Wanna see my Kitchen?

 No, not this kitchen!

 Upon seeing this post (or maybe it was this post) a few weeks back, our nephew Noah said something along the lines of, "Wow, Aunt Lauren and Uncle Michael's kitchen is a mess!"

Noah is correct, our kitchen is truly a mess (but a mess that is coming along), but that doesn't mean that we haven't been eating well.

We do, after all, have a place to cook...

 Why, Hello Basement!

 Yup, this where the magic happens, so to speak.  

Here we have our beloved John Boos end-grain cutting board, our knife block, mortar & pestle, hand-crank coffee grinder, and our hot water kettle all living on a hand-me-down library table.

 And on this side we have the microwave and KitchenAid below and on top (from left to right) is our toaster oven, rice cooker, blender, and induction burner.

I'd also like to note that the table on this side of the "kitchen" is a family heirloom, my Vogler grandparents' first piece of purchased furniture after they were married. In my mind, it is very fitting that so many decades later (it must be at least 8 decades? Dad?), it is being used as 1/2 of our kitchen in our first house.

 The blender isn't a normal fixture but was on the "counter" to make some ice cream a few days ago. (really amazing candied bacon ice cream, I should note)

 And that sink back there on the right, that's my dishwashing sink with the dish strainer on the floor.

 On the opposite side of the basement is where we store our cookware and dishes.

And just to the left of that is our "pantry", also known as the built in basement storage cabinet.

The only thing really missing is an oven.

But the fact that this will be mine soon makes it all worth it.

And if you think about it, we have far more kitchen space now than we ever did in France.

Reindls Visit St. Louis

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!

A List (cause I'm way behind)

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!

Harvest Time

 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

 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.

Rehearsal and Rehearsal Dinner Fun

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.

Happy Birthday to my favorite set of twins!

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.

tea, kitties and wine

 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.