Metzing Around

A Very Pinterest Christmas

2011-12-16T16:47:00.000-06:00

My Mom and Grandma made a surprise visit out to see us a few weeks ago and wouldn't you know it, we put them right to work.

Without my dad's master tie-down skills or a roof rack, we decided we felt more comfortable in my car. Yes, transported a 7' Christmas tree in my little Saab. It's really amazing how much interior room there is in such a little car. All I can say is the Swedes are great engineers!

Oh, and my Grandma is somewhere behind the tree.

After picking up the tree, and since we were already in the right part of town, we stopped of at JoAnn fabrics for lots of crafting supplies and then at Lucky Sushi House (which was Amazing! Far better than I expected from a tiny, strip-mall sushi joint) for some yummy Japanese offerings.

After the requisite grunting and groaning, and cutting of lower limbs, the tree was finally up and the resident perfectionists (Mom and Michael) took to covering the tree in our new LED, warm white tree lights.

Our first project was this beautiful tree-skirt. (Please excuse the cat hair.) We used this online tutorial and made it out of a pretty gray linen on top, silver edging (which was much more difficult to work with than I had anticipated, thank goodness for mom's amazing sewing skills) and a bottom weight red cotton for the bottom, which has the added benefit of making the whole thing reversible. (I excel at run-on sentences)

Here's a view of the back. And more cat hair.

Pepin has unfortunately decided that the tree-skirt is his new play thing. He jumps and slides all over on it. Some mornings we were finding it half-way across the living room. Thankfully that has mostly stopped now that we have some presents under the tree to weigh it down. And in the coming year I'm planning to make some ties for the back opening.

And now we come to the Pinterest section of the Christmas tree. (For those of you unfamiliar with Pinterest, I would go ahead and define is as a virtual cork board. You know all of those times when you are just perusing the internet and think to yourself "Wow, I need to remember that!), well with Pinterest, you are now very easily able to click a little button that you've installed on your web-browser, be in Explorer, Safari, Firefox, etc. that says "Pin It", put it into one your personalized catergories, and bam! It's there on your Pinterest board whenever you think to look back and remember all those things you mean to make or do.)

(Also, the site is still invite only, so if you would like an invite, leave a comment with your e-mail address and I will be happy to send one along.)

These citrus slices seemed the easiest and really turned out beautiful. I love how the light shines through if you get them positioned just right in front of a bulb.

And although this tree-topper had no tutorial attached to it, with a little hot glue, yarn and styrofoam, we were able to figure this one out (Well, Mom was able to figure it out).

There are quite a few more half-finished projects sitting on the dining room table but they will have to wait until family Christmas presents are finished. I am excited for the ornaments to come but on the whole, I am very happy with our half-finished product:

Irrational [Constant] Knitting

2011-12-02T09:33:00.001-06:00

Michael pointed out to me last night that it has been close to a month since my last post.

Forgive me.

Life has been, in a word: hectic.

My job at the bakery has sadly been dwindling down. My boss, who is quite pregnant with her second child, opted to focus on her family and close down the bakery. I am sad to lose the job. I really enjoyed working at this bakery in particular and loved stretching my baking muscles, so to speak. But honestly, the close comes at a good time for us and next year will be BUSY (with the possible purchase of a house?). So really, I'm not all that sad. And that's not to mention the fact that I can personally understand how draining on a family a restaurant business can be.

So

This dwindling of working time (I have been going in occasionally to bake off extra product or clean) has left me lots of time to sit, watch the Gilmore Girls series from the beginning, and KNIT! I Love it!

This is the current project: the irrational constant mittens.

The mitten pictured (the left mitten) is the π mitten (the symbol will be on the thumb, when it's finished) and the right mitten (to come) will feature the e constant (don't ask me what that constant is used for...).

I guess this is what happens to your knitting when you marry a math nerd. The colorwork has been a fun challenge at least!

I'll be sure to update the post when the mittens are complete.

Totally Random

2011-11-10T13:31:00.001-06:00

I honestly had no clue what this post was going to be about until I opened up my photo folder. I don't have time (or mind capacity) to write a thought-out post but still want to keep you all up to date on our adventures.

So here, is my totally random blog post:

I found this apron at World Market (the home goods version of Trader Joe's) and want it. Need it. Have to have it. It is my life motto at the moment and in the near future. It also made me giggle because it reminded me of a good friend from our time in France, Sarah and the sign that this came from.

We bought a food processor! It is amazing!

And we went to a locally famous pumpkin/apple patch in Illinois. We had a great day in the sunshine and came back with lots of apples to make applesauce with. Which, still has yet to be made (3 weeks later).

Life, please calm down so I can make my stinkin' applesauce!!!

TGIF!

2011-10-14T15:16:00.001-05:00

It no longer only stands for "Thank God It's Friday", no my friends, on this day (which happens to be a Friday, I know) it stands for "Thank God It's Finished!

It = our dining room set

During my parents' visit back in April we went to the unfinished furniture store to pick out some chairs to match the farm table that my dad had helped my make back in PA.

I loved the chairs that we came back with. They're not to big, not too small, and elegant but they're still simple enough to match the simple table. They turned out to be a great "unemployment project", keeping me busy for weeks during the painting and staining process.

This was the resulting look. Don't ask me why but for the bit of time when I was finishing the table and chairs I developed a phobia of polyeurithain which explains the absense of any on the final product. I think my aversion may have been related to using it on a previous project prior to our move to France but I was hell-bent on keeping the farm table looking farm-ish.

It only took a few months before I realized that this mindset is not practical for a soft-wood dining room table. Very soon the scratches and dents were taking over the table top, which really didn't bother me since it is a very "distressed" looking table top to begin with, but I didn't want to end up ruining my precious table. Thankfully, this decision coincided perfectly with the purchase of the 5th and 6th chair in the set (we had been saving up for a few months to complete the set) so over the past few weekends, we (but mostly Michael) have been working to get the furniture finally completed.

While I was at work Michael started by taking the seats back off the chairs, new and old, then priming the new chairs and paining the old in a fresh coat of semi-gloss black (stupid me had painted them flat before...it kind of went along with the no-poly-no-shiny thing from above but I'm learning lots about durability of paints lately). We also flipped the table so he could do a fresh coat of the semi-gloss on that as well.

Then came the surprise!

Blue chairs! On a walk one morning last weekend Michael made the tentative suggestion of painting his chair the french blue that we had used on my childhood stool. He thought I was going to laugh at the suggestion but in reality, I had been feeling that the simple black and stain look was a bit too plain for me so I agreed as long as the two end chairs could both be blue. In the end, I love the color and how they go so well with the paintings and other pieces of furniture in the room.

Pep supervised and thankfully, never jumped on the table while it was drying.

Here's the final look complete with a shiny-topped table and blue chairs on the end. So, who wants to come over and test them out?

My Best Friend's Wedding

2011-10-03T18:12:00.001-05:00

It seems like we've moved over to a every 2 or 3 week schedule over here at Metzing Around. Honestly though, until my work schedule is a bit less crazy and exhausting and until I get finished with the last of my wedding cakes for the year, this posting schedule will probably stand.

On the subject of weddings though, almost a month ago (You've been married nearly a month, A!), Michael and I made our way across Illinois and Indiana and almost through Ohio to Cleveland for my best friend's wedding.

It was a insanely fun wedding weekend and we were sad to leave on Sunday morning.

Long story short though: we drove, with a cake, 10+hrs, I finished the cake in 100% humidity (which does NOT make rolled fondant happy), there was a beautiful, sunny wedding (despite a morning or pouring rain), we partied, we ate cake, we partied some more, we collapsed into bed, we drove home.

And here a a few favorite pictures from the trip.

Pep was certainly not happy about the packing

The lovebirds themselves in this utterly creepy underwater shot

The self-proclaimed Sex In the City girls and my new friends

The gorgeous bride

Their excellent photographer blocking my view

The final product

The Adrienne look

Oh, and Adrienne and Shannon gave us the best "Thanks for making our wedding cake" present EVER!

Behold!

Only Adrienne would seek out a 1964 French Guide Michelin for us.

Although it did make us a bit "home"sick.

I hope this post will last everyone a bit. I am sure I'll be back to my regular, err...more regular posting schedule at some point soon. For now though, I'll let this and some other Photos from the wedding keep you satisfied.

Reindls Visit St. Louis

2011-09-18T19:34:00.000-05:00

Q: How far behind am I on this blog?
A: 1.5 months

Sad, I know. In my defense, it has been an absolutely crazy few months including no less than two wedding cakes, multiple 12-hr work shifts (and working straight threw a few weekends), car issues, visitors, a Birthday (which I did manage to blog about), medical tests (nothing serious, thankfully), and a few other things that we'll get to later on in the blog.

Now, to get caught up. Wish me luck.

Back in the beginning of August Tom and Ginny drove out for a week-long sort-of visit. I say sort of only because they actually stayed an hour and a half outside of the city so we didn't spent the whole week with them but got some great shorter visits while not feeling guilty that we still had to go to work every day.

Our first visit with them was a overnight trip down to visit them and the wine region that they were conveniently located near.

Of course, I took no pictures.

We did have a great time though, as we always do, visiting wineries, breweries and driving around the picturesque town of Ste. Genevieve.

A few days later, I had a day off so they headed up to the city for a visit. That first evening we all headed into the city for the first trip up the Gateway Arch for all four of us.

We did get some great views, especially on the East facing side (less weather), but the way up was a bit too rickety for me. and what they say is true, the viewing windows are incredibly tiny.

We posed outside in the beautiful (if horrendously hot) weather then I'm sure headed off to eat something.

The next day was my day off so we hit up the Missouri Botanical gardens for the second time with the Reindls. They liked it so much they first time, we had to go back. Not to mention the fact that it was very early spring during our last visit and we were all anxious to see how everything had filled out. Not to mention the fact that Mo Bot is free to residents on Wednesday mornings.

That visit made me realize just how much I would love to live in their greenhouse. Who wouldn't love the beautiful brick and beautiful view?

After the gardens, we went to one of my favorite restaurants Farmhaus for their blue plate lunch special then killed a few more hours at the St. Louis History Museum.

Our last visit with the Reindl parents was a very chill Friday night. They came back up to stay with us before making their way home on Saturday and we spent a nice evening eating Cicero's pizza and playing with Pepin.

All-in-all, a great week of visits. We can't wait for the next!

Happy Birthday to Me!

2011-09-07T16:06:00.002-05:00

We begin our story of the Birthday celebration on the day before my 25th.

After working during the day, I picked up Michael (the subaru was in the shop) and we headed to the fancy-schmancy mall for some quality Williams-Sonoma time. This used to be a common occurance back in our Pittsburgh days when W-S was just up the road on Walnut, but we don't seem to get around to it as much here, which is probably a good thing for our bank balance. The first things you should notice are the cheese slicer and veggie peeler on top of the pretty box. We bought those purely because we needed them. Our former veggie peeler, for example, would peel off about 1/4" of whatever you were peeling. It wasn't very efficient.

The really special splurge was in the box. This pretty rosemary colored Le Creuset not only will be very functional to us, but by purchasing the limited edition color, we helped in the fight against childhood hunger (Le Creuset donated 25% of the purchase price to Share Our Strength, on of my all-time favorite charities).

The plan was to break her in by making some slow cooked carnitas (yum!) but as most of you know, Michael is not the quickest in the decision making department so by the time we got home at 7:30 (we go to sleep at 9) we used it to throw together some quick beef tacos. They were good but I am anxious to use her for a better purpose when we are back to normal next week.

I spent the early morning hours of my 25th Birthday on the 10th floor of Barnes Jewish Hospital dropping off a piece of equipment.

At least I got this wonderful view of the sunrise over the city. If you enlarge the photo you can clearly see the arch on the right side. Don't worry, my day got better.

After another long day at work, we were both beat so we did something we never, ever do: we ordered way too much delivery food from Dominos. I must say, their spicy hawiaan pizza was pretty amazing.

Michael was also kind enough to make me (the cake-baker) a Birthday cupcake (that we shared because I was too full to eat a whole cupcake). As you can see, he and Pep did a wonderful job of singing to me and making my Birthday special.

Oh, and thanks to everyone for the great cards, texts, emails and facebook messages. You made a quarter-of-a-century no so scary :-)

Love from Grandma

2011-08-31T16:09:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow is the dreaded 2-5 for me. Not that I'm really dreading it. I'm actually pretty excited about the gift (kind of to myself) and dinner we have planned but more on that later.

On a related note, I thought I would share the card I received from my darling Grandma Baker.

I do believe this is the only time I have ever been scolded by my grandmother. Before this, all I can remember is Fruity Pebbles and Riesen candy.

I am truly sorry though about the delay in posts. It has been a busy few weeks filled with flying, wedding cakes, 12-hr shifts and weird medical testing. I really need to work on fitting little posts into my suddenly hectic schedule. In the meantime...I Love You Grandma!

View from the Top

2011-08-18T08:34:00.001-05:00

Last week we had some wonderful semi-visitors: the Reindl parents!

I say "semi-visitors" only because they actually stayed at a golf resort 1.5 hrs out of the city. It worked out nicely with us visiting them for a few days near the resort then they came up to Saint Louis for a few days of tourism. We hit up some well-known eateries, roamed through the botanical gardens on my day off and finally, after nearly 8 months living in St Louis, we made it up to the Gateway Arch.

Check out the (dirty) view of Busch stadium and downtown St Louis for yourself.

