Rather than writing about food as I should be, I’m going to talk about getting engaged!

Before I bore you to death with the details, know that I’m mostly writing this entry for posterity. I don’t actually think everyone reading my blog really  cares about me getting married. You’re all here for the food!

On Good Friday, I got out of work early and we headed across the state to spend Easter weekend with the boyfriend’s fiance’s family. We’d looked at the weather days earlier and since it was going to be warm and beautiful, Joel suggested that we take a little afternoon detour into Shenandoah National Park/Skyline Drive. Nothing about this suggestion was at all suspicious as it was something we might have done anyway. Little did I know what was up his sleeve…

We approached several scenic overlooks but didn’t actually stop at any of them for whatever reason. This seemed a little odd to me but I figured we were looking for a good spot to take a few pictures of the view. Again, nothing suspicious. We finally pulled over at the Sawmill Ridge Overlook. We got the camera bag out of the trunk and I pulled out the camera to take a few pictures. Joel wandered off and took the camera bag with him despite my offer to hold onto it or put it back in the trunk.

He wandered back, we took a few pictures and sat down on the stone ledge to admire the view. After talking for a few minutes, Joel all of a sudden said, “I’ve got something to ask you.” He reached into the camera bag and pulled out a little black box. I, being the weepy wuss that I am, immediately started tearing up and then he pulled a note out of his pocket. Written by his grandmother many years ago (just before Joel’s mother passed away), the note read that Joel’s mom wanted her engagement ring saved for him to use if he chose to do so. My ring has 3 diamonds, one of the smaller ones is from his mother’s engagement ring. At this point, I said, “Yes!” and then realized that he hadn’t actually said, “Will you marry me?” yet. At which point he asked and I said, “Yes!” for real.

This is where I admit that I’ve never really cared about weddings or engagements very much. When other people got engaged and eventually married, I was happy for them but never super, hyper excited about it. I was kind of apathetic about having an actual wedding myself and always kind of thought I’d just run off somewhere and get hitched. The ring and the actual proposal changed my mind. I want a real wedding and I’m ecstatic about being engaged. We’re also both really amazed at how excited other people seem to be about our engagement. The outpouring of happiness from everyone we know makes the whole thing a little more awesome. Being told that the news of our engagement made someone else’s day is pretty cool. So, after all these years of not quite understanding why weddings are such a big deal, I finally get it.

There aren’t many details to share about the actual wedding yet. We haven’t finalized a date, a venue or even the wedding party. About all we do know is that I won’t be making my own wedding cake!

P.S. I promise to try my best not to turn this into a wedding blog.

Tweet This Post 

Every weekend, we sit around and plot our meals for the week. Generally one trip to the grocery store follows the meal planning and we rarely stray from the plan. We may not get around to cooking everything we planned to cook but we don’t usually decide to make something completely different once the shopping is done.

Despite having done this for about 2 years, planning meals for the entire week is a challenge for me. I used to be the type that would make a zillion trips to the store and would decide what I wanted to cook on a complete whim. This ended up costing a lot of money and I wasted a lot of food. I also worked in a restaurant for a long time and quite honestly didn’t have to cook that many real dinners. I pretty much never had to think about what to eat for lunch since the restaurant fed me. In addition, I detested leftovers and rarely wanted to make something that would last for several meals.

Fast forward to now and life is pretty different. Instead of working 4+ nights a week, I’m home every night and need to have something to eat for dinner just about every night. I also take lunch with me to work most of the time. When we plan our meals for the week, we think about what we want to eat for lunch and dinner for a full week. To make decision making a little easier, we keep a list of all of the meals I’ve cooked that we liked enough to eat again. We also have to think about leftovers. It’s rare that I don’t cook something with the intention of eating it again at least once. All this planning is not an easy task. For me, it takes a little bit of the fun out of cooking. I liked the old way…where I would wake up and decide what I felt like cooking. Fortunately I still get to bake on a whim as we don’t plan desserts or baked goods in advance and I keep enough supplies in the house to bake nearly anything we might crave.

