Category: holidays

End of the season.

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It was bound to happen – the first frost of the year, putting an end to bounty from the garden.  I still have some greens and herbs out there, but the days of fresh basil, peppers, tomatoes are over until next year.  Sigh.
I ran around Friday and harvested.  I filled a garbage bag with basil and Saturday, I made a few batches of pesto and froze it.  I also froze a few bags of tomatillos, picked a bowl of tomatoes and a huge bowl of peppers.  I think most of them will get pickled.

I picked every last flower that was blooming and threw them in a vase.  I meant to go back and ‘arrange’ them, but then realized I really liked them just the way they were.  And I loved how they looked on the coffee table next to my Aunt Anita ‘family’ sculpture.
It was also the end of birthday week.  Edie had a slumber party, which meant we were kid free for a night AND the next morning.  A dear friend suggested we go to dinner and so in the process of tossing about places to go, we found ourselves agreeing to at least begin with a margarita from Continental Divide. Surprisingly, it wasn’t too crowded and we thought about staying for dinner.  But as we toasted my age and I joked that I was now “Two 21 year olds”, I looked around realized that I was easily twice the age of oh, more than half the folks in there.  And suddenly realized that the C&O option sounded way better than Continental Divide.  So, away we went.  We were lucky enough to walk right in and get a cozy table in the bistro.  A bottle of wine was ordered and I had the rare delight of not being involved in the selection!  That right there was a gift.
Having worked at a few variations of wine bars on the downtown mall, as well finding myself writing a monthly wine column, people seem to think I know wine. As a result, I am often consulted about what to drink.  I loved being surprised by a bottle of Haraszthy Zinfandel, that had to be retrieved from the shed.  Apparently that’s where they store wines that are not frequently ordered, which was quite exciting for the staff, as well as myself, I have to admit.  It was a nice, big red to go with the cold evening.  The fellows had the trout, which was about the most perfect fish I’ve had in I don’t know how long….and I had my usual C&O standby of rabbit, also wonderful, in a house made Boudin Blanc.   I also had a glass of the Knight’s Gambit Petit Verdot.  I mention them in my upcoming November wine column, so I couldn’t resist.   For dessert I had the chocolate bread pudding, which is better than I make.  And that’s saying something.  They use brioche, making it incredibly light and dreamy.  A Baileys and coffee was ordered for me and the two paired just wonderfully together.  A fabulous cap for a fabulous evening.
Sunday morning, Pat & I headed out for the last birthday hurrah – brunch at The Villa.  We hadn’t been there in ages and other than a name change (From the Italian Villa), it hasn’t changed much.  It was parents weekend at UVa, so the place was filled with college students and their parents, as well as a few Zombies from the Zombie run that took place in the morning.  It was a lovely finish to a good birthday week.
Next up, candy season.  Happy Halloween!

A perfectly lovely day.

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Tuesday was my birthday.  Pat knew he was going to have to be away for meetings all day that day.  And I do mean, ALL day.  He left here about 6:30 am and returned about 10:30 pm.  Considering we both work from home most of the time and so therefore spend most of our time together, I told him it was okay.  It’s a day.  It’s given me an excuse to spread the celebration out over a week.  Which I’m inclined to do anyway….
Tuesday was beautiful.  In the 70’s, sunny, a beautiful fall day.  Pat made coffee before he left, so right there, the day was off to wonderful start.  It was nice to have the day to myself.  I got showered with lots of birthday wishes from Facebook friends.  I got a few phone calls, the mail brought cards and friends dropped off gifts. I went to the gym, then went and got my favorite cookies (snickerdoodles. I simply cannot make them as good as they do.) from a local bakery and surprised Edie and her pals at school with them for lunch.   I sat in the yard, soaking up sun and reading in the afternoon.  (While doing that, I realized my save Greenleaf Park move made The Hook.  Go me!).  A friend called and said she was at the park, any chance we want to come over?  So off we went….

Where Edie modeled my new crown and declared herself “Queen of the World”and our friend Phoebe “Princess of the World.”  It was a lovely afternoon to be at the park.  Thanks for calling Mo!

