we-are-married christmas tree

This is our first Christmas as married people, and that is pretty much what motivated both of us to get our butts out there and finally get a tree. I guess being married itself isn't a reason to get all glitzy for Christmas, but it is a good reason to start traditions. We settled on a small to medium-sized tree, 5-6 ft tall, and had a super easy time transporting it back to the house. My personal favorite thing about a christmas tree is the idea that it is considered perfectly normal to haul a live TREE into your house. I love that. Ken's favorite thing about a christmas tree is the party atmosphere.

In regards to decorating the tree, Ken thought we should go with blue lights and somewhat of a blue-ish theme, inspired by our friend's xmas tree last year which was topped with a blue Father Christmas (the original Clause wore blue, apparently). I wanted something special for our tree topper, so when I found the pair of peacocks at an art store- eureka!

My most favorite thing about the tree is that almost all of the ornaments are handmade. I had made ornaments out of glittery yarn and glue, kind of in the shape of an egg, and when I put them all up I realized that it looks like the peacocks are laying gold and silver eggs down our tree.

an ode to tomatoes, and its sauce.

The tomato.

Picture from smittenkitchen.

I thoroughly appreciate good italian tomato sauce. And I love a good home-cooked italian spaghetti, when its done right. When it's not, the whole dish can taste like watery ketchup carb-dump. So when I realized this past year that I can try my own hand at making tomato sauce, I indulged. I adore tomatoes and I like cooked tomatoes even more. When I was in Seoul during the winter a few years ago, in order to help combat the bone-chilling cold, I used to boil a tomato (place whole tomato in 1/3 cup of water and boil) until it got soft and sprinkle some sugar on it to eat as a warm snack. K. thought it was strange, but it is oh-so delicious. Also, tomato sauce is one of the best platform to simmer all sorts of different kinds of spices and flavors, and when you get the combination right it can be heavenly. Paired with a good Cabernet, I'm all set.

The sauce.

Before I go into how I personally make my tomato sauce on a regular basis, I want to share from whence I evolved my philosophy about tomato sauce. Not too long after my affair with cooked tomatoes, a friend told me about this concept of cooking with three basic ingredients from a great book by Marcella Hazan, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. This book is basically the Italian counterpart to Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I could harp about both, but the relevant thing to note here is that Hazan suggests a recipe so delightfully simple I had to try it immediately.

Picture from smittenkitchen.

The recipe calls for three ingredients. That's right, THREE. Tomato, butter, and onion. It's like something out of a magic book. How can that make sauce? And yet it does. Put tomatoes (28 oz of whole peeled tomatoes from can, San Marzano, if you can find them), 5 tablespoons of unsalted butter, and 1 medium-sized (peeled and halved) yellow onion into a saucepan over medium heat. Bring sauce to high simmer, then lower the heat to keep the sauce at a low simmer for about 45 minutes. Stir occasionally, crushing the tomatoes with a wooden spoon. Remove from heat, discard the onion (or not) and enjoy over pasta. That's it!



As simple as it was, the sauce truly was delicious. Apparently, the butter and the juice of stewed onion is all it takes to transform tomatoes to something velvety and lush. You get to really enjoy the tomato for what it is, and you also get to enjoy how easy it was to make it. The taste of the sauce manages to remind you of how fresh and sweet tomatoes are in the summer, while being so appropriate for the winter when canned tomatoes abound.

What this sauce taught me was that tomato sauce has to be about amplifying the wonderful depth of a tomato. I have since then tried all sorts of different things with my sauce, but here I'll share the steps I usually take to put it together. For me, onion and garlic are key, and I add in the meat because meat is key for the husband.



I always start by sauteing garlic and onion. Then I brown whatever meat I am using. Ground beef is okay to use, but italian sausage is my favorite. I think it goes better with the tomato sauce and adds a lot of flavor. Ideally, I would mix half spicy and half sweet italian sausage together.

