Monday Night Pizza

Last night's happenings en maison a la Redondo Beach:

(love that wine)

Watching TV on the computer, that's how we roll...

Easter weekend '09 (and on getting old)

So on Saturday we met some of T's buddies from college who were in town visiting. They were stretched out on the frigidly cold beach, and there we were, in our normal shoes (what was I thinking? And how in the world is it physically possible to get THAT much sand in your shoes when your feet are in there too?...). I know that it's warmer over here than in D.C., but I'm sorry, 63 degrees is too cold for me to surrender my pashmina-acting-as-neck-scarf, much less take off my clothes....

Anyway, after the beach meetup, those guys were going to go to a beer pong tournament, and I'm just getting too old for that sort of thing.
#1) I'm terrible at beer pong.
more importantly,
#2) It's just not worth it anymore to me to spend a sunny Saturday delirious, and completely rob myself of a Sunday because it's spent in a room with the curtains drawn, trying to make myself as still as death because any movement hurts, including that of my hair...

So we didn't tag along.

Instead, we went over to Santa Monica and a sweet Irish bar there, with huge horseshoe booths and random guys yelling at the baseball game on tv every 3.2 seconds. Well, make that random guy. And no one else was watching the game. The bar was quite silent, actually. It was a little awkward.

But there were moderate drinks involved,
(this was supposed to be a normal shot with all of us in it. Obviously that didn't happen so the pics on my post will be very B heavy. It was just that angle of the booth, can't help it. But oh, by the way, he's, in his Sexy Vegan guise, started a new blog. It's here. Go check it out.),

...and we didn't end up leaving til after 10.... from our 3:30 arrival. Here is another testament to my (relatively, as in the past yearish) newfound adulthood, that in the entire time there, I had 2 nutty Irishmen (a drink! geeeeez) and a cider (which was delicious). I was completely unfazed. Honestly, I don't know if I've ever left a pub that sober....well perhaps I have, but not if I spent more than 30 minutes in said pub.
That night we went home and had a little band practice, and the next day, T and I, acting as responsible adults again (isn't half bad. I could get used to it) went grocery shopping (okay so I guess actual responsible adults would've gone before the day that they needed the supplies) and made a delicious Easter feast for two.

We're talking Sangria with fresh strawberries and oranges. Did you know that strawberries soak up the carbonation? So after 30 minutes in the carbonated sangria (from ginger ale and stuff), you eat a carbonated strawberry. It sounds weird, yes. Heck, it tastes weird. The jury's still even out on whether I like it or not...but interesting, nonetheless....

And a roast chicken with vegetables (see Carrots in the Kitchen post from long ago, multiply amounts by 2, add bacon and increase oven time)

And to top it off? Made from scratch carrot cake cupcakes, with cream cheese frosting also from scratch. Yes, I do have one in my little pink lunchbox today. I think it's time to start watching Dancing w/ the Stars again...

Happy Monday! And I hope you have lots of delicious and unhealthy leftovers too :)

Kahluah Cleavage

Saturday morning, after a while of working in my little pillowed cubby in our "library" (aka a spare room- that's-not-really-a-room- because-it-has-only-2-real-walls, -a-banister-and-a-hallway-so-we- put-shelves-in-and-call-it-a-library), T and I escaped to Pasadena's Huntington Gardens.It was a smidge chilly out, but we found a nice grassy knoll to lie on and chat about things like the state of technology, the changes that are happening in today's youth because of it (as he observes as an academic tutor and as I observed when teaching and working with young'uns here and there over the years as a camp counselor and things like that), and other such topics that only dorks like us can appreciate :)
It was nearly comfy enough to nap,but I realized what a task list I had for the upcoming day and a half so I dragged my eyelids open, and we continued on.
After a couple hours we got stuck in traffic on the way to Tom Bergin's Tavern, which was amazing.
This is T's "Charis isn't yelling at me for having a Guinness for once" face (they have wheat!):And our respective drinks, his=Guinness, mine=some coffee/Baileys/various other stuff mix. (delicious)

Sunday M took us to lunch at Elephant Bar,which may be my very favorite restaurant.T liked it too.We made corned beef and cabbage for dinner yesterday. It was amazing (yay for internet recipe conglomerations!)

