just for Mercedes

She and Ilya are in Spain right now, so I don't even know when she'll read this, but we made gazpacho for dinner tonight! About 1/4 of the tomatoes came from my bosses' garden, about 1/2 from the store, and the rest from our garden. There's some sort of tomato thief afoot at our house that eats or knocks down our tomatoes before they're ripe enough to pick. The gazpacho also has jalapenos and parsley from our garden. It's really, really delicious.

In other garden news, I have 2 watermelons growing! They're little and cute right now, and I'm super excited for them to grow and to eat them. We also have some more eggplants coming along, and another banana pepper has finally started growing. Not as good a haul as we were hoping when we started this project, but not bad for someone who can kill a plant just by looking at it, like me.

reaping what we've sown

We've used stuff from our garden in 2 meals this week! It's been pretty awesome. This Sunday I used a bunch of basil, oregano, and parsley in this turkey and vegetable casserole thing I made, and then yesterday we made this pasta, tomato, shrimp, and basil mix. Both meals were quite delicious. It's been fun being able to use stuff already. Not much is ready to pick and use, mainly just herbs and some tomatoes, but it's still cool. I can't wait for more stuff to be ripe enough to eat. Oh, and blueberries! We've picked and eaten like a couple dozen blueberries. It's awesome.

Speaking of the garden, it's growing out of control. Like seriously, the eggplant leaves are bigger than my head. The zucchini have overpowered the strawberries, though the strawberries seem to love it. I guess they like being in the shade, it keeps them cooler. It's pretty exciting that I have yet to kill anything.

In other news, it's starting to slow down a bit at work. Finally. After next week we're done with school groups; then we just have to figure out how to get some more tourists in to keep us busy. Otherwise I'll go crazy with boredom after a couple of weeks. People keep asking me if we're going to take another trip this summer. They say they need something to read.

There's probably more going on, but honestly, I've been working on this post for about an hour and can't come up with anything else. Luckily I have this entire weekend off from work, so hopefully we'll go have some adventures and I'll have something to write about.

Another weekend (nearly) gone. It's been a fairly productive one, which is sort of nice. Last week we had our first school groups since winter break, which was good, I needed something to do at work again. Not that I have nothing to do when there are no groups, there's just nothing I want to do. I made brown velvet cupcakes Thursday evening and took them in on Friday. They were brown instead of red due to the lack of food coloring. They tasted good. I had a few interviews too, with varying results.

Friday night we went to Ilya and Mercedes' house for dinner. They had a bunch of really good sushi grade tuna, so it was pretty yummy. Then we watched The Men Who Stare At Goats, which Mercedes and I slept through. Apparently it wasn't as good as Alfred and I had hoped. Saturday we spent far longer than anticipated cleaning the new house. The tile floors, specifically. But they are now clean(er) and sanitized and ready for things to be placed on top of them. The last big cleaning thing we have to do is the blinds, but someone didn't think we needed to bring the vacuum cleaner with us for that this weekend so they'll have to wait.

Today Alfred did a little bit of cleaning and organizing in the garage, while I mostly sat around and was useless. I did exercise and go grocery shopping, so at least I left the house. We also watched the G.I. Joe movie, which probably would have been better if I was a 13 year old boy, but at least the line "knowing is half the battle" was included, which got me pretty fired up (I am a child of the 80s, after all). And "yo Joe." But not "got to get tough," or "real American heroes," but hey, I'm not complaining. Maybe they'll be in the sequel that is so clearly going to be made.

lazy Saturday

Our first non-working (for me) weekend at home in quite awhile. It's been great so far! I didn't get out of my pajamas until about 6:30pm, and then it was to exercise, shower, and put on new pajamas. So, pretty fly. We've done a whole lot of not much today, which has included watching a movie (Julie and Julia, which we both enjoyed), doing some organizing and cleaning in the office, and grocery shopping (for Alfred). Sometimes, it's just really nice to sit around and relax. It didn't help that it's been cold and dreary all day, which really doesn't inspire outside activity. Right now Alfred's making me hamburgers for dinner. We forgot to put Heinz 57 on the list, so I have none. Yes Michael, I could go up on piggy back and cruise the store in my socks, then sprint back home carrying a case of beer which I could then drop in the middle of the road, causing half the bottles to shatter. Ah, memories. Our lives have been severely power hour deficient since you moved.