Then I work on the sauce. I start by mixing whatever combination of tomatoes I have on hand. A mixture of regular tomato sauce, diced canned tomatoes and tomato paste is usually standard, but I always like being able to add cut-up pieces a fresh tomato or smooshing peeled plum tomatoes into the mix. After bringing it to a gentle boil, I let it simmer and start adding in all of the spices. Some salt and pepper, a couple of basil leaves, a little bit of sugar, small dashes of the red pepper and parsley flakes, maybe a little bit of oregano, and a dash of olive oil - tasting as I go. In the spirit of experimentation, other things I've tried adding are bacon bits, beef bouillion, and wine. I add in the cooked garlic-onion-meat and continue to let it simmer so that all the flavors can mix in together. Usually I also like to add in a vegetable if we have it around - my favorite is zucchini. Coat some cooked pasta or spaghetti with the sauce, sprinkle some grated parmesan cheese, and voila!

The meatball.

Yesterday, I decided to try another variation by trying my hand at making meatballs, for the first time. I found a pretty basic recipe and modified it a bit. I first mixed 2 eggs, 1 cup of Romano and Parmesan cheese, 2 cloves of garlic, and salt and pepper together in a bowl. I toasted 6 pieces of white bread and made 1.5 cups of bread crumbs and added it into the mixture. I then put 1 lb of ground beef and 1 lb of ground pork into a separate bowl, and added in the breadcrumb mixture. I mixed the meat with my hands (because using a fork or spoon for too long makes the meat stringy) while slowing adding 1 cup of lukewarm water. Adding water might seem strange, but it makes the meatball really juicy. The mixture should be moist, but the consistency should be so that you can form a ball of meat.

I got a saucepan hot with olive oil, and placed the meatballs into the pan. You have to watch the meatballs to make sure they get cooked and browned on each side (i used a spider to rotate the meatballs). Once they were appropriately brown on the outside, I stuck them in the oven at 375 degrees for about 5-19 minutes to make sure they cooked all the way through. After they were done, I placed them into the 3-ingredient tomato sauce to simmer and served over spaghetti.

The meatballs turned out tasty- slightly crispy on the outside, moist on the inside and melted cheese in the in-between. These meatballs may make another appearance in another non-tomato dish.

xmas gift idea: Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl was and is one of my favorite authors, so I think its great that Harper Collins Publishing have these unabridged audiobooks available, which have apparently won Grammy Awards. The Roald Dahl Audio CD Collection would make a fantastic Christmas gift for anyone who loves these stories. This particular collection has five of his stories, read by the author himself.

fancy green beans

We are always looking for new ways to eat our vegetables so I was happy to come across Paula Dean's recipe for fancy green beans. It's tasty, delicious and easy! And yes, bacon is involved.



2 tablespoons teriyaki sauce
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 pounds fresh green beans
2 slices bacon
1/2 cup red bell pepper strips
1/2 cup thin onion wedges
1/2 cup whole cashews or sliced almonds


In a small bowl, stir together the teriyaki sauce, honey, and butter.

Fill a bowl with cold water and ice cubes.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add the lemon juice. Drop in the beans and cook for 4 to 5 minutes, or until beans are bright green. Drain the beans in a colander and then plunge them into the iced water. Drain again and set aside.

In a skillet, cook the bacon until very crispy, crumble and set aside. Saute the bell pepper and onion in the hot bacon fat for 2 minutes. Add the beans, cashews, and bacon to the skillet. Add the teriyaki-honey sauce and toss gently.

Thinking of summer

As much as I love Christmas, I do not love winter and I do not love the cold. Yes, it is snowing today but I am sorry to say I am not excited, and it just makes me anxious for summer even more. I will do a season-appropriate post soon but in the meanwhile, an hommage to summer via athingfor with lovely inspiring photographs:




1. [Monte Carlo and Cap Martin, Monaco (Riviera)] (LOC),
2. April - abstract oil painting byYangyang Pan
3. Fabio Bartelt,
4. Postcard From Paris



1. Summer, please return by Irene Suchocki,
2. Flowers from Tea, Butterflies & Friends' flickr photostream,
3. Tim Walker for Vogue UK Jan 2007 see more @[d]r via Vive Le Chic! ,
4. Home by Simon Whitmore

so, it's back to studying again.