A List (cause I'm way behind)

2011-08-05T11:18:00.004-05:00

1. Some of you may have gathered through family or even facebook that I am finally employed. It was a quick development; I dropped off a resume on a Friday, went in for an interview the following Wednesday, a kitchen interview the next day (Thursday) and on Saturday morning, I started my first day of work. I am doing something similar to my stint at CoCo's in Pittsburgh, working half in the front and half in the kitchen and while my ideal would have been to only bake, I do love my interactions with the customers. And it's a job! And I am enjoying it! Both the people (co-workers, employers, and customers) and the baked goods (all from scratch) have been wonderful to work with so far. I am really, very happy to be employed again after such a long break (1.5 years...gasp!).

2. Since beginning my job, we have had some serious issues with kitten separation anxiety. Case in point:

And

3. A few projects were completed before I went back to work.

My dad made me this stool when I was little and it has been used and abused, broken, fixed, glued and it was desperately in need of a new paint job. I'm loving the happy French blue color.

I'm realizing now that I have a thing for brightly colored furniture. I finished the orange weeks ago but it sat unused because we had no hardware for it. That is, until I came home from work to find that Michael had made handles from spare chair parts and a cork (on the door, which still needs to be messed with, but it works!).

And there it is with the matching wine rack and the pile of wine bottles we've been saving for this year's batch of wine.

4. Apparently, Kathy Lee's stylist and I are on the same wavelength. Thanks to my wonderful m-i-l Ginny for pointing out the match.

As a reminder, here's my dress from Megan and Mike's wonderful wedding.

And here is Kathy Lee wearing my dress the very next week. At least I wore it first. And, I bet she didn't find hers on the Banana Republic Clearance rack with an extra 40% off!

5. After many failed attempts, I managed to remember that I can make a good baguette. The downside to that is that Michael will no longer accept Trader Joe's baguettes for his lunches.

5. We had a great visit with our friends from France, Megan and Joe last week. I'm hoping to post a more significant post on this later but they were in town for a poetry reading that Joe was the star of and despite having many friends to visit here (they lived in St. Louis before moving to France), they took an evening to share with us one of their favorite hole-in-the-wall pizza joints that I am sure will be come part of the Friday night rotation.

6. We've been tapping into our German roots lately with spätzel two nights in one week!

7. As a celebratory dinner this past weekend, Michael made me a very, very happy girl by buying two yummy lobsters so we could have my favorite meal of all time, lobster bake. Yummm!

My Saab Story

2011-07-26T17:46:00.004-05:00

As far as love for inanimate objects goes, this girl is my baby. (Please ignore the rust on the front fender...I'm hoping to have that fixed next year.)

Stella Luna is 22 years old and this Christmas, I will have had her for 6 years. For the most part, she has served me well but since sitting 1.5 years in a family friend's barn (while we were metzing around), she has begun to show her age.

(* On a side note, a man at a red light asked me a few days ago if I am the original owner of the car. WHAT??)

She made the long drive out from PA early in the year with no problems but the problems began not long after.

It all started with some sputtering and stalling when I first started her in the morning but by the time my appointment rolled around, she refused to start at all. After lots of tries and a push down the hill, Michael and I finally managed to start her up and get her to the shop.

Their verdict: faulty fuel pump. So we had it replaced (for a pretty penny...ouch!) and all but a lingering fuel smell, she was running great!

Of course, this isn't to mention the fact that my key somehow got stuck in the ignition and would not, no matter how much turning and WD-40 we tried, come out. Unfortunately, the shop was unable to fix this before we left so Michael and I were stuck locking the keys in the ignition with the spare key and unplugging the batter every evening when we parked it (since some of the auxiliary lights stay on when key is in). A little goofy, but it worked.

We hit the road the next day for the wedding in Ohio and soon realized that the fuel smell wasn't just lingering. But since we weren't noticing any leaking fuel, we weren't too concerned.

All was well until we were heading back from the wedding on the highway and the gas gauge suddenly fell to the bottom. Did the fuel gauge sensor die? Did a hold suddenly form in the bottom of the gas tank? Did the entire gas tank fall off? We had no clue but Stella seemed to be running fine so we kept going until the next gas station where we filled up the tank (just to see how much gas we really had) only to see gas come spilling out the bottom of the car.

We weren't far from our first pit-stop at Michael's Grandparents' house so we kept going despite some safety concerns. And thankfully, Michael's wonderful Aunt had phoned up her mechanic who agreed to take a look at the car (even though it was a Sunday).

Thinking we wouldn't be able to take our car back, the initial plan was to take Michael's Grandparents' car back to Saint Louis and return to trade when Stella was back in working order. But after a quick look, the Mechanic said that there was a simple gasket leak in the top of the fuel tank (meaning no safety concerns with driving her) where the fuel pump had been installed and the fuel sensor was simply broken, so we would just had to pay attention to how long we were driving. Did I mention though that my odometer is broken? It's been broken for years (I probably shouldn't be publicizing this but since I stubbornly won't sell her, I'm not concerned) and hadn't been a real problem until now, when I needed to be paying attention to the miles passing by so I could calculate how much gas I was using. Amazingly enough though, there's an App for that! No, really. After a quick search on my phone I found an odometer app that uses the phone's GPS to track your miles. Using that app (and with a safety 2 gallon gas can in the trunk), we were able to safely (and without spilling gas everywhere) make it back to Saint Louis by using a few gallons, then replacing it.

After returning home, we dropped the car off and they immediately fixed the leak in the top of the fuel tank.

To recap though, the following things are broken in my car:

Ignition switch (the key is stuck)

Fuel gauge

Odometer

A/C (did I not mention this? That car ride to and from OH was the hottest, sweatiest time of my life but $1200 to repair is a bit much at the moment)

Oh, and I'll probably need a new clutch by the end of the year

I know it seems crazy to keep her around. I'm sure our families question my sanity at times but Stella really is a great car and in a few short years, she'll be considered a classic. That has to count for something...

Another Wonderful Wedding

2011-07-15T10:51:00.001-05:00

If you are a Facebook friend, you know that this wedding weekend included a bit of a Saab Story (a.k.a. crazy car troubles). I am a bit of a superstitious person though, so until my car is happily back from the shop and not acting up, I won't be posting anything about the saga.

On a happier note: Megan and Mike's wedding was absolutely beautiful and we had a wonderful weekend with the in-laws and Michael's very large Ohio family.

Unfortunately, I suck at taking pictures when I'm having fun. Or I'm just too lazy to dig the camera out from the bottom of Michael's backpack. So a written account will just have to do.

We are very thankful that Michael has the ability to use flex time at work and this past week we used that flex time to make sure we were out of the house by 2 on Friday. After the (perfectly calculated by the GPS) 6.5 hr drive (with a pit-stop at Skyline Chili just before the Ohio border), we arrived in the tiny town of Russia, Ohio (pronounced Roo-shee) at around 10 on Friday night (which included the 1hr lost when we passed back into the Eastern time zone).

Ginny and Laura were there already and Grandma and Grandpa K. were still awake. We had a bit of time to visit before Grandma and Grandpa hit the sack in preparation for the big day they had ahead of them. The rest of us stayed up for a bit visiting, eating snacks and drinking wine (or, if you're me, spilling your wine on the floor) before crashing ourselves.

On Saturday morning, after breakfasts and showers, Laura, Michael and I set off for Columbus to meet up with David and Kathia for a pre-wedding lunch at Donatos (an Ohio chain pizza place that David raves about). After lunch and wine in the hotel room we all got prettied-up and headed downtown for the evening.

The wedding itself was beautiful. Again, I didn't think to pull the camera out of my clutch to take any photos but the inside of the church was a gorgeous blue with ornate white moldings. The ceremony was touching and the Megan and Mike were adorable. And Mike's grandfather did a very comical reading from John, telling the story of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding.

And after the wedding we stood out in the courtyard to take some family photos.

Good lookin' group, right? Unfortunately, Tom was unable to make it to this wedding because it was the week before the opening of the newest play he's performing in. You can see that we kind of instinctively left a space for him in the photo.

The reception was of course the most fun. And the only place I thought to take any photos.

These sweet twins belong to Michael's cousin, who also happenes to be the bride's sister. Which meant that their dad was a bit overwhelmed with the two sweet ones while mom was in the wedding. Of course, Laura, Kathia and I were more than happy to give him a hand with the wee ones.

Content siblings after a delicious dinner

Soon-to-be married themselves!

Some of the family with the bride and that little girl in front? That's little Julie (she may get mad at me for the "little" part if she ever reads this, but she is the youngest of 3 in the family), another cousin.

The after party was a good time too. As you can see here, Michael made sure to teach his sister how to tie a necktie.

Honestly though, we were pretty lame after that. We were all ready for bed by this point.

Sunday was the day that my car decided to throw in the towel so I won't go into it quite yet but you can look forward to a fairly comical string of events.

Harvest Time

2011-07-08T07:53:00.001-05:00

Cucumbers have gone from this....

...to this seemingly overnight.

And tomatoes have gone from this.....

...to ripe.

Sorry, if you know me at all you know my obsession with tomatoes. So far, 4 tomatoes have been harvested but I am too impatient to take a picture before inhaling them right there on the balcony.

We're off today for another fun wedding weekend with family in Ohio. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my beloved Saab (just back from the shop two days ago with a new fuel pump) makes it without a hiccup.

Things My Dad Taught Me: Part I of Many

2011-07-07T09:05:00.000-05:00

Pickled Eggs (and Beets)

1. Hardboil and peel eggs

2. Add to large jar

3. Cook beets and cut into pieces (reserve cooking liquid)

4. Make pickle liquid (Equal parts cooking liquid and cider vinegar; salt, sugar and pepper to taste)

5. Add liquid to jar and sit on your hands for at least two days before devouring

*My dad is currently on vacation in Alaska with my Mom, brother, sister-in-law and nieces and I feel like giving away one of his secrets is a passive-aggressive way of showing my extreme jealousy.

Filling a Request

2011-07-06T14:51:00.000-05:00

My Pittsburgh BFF Adrienne made a request in last night's e-mail thread: "More pictures of Pepin!".

And since little Pep is almost a 6 month old kitty (he's been with us nearly 4 months) I thought I'd do a photo post from our first 4 months with this loving and very entertaining little companion.

First night with his new family

Hiding out whenever I left the room

Looking tiny on a big print

Squished nap

Pretty posing

One upset kitten after falling in the bathtub

Get that tail!

My blogging help

Monorail kitty

What cat steals tortilla chips out of the bag?

Attack blur!

Terrorizing my plant (this one currently has one leaf and is locked up in the guest bedroom...he doesn't eat them, he just rips them off and leaves them on the floor)

My kitchen hoodie help

Someone got in the orange paint!

This cat never sleeps in the same position twice

The most recent picture of Pep

In four months he's gone from a 2.5 lb. puffball to a 7.5 lb. loveball that plays like it's his job.

He also ocasionally chews and eat things he shouldn't (one hair tie that went through and one shoelace prior) such as this camera wrist strap which led to a trip to the Animal ER last week. Thankfully the X-ray came back clean but he's been sincerely enjoying the Vet prescribed wet cat food for extra fluid -- just in case.

Wedding Day!

2011-07-05T12:35:00.000-05:00

I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July!

And now, back to business.

Wedding Day Schedule (Times are approximate)

5am:

Wake up

6am:

Realize there is a problem with the egg whites

6:30am:

After whipping un-whippable (yup, made up that word) egg whites for 45 minutes, send dad on a last-minute egg run to our trusty egg lady down the street

We think he woke her up

8am:

Ice the cakes and build up layers

10:30am:

Get my sister out of bed and make sure everyone has showers and is ready to head out in one hour

11:30am:

Leave for Williamsport with iced cake in the back of a VW wagon

12:30pm:

Pick up flowers for cake at Bride's (Jess) apartment

12:55pm:

(A little late) arrive at wedding and leave cake in car under a shady tree

1:05pm:

Wedding starts

1:25pm:

Leave ceremony to turn on the A/C in the car so the cake won't melt into a giant buttery puddle

2:00pm:

Decorate cake with Michael and Zoey's help in the back of the car

2:15pm:

Drive up to the tent and deliver the finished cake

Phew!

And then, we we able to enjoy and celebrate this beautiful day and wedding. Thanks Ben and Jess!

And in the process we added the last of the girls to this generation of Sisters. From left to right: Chrissy (with niece or nephew #10), Heather (at thriftymomspot), me, Jess (the newbie), Natty, Katie (at Alaskarella) and Rosie

The Cake!

(Great choice on the flowers guys!)

This was too funny not to document; while waiting in line for the buffet, my mom noticed a small speck on the cake. Always the perfectionist, she pulled out the pin from her boutonniere and used it to remove the spot.

Pretty-girl Lucy provided much entertainment (she does a killer version of ring-around-the-rosie)

Ben and Jess cut the cake and very nicely fed it to each other and then I made a huge mess cutting it up for the rest of the reception-goers. Hot an humid days are no friend to Italian Buttercream.

One wedding cake down, 3 to go :-)

Rehearsal and Rehearsal Dinner Fun

2011-06-24T11:58:00.004-05:00

Boy am I dragging this event out. I hate writing (and making you read) long blog posts though so you'll just have to deal with the wedding cake suspense for a bit longer. Deal.

What I didn't mention in the previous post is that while I was working away on the cake that Friday afternoon, using a good chunk of the kitchen counters in my parents' kitchen, they were working on the salads and side dishes for the rehearsal dinner to feed 70. It was a mess, to say the least but we managed to make it work. Thankfully, my Mom, Dad and I have worked together in kitchens many, many times in the past so we are pretty good at the give and take required (I'll give you this knife if you give me some counter space).

