[Inez] Things maybe only Elise cares about

You know we love you, gentle readers, but this was originally a blog for Elise and I to share with each other, so I'm going to use this post to show Elise some of the home/garden improvements we've done since she moved back to Minnesota. Elise, I think you'd be proud of us. I'm going to start in the front and work my way back.

Yesterday I went to Ginkgo Gardens with Colin so he could get some mulch and pepper plants, and I ended up getting stuff to line the front sidewalk.

I got Cheddar Pinks (the pink flowery things), Stonecrop (the low spready thing, which will apparently have flowers later in the summer, too), and these orange and red things that I absolutely love and whose name I don't know. These:

We also planted along the front walk with bulbs (which sort of did okay), and with wildflowers. Right now it just looks kind of weedy, but there are these little white things that have started blooming within the past couple days:

The flowers are probably .5-1 cm across, and low to the ground (6 in high or so). These are from the low wildflower mix you left.

Along the back of the front yard (against the front porch), we planted two little rose bushes from Home Depot, and the yellow sunflowers you left. I also planted two canna lily bulbs I got from Fragers, and in front of all that we planted some of your tall wildflower mix.

This is the left side of the porch. We've got a potted rosemary, a bitty rose bush, some thriving sunflowers, and if you look closely on the lower right you'll see my bitty canna lily (hiding between the sunflowers), doing quite well in spite of its large neighbors. I thinned the sunflowers out around the lilies so that they will still get light.

The rose bush on the right (by the stairs) is doing really well, and already has buds! (We were worried they wouldn't bloom at all this year.)

Look, I worked something beautiful and yellow into this post!

For inside we got a new hanging plant for the other living room doorway, and a little begonia which lives next to the TV, where it has a chance of getting some light. It goes really nicely with the curtains (that sounds dumb, but it really does).

Last Saturday was the big Brookland yard sale day, and I got this pretty photograph.

I hung it on the little bit of wall above my vintage blue chair (looking from the living room to the dining room).

In the back, the boys planted 8 (!) tomato plants, and four little strawberry plants in a big pot. Also some lettuce. The tomato plants are doing really well and getting quite big! I guess we should get some cages...

The lettuce looks like an alien life form right now, to me.

And the strawberries are doing so well that I think we might need to build them a trough so they have room to spread out.

[Elise] Wild Rice Curry

This is a yellow curry with wild rice and onions, topped with pan fried sweet potatoes. Yum.

 I love sweet potatoes. If I could put them in every single entrée I make without everyone I cook for being absolutely sick of them, I would. For a change of pace I got some yellow fleshed sweet potatoes. They're a little starchier but still sweet, providing a nice crunch to contrast the soup.

The recipe I got a few years ago from La Fuji Mama  and when it's done it is the most vivid yellow. It was this yellow that stuck in my mind while I took off for the grocery store without a list and not having looking at the recipe since the night before.

I went to the store knowing I had all but three things; a can of coconut milk, yellow curry (right? I mean, the soup is so yellow, how could it not be yellow curry), and... something else. What was that something else?
I went to a few different grocery stores which all had the same selection of "Thai Ktichen" curry pastes: one red, one green, a chili paste, and a satay peanut sauce. Finally I went to a Vietnamese market, where I finally found yellow curry, and big cheap tub of it instead of a little expensive jar. I need to remember to go here more often. I'm also going to need to make a lot more yellow curries.

Finally I got home and started cooking only to realize that the recipe actually calls for red curry. Go figure.

I did find that the yellow curry tasted wonderful in the recipe. It had a very warm spice that was more than I had expected without being overpowering.

Also, I got a round about compliment from my dad, when asked if the two week old bread tasted any good, or if it just tasted like stale bread with good soup on it. 

May is Yellow!

Inez and I are trying a new theme. COLORS! Each month we will pick a new color, and this month the color is yellow!

[Elise] Budapest, April, 2009

[Inez] Multi-colored birthday cake

A week and a half ago my housemate, Ryan, crashed his bike and broke his face. Well actually he didn't break anything, but he did get stitches and the left side of his face did swell into a semi circle and his eye swelled shut and everything. Also, it was his birthday. So I made him a three layered, multi-colored, multi-flavored birthday cake.

Okay, so I had the plan before he crashed his bike, but isn't it nice as a "Sorry you crashed your bike on your birthday"?

Anyway, cake. Bottom later: orange. Middle layer: chocolate compost cake. Top layer: originally it was supposed to be hibiscus but then I remembered that Elise left us and moved back to Minnesota and took the hibiscus extract with her. So top layer: raspberry.

For the orange and raspberry I used a recipe for orange cake that I've used before, which calls for orange juice and orange zest. For the raspberry layer I just put pureed and strained raspberries in place of the orange juice and zest. If I did it again, I'd probably put whole raspberries in the batter as well, because it was a little lacking in raspberry oomph.

Oh yeah, and I added food coloring to the orange and raspberry layers. Just because.

For the filling between the layers I used Ruby's go-to chocolate cream cheese frosting:

1 package cream cheese, 6 T butter, 6 oz baker's chocolate, and a cup of whipping cream (whipped with a couple spoonfuls of powdered sugar. You can omit the butter, but I kept it because I wanted a nice smooth frosting.

Especially since I dyed two of the three layers, I wanted the outside to be more plain. I did a plain cream cheese-whipped cream frosting and added these silvery edible little decorative balls I got in Brazil. And star candles. Because it just seemed right.

(Recipes to come because I'm writing this from a Megabus to Philly for the weekend).

[Inez] Saturday breakfast

Saturday is easily my favorite day of the week. Saturday breakfast or brunch is probably my favorite meal of the week. Last Saturday I had a treat -- I was supposed to play a double-header all morning, but it got rained out. This is good, because my butt is out of SHAPE, something I am reminded of every time I ride up the big hill by the transfer station on my way to work. It hurts.

So anyway, instead of huffing and wheezing and hurting, I had time to make scones and have a nice Saturday breakfast.

Raspberries, an orange, scones, and one of my new(ish) favorite things (cooked in my newly seasoned cast iron pan!) - fried eggs.

A note about the scones: I put half a cup of currants and the zest of one orange in a single recipe of the adapted recipe from the New Joy (see the link above). I cannot tell you enough how delicious the orange zest is. I have always love love loved scones, but this puts them in the realm of the spectacular. Uh, if I do say so myself.

A note about seasoning cast iron: Joy the Baker, who I linked to above, says that your pan might end up a bit sticky after seasoning according to her instructions. My pan did end up a bit sticky, and it looked a bit splotchy and I was worried it hadn't really worked. But fear not! It really works.

[Elise] Walnut Cranes

While I can't take any credit for having made this table, I did refinish it, which with four detailed crane carvings, was not easy. (Not to deter you from refinishing your table, Inez. I'm sure it will be much easier, and feel free to call if you need tips!)

The table is for plants on my south-facing window. The mirror is to bring more light to the plant and into the room. Hopefully my pomegranates are happy!

[Inez] Baby blanket

Hey Elise, look what I finished!

I had to wait until after I visited Costa Rica to post it, because I didn't think Ili knew about the blog, but I wasn't sure. But anyway, here it is folks: my first baby blanket. Also my first quilting project. I know these big triangles are quilting-lite, but it was still hard. Precision, it turns out, is really important. Wait, that wasn't stressed enough. It's really important. The good news is, it was all straight lines, and the fabric wasn't as ridiculously finicky as the stuff I made curtains with.

I lined it with felt, so practically he won't be using it that much. But I figured since I'm the auntie from the north it fell on me to make him a warm blanket.