festivities!

There has been so much fun and joy and Christmas awesomeness in my past few weeks!

It began with gingerbread.

Someone in Superman pajamas making gingerbread.

 

We went to see Steve’s cousin Mickie  (Mickey? I can’t spell anyone’s name in this family, I’ve realized, as I’ve started writing this) and her kids Alison (Allison?) and Connor (Conor?). Baby Emily, the only one with a simply spelled name, is not pictured :)

The kids are SO MUCH FUN. Alison is 6 and Connor is… 3? 4? Not only are they adorable and well behaved, their family spent the past few years in England so they have ACCENTS!

Anyway, Mickie has been very very hospitable to Steve and I since she moved here, so I wanted to reciprocate. So I brought a big box of gingerbread men and frosting and red hots to beautify them. The kiddos jumped in!

I adore both of them- Alison is pretty much exactly like I was as a child- very into dressing up and performing. And she’s so smart! Alison is older and has her fine motor skills down a little more. Conor is young and excitable and yells everything. I think their personalities are represented nicely in their respective cookies.

Ended up with several beautiful plates. Each kiddo got one, and then the grownups ate the rest!

    

Steve and I decided to get a real Christmas tree for his apartment this year. He’d had an artificial tree in previous years (that as I recall he found in the hallway… or anyway, acquired it in a freegan way), but during his move, he ended up leaving a lot- a LOT- of stuff behind in his old cockroach infested apartment. It was better that way. But slightly tricky in that he didn’t have a couch for awhile… or a table.

Anyway, real trees were a good deal and smelled awesome and the profits from them were going to charity, so it was great.

AND because that tree sale was in Steve’s old neighborhood, we went to one of our favorite old haunts- Cafe Sazon! How I miss you, Cafe Sazon.

Got our old favorites- a cheese empanada for Steve (or Esteban, given the primary language spoken at Cafe Sazon) and an api morado, the most wonderful sweet, fruity, filling, festive purple corn drink for me.

 

They always go all out for the holidays (Halloween is hilarious) and assembled a gigantic animatronic village in their front window display. Complete with an animatronic village Ferris wheel. Loved it loved it!

 

The tree was beautiful and shapely. In lieu of having a dedicated tree skirt, we put it on Steve’s Sweden blanket.

 

We picked up a coupla ornaments at Goodwill- I opted for this angel/alien/moth…

… but I then had a LOT of fun making ornaments!

  

My favorites were these guys- made from toilet paper rolls!

The two projects we used were on Pinterest, which I just joined and I feel ambivalent about. One because it’s so cliche being a girl on Pinterest. Two because the second I joined the spam coming to my inbox multiplied EXPONENTIALLY. However, you may follow me if you like, at leleinthesky.

More holiday festivities. This past Saturday night found us at our friend Erica’s house. She and her husband Chris hosted a Christmas Vacation themed party. I wish I could’ve come up with some costume (why, why do I not own a blue leisure suit to play Uncle Eddie?!) but it was fun even without.

Best of all, Erica and Chris live in a REALLY fancy building, so we took a few minutes sitting by the fireplace in the lobby on our way out :)

And we had gotten all of the leftover cherry tomatoes from the party (!) because Erica and Chris both don’t like tomatoes (?!).

So Rudolph poses it was.

And so we reach Tuesday night, when Steve and I co-hosted a Chrismukkah party!

Surprise surprise, pretzels happened (actually, there was a special request from my girl Maya, the girl who doesn’t update her blog anymore so I won’t link!).

There is a charming difference between girl pretzels (rolled by myself/my mother/my sister) and boy pretzels (lovingly assembled by Steve with just a brief tutorial as I ran back and forth doing a billion other things).

The pepper-Parmesan variation, which I think is the MOST delicious! Told you I’d get a picture in daylight.

 

Public service announcement this holiday season: KNIFE SAFETY. GUYS. Whilst making one of my slightly older batches of pretzels into pretzel chips for dippers, my knife took a detour through the pretzel into my thumb. My nail bore the brunt of it but it still entailed applying pressure and holding my hand over my head for probably fifteen minutes, bleeding all over Steve’s apartment, frantically hunting the manly apartment and not finding any bandaids, putting together a Hail Mary bandage out of a paper towel with my apron string tied around it.

And then I had to get a nice holiday tetanus shot, so in addition to a sore thumb, I now have a sore arm.

Steve was super great and cleaned the ENTIRE APARTMENT. You know, I trashed it cooking, sprinkled it with my own blood, and then conveniently left for an hour and a half to go to the doctor (and, uh, buy Bandaids). Steve, you are really really great.

