Two Years

Today is our second wedding anniversary.  

It's hard to believe that it's been two years; it feels like the wedding was just a few months ago.  I guess time flies when you're having fun, eh?  As a wedding gift I gave James an engraved pocket watch and he gave me a pair of pearl drop earrings.  For our first anniversary - the paper anniversary - I gave him subscriptions to a couple magazines (Imbibe and Make), and he gave me The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, which has quickly become my favorite cookbook in my collection (shhhh, don't tell the Joy of Cooking, it'll get jealous).  The second anniversary is the cotton anniversary.  Since I have more time then money I decided to embroider a set of cotton handkerchiefs as my gift to James.  I've never embroidered before, but I have done a lot of cross-stitch, so it didn't take me too long to get the hang of it.  After consulting a book on needlework and studying some hand embroidered napkins from some long dead relatives I dove in.  And I'm rather proud of the results.

The next needlework project I want to take up is learning how to crochet.  I'm hoping that's as easy to learn from a book as this was.

 

Happy 2nd anniversary, Sweetie!

My black thumb

When we bought our house a little over two years ago there was a wisteria bush growing up along the back fence, but it was pulling the fence down with its weight so it had to go.  We finally got rid of the last of it this past winter and were left with a barren section of dirt about two feet wide all along the length of the fence.  Instead of trying to make the grass grow back there we decided to plant some herbs and vegetables and flowers and have ourselves a nice little garden. 

Unfortunately Mother Nature had different ideas.  We bought some seeds and seedlings from a local nursery and planted tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, carrots, peas, mint, basil, thyme, parsley, rosemary, and some vincas, for color, two weeks ago.  The basil was the first to look sick, but now almost all the plants are dead.  Well, except the peas.  They actually look pretty good!  I don't really know what to make of it.  We've been watering every day or two, and it hasn't even gotten all that hot here yet.  I have a sneaking suspicion that it's the soil.  My mom told me that sometimes other plants, such as oak trees, can leave the soil surrounding them acidic.  So I'm wondering if the wisteria changed the pH of the soil in that section of the yard.  We did plant some of the leftover vincas in pots with potting soil, and they seem happy and healthy.

Part of me thinks I need to figure out the problem and fix it.  But, then, part of me doesn't care.  I do like having fresh herbs with which to cook.  And no store bought tomato can compare to one you grew yourself.  But I'm starting to think that I don't really like gardening.  I feel like I SHOULD like gardening.  My parents are serious gardeners, and our friends have successful herb and flower gardens.  But when I think about gardening it just makes me feel overwhelmed.  And I don't really care enough to do the research to find out about different plants that thrive in the dusty West Texas plains.  Maybe I just need to cut my losses and move gardening into the "tried it but didn't like it" column.

Move Over Kraft Dinner

So yesterday I was figuring out the calories in the mac'n'cheese I was planning on making for dinner (using the awesome recipe analyzer over at Calorie Count) when the results kind of smacked me in the face.  I mean, I shouldn't have been shocked.  It's macaroni and CHEESE for crying out loud.  But I wasn't expecting 800 calories per serving!  Ugh, even with a grilled chicken breast and steamed broccoli, that was more than I could afford for dinner.  But I really wanted that bowl of cheesy goodness, so I started to mess around with the proportions.  The recipe came from my beloved America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, so really, it shouldn't be tinkered with.  They've already done that.  But I got rid of the butter and reduced the amount of milk and cheese and came up with a dish with a more reasonable 500 calories per serving.

And as I was adding the nutritional info to my food journal (an awesome app for my droid from FatSecret) I realized that this new and improved mac'n'cheese had 30g of protein!  Not nearly as much protein as a chicken breast, but still enough that I really didn't even need the chicken for protein with dinner.  Cutting out the chicken would save an additional 250 calories from dinner.

I decided to add a salad just to provide a little more volume to the meal.  So, what started out as a 1100 calorie meal ended up being a 600 calorie meal which allowed me to stay under 1500 calories for the day.  And the mac'n'cheese did not suffer for it.  In fact, the last time I made this recipe (without any alterations) I found it to be too soupy.  I ended up liking my lower calorie version better.  Here's the recipe:

Creamy Stovetop Mac'N'Cheese adapted from America's Test Kitchen
Serves 4

8 oz macaroni
2 large eggs
5 oz evaporated milk
1 tsp dry mustard
8 oz cheddar cheese, shredded
salt and pepper to taste

- Combine the eggs, evaporated milk, mustard, salt, and pepper together in a bowl.
- Boil the macaroni until al dente.
- Drain the macaroni and return to the pot.  Add the milk mixture along with half of the cheese.  Cook over low heat while stirring and gradually adding the remaining cheese until thick and creamy.

Nutritional information per serving: 527 calories, 25g fat (15g sat. fat), 165mg cholesterol, 431mg sodium, 48g carbohydrates, 2g fiber, 27g protein

Lions and monkeys and zebras... oh my!

