Second, Daisy. Her owners are still teaching her to balance things on her head. Here, she balances a frozen banana waffle from Trader Joe's.
On another note, Mike made a great salad last night. Recipe from one of our new favorite cookbooks.
the final part of the course
shivering BEFORE the race
Friday night we cooked a nice dinner for my grandparents, including Mike’s famous bruschetta.
Saturday day, I spent a little time photographing some of my grandmother's prize-winning plants.
Saturday night, we headed to Carlsbad to visit with good family friends - and eat the best pizza and lemon bars [those were home-made, but I do have the recipe] on earth!
For example, for New Year’s I made the champagne cupcake recipe. I made it as a cake, though (using the champagne cupcakes recipe, but putting it in two round pans), which shouldn't really change anything. But, it tasted, in all honesty, like white bread. Which is to say: nothing. Not that it was bad, but it was a bit heavy and lacking in taste (other than "sweet"). The icing, on the other hand, was awesome: what’s not to like about home-made buttercream with 6 tablespoons of champagne mixed in?
The next day, I decided to just focus on the decorating. I made the snickerdoodle cake from the Cake Mix Doctor and then decorated it. Originally, I wanted a teddy bear design, then I thought of a lion, or an alien. But I ended up stealing an idea from a parenting magazine for a critter like this.
This cake was for Scott’s birthday. Can you tell which one is Scott?
The latkes
The men 
The men-orahs
And the M&Ms
Dr. Farls
Us
Now we’re back in Seattle where we’ll do a little relaxing (and a little work) before school begins next week. Today we took a walk with our friends Scott and Meh.
Last Sunday, we went to Pacific Science Center to see the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit. The exhibit was pretty cool, but very, very crowded. Buy those tickets in advance, and buy them for a weekday. The scrolls themselves were interesting, and I also enjoyed all the other artifacts (coins, clothes, pottery) that were presented along with the scrolls.
After that bit of culture, we walked around the Science Center. Kris checked out the display on camouflage.
Nearly invisible, no? Then we hit the IMAX theater for the Egypt movie. The movie had beautiful scenery, and I’m a total sucker for the IMAX films, but it also had a weird sort of explanation-of-the-curse conceit. And Omar Sharif. And not in a good way, either.
Then we headed to dinner at the fondue restaurant. I love fondue! Seriously. I mean, what’s not to love about melted cheese and melted chocolate? So yummy! Here’s a shot of us and then one of the dessert plate (the lighting was a little weird, but we’ll get to that issue below).
On my actual birthday, we just played it low-key with a dinner of fried rice at home. Note the flowers on the table (from my mother) and my holiday decorations in the windows (I’ll try to get a daytime shot of those, too).
Saturday night we had a little party at our house, both to celebrate my birthday and to welcome the nomad scholar home. It was a bit of open house, and lots of people came and brought lots of yummy treats. Mike made our traditional birthday cake from this book.
So that’s been the past week, in words and pictures. And about those pictures . . . for my birthday, folks around me pitched in to give me a brand-spanking-new-fancy-dancy camera. So, hopefully, the pictures around here will get a lot better (that is, except for the bad pictures due to operator error). I’d like to do something like the picture of the day, but I’m not sure how that would work with blogger or that I’d truly be able to post a picture every day. Anyway, I’m super-excited about the new camera, but I think there’ll be quite the learning curve with it. I’m planning to study up over break.
I have pictures and stories to post about Mike's first few days home as well as about my birthday, but that will all have to wait. Instead of a looking-backward post, this is a looking-forward post.
Heat together one cup each of molasses and honey. Cool. Beat 3 cups of
sugar with 4 eggs. Combine and add 4 teaspoons cinnamon.( mum wrote tbs. but
we all think that she meant teaspoons), 3 teaspoons( same issue_ cloves,
some salt (/) and assorted spices ("depending upon what you have on had and
how you feel"). Add round tsp.( this time she got it right so we all
wondered if maybe she really meant tablespoons before) soda and 1 tsp. cream
of tartar( "if you have some- I rarely do"). Stir in enough flour till your
arm is dead and the stuff won't budge anymore. Cover and wait a few days
till you've recovered since you need all your strength to quasi roll out,
cut into forms, and bake in moderate oven after you have brushed each cookie
with honey water ( made with honey and water) and pressed a piece of almond
in center of each.
Note_ I wrote down 8 cups flour, 3/16 inch think roll out, 350 degrees for
7 minutes after talking to her.
Good luck.
Um, yeah.
He just caught the end of the big snow here last week (check out some of the pictures linked to the article, too). I wish I had better pictures of the snow, but during the best picture-taking days, it was either too icy to go outside or I found myself without my camera (you know, like during my 45 block walk home on Monday night. Sweet!). So here are some pictures that I took on Wednesday afternoon when Mike and I were out for a walk.
Also, here’s a bird that hangs out in the tree near our apartment.
We’ve been to a few of our favorite restaurants and coffeeshops and we’ve seen some of our good friends.
Mike has also enjoyed having the use of a full-sized kitchen, stocked with all our fun toys. Tonight, using the pasta machine I got him for his birthday, he made fresh pasta.
Very yummy!
