Enjablog

Happy belated birthday to E2 (my youngest niece)! She turned 1 on Thursday!

I’m also just now realizing how few pictures I have of her where she’s smiling. She has this huge, happy smile where she can’t even keep her eyes open, but I haven’t been able to capture it.

Pita

Ingredients
1 1/8 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
1 1/2 teaspoons white sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt

Directions
1. For those of you without a bread machine, proof dry yeast in warm water with the sugar (about 10 minutes).
2. When foamy add oil and pour into the flour that has already been mixed with salt.
3. Knead by hand or machine until it’s smooth and elastic. You should have a moderate dough (not soft and not firm, in the middle). Don’t worry if it’s a little sticky. You can add flour when rolling out if needed.
4. Let it rise for 1.5 hours (until dough had doubled in size)
5. Cut dough into 8 equal pieces and roll into 6-7″ circles.
6. Cook on med/med-high in a frying pan on the stove like a pancake, but without any butter or oil. Takes about 1-2 minutes per side; bubbles were starting to form on the uncooked side when I flipped and were done when just starting to brown in spots.

Spicy Chickpeas and Spinach

I kind of made a mesh of these two recipes: Spicy Chickpea and Spinach Curry and Pakistani Spicy Chickpeas.

Stephanie made something similar to this a while back when I visited for dinner one evening and I really liked it. She got me some curry and cumin so I could make it myself. She assured me it was easy, but it sounded like a lot of ingredients so I didn’t end up making it until now. I should’ve listened to her!

Ingredients
2 (15 ounce) cans garbanzo beans, drained
2 (15 ounce) cans tomato paste or canned tomatoes
1 onion, chopped
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon curry
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon lemon pepper
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 cups frozen spinach

Directions
1. Put all ingredients except for spinach in slow cooker. Cook on high (3-4 hours).
2. Mix in spinach about 30 minutes before serving.

Falafel

Last week, Ian and I visited Sonny and Anna twice for doggy play dates. As part of these outings, Anna cooked dinner for us. It seemed like something they did often… you know, this cooking at home thing.

I asked Anna if she cooked the same things every week or if she made weekly meal plans to have all the ingredients on hand, etc. She does a weekly meal plan with 3 or 4 recipes she wants to try out. I was so impressed that I asked her to email me her meal plans so I could try some of her recipes too! Although, now that I think about it, she should really start a food blog.

In any case, one of the recipes for this week was falafel. I had no idea it was something I could make at home! I combined her recipe with one for Falafel Burgers for tonight. We’ll see how they turn out…

Ingredients
2 cups canned chickpeas, drained
1/2 large onion, roughly chopped (about 1 cup)
2 tablespoons parsley flakes
1 teaspoon salt
1/2-1 teaspoon dried hot red pepper
4 cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon baking powder
4-6 tablespoons flour
Soybean or vegetable oil for frying
Tahini
Pita bread

Directions
1. Place chickpeas and the onions in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Add the parsley, cilantro, salt, hot pepper, garlic, and cumin. Process until blended but not pureed.

2. Sprinkle in the baking powder and 4 tablespoons of the flour, and pulse. You want to add enough bulgur or flour so that the dough forms a small ball and no longer sticks to your hands. Turn into a bowl and refrigerate, covered, for several hours.

3. Form the chickpea mixture into small patties.

4. Heat enough oil to cover the bottom of a large skillet over medium heat. Place the burgers in the hot skillet, and fry for about 5 minutes on each side, until nicely browned.

Some stuff from last weekend while Ian and I were out exploring:

After finding out we couldn’t keep Lucy, Sonny & Anna offered to take her in. We had a couple of doggy play dates to introduce Lucy and Rora, but in the end, they didn’t seem to get along.

We did have a lot of fun with her for the week though. We brought her back to the kennel yesterday before snowpocalypse struck. And I’m sure she’s having a blast playing in the snow at the ranch now anyway. :)

No go. We have to give her back. :(

Going to spend lots of time with her the rest of this week and have some fun in the snow and at the dog park!

So… Ian weighed Lucy yesterday and it turns out she’s 31 pounds instead of 20, as reported on the website and her adoption papers. Our building has a limit of 25 pounds. We thought we could get away with it if she were 20 pounds and ended up 30 pounds at full size. At a year old now, she probably still has 6 months or so that she might grow.

