This weekend

We accomplished a couple of things this weekend.

First, on Friday, we found a really good Thai restaurant: Thai Tina's. We went on whim, and we were totally surprised. The tofu was delicious, and there were lots of fish entrees. It was a lot of food - so much that Mike ate the rest for lunch on Saturday. We'll totally go back there!

Second, on Saturday night, I finally finished the penguin I started as my Olympics knitting project. The goal was to cast on during the opening ceremonies and cast off during the closing ceremonies. Although the Olympics ended a bit ago, I still had Olympics coverage on the DVR recorder. So I wasn't really late. In fact, I finished my recorded Olympics coverage the same day I finished the penguin. So I was right on time! Here's a picture of it, posed on the "iceberg" and "permafrost" of our clean sheets (albedo effect, anyone?).Third, we finally framed and hung the last pictures in the living room. This was a bit of a tricky hanging job, since this was a set of four pictures that had to be spaced exactly right on the wall and in relationship to each other. Mike did a super job!Fourth, I ran across the remainder of the cream cheese from last week's apple cake. It was exactly the right amount to make a small batch of sugar cookies. So I did. We intended to share some of them with our friends who shared their organic veggies with us, but then we forgot. Hopefully, Mike can track them down on campus tomorrow.What we didn't do this weekend was adopt a dog. We'd found a dog we liked, but she was adopted before we had a chance to get to the shelter to get her. I'm feeling a little dog-disappointed and a little dog-burned. I want a dog, I just don't want the heartache of the process of adopting a dog. We've also filled out an application with a lab rescue organization. This is a good deal since the dogs from the rescue group come house-broken, crate-trained, spayed/neutered, with all their shots, and have been living in foster families with other dogs and kids. But the wait can be as long as five months. So we'll see.

Also, check out these beautiful roses:

Texas updates

We had a good weekend. For me it was pretty baking-intensive, as I had set myself up with three different projects.

My first project was making Chocolate-Chocolate cupcakes from Dorie Greenspan's Baking cookbook. The un-critical me says: "these were yummy, and the recipe is a total keeper." The critical me says: "you fool! You slightly overcooked these because you couldn't believe that they would be that squishy when it was time to come out. Follow the directions next time." Here's a picture that some other enterprising baker took of her cupcakes. Taking pictures, um, didn't occur to me with a plateful of cupcakes before me.My second project was a cake for a co-worker that had a baby recently. Since this person isn't a very adventurous eater, I went with a plain pound cake. This cake, though, had a twist: it was leavened with 7-Up. The link there is to something similar, but I actually used a recipe from Mike's family that someone gave us at our wedding shower. The cake was sweet and citrus-y. I glazed it with a little lemon glaze. Pretty good for a pound cake. Again, no time for images of my own, but here's a picture of a similar-looking item.My third project was an apple cake. I struggled with the skill known as "following the directions" on this one. As it turns out, it is not a good idea to add one more apple and 2 more ounces of cream cheese than the recipe calls for. This will make your cake dense and doughy. Luckily, Mike was able hop in and make a second apple cake (this one more closely guided by the convention known as a recipe). His cake was a total hit! Again, we didn't do the picture thing, but here's really, truly exactly what it looked like (even though this comes from a magazine).[And now for those that might worry about our waistlines: the cupcakes were made for an event on Saturday, and we shared them. There were no lingering leftovers. 95% of the pound cake was given away. And the apple cake went to dinner at someone's house, but didn't make it home, so no potential snacks there. we're doing just fine, thankyouverymuch]

In other Texas news, it was finally cool enough that we slept with the a/c off and the windows open last night. All this because of a cool front that has our temperatures down to 85 during the day.

Also, we saw a snake tonight. It was small and harmless. But slithery.

New Items

Not so much new here: things just chug along. It's cooled down a bit - now the days are only in the 80s and 90s. I understand that it's been 55 and raining in Seattle.

I took my first run outside since I ran the half marathon in June. It was, um, different. I think running outside here will be an acquired skill. I suppose I am theoretically training for this race, but we'll see....