Saturday night, because the coffee drinks at Bergin's had been soooo yummy, we decided to walk the two blocks to a Starbucks to get large coffees, then bring them back and make our own version (hello, wet bar in our living room that I have used, now, twice). At the Starbucks we saw that a murder in our neighborhood last month had an update - apparently at the end of January, a couple of guys in a van asked for directions from a girl walking home and tried to grab her and put her in the back of the van. She fought them off and ran away, thank goodness. That's who they're thinking the murderers were. Get this - the van incident happened just around the corner from my house, a little over a block away. Put another tally up in the "let's live in a small town" category.... I never had to be afraid to walk to my car in the morning when I lived in the middle of nowhere....

Anyway, so we brought coffee back and spent an inordinate amount of time making coffee drinks, using spoons to ineffectually attempt that cool layering that you sometimes see in those drinks and everything. They ended up cold (not after we microwaved them), really sweet, and VERY strong. I only had one, of course...

At one point (T made a pizza that night) T was at the sink, dealing with the saucepan after the pizza was in the oven, and I was precariously perching/leaning against the opposite counter, with my cup to my lips, and he slipped, sloshing water out of the sink onto his shirt and the floor. At the exact same moment, my hand slipped and my coffee cup did that almost-dropped-it-but-I-didn't thing.
Did he startle me? No.
Did I startle him? No.
Was there a loud sound? Nope.
Did something subconscious happen to make us both startle? I don't think so.
Did the murderer drive by our house and his psychological evil penetrate the house and both of our minds to make us both unknowingly freak out and lose hold of what we were grabbing? I don't know.

What I do know is that my coffee did not go onto the floor like his dishwater. It all got caught by my shirt. And under my shirt. Yuck. (if you don't know what I mean, check the title of this post)

Happy Monday!

Introducing T

So my buddy B, a vegan chef, has a website and updates his opening video every Friday. It's a weekly thing to bug him, therefore, about what he'll post. Last Thursday I came over to the boys' house and was immediately ushered to the computer and shown this.

Amazing. Note the cameo by T (and my incredibly wobbly camera work), and definitely stay for the credits. You won't regret it.

Carrots in the Kitchen

That's the name of my new recipe book.

One of my resolutions this year is to find a new recipe each week. So far, so good (well, I only started started this week, as last week was still vacation, and therefore did not count as the actual new year...)

I've been trying to decide what to name it, so I can decorate it all prettily, which will make me more likely to actually put recipes in it rather than just (incorrectly) think I'll be able to remember them all, and that's what I got.

Carrots in the Kitchen.

Let me explain. It's all about name pronunciation. Everyone gets it wrong (in fact, I'd be willing to bet a dollar that everyone who reads this blog and hasn't actually met me thinks my name sounds differently than it does). When I taught at UF (yay for the 2009 nat'l champs!) as part of my master's assistantship, I used to tell my students that I understood if they couldn't remember, but please, please, please (as in, don't get on my bad side or else your semester may not be as nice, just saying. Kidding! I loved all my students...) if you're not sure how to say it, just call me "hey you". Or, "excuse me". Some actually called me "Professor", which made me feel absolutely old.

So, what's the pronunciation? My name is Charis. I have found that most people automatically think the first syllable sounds like share, as in "share and share alike", and that the second sounds like eess, as in "lease".

Wrong.

It's actually pronounced with the first syllable care as in "careful" and the second iss "as in kiss".

So, to make it easy to remember for the little ones that I later taught, I'd say that "it's like 'carrots' without the T."

Kids always got that. Grownups, not as often. So now when I meet someone, the people who I'm with usually say that "it's like 'Paris' with a K." Which isn't true, because it's actually a CH, but let's not get started. And that isn't so much my favorite because we all know of another Paris who I wouldn't necessarily want to remind people of....and once in awhile someone will actually call me Paris.....sigh....

Anyway, so a term of endearment from the kiddies and for me was 'Carrots'. I liked it. I thought it was cute when they'd call me that. And I don't understand little 'un humor - I could make my friend's six-year-old giggle forever by just repeating "Hello, my name is Carrots and I like to eat vegetables."

Do you get it? I don't.

Anyway, so Carrots in the Kitchen is my new recipe book. And now you can say my name. Why you'd want to, I don't know, but when I read in my head I hear it, so I thought it may be useful for my 3 blog readers :)

Happy Friday!

Thanksgiving 2008

Thanksgiving!

