From
E’s drill last week:
Yesterday, Mr. B call Mrs. B and Mrs. B went home quickly
and Mr. B said to her, “I want to [have a] baby.”
And
then J walked up to me to hand in all their drill papers and patted me on
the stomach and said, “Hi baby!”
And
then E said, “Hi baby! Welcome to Mrs. B stomach!”
I think they want me to have a baby!
From E’s drill last week:
Yesterday, Mr. B call Mrs. B and Mrs. B went home quickly and Mr. B said to her, “I want to [have a] baby.”
And then J walked up to me to hand in all their drill papers and patted me on the stomach and said, “Hi baby!”
And then E said, “Hi baby! Welcome to Mrs. B stomach!”
I think they want me to have a baby!
Here’s the very basic instructions for grilling cabbage. Let me know if you want a more specific recipe!
Saute a few slices of bacon (cut into slivers) and one small onion, chopped. Mix with your favorite barbecue sauce. Cut out the core of the cabbage plus a little extra so that you have a good sized hole in the top. Fill the hole with the bacon mixture and then put pieces of cut up butter on top. The recipe calls for four (4!) tablespoons but we only used two. And even that looked like a lot! Grill with indirect heat for about 1 to 1 1/2 hours or until tender when pierced with a fork.
Cut into wedges, distribute the yummy bacon stuff, and enjoy! 🙂
Here’s a few pictures from some recent cooking adventures:
Filet mignon with spicy sweet potato fries and arugula (roasted under our very scary broiler!):
Nik and I highly recommend the spice mix from that recipe. Nik has made us sweet potato hash browns a couple times now and added that spice mix to it. They are SO GOOD! I could eat them every morning for breakfast!
Barbecued cabbage (before and after the grill!):
And yes, that’s butter on top, and that’s only half of what the recipe called for!
And, for Rachel, a turkey club sandwich.
This just in! There’s going to be a fresh cranberry shortage. So if you want cranbrosia for Christmas, buy those berries now! I did! Actually, I bought two pounds at Costco last weekend for Thanksgiving cranbrosia and froze most of them. So I have great plans for making all kinds of cranberry stuff. Now I’m glad I have a lot. So I don’t have to worry about being caught in the Great Cranberry Famine of 2007.
HGTV is starting a new program where they’re going to choose one city to do a lot of work in. Baltimore, and more specifically Pen Lucy (the neighborhood of my church and where I lived last year) is one of the possible places. Please go here to vote for us! I also go to church with the homeowner of the house they would be rehabbing.
You can vote once a day and it’s really easy to vote. You don’t have to register or anything.
Go here to vote – make sure to vote for Baltimore, MD!
And go here if you want to read more about the projects that they would be doing in Baltimore.
Thanks for voting! Don’t forget to vote every day!
This past Friday through Monday, several of our students, all of whom are Meskhetian Turks, participated in a Youth Refugee project where they took pictures, under the supervision of National Geographic photographer. You can read a little bit about it in this Baltimore Sun article. Last year, our students both faced and created significant problems and challenges in school as they entered an entirely new culture. But this year is drastically better and it’s really cool to see their success and also to read a little more of their story.
Announcing… OUR new arrival! Please welcome Dillingham the 2nd!
My birthday present from my friend Katie:
The last fruits of our garden:
(Yes, those are habanero peppers, and yes, Nik has used them in hamburgers and salsa! Spicy!)
And the last of my flowers – This vinca lasted over five months and would have kept on blooming except for the frost that started its slow demise this week. I’m going to miss walking by it every day on my way into our house!
This is what I got at the Farmers’ Market last week:
Nik has been asking for it so that afternoon, I made pumpkin pie (but not with that pumpkin in the background!):
I used Mom’s recipe for the crust. I only added the low end amount of water called for in the recipe and the dough was immediately too wet. So I guess maybe cooking in Baltimore is different than cooking in Glennallen. Although certainly not beautiful, it came out flaky and tender, despite the lack of vodka. Take that, Cooks Illustrated. It tasted so good but we ended up taking it to Covenant Group on Tuesday night because, really, do two people need to eat a whole pie?
On Tuesday, we made kaddo borawni with the sugar pumpkin that you can see in the Farmers’ Market picture:
Kaddo Borawni (also spelled bourani) is a dish that you can get at the Helmand, an Afghani restaurant (owned by a younger brother of President Karzai of Afhganistan). We went there last Friday to celebrate my birthday, before going to the symphony. It was so good that we came home, motivated to find the recipe and make some. (What would we do without the Internet?!) It’s essentially sugar pumpkin, pan-fried and roasted (in my Calphalon Dutch oven!) in the oven with sugar and cinnamon for a long time. Then you eat it with a garlic-yogurt sauce. It sounds weird but it is SOOO good! Make this while you can! (Sugar pumpkins won’t be around for forever and then we’ll have to wait until next fall!)
Here’s the recipe:
One 2 to 2.5 pound sugar pumpkin – quartered, peeled, and cubed. (I actually found it easier to cut it into slices, sort of like you slice a cantaloupe and then peel it, just using a vegetable peeler).
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2-3/4 cup sugar (Yes, it sounds like a lot of sugar but it’s really good this way. I found recipes that called for twice as much sugar!)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Heat the vegetable oil in a pan (preferably oven-safe if you have it). Add the pumpkins and saute it, turning frequently, until golden brown. If necessary, transfer the pumpkin to a roasting pan, then stir in the sugar and cinnamon, cover it, and bake at 350 for 30 – 60 minutes (depending on how soft you want it.
Sauce
1 cup plain yogurt
1 clove garlic, crushed
Mix the two together and let the flavors chill together while the pumpkin is roasting. To serve, put some garlic sauce on a plate, then pumpkin, and then more garlic sauce.
As an added bonus – wash off the seeds from the pumpkin, toss with olive oil and kosher salt, and roast in the oven for about 10-15 minutes. They make a YUMMY treat to eat while waiting for the pumpkin to finish!!
Then, last night we made pumpkin soup with canned pumpkin and hot Italian sausage. It was really good too. We used the cilantro from the FM in this.
Here’s the recipe for this one. It’s easy!!
Ingredients:
1 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 onions (chopped)
2 cloves garlic (chopped)
2 chorizo sausage (casings removed) (We used hot Italian sausage because that’s what was on sale!)
3 cups chicken stock
2 cups pumpkin puree
1 potato (peeled and cut into 1/2″ cubes)
1 tablespoon oregano
1 teaspoon cumin (ground)
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon cilantro per bowl (chopped)
Directions:
1. Heat the oil in a pan.
2. Add the onions and saute until tender.
3. Add the garlic and saute until fragrant.
4. Add the chorizo and brown.
5. Add the chicken stock, pumpkin puree. potato, oregano, and cumin and bring
to a boil.
6. Reduce the heat and simmer until the potato is tender, about 45 minutes.
7. Remove from the heat and let cool for 10 minutes.
8. Stir in the cream.
9. Pour some soup into a bowl and top with the cilantro.
I found this recipe here (my soup looks much different than his!) thanks to this food blog. Now that I’ve found the world of Food Blogs, my life may never be the same!
Salmon and Souvlaki 