Even though it is the. suck. that I have to take the bar again, praise Jesus for the way that things have fallen into place enough that I can do round two with a peace of mind. This time around, I'm changing up the study method so that I end up doing most of my learning through practice tests. Let this be the way.

To give me further peace of mind, I put up some old and new pictures I found recently on the wall next to the desk. They are pretty pictures and I like to look at them.



From upper left: Grandpa, mom and dad, dad's sisters, baby me at picnic, husband and me dancing.

winter pick-me-ups

I get slightly more excited about all things gold and silver glitter during the holiday season which is why sephora's "It looks like rain, dear" nail polish by OPI is my favorite right now. It goes on great and helps keep me in a festive mood.



Another current favorite is a polish with a reddish hue by Sonia Kashuk found at Target. Its a great shade of deep red, but its the name that makes me love it - "STOP WHINING". Perfect.



From the fancy to the practical, here's a quick shout-out to the things that help my skin survive the winter cold. My skin freaks out when the temperature drops below 40, and these are some of the things that have soothed its drying/cracking hysteria.

1) Kiehl's Ultimate Strength Salve for hands
2) Eucerin's Calming Creme for body
3) Burt's Bees Chapstick for lips
4) Neosporin's Lip Health Overnight Renewal Therapy, if you need extra mojo for chapped lips.
5) Gap's basic leggings for extra layering

poached egg.

Poached egg made and eaten about five minutes before writing this post. Egg topped with pinch of salt, shredded parm, olive oil and oregano.


I am a fan of eggs in general, but there is something really special about a poached egg. I love the idea of it, the asthetics of it, and the way that it compliments their particular dishes so perfectly. A poached egg is probably one of the more healthy ways to eat an egg because there is no salt, butter or oil involved in the process of cooking it. The idea of a simple food that is solid on the outside and liquid on in the inside is glorious to me. I don't know, something about the casing of a liquid, the delicate simplicity, etc. Plus, I personally enjoy all the poached egg pairings: eggs benedict, eggs florentine, eggs st. charles, or poached eggs on any kind of hash. Yum.

I have never made a poached egg before and for some reason had always assumed it would be wildly difficult. You know, one of those things left to serious chefs. But today, I ventured the task and found it to be very do-able and fun, in an obsessive kind of way. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that in this kind of a task, you either end up with a poached egg or you don't. It's hard to be an in-between poached egg, so when you successfully make a perfectly poached egg, it feels marvelous, as if you'd accomplished something grand.

Inspired by a food blog (paul and sharon's) entry about shrimp hash, I decided to make some hash of my own with slightly different ingredients. I sauteed chopped onions, garlic, and potato in olive oil until the potatoes were cooked, and then added in shallots, sweet corn, ham and avocado at the last minute. I then went about making the poached egg to top the dish.


Basic ingredients for hash, and for most of my favorite dishes in general: garlic, onion, potato, avocado, green onion.

Along with urban provincial's advice about the how-to, I looked up some more articles before I ventured a try. First, bring a saucepan or small pot with 2/3 of water to a medium-level boil. Don't let the water boil violently because it will most likely wreck the egg. Try to use a fresh egg because apparently, the fresher the egg, the better they poach. If you happen to catch an egg right as the chicken hatches it, you will have a much easier time. Otherwise, adding a little bit of vinegar to the hot water will help the egg stay together. Second, crack the egg into a separate bowl. Once the water is at a moderate boil, take a spoon and stir the center of the pot in order to cool it down just a tad and slip the egg into the water. Third, use a spider to handle the egg and maybe even hold it in the water while it cooks. The whites of the egg will eventually come together and cook. After about three minutes, take it out and enjoy!

