goodbye, old girl

Rest in peace, Miss Moxie.  We're so glad we were able to give you a cozy home and an occasional tuna dinner during the last 10 of your 18 years on earth.

tuckered out

It was 42 degrees (F) when Mr. Cecil and I went on our walk this nothing. (For those of you closer to the equator, I say this as a very good thing.) That means no ice and almost no snow left on the sidewalks.

The complete lack of slipperiness ushers in the season of running outside.  Neither of us (me and Mr. Cecil, that is) is used to running several miles in one shot right now, but we're working up to it.  Some running, then some walking.  Then some more running and some more walking. 

I have that "worked hard" feeling in my lungs now, but the best part is seeing a tired, relaxed puppers lounging on the floor. 

feminism ain't easy: all apologies

I saw this on the news last night about an exchange between Ted Cruz and Dianne Feinstein in a senate judiciary committee hearing.  It bothered me, but not for the reason you might suspect.

I'm not overly upset about Ted Cruz and his line of reasoning. Sure, I disagree with him.  I also figure if he wants to make his underlying argument look weaker by trying to be condescending, that's his decision.

What concerns me about this story -- and others recounting the exchange between Cruz and Feinstein -- is the mention at the end of her apologizing to him after the fact.  If you watch the conversation in full and not edited for prime time news (available here), you'll see that Senators Leahy and Durbin also had some cutting remarks for Cruz.  In my opinion, none of the comments, Feinstein's included, were inappropriate or disrespectfully irate.  I'm at a loss as to why she should feel the need to apologize for making a strong argument in defense of her opinions.

More to the point, why is it relevant to the journalistic recounting of events?  I can't recall the last time a story on male legislators mentioned that one apologized to another.  Maybe the men of Washington apologize to each other all over the place.  Who am I to know?  Whether they do or they don't isn't my point, though, it's that if they do, we don't hear about it (and probably don't need to).  The fact that major media outlets seem to only find it relevant when a female senator apologizes: that's what I find problematic.

(new) neighborhood wildlife

Our old house was in a great location close to civilization but letting us see the occasional woodland creature scampering by.  We saw foxes a few times and heard a lot of fishercats in the woods next to the house.  There were lots of turkeys, and there was this little guy.

We love the house we've moved to, but there's been a bit of wistfulness about leaving behind the "hidden wooded gem in the middle of the city" location we used to have.  Mind you, I'm glad to leave the fishercats behind, but the thought of just squirrels and chipmunks in the yard was a little boring.

Thankfully, the new neighborhood doesn't disappoint.  Mr. Cecil and I were out on a walk last week, when I noticed about seven or so really, surprisingly, intimidatingly large birds in a cluster of trees.  We turned a corner and found a few of them perched on the roof and chimney of a house.  Stock-still.  With their wings spread out.  It was more than a little creepy, in a fascinating way.

Based on a little quick googling, I think they're turkey vultures.  So, not a threat to small and medium-sized dogs (yay!) but pretty cool to see.

 

how i roll

Oh yes I did.  Radio silence for two months, then back with an atrocious pun.  Pow!

I may never buy store-bought hamburger rolls again.  I won't if The Awesome Husband has anything say about it, anyway.

These were somewhat time consuming in a plan-ahead sort of way, but not overly difficult.  My perspective may also be different now because the process of cleaning up after cooking finally involves putting bowls and spoons in our dishwasher rather than into the sink where they'll mock us until we wash them by hand.  So now everything feels easy-peasy.

Anyway, yeah, homemade hamburger rolls.   We had these with black bean burgers, sweet potato fries, and a salad.  Yum!

new year, new furniture

What better way to spend New Year's Eve than moving a large piece of furniture.  That's what you guys all did too, right?

I've been keeping an eye out on craigslist, at thrift stores, and the like for furniture we'd like to have in our new house.  A desk for the semi-finished basement.  More dining chairs.  They're things we don't necessarily need right away, so we have the luxury of waiting for just the right whatever-it-is.

The other day I found just the right desk listed on craigslist for $50.  I asked if the seller would take $40, and thankfully they took that and weren't offended.  Also thankfully, my parents have an SUV big enough to move furniture (and thankfully they let us borrow it).  The Awesome Husband and I drove over to pick it up in the evening on New Year's Eve.  It's bigger in person than I expected, but (one more time!) thankfully we found that the top and bottom could be moved separately.  We ended up making two trips, but we got the whole thing moved and set up in about two hours.  

