we made the aforementioned posole and it was so, so good. I'm all about soup; I usually plan at least two soups in the weekly menu during the fall and winter months.
This was kind of an experiment. I've never made posole, and Ricky grew up with it but wasn't sure how to make it exactly. I think it was a success. All the flavors were subtle, but present.

Ingredients:
1/2 onion, chopped
1 tsp minced garlic
14 oz red chile puree (I used mild)
stock of some sort-I used homemade turkey stock, since it's taken over my freezer. But chicken stock or bouillon would work too. About four cups.
shredded, cooked pork (or chicken, or no meat if you prefer)-about 2 cups
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 of those huge cans of hominy-about 6 cups I think
olive oil

toppings: limes, radishes, cabbage, onion, oregano

Method:
In a large soup pot, saute onion and garlic in olive oil. When onion is translucent, add red chile puree and stock, stir and let simmer for a few minutes. Add hominy and shredded pork or chicken. Stir and let simmer some mo'. While it simmers, cut up some limes, radishes, and more onion if you like it fresh, and shred some cabbage (or buy a bag of cole slaw mix to save time). Cut some rolls in half, brush with olive oil, and broil for a few minutes until they're toasted. Add salt and pepper as needed to soup.

To serve: ladle soup into bowls, squeeze some fresh lime into soup, top with radishes, cabbage, onion and oregano as desired.  Eat with yummy bread.

Kiddos may enjoy a similar soup sans the red chile if they're like Nicky, who is very suspicious of anything remotely spicy (even toothpaste).

Happy soup weather!

Late Summer Squash Soup

Last night Ricky was blending up some squash he had cooked for Silas to eat this week, and he noticed that it made a nice creamy puree. He remarked that it would be really good to eat just the way it was, which inspired me to make a soup with the puree as a base. It was quite tasty and late summer-y tasting, but the best part was using the mountain of squash we had! Of course, tomorrow there will be more. Squash is relentless like that.

Ingredients:

• yellow crookneck squash (5)
• 1 Tbsp butter (I used Smart Balance spread)
• 1 cup chicken stock  
• 4 roasted Anaheim chile (unless they're super spicy, then you might want less)
• corn (I used 1 bag of frozen)
• grated cheese
• salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Boil or steam squash until soft. Blend until creamy and smooth. (If you do this step ahead of time, the soup is very quick to prepare.) In a large pot, melt the butter. Add the squash puree, chicken stock, and corn. Stir and let simmer over medium heat. While it's simmering, chop the chile into small pieces. Add to the pot. Let simmer for about 20 minutes to combine the flavors. Taste, add salt and pepper as needed. Serve with grated cheese on top, if desired.

good things

All week I've been taking pictures of food. It just strikes me as such a pretty thing lately, especially with summer in full bloom and all of it's vibrant offerings. For me, this is a way to remember to be grateful, and to make it special, like I wrote about before. It really is the little things that make the day.

Here are a few recipes we really enjoyed this week:

1. I Ain't Chicken Chicken with Watermelon, Feta, and Arugula Salad. Eaten outside, with cold iced tea, watching the clouds roll in, enjoying a little break from the heat wave. The chicken might make a little more sense for fall, since it had to be roasted in a very hot oven, and smelled like Thanksgiving. It was so, so good though.

Nicky's version. One of these days I will get this boy to eat salad.

2. Toasted nine grain bread with melted mozzarella, green peppers (from the garden, yay!), roasted red peppers, and dijon mustard, with this cranberry walnut coleslaw. One of those last minute dinners that came together well. Love when that happens.

3. the breakfast Ricky made for us on Saturday morning. I love Saturdays with him. We had such a nice day, starting with this lovely meal, then school supply shopping for Nicky, Hawaiian food for lunch, a trip to the theater to see Cars 2 (I spent the last half in the truck driving Silas around so he could go to sleep). It was our last Saturday all together before Nicky starts kindergarten.

Nicky and I made these cute Angry Birds pom-poms. I love that he has just as much fun throwing them at a stack of cups as he does when he plays the game on our phones.

3. Harvest from Saturday morning. The first real butternut squash. I'm thinking of ways to use these this week.

4. Carnitas and Mexican Coke. The crock pot is such a good friend to me. 

More and more I'm thanking God for the little things in life. Days with a lot of space in them are good. There needs to be room to spare in my life. I need to pause more, not less. Spending time preparing food really helps me with that. It's one of those everyday, sometimes mundane tasks that is so spiritual for me if I choose for it to be. I'm starting to see how domestic tasks really lend themselves to contemplation, meditation, prayer (all the same thing perhaps, at the end of the day)....I want more of that. More of the simple joys.

making dinner special

I love dinner. The ritual of it-planning, shopping, cooking, and finally eating. My routine goes something like this: on Sunday evenings I make a meal plan for the week, see what we already have in the fridge and pantry, and make a list. I shop on Monday morning with the boys. Then, we try to cook at home all week and reserve eating out for Sundays after church (because who wants to cook after working up a sweat chasing preschoolers around ? Not me.)