Anyway, two new additions to our house - we finally have some new dining chairs. Our other ones were the $19 ones that SYL and I built ourselves after buying the flat-packs from Ikea. They were incredibly uncomfortable and very wobbly. Our new chairs did not require us to build them, and they actually have a built-in, padded cushion. The wood darker than our table, but the cushion is the same color as our oak table - hopefully, this is sort of shabby chic.Second, I made a German apple pancake for breakfast on Sunday. I adjusted the recipe by using four eggs in place of the egg substitute. I think it was a little egg-y; next time I'd use three eggs. But this recipe is definitely a keeper for yummy brunches. (The picture below is from the magazine, mine didn't look quite so pretty)

Weather Report

The big hurricane seems to have mostly missed Fort Worth. We had a gray, rainy, windy day with some occasional big gusts of wind. But we were spared the damage that hit southeast of here.

Here are some pictures of the damage, courtesy of the NYT.Donations to the Red Cross, if you are so inclined.

Cooking update

This is a post I've been meaning to put up for a while...

Mike and I have been trying out a fair number of new recipes. Here are a few of our favorites (all pictures from the original publications, not our kitchen!):

Southwestern salad (vegan!)
[Sorry, no picture. But this is seriously good - we've added it to our permanent rotation!]

Soba salad with Wasabe vinaigrette (also vegan!)
Blue Elephant Pad ThaiWhite Bean and Tuna PanzenellaCherry Ripple Sour Cream CoffeecakeAs an aside, Mike told me that he read that the chicken-friend bacon had won the state fair recipe contest. I think we'll pass on making that recipe.

Saturday night lights

Last night we went a football game at Mike's school.
To say it wasn't much of a game is an understatement: the score ended up being 67-7, in our favor. But, hey, it's always more fun when the home team wins! (of course, if there's actually a football game, I hear it's more fun, too. But we'll be playing Stanford next week, so that might be a different story)

We also had great company. Here's a shot of the canine half of our friends from last night.

For a vegetarian

I think I still managed to have a true Texas breakfast this morning:

scrambled eggs
two really outstanding biscuits
drip coffee
cheese grits

For the record, I strongly recommend the Paris Coffee Shop. (it is a coffee shop in the Texas sense of the word, rather than the Seattle sense). Although I have never been to Paris, France, I am going to assume that the city is full of outstanding diners with great biscuits and grits.

Labor Day in San Diego

Last weekend I headed to San Diego for a quick visit.

The main goal of my trip was to get my grandmother on the internet. And, as impossible as it seems, I (think) I (may have) succeeded! This was a total team effort. Mike built (or, really, un-built) the computer for her. We gave her an apple laptop with a very small set of functions and targeted bookmark buttons. I wrote the documentation (complete with many, many screen captures) for the computer. And Mitchell and Polly ordered the internet service. Saturday morning, I hooked up the internet service, and voila!

Kind of blows your mind, no?

It's like a total adjustment, having internet in La Jolla. My grandmother wanted to know something about growing okra. So we looked that up. And then she wanted to know about geraniums. So we read about that. And then I showed her how to read foreign newspapers online. And, like, if you want to check if your flight is on time, you can just look it up. Same with the TV listings..... It's like discovering the ease of the internet all over again.

As an aside, I also ordered a new office chair for her to sit in. A chair that doesn't weigh ten tons and isn't hideously uncomfortable to sit in. Shocking, no?

Saturday night our friend Harriet hosted a little garden party. It was great to see old friends again. I also got to meet baby William for the first time. William is Emma's brother; they are the children of my friend Alex and his lovely wife, Kat. Here's William and Harriet:

William and Brooke:And Emma and Kat:And Emma and William:Aren't they adorable!

The rest of the weekend I just kind of hung out. Here's the view from the front deck:Here the chickens my grandmother's neighbor is keeping. Unfortunately, there's also a rooster in the bunch, which made for less than restful mornings.And here are some obligatory plant shots.

Toto, I don't think we're in Seattle anymore. . . .

-- That that place I've been thinking is a drive-thru espresso stand is actually a drive-thru liquor stand.

--This article was in the paper this morning.

-- It is, of course, a bazillion degrees. And what's this I hear about a hurricane?