Another girlfriend came over, with a bottle of wine in hand.  Her husband has a wine distributorship and he apparently spent some time going through his collection looking for a bottle that I was sure to have not had before.  And indeed, I had never had Georgian wine.  It was nice.  Quite dry, but I love dry wine.  A little bit jammy too, which is another favorite quality I like in a wine. Thank you Ted, it went nicely with…

the chocolate cake yet another girlfriend came by with. 
Yes, I’m a lucky, spoiled girl.  And yes, I did happen to mention to a few friends that my husband wasn’t going to be around on my big day, so don’t they want to come have a glass of wine with me?
Of course, I used that excuse to have friends over for an ‘early’ celebration last Saturday night.  And I’m using it a few more times this upcoming weekend.  I told you I’m good at stretching out the celebration….

So this cake.  Teresa knows the sort of cakes I bake.  She was well aware the bar was set high.  And she did well.  I’ve been calling it a chocolate praline hazelnut mousse cake, which is shorter than the actual name.  It had a crunchy chocolate bottom crust, a cake layer and a mousse layer.  Seriously yum. 
Also, I love that when I asked where she got the recipe from, I was able to reach in the cookbook cabinet and pull out the exact issue of Bon Appetit that featured it on the cover.
All in all, it was a perfectly lovely day.  I did miss my love, but he was home by the time I was ready to crawl into bed.  And he had gifts for me to open Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  And I hear there’s more to come this weekend, when we celebrate again. 
I’m a lucky gal.

I’m still not ready to let go of summer.

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Really summer? This is how you want to end it? We’ve had such a lovely run and now you go and end it like this?  So uncool.  Frankly, I’m a little bitter with you right now.  This is so not a good break up.

It’s done nothing but rain since our return from our labor day weekend trip to Annapolis.  It’s been cold and rainy and at one point yesterday, Pat said it felt like winter.  Nothing gets in the way of your denial that summer is coming to an end like having to break out your jeans and long sleeve tshirts and cardigans that have been stashed away all summer.  I even thought about breaking out my wool socks yesterday, because my toes were so cold.  The horrors.

Sigh.  At least we had one last lovely weekend by the water. 

And with Girl Scouts, PTO and my other little side project gearing up, I will certainly be busy, so it’s not like I have lots of time to sit by the pool these days anyway.  Despite my last few posts about all the changes going on currently in my life, things are going pretty smoothly. Thanks to all of you for all the support you’ve given me.  It really does help inspire me, which is part of the reason why I started this little blog – hoping to nuture that inspiration.  I always hate to see summer fade and this year is a bit worse than usual, no doubt because of everything else going on.  Although the return of college football has helped smooth things over….

Any old excuse for a party around here.

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A few weeks ago, Edie was invited to a lovely backyard birthday party and afterward mused why does her birthday always have to be in January?  January birthdays are just not conducive to having lawn games with your friends, not to mention, the size of our house really limits the number of guests she’s allowed to invite.  So, we somehow agreed to the idea of a half birthday party – not that we celebrate half birthdays on a regular basis, but around here, we’ll take any old excuse to throw a party, obviously.   Bless her heart, she was so excited about this party that she came up with a list of games, as well as whipping up the invitation on indesign all by herself.  
We started off with some games and races and even a water balloon fight.  They were on clearance when I ran to the store yesterday morning and I grabbed 3 packs of 175.  Edie, always the realist, talked me down to 2 packs.  And only most of 1 got filled up.  Filling water balloons is alot of work.  Somehow, she knew this.
As it’s July and we live in Virginia, I felt some sort of ice cream cake was called for.  I thought about ordering one from Ben & Jerry’s,  but knew I could whip up something myself.  After pondering long and hard some of the beautiful cakes Martha suggests, I realized that this was more the effort I wanted to put into it. (I need a form.  Plain and simple.  I know this about myself.  I am not ashamed to admit.  No way can I free form something square.  Straight lines & I are not something that mix well.)

It was cold, it was yummy and the children were all completely impressed.   We had real watermelon to go with the frozen and I filled the punch bowl with lemonade.  That and a couple bag of chips and we had a party.

Edie’s vision for the party also included a trip to the sprinklers at the park across the street.  (Which was great, because while I can throw an awesome party, I am just not good at entertaining children.  Especially 12 of them for 2 hours. Must be my lack of enthusiasm for games.)    So, after everyone got their fill of ice cream cake, we headed across the street.

