New England Hurricanes

We're about an hour from any coastline here (straight south is the Long Island Sound, straight east is cape cod, and southeast is Narragansett Bay), but we spent today preparing and then waiting for Hurricane Irene.

I'm no stranger to hurricanes, growing up in Hartford, CT, but it has been quite a while since we were worried about one. We didn't do all that much: all the outside stuff came in, we cleaned out the garage so my car could fit in it, we filled nalgene bottles with water, got out all flashlights and some candles, found the matches, but after that, we sat back and watched the weather channel. And waited.

And waited.

And then it was cocktail time. What better cocktail to have while waiting for the hurricane, than a hurricane?

New England Hurricane

serves 2

adapted from various websites, including wikipedia

1/2 cup dark rum

1/2 cup light rum

1/2 cup blueberry juice

1oz grenadine

2oz lime juice

Mix the ingredients together, pour over a highball glass (or Lilly Pulitzer tumbler) filled with ice. Enjoy, and hope that you've already battened down the hatches before cocktail time!

Snow

A few posts down there's a picture of our house after a big snowstorm.
This picture, actually.


Well, that's nothing.

Here's Clint trying to get our paper (why did our papergirl throw it in the yard? That was mean.) You can't see the paper, it's been covered with snow.

Clint after our attempt to remove the 4x4x6ft pile of snow in our driveway (the plows have nasty senses of humor)

A domestic, TDL weekend

TDL = to-do list.

We had one, and we did things on it. I wish I had photos, before/after style.

1. We cleaned/unpacked. At the top of the list was bedroom, guest room (guest coming tomorrow), kitchen. Also on the list was to clean (vacuum, dust, bathrooms), and unpack the office, and maybe the dining room. And... success!
Bedroom: completely unpacked, just needs some more furniture (not sure what just yet- but there's a ton of empty space)
Guest room: contains 4 boxes of craft supplies, otherwise unpacked! It also needs furniture, a bureau is on its way
Kitchen: all unpacked! some cabinet reorganization is necessary, and to purchase a free-standing cabinet or shelf thing
Dining room: unpacked! Requires 3 pieces of furniture, one's on its way, the other 2 still need to be purchased
Office: well... it'll be done by the end of the week- the new desk's not due in til friday anyway.
Living room and den: they'll get there. We seriously need bookcases to finish off the living room, and small tables. The den currently serves as wedding/shower gift storage.

2. We cooked, in the style of a married couple. This will sound odd, coming from me, but all of a sudden, on Saturday, the idea of cooking dinner completely terrified me (I was also sick). I bake all the time, and I love to cook, but when I cook dinner, it's a big, gourmet production. I don't cook simple things that can be done on any normal old weekday night. And I thought, what happens when I have kids?!? Kids actually have to eat, they can't get by with a bowl of cereal or cheese and crackers and a piece of pie for dinner. So I got out my only Rachael Ray cookbook, and made, with reasonable success (we didn't have enough couscous to soak up the liquid, so it was soupy), sweet and spicy chicken and couscous pot. And it was good- we both had seconds, and looked forward to lunch the next day. Yesterday I then made a cashew chicken and sweet potato curry with curried quinoa. We lacked a green food item, tonight I'll add some steamed asparagus when we finish off the leftovers. Both of these dinners took us about 1.5 hrs to make, but most of that time was spent thawing the chicken or waiting for it to cook, so if we can get a little more stream-lined, I think we're good. (and now we're both looking forward to lunch and dinner today :) ) So I think I need to get another RR cookbook (how strange is it that, with all the cooking I've done, I've never made a 30 minute meal?) and peruse my Everyday Food mags, all with sticky tabs in hand, and mark the heck of these books so I can get some good, quick recipes. We'll work on making them kid-friendly (i.e. kids probably won't like the kind of flavors we like) when we actually need them to be.

3. We worked hard on the wedding thank you notes. I hate that we're not done, 5 weeks after the wedding, but finally, we're nearly there. I have 1 more and Clint has 10 more, and we have to address 90 or so of them. But since I wrote about 75 of the notes, Clint will address more than half of them (he also has much better handwriting than I do).

And I hardly knit at all. I did the kitchener stitch on 16 stitches to finish a sock, and cast on and knit 8 rows of a baby sweater. but the best part of the weekend was that I slept in, wore sweatpants and no makeup, and didn't set foot out of the house (except to get the mail on Saturday) the entire weekend. I haven't had a weekend like this in at least a year.

To-do lists and planning

In our last installment, I showed you pictures of my new kitchen. And promised you more. Well, those pictures have yet to be taken, must less posted, but I did host my first party in our new house this weekend: my bachelorette party. The b-lette included such foods as cupcakes from Kickass Cupcakes in Somerville (very good, especially the super dark chocolate frosting), cookies of unmentionable shapes, and my new favorite snack food, pita chips (I especially love the cinnamon sugar and the sea salt, and hope to try the Tuscan herb next). The b-lette after leaving my house included delicious tapas, sangria, and sparkling rose.

My wedding is in 19 days, but I prefer to think of it as the number of items left on my to-do list away, which currently is 41 things (I must be forgetting something). I had great plans to blog about my wedding planning, which I thought would be great to have, and read over later, but I've done a horrendous job of keeping it up. I guess I was a bit busier than I expected.