[All this is also to say that I'll be in San Diego this weekend]

New York Minute

The weekend was a bit of a whirlwind for us, as we flew out (very) early on Friday morning to New York City and then flew back on Sunday morning. It was so weird landing at DFW on Sunday and realizing that this was our "final destination". I wouldn't say Texas feels like home yet.

At any rate, we went to the big city for a very special wedding. The B-hatch was marrying a most wonderful Jenji. The wedding was a private ceremony on Saturday morning, followed by an amazing party in Bryant Park on Saturday evening.

Compared to the last time I was in New York, I definitely felt like I was appreciating the city much more (taxis! tall buildings! ethnic food! ethnic people!).

[As an aside, when we landed on Friday, Mike and I had the most sickening taxi ride of our entire lives. There was no a/c and the driver was inexplicably stopping and starting (seriously, this was not in any way to avoid traffic). By the time the cab reached Riverside Drive, we both wanted to puke. Neither of us did, though. But only barely. Uuummm, okay, so what was I saying about those taxis? Perhaps not so much to miss there.]

Friday night while Mike attended the bachelor party, I joined the left behind crew for a very yummy dinner and very funny show.

Saturday morning we met Mike's relatives for brunch and a stroll in the park. Mike's cousin has some very cute daughters:Then, I met one of my dearest friends, Karen, for lunch and another stroll around the park (can you tell how excited we were to be somewhere where it was actually comfortable to be outside?). We had the requisite New York pizza, followed by a shared cappuccino cupcake from a bakery with stellar selection (although, the word from a fellow cupcake lover is that these aren't as good as they come in Seattle. I guess I am out of cupcake practice, since they tasted pretty good to me!). Here's a picture of Central Park:And here we are (not barefoot) in the park:Then, it was time for the wedding celebration. Here's Mike with the man of the hour:The rooftop cocktail hour was absolutely divine - Bryant Park was so green, the buildings were so tall, and the weather was so pleasant. I could have stayed there forever!

Here are some shots from later in the evening:The wedding was lovely, the bride beautiful, the groom handsome, and everyone so very happy for such a wonderful couple.


p.s. As an aside, I'm noticing a lot of distortion as I link the photos from flickr and put them on blogger. My pictures really are much sharper! People really do have their eyes open! I think this is happening because of some kind of compression, since the photos really are huge - but I'm not sure how to fix this without uploading two copies of each picture (one small, one original size). If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Update: Thanks to Scott's tip, the pictures are looking much better. I can't say what happened to the right-hand side of black box around the pictures or why Karen and I are a little off center, but c'est la vie. Also, I am going to HTML class next week. For the record.

Rainy Day

It was a gray, soggy Monday here. It rained all day. It was glorious.
(okay, so it was also 80 degrees).

Broken elbow blogging

I visited my great surgeon on Friday, and he was happy with what he saw on the X-Rays. If you want to play along with my doctor, here is what he saw (the staples were removed shortly after the X-ray was taken, but the screws are in there for the long haul):



After the doctor's appointment I decided to give Fort Worth's bus system a try. Because the first bus I needed to catch only ran once per hour, I decided to walk a mile to pick up the second bus. However, because Fort Worth's streets were SO pedestrian unfriendly, I ended up walking more than a mile out of my way, though an upscale Fort Worth neighborhood. In political science news, here was the political lawn sign count in that neighborhood:

Obama signs: 2
McCain signs: 1
Nader signs: 1

I found these results surprising.

Our weekend

Although I wanted to make this be a whole post where we didn't really mention Mike's arm, that's not likely. . . .

Mike's surgery was Thursday. Thursday night and Friday night were a bit rough, as Mike was in a lot of pain. Saturday afternoon, though, Mike seems to have turned a corner and he's been steadily improving since then. On Sunday he even made his famous Pad Thai (although this is actually a picture of him making eggs).Also on Sunday morning I made lowfat lemon blueberry buttermilk muffins. This is one my favorite recipes.Last, my dear friend Claire sent me this. I totally adore it, and it helps me to remember that not *everything* in Texas is terrible (although my new default is to root against the Texas Rangers in all situations - and tonight they're playing the Yankees! Also, I use root extremely loosely in this context).