Today I can call myself a professional baker!  One of James' coworkers asked me to make cupcakes for his son's second birthday this weekend.  He wanted two dozen vanilla cupcakes with green frosting (like the Easter cupcakes, but without the eggs)

and two dozen chocolate cupcakes decorated like jungle animals.

This is the first time I've been paid to make cupcakes for someone.  It's very exciting.  Mama needs a new pair of shoes!  LOL.  I really am going to buy a pair of shoes with the money.  I need a pair of comfortable slip-on walking shoes for when we go to Paris this summer.

Mmmmm... cupcakes

I've become known as the Cupcake Lady at James's work.  Unless what I'm baking calls for whole wheat flour, it's usually best for me to send my baked goods away so I don't end up eating them all myself.  So anytime I find a new cupcake or cookie recipe I'm dying to try out I bake up a batch and send them along with my husband to dispose of with his coworkers (after trying one or two myself, naturally).

So, without further ado, cupcakes for Easter, or Good Friday, really.  But green frosting and eggs are much more fun to eat than crosses and a crown of thorns.

Just call me Betty Crocker

I love to bake.  I enjoy cooking, but I LOVE baking.  The first thing I ever made were brownies which I entered into the county fair when I was nine.  I didn't win (I think I placed third... out of three entries), but I've been hooked ever since.  I have a pretty intense sweet tooth, so part of my infatuation stems from the ability baking gives me to indulge in whatever dessert I can whip up, but I also love the scientific aspect of it all.  There are so many similarities between what I do in the lab all day and what I do when I'm making a batch of chocolate chip cookies (perhaps my all time favorite cookie... I collect chocolate chip cookie recipes like some women collect shoes).  Add A to B, mix, heat for 30 minutes, chill, and serve.  Though what I do in the lab is not nearly as tasty, or as fattening.  And since baking is such a science I understand that once you start tweaking the ingredients you'll begin to mess with the outcomes.  Thus, I rarely alter recipes.  I stick to instructions faithfully and if I don't like a result I toss the recipe out and look for a new one.  But I recently started tweaking a muffin recipe and after several batches I've developed it into one that I'm quite proud of.

It started with a bran muffin recipe from the Fiber One website. Their recipe uses crushed up Fiber One cereal and two containers of vanilla yogurt.  I loved the muffins, but I wasn't thrilled with having to crush up cereal and buy individual yogurt containers for each batch of muffins.  So I started tweaking.  Switching out wheat bran for the cereal and plain yogurt for the vanilla.  But then I needed to up the sweetener and play around with flour proportions.  And after a couple weeks I've settled on a recipe that I really like and is all my own!  I love these muffins because they're hearty, thanks to the bran and ground flax seed, with just a little indulgence, thanks to the chocolate chips.  I have one for breakfast every morning with a big glass of milk, and I also eat one as a pre-workout snack.  So, without further ado:

Chocolate Chip Bran Muffins

1 egg
1/4 cup vegetable oil
12 oz plain nonfat yogurt
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup wheat bran
1/4 cup ground flax seed (optional)
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup chocolate chips

- Whisk together the egg, oil, yogurt, brown sugar, and vanilla.
- Stir in the flours, bran, flax seed, baking soda, salt, and chocolate chips until just combined.  Be careful not to over mix or the muffins will become tough.
- Portion out batter into muffin tins sprayed with cooking spray. (I usually get 16-17 muffins per batch.)
- Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes.
- Immediately remove from muffin tins and let cool on a wire rack.

Nutritional information: (per muffin) 169 calories, 7.6 g fat (2.7 g saturated fat), 22 g carbohydrates, 2.5 g fiber, 4.2 g protein

We've got a bed wetter in the house

We have two cats. We adopted Marley, a long-haired black feline, near the end of 2008 from a friend whose cat had a litter of kittens. James was kind of resistant at first, but when I told him I either wanted a cat or a baby he quickly came around to allowing a purring ball of fur into our home. (He knew I was joking... sort of.) And that was supposed to be it. One cat was enough for James. But Marley would get so lonely when we were gone all day at work (not to mention if we ever were out of town for a weekend!) that I finally convinced James we needed to get Marley a companion.

We adopted Reba, a short-haired orange and white tabby, from the Humane Society this past August. Thankfully Marley and Reba got along beautifully from the moment we brought her home. The only problem we've ever really had with Reba has been the occasional night when she's urinated on our bed. She did it several times right after we brought her home. We figured maybe as a kitten she was too afraid/lazy to make the trek across house to use the litter box in the laundry room. So we put a litter box in our bedroom for a few weeks and that seemed to take care of the problem. She did it again once after being spayed, but we figured it was probably due to a combination of the medication and the uncomfortable E-collar the vet sent her home wearing so she couldn't chew at her stitches.

But then she urinated on our bed again last night. Out of the blue. Which mystifies me. I'm hoping this doesn't become a habit for her. We've washed the sheets, sent the down comforter to the dry cleaners, and are keeping our fingers crossed that this was a one-time fluke. Otherwise somebody's getting locked in the laundry room at night.