November, 2013

I thought I'd take a break from telling you about my terrifying dreams to write a little recap of the past few weeks.

1. I've participated in a few Triathlon Club events, including this one where we walked around campus with bags of Hershey's HUGS and randomly handed them to people. We also took pictures along the way. 

I love the TriClub, even though I feel old enough to be everyone's mom. It's nice to get together with them outside of swim practice, since I never have my glasses on and everyone is wearing swim caps.

2. A couple of weeks ago we got a decent amount of snow and Bobo went NUTS over it. 

For some reason she really wanted to get it all over her face.

And she loved laying down in it, but she was always poised to strike.

3. I saw this random box of sweet potatoes in Talbot College. Its smiley face makes me so happy!

4. On Friday night we went to Gen Pop. Here's a picture of some music theory classmates of mine, breaking it down.

5. And then it snowed some more! We got almost 2 feet last night. 

Bobo is a tall dog and even she was in it up to her chest. We had to double up her sweater and her coat because it was only 18 F. when we got up this morning. She seems equally excited and perplexed by the snow. She doesn't know where to go to the bathroom, but she likes jumping in the snow like a porpoise. 

One more week until our Christmas decor goes up! I've resisted putting it up, even though our yard looks like Christmas Town from Nightmare Before Christmas. Instead, we're just listening to a bunch of Christmas music to get into the holiday spirit.

6. It's almost time for Gym Christmas! I'll post a lot more during it, and I have some specific goals in mind, but you can read the DJ's preliminary post here (<-- 12="" a="" baby="" bit="" but="" christmas:="" christmas="" complete="" cute="" different="" dj="" explanation="" for="" forthcoming="" gym="" here="" info="" is="" mommy-hood.="" more="" need="" of="" p="" photos="" reflecting="" s="" short="" tasks="" the="" there="" this="" to="" transition="" we="" year="">

You need not be a personal friend of the DJ to participate! Gym Christmas always adds greatly to my December. 

Almost Here

Kind of a lot of things are about to happen. I'll present them in a convenient (lazy) list format. But first, here are some things that happened recently: 

1. We went to Gen Pop, a dance party/fundraiser that my friend Matthew organizes. It benefits an LGBT youth group in London. This month, Gen Pop took place on Good Friday,* so they hid Eggs filled with chocolate and condoms all around the venue for guests to find. I found three!

2. John and I have continued to work our way through the Appetite for Reduction. Here's the caesar salad with smokey, roasted egg plant on top (how does she make the dressing taste so good?!):

We also made this chipotle chili with sweet potatoes and brussels sprouts. I know it sounds like an odd combination of things, but this chili was delicious! It's great with any kind of corn bread, obviously.

3. On Holy Saturday, we had an Easter brunch at our house with friends from school. I took this picture of the table before everyone arrived, so it's an incomplete representation of what we ate. Not shown: crepes, eggs, crumpets, and lots of Bailey's in coffee. I also started to make a drink composed of Bailey's, a splash of cream, and a splash of whiskey. I know, I know, there is whiskey in Bailey's. But a touch of it on the top of the drink kind of turned the rest of the flavors up to eleven. I call it: the Irish Russian. Like a black Russian, but with Bailey's and whiskey, instead of vodka.

Side note: after brunch, we went to see The Quartet. Music student friends, have you seen this movie? It's charming. Several of the characters reminded me of voice professors at Indiana. 

4. For lunch this week, John and I made this salad with chickpeas, lentils, tahini, and feta from Smitten Kitchen. Two thumbs way up. I made a second batch of it today. Tomorrow we're going to brunch at Matthew's house and I'm bringing blackberry gin fizzes (also from Smitten Kitchen) to drink. I'll test the recipe and report back.**

5. It's April, and yet this was our weather this week: snow, as fast and hard as snow can fall for about 15 minutes. It was a total white out while I waited for the bus. Fifteen minutes later, it was bright and sunny. As one of my friends posted on facebook last week, "Go home Spring. You're drunk." 

