By the time all of the holiday cards came in the mail, it ended up looking like a giant mass of randomness on our wall, but it started out as a crafty attempt to display our cards.

Stolen from/inspired by Martha Stewart, I started with my hot glue gun, the largest embroidery hoop I could find, some wide wired ribbon and two sizes of clothespins.  Hot glue was strung everywhere, and I burned many fingertips in the process.

I twisted the last bit of ribbon to hang it and started adding cards.  At first, we had so few I had to include my mom’s Thanksgiving card and our own holiday card. Eventually we had so many cards I had to add clothespins to the hanging ribbon, creating the holiday-card-blob seen above.

Now it is completely empty, but still on the wall.  I like the green ribbon because it was Christmas-y enough, but it also complements the white and yellow of our living room/entry way walls.  My next project is to find a handful of pictures to display here during all non-Christmas times. 

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I have been really bad at snapping shots of our culinary adventures, but there have been some tasty ones, and I promise I intend to get back to some regular posting soon. 

Santana was not so interested when we put the tree up, got a little concerned when we added the ornaments (mostly because of the boxes around the living room), became increasingly curious after the tree skirt went on (is this a place to sleep?!) and is constantly investigating the area now that there are a couple presents under the tree (early arrivals from my mom & dad). 

This is so much better than our tiny tree last year!

On Wednesday night, Hanukkah starts and we’ll be focusing on the menorah for 8 crazy nights! So the goal is to get the holiday cards in the mail before then!

LOVE this time of year!

We tried a thick crust, chewy pizza dough recipe that turned out to be pretty tasty. Topped with a basic tomato sauce, Salumi pepperoni and a blend of mozzarella and parmesan cheese. I have half a crust left in the freezer, so that might be making a repeat appearance in the next couple weeks.

We also used an Alton Brown recipe for chili and made it work with ground beef and beans rather than cubed beef.  The best part of the chili was the base (pictured above) that starts with lots of fresh peppers and chilies and gets pureed before the meat and beans go back in.  The spice in the final dish had a sweet freshness to it that was so addicting we didn’t even freeze any leftovers.

I had a birthday! Woo! There were presents from Matt and Santana. Somehow, Santana’s wrapping job AND handwriting seem more advanced than Matt’s….hmmm?  Also, they both chose to use my Christmas wrapping paper instead of the birthday wrapping paper.  Fun!

For my birthday (and for the heck of it), we took a road trip to La Conner…a small town north of us about an hour or so.  We did a little shopping (lots of artsy and antique-y shops) and just enjoyed spending the day together away from the chores and errands at home.  We followed it up with a tasty, semi-fancy dinner at a wine bar near home. 

Of course, the big excitement of November is full of food as the holiday season kicks into full gear.  We paired up with a couple friends to make lots and lots of food.  There are probably enough leftovers to last all of us at least a week.  My main assignment for the dinner was the turkey:

The recipe was from the most recent issue of Cook’s Illustrated.  A butterflied, glazed turkey with an Apple Maple glaze.  So so crispy and moist.  The sweetness of the glaze gave a nice twist to the resulting gravy and went well with everything else we had to eat.  Cook’s Illustrated’s recipes are consistently wonderful, so I also used their bread stuffing recipe.  I missed my usual cornbread stuffing, but this was delicious!  I love Thanksgiving! 

And now that Thanksgiving is over, we’re moving right along…the menorah is out and ready for Hanukah and the Christmas tree is up and decorated! We need a tree skirt apparently, but that is on our list for the next batch of errands.  Excitement!

Santana is also getting ready for the holidays.  It makes me miss my family in NY a lot, but I’m excited to spend our first married holiday season relaxing with Matt and Santana and not stressing about travel and plans and weather and all of that mess. 

We also embarked on a new food experiment this month, but I’ll save that for a later blog (that will hopefully happen in less than a month). Stay tuned!

Yep, candlelight. With wine (Riesling), cloth napkins, and cupcakes for dessert.  Fancy, huh? Dinner was leftover homemade minestrone soup from this weekend that I have failed to get any pictures of.

We also did a load of laundry, a sink full of dishes, and cleaned the kitchen counters.  Somehow, the bedroom and living room are also both pretty clean.  I’m not sure what is going on here, but it feels wonderfully relaxing.