Or, as we should perhaps call it, Turkey Day! (because we should give thanks all the time, right? Oh, maybe I'll withdraw that opinion, because there's Valentine's Day too, which, yes, is a holiday greatly inflated by the consumer industry blah blah blah, still - it's nice that there's a day devoted to love. And we should love everyday too...so Thanksgiving it is.)
~
I cooked a LOT this year, for the very first time. I, of course, like to cook and all, I just don't do it too often. Hopefully, that's changing. (the only thing that 'hopefully' stands for in that instance is my 'hope' that I'll get off my tired bum at the end of the day and actually cook something...) In the past, I've taken care of one or two dishes, but I'd never been responsible for the turkey. Or for anything very important, for that matter. I've made lots of pumpkin pies, but I don't count that. This time, I did the turkey, sweet potato casserole, cornbread, AND pie. It was lots of fun!
I'll get back to cooking in a minute. The first thing that I learned this holiday, prior to the turkey-making, was how to play chess. T and I are learning together. Now it's all we do.
(note the grocery bags in the background, having yet to be unloaded...)
I was very excited. Although we were only 5, somehow a 12-lb turkey was purchased. I rolled up my sleeves and got to work.
I got the idea for what I'd do from a combination of a few recipes on www.allrecipes.com, good old common sense, and the amazing vegan chef and friend B, who has not always been a vegan and dug up some great tips for me out of the foggy pre-vegan memory. Here he is, being kind enough to help me with the brining (was it kindness or the fact that he didn't want me to touch his salt container with my gross turkeyed hands? we'll never know...)
Because T doesn't eat gluten, I searched for some gluten-free recipes for things like cornbread and pumpkin pie. I was 1 for 2 - the cornbread was awful. BUT, the pie was great! The crust, not having regular flour, didn't stick together the way it should so I decided to do mini pies in a cupcake pan rather than gambling with a full-sized pie crust:
They turned out amazingly well! Beautiful, perfectly browned and delicious. I think they'll be making a reappearance before long.
~
Finally, the time came. After a day of cooking, chess, and general foolery, dinner was ready! I was also the only girl in attendance, so I represented the whole gender (you can bet I was under some how's-the-turkey-gonna-taste pressure!) The friend who we were visiting has a balcony that overlooks the Pacific, so the boys moved the table outside as I got ready. I came out to a bare dining room and a lovely table under the sunset:
Gorgeousness. They even did a great job with setting the table, for boys :)
So, we all sat, and after lots of pictures were taken (I could've sworn B's tripod was going to fall off the wall of the balcony to the mountain below, but all ended up fine in the end) we sat down to eat. There was amazing butternut squash soup, delicious vegan stuffing, green bean casserole, wine - of course, marinaded brussel sprouts, plus everything I'd made, and I'm sure I'm forgetting even more. We passed around the serving dishes, and I heard echoes of kudos on the turkey. (I was SO nervous!) Finally I got some, and tried it...and....it was AWESOME. Yay! Moist and flavorful (oh yes, I used bacon. That's right, bacon. Everwhere. Can't go wrong with that.) I think I've found my permanent turkey recipe.
~
I finished before the boys (snacking while cooking all day made me the one with the smallest appetite) and hung out on the hammock nearby on the balcony, gazing up at my much-missed-in-LA stars -
Eventually T came over and joined me, as well as thankfully keeping me warm (if you know me, you know that I don't generate my own body heat)
yes, those are snowmen on my socks. I can at least wear snow if I can't see it, ever.
~
The next morning, we woke up at 4am for Black Friday shopping! T was infinitely less excited than I was, but he was an amazing sport about it, as always.
I love Black Friday. I usually only shop for a few hours, am back in bed by 11am, and spend maybe, a THIRD of what I would on Cmas presents otherwise. It's amazing. The crowds don't bother me because I am ready. It's like my own personal Running of the Bulls. (any more than once a year, I would never. Just sayin.)
But sadly, this time the sales were not so great. We ended up only buying a few things, and heading back down toward home just as the sun was coming up. Made for oh-so-gorgeous views though:
Once we arrived back in Santa Monica, we went to the omelette parlor for breakfast. This, unfortunately, was where we ran out of steam. Terry did about 1.7 seconds before me.
Back home, back to sleep, to wake up at noon, refreshed and ready for a great long weekend!
~
I can't complain. Even though it's Monday. One down, two to go. Bring on Christmas!