Lately, though, instead of thinking of wedding and planning and assembling programs and wrapping gifts and writing thank you notes, I'm bookmarking and printing out recipes.... recipes to make after the wedding, when I have time! Is that bad?

Some examples:
gumdrops
baklava
fried ice cream (assuming we get the deep fryer off our registry)
bread- just bread in general.

And I'm looking forward to eating cheese fondue again- I haven't had it in 7 months, which I'm sure is the main reason my predicted-to-be-too-small wedding dress is too big.

Oh, by the way...

I moved! I guess I forgot to mention that.

Our move has all the usual closing date frustration and utilities not working, which I could share, but the only pertinent bit about our house is

I HAVE MY OWN KITCHEN.

It's a lovely kitchen. The appliances are all fairly new (extremely new and fancy and shiny, compared to my condo), there is a decent amount of storage space (the pantry's paltry, but we can work around it), and I have an island. Oh, how I love islands. Regular countertops tend to be fairly shallow, and always full of stuff that has to sit upon them. But islands are big, and spacious, and empty. They're workspaces that are dedicated workspaces, not something to clear off every time you need it. And it's mineallmine.
Mine.

These pictures were taken the first couple days we lived in the house (now it's been almost a month, although only about 1/3 of our belongings are actually in the house yet), when nothing ws really put away. I will take some more detailed pictures, to give a thorough tour of My Room. (the cat also has her own room, although Clint hasn't chosen one yet- probably the sunroom, which will have the tv, PS2 and card/boardgame table).We're very happy to be there, as you can see. Also note the nice light fixture above the island: the previous owners kind of were chandelier people, so we have this one in the kitchen, kind of a similar style, but more formal, in the dining room, and another similar style/formalness in a lighter color in the screen porch. Not to mention the smaller, yet still notable, light fixtures in the hallways and living room (the ones in the bedroom appear to have been installed in the '70s... and we'll be changing those eventually).

Also note the glass cabinet: this is for our every day china. It's not in there yet, because right now our wine glasses are in those cabinets. We need to do some rearranging still.


My island. :) It's much less covered in stuff right now, I'm trying to have it only have a cutting board (the glass one that you see in this photo) and a bowl of fruit. Where you see the green plastic bag with cereal: that is this interesting little shelf, presumably for large electronics, such as a stand mixer, or blender, etc. There's another shelf on the other side, which Pansy claimed as her spot- so her food goes there. (I was pleased that she claimed it, since I'd planned to put her stuff there, anyway. but she hopped up and sat there often enough to prevent putting anything there- it's raised maybe 4 inches from the ground, and that's about how far off the ground she perfers to be.)
This is my oven. Nice and shiny... it's one of those glass cooktop electric stoves, so far, so good, but we're probably going to switch to gas at some point. We have gas heat/hot water, so it should be fairly straight-forward to switch. Someone has already claimed our oven. Oh.. hey, is there something in the oven?

Oh, it was a pork wellington, for our first meal together in our new house! (You have to try this recipe, if you like pork)

Pork Wellington (by Alton Brown)

a 1lb pork tenderloin
4.5 oz of thinly-sliced prosciutto
1-2oz dried apples, finely diced or chopped in a mini food processor
salt and pepper
1t chopped fresh thyme
1T whole-grain mustard
1 sheet puff pastry, thawed
flour to roll out pastry
egg and water for egg wash

This pork tenderloin is stuffed with dried apples, wrapped in prosciutto and then wrapped in puff pastry. It's a serious entree.

Slice into the pork tenderloin (lengthwise) almost all the way through. Stuff in the inside with the dried apples, and fold closed. On a sheet of parchment paper, lay the prosciutto out, overlapping the pieces, to make a column slightly longer than the tenderloin, and wide enough to wrap around the tenderloin. Place the tenderloin on top of the prosciutto, and using the parchment paper, wrap the prosciutto tightly around the pork. Roll out the thawed puff pastry to be longer than the tenderloin, and spread down the middle (lengthwise) with mustard, and sprinkle with thyme, salt and pepper. Place the tenderloin on top of the puff pastry, and wrap the pastry around it, folding it under at the ends. Brush the puff pastry with the egg wash (one egg + 1T water)- or not, but it's prettier with the egg wash.

Bake in a preheated 400oF oven for 25-30 minutes, until the middle of the pork reads 140oF on a meat thermometer. I baked this in a parchment-lined 9x13 glass dish, and I'd recommend baking it in a roasting pan with a rack- my pastry got a little soggy from the juices from the pork.

And you don't need to serve it with anything, it's amazing on its own. (I just added a simple salad and steamed asparagus)

My absense...

Sorry for the lack of posts! I have been cooking very little. I'll get some pictures up soon, of 94 cupcakes that I frosted last Friday, and some other tastiness.

I've been knitting a bit, mittens for mom and baby blankets and sweaters for people. I'm going to finish all the baby knitting and then get on some mittens for myself.

But the main thing I've been doing is packing! I'm moving in a week and a half. I don't have an apartment yet, so I'll be staying with a cousin who has room to spare, probably for a month. I'll continue to look for an apartment and hopefully be able to move in around March 1st.

I hate packing. How in the world did I accumulate so much stuff?? Sigh.