Here is some other fun from the weekend.

Pumpkin carving on Friday night with two spectacularly fun friends. Mine is the house with the ginkgo leaves and Matt’s is the tiny pumpkin with the crooked smile, square nose and gigantic round eyes.

Sunday night dinner spent waiting for trick-or-treaters (we eventually got a few later in the evening).  Shepherd’s pie with a stew base made from ground pork and lots of veggies, topped with mashed sweet potatoes.  With a side salad and bread (not pictured).  Finished off with a fun punch (also not pictured) and dessert of Gale Gand’s “Perfect Yellow Cupcake” with butter cream frosting (both from my stand mixer!) and a yummy homemade pumpkin pie.

The end of October/beginning of November has been very good to us.  Not least of all because my long recruiting trips for work are over and the cold weather means Santana has been extra cuddly.

Happy Fall!  Now it’s time for Thanksgiving planning!

And this….

Basic White Bread and Spaghetti recipes to test out the stand mixer and pasta attachments.  My kitchen may never be clean again.

  I would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys Kingsolver.  It was spectacular and it made me miss a few things:

1. Kentucky (especially the fact that one of the main characters spent her college career in an apartment on Euclid Ave.)
2. Thunderstorms.  Big, booming, loud thunderstorms.
3. Writing and talking about novels.  Not enough to go back and take English classes again, but enough to make me want to keep reading Kingsolver.  I have Animal Dreams on my “to read” shelf…it was an assigned reading during grad school, but I don’t remember actually reading it—that seems like a bad sign.  I have also heard good things about The Bean Trees, and have my eye out for a cheap used copy. Any Kingsolver or Kingsolver-esque recommendations?

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Unrelated:

(Click Santana’s awesome face to jump to her blog for more pictures of her new squeaky dragon friend named Pinky.)

Pre-wedding on Saturday, my family made enough food for approximately 150 people.  There were around 30 people (if that) in attendance at the party.  This was completely out of control wonderful.  It was also my cousin’s birthday around the same time, so my uncle whipped up an adorable and fun birthday cake (he was also responsible for the gorgeous wedding cake farther down.)

Yes, that is my grandma’s macaroni and cheese.  All of my friends are familiar with this already, since I make it every chance I get.

It seems like no one got pictures of the actual dinner at Thirteen Moons Restaurant, which was really delicious.  However, we are overrun with photos of cake, cake and more cake.  My uncle went overboard, and I love it…everything was moist and delicious as well as beautiful.  The main cake is a traditional wedding cake with raspberry filling.  There were carrot cake cupcakes and german chocolate cupcakes along with a german chocolate mini-layer cake.

And little boxes (filled by Hicania!) with red and yellow M&Ms along with some other fun candy.

The “M” was sparkly and wonderful!

The food not pictured included prime rib, salmon, chicken, pasta, veggies, grouper and a side salad with a white balsamic honey vinaigrette that I really want to replicate. 

On Tuesday, Matt and I returned to Thirteen Moons to try some more of their food while not quite so busy with hugs and pictures.  It was a spectacular first dinner out together as a married couple…we ordered Sake Marinated Chilean Sea Bass with baby bok choy and a coconut saffron beurre blanc and Iron Flashed Buffalo Sirloin with horseradish whipped potatoes and truffled demi glace.  Both were outstanding.  Matt started with a repeat of Sunday’s salad and I had the Thai Shrimp Soup, which was delicious, but crazy spicy. 

Of course, on the drive back to the airport, we stopped at Chik-Fil-A for lunch. Our NC wedding weekend was complete.

Well….

We moved into a new house! We have surprisingly few pictures of it…but it’s wonderful!  We have three bedrooms, a gorgeous and light-filled living area, a fully fenced backyard and a 10 minute drive to work for me!

We bought a shiny new car! Matt’s lease on our Honda was up, and I wasn’t particularly fond of it.  The Mazda 3 is lovely, sporty, and took us on a super fun road trip to Portland for Matt’s birthday…

And to a Seattle Sounders game!

We have cooked…and eaten…a LOT!  The following pictures only make up a couple months (if that) of the last half a year.  It has been delicious.