Also, I have a few more quick movie reviews to add, in addition to Julie and Julia. Zombieland was really funny, especially the Ghostbuster-related parts in the middle. Whip It was good too, though Alfred didn't like it as much as I did. That seems to be a theme with our movie reviews in general, no?

One last note: I apologize for the lack of interesting pictures to go along with these posts lately. Alfred moved all of our pictures to an external hard drive awhile back, so in order to use any old pictures I have to hook that up and I really am not entirely clear on how to do it. Or where that hard drive is kept. Also, we haven't been taking pictures lately. Mainly because we haven't been doing many photo worthy activities. We'll work on that, maybe. Time for dinner!

we've found a better maid

This maid only comes once a week, and the day he comes tends to change from one week to the next, but today when I came home from work all the dishes were done and a delicious dinner of fish ceviche was waiting for me! Someone's laundry hasn't been put away yet, but the ceviche made up for it. Plus he watched last night's So You Think You Can Dance with me (which was not great, by the way). What a guy.

In other news, it's Veteran's Day. Here's a picture to dispel the solemn, honorable mental image that phrase might conjure up for you. Yes, this fine young knight is off defending our country. Go visit Mike's blog for a up close and personal view of his life in the army. This picture makes me want a beer.

On another totally unrelated note... one of the reasons we live in Florida is no longer alive. Back in summer 2002, Alfred moved to Washington DC after he graduated college. I was all psyched to join him after I graduated the next year. And then the sniper thing started. You may remember the month or so that fall when people living in the DC area were basically terrified to go outside because of the random sniper attacks taking place. It was one of the things that made Alfred decide to move back to Florida. Well, last night one of the snipers was executed. The other one is serving a life sentence. And I didn't get to move to DC. Jerks.

rib off!

(No pictures today, unfortunately we had no camera this Sunday because I had accidentally left it at Ilya and Mercedes' house. My bad.) This past Sunday we had a big event: the first ever Meat Off competition between Alfred and Kevin. They both have smokers, and when we were at Universal a few weeks back they got to talking and came up with the great idea to have competitions to see who's best at preparing various meat products. The first competition was ribs. Alfred makes some awesome ribs, but he was doubting himself a bit. He even tried a totally new recipe a week or so before the Rib Off, but it kind of sucked so he ended up going with his old standby for the competition. Anyway, I/we spent Sunday morning cooking: he started his ribs and helped with the cole slaw, and I finished the cole slaw and made cornbread and macaroni and cheese.

The rib off was at Kevin and Gara's house, and they had invited a whole crew to help us eat and judge. In the end I think there were about 12 people there. We watched the Jaguars game technically, but they played so badly that by the end only 1 person was paying any attention. I was a little worried we wouldn't have enough food, but in the end we had a ton of ribs, pulled pork, our sides, baked beans, cupcakes, and Oreo cheesecake (which was flipping amazing). And lots of beer. And tequila. And I think some rum and vodka. I managed to get away with only 1 tequila shot, plus several beers, while Alfred enjoyed at least 5 shots of tequila and God knows how many beers. Yeah, he was still drunk the next morning. I imagine Lucy had to prepare some formula for Ellie that night. They were playing that stupid game where you hit the top of someone's beer bottle with the bottom of yours and make their beer foam up, and glass ended up everywhere. I say "they" because I hate that game and steered clear. There was a dance party in the living room at one point; someone hit their head on the light fixture on the ceiling. It was really a lot of fun, hanging out with friends and eating a ton of good food. The cheesecake and mac and cheese were fan favorites, and as far as the ribs were concerned, general consensus was that Alfred's ribs edged out Kevin's. Which is good, because I kind of told him I wouldn't love him anymore if I didn't like his ribs better. But I did, so our marriage is safe. For now.... I hear Kevin makes a mean pork shoulder.

ah, fall

I've decided that I really like fall. I like when the weather starts to cool off and the humidity drops. I like that work starts to get a little busy: busy enough to give me something to do so I'm not bored, but not so busy that I go crazy. And I like that football is on and we spend all day cooking! Yesterday we hit the farmers market and had all these plans for food to make to eat during the Jaguars game. Unfortunately the Jaguars aren't playing this week, so that plan sort of fell through, so instead we watched the Vikings game for Mike. Pretty good game, especially the fourth quarter, though I must admit I slept through some of it. All that eating wore me out.