What a pack.  You can almost see all the kids in that shot.  We had first graders through fifth graders in attendance.  We had soccer teammates, friends from school, neighborhood friends.  We had boys and girls.  Edie put a good bit of thought into her guest list and I have to say, she can throw a party. 

The kids had the run of the sprinklers at the park. We gave them all cups and while running through the water, they had water battle that kept Pat & I (and themselves) greatly entertained.
We stayed at the park until it was time for everyone to leave.  Everyone looked thoroughly exhausted and I do believe a good time was had by all. A few parents stayed for a cold beer afterwards (always a tradition at our house) and after spending my day getting ready for and then hosting a party for 12 kids, that beer that had been iced down in a cooler all afternoon was nice and cold and mmm tasty.
I don’t know if this party will become one of our annual traditions, but it was a good time, pretty low key and a good excuse for Edie to gather a bunch of her favorite people together for no reason other than just because.  Considering we throw a huge party every May for that reason, she really is just following in our footsteps.  I really couldn’t be prouder of her.

Things I’m good and bad at.

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I can’t remember when it became a tradition for me to bake Betty a fabulous chocolate birthday cake.  Part of it was wanting an excuse to bake, but part of it was wanting to give a single mom friend something nice.  Birthdays are meant to be celebrated in my opinion.  At any rate, for I don’t know how many years now, we’ve had a tradition of chocolate cake for Betty’s Birthday, usually something decadent.
I made Martha Stewart’s Moist Devil’s Food Cake for the second year in a row.  It’s a triple layer cake.  I learned the hard way last year the best way to transport a triple layer cake from your house to anywhere else is in pieces and assemble it there. 
See?  It’s tall.   Looking at that picture, I now see that it was going to be dry.  I didn’t bake it as long as the recipe called for and it was still dry. (Not terribly, just enough to bug me.) And the frosting….the frosting takes 2 1/2 hours.  You read that right.  It makes enough to cover 3 layers and any imperfections you have with putting 3 layers of cake together (including the cake being a wee bit on the dry side), plus, it’s really good, so I find it worth it.  However, I followed the recipe to the T and for about an hour and half of that 2 and 1/2 hours, I was worried my frosting wasn’t going to turn out.  While I was slightly freaking out, I googled it and found this. The video of Mrs. Millman making her frosting, which not only is informative, but a fabulous Martha moment.  Really wished I had watched this first.  Oh well.  Next time.

I grabbed some strawberries from everyone’s patches and used them to decorate the top. Another tradition that seems to have sprung up while we weren’t looking.
Happy Birthday Betty. 
I already have next year’s cake in mind.  Pat has suggested a few from the repertoire that I haven’t made in while, like this one. Otherwise known as 2 day cake around here, because it takes 2 days to make.  But worth it.

The weekend wasn’t all baking though.  Spent some time at the pool, trying to get the sun and the pool chemicals to help clear up the poison ivy.  It worked fairly well, I must say.  Took Edie strawberry picking out at Chile’s.  We wanted some strawberry shortcake and our little patch just isn’t producing for that this year.  It was a good mother-daughter field trip.  Once this crazy week full of lots of end of school year events is over, I’ll head back out and pick oodles to put up for the winter. 
We also took our annual Memorial Day canoe trip.  Once upon a time, this was also part of Betty’s birthday celebration.  The ladies of the ‘hood took the children by our lonesomes one year.  We did about a mile stretch of the Rivanna, the nice, little, local river and it took us all day.  We hit every rope swing, had several beer & cupcakes stops and by the time we got home, everyone had had a meltdown.  Since then, we have decided it’s best to have our husbands around for the trip.  If nothing else, they help keep the kiddo meltdowns to a minimum. (Okay, they are good to schelp canoes too.)
This year we did the Rockfish River in Nelson County.  Absolutely Gorgeous.  And we had it all to ourselves, which was even better.  Somehow I ended up steering a canoe with Edie & her pal
Sophia, but that didn’t last long.  I completely and totally suck at steering.  Not only did we run smack into a downed tree that came darn close to throwing me from the boat, we flipped over, all within a few hundred yards of putting in.   I got to go in unexpectedly a second time when I was in Virginia’s boat too.  Good stuff.  Edie says crocs float and I can assure you they do, because I had them kicked off when we went over the second time and had to quick swim downstream to save my shoes.  The only things lost besides my dignity were a few pairs of sunglasses.  Thanks to my Becky Bucket Pat got me for Christmas a few years ago, everything that needed to stay dry, like my camera, did.  So, I might suck at steering a canoe, but I can put a tight enough seal on my bucket to keep it dry under water.  Which really is comforting.
All in all, it was a completely relaxing, rejuvenating weekend.  

