Whip it up week #3

This week I decided to try to make Olive-Thyme Foccacia!

Ingredients

2 cups tepid water
½ tsp sugar
1 envelope active, dry yeast
6 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp salt
2 tbs minced thyme
1 ½ tbs olive oil
½ cup black olives, pitted

Directions

Put tepid water in a bowl and sprinkle with the sugar and yeast. Leave in a warm place for about 15 minutes until it starts to froth.

Mix the flour, salt and half the thyme together in a large bowl, then add the oil. Make a hole in the center and pour in the yeast mix. Stir with a wooden spoon, gradually taking in the flour from the sides until thoroughly combined. Knead into a firm dough that leaves the sides of the bowl clean.

Cover the bowl with a damp kitchen-towel and put somewhere warm to double in size.

Turn the dough out onto a greased baking sheet and punch it down, spreading it with your fingers or a flour-dusted rolling pin, to make a rectangular shape.

Brush the top with extra olive oil and sprinkle with the remaining thyme. Poke regular indentations in the top of the dough and push olives in them.

Bake in a preheated oven at 450 degrees for about 35 minutes, or until the top is just turning golden-brown.

Difficulty level: Medium

Taste: I am not a fan of olives so that is why you only see them on half of the foccacia bread. I am wondering if the recipe doesn't call for a lot of salt because of the salt in the olives?? Unfortunately both my side AND CP's side needed more salt. I think that it would have been nice to top the foccacia with kosher or sea salt and the thyme.

Would I make it again: Probably. It was my first time making foccacia so now that I know to add more salt, I think that it could be really tasty. I wasn't expecting it to make so much so only make this recipe if you want a lot of foccacia! :-)

The sometimes frustrating CP

So I haven’t talked a lot about wedding-related stuff too much lately. I guess it was because I needed a little break? CP and I did a few things while I was down in DC, but for the most part, I have just been emailing possibilities to CP and him shooting them down. Grrrrr.

For instance, I was able to do a lot of research on different vows while at work in DC because I was so damn bored. I sent him an email chock full of them. Instead of constructive thoughts and ideas of things that he did or did not want to say, his response to one of the vows that happened to mention the word God? “There is no God.” Okay funny man---so if we take that word out, would you still be opposed to saying these words in front of our friends and family?? *sigh*

Another example is my (stolen) idea of a guestbook. For those that are married, have you even looked at your guestbook since the one time you peeked through it after the wedding? Through internet research (again, bored at work), I found a couple that instead of having a regular guestbook, bought a cookbook with a lot of white space so that guests could find a favorite recipe and write their comments/ good wishes next to it. I thought that it was a great idea- buy a cookbook that we would be interested in and then be able to use it--while finding fun guest comments! His response? “I don’t want our wedding to be too theme-y. We already are do the herb/ recipe thing for our favors and this would just be too much.” Frankly I see it the opposite way- nothing else that we are doing has to do with cooking...so instead of having a book that sits around on a shelf collecting dust, why not get something that we would use?

Overall, I am really happy that CP is involved in the wedding, is helping me making decisions, etc. but sometimes he is frustrating! Instead of then proposing a NEW solution, he just shoots down mine. Although, I guess I can’t complain too much...it’s better than if he was indifferent to everything!


Oh, and also while I was gone? CP went and tried on tuxes. I really wanted to be there, as I have told you guys how much I like seeing him in a suit. When we first discussed tuxes, CP decided that he wanted a bowtie. I thought it was a silly thing, but decided it wasn’t worth it to argue about it. Then he also got into a suspenders kick. That’s right- he wanted to wear a bow tie and suspenders to our wedding. So….he basically wanted to look like a stuffy 50 year old English professor. Awesome.

Thankfully when he went to try on tuxes, he came to the conclusion that ties and vests look much better. Crisis averted and we didn’t even have to argue about it. SCORE! :-)

It's Monday already???

Please send help. My 30-year old body can’t handle the hike that we did yesterday! Yes, I always drag on Mondays but today it was even harder to get out of bed! My legs DO NOT appreciate the fact that I didn’t stretch them out after the hike either.

Overall, it shouldn’t have been that hard of a hike. The vertical was a little more than 800’ to the top of Mt. Norwottuck (in the Mt Holyoke range). The problem was that the state park didn’t have any maps when we arrived at the trailhead. No matter, we had an AMC map! However, the AMC map didn’t name all of the trails….and not all of the trails were marked. Fantastic. So we ended up on an unnamed mountain biking trail (whoops) and when we finally thought that we were back on the right path, we climbed to the summit on something that was definitely not a real trail! We didn’t see any markers, but could tell we were getting closer to the top, so even though it was all loose rocks from washouts, we continued up to the top.

We were REALLY proud of Fuzzy Britches. Back out west (when she was 20 pounds heavier) she would have been dragging for most of the hike. But yesterday? She was fantastic. Keeping up with CP, looking back to make sure I was okay when I fell behind (ha ha), etc. There was a pond at the beginning of the hike that she got to swim in so she was pretty happy puppy.