We started our day with a smoothie for breakfast (didn't want to weigh ourselves down too early). Then we got cracking with the food. We made 2 dips: 1 with eggplant and 1 with spinach and cannellini beans. Both were awesome. To go along with these dips we attempted to make some butternut squash chips. We do this with both squash and sweet potato fairly regularly, but for some reason it totally didn't work today. So we ended up with some kind of mushy baked squash pieces. Still tasted good. Luckily we had also decided to make some pita bread to have with our dip. Yup, pita bread! From scratch! It was awesome!

You roll the dough out really thin and then they puff right up in the oven. So cool. They were yummy, too. Now I totally want to have a Mediterranean dinner party.

After the game (and my nap) we had one more kitchen task for the day: roasting chicken. Yes, we're currently roasting 2 chickens in the oven. One's just your basic roast chicken, with garlic and lemon, and the other one has a Caribbean rub and basting sauce. I'm not so sure we'll be hungry enough to eat much chicken tonight, but that's ok. It just means we'll have food ready to go for dinners this week. We have big plans to make some chicken salad to eat in our leftover pitas. Anyway, our kitchen is clearly a bit of a disaster right now, as can be seen in this picture. Alfred tried his best to get out of the frame. Ha! Got him!

I just remembered the other reason I like fall: cranberries are in season! Last year we found this amazing cranberry chutney recipe, not realizing that we were at the end of cranberry season. So we've been waiting months for fresh cranberries to be at the store again. We made our first batch yesterday. It's so damn good. I might have to go sneak a spoonful right now.

bonus birthday pics

Alfred's back home tonight, with both the internet card and pictures. So here are a few more photos from his birthday weekend. First up: Wilbur! This was taken about 2/3 of the way through the smoking process. His head is on the left. Note the arm bone poking through his skin.

Then, Bessie's head. This is just after it was taken out of the smoker. Its teeth are towards the right, that big black hole towards the left is the eyeball.

Another shot of the cow's head, this time with its mouth open, meat being torn off.

The birthday boy, happily loading his plate.

A shot of some of the non-meat based food.

And, for good measure, an upside down baby!

preparation

Alfred's birthday is on Sunday, but since everyone we know is too busy to celebrate on his actual birthday, we're doing it up tomorrow. We're smoking an entire pig, a couple of pork shoulders, a couple of chickens, and a cow's head. Yeah, not sure whose idea the head was, but we'll see how it goes. They just cut the tongue out and are prepping the rest of the head. It's huge! (That's what she said!)

Alfred and I are house sitting this weekend still, so we're over at his parents' house tonight to help get things ready for tomorrow. Mercedes and Ilya came over too, and we've been working (more or less) for the past few hours. I made 4 (yup, 4) pecan pies, Mercedes tackled the fudge, Robyn and Alfred collaborated on the cole slaw, Robyn's been making some secret sauces, and Alfred and Max have been seasoning meat. There's a massive pot of boiled peanuts cooling on the stove. The gigantic smoker that we're borrowing is heating up outside. We're putting the meat on tonight and smoking it all night long so it's done in time for lunch tomorrow. It's going to be a heck of a Cracker (Florida pioneer) feast!

We've also been doing a bit of eating and drinking tonight. Alfred has discovered the wonders of Bold City brewery and bought a growler today for us to all sample. He also got to open his gift from Ilya and Mercedes: 27 pounds of peanuts! The boy's a peanut eating fool.