Traditions, with a side of arugula.

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Easter Sunday was an absolutely beautifully perfect Virginia spring day.   The light this time of year is just golden.  Divine.  Breathtaking.  I cannot soak enough of it up.  Throw in all the blooming dogwoods and azaleas everywhere….it’s just beyond words.  I love spring in Virginia. 
We have a Christmas tradition where we invite over anyone we’ve ever met that we discover will be spending the holiday alone.  Edie, ever the thoughtful little elf, decided we should apply it to all holidays.  So while she was making Easter greeting cards for friends and neighbors, she happened to decide to invite a new neighbor to dinner. 
She broke it to us by telling her father I had decided to do this.  I think she had run it by me in the car on the way somewhere when I was distracted, so I signed off on it, but it was definitely her idea.  Which I pointed out when she told her father what I had supposedly done. 
Not a big deal really, I actually love that she is so thoughtful and generous.  And the ask permission by trying to tell her father it was my idea?  Well, she comes by that quite honestly. 
Despite our tradition of having guests to Christmas dinner, we’ve never really settled on a traditional menu, one that we serve year after year.  It’s always an experiment.  Easter however, is a different story.  Our one tradition (besides the Easter Bunny leaving a trail of eggs all over the house) is our meal.  We’ve had it for a good many years now and it’s always spot on.  Pesto-encrusted salmon, parsleyed red potatoes, salad and roasted asparagus.
This year’s pesto was made with the abundance of arugula.  If you’ve never made pesto with arugula, you really should try it.  It’s become our favorite pesto and we love us some pestos here.   It went paired wonderfully with the salmon.  Try it for yourself.

Arugula Pesto
2 cups arugula leaves, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup parmesean cheese
1/3 cup (or more if needed) olive oil*
1/4 cup pine nuts or walnuts, chopped
Pinch of salt
Blend all ingredients until smooth.
Pesto Encrusted Salmon
Oil a baking dish or cookie sheet. 
Place a filet of wild salmon in it and pour about a 1/4 cup liquid (wine or broth) over it.
Coat your fish with a nice layer of pesto and then stick under the broiler for 8-10 minutes, rotating halfway through, until the pesto has a nice, brownish-blackish crust.
Serve.

Merry it was.

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So much work goes into Christmas. It’s really the ultimate deadline. Being trained in design, I work best under deadline I’ll admit. And Christmas morning simply must be magical. At least it feels that way when you have a wee one (or even not so wee as she’s getting) who cannot wait to see what Santa brings.

Two days before Christmas, neighbors had a party. I’ve struggled with getting into the spirit this year, but the 23rd was my last day at work until the new year and I finally felt I could throw myself into the last of it. The party really did alot to buoy my spirits – we really do live in the greatest neighborhood, at least the greatest one for us. We have a core group of friends here that are more than friends, they are family. Year in and year out, we have various holiday traditions with them – not just Christmas, but birthdays, Halloween, the Fourth of July. We find reasons to celebrate every holiday.

A few of the neighborhood kiddos were across the street and threatened to crash the grown up party (All of our celebrations include the kids, with the exception of this party. We figure we are allowed ONE night to ourselves all year, yes?). They did wander over for some dessert, because Edie knew I had baked one of my fabulous chocolate cakes and she was hell bent on having some, but for the most part, they stayed out of our hair.

There was much joy and merriment and I am blaming that oyster shooter for sending me over the edge of being slightly overserved. Needless to say, I felt the effects of it a teensy little bit the next day, which may have slightly impeded my to-do list until later in the day.

Betty called and invited us down to bake cookies with her Christmas Eve. Baking cookies is something we try to do together every year and so I knew, this was it. So we went down and baked cookies, had some holiday cheer and while we were there, Virginia popped over and by the time it was all said and done, Edie had agreed to go to the 10 pm Christmas Eve service with her.