Ian’s going to talk to our building manager today to find out if we can keep her. We figure if we’re not allowed to, it’s probably better to find out now before we get even more attached.

Sigh…

Ian and I have been talking about adopting a dog for years now. We finally started visiting shelters last weekend and met Lucy yesterday through a Lost Dog Rescue adoption event at PetSmart.

She’s super sweet, but rambunctious. And still a bit of a puppy, so there are a lot of things for her to learn. But she’s clearly very smart, so I have high hopes. She’s been barking a lot when we go on walks, but likes people and other dogs so far. She’s also been spending a lot of time sniffing around our place and licking stuff, but hasn’t eaten anything she shouldn’t, so also good. The people at the shelter said she likes kids, but I think we better train her not to jump before letting her play with the nieces.

Somehow Amazon has gotten to know me better since the last set of recommendations.

Creepy Cute Crochet: Zombies, Ninjas, Robots, and More!

Who knew there was even a market for this??

In response to Kristy’s insight on Amazon recommendations, here are my top recs from Amazon:

1. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies — This is on my to-read list, but I don’t think I ever told Amazon that.

2. Energy and Finite Element Methods In Structural Mechanics: SI Units — Because, seriously, why would I want to read that in English units?? ;)

3. Angry Little Girls Original Angry Little Girl Black Tote Bag — I don’t even know how they know I like this comic strip. I mean, I do. I just don’t know how they know.

Overall, not too exciting. But scrolling through a few pages of recommendations found more telling items that describe my life:

Boon Snack Ball – Snack Container — Why…?

PIG CATAPULT — “LAUNCHES PIGS UP TO 15 FEET!” Ok, I totally know why this was recommended to me, but it’s still ridiculous.

Bacon Lip Balm — So… I bought TLD a bacon cookbook for Christmas a couple years ago. And then I bought Ian some bacon mints. And now Amazon thinks I want bacon in everything I buy…

Norpro Nonstick Mini Donut Pan — Spot on, Amazon.

Had a really jam-packed weekend! We started out at Ian’s brother’s house for Christmas eve with their branch of the family. I forgot my camera, so no pics from that night. Ian’s sis-in-law and family cooked up a storm, so we feasted on ham, squash, green beans, homemade rolls, and fruitcake for dessert!

I got up early on Christmas to make some rolls of my own (using sis-in-law’s mom’s recipe) and way too much mac & cheese. I tried out a Cheddar-Jack this year, but I think we were were a little too apprehensive about mixing it in. We used a 1:2 mix with regular cheddar, but I think I might try 1:1 next time. I also made marble pumpkin cheesecake, which I haven’t made in a few years.

My aunt and uncle hosted this year because my parents were leaving in the afternoon for NY. It worked out really well, so I’m glad we tried something new. They just finished getting some remodeling done on their house and this was my first visit to see how everything turned out. Everything looked great! And I love how open their kitchen is now! (Ian and I are probably going to use the same contractor to fix up our condo.)

They made ribs, turkey, lo mien, mashed potatoes, and vegetables. There was also a macaroni dish, linguine, cauliflower au gratin, sweet potatoes, meatballs, pecan pie, and pumpkin pie. Soooo much food!

After lunch, Ian and I headed home for a 30-minute breather. We got another pan of rolls baked and I took an 11-minute nap. Refreshing! We grabbed our other tray of mac & cheese to bake on site and the other cheesecake and we were on our way.

Ian’s parents hosted Christmas dinner for the Christmas eve crowd. Again, lots of food! Turkey, ham, green beans, cornbread stuffing, broccoli salad, mashed potatoes, and jell-o.

We hung out for most of the evening listening to Christmas music, discussing abortion insurance for the second night in a row, and playing with the dogs. I don’t get to see the in-law-in-laws very often, so it was fun catching up with them.

Saturday night, we headed out to Sterling for re-scheduled Friendmas before everyone skipped town. Fun, drinking, and discussion of argyles. Heather and I also combined powers to make a fortune teller a la elementary school!

I still need to get my act together and put together some pictures for next year’s Friendmas calendar. I’m running out of time! Though, maybe we’re just going to have a tradition of April-March calendars… ;)

The long awaited behind-the-scenes look at the making of Snowman Mao!

Ian and I stopped by my parents’ yesterday for our weekly Saturday lunch. After lunch, we all went outside to have a snowball fight with my niece, but the snow was so perfect for packing we decided to make a snowman instead:

When the first snowball got to be Eliana’s height, we tried to convince Ian that the snowman was going to be too big. We all had to concede in the end though that he was right all along.