Steve’s other major project was cookin’ up a batch of GLUGG! Otherwise known as mulled wine.

Wine goes into a big pot with orange peel, cinnamon sticks, raisins, and almonds.

But the highlight, of course, is the sugar-brandy flambé that goes atop. Lotsa sugar! Lotsa brandy!

Pyro boy enjoyed watching the flames grow larger and larger.

So I had a little epiphany pre-party that was like, “I try to be a healthy eater most of the time and then any consideration of the nutrients or lack thereof in my food completely disappears when I have a party. Why do that?! I know healthy food can also be delicious. I am going to try to cultivate some balance at this party.”

And I think it was overall a smashing success.

I decided that I wanted a red and green color scheme for Christmas.

So there were red and green dips- my all time love muhammara and hummus given extra pep and deliciousness with roasted garlic and fresh basil.

There was a red and green apple pear salsa with cinnamon chips (regretfully a bit of a yawn).

And there were adorable red and green cheesy zucchini bites, selected based on the adorability of the recipe.

Cut zucchini into little hollowed out vessels, like so.

 

Fill with bleu cheese.

  

Annnnnnd just because cheese is a good idea during the holiday season- or always- add a little more, in the form of Parmesan livened up with herbs and pepper.

 

RED TOMATO HATS! Steve and I said that at the same time whilst making these.

  

And, you guessed it, a little more cheese for good luck. Missed the picture of the final product, as I was running around and ordered Steve to keep them from burning (no easy task given his oven). They were cute. More cute than delicious, but this time of year it’s fun to make cute stuff.

Now for the –ukkah portion of the Chrismukkah theme: LATKES!

I had been craving latkes when we first planned the party, which is partly how we opted for the theme. However, as the party grew closer I realized I’d never made latkes before and it all sounded a bit INVOLVED.

Fortunately, as I drove my sister home from the airport, she went, “… Yeah, I’m invited to Hannukah tonight at Jamie’s…” and we promptly rerouted the car and I went with her.

Hannukah was great fun and it also involved a LATKE TUTORIAL. These latkes are from an actual Jew, unlike me :) They are also very delicious and idiot proof.

The recipe:

1 large Russet potato (or 2 small)
1 small onion (or 1/2 a medium, 1/4 a large)
1 egg
Enough flour to give it an applesauce consistency

Blend ingredients in a food processor or blender. Fry in oil.

That’s IT. And it’s SO GOOD!

  

I spent a lot of the night running around (Steve’s apartment is nice but it’s basically humanly impossible to find his building, so I tend to just walk people in), and I was also gabbing with people I don’t get to see very much (my cousin and her boyfriend, my friend from chemistry class, a high school friend I hadn’t seen in a few years!), so there are few pictures.

But this one conveys the general splendor. Red and green, eh?!

 

In the dessert department (rear right), there were peanut butter kisses, a pumpkin pie my friend Lorraine was kind enough to bring, and rutabega carrot bread (which I need to post about- it’s a revelation!).

The funny thing, however, is that my main dessert project did not get served. This is funny for a number of reasons.

First, the party initially was also going to be hosted by Steve’s roommate Dan. I asked Dan his favorite kind of pie, and he said pumpkin. Then Dan bailed on the party (work commitment? Social anxiety? Who knows) and the pie was still on the menu. That’s okay.

Then I put together this beeyootiful crust for the pie. A personal recipe I made by compiling ideas from some of my favorite blogs- ground up pecans, oats, butter, sugar… everything nice!

 

Well, I put it in the oven and there was a RING OF FIRE around the edge. Ash. I screamed and cursed and kicked Steve’s oven (sorry, Steve).

Fine. I made more crust (by which I mean, threw random amounts of pecans, oats, butter, and sugar into the food processor and hoped for the best) and did a patch job around the outside.

The filling looked fabulous (I added coconut milk for fun and excitement purposes). There was WAY too much, but that was okay as I put the excess into mugs and made microwave pumpkin pudding pie for Steve and I as a midafternoon snack to keep up cooking energy.

I baked it. The crust burnt again, despite being tented.

And then IT DIDN’T EVEN GET SERVED. Oh, irony. The things I stress about.

Anyway, it’s beautiful… and it’s in my fridge.

 

The pie is lovely- though a little schizophrenic. The crust is this granola-y crumbly cookie-y thing and the filling tastes like a sweet version of Thai curry. An odd couple. Though we haven’t exactly been having to choke it down- both elements are yummy yummy.