Need to know what any of those are?  Ask me and I’ll try to figure it out…I have been pretty lazy about keeping track of things we cook lately.  Included above…a vegetable chickpea curry with paneer, pumpkin lasagne rolls, seared scallops, bean and corn tortilla “pizza”, roasted corn tilapia, homemade Cincinnati-style chili (!!!!) on top of Cook’s Illustrated-style hash browns with eggs and cheese for breakfast, ham dinner for Easter, coconut crusted something….it was all really spectacular. 

I went on an amazingly relaxing celebratory cruise

with this lovely new Doctor of Veterinary Medicine:

We cruised in the Bahamas for 5 days, maybe?  In honor of Veronica’s graduation from vet school and my newly-engaged status, we escaped from everything for a few days and got caught up on each other from the last four years.  We need this more often. 

Oh…there was also the small matter of this:

Complete, spectacular happiness.  It turns out planning a small wedding for family and a tiny handful of close friends is a shit ton of work.  Who knew?  Also, we were in NC, so there was sweet tea, chik-fil-a and actual summer weather (we have seen very little of that in Seattle this year)! It all turned out to be really fabulous…with the help of an unbelievably adorable and excited mom, a maid of honor/best girlfriend who kicked butt on the actual wedding day, a lovely lawyer/online-ordained minister friend who helped us create the perfect ceremony, very excited Seattle friends who were more than happy to help me plan all of the details in the middle of the work day, and of course a partner who was really eager to help and smart enough to stay out of the way when necessary. 

Any wedding-planning friends out there, it is so so worth it. Even though there were several points during the weekend when I turned to Matt and said “the next time we get married, we are not doing it this way at all!”  Mr. Wonderful Ross kept me sane through the whole process by saying things like “This is your day! You can’t do it wrong! Your job is to be beautiful and everything else will be perfect! You need to learn to delegate!” My one piece of wedding advice…find someone to tell you these things constantly!

I’m back on the road for work again soon and without wedding planning looming over me, I promise I will try to be more bloggy. 

For a really wonderful veggie meal that makes amazing leftovers for several nights, uses up random vegetables in the fridge, and provides a really comfort-food level of satisfaction, this gratin is a great choice.

I started with a couple different recipes, and can’t remember exactly what I ended up doing (the danger of waiting months to post these things).  The veggies used: potatoes, onions, sunchoke (jerusalem artichokes), carrots and zucchini. 

They all got sliced thin and layered (with cheese).  Some liquid (a milk mixture, I’m sure) gets poured down through the veggies, and then it’s all topped with a seasoned breadcrumb mix.  I’m pretty sure I just used a basic gratin recipe from Better Homes & Gardens and switched up the vegetables based on what I had.  Keep in mind that some veggies that you might add (zucchini, tomatoes, eggplant?) might provide more  liquid, while root veggies like potatoes, carrots, etc. will soak up more liquid….adjust the amount of milk/broth/liquid accordingly.  Bake it up until everything is tender and cooked through.  We had this a couple times as a whole meal and it was really satisfying.  We also enjoyed it as a side (and I took some to work for lunches as well).  Wonderful all around.  And a great way to get random vegetables out of your fridge.

Although it doesn’t really dish up so well, you can see the pretty layers at least a little bit…

I think we preferred one of the middle syrups, but can’t remember which for sure.

Santana was intrigued (as she always is when we’re eating at the table), and was sporting her new holiday sweater & fancy Hawaiian collar that she got in her stocking! 

The coffee was an anniversary surprise from Matt’s favorite coffee place in Seattle…Caffe Vita.  Now two and a half months later, we’ve just finished the first bag (Caffe Luna blend), so we’ll be starting the Holiday Blend in March.

The waffles we made came from AB’s I’m Just Here for More Food, and were spectacular.  Instead of paring down the recipe, we made about 18 waffles and froze the 12 or so that we didn’t eat.  They have been wonderful homemade frozen waffles ever since then.  They were thin and crispy and very very tasty.  Not your typical waffle batter, but very delicious and froze really well.  Here is our gigantic stack.

Matt loves his coffee and waffles!

Santana may or may not have had a bite of waffle.  We’ll never know!