I’m really glad that we were able to do the hike. We had to constantly spray ourselves with Off because of the ridiculous amount of mosquitoes (the hike was through woods) and I found a tick on the towel used to dry off Fuzzy Britches (we will continue to do tick checks on her for the next few days or so), but it was a great workout! CP and I both agreed that we are going to have to do some more hiking/ working out before the first weekend in August. CP’s sister comes out and she wants to hike one of the presidents in NH (the White Mountains have a number of tall mountains named after different presidents) with us. Those will be a lot higher and harder so we have got to get into shape!!!

Am I wrong?

Last night CP brought up wanting to invite four coworkers that he attends happy hours with to the wedding. (CP is a contractor so they don’t work at the same company) I simply asked if he actually was friends with them/ would he keep in contact with them after the wedding? He said that they might be good business contacts later on. I said that we shouldn’t use our wedding for networking!!! It should be our friends and family that we want there.

My stance is that all four of them have wives, so that’s 8 extra potential guests at our wedding. I’m not sure of our actual per plate cost but I think it’s somewhere around $60. So $60 for 8 people plus the amount of alcohol consumed (unknown number) and there is another $500 (not counting alcohol!!) on people that you go to happy hour with and want to invite for networking purposes?? Keep in mind that we have already sent our invites out AND he has a number of people (at least 3 that I can think of) already invited from his company (he has been working there longer so I am okay with that). I selected to only invite 1 person from my company because she is my boss. I am friendly with a number of people at work, but I have only been working here since August…

We then had a lovely fight and didn’t speak to each other that much the rest of the night. Awesome.

Am I wrong?

Why I need to take an SVU hiatus

Why I need to take an SVU hiatus

By Nonsequitur Chica

Last Monday on my second to last day of work down in DC I arrived at my metro stop and got off the train. I walked towards the escalator and could have sworn that I saw a bloody severed hand. I kept staring at it as I made my way towards the exit, but couldn’t quite make out exactly what it was. No one else in the metro station seemed to be checking it out so I decided not to deviate from my usual path. In my mind I then decided that what looked like the base of the severed hand was too clean of a cut for it to actually BE a severed hand, so that I would forget about it.

I also decided that I clearly watched too much Law & Order: SVU this spring while in DC. CP doesn’t like the show so when I was able to DVR that baby while in DC? Oh I DVR’ed the heck out of it. Invariably, USA would play 8 of them in a row at least one day a week, along with a couple of episodes every day. I’m not sure how long that show has been on, but I would say that I have now watched most of the episodes. Yeah they weren’t in order so I would get confused when one day Ice-T was hanging out with Richard Belzer, and then the next day Belzer would have a totally different partner. I also couldn’t figure out when Mariska Hargitay was off having one of her babies or off because she had pneumonia. *shrugs*

All I know is that due to my excessive SVU-watching, I thought that I saw a severed bloody hand in a metro station. I still have no idea what would have looked enough like a bloody hand to catch my attention. But I think that some time off of SVU is warranted. Then I won’t think that I found severed body parts in public transit systems!!

NBC shouldn’t be worried though….I’ll be back come fall for the new episodes! :-)

Whip It Up- Week #2

CP and I decided to whip up some yummy food for the Fourth of July weekend with friends. CP made goat meat sausage and an Italian-style sausage. Both were delicious! Meanwhile, I decided to use my new baking pan received at my bridal shower to make.....Lemon Bread!

Ingredients
6 tbsp shortening
1 cup white sugar
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp lemon zest
1 lemon, juiced
1/2 cups chopped walnuts (optional)
1/2 cup powdered sugar

NOTE: I did not put walnuts in.

Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 and grease and flour a 9 x 5 loaf pan.

Whisk together flour, salt and baking powder. In a large bowl, cream shortening, sugar and eggs together until light and fluffy. Add milk and flour mixture alternately in two parts; mix well.

Stir in the grated lemon zest and walnuts. Pour batter into greased and floured loaf pan, baked at 350 for 45-60 minutes.

Cool bread in pan for 5 minutes. Mix together powdered sugar and lemon juice to make a glaze. Pour glaze over warm bread.

NOTES: I used our new Kitchen Aid mixer to whip together the shortening, sugar and eggs. I love it! Also, when you pour the batter into the pan, it doesn't fill up the entire pan. Don't worry- it rises!

Unfortunately I didn't get a picture before people dug in!!

Difficulty level: Easy

Taste: Great! It was a big hit! Lots of compliments on the dish.

Would I make it again: Most definitely!

Oops

I have been neglecting the blog a bit! I guess I have been too busy getting back into the swing of things at work and at home with CP and Fuzzy Britches. :-)

Will be back tomorrow with a fresh new post. I hope that all of you had lovely holiday weekends. We spent time with friends and I cleaned the house because CP reverted back to his bachelor days....