Being an entire pie, a posting was in order.

kids on a farm

Took our tykes to a farm!

As part of being a site served by the Capital Area Food Bank (our kids receive a daily afterschool snack and, now that it’s summer, lunch) we get to participate in the Farm Youth Initiative, where our kids get to visit a local farm to learn all about healthy plants and how we grow ‘em.

One long and not entirely barf-free bus ride brought us to Clagett Farm, which partners with the food bank. We were ushered into a barn where I immediately met the beautiful, comforting sight of scads of fresh garlic hanging from the ceiling to dry (garlic that I’ve been getting to eat all week, garlic that is SPECTACULAR!)

 

I admired the attitude they tried to instill about nature in the kids; they pointed out that yes there were bugs everywhere on the farm, but were it not for the bees and the wasps doing their crucial pollinating, they would have no new plants. “Don’t bother them and they won’t bother you. You are a giant. They are scared of you.” And sure enough, everyone stayed calm and no one got stung.

We began with some games that reviewed good nutrition (the kids had already received an intro nutrition class back at our site). The way they approached everything was simple and age-appropriate. The basic take-home lessons were

1. The first ingredients should be something good for you
2. A short list is a good list
3. Don’t eat anything you can’t pronounce

In this activity, which involved buckets of water (many many points for farm people!), the kids ran relays to dump cups into buckets. Their cups had ingredients written on them (everything from “carrots” to “high fructose corn syrup”) and they had to pour them into the “healthy” or “unhealthy” bucket. They were into it!

Then we marched up to the small but beautifully maintained gardens.

 

Clagett farm is gigantic (it was originally a tobacco farm that was repurposed for organic fruits and veggies and various education programs), but this little section is specifically for the Farm Youth Initiative, the partnership with the Capital Area Food Bank that brought us here.

They very cleverly divided up the garden into the “pasta garden” (ingredients that you would put into pasta or a pasta salad like the one we’d eat later that day), and a “pizza garden” (ingredients for pizza). A great way for kids to see fresh veggies not as (eurgh) actual fresh veggies but as ingredients in delicious foods with which they were comfortable and familiar.

And they got to pick them!

The instructors reviewed the techniques for properly picking tomatoes, hot peppers (hint: don’t touch them directly or they’ll burn you!), and carrots (which were tricky to get out of the ground! They stepped in giving them a little nudge with a spade. Apparently the trick to picking carrots when they’re ready is to wait until you can see the orange tops of the carrots sticking out)

  

The kids were all responsible for washing and weighing their produce (they were annoyed that they didn’t get to hold on to their individual tomatoes and carrots, because some were “better” than others. I swear to God, the things kids come up with to be competitive about are truly insane).

Anyway, they ended up with a pretty good lookin’ stash!

We played around the garden a little more: while one of the guides ran to another building to get supplies, I introduced the kids to “nature’s gum” (fresh mint). They were super into it! When I was a kid and we’d go out to dinner, I always ate the mint garnish on fancy desserts (well I mean, actually I still do).

Then we got to play in the sprinkler (which is totally still just as fun when you’re an adult) and then paid a visit to some chickens!

The guides told the kids that the chickens liked eating juicy crickets, grasshoppers, and praying mantises, and the kids had WAY too much fun catching bugs and throwing them into the chickens. The chickens were actually eating straight out of kids’ hands by the end of it (which our guides said was really unusual).

Back to the barn we went, for a quick activity identifying the veggies we saw in the garden that went into the snack we were about to eat..

And then it was local food time! Whoo! I was very very obviously very very excited.

The table was beautifully laid out, with scrumptious looking whole-wheat pasta salad, that contained (this is clever, people with kids should do this) vegetables that were shredded so finely you were hard-pressed to tell what they were)

And bowls with a colorful selection of the veggies they themselves had picked (those yellow tomatoes are probably the most sweet, delicious of their kind I have ever been fortunate enough to taste) and, to keep the kiddos happy, some cheese.

  

In general, I was disappointed about how little the kids ate. A lot of them raved about the cucumbers (perhaps the texture of that is more familiar to them? Kids like crunch?), and some of them just kept on eating the yummy salad, but in general they were still kind of apprehensive about the whole thing. We also just have a bunch who never seem to eat anything…

Anyway, I sure did! And more and more and more. I could not stop. It was SO GOOD!

Hilarious: I point my camera at this, and Karen, one of our most sarcastic/generally badass fifth graders (whom I adore), looks at me and says, “You would take a picture of your pasta salad, Ileana”.