I plopped the poached egg on top of the hash and drizzled it with some texas pete hot sauce. Delicious! Will definitely be making variations of this dish while practicing my poaching skills.

wknd in phlly

A great weekend in Philly this past weekend visiting sister and paul: charter school apartment, monty, farmer's market, philly cheesesteaks, magic gardens, italian market, shopping on south street, run-in with eugene, hot spiked cider, sushi in downtown philly, troy and the protector, the new aerobed, the worst pho ever, franz nicolay, younglove's!

mental health

I am in some sort of pit. It may be a spiritual attack or a long bout of disappointment or readjustment, but some days I am so discouraged I can hardly stand it. It comes in waves, so its not as though I am wading through a swamp all of the time, and at times I am quite happy and very much at peace. But there seems to be a wider separation between the things that I know to be true and the things that I feel to be true. I am usually more of a knower than a feeler, so it is almost horrifying to observe how much my emotions are running amuck these days.

So it is with a lot of interest that I looked into this post from John Piper's blog where he posts 10 resolutions by his professor, Clyde Kilby, who advocated an attitude of wonder, rather than excessive self-analysis to mend mental health. And here they are:

1. At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me.

2. Instead of the accustomed idea of a mindless and endless evolutionary change to which we can neither add nor subtract, I shall suppose the universe guided by an Intelligence which, as Aristotle said of Greek drama, requires a beginning, a middle, and an end. I think this will save me from the cynicism expressed by Bertrand Russell before his death when he said: "There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment, and then nothing."

3. I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities. I shall not be fool enough to suppose that trouble and pain are wholly evil parentheses in my existence, but just as likely ladders to be climbed toward moral and spiritual manhood.

4. I shall not turn my life into a thin, straight line which prefers abstractions to reality. I shall know what I am doing when I abstract, which of course I shall often have to do.

5. I shall not demean my own uniqueness by envy of others. I shall stop boring into myself to discover what psychological or social categories I might belong to. Mostly I shall simply forget about myself and do my work.

6. I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their "divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic" existence.

7. I shall sometimes look back at the freshness of vision I had in childhood and try, at least for a little while, to be, in the words of Lewis Carroll, the "child of the pure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes of wonder."

8. I shall follow Darwin's advice and turn frequently to imaginative things such as good literature and good music, preferably, as Lewis suggests, an old book and timeless music.

9. I shall not allow the devilish onrush of this century to usurp all my energies but will instead, as Charles Williams suggested, "fulfill the moment as the moment." I shall try to live well just now because the only time that exists is now.

10. Even if I turn out to be wrong, I shall bet my life on the assumption that this world is not idiotic, neither run by an absentee landlord, but that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course I shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the architect who calls himself Alpha and Omega.

limbo

Painted sometime in 2007, probably in NJ. Watercolor.

sight

source

Someday, you will see that your fears were a hologram.

It would be terrible to live in a hologram world and tell yourself it is reality. The better option is to see the hologram for what it is, a hologram. Artists will paint pictures about it, musicians will sing about it, and writers will weave a story around it, to make clear the distinction between reality and non-reality. Therein, the attraction.

...

If we are really this fragile, let us break! And then there will be something new again.

Pencil v. Camera

glorious! his own version of adding to the photo, via pencil sketch






by Ben Hein
http://www.benheine.com/

lovers who uncover

Today, Virginia was for wine-lovers, apple-lovers and fall-lovers! A trip to the west with friends to gather apples was the best way to spend an October day.









Carter Mountain, Jefferson Vineyard, Carytown Burgers

first fridays spotlight- josh george

Got to see some amazing stuff this past Friday at Ghostprint gallery by Josh George. I love the innovative use of materials, the paint, and the grittiness. He mixes in cloths, bits of paper and wallpaper, patterned fabrics and other assorted materials with his paint to get a dramatic and memorable effect.
















inspired!