We finished everything up, got threw on some semi-nice clothing and headed out to the wedding venue at a beautiful spot along the Susquehanna river.

While the rehearsal went on, the rest of us occupied ourselves by keeping babies busy.

And by comparing freckles; little Luke has a long way to go to catch up to his Mommy.

What a beautiful wedding space!

The rehearsal dinner consisted of pasta salad, veggies and chips with dip and 25 boxes of pizza from what I believe to be the best pizza place on the planet earth, Park Pizza. Please, promise me that if you are ever driving through Williamsport, Pa, you will stop for a pie. You won't be disappointed.

And after dinner, we reminded ourselves how much fun it is to have an underwater camera!

The little babies loved the rafts!

Little Emma is cute as can be in her frilly purple suit!

Jolly Giants (is that Alaskarella?) supervised (and photographed) while Aaron and Michael took a swimming break.

Aaron shows off his under-water abilities along with the camera!

Zoey and I toughed out a marathon of swimming and after we all returned home, the whole family crashed.

Getting There (with a wedding cake)

2011-06-23T11:41:00.001-05:00

Did I mention before that I was doing the wedding cake for my brother's (and now sister-in-law's!) wedding two weeks ago near our hometown in Pennsylvania?

Did I mention that I was going to be baking the cake (for 170 people) in Saint Louis and flying with it to Pennsylvania?

Well, I did.

And it was stressful.

Along with the stress of baking some rather large cake layers in a less-than-perfect (read:cheap-apartment-grade-but-at-least-its-not-electric) oven, cutting the cakes into nice, even layers, freezing the cake in layers, there was much more that needed to be acquired, packed, and remembered.

I feel like I should copyright this.

Well, that wasn't so hard! Not that I really think it bares (bears? I don't know which one is grammatically correct here!) any legal clout. And I feel like I need to copyright the information, not just the picture. Any lawyers out there? I'm confused.

Anyway, this is the write-up for this particular wedding cake (which I seem to have left at home. Mom? Is it there?). And after at 4:30 wake-up (it's OK, Pepin had me up at 3 anyway), a quick pack of last minute things (including 4 frozen wedding cake layers into a Igloo Cube cooler along with an ice pack and all the sharp objects and toiletries we were taking home [since the rest of our luggage was carry-on]), we jumped in the car and headed to the airport.

Parking at the St Louis airport can be as cheap as $7 per day -- isn't that crazy?

And this was our lovely greeting while we waited for our plane at 6am.

Our first leg out of Saint Louis was extended in the air for a bit thanks to some nasty weather that the pilot had to avoid so we ended up landing in Detroit 30 minutes late.

Leaving us, and our cooler under the plane only 30 minutes to get to the next plane to Elmira.

We made it -- Detroit is a pretty easily navigated airport -- but then I started to sweat. Would the cake make it?

Then the announcement came over the loudspeaker: "Flight *blablabla* to Elmira, New York has been delayed because the crew had been held up on another flight". I've never been so happy for a flight delay in my life.

And then the cake came.

40 minutes after our scheduled departure we were on the ground in Elmira (or Corning...whichever it actually is).

Hello Corning/Elmira Regional Airport. So nice to see you!

My dad was there waiting for us. Unfortunately, since the man has never and will never own a cell phone, he wasn't warned that we would be late or how late we would be. It seems to be our curse that we can never get in on time from a flight (thinking back to our long trip home).

As soon as the cake came around the conveyor belt we ripped it open and checked (it had been duct taped for the voyage) on the cake, which was fine; a bit thawed, but fine.

45 minutes later we were home and after greeting what few family members were already at our house, Zoey (my 4-year-old niece) and I got to work on the cream cheese icing for filling in between the layers (she put in the butter). And within two hours, the four layers were filled and back in the freezer, ready to be iced the next morning.

Then we all went to the rehearsal dinner and the fun began.

Stay tuned for rehearsal fun, wedding pictures and most importantly, cake pictures!

Where to Begin?

2011-06-21T11:11:00.000-05:00

I know, it's been forever since a post.

We returned from our PA hometown over a week ago and I am only now just starting to feel like life is back to normal...whatever normal is these days.

I have lots to catch up on here so you can look forward to many posts in the next few weeks involving everything from brothers and sisters to nieces and nephews with a few cakes, ripening tomatoes, growing jalapeños, pickling beets and sharpened knives thrown in for good measure. Notice please that all topics mentioned above, aside from family, has to do with food.

That's just how I roll.

In the meantime, here a few lovely pictures from the mess I came home to find in the frantic day before flying to PA with a frozen wedding cake.

That, my friends is wine from a bottle that popped its cork. It's hard to see in these photos, I know. It was much more vibrant in person, and the smell...oh the smell; my first concern was that Pepin had been boozing it up while I was out (kidding, kidding -- I'm not that crazy!).

Again, it's hard to see but the wine shot from the bottle on the far side of the dining room, through the dining room and almost to the far side of the kitchen; 15 feet. I measured.

And it managed to touch on everything nearby as well: the walls, the dining room table, even making it to a far wall to the left of where this picture was taken.

Needless to say, it got cleaned up but only after I let it sit for an hour until Michael came home from work so I could show him. It was too funny and amazing, really, not to show him.

And that way he had to help me ;-)

Balcony Garden Update

2011-06-09T07:00:00.011-05:00

It's been a few weeks since I've highlighted the amazing growth that's been taking place on our little balcony. I've in no way inherited my parents' green thumbs (can't even count the number of plants I've killed) and we've struggled with some of the bi-polar weather this spring (frosts, cold and soaking rain, tornado warnings and high winds) but the opposite swing (over a week now of over 90° days) has really given the garden the kick start it's needed.

And in case you aren't the gardening type, you might want to skip this post. After reading over it, I'm amazed at how long-winded I can be over a 8x11 foot space.

I realize that I never got around to showing off Michael's Birthday presents. I purchased two blueberry plants because they apparently need to have another one around to facilitate cross pollination. And I purchased two types so that we would have different harvesting seasons, thus extending our fresh blueberry eating time. Now, I must admit that I never would have thought to keep blueberries in pots, but Gayla Trail in Grow Great Grub (my current container and small space gardening bible) makes it clear that container grown blueberries can do quite well. Our master plan is to transplant these babies into the ground when the time comes that we have our own yard. This particular plant is the "Patriot" blueberry, and as you can probably tell from the already blue berries, this is our early harvest plant.

This is our "Jersey" (late harvest) blueberry bush with my massive mint alongside. There are many green berries on this plant and while there are one or two blue berries, I don't expect that we will be harvesting for 2 months or so.

Don't mind the wilty-ness, I watered just after taking the pictures. But regardless, these are my cucumber plants (top right and bottom left) which already have blossoms and tiny cukes growing. The bottom right plant is our lavender which has been growing like crazy; I've already harvested twice and am due to harvest again tomorrow before we leave. The strands of drying lavender are hanging on the same hook as my France calendar which happens to be on a Marseille theme this month. The pairing is very fitting. The herb on the top left is a new dill plant. Since the sage seemed to be over-taking the cucumbers, I opted to transplant it to its own container and put something a bit less invasive.

Herbs clockwise from top left:

Cilantro is doing OK. It was taking over for a few weeks but unfortunately it went to seed and I didn't catch it in time. We'll see if it comes back or if I have to replace it. Since Michael has an aversion to Cilantro, having a plant means I no longer have to feel guilty about buying it in the store for only one of us to eat it. You could say I've become cilantro dependent.

Terragon is finally taking off after the addition of some worm castings (aka worm poop) to the soil.

Parsley is also starting to catch up with my demand. I have a problem with using too many herbs as soon as I get the plants, not allowing them to get really established before I start eating them.

Chives are also new to the garden. I struggled with the basil that was in this container. It didn't like the cold, wet weather that we had last month so when I finally decided to replace it I opted to move it into it's own container that could easily be taken into the house when the weather isn't perfect. The chives are still quite new but are establishing themselves nicely.

As you can see, my upside-down tomato plant experiment has been working out quite well. The plant is huge and as of my count this morning, I have 7 tomatoes so far. Two of the three basil plants in the top have done quite well (Thai and the new Purple basil) but the Greek basil struggled with the cold weather and I haven't been able to get it to grow more than one stalk, so we'll see how that one pans out.

The lettuce, radishes and onions are doing much better after a move to the other, cooler side of the balcony. We have been eating and thinning out the lettuce and onions for quite awhile now and I'm trying hard to keep the radishes happy and damp.

All of the herbs seem to be loving our heat wave, including the transplanted sage (huge, right?) and the new basil which (thanks to more worm poop) has probably tripled since we bought it last weekend.

My jalapeno plant is doing well but teaching me patience. It has been flowering for quite some time so I was starting to worry that I wasn't seeing any peppers but my research this morning assured me that these plants can take 4-6 months to produce.

Home Improvement Part 3

2011-06-08T07:00:00.000-05:00

Not too much has been done on the home improvement front in the past few weeks. As I mentioned in my last post, we've been busy. We have, however, acquired some apartment additions that have made a world of difference in how our spaces feel.

In this picture alone we have two things acquired (or purchased) when Miss Emily made her move to Boston, the floor lamp and the bookshelves. More than anything, I am so happy to have at least a bit more of our books out of storage.

We also acquired the floor lamp in this picture from Emily and the new bed was a great Craigslist find. It was a bit out of the city, maybe a 45 minute drive, but it was well worth it. And after a good rub-down with Howard Restore-A-Finish (which I highly recommend if you have anything with a dull or scratched finish), the bed looks almost like new.

What's Next?

As soon as we get back from our PA trip this weekend, this dresser will be receiving the same red/orange treatment as the wine rack in this blog post. I also need to find some fun hardware to replace the fake chrome.

Busy Times

2011-06-07T10:06:00.001-05:00

We had visitors on the Sunday and Monday of Memorial Day weekend. Mary and Michael Neumann stopped by on their way across the country. Mary is a great friend of both Michael and I from our school days back in Wellsboro and we had the pleasure of meeting Michael a few years ago before we were all married. Michael Neumann and I tend to have a love/hate relationship though, depending on where we are in the football season (Steelers fans and Ravens fans generally don't mix come playoff time) ;-)

We had a great time with them though, enjoying a late dinner on Sunday then getting up early on Monday morning to go downtown. We spent some time in the park around the Arch and played in the flooded Mississippi river. This was our first time seeing the Arch up close.

It is pretty impressive I have to admit.

Mary played paparazzi with my dream camera (Nikon D90) while I took pictures with my Android.

After the Arch we walked back into the city through the amazing CityGarden and eventually we ended up eating lunch at the famous St Louis establishment, Blueberry Hill.

After the guests left on Memorial day we fired up the grill and made these amazing smoked ribs and a great and refreshing macaroni salad. That night we went to Emily's last Martini Monday (friends that get together every Monday for drinks, a weekly event that was invented by Emily) at an amazing rooftop bar that's not too far from our house.

This is Emily. She is sad in this picture because our candle holder in front of her exploded while she and another Emily were over for dinner a few weeks ago. I spent a few days after Memorial day helping her pack up for her move to Boston. She and I became quick friends after we met approximately one month ago. I feel like I've known her for years which makes me very sad that she is gone but also very happy for her that she finally gets to be in a non-long-distance relationship with her boyfriend of three years.

This is a cowl (raveled here) that I have been knitting in my spare time for the past month or so. It was a lovely (and free!) pattern but it wasn't quite the mindless knitting that I tend to enjoy. The changing pattern every row meant I couldn't space out and watch tv while knitting it. It did turn out well though, and went to Emily before she left. I'm just waiting for a picture of her wearing its so it makes a bit more sense. Unfortunately, since the cowl is made of wool, this might not happen for half a year or so.

After that the week seemed to fly by and before we knew it Thursday was here along with our first CSA (or farm share, if you prefer)delivery including:

Strawberries (already gone)

Wheat Berries

Iceberg lettuce (1/2 gone)

Free-range eggs (2/3 gone)

Green Garlic (almost gone)

Spring Onions (will be used tonight)

Russian Turnips (will be used tonight)

Red Mustard Greens (one leaf eaten by Pepin)

Romaine Lettuce (mostly gone)

Radishes (1/2 gone)

Broccoli (maybe I'll throw them in tonight too)

We're trying hard to get through everything so the fridge is cleaned out before our next delivery the day before we fly back to PA to finish...

...this cake for my brother Ben and soon-to-be sister-in-law's wedding this weekend. We can't wait to celebrate with family and friends and mostly, I can't wait to see all 9 nieces and nephews!

What's in your tornado kit?

2011-05-27T11:51:00.002-05:00

I know we moved to the midwest but the reality of being in "tornado alley" has only just begun to sink in for this solidly northeastern girl.

While Michael was still at work on Wednesday in his nice, cozy basement office (I'm not sure he feels that way on normal weather days), and while Pep and I sat at home, a string of very severe weather began to make its way through our area. The meteorologists has been predicting it for days, telling St Louis residents that the conditions were "very favorable" for tornadoes. We were placed in the "high-risk" area on the national map and I was ready with the TV on, to watch the action unfold. Unfortunately, nothing else was prepared.

You see, up until this point, while we had been under tornado warnings on past bad weather days, and the sirens had blared before, there had never been anything resembling a tornado heady towards our house. And as I am sure you are all aware, the terrible tragedy that happened the past week in Joplin, MO has scared everyone into being a bit more diligent.

Wednesday was a different story though. I had the TV blaring while frantically cleaning (the nervous energy of tornado warnings makes me a great cleaner!) when I heard that there was rotation in the atmosphere and a funnel cloud had been spotted just a few miles south of our house in the shopping area that I frequent daily. At this point, the TV announcer suggested that anyone in the path of this particular cell move to the basement, naming our neighborhood in his list.