6. Back to our original topic: lots of exciting things are about to take place. My area exam (a defense of my dissertation proposal) will take place between May 6th and 10th, but that means a lot of writing and editing in the next week. I only have time now to write this blog post because I've spent a lot of the day trying to determine exactly when Newton's theories gained traction in France (the actual content of my dissertation proposal is the subject of another post, one that I hope to write after my proposal is eventually accepted and the problems have been hammered out). Once I've submitted it to the committee, I'll have lots of time to grade final exams, make delicious foods, and do research for my RA-ship (for which I actually get paid by the hour - hooray!). But until then, I have a lot of Rameau work waiting for me. So by extension, my ABD status is also almost here. 

Incidentally if you're looking for a somewhat satirical explanation of what it's like to be a PhD student in the humanities, may I recommend this detailed analogy between the PhD process and the plot to all three Lord of the Rings movies. It was eerily familiar.

7. Other things that are almost here: our wedding (in late June), and the greyhound we plan to adopt in August. We're going to look into adopting one from GRA Canada, a greyhound rescue just outside London. Some of the dogs they currently have aren't quite ready for adoption, but will be within a few months. That means that one of the dogs on this list could be our future dog! Not that I look at the list all the time or anything. I totally don't know the names of any of the adoptable dogs. And I also definitely don't have a potential list of names for our dog based on historic music theorists/Enlightenment philosophes.***

*I would try to give a deep, quasi-theological interpretation of attending a gay dance party on Good Friday (perhaps about "dying" to prejudice or fear of others), but you know....it's not that kind of blog. 

**Brunch, two weekends in a row. I know what you're thinking, and you're right - my life is hard.

***Yes, I do. 

Holiday Decor

Here are some of the things John and I put up around the house for Christmas this year. Obviously I love Christmas, but I tried to keep it reigned in so that it doesn't look like Christmas threw up on our apartment.

























On the kitchen table:
A square vase I got with a great coupon, filled with the sparlkley balls I've had for years. I think those balls came from a $8 package at Walgreens in Bloomington one year. I also took some red ribbon and tied a bow around our rosemary. It's already in a white pot that I found on our porch over the summer, so it's practically a Christmas decoration already. The thyme plant next to it doesn't look as Christmassy, but it's best not to go overboard when decorating your herb garden for the holidays.

In the "den," aka, "The Christmas Room where it's Christmas All the Time."

Before...























And after.









































This year I have tons of wrapping paper supplies that my Aunt Becky gave to me during her moving sale, including a roll of brown paper. Our presents are taking on a "brown paper packages tied up with string" look.





John added his GQ so that Leo could look up at us from beneath the tree.










Last week, as John and I sat watching old episodes of Community, we started cutting snowflakes out of pages from my Office page-a-day calendar. Now they're proudly displayed on the window. I only made a few, but John kept cutting and produced a few...avant-garde snowflakes.


















The cyclops and the 4-square ones are John's. The one on the bottom left with the (accidental) little TIE fighters is mine.

A couple days after we finished decorating, Winter showed up and decorated the back yard. It didn't stick around. Just a little snow every week is enough to make things feel Christmassy for now.

January

Hey Y'all!

I've been a little bit absent for a while. I have hopes of posting more regularly this month, but with school starting again, it's taken some time to figure out the new routine. While I get things in order, here's a few highlights of what we've been up to since the new year started.

This is the image from our back porch in the morning. Winter has us surrounded.





























John and I are going to run the Really Chilly 5K on February 27th. I made a new training plan for the next two months and taped it to the bottom of the February calendar page, like I usually do. Hanging it in a public place is usually a great reminder for me to stay motivated, and a sign that I've committed myself to whatever I've planned. Then I cross off the days and feel super accomplished!























And on to the food!

