It’s hard to believe that Thanksgiving has come and gone and the holiday season is truly upon us. How did this happen already? I think I am starting to understand those people that just leave the Christmas lights up all year round… seems like it’s always time for them again. But anyways, I’ll save the redneck tendencies for another blog post.
We started our long weekend enjoying a full thanksgiving dinner together with both sets of our parents, our sisters, brothers, and aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was the last Thanksgiving celebration at Ivory Road before my parents finally finish packing up and selling the house for their big move. So hard to believe. I wish that the Alaskans could have made it home, but they were busy enjoying their moose meat! And they’ll be home in almost a week, so we can wait until then. We did the usual football watching, nibbling on homemade chex mix, napping on and off, and then went for a good, long walk before dinner in the unseasonably warm weather. The best part of the day was all the story-telling. The worst part was the lack of table-cloth and napkins that had already been packed up — way to go, Mom.
On Friday, we made the drive up to Delaware to spend some more time relaxing, eating, trimming the Steenhoek Christmas tree, and doing a little bit of shopping. I guess we’ve been making that drive for about 5 or 6 years now, and though I normally hate being on the road in holiday traffic, there is still something comforting about settling into the car together for 2 hours and making our way up 95. Usually we are pretty quiet as far as conversation, just Matt silently putting up with my singing along to every country song on the radio. I keep waiting for the year when he finally snaps and tells me his ear drums just can’t take it any longer. But until then, it’s just enjoying the miles going by while Bowser naps in the lap of whoever gets the passenger seat. This year, as I was belting out the Keith Urban, I was also mentally making a list of all the things I am thankful for: It goes without saying that our family and friends would be the top of that list. We are so lucky to have families nearby that we see often, and friends that we’ve known for decades, but also lots of new ones that we’ve met while living in DC. I would also add to that list our cuddly Bowser-dog (currently snoring away in the corner), who brings a smile and a slobber to my face without fail every single morning. Also on my thankful list is a house that we are working on making a home, a new business venture starting out well, bicycles to ride, lots of trips and travels both past and coming up, giant marshmellows on sweet potatoes… and… I could go on, and on. I’m thankful to have so many things to put on my list.
On Saturday, I did my bit supporting a small business in Newark with a $3 purchase. I can’t tell you what the gift is, but I will say it involves tacos and is for a very dedicated reader of this blog. Also, Matt purchased a lemonade from the local coffee shop for $1.50… so for a grand total spent of $4.50, TAKE THAT Black Friday. In the afternoon, we drove back to Maryland in time for my 10-year High School Reunion at Circle-D Farm. It was an interesting night, catching up with some old friends and trying to gauge just how much everyone has changed. Lots of new spouses, babies, jobs… Amazing how fast that time went by and suddenly we’re all almost 30 years old.
Today, Sunday, the last day of a four-day weekend is always tough. We did a fair bit of “yard”work cleaning up the leaves around our front and back this morning. We took out the Christmas boxes, and strung up red lights around the front yard. I promised that I wouldn’t turn them on until Decemeber 1st, and that I just wanted to put them up while it was so warm and beautiful out today, but I lied, and they are on tonight. Our neighbor stopped by to see what we were up to while Matt was up on the ladder, saying he was “sizing up the competition” — I can’t wait for his light display to go up now and start turning our street into a lovely Christmas wonderland. Ahhh..
This afternoon, we continued putting off schoolwork by taking a bike ride down to Gravelly Point, stopping first at Paul to pick up some treats. Matt had purchased a picnic basket awhile back at a flea market for $10, and it fit PERFECTLY into the front of his bike rack, so I made him promise me a real picnic sometime soon, and he delivered. We had croque-monsieurs and macaroons while we watched the sun set and the planes roll in overhead to Reagan National Airport. Probably more planes than ususal at the end of a travel-heavy weekend. It was pretty much the perfect end to a perfect weekend. Thanks for reading this, I hope you had a happy thanksgiving!