Then I thought, "Oh, Crap! I have nothing ready!". Thankfully, we were still a bit away from the funnel cloud, and the TV was predicting that we would have 17 minutes before anything would be close. What better time to prepare an emergency kit, really?

So, here's my 15 minute tornado kit ended up looking like:

1. Sneakers (with the nasty pair of socks that I've been wearing all week to work out in. Sorry, I only own two pair, so new pairs are doled out sparingly.), cause shiny gold flip-flops just won't cut it.

2. Water

3. Food (a banana and a granola bar)

4. Mag Lite flashlight (I hope Preston isn't reading this, and if you're reading this Cayley, don't show it to him. He left it at my house 8 or so years ago and I never got it back to him.) with a pack of extra batteries.

5. Money, credit cards, insurance cards, etc

6. Phone

7. A sweater

8. Kitten in his carrier

9. Kitten food and treats
10. A book (specifically Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated)

Funny story about Pep and the carrier:

He actually jumped in the carrier as soon as I pulled it out. While he doesn't like being shut in it the carrier, he does think it's quite a comfy bed to lay on (as you can see in the picture above, taken later in the evening before I got around to putting it away). So after he willingly jumped in his carrier I zipped it up and continued with my frantic packing. I opened the door to the basement to get a baggie of his food out of the stairwell closet and heard a loud "Meow" fly by me down the stairs. It seems that Pepin was worried I would forget him in the shuffle and figured it was every cat for himself! I was worried at first that he had ripped through his carrier but in reality, I had simply forgotten to fasten the clasps after zipping him in.

I probably should note that Pep is slightly obsessed with exploring the basement and probably just saw his chance with the door wide open and me paying little attention (thinking he was contained.)

All ended well though. That particular funnel cloud never touched down and while the severe weather lasted a few more hours, it mostly involved heavy rain and some hail.

The moral of this stupid story is that we need to get an actual kit together so we're not scurrying around and nearly losing the kitten in the scuffle.

And also, I may have some unhealthy anxiety when it comes to tornado scares.

On a Happier note:

This happened two years ago yesterday on a cliff in Hawaii.

We celebrated with a movie and sushi and I have to say that I am so happy with the little life and little family we've made (minus the tornado alley thing).

Two wonderful years down, and here's to many, many more to come!

Happy Birthday to my favorite set of twins!

2011-05-22T15:47:00.001-05:00

Look at those cute kids back in 2003. They turned 25 today! We always wish we could celebrate with Laura, but as usual, we are separated by many miles. Thankfully, we have a family wedding to attend in a few weeks and will be able to see her and maybe have a drink to celebrate the milestone Birthday.

Michael's present was in two parts this year. He got to pick out this absinthe that we have been wanting to try and I snuck around to buy him two blueberry plants that can be grown in containers for now but will be easy to transplant into the ground once we have a yard of our own. The boy loves his blueberries :-)

We had to do a bit of fenangling to get the mixing just right. To attain the perfect cloudiness you must slowly drip water into the absinthe a drop at a time and although you can't tell from a picture, that water jug is really heavy. Eventually we filled salt shaker (from Michael's extensive thrift store silver collection) with the ice water and using a cork in the fill hole to vary the speed at which the water flowed out.

For his Birthday dinner, Michael opted for a chicken fricassée with homemade spaetzel (we found a spaetzel maker at a kitchen store for $8 -- I can't tell you how excited I was!).

And Pepin spent the evening trying to fit in the bottom of the pot we bought for the blueberries.

Home Improvement Part 2: A weekend of progress

2011-05-19T11:33:00.001-05:00

Over this past weekend, Michael got me motivated to finish some of the half finished bits and pieces lying around the living room. I've done a poor job of taking before pictures of our recent projects but nonetheless, I will show you the finished products.

I mentioned in the post about my parents' visit that we worked on hand-caning one chair but I realize now that I never showed the good, finished picture of the piece.

Silly me, here you go.

Thanks to lots of help from my mother I was able to complete the hand-caned chair on the right. After my family departed I was left with a pressed (pre-woven) cane chair that I needed to figure out how to do on my own (shown on the left hand side, for comparison of the hand weave vs. pre-weave).

Thanks to the modern marvel that is youtube, I was able to watch a video 2 or 3 times then Michael and I were a able to replace the old caning within 30 minutes. Although I made a small mistake on the spline (the piece that goes around the edges of the cane), I must say that I can see why the pre-woven cane was invented, if only because this chair took 30 minutes to complete as opposed to the 10 or so hours that the hand-woven cane demanded. (That isn't to say that pressed-cane doesn't posses its own challenges.)

I also worked last week on sanding and staining this adorable little tea tray that my dad made for me when I was 10 and still had tea parties. I don't know why I never got around to finishing it until now.

Also on our to-do list was this all-important wine rack. As you can see in the background, we finished bottling this year's 45 bottles of wine and were severely lacking a place to put them. Michael is putting on the primer in this picture.

Here it is with in the finished red/orange color. (LOVE!)

And holding some of our wine. As you can see, we need to add something to the bottom of a leg so it doesn't wobble.

On a slightly related note: if you have a very quick little kitty and are painting, lock him in a different room. Pepin was not very happy with the bath he received after this little mishap and still has some peach-tinged fur on his back.

Bright Baby Knits

2011-05-17T15:38:00.001-05:00

If I wanted to count how many pregnant friends and family members I know, I may just have to move past my fingers and count on my toes as well. Most of the projects have been small, quick gratification projects like these sweet little bibs and bunnies:

Unfortunately I didn't realize that this picture was so terrible before packing some of them up and shipping them off to 2 of the 10 million babies that are soon to come.

On a side note: you can see that Pep isn't particularly helpful when I when I want to knit.

But back to the point: my favorite recent knit was this Tri-Terra Cardigan that I did as a test knit for my friend Cosy. It was sized for a 6 month old but I messed up a bit on my measurements and it turned out a bit bigger. I am still in love with it though, especially the colors.

I loved the pattern and was so happy that I was able to use some of Cosy's own Rainbow Chard hand-dyed yarn.

The buttons were another great find and my new favorite St Louis store, Knitorious.

This was also my first time knitting a sweater from the bottom-up. I was mildly terrified and had avoided anything but top-down like the plague but after finishing this super easy pattern, I can't figure out where my fear came from.

You can see a couple of Cosy's other adorable baby sweaters that I did as a test knit for her last fall in this blog post. Sadly, those earlier sweaters never made from France to their recipients in Alaska so it is needless to say that whoever receives this sweater get it by hand-delivery.

P.S. For those of you who knit, this pattern is raveled here and will be linked to Cosy's pattern as soon as she posts it within the next few days.

Home Improvement Part 1

2011-05-15T18:29:00.000-05:00

You might remember our living room looking like this:

Cramped, smushed, and difficult to navigate. Unfortunately, if we wanted to make out anything on our tiny 17" TV, this is what we had to deal with.

Thanks to the untimely death (seriously, untimely. We were very lucky that we had been saving a bit.) of the 17" Samsung, our living room now looks like this:

While still not perfect, and not all in our style, this a serious upgrade from what we had been dealing with.

On a slightly related note: I'm not sure if any of my brothers read this blog, but if you do, I just wanted you to know that I never expected that I would be playing Toejam and Earl on a 42" TV (the color is a bit distorted by the camera, but the picture quality of this TV is amazing!).

P.S. Blogger -- thank you for finally letting me post!

tea, kitties and wine

2011-05-02T11:52:00.002-05:00

Those three things are mostly what our weekend consisted of. Well, those and lots and lots of Netflix Instant View since our TV has been dead over a week now and the new one won't be here until Wednesday. It's not even like we are TV-aholics, we're still using an antenna, in fact! But we do like to watch the Sunday morning fare, the local realty show, and the occasional episode of Jaques and Julia on PBS (Jaques Pépin and Julia Child in one show = BRILLIANT, if you want my humble opinion) and we were a bit lost without them this weekend.

Back to the point of illustrating our weekend. On Friday I baked some scones for Michael to take to work to commemorate the Royal Wedding and so when he got home from work I made him eat some more along with a "spot-o-tea".

And, that was about it for the day. I guess we watched The Office too, but that's not very exciting to blog about.

On Saturday, Pepin practiced his rendition of "Thriller"

And hid by the balcony door in hopes that we would open it so he could jump off of the balcony and attack the squirrel in the front yard. No luck for Pep though.

On Sunday we actually accomplished something: we bottled some of this year's wine!

At first, Pep was all excited to help.

But he soon opted for a cat nap when he realized that you need opposable thumbs to work the corker.

Here are the 28 bottles that we finished yesterday (well, they still need labels, but they are at least drinkable). That's a little more than half of the wine we made this year. The plan is to bottle 6 more of both the Niagara (white) and Foch (red) then to blend the two for the last 10 or so bottles. Thanks again to my Dad for keeping us stocked up with grape juice and making sure that the partially fermented wine was well kept until we returned to the states.

He's Gigantic!

2011-04-29T07:59:00.001-05:00

At least to us he seems gigantic. We've had Pepin for a month and a half now and in that time he has gone from just over 2lb. to a whopping 4.5lb. It's hard to tell he's bigger when he curls up, but if he stretches out, you can tell how much he's grown.

In some ways, he is a very strange kitty:

He insists on being at least at eye level with the counter when we are cooking in the kitchen, even if that means sitting on our shoulders or in this case, tucked into the hood of my sweatshirt.

Please ignore the 6:30am version of me in the picture.

He sometimes sleeps at my feet, similar to a dog.

And if you look at Lolcats at all, you'll know what I mean when I say that he vastly prefers to be held "monorail cat" style.

In many ways though, Pep is most certainly a cat:

Upon receiving some cosymakes yarn in the mail, he proceeded to make it absolutely impossible for me to get any knitting accomplished.

He's found his way up on to the mantel, using our bottle of used corks as his own personal toy dispenser and putting our "fine crystal" (haha!) in danger. We've since remedied the problem by both installing a deterrent (double-sided tape) and getting rid of his way up (a.k.a. our TV that he would jump from is now dead, and will be replaced next week with a flat screen that he hopefully can't balance on to use as a jumping-off point).

Pep has also taken to attacking my houseplants. You can barely see it in this picture but he had already taken a chomp out of the bottom right leaf (the plant has since been moved to higher ground). And fittingly, this reminds me of a little ceramic cat that my grandma has hanging off of the side of one of her houseplants.

Pep also loves to play, mostly by attacking our arms. Thankfully he is quite gentle, never using his claws but we are occasionally bitten a bit too hard.

And he talks and complains almost constantly. Especially with a Siamese cat, you can never, ever do anything right. *sigh*

Easter

2011-04-28T10:30:00.001-05:00

Our little family of three had a nice, lazy Easter Sunday this year. We started the morning opening our Easter basket (bag) filled with Highland chocolates and Jelly Belly jellybeans. Pep even got a bag of treats in the bag but as per usual, he was much more interested in the packing materials than the actual gift.

So, we spent most of the morning with the crinkling of paper and occasionally we would see a freaked-out blur of yellow speed by when a claw or tooth got stuck.

After a delicious brunch consisting of an asparagus and goat cheese omlett (sounds yummy, huh Mom?), cappuccinos, and bloody marys we spent a good few hours playing Pep's favorite game of "stalk and pounce". (Sorry for the poor photo quality.)

We then dyed eggs and hid them for each other.

And at dinner time we made this amazing Roast Leg of Lamb with Tarragon-Mint Butter, roasted-garlic smashed potatoes and salad.

I can get used to early planting times in the Midwest!

2011-04-27T10:37:00.001-05:00

I seem motivated to blog lately! So motivated, in fact, that I spent a few hours this morning figuring out how to stitch together photos in Pixelmator (something I have been meaning to figure out for oh, maybe a year now) just to show you all how much my lovely balcony garden has grown.

I mentioned in the post about my family's visit that while Mom, Grandma and I were at the Botanical Gardens enjoying all of the pretty colors, my dad stayed home to build me a balcony-wide planting box.

Not only did he befriend the local lumber yard owners while buying the supplies, but he also managed to convince a man working at a Catepelar store to use his torch to bend the brackets you see holding the box up in the photo (originally simple L brackets) so they could wrap around the bottom of the planter box and up over the balcony railing.

Many of the plants on the balcony were herbs planted in pots and other railing boxes that were already here and they are all doing splendidly.

But we also planted some plants from seeds to fill the planter box and some other spaces in the other railing boxes and despite some lack of sun (which will be aided come summer when the sun is higher in the sky), and a ridiculous amount of rainfall, they are all doing amazingly well!

The "before" pictures were taken just a few days after my family left and the "after" pictures were taken yesterday (just two weeks later).

Leaf lettuce: I'm going to need to start pulling some micro-greens for salads here soon.

Radishes and Scallions: look at those babies go!

Sage (not really important) and Cucumbers (really, French Cornichon seeds that we kind of snuck through customs on our way back): These took awhile but I'm happy to see some sprouting.

Lavender (not important) and more Cucumbers: same as before, but this pot actually has all three cucumber seeds sprouting as of today!

I have lots more going on out on the balcony that I'll be sure to update you on, but for now, keep your fingers crossed for me that no natural disasters or my black thumb cause any damage.

Have a seat

2011-04-26T09:55:00.000-05:00

Our four dining room chairs are done (2 more to come soon) so I thought I'd give some insight into the process.

