Tasty Tuesday

What happens when I'm craving veggies but Tom wants soup? Broccoli soup, with a staple in our house, grilled cheese.  In this case, grilled ham and cheese.

Roasted broccoli and pureed with a boiled potato, stock (I used chicken since I didn't have vegetable stock), onion, and I think garlic. Strain.

Recap

I finally took care of the garden, removing all the dead plants from winter and found a nice surprise:

This was from the nut (probably a pecan) that a squirrel planted a year ago and had started to sprout.  I guess over time it established roots. This year, it got its own planter.

We had craft night at Do It Yourself Crafts in Homewood; A glass fusing class, and you bring your own wine/beer. We had fun. I can't wait to see our finished art!

On Saturday, Tom and I went to Ozan Vineyard since I had a Groupon for a wine tasting that was about to expire. The vineyard is a strong contender for the wedding.

My vacation is nearly over. My last experiment did not work out the way we planned. Oh well! I reviewed a second manuscript in two months. I start my new position on Wednesday.

Craft-ish

Grace had mentioned Christmas letters as a tradition to catch up with family and friends. Our conversation was the inspiration for this project.
I took 12 postcards depicting various scenes from Washington DC (that's where Grace is), added stamps (see note), and used the address labels that I receive as advertising from non-profits (this group is from WWF). I wrapped the postcard bundles, included a note about the project, and mailed the whole thing to Grace. The idea is that each month, Grace will write what she is excited about, hoping for, worried about, loving, listening to, etc... (this part was inspired by Anne B's posts) and drop it in the mail. On my side, at the beginning of the month, I will post the same list on the blog, making this project two-way. It's one more way to keep in touch with friends that live further away than we would want.

Notes:
If you don't know this, I love getting mail. Cards, letters, etc... I am hoping that my friends who are abroad (Angie, this applies to you) are reading this and will send me postcards from --insert country name here--. If only there was universal postage...
Postcards were from Zazzle. Next time, when I'm in Dallas or Nashville, I will pick up postcards from there instead of doing Zazzle.
I've had this idea for a while, but was waiting for the USPS postage to go up so I could use one stamp instead of 2 or 3, which would decrease writing space. The post office didn't have the new postcard stamps, so I had to settle for the old ones and 4 cent stamps (they were also out of the 3 cent stamp).
If this works well, guess what the out-of-town BFFs are getting at Christmas this year?!! :)

Tasty Tuesday

Build-your-own taco for dinner on Sunday: ground turkey with home made taco seasoning, diced tomatoes, shredded lettuce, sliced olives, diced onions, and shredded cheese.

Happy Chinese New Year

Happy Chinese New Year!
My sister taught me to say it in mandarin: xin nian kuai le (In Mauritian Chinese: Kung Chee Fat Choy)
Hope that the year of the Dragon brings you happiness and prosperity.

Tom and I went to Mr. Chen's for dinner and had a very nice meal. Tom was more adventurous, ordering spicy pig ear as appetizer and the "boiled beef in hot oil". I had steamed dumplings and Kung Pao shrimp. Oh it was so good. I also set a Chinese New Year resolution: for the next Chinese new year celebration, I will make a variety of dumplings, dim sum style. Also, we want to institute an ethnic food day: once a month, try a new ethnic restaurant. While this wasn't our first visit to Mr. Chen's, we will count this as the first month. Ideas for the other places: Iguana Grill; the new Indian place on Hwy 280; some Japanese grill; Cafe de Paris; etc... Any suggestions?

Sunny Sunday

Well, it's not really sunny today. We may even get a storm tonight. But Sunny Sunday refers to a gardening post. I still haven't cleaned the balcony garden since we got back in town about three weeks ago. More on this later. I digress. Somehow we forgot to check the mail yesterday, so this morning when I went to pick up the Sunday paper, I noticed that my Burpee plants and seeds catalog came in. I spent a few hours some time browsing. I have ideas. I nearly grabbed my marker. Then I paused, and made a deal with myself: I work on my review article for 3 hours today, then choose my seeds and do some garden planning.

Sweet memories

Right before leaving town for the winter holidays, I was running around trying to finish up all of our shopping. We wanted to keep our Xmas gifts (mostly) local. I had found Alabama Goods (http://alabamagoods.com/) online and decided to go there. It is located in the neat Homewood Downtown Strip, which I had never walked in the 6 years that I have been in Birmingham. Here comes the cheesy part: Tom came with me as we strolled the strip in the early evening. We walked hand in hand, and he was very supportive of me checking out all the stores. It was such a sweet moment for us, turning something so banal into something romantic-ish.

As a side note, this is how we found a signed copy of Night Night Birmingham (http://www.mynightnight.com/2011/05/night-night-birmingham.html), a kids book written by a local, and that talks about features of the town. Great gift for Baby Julia.

Vacation time - weeks 4 and 5

Week 4 started off poorly, with LSU losing the national championship on Monday. But with the arrival of my sister, I was very much insulated from all the hype in the city about the Crimson Tide win. Football wise, it was a terrible week, with LSU, the Saints, and the Packers all losing this week.
Payal arrived on Tuesday night. Our daily ritual was to have breakfast together, get ready, go shopping, eat lunch out, shop some more, take a nap, eat out for dinner, drink plenty of tea.
During Payal's visit, I tried new restaurants: Silver Coin Indian Grill for girls night out, John's City Diner for lunch on Friday, and Over Easy for brunch on Saturday. Silver Coin and John's were very tasty! Over Easy, I found, was over-rated. Payal had given me a list of things she wanted to eat: Indian food (hence Silver Coin), red velvet cupcakes (obliged by Urban Standard and made a batch at home), and steak (Tom did a wonderful job, as expected!). I felt that she had to try BBQ (Jim n Nicks), Mexican food (Acapulco), Cajun food although she had it in Louisiana when she last visited. We went to Crazy Cajuns, she had the oyster poboy and did not like it. To be fair, Crazy Cajuns is very hit or miss, and this time, it was more miss than hit. We had cocktails at the Blue Monkey and mimosas on Sunday. At some point during our fantastic week, we went to the bridal place. No purchases yet.

