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!