Yes. I would.

Trip concluded with a visit to the porta potties. Mitigated by the beautiful flowers blooming near them!

2011!

I spent the early part of New Year’s Eve in a cookie decorating bonanza! One batch of sugar cookies (I use this vegan recipe and it takes like a grand total of 30 seconds, is easy to work with, and is totally delicious), a cookie decorating kit with icing…

Sprinkles galore…

   

My darling and oh-so-talented little sister

My adorable and hilarious ten-year-old cousin…

And my boyfriend :D

So diligent with the sprinkles. He gets serious cool points for this. I picked him up from the airport and brought him to *this*.

HAVE I MENTIONED I’M HAPPY YOU’RE BACK?!

Anyway, creativity was boundless…

And we are equipped with some beauties for our annual holiday bonanza on Sunday.

Decorating was followed with a spirited game of Texas Hold ‘Em (Kayla’s idea) using Smarties, rather than cash as currency.

 

I totally CLEANED UP with the Smarties- a total winning streak. But, lost $1 of actual money because Kayla charges when you curse in front of her and I’m hella competitive.

Then we had a dance party, hahahahaha. There are pictures but I think I’ll spare you, Steve.

Neither of us, once reunited, felt like hanging out with other people, so we decided to spend our New Years in. With a feast, obvi. I had a hankerin’ for sushi, so we hit up HMart, where I whipped out my camera and took this picture before the sushi people could blink. They looked startled.

But it was awesome, cause they just sliced up one of those there rolls in the foreground, and then I bought it. Freshness!

The goods:

In back, a mango that I sort of just ripped up with my bare hands while Steve was cooking (I was hungry!).

The aforementioned sushi:

 

Good, but I have to say once you’ve had the awesome black rice stuff, this seemed boring.

I had a craving for cold vegetables (isn’t that impressive of me? How rare that I crave something that isn’t cheese-stuffed or chocolate-coated). They had these gorgey things in the sushi section:

Green beans (are people familiar with those awesome megalong, chewy, almost meaty tasting Asian green beans?! So yummy), bean sprouts, and spinach, all simply dressed with sesame oil.

Finally, slightly whacky red bean porridge:

I was thinking how black eyed peas and lentils and things like that are always traditional New Year foods, so I was going for something comparable.

It tasted like eating mochi filling straight up. So think about that for a minute. It’d be intense, right?

Ohh… yes… Steve’s.. creation. There were fresh potato noodles that were sort of all whirled up together and you throw them in boiling water and they sort of… clump. And then you can attempt chopsticks repair and it was just… interesting.

But anyway, put enough oyster sauce on anything and it tastes good.

 

Upon exiting HMart, we went by this bakery/restaurant that I had always sort of fantasized about going into because it’s called Chicken House and it’s just an evocative title to me. And is clearly a Latin American bakery and I sort of live for that stuff.

So I’d been nervous to go in all aloney which was silly, but I took Steve with me. And I looked at all the yuca and plantains and goodness all around me and my eyes sort of glazed over. And I got a horchata, the beverage I cannot stop drinking of late.

And Steve got a tres leches, which made a marvy dessert.

But I have to say, the main attraction of the evening was that we decided to go all James Bond (except I hate all the Bond girl names so I continued to be Ileana :D) and make ourselves some martinis. And then there was backup wine, in case we didn’t like them. And champagne (well, California “champagne”) because it was New Years.

Let me add that Steve is an intense environmentalist and avoids grocery bags at all costs, which is how I ended up carrying a bottle of gin in my purse. Klassy.

Those martini glasses were purchased at the dollar store. Aren’t they lovely?

To make a martini, Steve considered it important to put on a tie. I certainly did not object :D

He mixed up gin, vermouth, and, for a dirty martini, olive brine. LOTS of olive brine. EXTRA DIRTY, these were. Um…

Yeah… not so much.

So then we just went for fun variations.

First the “Steve-Tini”, which involves blueberries, Muscatel wine instead of olive juice, and Reddi Whip on top, hahahaha.

Sort of peculiar both in looks and taste.

 

Then we went for the chocolate martini, which began by melting together some chocolate and gin in the microwave.

The ensuing sauce was AWESOME!

 

The martini?

Ummm…

There was all kinds of ridiculousness, and we ended up not paying attention, due in part to the fact that Steve has no TV, to when the New Year actually began. Meaning we looked at a clock and it was 12:18. Already 2011. Oops!

So we pretended we were in Chicago and counted down to Midwest New Year. And I had someone to kiss at “midnight”

:D