Step 1: acquire your clean, unfinished furniture, fresh from the store

Step 2: (not shown) disassemble, making sure to number each chair and seat so they fit together afterward

Step 3: apply primer to avoid nicks to heavily used furniture

Step 4: make a huge mess out of your living/dining rooms while everything is stained and painted

Step 5: re-assemble and enjoy the view

Step 6: sit and eat!

Step 7: buy two more chairs and repeat steps 1-6

We didn't sit down for a minute...(cont)

2011-04-25T09:52:00.002-05:00

My parents and Grandma set out on the 800+ mile drive on that Friday morning. The original plan was to stay the night along the way and arrive Saturday afternoon. I called it though, I told Michael the night before to expect a phone call saying that they were just going to tough it out and drive straight through on Friday. And the phone call came, happily, meaning one more day with the crew all here.

As you can see, Pep warmed up to the visitors quickly.

I'm not sure what we did on Saturday...I think we were a bit lazy, which was understandable for those who had spent 12.5 hours in the truck on the previous day. We did however manage to get out of the house and to the grocery store to pick up dinner supplies and tulips to adorn the table for our first meal at it.

Everyone is smiling in this picture but really, they are probably cringing from the pain of sitting on seatless chairs since up until this point, we still only had one solid chair that included a seat (Grandma is sitting on that one).

Sunday morning we hopped in the car and headed out MO rt100 towards the wine region. Grandma claims she was falling over from exhaustion in this picture but I think she was just being camera-shy.

Here's the group taking a tour of the wine cellars at Stone Hill Winery in Branson, MO.

And here we are during the post-tour wine-tasting. We cut Grandma off at this point (kidding...kidding).

I don't know what we did up until the afternoon on Monday but when Michael got off of work we met at an unfinished furniture store to fill out our dining room set with some chairs (with seats). We bought four for now and plan to get two more in the near future (although, since our TV just crapped out, I don't know when we'll be able to afford two more chairs).

I'll post more on the finishing process in another post.

Anyway, on Tuesday, we realized that our hometown Pirates were in town playing the Cardinals and get this: the Pirates had won the previous night's game against the Cards!

Sadly, the Cardinals won this game (but lost the next night's), but we did have a great time with a great view. I am anxious to go to another game to cheer for the Cards. I really tried at this game, but I just couldn't bring myself to root against the Pirates.

On Wednesday we loaded up into the truck and drove across the Mississippi river into Illinois to visit the Cahokia Indian Mounds.

Here we are at the top (Grandma didn't bother, there were lots of steps up). Dad and I may look a little tired. This was taken seconds after we raced up the stairs. Unfortunately Michael wasn't able to come along on this trip since he had to work. (boo.)

We may have been miles away but from the (relatively) high viewpoint on top of the mound, we were able to pick out the arch in the distance.

On our way back from the Mounds we stopped off at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis.

The walls, ceilings, floors, everything is covered with 41.5 million mosaic pieces.

Coincidentially, after posting these photos to facebook I was told by Michael's Aunt Susie that "Many of these were done by the Frei Studio or Ravena (sp) Mosiacs...Joe's (Michael's Uncle Joe, that is) grandfather's/great-grandfather's company."

We have an exciting familial St. Louis claim to fame.

I particularly loved the red on the ceiling in this chapel, made to symbolize the blood of Christ.

And in this chapel we have the Cardinal hats, left to hang until they turn to dust. Literally.

After the day's excitement, Mom and I did more work on the chair we had been caning all week while Pep drank our cane soaking water.

On Thursday, while dad whipped up a balcony planter box for us, Mom, Grandma and I hit up the botanical gardens. There was much more color on this visit.

It looked as if an Easter basket had exploded.

I love tulips.

We visited the local gardening center at the Botanical gardens so I could drool over the raised bed gardens,

And the cold boxes.

And on Friday we hit up the free (with the exception of the 12.50 parking pass, unless you want to walk 1 mile for free parking, which is what we did) Zoo where we had the pleasure of seeing some incredible birds,

A tiger losing his lunch,

This rather large giraffe,

Pairs of penguins,

And an elephant coating himself in mud to stay cool. (I missed this one, I was busy fetching the truck from a mile away.)

And after the swealtering heat (something like 85°) at the Zoo, we were in need of some lunch and cold beer, so we headed off to Schlafly Bottleworks. After an excellent lunch we took the tour and...

(You guessed it!)...tasted!

And on their last night here we ordered take out BBQ from one of the highest rated St Louis BBQ joints and spent the evening finishing up the chair.

And we moved this beautiful family piece to it's final placement and filled it with all of our (mostly wonderful hand-me-down) china. I forgot to mention earlier that this China cabinet, my Grandparents' (first belonging to my Grandpa's parents) China cabinet, came with my family in the truck so that we wouldn't have to keep all of our special dishes in boxes in the corner of the dining room. Thanks again Grandma!

And thanks to all three of you for the visit, we had a wonderful time!

Well, that was annoying!

2011-04-22T13:00:00.004-05:00

It took some significant messing around to finally be able to use blogger as I normally would; stupid photo upload limits!

Anyway, I'm back and can finally tell you all about the great (and very productive) time we had with my parents and my Grandma.

Testing...

2011-04-20T11:38:00.001-05:00

I am curious to see how Blogger for Droid works.

If you had told me 4 months ago that I would be blogging from my phone, I would have laughed at you.

And yes, I am both resistant to technology and just that behind the times.

The Voglers (/Bakers) visit Saint Louis!

2011-04-19T17:14:00.001-05:00

Blogger, a set on Flickr.

We didn't sit down for a minute...

2011-04-19T16:37:00.002-05:00

There is much, much more to come in a blog post about my parents and grandma's visit last week. Unfortunately, I am fighing with blogger, trying to get around my photo upload limit. Until then, this picture of the group touring the wine caves at Stone Hill Winery will have to suffice.

Visitors Galore

2011-04-01T09:59:00.003-05:00

We've been busy beavers lately. We've hosted two sets of visitors in the past week and we'll be hosting 3 more in visitors this coming week. With all these happenings, my thinking is that if I am going to stay up on my blogging, today would be the day to do it.

Harry and Camille were the first friends (family, really) to step foot in our humble abode. Pepin was very excited to meet someone other than us, his adopted Pittsburgh Great-Grandparents no less!

You probably don't remember but Harry and Camille were also our first visitors in France and while they didn't make it to Metz, they did meet us in Paris for a fabulous mini-honeymoon. You can read about that adventure HERE, HERE, & HERE.

As luck would have it, Harry and Camille just happened to be making their way from CO to PA and Saint Louis is directly en route. Somewhere along the way, they stopped to pick us up some great housewarming gifts (please don't feel like you have to shower us with gifts if you visit, your company is plenty!). The first was this great Asian box that now holds Pepin's treats. He knows to come running whenever he hears that noise.

They also picked out these great swirled water goblets (or glasses of some description, I'm no good with such high-class things) that we have been using non-stop.

And of course I forgot to take any pictures while they were here.

Regardless, we had a wonderful time first at our apartment eating cheese and crackers with sweet German wine and playing with Pepin, then at a great Mediterranean restaurant called Remy's.

On our way back to their hotel we hit some trouble though when I hit two bad potholes simultaneously on the busy outer belt of the city and ended up on the side of the road with a flat tire and a badly dented wheel. To add insult to injury, my Dad had called me the day before to let me know that he had the tools out of my car, including the jack! Not to mention the fact that we weren't 100 meters from Harry and Camille's hotel and could even see the sign from where we sat on the highway. Thankfully, 10pm isn't a busy time to get flat so AAA was there within 20 minutes to put on the spare for us.

The next visit was from Tom and Ginny (Michael's parents). They flew in to the Saint Louis airport Saturday morning and we came right back to the apartment to meet their new Grandkitty and give him this very exciting and stimulating (and thankfully, tiring) present. It spins.

As you can see, he likes it.

After lunch at the famed Blueberry Hill restaurant (Legendary performer Chuck Berry performs there for one hour on a single Wednesday each month, downstairs in the Duck Room. Thanks Wikipedia.) we made our way through Forest Park and eventually stopped at the impressive (and free!) Saint Louis Art Museum. While we were browsing the first floor of the museum, the snow that Tom and Ginny brought with them from Northern PA snuck up on us which led to us stopping quickly for groceries then camping out at our place for the evening, making veggie tacos and playing some more with Pepin.

After snowing close to 4" on Saturday, most of it melted by Sunday morning and we were left with maybe an inch on the ground and balls of wet snow clinging to tree branches, ready to fall on your head at the slightest breeze.

On Sunday we decided to hit up the Missouri Botanical Gardens, which are huge, and beautiful. Don't get me wrong, I love Phipps, but MoBot has much more outdoor space (which I can't wait to see in a month) and is only $4 for MO residents! We did pay a little extra for the special exhibit that combined hundreds of Orchids with Aztec history and culture.

It's too bad my mom will miss this exhibit (Sunday was the last day), she is an orchid hoarder. (She'll hate me for saying that since she lives in fear of being an actual hoarder.)

Tom and orchids, a great combination!

I found a new favorite orchid! I would love to have this everywhere, no more grass! Too bad it is only fit for 9b, 10a, 10b, and 11 hardiness zones while we are somewhere between 5b and 6a here in St Louis.

Our wonderful house guests in the orchid room.

The Japanese gardens are host to some of the largest coy I have ever laid eyes on!

Really can't wait to see this in the summer!

The Climatron, home to all sorts of tropical climate life.

Look at that, Chihuly has left his mark on yet another Botanical Garden!

The freak snowstorm did little to dampen the spirits of these ready-for-spring trees.

After MoBot we hit up Lowes to purchase our housewarming gift. Ain't she purrrdy?

Then we made our way over to the free tour and tasting at the wonderful local craft brewer, Schlafly, at which time my phone died and I was no longer able to take any pictures. Boo.

We stopped for dinner makings on our way home then spent the evening grilling and chatting.

On Monday morning, after Michael had already left for work, I made the sad drop-off at the airport. Don't look too hard for Tom and Ginny in this picture, I managed to snap it just after they went through the doors.

And although sad, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Saint Louis Airport is incredibly user friendly, for anyone planning to visit us (*wink, wink*).

...this is becoming a cat blog

2011-03-31T17:01:00.002-05:00

But I promise that it won't last forever, at least not in a regular capacity. At this point though, he is still exploring, making mistakes....really hilarious mistakes.

Case in point: getting caught up in the shower curtain and falling in the tub while I'm taking a bath.

He does love yarn as much as I do. Thanks kitty Aunt Laura for this great unintentional toy!

Pepin cerainly has the regal Siamese look down.

"Just let me sleep woman!"

I had forgotten how fun (not!) it is to have a cat as a knitter.

I know dogs love to chase their tales but a cat with the same obsession?

Kitty Grandma Reindl, the cat whisperer.

The box that our housewarming gift from Tom and Ginny (a new Weber grill!) came in turned out to be the best cat toy ever!

Blogging and napping, this is the perfect picture of our afternoons lately.

Random & Progress

2011-03-16T07:00:00.000-05:00

1st Item:

Back when I wrote the initial Apartment Tour post, I made a promise that I would get around to taking a picture of the front of the house. Well, today on my way out of the car, I finally remembered to snap a quick photo with my phone.

Here she is in all her glory. It's a typical brick multi-family house for the area. Really, the houses here all look just like houses in Pittsburgh to me. Of course, I caught in this photo the last bit of melting snow from our freak snow storm on Monday morning. The winter weather advisory warning read in a huge red banner: "1-2 in of snow over next 36 hours!"...it made me chuckle, but I digress.

We are on the top floor of the building. You see that cute balcony over the front door? That's ours, and we're very excited to do something with it this summer.

You see the round thing on top of the roof? That is the roof turbine vent that caused me so much pain and depression.

I'm all better now.

I have Pepin.

2nd Item:

Of all the things I missed from home while we were in France...

...Our nice, big Boos block was very high up on the list. I love you Boos block!

3rd Item:

We're slowly progressing. Soon enough we will have a fully functional kitchen(/apartment). For now, baby steps. We started this week by improving our storage capabilities greatly in our little kitchen with the purchase of some new shelving to go beside the refrigerator.

Before

After

Sorry for my failure to take an adequate before shot, I wasn't anticipating switching out the old shelves so quickly but when we found these highly rated baker's shelves on Amazon.com this past Sunday, we jumped on them. Despite the crappy before picture though, it is obvious that they were small and not quite cutting it. What isn't obvious except in person is the fact that they are hardly head together. Every time I put the KitchenAid back on top I would have to slam the sides in with my palms because it would start to shimmy apart every time you moved something to or from it. They are nice shelves, they just need a little TLC and aren't really practical in this spot.

One last thing:

Amazon Prime with free 2-day shipping is both amazing and terribly addictive. Progress at your own risk!

His name is Pepin

2011-03-15T10:23:00.000-05:00

He is a bluepoint Siamese kitten.

For those of you unfamiliar with cat colors, bluepoint means that his points (ears, nose, feet, tail) will be gray when he is older.

He came home with us last Thursday and took a lot of coaxing to get him out of his carrier.

We decided on a Siamese kitten because while no cats are hypoallergenic (with the exception of some special genetically modified breed that probably costs $200,000), Siamese are generally less aggravating to those with allergies, Michael included.

After he finally came out of the carrier he took up a new hiding place under the dresser. Finally, after four days with us, he is no longer running and hiding under there whenever he hears the slightest noise.

We finally coaxed him up on to the bed that night and he conked out immediately.

He is feisty.

He is incapable of eating out of his dish without spilling food everywhere. (By the way, we didn't buy him a cut glass dish, I think my Mom gave it to me at some point. Hope you're not offended, Mom.)