Eliana spent much of the building process as Supervisor and telling us, “Bigger!”

Ian finally agreed that the snowball had reached a sufficient size, but had to roll it back across the yard (and snow) so we could build on flatter ground.

Then Ian helped me maneuver the second snowball over to the first. And, fortunately, he and Yenny were strong enough to lift it onto the base.

Eliana tried to help me push the head over, but did what she saw me doing… which was push toward her.

After a little convincing, she agreed to come over to my side of the snowball. And we were able to push the head over together.

Eliana needed a boost, but she was plenty helpful getting the torso shaped and ready for the head. We all helped fill in the joints and round out some spots.

After a while, it started to get a little windy, so Eliana used the snowman to protect her from the cold.

As we were getting the head onto the snowman, Ian suggested we make it taller — a 4-ball snowman! So we decided he needed a tophat!

My mom let us use a real carrot for the nose, found us some branches for arms, my dad found us some nice pieces of mulch for the face, and even grandma came out to give us a scarf to use. And after some more shaping and sculpting, we had our very own Snowman Mao!

This took us probably a little over half an hour to build. For scale, Ian is uphill from the snowman, so with the hat, they’re just about the same height — 6′6″. The snow really was the perfect condition to roll around and make huge snowballs; the best I can remember in at least 10 years. Then we went in for traditional post-snow hot chocolate!

Special thanks to my dad for the photo-documentation!

UPDATE:

Hope everyone has a wonderful and happy day! :)

A couple of Ian and my friends finished making their baby a couple weeks ago and we got to visit her this weekend!

She came in a few weeks ahead of schedule, but everyone is healthy and doing well. She’s too tiny for all her clothes though (<5.5 lb!), so I made a couple hats for her:

Ian and I went over to TattooGirl [and Mr. TattooGirl]’s place last night to hand out candy for Halloween! It was loads of fun!

Here is the candy bucket when we started the evening:

Had some trouble getting the dogs to sit still for their pictures, but got a couple blurry pictures. There was Buddy in an Elvis costume as a “Hound Dog.” And Charley was “Count Dogula.”

I didn’t get any pictures of the kids dressed up, but here are my top picks:

Best costume: ~5-year-old kid in full astronaut costume. It was probably a little unsafe because the helmet looked like it was a little too big and limited his visibility. But it was a fantastic costume.

Best costume on the cheap: Teenager wearing a clear garbage bag/poncho filled with purple balloons. He was a bunch of grapes.

Most common costume: princess.

Other notable costumes:

- Little girl in full Sponge Bob get-up, including shoes.
- Star Trek character in red uniform. Because, really, what is more scary than wearing a red uniform when you go out?
- Little kid in Yoda costume. About the same size that I would picture real life Yoda.
- Two girls dressed as nerds — suspenders, ties, and broken glasses taped together. They didn’t really seem pro-nerds, but they were good costumes.
- The numerous girls who dressed as prostitutes. I mean, I don’t know what they were actually supposed to be, but that’s what they looked like.
- Woman who looked like she was in her 50s, not with any kids or in costume… TattooGirl says she stops by every year. She might be homeless.

Oh, so TG’s sister-in-law lives with them. And she and a friend were going out to a party later in the evening. So TG’s sister-in-law’s friend came over a little early to get ready. None of the rest of us had met her before. And she was in a hippy costume with a big purse. She also showed up at the same time a mob of kids came to the door. So, I maybe dropped a handful of candy in her purse before she tried to get me to stop… And then I realized she was just a short adult… Whoops! ;)

Then there was the one kid whose parents saw us standing in the open doorway waiting for the next bunch of kids to walk up…. and called the kid back to skip this house. What? Just because a few of us were standing in the doorway with bottles of “juice” in our hands? I don’t understand.

After handing out candy for 3 hours and watching Hunt for Red October (you know, October… so it’s a Halloween movie…), we were a little punchy and running out of candy:

Ian’s been doing some sorting of old clothes recently and we decided it made the most sense to swap up which dresser we each use. As it turns out, my tiny clothes take up less space than his…

This dresser drawer fits 33 of my camis/t-shirts vs. 7-9 of Ian’s t-shirts. So, it might be possible he doesn’t have more clothes than me by articles of clothing. But by volume, he wins by a landslide!