So…here’s what we’ve planned to eat this week. Pretty much everything on the list will be eaten more than once.

Pork Fried Rice - I use a variation of the recipe in Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. I’ve made this enough times that I don’t actually need the cookbook anymore. This is great reheated in the microwave and even better if you fry it a second time. Also, my version is made with brown rice.

Potato Leek Soup – I like mine pureed and topped with cheese and chives. The topping is not necessarily traditional but it’s delicious. The version I’ll make is from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters.

Shrimp Cakes with Tartar Sauce - Like crab cakes…but with shrimp. I found a great recipe online last year at Je Mange la Ville and this will be the recipe I use again this week.

Turkey and Muenster Cheese Sandwiches on Homemade Oatmeal Wheat Bread - I could eat turkey sandwiches every day so they’re a common item when we plan meals. The bread recipe is slightly adapted from one found in the February 2010 issue of Martha Stewart Living. It’s great tasting and doesn’t get stale as fast as a lot of the homemade breads I’ve made.

If all of the food above doesn’t last until Saturday, we’ll have baked potatoes or eggs or vegetables or even a bowl of cereal. We probably won’t have to resort to any of these as I usually make more than enough food.

And then there’s dessert. I don’t have anything planned for later in the week but I did already bake a batch of dark chocolate oatmeal cookies – minus the oatmeal and white chocolate chips in the recipe. Instead I used toffee bits and peanut butter chips. Still very delicious…so much so that they won’t last all week. By Wednesday or Thursday, I’ll need to dream up something else.

P.S. Let me know if you want to stop by for dinner…we’ve usually got plenty of food!

Tweet This Post 

Like everyone else, I want to eat better. Trite but true.

In order to aid my evolution towards better eating, I’ve come up with some food oriented goals for 2010 and beyond. I’m posting it here to hold myself somewhat accountable. The good thing is that none of these goals really require giving up anything. I just have to try a little harder and think about what I’m eating.

1. Eat fish (or seafood) at least once a week. We eat it about twice a month now…but I’d like to start eating fish or seafood more often instead of heavier meat-centric meals. Added bonus: fish and seafood are quite often easier (and faster) to prepare than meat dishes.

2. Eat vegetarian at least once a week. That’s vegetarian…not vegan. I can’t promise to go that far. I like eggs and dairy too much. Not much more than a year ago, I scoffed and “icked” at the idea of vegetarian meals. I’m a carnivore at heart. But I’ve slowly come to realize that I’m okay with a lot of vegetarian choices. And if you throw mushrooms into the mix, I’m nearly as happy as I would have been with beef or chicken or pork or duck or lamb or turkey. I’ve also realized that just a hint of meat in a dish can sometimes satisfy my carnivorous ways. A few slices of bacon in a quiche or a little bit of sausage in a bean soup actually gives the dish enough meaty flavor for me!

3. Eat vegetables and lots of them. And make them local if at all possible. Once farmer’s market season is in full swing, I plan for the farmer’s market to be my first source of food ideas each week. We’re also already planning a larger garden this year. We’re trying to learn about when to plant what so that we’ll take full advantage of all of the growing seasons we have here in Virginia. In addition, I’d like to pick lots of fruits (and veggies) at pick-your-own farms when they are in season. There’s a chance we’re going to need a bigger freezer and a very large pot…

4. Eat non-industrial meat and poultry. Yes, it’s going to hurt the wallet but I’d really like to find local sources of grass-fed beef, humanely raised pork and cage-free chicken and eggs. We’ve got plenty of possibilities between the local farms and the farmer’s market. And the somewhat famous Polyface Farms (located on the other side of the state) actually delivers their goods once a month to a home here in Williamsburg that happens to be located only about 10 minutes from my office.