I'm so stinkin' excited about this desk.  It's exactly what we didn't know we wanted to find, for a fraction of the price we were expecting to pay.

orange + chocolate = delicious

One of my eccentricities is a very, very strong aversion to wastefulness.  I should probably put another "very"  in there, just to be accurate.  What this meant when I made candied orange peels was that I couldn't bring myself to throw away the orange-infused syrup left behind at the end of the steeping process.  Most of it went into the freezer to await further inspiration.

An idea hit me before the pot hit the sink, in fact.  I added milk to what I couldn't scrape out and stirred it over low heat, then added cocoa powder and whisked it until it was incorporated.  

Orange hot chocolate.  My new favorite toasty beverage for winter.  Yum.

settling in means being festive

Let's take an intermission of sorts from the posts about our old house.  I suppose you could also call it an intermission from not-blogging.  That wouldn't be inaccurate.

We're about 90% settled in at the new house.  There are some boxes left to unpack, which drives The Awesome Husband nuts but doesn't phase me much.  There's some art left to hang on the walls, but I'd rather wait until we're sure of where we want things to go before we go hammering nails every which way. 

Thankfully the kitchen's pretty well put together at this point.  Pots and pans and mixers and appliances are all where they need to be, which made it much easier to make some festive treats last weekend.  There was this wonderfully adaptable recipe, which I made as cranberry lime bread.  And then, because I wanted to make something for someone allergic to eggs, peanuts, and dairy -- the horror! -- I also made a small batch of candied orange peels.  

I think they turned out pretty well.  And hey, in the background and stuff, that's our new kitchen!  

   

love letter to our house: living room

Whoopsie!  I showed you the before and after versions of the outside of our house, then completely dropped the ball on the rest of it.  Moving will do that to you, apparently.

So I'd mentioned in passing that there was some orange shag carpet when The Awesome Husband closed on the house and first clutched the keys in his very own hands.  That doesn't fully convey the amount of 1960s-ness that had to be eradicated from the premises.   Not only was there orange shag carpet covering every square inch of the floor other than the kitchen and bathroom, but there was wall paneling everywhere.  And it covered up wallpaper.  Which covered more wallpaper.  

There were also some pretty sweet window treatments. 

We tackled the walls ourselves with some help from friends and family, and once we gave the orange shag the boot, we paid to have the hardwood floors refinished.  We could have given it the ol' college try, but it wouldn't have looked as good and it sure wouldn't have been done in a weekend.  Best $700 we ever spent.

And then, you know, we put furniture in it and stuff.  Take a look! 

Before 

During

After!

mission: use up all the food

We've reached the stage of moving where we're trying not to buy groceries unless absolutely necessary.  Along the same lines, we're using up what we can from the freezer and cabinets.   Why move more stuff than we have to, right?

There's been a fair amount of pasta.  I predict quite a bit of cereal this week, too.  Thankfully, we were able to break it up with a butternut squash that's been waiting patiently on the counter for a couple weeks and some pork from the back of the freezer.  There was parsley in the fridge from a recipe last week, so it even looked fancy. 

I can't wait to get settled in our new house, though, and have the world be our culinary oyster again.

Not that we'll be eating oysters.  Ew.

a very good day

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with good food and good company. 

I'm thankful for lots of things this year.  I won't bore you with the whole list, but Mr. Cecil is certainly on it. The dog beach 10 minutes away is on it too. 

"Leave it!"

love letter to our house: exterior

As I mentioned recently, we're selling our house.

This means, among other things, that it's never looked as wonderful as it does now. The outside has been pressure washed and the landscaping was updated.  All the rooms have been re-done over the course of the past few years.  The living room wall paneling and orange shag carpet are long gone, and even the pink kitchen counter that hung on for a while has been revamped.  And of course we re-did the bathroom.  Oh, the bathroom...

So now's the time to post pictures of it, right?   One part show-off-our-hard-work, one part nothing-else-interesting-is-happening-to-me-right-now, and one part farewell-house-we've-loved-living-in.

First up, the exterior:

Before

After

next time i'll make cookies

You guys.  I found an amazing apple cake recipe that you should definitely try.  I don't recommend, however, baking it under the circumstances I did today.