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October 20th, 2011
We finally tried Taste of Jamaica on H St the other night for dinner. While we were waiting, we were checking out all paper money from around the world that they have posted on the glass of the ordering window. There are a few coins taped on there, too. It pretty much put my dad’s foreign money collection to shame. We tried counting the number of different currencies that we had come into contact with, ie how many of the countries we had visited… I think we accounted for maybe only 6 or 7 of them. Moral of the dinner outing = we need to plan another trip!!
Travel wishes aside, we ended up getting takeout – curry chicken and jerk chicken. It came with a ton of rice and veggies, and loaded with delicious spices. It made our noses run it was so good. Next time, we could probably have split one platter, there was so much food. Highly recommend. Hmm, maybe we should go to Jamaica…
Yesterday we checked out the H Street Festival and all the eye-candy it had to offer. It was PERFECT fall festival weather – cool and comfortable. We ate some delicious street vendor food, ran into lots of friends and neighbors, and enjoyed all of the people and dog watching. Love this neighborhood!
the Atlas Armada ran up and down the streetcar tracks. human-powered!
one of the many decorated cars on display. how awesome is that paint job?
(and with “taxation without representation” tags, no less)
Growing up, birthday dinners* were always a big deal in our house. You could order whatever you wanted to have and mom would make it. So, for 2 siblings plus myself, all with summer birthdays at home for approximately 18 years.. if you do the math, that’s about 54 unique birthday dinners we could have had. Yet, we all always chose the same thing — steamed, spiced shrimp and a side of cantaloupe! And sometimes corn-on-the-cob. It was a pretty big faux pas the year (I think?) I tried to order roast beef for my birthday dinner. The family was secretly pissed off at me for the shrimp-deprival that July. There was another time that Jill tried to switch things up and do a bushel of crabs, and I don’t think that went over well either. Even though we’re all old now and moved out of the house, we still carry the shrimp tradition on whenever possible.
SO ANYWAYS! When Matt turned 28 this past week, I offered to make him a birthday dinner of whatever he wanted. He had class that day until 9pm, so we figured it would be better to stay in and have a special meal. He had a pretty simple request — grilled cheese and rice pudding. That would definitely have gotten the major thumbs down in our household as kids, but I was pretty glad to make him those things because the birthday person gets to choose!! And also, it didn’t hurt that they are some of my favorites too.
For the grilled cheese, I went with a combination of Sourdough bread, fontina and mozzarella cheese, prosciutto, and bartlett pear. Yeah, it was as good as it sounds like it would be. Yummy melty goodness. For dessert, the rice pudding turned out pretty good too, for something I had never made before. Instead of putting raisins in it, we sprinkled a little cinnamon on top and voila! Much easier than making a cake!
*Somewhere recently this started turning into somewhat of a foodie blog. I’m not sure how it happened. I hope you don’t mind.
What’s the best part about having a pastry chef for a sister? Fresh wedding cake for our one-year anniversary! Jill decided to completely spoil us by recreating our exact wedding cake, purple funfetti and all, for our first anniversary. (For those keeping track, it’s actually a little bit past one year by now since we were married in May, but we had to schedule it for a time when we were both around to meet up of course). It was a nice treat to actually sit together and eat our wedding cake, since the piece that Matt fed me that night was such a blur that I really don’t remember if it even tasted good… though I’m sure it did. Thanks Jill!
“Make No Small Plans” is a quote by American architect and urban planner Daniel Burnham. It is sometimes written as “make no little plans” but I’ve seen it both ways, with the full quote as “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized.” Either way, the words were attributed to Burnham following his death, so there is no actual proof that they were ever even uttered by him anyways. Regardless, I remember reading them around the time we were wedding planning and thought they were pretty fitting for us and the life we are planning.