I did have every intention of going along as well, but when we came home to make our sugar cookies for Santa and dinner and start the cake for tomorrow’s dinner and the dough for the cinnamon rolls for breakfast, we got as far as popping the cookies in the oven when I realized, it wasn’t on. It was 6:30 Christmas eve and I didn’t have an oven.

I calmly tried to not freak out, as Pat ripped apart the entire range. As parts came off, I realized it had been a while since I had really cleaned my oven and stove and so my clean kitchen OCD kicked in and there I was, scrubbing away, mentally rethinking my entire Christmas Eve & Christmas Day menu based on not having an oven. Black Forest Torte became Julia Child’s Chocolate Mousse, Oyster Dressing became Oyster Stew, the cinnamon rolls could become french toast or pancakes. Not as Christmas-y, but hey….I was in crisis mode. The sugar cookies got moved onto a smaller tray and went into the toaster oven while all this was happening.

Finally, inexplicably, the oven turned on. We think maybe the emergency shut off valve got knocked (possibly when Edie, by her own admittance, climbed on it to get the brown sugar out of the upper cabinet for Betty’s chocolate chip cookies earlier in the day). Whatever it was, the oven was now on and bonus, scrubbed clean.

We didn’t sit down for Christmas Eve dinner until after 9. I hadn’t even started my Black Forest Torte, so when Addison came to pick Edie up for church, I had to bow out.

Instead, I got that cake in the oven and then decided to finish scrubbing down the rest of my kitchen. At 10 pm Christmas Eve night.

In my defense, everything was wrapped. I couldn’t put it all out until she came home from church, because she is still a firm believer in Mr. Claus. No way was I going to ruin that simply because she had gone to church this year. I was so tired I really just wanted to crawl into bed, but I had to keep going….and so mopping the kitchen floor it was.

Thankfully, staying out until almost midnight 2 nights in a row made her sleep in Christmas morning until after 8. Delightful. She had a wonderful Christmas, the oven turned on Christmas morning for those cinnamon rolls to bake and all was right in the world.

It was just the 3 of us this year. Years past, we invite anyone we know who is going to spend Christmas away from their family. Edie was quite disappointed it was just the three of us this year, but Pat explained, it’s a good thing. It means we don’t know anyone who needs to spend the day with us, everyone is with loved ones.

Up until Christmas Eve, I couldn’t narrow it down to what I wanted to make for Christmas dinner. I couldn’t find a local ham, I don’t like beef all that much, and Pat suggested fish. Christmas Eve, I ran down to the local seafood shop and got some nice fish, some trout actually. That was our main course, with some of Smiley’s oysters in a nice oyster stew as our first course. Because of course I have to know where our food comes from at all times, well, with a few small exceptions here & there. And while Pat spent an hour Christmas Eve pulling my range apart, some of those mental menu reworkings stuck.

Last Christmas, I was recovering from stomach surgery. Not only was I limited on what I could eat, I had zero energy. I was forced to scale back. This year, I realized, that was not a bad way to be. We had mimosas, Betty came by for our traditional mid-day cheer and exchange of gifts, but otherwise, we didn’t bother to get dressed until dinner and we just lounged all day. I followed the lesson from last year and dinner was easy but good. I put all my effort into dessert, because quite frankly, I can bake some chocolate cake to knock your socks off and I love chocolate cake. This years may have been the best yet. I remembered to undercook it and avoided those crispy edges. (I still could have pulled it out sooner and will make the note on the recipe.)

So, our Christmas was cozy and really sort of perfect. I love spending our day with just us. It makes it so relaxing, and with the snow off and on all day, it was quite conducive to not getting dressed.

The magic really is in what Santa Claus brings. Everything else is the cherry on top for her. It didn’t matter the only present I made her was an photo album from a website. Santa ‘set up’ her Itunes under her profile on our main family computer and loaded it with music she requested. So what if some of that music makes us cringe. The fact that she has her own musical opinion and taste is what matters. And now she knows how to load her own music onto her mp3 player.
And her belief in Santa is strong, at least until next year.

And all that work? Worth it.

Holiday Tea Party.

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The activity in her advent calendar the other day was to have a tea party. We spent the day baking cookies and when I wasn’t looking, she set some things out she wanted to use. Like the tea cups Uncle Dave gave her last year. And my new pink depression glass cake stand. And ‘the fancy sugar bowl’.