These are chocolate-almond-butter-oaties, a healthier and easier version of the Interlochen Chocolate No Bakes. This recipe comes from one of my favorite blogs - Heather Eats Almond Butter, or HEAB. Click here! She is breast feeding at the moment and since her daughter may be allergic to chocolate, she made these for herself with carob. So far I've used almond butter and soy milk in the recipe (so they're vegan!) but you could use whatever nut butter and whatever kind of milk or alterna-milk.

















John and I are working through the soups in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, and we started with leek and potato soup. How are leeks so flavorful? This soup was the "thing of the week" as John says. Click here for David Lebowitz's take on the recipe. Bittman advocates putting in something extra to tailor this soup to your tastes, and we added chopped avocado. It was a delicious soup.




John, getting ready to use the immersion blender, Immersio.
































Another food highlight was this avocado chickpea wrap. The lime and avocado make this really refreshing for a January meal, and it was easy to put together. We chose to have ours in a wrap just for fun, but you can eat it straight from a bowl if you like.

















That's all for now! More recipes and new foods for 2011 next time.

Springbank Park in Winter

John and I ventured out on the 26th to take a walk in Spring Bank Park. It's my favorite running spot in London, and you may have read about it here and here. Here are the photos we took to document our cold adventure:



























I thought the light looked just right to take a whole bunch of pictures just before dusk.



























It was cold, but the parks dept. laid down enough salt that the path was relatively clear.



























We hardly needed our YakTrax, but John really wanted to try his out, since I got them for him for Christmas.
Here's an upclose shot:



















I love this picture of John on the run:
























View from the bridge:


















And from the other side:


















My favorite path:

Melted Snowmen Cookies

This week as I was reading my food blogs I came across a post about using marshmallows to make melted snowman cookies. It didn't really look too difficult and after I watched about 10 youtube videos about piping with royal icing, I thought it would be fun to give it a try.

For various reasons, however, I got kind of lazy. Instead of making royal icing in a few colors I just bought some cookie decorating supplies. What could go wrong?! This is a moment of foreshadowing: we learned that gel icing tubes are probably not right for this kind of detail. Still, the regular white icing we used worked fairly well and I'm pretty sure all of it is vegan. So if you made some vegan sugar cookies, this would translate fairly easily (making royal icing vegan surely involves lots of chemicals, but apparently no animal parts).




The set up.











Part of the point was to use up a very old package of Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix, and in order to make them big enough, I was only able to get 5 cookies out of it (the fifth didn't survive the transition from cookie sheet to cooling rack). Still (more foreshadowing), the gel icing doesn't look super appetizing, so it's not like these are actually going to get eaten, and I think our attention spans held out just long enough to do all 4.









Gillian came over to watch a movie and decorate with us.







That's my little snowman, just after I gave him eyes. "Purple" turned out to be a sort of light blue, and it pretty much made our snowmen look possessed. The gel didn't really hold its shape very well, so their stick arms kind of bloated up.
















Here's Gillian's, before his face was finished. Check out those creepy "purple" eyes!
















John decorated the fourth cookie. As he says, in fairness, he had the most practice. But this fourth cookie is the only one that I think looks endearing, as intended.
















Look how much mine looks like a scary clown. "Merry Christmas, boys and girls! AHAHAHAHA!!!!!"
















John's first snowman is even scarier. Note how his eyes are oozing down his face, and he's apparently having a nose bleed.















John's second snowman just looks pleasant in comparison to our demonic ones.






















Love the ear muffs. Here's the whole gang:
















After the gel sort of spread we decided that Gillian's (far left) looks as though his throat was slit, with blood dripping down. I think with royal icing and finer tip they would have turned out fine, and the whole thing was pretty fun! I guess I have a certain habit of making Christmas desserts look evil - recall last year's gingerbread robot monsters.


Since I didn't really bake any of this from scratch, here are some links, including a very clear tutorial on how to make these snowmen:

Post with pictures and instructions
Snowman Cookie Tutorial