As with all cats, he can sleep anywhere.

After we let him out into the rest of the house he acquired a new scary noise hiding place.

He is dangerously cute.

He loves to sleep just behind our heads on the couch back.

He didn't like his scratching post at first because the fabric poked him in the face but he is coming around to it.

When he wakes up he is crazy playful.

He is already aware of his standing as king, which is fitting because he was partially named after the first King of the Franks, Pépin le Bref, a.k.a Pépin the short. He was also named after the famous French chef, Jaques Pepin.

He also loves to sleep wedged into any small space.

There you go, you've been introduced.

I'll try not to become a crazy cat lady, posting about her adorable kitty on a daily basis but no promises while he's still so little.

A Few Things

2011-03-01T12:54:00.002-06:00

1. We have a roof turbine vent in our new apartment and while I appreciate the fact that our attic will not be acquiring any mold while it is spinning, I find it cruel. Why the anger at an inanimate piece of aluminum, you ask? I greatly dislike the roof turbine vent because when it spins in the wind, it sounds remarkably like dog tags clinking when a dog is licking itself. This sound makes me sad because not only does it remind me of my loyal Mocha (pictured above...probably after a dip in the pond, with my nephew Noah) who passed away at age 18 this past October, but it also reminds me daily that we cannot have a dog in this apartment. We can have a cat. And we will have a cat just as soon as we have some money to pay for one. But everyone knows there is a loyalty to a dog's manner that cannot be reproduced by a cat (not that a cat would care enough to try). Being around our family dogs, Rascal and Malina, during our month-long intermission at home made me realize just how much I had been missing dogs in my life. So, since we are in this apartment (which I love aside from the dog thing) for the next 15 months, we will get a cat, we will love said cat, and I will try like hell to make some friends with dogs -- because dogs are just something I need in my life.

*The link above is meant solely to show you what the heck I'm talking about, not to advertise in any way. In fact, I suggest that you don't buy a roof turbine vent because it will sound like a dog licking itself and it will make you sad.

2. I experienced my first tornado sirens on Sunday night. The sirens and the accompanying winds were terrifying. I'm a northeastern girl, I don't like Tornadoes!

3. I love to knit. I love to knit just to knit. I have no pattern for what I'm doing now, just throwing in random cable stitches here and there. And I don't know if I will even keep this. I may just rip it up but at least I have something to do with my hands.

4. Eggplant Parmesan is one of my favorite meals of all time. It is time consuming but oh so good, and the leftovers are just as delicious, if not more delicious.

5. I miss you all!

Sneak Peak: the New Abode

2011-02-25T13:04:00.003-06:00

Sorry for the break readers but as you can imagine, I've had my hands full dealing with movers, internet companies, plumbers, apartment management companies, and unpacking box after box of crap. Ok, most of it isn't crap, most of it is great stuff that we will use but it is amazing; we went a year an a half without most material luxuries and now that we're back to all of our stuff, I'm wondering what on earth we thought we needed it all for. There is a large pile at the moment in what will one day be the sewing room that will be making its way to Goodwill in the near future.

That being said, I am a hypocrite and a sentimental person, so there will be many things that, while unused, will not be making it to the thrift store anytime soon.

So, here it is! Sorry there's no picture of the exterior at the moment. I don't think it would work very well for my image if our downstairs neighbors, neighbors all around us, and the kids currently enjoying recess at the elementary school just two houses down were to see me in my bright pink French Kitty pajama pants.

The Living Room

(a.k.a the only really functional room at the moment)

Here we are facing the street. The French doors lead out to a sweet little balcony which will hopefully hold a little outdoor bistro table for some fresh air dining come summer.

I know the squished living room set-up looks a bit goofy but that's what happens when your tv is a mere 17" diagonally, you have to sit 5 feet away to discern anything.

Now we're facing the opposite direction towards the dining room and the backyard. Please, take note of the lovely dyson vacuum, box-o-tools and pie plate filled with random screws, hooks and picture hanging supplies.

This is the cat bed for the (hopefully) soon-to-be Reindl feline. The basket was a hand-me-down from the late and great Madigan, my slightly tubby but wonderful Siamese that disappeared this past fall. RIP wherever you are Maddie.

Oh, and the cushion is the first (and perhaps only?) project ever sewn by M. It is a puppy that could not be parted with so we agreed that it could stay as long as it had a purpose which will be to cushion a real cat.

The fireplace, which I am certain is in working condition but we aren't allowed to use it.

The Dining Room

The current state of the dining room = disaster. Do ya think we need a china cabinet (*to be read in a sarcastic tone*)? I've been scouring craigslist.com for that perfect steal.

The dresser will not stay but was put there temporarily in an attempt to lessen the clutter. It didn't really work.

Here's a quick look into the kitchen from the swinging door in the dining room.

The Kitchen

It's still a small kitchen with not much more counter space than we were working with in France but the difference is that this one has lots of extra room and with a couple additions, I think this will be a very workable space. At least it has a gas range (4 burners!) and a dishwasher.

Oh, and if you're reading this Ashley, I take back everything I said about not needing a dishwasher. After being re-introduced to one at our parent's houses over break, I am re-addicted to the machine that cleans my dishes for me.

What? A full-sized refrigerator for 2 people?!

Despite all the space in the refrigerator though, this is one area that I hope to improve storage wise. The little shelf to the right of the fridge (which is in dire need of some added screws for support and other tlc at the moment) will hopefully be replaced by some taller, commercial wire racks for holding all of our kitchen gadgets and perhaps some of the hoards of cookbooks that we own.

Ok, it is larger than France but still not large enough for the two of us to work comfortably.

Here's another area of improvement; while I love my grandparent's kitchen table, there really isn't enough room for this kitchen to be eat in. So this table will be put to better use as a nice, large sewing table in another room and the space will be made more useful with a counter height kitchen island which will add more much needed counter space above and more much needed storage space below.

On a side note -- is that not the cutest paisley print broom you ever did see?

This is my new life motto. We got two of these bumper stickers on a spice run to the fabulous Penzey's Spice store.

The Hallway

Not terribly exciting but still worth noting. Please notice the peaceful Buddha perched in the little display nook when you come in from the entry stairway through that door just to the left.

As you look down the hall, the first door on the left (past the front door) is the sewing room, the next room on the left is the office/guestroom, the middle door is the first smaller bathroom which attaches with a pocket door (weird, I know) to the larger, master bathroom, the opening to the far right is the small hallway with a small linen closet and our bedroom, the door just past Buddha is the coat closet and the opening to the immediate right leads to the kitchen.

The featured photographer in the hallway is my brother Noah. These black and whites were take of the famed Wellsboro Diner years and years ago.

Our Bedroom

Please disregard the creepy stuffed animals on the bed. I'm still trying to figure out where things go.

And please ignore the fact that we don't have a bed at the moment and still have the mattress and box spring on the floor. This situation will hopefully be remedied in the near future.

Nothing terribly exciting happening over this way. the door on the left leads back out into the hallway (the little door is the linen closet I mentioned earlier) and the door on the right leads to the master bathroom.

Here's another boring wall that is sorely in need of some artwork. That door that's open on the right is the hall door and the door behind it leads to our closet. That stack of plastic containers needs to leave the bedroom soon.

We've got lots of pretty windows in this bedroom...now what to cover them with?

We also need some sort of rug on the floor...too much wood everywhere.

The Master Bath

(And by master, I'm not implying that it's large, just that you enter it from the master bedroom)

Our lovely tub/shower; I really like it now that we bought that pretty and economical eco shower head, the old one was ridiculously high-flow. It felt like being sprayed with a garden hose without any sprayer nozzle.

It's tight but it works just fine.

The Hall Bath

(Remember that this one attaches to the master bath with a pocket door)

This one is even tighter, but we don't mind. Neither of us really get the concept of having 25% of your square footage taken by by gigantic bathrooms.

Oh, and I'm standing in the shower to take this picture.

Here's shower #2, a small but useful stall shower. I used this one for a few days (and liked it!) until we got the new shower head in the other since the high-flow shower head in the other shower ate through all of our hot water after about 3 minutes.

The Office/Guestroom

Still a big ol' work in progress.

If the boxes still aren't unpacked it means they are filled with books.

Or in the case of all the milk crates, filled with cookbooks.

The Sewing/Knitting room

(I don't really know the eventual intended purpose but this is what I'm calling it for now)

A large portion of this room is taken up by the Goodwill pile.

There you are people. Come visit us sometime, Chez Reindl. I promise I'll clean up by then!

Reindls Go West

2011-02-13T19:10:00.002-06:00

Well, we made it to the Midwest at least and that's as far as we're going for now.

Since not everyone is on Facebook, I though I would share my recent mobile pictures (translation: cell phone pictures, so not the greatest) on here for everyone to see.

Before hitting the road on Friday morning I snapped this quick picture of our new (old) coffee table. During our time home, whenever we weren't spending time with family we were in my parents' basement cleaning up some old pieces furniture pieces for use in the new apartment. We didn't get everyone done that we wanted (there are still two chairs that I need to cane and finish) but at least we have a coffee table.

We made our icy way down route 287 towards Jersey Shore (for those of you not from Tioga County, Jersey shore is a town in north central PA, not oceanfront property) we drove up upon this little guy racing down the middle of the road. I slowed down and drove a good bit behind him (or her) so that bambi wouldn't veer into my car. After a quarter mile, driving deer-speed became a bit rediculious so I sped up to pass when a giant tractor trailer came in the the opposing lane, forcing the deer to jump off into the woods to avoid becoming road-kill.

I guess all that ice covered snow made cross-country travel difficult for even the deer.

Here we are crossing our first milestone into Ohio.

Poor Stella (my 1990 Saab) sustained some damage on the highway but as my sister-in-law Laura pointed out, Stella now has a chip to match the chip on Michael's car's windshield.

We stopped off at Arby's for an on the road lunch which was our first fast food meal in a very long time. Tummy aches took up the remainder of the day of driving.

Thankfully, Susie (Michael's Aunt) treated us to some delicious homemade tortellini soup when we stayed over that night.

Driving was no so pretty or so smooth on day #2. We managed to hit Indiana (and miss the "Welcome to Indiana" sign) just in time for the last of the snow/ice storms. That increased speed limit of 70mph did nothing for our time since we rarely made it over 55mph with all the snow, slush and ice.

Illinois was a little better for us but not so good for others. The bad weather passed for the most part by then but as I noted on Facebook that I-70 was closed in both directions and detoured almost 10 miles while clean-up took place from an earlier multi-car and multi-semi pileup.

In case you needed it, here's some proof of the terrible driving conditions. Please disregard the blurriness, the windshield was so dirty that the camera refused to focus beyond it.

The delay from the detour put us back 2 hours so that instead of arriving to our new city in daylight and having time to explore, we pulled in at sunset, taking this blurry picture of our Welcome to Missouri.

Is it any surprise to any of you that the first thing we did (after picking up Michael's job-supplied rental car) was to find and raid the closest Trader Joe's.

And more importantly: Trader Joe's wine section

Our first dinner in the hotel room consisted of Trader Joe's packaged Indian food and a sweet German wine, which, ironically, we were unable to get in Metz, even living as close as we did to a famous German wine region.

We enjoyed a bit from home and a bit from our new home during the Superbowl. The old treat in the form of dad's famous mustard dip and the new treat in the form of some delicious Schlafly beer from the local Schlafly brewery. We need to check out the actual restaurant at the brewery, but for now the beer certainly wins our seal of approval.

On Sunday we drove around a bit to familiarize ourselves with the city. We purposefully drove by the iconic Gateway Arch just so we would finally feel like we were in Saint Louis.

For now, there's nothing better than relaxing with a glass of 2-buck-chuck and some pommegranate blueberry sherbet but tomorrow the work begins (for me...Michael started his job last Friday); the movers should show up at the new apartment tomorrow morning (fingers crossed for us please people!) and I'll be busy for a good bit trying to put together a reasonable home for Michael and I to live in.

I'll post an update soon to give you all a view of the new place.

Packing, Cleaning and Stripping

2011-01-30T21:52:00.002-06:00

Stripping furniture, that is.

I'm sorry for the long lag between blog posts at the present. As you all can imagine, our time home has been filled to the brim. We've been cleaning decades of clutter out of my parents hell-hole of an attic. We've been throwing more and more things on our pile to be moved to Saint Louis (I am SO thankful that Michael's job is paying for movers to deal with the mess!). And we've been attempting to clean up and refinish a few dining chairs and a coffee table so that we might have some semblance of a functional home once we finally move in. All of this, coupled with lots of wonderful times and meals with family has left me with very little time to edit pictures or write.

I do plan to continue with blogging once we are settled in Saint Louis. (Did I ever think to mention on here that Michael got a job in Saint Louis? Well in case that slipped my mind, he did and we will be hitting the road this Friday.) The content will obviously be changing, shifting from European travel and adventure to travel and adventure in our new city and state. I am also hoping to work on adding some more of my own recipes now that we will have, I hope, a larger kitchen space to work with.

The blog will need a name change, and I am taking suggestions. So far the ideas are leaning towards "No More Metzing Around"....keeping with the play on Metz. If you have any ideas, please feel free to shout them out in a comment on this post or as a facebook comment.

So, here is the plan: We'll be frantic these last few days packing. On Friday we will set off for Saint Louis, making a pit-stop to visit family along the way in Cincinnati and arriving at our hotel on Saturday. Sunday we'll hit up Trader Joe's (yay!) for Super Bowl snacks which will be enjoyed while watching the game in the hotel. On Monday the apartment search truly begins and hopefully, we'll find something soon, which will mean a return to blogging on a regular basis.