5. Buy even less processed food than we already do. We’re pretty good about this already but there’s always room for improvement. I’d really love to be able to stop buying anything containing high fructose corn syrup and/or a list of ingredients a mile long but I’m not sure this is entirely possible. In trying to accomplish this goal, I’ll definitely have to bake more breads, cookies and other treats. Fortunately I’m not at all opposed to expanding my baking repertoire. This goal is also a way to help cut some costs in the food budget. It’s a lot cheaper to bake a loaf of bread than it is to buy one at the store. Same with cookies and cake and granola and so on. We can then spend the extra money on the more expensive but better for you foods I’ve already mentioned.

P.S. I’m already off to a good start on goal #5 with the bread in these pictures. I baked it myself last weekend for sandwiches rather than buying a loaf of grocery store bread!

Tweet This Post 

Actually, I’m not really writing a blog post. I’m just summing up 2009 with photos taken during the last 365 days.

First up are some of my favorites of the thousands of photos I took in 2009. It was really hard to narrow these down to just a handful of favorites and I hope to take just as many (or more) pictures in 2010!

Then there’s me through the year. Putting this together wasn’t so easy as both the boyfriend and I have discovered that we don’t take a whole lot of pictures of ourselves. We’re going to try harder next year…and the mosaic I create on 12/31/2010 will be easier to create!

I hope that everyone has had a great year and best wishes for 2010!

Tweet This Post 

Like a child, I still get excited about the little things in life. Little things like one of my pictures being used in a segment on The Martha Stewart Show! Yes, The Martha Stewart Show!

They did a segment on Flickr earlier this week and showed a few pictures from a Martha Stewart group on Flickr. When my photo of turkey burgers was shown on the show, Martha made a comment about how I didn’t toasted my burger buns…which made the audience laugh. I’m perfectly content to have been scolded for not toasting my buns.

If you’re interested in seeing the clip, it’s available here. My photo’s 10 seconds of fame is at 5:23.

Tweet This Post 

Post title borrowed from a Ben Folds song of nearly the same name.

Last song I purchased from iTunes: When Will I Be Loved by John Fogerty & Bruce Springsteen.

Made for dinner tonight: Chicken, cheddar and onion quesadillas. The chicken was marinated with chipotles in adobo sauce & grilled with the onions before being turned into quesadilla filling.

Currently drinking: Nothing. But a glass of milk sounds good.

Playing on iTunes right this very second: Glory Days by Bruce Springsteen.

Currently reading: Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson and Amarcord by Marcella Hazan.

Laughing about: The episode of Mad Men we just watched. We’re at the beginning of Season 2 and Joan is my favorite character. Tonight she discussed why crying in the break room is bad: “This is why I don’t allow crying in the break room. It erodes morale. There’s a place to do that, like your apartment.”

New to me, easy and delicious dessert I recently made: Tarta de Santiago (as pictured here). It’s a Spanish almond cake with a hint of lemon. Yum. Recipe here. I followed it almost exactly.

Song I can’t stop playing over and over and over again: 21 Guns by Green Day.

Currently knitting: Still nothing. But it’s almost cold enough for me to want to knit again. And I’m hankering for a project that will use some of the Noro Iro in my stash.

In need of: A new immersion blender. We had a generic one that mysteriously died/broke when I tried to puree black bean soup. I need to decide what brand to go with for the new one.

Playing on the iPod now: Something to Say by Toad the Wet Sprocket. I still love this song from the early 90s.

Will soon attempt to learn: Adobe Lightroom. It’s installed on my computer at work and I haven’t had a free minute or hour to learn how to use it yet.

Not getting enough: Sleep. I think the changing season has made me want more of it. And I still don’t know how to go to bed early.

Hyped up about: Autumn weather. I like the sorta warm, sorta cold days and I can’t wait for the leaves to change color.

Something I need to do tonight if it kills me: Decide what kind of cookies to bake tomorrow. Yes, it’s important that I decide this tonight.

Craving: A grilled hamburger. We walked around W&M yesterday and there was some sort of barbecue somewhere and the hamburgers called to me.

Trying to learn how to: Stop buying clothes that all look the same. It takes real effort on my part to buy shirts in different styles and to refrain from purchasing something I like in every color made in it.