Tomorrow should be pretty exciting. We're going to have enough food to feed an army. Good blog fodder!

return of the weekend cooking fest

This was supposed to be our first weekend home together since about June. So of course my boss called me at about 3:00 on Friday afternoon and asked if I would come in Saturday morning to meet a bigwig who was coming to see the museum with his wife and kids. So of course I had to go in. I was only there for a few hours, which wasn't too bad, and my job ended up being to entertain their twin 3 year old boys. They weren't too sure of me at first, but after showing them an alligator and letting them play a drum, we were old friends. I went in at one point to get everyone bottles of water and the boys followed me, even though my boss tried to lure them away. I didn't get invited to lunch with them, but I got a three year old high five at least. Not bad.

We made sure to get up early enough to go to the farmers market and stock up for the week. After I got home from work, we came up with meals for the week, made a shopping list, then started moving furniture. Obviously. I think it was sometime around then that Alfred got a text from Billy's wife asking if we would house sit all this coming week. It's been awhile since we house sat for them, but it's pretty standard for them to ask us about 24 hours in advance of when they need us. So I guess this was more notice than usual, actually! However, it meant that our week's worth of meals was going to have to be prepared this weekend. So that's what we did today.

We started this morning off by shopping, then got to work cooking. We had a whole mess of vegetables and defrosted meat to use and needed to be as efficient as possible in our recipes. So we ended up making an arm roast in the slow cooker, an oxtail stew and roasted red pepper soup on the stove, and cucumber salad. We just ate the soup for dinner (pretty good), wrapped up the cucumber salad, and are still cooking the other two. Hm, it felt like a lot more work when we were actually doing it. Unfortunately we sort of forgot about taking pictures, so this one is from our first dinner of our trip, in Mobile. Also, we discovered at some point of the day that we somehow get Bravo, so I recorded a couple episodes of Top Chef, which we're watching now. What a foodie weekend!

I can photoshop drunk!

Mike has this peculiar love of doing yard work when he's at our house. We're putting him to work this weekend, since we don't know when he'll be back.

Right now we're in the midst of a controlled burn of a section of crap by the dock. I'm staying up on the porch, far away from the spreading flames. I'm also drunk enough to not be freaking out about raging fire in the middle of our yard. It's better that way.

Mike's currently down by the water, throwing random flaming objects up onto the main part of the fire. Not asking questions. He and Alfred worked on the yard for awhile yesterday, and we've been burning shit like crazy. Doesn't it look nice? Go here for a look at the before (Alfred's computer is off, which severely limits my picture access).


We finished our second power hour of the weekend about half an hour ago. I didn't go full out, but the boys did. We've got ribs in the oven and big plans for another power hour later this evening. Also, I made the best pizza ever last night. I discovered the secret, which I shall not divulge in such a public forum. If anyone's interested, they'll just have to visit us to try it and see for themselves!

it's back!

Briefly, at least. Obviously it went out again the other day after that short post, but right now it's back. I started writing this Sunday and hopefully it will post today. We'll see.

So what have we missed? All sorts of fun stuff! For one thing, we opened 2 new programs at the new museum last Thursday. I was insanely busy Wednesday through Friday, getting things ready and set up, and then making sure everything ran smoothly with groups. There were a few really long days, but in the end, everything went very well. Except for a slight mishap first thing Thursday morning: I smashed my thumb with a hammer. Hard.














It's doing better now, the swelling has gone down some and I can bend it almost all the way. The bruising is healing a bit already, too. It doesn't hurt to touch at least, but I can't put any pressure on it yet. It's interesting to see how often you use your left thumb. Toothpaste, for instance. And it's a good thing I cut my nails last week!

Friday was also Ella's sixth birthday! Mike sent me a picture of her with her cake that he took on his phone. Freaking cute. Damn kids, getting old.

This weekend was nice and calm, but productive. We made a whole mess of jam, since we still had some frozen strawberries from last spring, and they're on sale right now since they're in season.

We made strawberry kiwi, strawberry rhubarb, strawberry ginger, and strawberry apple. Now all we need is some more yogurt to eat it all with. The goat we get our yogurt making milk from should be producing again, so that's exciting. I think this weekend I'm going to make some bread to eat it with, too.