Sometime after we had Nicky, cooking became really important to me. Having a small grocery budget was what really started it. It was a fun challenge to see if I could make interesting meals with what we had to work with. I found out it's totally possible. We were also trying to lose weight and learning to love eating fresh, simple food. Now, our food budget is a little more flexible and I tend to be led more by what I feel like making, but I'm so grateful for that time, when I learned to love cooking. Here's the tricky thing with dinner these days-it's a rough time of day. We usually eat at about 6 pm. It's getting close to Silas' bedtime, Nicky is wired because Papa just got home, and Ricky and I need a second wind but it's not time to sit just yet. Sometimes this creates a perfect storm of grumpiness (mostly on my part, I have to admit).

I kind of see this as a personal testing time for me-because most of the time what I feel like doing (and often do, sadly) is to start barking orders and feeling sorry for myself. So I'm trying to work on enjoying the whole process. Music helps greatly. A cold drink. Laughter. Silliness. Eating outside and watching the clouds roll in (even if they are just teasing us, day after day....)

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to share some dinner ideas on here-mostly to inspire myself to enjoy the process and make food that I would want to take pictures of. If you're reading and want to share some ideas yourself, I'd love to hear them.

Here's one from last week:

Frittata with bacon, spinach, roasted red peppers, yellow pear tomatoes and cheddar, simple salad, Corona with lime (a summer staple I say)

arroz con leche

It just seemed like the right time. 

nyc

What better way to spend a weekend than to cram yourself onto an island that is already quite crammed? Well. Maybe there are better ways but once in a while I do crave the city life.
This was the first time visiting New York City for both me and Ricky.It did not disappoint. We had about 2 1/2 days to see the city, and like most tourists, we mainly stuck to Manhattan. For the amount of time we had, and considering we had a toddler in tow, we did pretty well. Some of the highlights:

• A charming hotel just 3 blocks from the Empire State Building (we had a junior suite with, wait for it.....our own bathroom. Just had to throw that in because it was advertised in a way that made it seem quite special. Space is quite the commodity, I know.) Anyway, it was fun to walk around that area each day as we were coming and going.

• A bus tour that was super-touristy, but perfect for us, since it doubled as a day taxi and let us see big chunks of the city without worrying about navigation ourselves.
• Walking. One evening we decided to have dinner in Little Italy, and had originally planned to take a taxi. We weren't very hungry yet, so we just started walking, and ended up walking the 30 or so blocks there. We also ran into a very talkative woman who I initially thought was crazy but was in fact just friendly. She asked what route we were taking, and when I told her that, oh, we're just going to walk down Broadway, she said "WRONG." Then it was awkward for a moment, but she the proceeded to explain a much more interesting route that led us through the original Five Points area. Best of all, when we got to Little Italy we were good and hungry. Sometimes on vacation I feel like I'm just eating and eating because I don't want to miss the local flavor, but I'm not even that hungry most of the time. Walking definitely helped with that.

• Getting rain-soaked during a night-tour of Brooklyn. Well maybe not the shiniest highlight but it made for a funny memory. We had some saran-wrap like ponchos, and Ricky had Nicky inside his. Nicky just curled up and went to sleep, as we sat there, squinting because the rain was falling so hard. Poor Ricky had glasses on so he couldn't see anything.
• A pastrami on rye from Katz's Deli. It was perfect.

• The view from the top of the Empire State Building. We waited until the morning of our last day to go up, and there was no line! I loved seeing the outline of Central Park; such a tidy rectangle of green in a sea of tan and gray.

• The drive up and back. We initially planned to take a train up from Baltimore, but it ended up being less expensive to drive, even with the tolls and parking costs. It was kind of a hassle getting around, but I just love the anticipation of driving somewhere, and then the coziness of driving home. It's when Ricky and I have some of our best conversations I think.
• Nicky boy's highlight: watching all the "Bob the Builders" at work at Ground Zero.

He's been asking to go "see the buildings" ever since.

fresh

I've sort of been gravitating toward more vegetarian dishes this summer. The hot sticky weather, availability of great local produce, and inspiration from online recipes are all to thank for this little dietary change. I love it, and no one else in the house is complaining much either. So I've set a new goal to continue to make at least 2 vegetarian dinners per week. As Ina Garten would say, how bad can that be?

Tonight: Panzanella and Fried Zucchini.