Something I thoroughly enjoy: Random cussing in songs that don’t seem like they’d have them. Ben Folds and Glen Phillips are both good at dropping random f-bombs in the middle of a song and I love it!

Hell hath frozen over because: I gave up whipped cream on my Starbucks iced toffee nut lattes. And I’m drinking less of the lattes as they’re not as good without the whipped cream.

Best thing I’ve bought this month: New corduroy pants. I love corduroy pants and these Old Navy ones are pretty spectacular.

What I might be for Halloween: Lucille Ball. Or a devil. Or something else that can involve my red hair.

Still bragging about: The wedding cakes I made this summer. I’m proud of me for having the skills to do that.

Looking forward to: Next weekend and the possibility of our first (and last) camping trip to the Outer Banks this year.

Not looking forward to: More painting in our house. It looks nice when it’s done but the process is so long and tiresome…plus I’m only a moderately decent painter.

Playing on the iPod now: Fidelity by Regina Spektor.

Next up on the reading list: The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan.

Can’t believe: That the new season of 30 Rock hasn’t started yet. I need an Alec Baldwin fix.

Absolutely, positively obsessed with: Trader Joe’s dark chocolate covered almonds with sea salt and turbinado sugar. Best new food I’ve tried in a long time. They’re good like dark chocolate covered pretzels are good…only better.

Next in the Netflix queue: More Mad Men Season 2, American Beauty and Away We Go when it’s released.

Must make time to: Get everything ready to get our kitchen inspected by the state so that I can legally bake things for money. After that’s done, there’s a business license to be purchased.

Trying to decide: How to spend less money in October. Less eating out? Less clothing purchases? Too bad it’s fall and I want new cold weather clothes.

Last dessert I baked: Caramel Apple Upside Down Cornmeal Cake from Better Homes & Gardens.

Tweet This Post 

Shockingly, I’ve managed to take a picture of the day for Flickr for 250 days! Even more shockingly, I think I’ve only missed or skipped 2 days in there and I plan to make those up at the end. When I started this back in early January, I thoroughly expected that I would fail or at the very least not do a good job of keeping up. But I have!

If you haven’t been following along on Flickr (and I don’t really expect that you have been), here’s a preview of the last 36 days of photos. The other 214 pictures can be found in the Year in Pictures set on my Flickr page.

Tweet This Post 

I was on vacation in Seattle recently (the first vacation in a year and my first trip to the West Coast!) and I came away from the trip a little wiser than I was when I hopped on the plane here in Virginia. Okay, maybe wiser isn’t quite the word…that would insinuate that actual learning took place.

Here’s a lengthy list of thoughts about my vacation. Some of these thoughts are silly but a few of them could actually be relevant to other people. Especially other people planning their own summer trip to the Pacific Northwest.

1. There is no need to bring 5 pairs of shoes on an 8 day trip. In fact, 5 pairs is 3 pairs too many. All I really wore all week were my Keen sandals.
2. If you’re in a park and the sign says that the loop trail is 2.8 miles long, the sign lies.
3. Even though Starbucks was born in Seattle, my iced toffee nut latte does not taste any better there than it does here.
4. Vacationing in the Pacific Northwest in August? Bring jeans. Lots of jeans. And a couple of sweatshirts. Do not bring 3 pairs of shorts. You will not wear them.
5. On that same note, if you’re staying with family, don’t pack so many clothes. You will inevitably do laundry and not end up wearing 60% of what you packed. All you’ll wear are the same 2 pairs of jeans.
6. Top Pot Doughnuts are incredible. The best doughnuts I’ve ever had. If you visit Seattle, you must have at least one.
7. If I lived in Seattle, I would be a cow because of Top Pot Doughnuts.



8. Small children do not need toys. They are perfectly happy to play with wooden meat tenderizers, laundry baskets and light switches. Save your money.
9. Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon (yes, we took a side trip to Oregon) is the most awesome bookstore ever. Followed closely by The Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle. They don’t make independent bookstores like that where I live.
10. Farmer’s Markets in Virginia are terrible compared to Seattle. Even the neighborhood market there was far superior to a citywide market here. Fruits and vegetables are also prettier and cheaper there.



