Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a great holiday or winter break or whatever that ends up being for you.  For us, it was a lot of lego, a lot of cookies, and a lot of pajamas.  I couldn't be happier with it. My 2013 had a bunch of high points, and I am hoping 2014 can top them.

In this blog's previous incarnation, I posted about our home remodeling projects. Mostly the kitchen. That whole set of projects kinda stalled out, in part due to finances, and in part due to family/contractor situation.  (Short form: Our contractor is my father in law.  Step mother in law passed away over a year ago, and my father in law just hasn't felt like doing anything, which I am totally sympathetic to. In addition, we were in aggressive debt repayment mode, which should be coming to an end in the next few months. Hopefully, it will soon be Game On for home remodeling projects.)

Will it ever be 'done'?

For now, I am doing the Apartment Therapy January Cure. I am really hoping this will help me get over my "nothing will EVER be done around this house" malaise.  We have so many projects, many of which are completely dependent on other projects. (Like, remember the structural engineering?  Still need to finish that.)

I am hoping the January Cure can help me spruce up without freaking out too much about the dependency chain of our home reno.

My List:

Kitchen/Office

• Clean up my desk
• Clean up Thomas's desk
• Deal with the things piling up on the window sill and counters

Dining Room

• Christmas Decoration Overload (did this tonight!)
• Lego have taken over this room.  

Thomas's Room/ Guest Room

• (Both of these rooms just got spruced up, so not much to do in here.)
• Fix up the curtains in Thomas's under-bed reading cave. 
• Organize Thomas's art work for the guest room, and hang up some additional pieces. 

So that's my list for Day 1 of the January Cure.  Hopefully I'll post some highlights over the next month.  In the meantime, here's a small selection of my 2013 highlights.

A Selection of 2013 Highlights

We had a 10th anniversary!

And renewed our vows after a golf cart ride

I finished a half marathon! 13.1 baby!

And I got a new haircut.  It will never look like this again because my hairdresser dried it all straight.

Hope you all had an awesome year. Happy 2014!

Do you guys know about The Beeroness?  I have been loving her blog lately, because it combines some of my favorite things: cooking, pretty photographs, and beer.

A few weekends ago, we took a half day, stopped at Growler Hours and then Penn Avenue Fish and came home with shrimp and beer.  I intended to make the recipe I linked to above, but realized that, sadly, I did not actually have the ingredients beyond shrimp and beer.  So I made something similar, but not entirely, like it.


2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 teaspoon old bay
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 pound raw shrimp: cleaned, deveined and peeled
1 cup grape or cherry tomatoes (I used red and yellow)
1 cup amber or red ale
1 tablespoon Sriracha (or to taste, depending on how much spice you like)
a squeeze of fresh lemon, salt and pepper to taste

• heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large skillet with a lid
• fry the onion until it gets translucent 
• stir in the old bay and smoked paprika until well mixed with the onion
• add the shrimp and tomatoes and stir gently for a minute or two.  the shrimp will start to pink up a bit 
• add the beer and Sriracha and run your spatula around the bottom of the pan to pick up any bits of spice or onion stuck to the bottom.  Then put the lid on and let everything simmer for a few minutes.  It's ready when the shrimp look fully pink, it should take maybe 5 minutes for regularly sized shrimp. A little more if you get super big ones.  
• Add lemon, salt, and pepper to taste and serve.  

I served mine with some tasty multigrain bread to sop up the yummy sauce at the end, kind of like how I serve mussels.  This reminds me that I don't think I posted about the time we made mussels. It was dramatic but tasty.

I am so excited! Today is the first day of our CSA, and this year, we're hosting!

A friend posted on Facebook that a local organic farm was hoping to expand into new areas, including our neck of the woods. Hosting comes with a bit of a discount, so I hopped on board that very night.  They checked out my porch to make sure it would work out, fast forward to today and I'm coming home to a porch full of organic vegetables.  And apparently an envelope full of capacitors for Jeff. Veggies and capacitors: that's how we roll.

Hooray for Veggies!

This time of year in Pittsburgh, veggies are a lot of greens and herbs. And some kind of turnip, which I am not at all sure what to do with.  Instead, I made this creamy, herby dressing to go on a big huge salad full of lettuce, and cucumber, and radishes from our garden. ZOMG garden radishes, you are delightfully zingy.  Don't stop, radishes!  We love you!

Creamy Herb Dressing

Creamy Herb Dressing

• 2 tablespoons fresh oregano leaves*
• 2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves*
• 2 tablespoons fresh parsley leaves
• 2 garlic scapes*
• 1 green onion, with the top and bottom chopped off, and the rest diced up a bit
• juice of half a lemon
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 1/4 cup sour cream (I used light)
• salt & pepper to taste

My porch today!!!

We are AT THE LAKE HOUSE for 4 glorious days.  Alas, the weather here is calling for snow overnight, says our neighbor, so it seemed like oven roasting something was reasonable. The lake house does not have AC, which means I mostly do not bake when we are up here in the summer.  Lighting your oven when it's 90 degrees inside is not a fun time with no AC.  I'm actually thinking it's a good reason to figure out this crock pot bread thing everyone is doing.  But anyway, the tomatoes. 

Oven Roasted Tomatoes

Before

After

During TheKitchn's reader request week, they answered my request about awesome looking white ranges!


TheKitchn is one of my favorite blogs so I was super excited that they answered my request.  I think this one above is my fave of the bunch.  Although, one of the commenters suggested the White Ice line from Whirlpool which is looking pretty snazzy.

I am committed to keeping my freebie white range for the rest of the year, though I'd love a newer prettier one with more bells and whistles.

Thanks TheKitchn!!

Happy Mother's Day!  My gift to you is a rant about puff pastry and why it's so awesome.  AND!  A recipe.


Puff pastry is a freezer rock star.  You can buy it months in advance, pull it out and have it be ready for toppings in 10 minutes.  Plus, you can turn it into a dinner or dessert that everyone loves, because it's difficult not to love something so full of butter.

I am a huge fan of the puff pastry from Trader Joe's, specifically, for two reasons.

1. It only contains flour, butter, salt, water and sugar.  NO HYDROGENATED OILS!    
2. It's pre-flattened.  I've bought stuff at other stores that's folded in half, and you have to thaw it and roll it or worry about breaking it if you don't let it thaw enough.  

Asparagus Romesco Tart

Yummy Tart

Strawberry Cardamum Tart

I love magazines and cookbooks.  When I am starting to feel stressed and freaked out, I almost compulsively buy magazines at the grocery store.  They represent leisure for me, in a big, big way.

April is one of the busiest months of the year where I work, so of course, I bought 2 cooking magazines that I barely had time to read and didn't get around to cooking anything out of them until, well, May.  (Hi May!  Nice to see you!)