@ Silver Coin

@ Acapulco

I hope you had fun Sis! Love you and will miss you!

The beginning of Week 5 - MLK day was spent doing laundry. Tonight I was at lab until 8:30 pm, and I find out tomorrow whether my experiment worked. So week 5 will be busy with work.
Tasty Tuesday: this week we are finding creative ways to use brats. One thing that I will try is a beer mac and cheese. The noodles are cooked in beer, the cheese sauce is a beer cheese sauce, and it's topped with brats. Not healthy, but it's oh so good! I had it in Green Bay at Curly's Pub at Lambeau field.

Resolutions

2012 resolutions... hmm... Not much change from last year.
1. While waiting for our flight from Minneapolis to Birmingham, Tom and I grabbed a beer. And a napkin. And a pen. We scribbled a few numbers down for our savings goal for this year. We have the Alaskan trip plus any emergency travel if needs be. Oh yea, there's the wedding next year. We'll try to live off one salary or as close to it as possible. We need to get a (better) handle on our weekly grocery budget too.
   Subpart 1. When possible, I want to buy products that are Made in America, and support local businesses. We are considering joining a community supported agriculture (CSA) farm.
   Subpart 2. I follow a few couponing blogs. I think that if I can get items for free that I wouldn't use but that a soup kitchen/shelter will, I might just pick those items and donate them. 
2. Be healthy. We both need to get in shape or better shape.
3. Travel. I need three new places to visit this year. Technically only 1, since we went to Green Bay on Jan 1 but I counted that for last year's goal. Fairbanks is in the works. I'll see where my parents want to go when they come here in May.
4. Craft more. I have a lot of projects that I want to try out. Maybe try a Pinterest Challenge?
5. Making a new recipe each month. Also, I'm excited about April, which is National Grilled Cheese Month. Grilled cheese has become a staple at the house, so I want to experiment with making a new kind every week during the month of April.
6. Get the garden back. Two weeks of not tending to our garden means that everything is dead or dying. So more gardening is due.


Let's see if I'll be better about my resolutions this year.

Vacation time

The line between work and vacation has become increasing blurry. From the time I defended until I start my new position, we'll say that I have 6 weeks of "vacation".
In Week 1, I had to review a manuscript - which was such an awesome experience. Plus Dr. P offered guidance on how to review manuscripts.
I also started to work on a review paper that focuses on my next area of research/next lab. I'm getting used to the lingo.

In between these assignments, I spent some time in Austin. Here is my niece (cousin's daugher), who likes cadeaux (gifts in French) but as mentioned in another post, amazes me at her language skills (English, French and German).

I left the big state of Texas on December 25, headed towards the dairy heaven of La Crosse, Wisconsin. Here we are, with Tom's parents, at Buzzard Billy's, which has better Cajun food than Birmingham. This is my must-go place when in La Crosse.

Not much work was done in Week 2. Tom, Laurie (Tom's mom) and I went to a Packer game on January 1 in Green Bay. Tom bought us tickets as his Christmas gift.  Kick off temperature was 35 F. It snowed during the fourth quarter, quite heavily at times. I wore ski pants for the first time. It was great to see Matt Flynn (former LSU player) to play the entire game and set new records for the team.

We headed back to La Crosse on Jan 2, and watched more football from the cozy family room complete with a fireplace. I had a great time in Texas and Wisconsin.
Now begins Week 3. We got back to Birmingham late Wednesday night. I have to wrap up a few experiments, including an 18-hour one. Plus shopping. Plus cleaning, everything, from vents to baseboards. Ooohh, and a much anticipated game on Monday night.
Week 4 will be marked by the arrival of my sister! woot woot!
Week 5 will be rushed to finish the review.
Week 6 will probably involve huge to do list, cleaning and organizing. Did I mention that during weeks 1-3, I have been jotting down/drawing new house projects? More on this later.

2011 in review

Lots happened in 2011. Here's a recap:
The Packers won the Superbowl
I attended my first Gordon conference
Got engaged
Got a PhD
Saw my first game at Lambeau
Saw my niece - the last time that I saw her she was 6 months old. I was at her 3 year old birthday parties (yes, she had two parties). The world is her oyster, she already speaks English, French and German
Visited with my out-of-town BFFs: Laura in Dallas (need to visit her and the triplets soon), Grace came to Boston, Susie Beth came to Birmingham
Visited La Crosse family and friends
Was away from the lab for two weeks

On the goals from last year:
1. No fast food: we cheated on this a few times especially during defense week.
2. Lose weight: still holding steady at -20. I managed to only put on 1 lb during the holidays - I don't know how, since I remember eating all the time while on vacation.
3. Eat out only once a week: on average, this worked.
4. Save money: yup, this worked.
5. Travel: visited two new states, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Three towns if we count Green Bay on Jan 1.
6. Be more social: I think this worked.
7. Become a domestic goddess: by the state of my garden and my long to-do list, this doesn't seem to have worked. But I have made some major steps in that direction, and continue to love being creative and adventurous in the kitchen.

Next post will have pictures of the holidays, and our new resolutions.

Hope that you had a great year, and that 2012 will be even better.