11. If you want to visit a chocolate factory (Theo Chocolate), you should make your tour reservation before your trip. If you don’t, you won’t get to take the factory tour.
12. Coconut cream pie tastes even better when there is coconut baked into the crust.
13. Trolls really do live under bridges.



14. I’d really like to live in a town where you could walk to small stores and restaurants. It was nice to walk down the block for coffee in the morning.
15. Even if my Toyota Camry is getting a little old, it’s still a wonderfully quiet ride. Unlike the Nissan Versa we rented for the week. That thing was obnoxiously loud.
16. Smoked pork barbecue tastes just as good in Seattle as it does in Virginia.
17. The Atlanta airport is too busy. There are too many people there are any given time. Too many scary people.
18. Blackberries are a weed out there. A delicious weed that I would love to have growing out of control in my yard.



19. If there hadn’t been a Jim Henson exhibit at the Experience Music Project, I would have wanted my $15 admission fee back. Fortunately a few Muppets made it worth the expense.
20. Parking in a city is not cheap. Correction: Parking in a city is not cheap if you’re lazy and unmotivated. It was so much easier to feed the meter than to drive in circles looking for a parking space.
21. I don’t know how to drive in hilly, steep places.
22. Poison ivy spreads. Despite your best efforts to contain it.
23. It’s a long drive from Portland to Seattle via the Oregon Coast. Possibly too long…fortunately it was a beautiful drive.



24. Sockeye salmon tastes particularly good when it’s just off the boat and really fresh.
25. There don’t seem to be a lot of redheads in Seattle. Is there a reason for this?
26. Mt. Rainier is not so easy to see. I didn’t get a view of it until we were on the airplane heading home. Fortunately that was a great view.
27. Not eating before a cross-country flight is not a good idea. Two cookies and a bag of pretzels are not dinner.
28. If I ever move to a big city, I should open a bakery. The prices they get away with charging are criminal and I’d like to be the criminal in that situation.
29. Libraries can make you dizzy. And not from reading.



30. Going to Seattle in August when you live in Virginia is kind of like going to Florida in February when you live in Maine. The weather on your vacation totally spoils you and you’re miserable when you get home.
31. Rainier cherries might just be my favorite fruit. Too bad they’re almost too expensive to buy here in Virginia.



If you’ve made it to the end of this post and would still like to see more pictures, visit my Flickr page.

Tweet This Post 

Behold the fruit (or vegetable) of my not so terribly intense labor. These little guys really weren’t ready to be picked but I was making potato salad and my potato salad needs green onions. These are the first green onions I’ve picked from our herb and vegetable gardens. It’s so nice to just walk out the kitchen door and grab just the amount of herbs I need for whatever dish I’m preparing.

After pining for an herb garden and/or vegetable garden for the last several years, I’ve finally got a little one going. Space at the new house and weekends off have finally given me the opportunity. I started the herbs on our deck very very shortly after the last frost but we kind of procrastinated about the vegetable garden. I honestly didn’t think we’d do it this year. But we did and I actually kind of squeal with delight every time I look at the garden and the quickly growing plants in it. Which means I squeal every day as I can’t resist looking at the plants.

In addition to the obvious benefits of very-locally grown food, I keep thinking of the money we’ll save by gardening. A large portion of our weekly grocery spending goes to fresh fruit and veggies…cutting just a portion of that will save a lot of money. Getting the garden set up was cheap. We spent $11 on dirt from a local source and about $30 on seeds and other garden necessities. Think of how few vegetables $41 buys at the grocery store. A bunch of basil alone will set you back several dollars. We’ll recoup our expenses in no time…if the bunnies don’t get to the veggies first.

Because I planted the herbs earlier, we’ve been enjoying cilantro for quite a while. It was a great accompaniment to the carnitas I wrote about last week. I used it in the fresh pico de gallo I made for those.