It was a lovely little tea party.

My very own elf.

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I have dream child. I do. I feel that when I admit this to people who don’t know me or her very well, it sounds slightly pretentious. However, after you get to know her, you start to realize this is indeed, just the plainly spoken truth. Sure she has her moments, they all do. But overall, I have been blessed with a wonderful child who is indeed dreamy.
I mention this because she turns into the most magical, helpful little elf this time of year. She loves to help with Christmas. First up is the tree.

She and her father go cut down a tree every year. They find the best one out there, cut it down and trek home with it. Once they get it inside, I put the lights on. She lets me dig out and hang the first ornament – always the Styrofoam ball and pipe cleaner beauty that my father made my parents first Christmas they were married. I always hang it on the inside, near the trunk, in a tucked away spot, just so I know it’s there. I’m pretty sure it’s the only one left out of the whole collection they made. I remember a good portion of our ornaments growing up were from that craft session and over the years, they either fell apart (My dad always commented on how surprised he was that spray paint made Styrofoam deteriorate.) or just seemed to disappear.

After that though, she gets to work. She’s not entirely comfortable hanging the vintage Shiny Brights, or any of the breakable ones for that matter. After all, she’s only 8. But she loves digging through the boxes of ornaments we’ve amassed over our lifetimes, especially the Hallmark ones we got as kids. She does a great job of decorating the tree. She has a really fantastic sense of style and proportion and design. She’s quite good at making sure the ornaments are spread out and not just all on one spot on the tree. Seriously, dream child.

Left to my own devices, I will take my time decorating the tree. I tend to get a little OCD about the placement of each and every ornament. I will hang and rearrange for days on end. She has very little patience for this and so we compromise by spending 2 days putting the tree up. And she does most of it.

I mentioned she was dreamy, yes?

Up next is the Christmas card. A few years ago, she came home from school to find cards, envelopes and mailing labels in neat piles on the dining room table. She sat down and took it upon herself to get those puppies ready to mail and has done so every Christmas since. This year though, she’s decided to seize creative control. After informing me that she was ‘not comfortable being the center of attention’, she announced that if our Christmas card was to be a picture of her, it needed to be of the entire family. I tried telling her no one wants to see me & daddy’s faces, they know what we look like, but she wouldn’t hear it. She refused to cooperate any time the camera came out, guessing that I was going to try for a sneaky photo. I really loathe having my picture taken, as does her father, so while I know she comes by it honestly, it doesn’t make it easier. I have a slew of family portraits dating since pretty much her birth, where she refuses to smile for the camera. There are the straight face pictures, the pouty pictures and then the out right scowl pictures that make me wonder what sort of teenager she’s going to turn into. A particular favorite has a 2 year old not only scowling, but curling her little fists up into balls, as if to say, get these people away from me. Of course, Pat & I are grinning quite happily into the camera in every single one. I finally caved and said fine, we’ll do it your way, but you have to smile.

Smile she did. Although when I suggested ‘outsourcing’ the card this year, both she & her father rebelled. Every year, I have designed and printed our cards in what most of our friends and family tell us is the best holiday card they get. There is a source of pride to it I suppose. But it’s also alot of work. We send an insane amount of cards and it takes an entire day of babysitting the printer to make it happen. I finally uploaded pictures to Snapfish the other day and made her a photo book. They sent coupons for a freebie, so I made another one as a gift for another family member. I got really comfortable with this, which is why I made the suggestion of perhaps having someone else print our card …..”You want our card to look like everyone elses? It won’t be handmade if you do that. It just won’t be the same. The website name will be all over the front of the card.” They had a number of arguments against this idea. In the end, I caved. I’ll do it by hand. And my little elf will help.

I love that she loves to help so much this time of year. She generally is helpful, but at Christmas, she really kicks it up a notch. I’m pretty sure she’s going to start hounding us to wrap presents soon – she always does. She encourages us to finish shopping early and then she somehow ends up wrapping every gift that’s not for her. She’s very helpful with the baking cookies part too. Every year, she takes just a little bit more on, of her own accord. Every year, I’m delighted to share these traditions. And the work. Let’s face it, Christmas is a lot of work. I’m quite grateful to my Christmas elf who works so hard to make sure we have a good one.