In the meantime, stay tuned.

Photopalooza

2011-01-17T09:55:00.000-06:00

I've finally gotten around to editing and posting all of the photos that have been taken in the past 3 months.

To view the final instillation of the Metzing Around albums, click HERE.
To view photos from Thanksgiving 2010, click HERE.
To view photos of GTL's Christmas decorating party, click HERE.
To view photos from the Vogler Parents trip to Metz, click HERE.
To view photos from the Solar Car Competition, click HERE.
To view photos from the 2010 Marché de Nöel, click HERE.
To view photos from our return trip to the US, click HERE.
To view photos from Winter Camp 2010, click HERE.
To view photos from Christmas 2010, click HERE.

The Long Way Home

2011-01-16T15:44:00.000-06:00

We're home. Obviously.But I realize now that I never told the excruciating story of how, exactly our 18 hour trip itinerary turned into 3 days of travel.

After our cleaning spree and three hours of sleep the night before at ALOES, we managed to enjoy a incredibly relaxing and sleep-filled evening and night with our great friends Janice and Jeramy. It had been snowing pretty steadily for a few days and we were beginning to get worried about our impending voyage but were determined to stay positive.

Well, we were feeling positive until we flipped the page of our French phrase-a-day calendar to this eerie premonition of a phrase if I ever saw one.

And despite a night of even more snowfall, Jeramy sucked it up and drove us all the way to the Luxembourg airport (about 45 minutes without snow) on roads that looked like this or worse. Since France doesn't normally get nearly the snow we get here in the northeastern United States, they aren't in the habit of performing much winter maintenance.

We had checked the status of our flight online and although the Luxembourg airport's website showed hardly any delays, we came upon an entirely different situation when we arrived at the airport and checked in after only an hour or so in the car. We were told by the counter worker that not only was she unable to issue the boardin passes for our subsequent flights (something about Delta airlines not being in cooperation with Lux airport) but to top it off, our flight had been delayed an hour and a half. We knew this would cause problems when we made it to Paris since we would have to somehow manage to leave one terminal in Paris, make it to another terminal, get boarding passes, then get through security and to our flight all within 30 minutes. But there was no turning back at this point; if we wanted to get home, Paris was as good as anywhere. We then walked downstairs to the departures area to find that almost all flights going out of Luxembourg were delayed, some by 6 or 7 hours. It looked like everyone was feeling stranded.

Our plane did leave at it's scheduled delayed time (which is much more than could be said for many other flights leaving Lux) and the flight went smoothly for how much snow had fallen the night before. Hearing others talk on the flight made us realize just how much mayhem the inclimate weather would likely cause; it seemed that the entire back half of the plane where we sat would be missing or had already missed their connecting flight in Paris. We would all be spending lots of time together in Charles de Gaulle whether we wanted to or not.

We attempted to make to our gate upon arrival in Charles de Gaulle. We ran though the terminals then waited in line at the Delta ticketing desk for a good 15 minutes only to be told that even though our flight was technically through Delta, only the Air France ticketing desk could help us. So we ran down to the Air France desk to find ourselves in the longest and slowest moving line I have ever been in at an airport. It turned out that our arrival had corresponded with the closure of Heathrow airport in London and the giant line in front of us was made up of one or two planes worth of people trying to get a re-scheduled flight into an airport where no flights were scheduled. Michael waited in line while I tracked down a rogue Air France worker who agreed to check on the status of our flight since we may still have some hope of getting out. Unfortunately for us, that flight was the last Charles de Gaulle to Detroit flight to make it out without delays before the real delays started.

We stayed in line for awhile, hardly moving at all, when we started hearing security warnings over the loudspeaker pertaining to a unclaimed bag at the gate were we were all patiently waiting in line. After 5 or so announcements asking the owner of the bag to return and claim it, the swat team and military gunmen descended upon the area and pushed us all out of line and down the hallway. After 20 minutes or so of waiting, the barriers were finally taken down and there was a mad dash for the start of the line. Being young and agile, we managed to greatly increase our line place but it turned out to be useless because only minutes later we heard a rumor just before the announcement that we needed to move the entire line way down the hall to the last ticketing gate, which led to yet another mad dash. Despite our relatively good place in line we still waited around for at least 2 hours before making it to the front of the line where we were able to speak to an agent. Within 10 minutes we had been set up with a new flight itinerary for the next day, a dinner voucher and a voucher for a hotel with breakfast.

At dinner we started to feel closer to home already simply because of a glass of orange juice served with ice (!) and a straw (!).

After dinner we made our way towards our hotel (an Ibis, which is a very common French hotel). We got off of the airport tram and there it was! (Or so we though.) We waited in line there only to be told that we were at the wrong Ibis and we needed to go out to the shuttle stop to be taken to our Ibis on the outskirts of the outskirts of town. So we went, and we waited, and we waited. And eventually we started to hear rumors that the hotel shuttles had stopped because of the snow and that they *might* begin to run again if the roads are plowed. What?!?

I went out to check the taxis but was told by other waiters that they had just had an altercation with a cab driver who refused to take anyone to hotels, so I turned on my heels and went back inside.

After a bit, Michael and I went back on the tram to the main terminal to speak with the Air France reps who assured us that a bus would be there soon. We were finally met by a large charter bus that must have been hired by the airline to shuttle us all out to the hotels. The ride rough, the roads were terrible and the driver spent most of the drive calling the powers that be on his radio to inform them that "les routes ne sont ni salés" (the roads are not salted), and this was unacceptable. But finally, we made it.

And it was lovely.

And one last French styled breakfast was thoroughly enjoyed.

We left the next morning with the snow still coming down (in the same hired shuttle, the normal ones had still not started up again).

And after 6 hours of delays, lots of worry, terminal changes, multiple goes through security and lots more worry, we finally were on the plane and in the air somewhere over the Atlantic. As you can see, Air France knows how to feed it's customers. We spent the 9 hour flight happily eating, drinking, watching Toy Story III and attempting to stay awake despite landing in Detroit when our bodies thought it was 3am.

We touched down many hours after the Detroit international wing normally closes so instead of having roughly 30 customs agents to shuffle us through, we waited in line while 9 overtime agents struggled to handle two large planes full (roughly 600 people). We were then further questioned and checked because of some questionable items that we brought back (seeds, food).

Thankfully though, the Delta ticket desk in Detroit was prepared for our late arrival and as we walked toward the desk we were stopped by an agent at a table who asked our name and handed us our hotel voucher, food vouchers ($36 to spend in one night since our hotel had a continental breakfast) and our re-scheduled flight for the next day. And after re-checking our bags (they had to go through customs with us) we walked out to our waiting hotel shuttle and collapsed into our seats, just happy to be back on US soil.

Again, we had nice accomodations, much larger but not quite as sleek and modern as the Paris Ibis.

What a very flattering picture; thanks Michael for capturing this moment of washing my underwear out in the hotel sink.

$30 worth of terrible, horrible, American take-out pizza and ribs. Don't get me wrong, it tasted wonderful but was hard on a digestion unaccustomed to American style take out. I'm fairly certain there was at least 5x the amount of cheese that we would have put on any Friday night pizza.

We slept soundly but only until about 5am when our internal clocks said "whoa, it's 11 and you're not up!?". We got to the airport early after our continental breakfast and after various de-icing and runway delays we finally got off the ground.

Now I will say that I am not the most calm of airplane riders and this flight did not do well for my nerves. There was no lack of turbulence and difficulty landing (we circled the runway multiple times) and to make matters worse, Michael and I were separated due to the lateness of our reservations so I had no one's hand to squeeze while it was all happening.

But we finally made it down and made it home; and I couldn't have been happier.

Last Supper(s) and Cleaning House

2011-01-08T13:18:00.000-06:00

As you all can I'm sure imagine, we didn't hold back on the delicious food in those precious last few days on the other side of the Atlantic.

The gourging started off with this extra old (that was seriously the name on the label) mimolette cheese, so old in fact that the woman at the counter asked if it was ok broken because it literally crumbled when she attempted to cut off a chunk. For reference, mimolette cheese is similar to gouda in it's aging.

Veal chops in mushroom sauce and braised endives made the dinner-time cut one evening. The recipe was taken from our new Paul Bocuse cookbook (purchased in French so I will be forced to remember something) all about cooking with fresh, market food.

As a special treat, I made a rare trip to the patisserie to pick up dessert (I know, I am a pastry chef and should be seeking out the spectacular French sweets but *gasp* I don't really like sweets very often). This particular treat is called the Paris-Metz (in honor of the new high-speed train line); it is a raspberry and citrus macaroon large enough for sharing.

The next big dinner was a re-creation of a restaurant meal. I am realizing only now just how often I ordered smoked salmon while out to dinner. This dish was composed of some potato pancakes topped with an herbed crème fraîche and smokes salmon which we served with some delicious mâche salad that Megan and Joe had introduced us to a few days prior.

And so began the cleaning and cleaning and cleaning. It's amazing just how dirty a teeny tiny apartment can get while still appearing clean. We cleaned and scrubbed for hours our last day.

And then I painted and painted...I want to know who the brilliant person was that decided that decided to cover the dorm walls (including the kitchen??) with textured white walls that disintegrated if you tried to clean them?

Somewhere in there we took a break from cleaning to break into this fun little basket...

...full of some amazing oysters.

Michael let the newly purchased oyster knife and oyster shell get the best of him on this attempt.

But regardless of blood loss, the final product was a great mid-cleaning treat with one last bottle of Champagne.

And finally, the next morning, after lots and lots work while the fluffy white stuff fell outside (which would prove problematic the next day), we finished cleaning. It looked creepy.

Last Sunday

2010-12-29T21:04:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the delay readers -- I do not intend to give up on blogging now that we are no longer "Metzing Around" but if you are a Facebook friend, you are well aware of our travel troubles when returning to the US (3 flights in 3 days but more on that later) and I just now am feeling settled and calm enough to sit down and look through all these pictures.

Our last Sunday was spent again in Nancy with our blogging/real-life friends Megan and Joe. Not only were we anxious to see them one last time before moving back but we also had a home-goods delivery to make.

Pre-departure, we made a giant list of all the things we had accumulated after 1.5 years in this tiny apartment and put them up for grabs. And since Megan and Joe are car-less and live 45 minutes away, we offered to drive them to Nancy in return for a fun evening at their place.

When we arrived, Megan was ready for the delivery with crust and batter for the scrumptious French burnt cheesecake, Tourteau Fromagé (which we mentioned here awhile back) to throw in their newly acquired oven.

We had a wonderfully light and very french meal complete with chewy bread, smoked salmon dip, ratatouille, the tourteau fromagé (isn't that a great cross section shot? we were seriously impressed that our little toaster oven managed to burn the top!) and a batch of Alton Brown's amazing brownies. And wine. Of course, there was wine.

And after another enjoyably long evening of chatting and reveling in how many strange things we have in common, we took our parting photos...

...and reluctantly headed home one last time (which turned out to not be the last time since I somehow ended up with their apartment keys in my pocket and had to run back the next day to return them).

And to make the night even sweeter, a few days later they were kind enough to send on a pdf file filled with all their favorite things and suggestions on Saint Louis where we will be residing in the near future. Here's hoping the we end up somewhere close to these wonderful new friends.

Fun(Fri)day

2010-12-15T11:30:00.000-06:00

Last Friday we met up with Amanda and Katrina for some fun in the cold. We went downtown to the packed-on-weekends ice skating rink for some skate time and found it empty with the exception of two other people who came and went while we were there (one is a local secretary taking figure skating lessons while the other is an 18yo boy convinced that he will be France's next big Hockey star).

We had a fun time trying out new moves and wiping out when they didn't go as planned.

Katrina worked on her backwards skating -- it was her first time trying and she did great!

After tiring ourselves out we took one group shot then split up for separate shopping endeavors; Katrina and Amanda Christmas shopped while Michael and I grocery shopped for that night's adventures.

At the marché couvert (covered market) we finally took the plunge and bought a poulet de Bresse (chicken from Bresse).

These chickens are so fresh, they come with the feet, head and innards still intact! The woman at the counter asked me if I wanted them removed then gave me a strange look when told her to "non", leave it how it is. I won't share the gory pictures of Michael chopping off the head and feet; and thankfully, we only needed the meat off the carcass so we were able to leave the guts where they were. It's needless to say that we are coming closer to our food here in France.

Katrina and Amanda showed up not too long after the butchering. We started off with some escargot, Katrina's first escargot, in fact!

And before we knew it, our 11:45 deadline was upon us and we hadn't even had dessert yet! What 11:45 deadline, you ask? 11:45 was Michael's deadline for accepting his first real, live job in the adult world!

So, if all goes smoothly, after spending the holidays with our wonderful families, we will be packing up (or *gasp* movers will be packing up) and we will hit the road for our new home in Saint Louis. We're excited to put it lightly.

After the excitement we settled down to dessert and enjoyed the rest of the evening and part of the morning (think: 4:00am) with friends.

Solar Racing in the land of no sun

2010-12-15T01:55:00.002-06:00

Metz is no Alaska but since I can only remember 2 sunny days in the last month or so doesn't a solar car race seem funny? Well, for our purposes, even a sunny day wouldn't have been reliable enough so when GTL hosted its OSA sponsored solar car race last week we stayed inside with a 500w light that was masterfully attached to a wheeled desk chair and a race course laid out in tape.

In all there was something like 10 participants and while not everyone's car cooperated with the conditions, it was obvious that they had all put a lot of work into the design. This is our friend Seth racing his speedy little car. He did well as you'll see later.