The last 2 nights we have had the most delicious, gorgeous salads for dinner, using lettuce that we bought from the farmers market. There's only 1 true local farmer there, and it's the lettuce/green leafy veggie guy. It was so good, I didn't even use dressing. Also, I'm listening to the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle in the car on my way home from work (mornings are for NPR) and I'm turning into a total hippie. I want to move to a farm.

Ok, I think we're pretty well caught up now. In case the internet doesn't work (assuming this posts), I may not post again till Saturday. I hope you can all hold out until then.

pictures!

Now you can get a visual to go with all those words from yesterday! Here we are in Mexico. Lucy got some dirty looks for carrying the extra margarita.

Norway. Apparently I was feeling the effects of the free margarita, cause I whipped out my tattoo in the middle of the store.

China:
Germany. I look completely trashed, but really wasn't all that drunk at this point. Tipsy maybe, and I had a bit of a stomach ache from my bratwurst, and was mad at the German waiters.

Italy. I think this is my favorite picture, it's the Dave and Face bunch! Face is third from the left, next to Lucy, and Dave is on the far right. I don't know the ninja's names, but they look like they're about to attack Alfred's crotch.

The United States. My favorite part of this one is the random Epcot employee on the right.

Japan. That's our friend Jeremy in the striped shirt and Jason on the right. I'm not really that short, I'm bending down a little so you can see Alfred. Those guys are extremely tall, though.

Morocco:

France. The camera was on the night time setting and flashed twice, so after the first flash everyone started moving. Those are some more Epcot employees with us.

England. Alfred set his beer down on the phone booth next to this one for the picture, and some little kid was playing right next to it. I don't think the kid's mother was amused.

Either there are no pictures from Africa and Canada, or they're so bad Lucy refused to send them to me. I'm not sure.

In other news, I played Suzi Homemaker tonight and made a couple batches of soup for the week. Pumpkin sweet potato and tomato vegetable with quinoa. I'm pretty zipped up about eating them later this week. I have to work late tomorrow, then have long days Thursday and Friday, so with the soup and a slow cooker meal we should be set. It's nice to not have to come home and cook after a long day.

free stuff!

It's been like a free stuff bonanza lately. Namely, free food. First, last week I went to Target and redeemed one of my free Dr. Pepper coupons from when they gave away Dr. Pepper for Guns n Roses releasing their CD. I still have one more to redeem, too. It's especially awesome since Dr. Pepper is one of my 2 favorite pops. The other is Coca Cola, because it is delicious and refreshing. It satisfies my umami cravings. I may have been brainwashed by the Coca Cola factory.

Second was the free breakfast Denny's gave out yesterday. Also awesome! I actually went with Kara for lunch, we stopped in a little before noon to put our names on the list, then went to the bank to make deposits, then came back to finish waiting. Total it took about 45 minutes for us to get seated, which I thought was pretty good considering how jammed it was. Then it was actually really fast to get our food, which isn't all that surprising considering they were just making the same thing over and over again. It was good though. The pancakes were nice and fluffy. Plus, since we both just got water, once we were finished the waitress just told us thanks and we were all set. Awesome!

Third, the Chick Fil A that was sort of giving out free food last week is giving out free breakfast items every Wednesday in February. This week was the chicken biscuit, which is my favorite, so I totally had to stop. I had to wait a bit but it was so worth it. I love those little chickeney bitches.

efficiency, thy name is Tracy

I've been working my little butt off making dinners for this week, so we won't have to cook after work. Alfred's not home, my game keeps crashing, my tv show doesn't start for another hour or so, and, well, I was feeling inspired. So I've been a cooking fool. My kitchen smells amazing right now, I wish there was a way to capture the smell because I would share it with you all and make you all jealous.