What a fantastic weekend! On Saturday morning we ran the inaugural Met Branch 5k. It was a pretty rainy, misty mess, but everyone was still in good spirits for the quick, 3.1 mile run. Afterwards, we treated ourselves to some Crunkcakes at the H Street Bake Sale outside of the Argonaut. Boozy cupcakes = brilliant! We popped by the Farmers Market as well, and picked up some kettle-popcorn hot off the cauldron, apples, and some fresh rhubarb. Then we had an actual breakfast at the Cap City Diner, biked over to Chinatown to do some shopping at Urban Outfitters, and finally came home to relax around the house.
Today, we checked out The Taco Experiment at Rock and Roll Hotel with JJ and Jaime. What a great concept! We tasted 26 bite-sized tacos that ranged from your basic pulled pork in a tortilla shell, to sweet potato tacos, dessert tacos, pork-belly tacos (not a fan), duck tacos, and every combination in-between. In the end, I cast my ballot vote for The Tacosaurus taco, which was a combination of beef, guacamole, and a delicious orange-colored sauce. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures, mostly because we were too busy scarfing down tacos, and I didn’t have any free hands. But picture the most delicious looking tacos you can think of, and that’s what it looked like.
Mr. Wilson
This afternoon, Matt decided to paint the outside of our fence with the random leftover paint colors we have stacked in our storage closet. He only got about half-way done before the rain came, so the rest of the painting is to-be-continued. Updated pictures to follow.
Meanwhile, I attempted to make a strawberry-rhubarb pie. Not sure I even had the right kind of rhubarb for this — it was very green, and I thought it was supposed to be red — but I went for it anyways. The result was pretty-looking, but a little on the soggy side. Oh well.
rhubarb
+ strawberries + sugar + flour + butter + crust… (here’s the actual recipe)
=PIE
…and lastly, Bowser was sleepy after a long weekend of playing with Tiki dog.
Now that I’m wrapping up this post, I realized it was a very food-centric weekend. Not that I’m complaining!
So I didn’t really need an excuse to make a shrimp taco-salad themed dinner tonight, but at around noontime today, which is the time I usually start daydreaming about what to make for dinner, I realized it was cinco de mayo. Perfect! No mole in this recipe per se, but there is homemade guacamole. And margaritas, extra salt. Happy Cinco de Mayo!
One of the coolest wedding gifts we received was from our aunt, uncle, and cousins who live in Maine — a gift card for dinner delivery from Maine Lobster Direct. We decided it was time to finally redeem the certificate (can’t believe we waited almost a year!!), so we placed our order about a week ago, and then waited with anticipation for the box of deliciousness to arrive on our doorstep.
It was an interesting little process unpacking a cooler with live lobsters in it. Of course, we had to put them on the kitchen floor to “race,” as this is how the tradition always went as far as I can remember. When we were a little kids, many of their visits to us from Maine to Maryland also involved lobsters. Family and seafood would arrive together for a big get-together and dinner, and naturally the part I remember most was being allowed to put sea creatures on the kitchen floor and let them race around as we all yelled with excitement. I seem to remember my sister Jill always being assigned the most lethargic of the lobsters, but maybe I just made that part up. Anyways, explaining this tradition to Matt went ______…. I was going to say an adjective, but I’ll just say it went anyways.
So we put them on our floor for a bit and let the pets inspect them. There wasn’t much of a race really, just two lobsters shaking their legs out while Bowser wandered around confused about what to do. The cat was more interested, and made a few circles around them, probably interested by the smell of seafood and lucky (though unknown to her) that they still had rubber bands on their claws.
From there, the cooking process was as simple as adding two beers to the big steamer pot, and waiting 16 minutes for the lobsters to cook. The mussels were in for a shorter amount of time (8 minutes), and then voila! a delicious dinner for two.
We did the usual football watching, nibbling on homemade chex mix, napping on and off, and then went for a good, long walk before dinner in the unseasonably warm weather. The best part of the day was all the story-telling. The worst part was the lack of table-cloth and napkins that had already been packed up — way to go, Mom. 