We're selling our house, and this afternoon our realtor did an open house.  I had the brilliant idea to bake something autumn-y so as to make the place smell cozy, and at the same time ingratiate the property with any potential buyers.  Welcome!  Have some baked goods!  Now don't you want to buy this house?

So, interspersed with some last minute cleaning, I baked this amazing cake.  No really, it's amazing.  Applesauce cake with cinnamon cream cheese frosting?  Yes please.  I didn't change anything, so I'm not going to type out the recipe here.  Instead, go over to Smitten Kitchen and check it out.  Trust me.)

My plan was to put the frosting on top and cut the whole thing into squares, then put the squares on a plate for the open house with a stack of napkins.  No need for forks, no need for dishes.  Sounds like a great plan, right?

Right.

Except.

To accomplish my make-the-house-smell-cozy agenda, I waited until a couple hours in advance to actually bake the cake.  So right off the bat you've got some time crunch pressure for added excitement.  Then factor in that cake doesn't cool down as fast as one might think (ahem, as fast as I thought), and you've got cinnamon cream cheese frosting getting slathered on a still-warm cake.  Mind you, that combination is DELICIOUS, but the frosting gets a bit runny and the cake crumbs get everywhere and the cake itself doesn't have very much structure once you cut it up.  Not as pretty as I'd hoped.

With 5 minutes left before Mr. Cecil and I had to clear out so the realtor could work his magic and show off our house, I was trying to salvage what I could of the haphazard, crumbly, looked-like-a-five-year-old-cut-them cake squares.  That was pleasant.

So the moral here is that you definitely need to make this cake.  Learn from my mistake, though, and pick a day when you have plenty of time and there's no pressure on the cake itself.

And the second moral, of course, is that there's an awesome house for sale -- if you know anyone in the market for an adorable home in the Greater Portland, Maine area, let me know!

Now go bake that cake!

urban hiking

Now, I'm using the term "urban" loosely here.  This isn't a major metropolitan area by any means.  My point, though, is that we went hiking this weekend on a lovely wooded trail that's adjacent to my town's biggest commercial center.   You can go to the mall, and then a fraction of a mile away you can hike for a solid hour.  No joke.

You can hear cars going by, but visually you'd never know you're still remarkably close to civilization most of the time.  We even watched as an owl flew across the trail in front of us, landed on a branch in a nearby tree, and stared at us for several minutes.

overheard

"... Sure, honey.  I guess it does sort of look like the opening to The Simpsons."

Happy weekend, all!

earthquake!

If you live in New England and have any connection to social media at all, I'm sure you know already that we had an earthquake this evening.

If you're not familiar with New England, I'll say this: New England is not earthquake country.  Most people I know thought a very large truck was driving by.  And then, oh wait, that's no truck; perhaps the furnace is malfunctioning?  I think it took us all collectively several seconds to figure out what was happening.

So now we're all rather proud to have this badge of honor.  We -- my state, even! -- had an earthquake.  4.6 on the Richter scale!  We're no San Andreas, but that's not too shabby.

from the garden: sweet potatoes

And when I say "from the garden," I mean "from a grocery bag that sat in the driveway all summer."
I grew sweet potato slips by suspending one in water at the end of the winter.  Then I planted a couple slips in a grocery bag filled with soil, watered infrequently, and crossed my fingers.
What do you know, we have usable sweet potatoes to show for it.  Next year I might put in more (or any) effort and see if the results are even better.

persistence

 

 

Nice try, strawberry plants. Nice try.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

motivation: take what you can get

If I could be assured that I'd have this weather and scenery every morning, I might be inclined to go running before work more often.  This morning was pretty much perfect at 45 degrees with a light breeze off the cove that this trail loops around, though I was certainly glad I opted for a long sleeved shirt.

I'll be running a 5k next weekend, and AGAIN I'm not prepared.  Oh well, it'll be a nice fall morning, if I'm lucky.

Apples, shmapples. It's golden raspberry season.

That right there is this year's golden raspberry haul.  So far.  Mind you, that's a gallon bag.  We freeze each day's berries and then add them to the bag so they're usable without having to thaw them all or chip away at a monolithic mass of berryness.

There are still lots of them on the plants, green, tiny, and waiting for more sunshine, so I'm hoping the weather will hold out for a while longer.  I heard the phrase "frost warning" as part of a recent forecast, though for now I don't think it covers this area specifically.  I'm excited for the return of sweater weather, but we don't need to go straight to parkas.