The closer pan contains sweet potato peanut soup, and the farther pan is beef and eggplant casserole (which I added zucchini to and subtracted bread crumbs from). Right now, the casserole is finished (except for baking) and in the fridge, and the soup is boiling away like crazy. And I'm sitting here eating tonight's dinner: English muffin pizzas. I've been carbo-loading while Alfred's been away. I should have let them toast a little longer before I put on the toppings. Oh dang, the battery just died on my mp3 player. Ok, one last picture before I get back to work on the soup:

This is the eggplant I used for the casserole. As you can see, it has a nice finger-like tumor protruding from it. I knew I had to have it as soon as I saw it. Both the cashier and bagger commented on it. And now it's sliced and smothered in beefy goodness. That's what she said!

colin farrell just made fun of Florida

I am proud to announce that our Christmas tree is still up. Yes, we've scraped by for another week. We did take down a few lights (only so we could return them, though), and I took down all of the other decorations around the house. I haven't put any of them away, of course. They're all sitting on the table in the kitchen. It's just too sad to take it all down at once. Plus I think we're going to need another Christmas box to store it all and I just don't feel inspired to find one and pack everything up. I was riding a wave of productivity when I took everything down, and once that left me, that was it.

Our Sunday was rather productive overall. I packaged up a couple of boxes to mail to Katie, we made a bunch of food to get me through the week, (Alfred's taking a real estate class and is spending several nights this week at his parents' house) oh and we had a freaking awesome dinner. We grilled a couple of steaks, cooked some swiss chard with parmesan cheese, and made some cranberry chutney to go along with it. Oh lordy, was it good. I could eat that chutney plain. Actually I could, we have a little left over. But anyway, it was good.

Right now I'm watching the Golden Globes from last night. This Steven Spielberg thing is awfully long. I just went upstairs to turn on Alfred's computer and came back down and he's still droning on. I mean, he's made some good movies and all, but come on. Hell, most of this post was written during this section. I really need to watch Slumdog Millionaire. Ok, it's over. And so's this!

happy 2009!

I can't believe it's already 2009. I feel like I just finally got used to writing 2008. I think 2009 is going to be a good year. Let's hope so!

Anyway, our new years eve celebration involved lots of fireworks, booze, and good food. Last night Mercedes made braised short ribs for dinner, and I worked on the stock for today's soup. Then we burned lots of stuff.


Honestly, I don't really remember going to bed last night. I had a few Kahlua drinks, some beers, and champagne at midnight, but I don't think I blacked out, I think I was just really tired and falling asleep in my chair before stumbling off to bed. All I know is I woke up in my bed at about 5:45am, fully dressed except for my shoes, and realized that we never turned off the burner under the stock pot. So I went downstairs, turned it off and put the pot in the fridge, then went back to bed and tried to go back to sleep. Once we got up for good, we got to work on our main meal for today: french onion soup and a Spanish tortilla.

Everything was delicious. It was really a very fun new years, overall. And finally, the sum of our drinking over the past 2 weeks:

good clean Christmas fun

First things first: a Christmas day post! We started out nice and early (well, most of us did, anyway) to get cracking on some food. I also made some cinnamon rolls for breakfast, which we had with mimosas. Then we hit the presents! I played Santa, but look too hideous in all the pictures to post them. We made a mess. We were careful to cover as much of the floor as possible.

Some Wii was played, since Katie had just received Mario Kart. Then we had to get started on the hard core cooking. Here's Alfred working on the chicken. The smoker with the pork shoulders is in the background.

We also had macaroni and cheese, baked beans, buttermilk biscuits, turnip and mustard greens, and cole slaw. All from scratch, of course. With apple pie, cookies, and chocolate birthday cake for dessert. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

While we were working on food, everyone else took part in a gingerbread house competition. I made it extra challenging by making the gingerbread pieces while drunk, so they didn't quite fit together. Surprise! But that made it fun. I think.

Ilya and Mercedes won for most decorated house (unfortunately all the M&M's caved one side of the roof in at first, but they rebuilt):


My parents and Katie won for most creative use of materials (theirs collapsed, so they remade it as a FEMA shelter after a hurricane):


Max, Robyn, and Ellery won for best plan (they cut their pieces to fit together better before construction):


And Mike and Maureene won for best overall. Theirs didn't collapse at all, even though they did use a few toothpicks to help it stay together until all the frosting dried. They also did a lot of decoration. Check out their gingerbread people in the second picture:



Then we ate, opened more presents, and sang to Emily. Then we drank again. All in all, a pretty great Christmas.