While the participants raced, the rest of us stood around the outside eating snacks and acting like paparazzi.

And here's Siri re-directing her car back into bounds. While many of the cars were very speedy, most tended to veer one way or another forcing the racer to re-direct the car which added 5 seconds on to the final race time.

Katrina's car was uncooperative at the beginning but after some tinkering and pep talk from Amanda, they go it working like a charm.

And finally, after lots of patient waiting, it was Michael's turn to race.

And he did great! Notice the open mouthed surprise of the timers.

The winners: (L to Rt) 3rd place -- Seth, 1st place -- Michael, and 2nd place -- Eli and his partner (don't know his name, help undergrads!)

The happy and unexpected winner

Seth and Michael showing off their prize money, which we subsequently blew on expensive wine and chicken that we've been too frugal to buy so far.

I've saved the best for last. You see, the reason Michael's car did so well is because it was so stable, and the reason it was so stable is...

Yup, he made it out of a sardine can. If he hadn't needed to tape on that stupid solar panel it certainly would have won the prize for most fashionable. A big thanks goes to Sarah who passed on these yummy sardines when she moved back to the states.

It's Beginning to Look...

2010-12-06T16:37:00.001-06:00

You guessed it: A lot like Christmas!

Since the French don't have that pesky Thanksgiving holding back Christmas decorations, we got an early start (this coincided with the Thanksgiving decorating) on bringing that festive spirit to the GTL lounge. Michael, Katrina and Peter make sure the tree was sparkling and blinking (much to my chagrin, lights are never static over here, always blinking).

These XL handmade snowflakes that Amanda is holding eventually hung from the ceiling mostly thanks to Francis, the GTL maintenance man and his XL ladder.

As is customary this time of year, we have been hitting up the local Christmas markets in town, soaking in all the festive smells and sights but mostly, the food and vin chaud (hot, mulled wine).

The indoor decoration stand was jam-packed with festive folks looking to spruce up their homes.

And much to our surprise, Place de la République, which was largely under construction last year has been miraculously transformed with a veritable winter wonderland complete with a rotating tree ride (which was present last year but placed in the middle of a street during the construction) a giant ferris wheel and an ice skating rink.

Warm and sugary churros and hot wine. Can life be any better?

The next week it snowed like mad, quite literally shutting down all operations in Metz. I have sadly come to realize now that I have a car here in this weather that not only are sidewalks never shoveled, but only main roads are ever plowed, leading to a slippery trip to teach English on Tuesday.

What else to do but go to the markets again?

Oops...forgot to rotate this picture! Here I am though, cracking open one of the most expensive confections we've found here: 8 candied chestnuts (marrons glacés) for a whopping 10.99€ (~ $15)! Mostly though, I liked the tin and totally plan to bring it back. I'll take a picture of it sometime soon.

Mmmm, glorious, scrumptious, candied goodness

I'm gonna miss Christmas in France.

Thanksgiving, Extended Edition

2010-11-29T10:38:00.000-06:00

The wonderfully welcomed view that we woke up to on Thanksgiving morning

I heard that Wellsboro woke up to the same view, it made me feel closer to home which is also a good thing on Thanksgiving day.

Thanksgiving Day, American-style fun at GTL

Full on tackle football

Thankfully it was too muddy and slippery for many big hits, mostly people were just sliding into each other and the snow and mud made for a softer landing.

I can't wait to do that laundry!

I was unaware that Michael had been home until I walked into the bathroom to find this. He was kind enough to rinse it all out and hang it to dry at least.

We enjoyed an excellent, as usual, meal at GTL complete with plenty of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes along with many, many interesting dishes from any number of cuisines. After dinner was the "talent" segment. The blurry picture above is of Katrina and Jessie (hope I'm spelling that right) during their "GTL Ballad: 21 going on 22". It was a hysterical re-mix of the ever popular "16 going on 17" from the The Sound of Music that confronted the trials and tribulations of being a GTL scholar.

After their little ditty...we performed. Well, not Michael and I; any of you that know Michael know that he wouldn't be caught dead on a stage performing. No, the day before the dinner our friend Peter asked me if I would be willing to do a song with him and I agreed...reluctantly. We practiced all that afternoon and ran through the song a few times with the mic that day. I would be lying if I didn't tell you that I was incredibly nervous, but that's what happens when you haven't been on a stage in nearly 7 years I suppose. I'm even nervous about posting this...my hands are sweating. But, here you have it. Peter and I singing "Baby, It's Cold Outside".

Oh, and if anyone with any power at GTL is reading this, please do not hold the performance portion after dinner, I thought I was going to explode. Oh, and a big thanks to Michael for putting up with hearing this song on constant repeat for 24 hours and for recording the song.

On Saturday we got a little out of order (you'll see why later); we made ourselves some yummy eggnog (for the record, eggnog with cognac=amazing!) and lit up our little palm tree thing.

Since we'll be leaving in a mere 2.5 weeks, it'll have to suffice until we can get home to enjoy our parents' full-sized Christmas trees.

We struggled for a long time that night to come up with something to make for dinner. We ended up settling on an epicurious recipe for Veal Cacciatore mainly because we have a lot of polenta in our pantry to use up in the next few weeks. On top of everything else, I feel like our time in France has opened up my eyes to new meats that I never really considered eating in the states and veal is certainly at the top. Veal has always had a bad rep in the stated because of some particular farms that were confining and abusing the animals and the market has never really returned. Here in Europe however, people care about their food in a way I have never seen before (OK, the Culinary Institute of America did have a high respect for food). There are very strict regulations in place for animal treatment and food safety and everywhere you look, there are these incredible looking, incredible tasting meats readily available in the supermarket (rabbit, quail, guinea fowl, lamb, veal, horse even?) and you know that it didn't live in the horrible conditions that we see in US factory farms. Sorry to get up on my soapbox but in short, if you have access to humanely kept veal, it is a delicious, lean, and tender meat, and it was oh so yummy in this particular dish.

Despite our wonderful Thanksgiving meal at GTL, I felt that I had missed out. I missed stuffing myself with stuffing and potatoes and lots of gravy. I missed the leftovers. So, Michael being the wonderful husband that he is, agreed to help me make a second Thanksgiving feast just for the two of us.

And because there was only two of us, and because I frequent the food section of the New York Times all too often, we decided to try a new turkey breast method and recipe. The turkey breast is first brined overnight then it is tightly wrapped in seran wrap and tin foil before being effectively steamed in a low oven until the internal temperature is 135°.

I can't even being to describe how strange the turkey breast looked and felt after coming out of the oven.

Seriously, it was gross!

The turkey turned out to be delicious although we weren't too sure about the honey and roasted garlic glaze that went on at the very end, it never really set and although it tasted delicious it was just kind of slimey. On the whole though, we loved the steaming method and plan to use it again but perhaps with a different glaze at the end.

The meal was rounded out with a green bean casserole and stuffing (both from The Pioneer Woman blog, her food always looks amazing), basic mashed potatoes, gravy and my family's uncooked cranberry relish kicked up a notch (1 bag cranberries, 1 entire orange (skin and all), 1-1" piece of ginger and 3/4 c sugar blended in the food processor until finely chopped). Oh, and we drank one last bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau for the year with the meal. Really, everything turned out perfectly and even though we've done our first "married" Thanksgivings at GTL, it was really nice to have a night and the dinner just to ourselves.

Less than 3 weeks people...!

Home Again

2010-11-27T02:44:00.000-06:00

After our lovely trip to the Black Forest (which was mostly spent with me trying to convince my parents to retire there) we headed back to Metz for our final 4 days together before that sad trip to the Luxembourg Airport.

The weather in Metz wasn't particularly agréable but we found ways to fill the time and our stomachs.

This particular meal was one of the few we made at home. It's a duck confit salad that was the product of a whole duck that we bought a week back, cut up, and used for multiple different meals. It's a very economical way to enjoy this scrumptious and usually expensive meat.

We went on multiple walking tours of Metz and as it turns out, there is much more to show that I had realized. I think we managed to walk off a good portion of the deliciously high calorie meals that we were ingesting every night by going out to dinner. Mom and dad are pictured here in front of the Knight's Templar Chapel (whom you might remember from The Da Vinci Code).

We also showed them the normal sight of St-Pierre-aux-Nonnains basilica which is widely believed to be the oldest church in France right in our beautiful little city.

As expected, Dad made more friends with the local fauna.

And across the river we found and explored more about the Temple of the German Garrison which has a very interesting story. It was built around 1880 during the occupation of the region by Germany solely as a Lutheran church for the German soldiers. The locals though it was ugly, being of the Gothic Revival archetural design and all, and they were offended by the bell tower which rivaled the Cathedral in it's height. After Lorraine was returned to France in 1918, the church was abandoned and day dormant for decades. During WWII it's nave was badly damaged by allied bombs and in 1946, the roof of the nave caught fire. The locals could ignore the church no longer as it was now a safety hazard. They had the nave demolished but kept the tower as a monument that was later incorporated into Metz's Luxembourg Garden.

While exploring the other side of the river, which we rarely visit we happened upon this beautiful view of the Cathedral. Too bad they're busy cleaning it right now; I may have to photoshop out the scaffolding at some point.

After dinner one night we were walking along the Moselle river when we were bombarded with hungry swans. One minute we could see 3 and the next thing we knew, there were 11 following us along the river hoping for a morsel. Sadly we had none, we had eaten everything (and it's not like it's kosher to take a doggy bag here in France).

The next day we packed everything, including an extra large duffel bag filled with our belongings into the tiny Twingo and set off for the Luxembourg Airport yet again. As expected, we had a wonderful time with my parents. I was so happy to see them in the flesh after over a year of not seeing them and while it was sad to leave them at the airport, we've made it over a year without seeing them in the past and at this point, today, we have only 3 weeks (eek!) here before we will see them again. And just for a tiny plug: I can't say enough how much skype and other voice/video calling has made this year and a half away from family more bearable. Thanks to it, I never felt too far from home.

La Forêt-Noire

2010-11-24T04:56:00.000-06:00

(back to the chronicles of the Vogler Parents' Visit)

After our brief stay of recuperation in Metz we jumped in the Twingo yet again for a trip to the "motherland", so to speak (lots of German ancestry for us Voglers and Reindls).

We drove 2.5 hours and arrived in the beautiful German city of Freiburg in the Black Forest. We dropped our things off at our beautiful farm B&B which was an adventure in and of itself. You see, when I booked the B&B online the information clearly stated that the owners spoke English. In France this isn't a problem; we know enough French to converse but German? Not one of us speaks a lick of German. And as it turned out, the daughter speaks a bit of English (think of your junior year of high school level of foreign language) but she wasn't home so we were out of luck. Really though, the woman was so nice and trusting, just leaving us with a key to their place without ever taking our name.

After getting settled we hopped in the car again and headed back into Freiburg. We had a great lunch in the Cathedral square (goulach, pasta, wiener schnitzel and sausages) and spent the rest of the cold afternoon walking around the city and browsing in kitchen stores to warm up. At dinner time we filled up on more German food and beer and shortly after, crashed back at the B&B.

We woke up to this the next morning. It was rainy and dreary but the colors were so vibrant that even the rain couldn't dampen the day.

We set off in the car on tiny winding roads through the mountains of the Black Forest. The views were spectacular but thanks to the rain, capturing them on camera was not an easy feat. After a bit of driving we pulled off into a parking area. Dad though he heard something but he was the only one...we didn't really believe him (sometimes his hearing isn't the greatest, and I've acquired the trait). But he insisted that I open the door and when I did, lo and behold, there was a horn playing clear as day.

We walked around a shelter at the end of the parking lot where we saw the Ricola man himself putting on a concert for...well, for us I suppose. He spoke no English and again, we speak no German but we did manage to ask for a picture and he kindly obliged.

As you can see in the picture with the horn player (I really need to look up what that is), the rain turned to snow as we traveled higher until at one point, I was going about 5mph and trying to keep the sliding under control on the yucky slush. It did, however, make for some beautiful sights. I can't tell you how much I would love to live in that house. I'll soon be posting more pictures from the trip on Facebok and will be sure to share them with you all. I'm also hoping to get a hold of some of the pictures that my Mom took on her sleek and shiny camera that I spent the entire trip drooling over.

Up Next: More time in Metz

I Heart Mirepoix

2010-11-20T16:41:00.001-06:00

(And now, for a break from our regularly scheduled program; we'll come back to the Vogler Parents' trip soon)

I really do, I <3 mirepoix. For those of you that didn't go to culinary school, here is a little lesson from Wikipedia. Pay attention to the the pronunciation, you'll need it later.

Mirepoix (pronounced /mɪərˈpwɑː/ meer-PWAH, French pronunciation: [miʁəˈpwɑ]) is the French name for a combination of onions, carrots, and celery (either common pascal celery or celeriac). Mirepoix, either raw, roasted or sautéed with butter, is the flavor base for a wide number of dishes, such as stocks, soups, stews and sauces. The three ingredients are commonly referred to as aromatics. (source)

Mirepoix is used in any number of culinary applications.

This particular pot was used to make a simple pot of braised lentils tonight and as the heavenly scent wafted through our abnormally small apartment I was reminded of just how much I <3 mirepoix.

Some of you may have heard this story before but when I was at the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) our intramural sports teams had two catchy, chefy fight songs. Regrettably, I can't remember one but I will always remember this one (oh, and roux is pronounced "roo"):

"Mirepoix, Mirepoix, Roux, Roux, Roux

Chop 'Em Up, Dice 'Em Up

Put 'Em in a Stew!"