And then there’s the basil. I made a pretty tasty Israeli cous cous salad last week with lots of torn fresh basil in it.

The basil looks like it’s going to be tremendously prolific. I’ve already shared a little of the basil as there’s plenty of it and there’s more on the way for later in the summer. A lot of that will probably get made into pesto that I’ll keep in the freezer to use later in the year.

I’ve also got some rosemary, parsley and chives planted in the deck based herb garden…but those don’t make me quite as happy as the cilantro, basil and green onions do. The rosemary is still really small…but I expect to get all excited about that once it grows a little.

We planted our “better late than never” vegetable garden at the end of May figuring that the part of Virginia we live in has a pretty long growing season. The boyfriend wisely put up chicken wire to try to keep the woodland critters out of our veggie plot. Our house is really close to a small woods and we have an insane number of rabbits roaming the neighborhood. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that the chicken wire will keep the bunnies out of the garden as I don’t want to have to share with them!

In our small garden, we’ve planted 2 kinds of green beans, lima beans, cucumbers, Roma tomatoes, butternut squash, broccoli, basil and green onions. We’re not really expecting the broccoli to do well and if it doesn’t, we’ll plant more later. We’re also going to plant some spaghetti squash a little later in the season as I’d love to have a supply of that for the winter.

If this year’s garden does well, we’ll probably expand it a little bit next year. We’re starting small…but we’ve got big hopes.

Tweet This Post 

I found this questionnaire/meme on the Brownie Points blog. I pretty much never do these things. I avoided the Facebook 25 Things meme. Yet I’m answering this one AND posting it on my blog. Apparently I’m more than willing to talk about myself when the topic relates to food.

Here’s the quiz as copied from Brownie Points. The questions as I copied them are in bold, my answers are not in bold.

If you post this on your site, please give that site credit!

I’d also love to see your answers here on my website!

GETTING TO KNOW YOU QUIZ

Metal or non-stick? Metal. Most of the time. I use mostly Calphalon anodized aluminum pans without a non-stick finish.

Cast iron or stainless? Cast iron. I’ve never really cared for stainless. Not even as a teenage cook.

Cutting board: silicone or wood? Silicone for actual use because they can be thrown in the dishwasher. But I do have several wood ones for photography.

Knife: carbon steel or stainless? Carbon steel. Wusthof Classic.

Kitchenaid or hand mixer? Mostly the Kitchenaid. But I do like the hand mixer for some things…like small batches of frosting.

Cooktop: gas, electric, induction? Electric. Sigh. I dream of having gas.

Side-by-side, freezer on top, fridge on top? Side-by-side. A big huge but not very expensive one. When people visit our house for the first time, the size of the fridge is often the first thing they mention.

Apron or whoops? Whoops. I have a lot of grease stained shirts. I do own aprons but I never remember to wear them.

Mashed potatoes: by hand, ricer, or mixer? By hand with a potato masher and then with a fork. I like the chunks.

Sandwich or wrap? Sandwich. Wraps are okay but real bread will always win with me.

PB & _________ ? Chocolate. Or celery sticks. Not jelly. I don’t like PB&J sandwiches. I don’t think I liked them as a kid.

Pancakes: syrup or applesauce? Syrup. Real maple syrup. Preferably grade B. People put applesauce on pancakes? I truly was not aware of this.

Cake: scratch or mix? Scratch. It’s really not that hard and they taste so much better.

Chili: beans or no? Beans. See my old blog post about chili.

Napkin: cloth or paper? Cloth. This is a fairly recent choice I made to be less wasteful. They’re also a lot prettier.

BBQ: takes the whole weekend to make or take out? I wish I could say that I always make it from scratch. But I can’t. It always tastes much better from a hole in the wall bbq joint.

Chicken: white or dark? White. So much so that as a kid I was an expert at finding the white meat in a bucket or tray of fried chicken.

Ice cream: cone or dish? No real preference. Usually a bowl at home. And a waffle cone when I’m actually at an ice cream shop.

Tweet This Post