Out With the Old
For Christmas we took the long drive down to South Carolina to visit my maternal grandmother and see my family. We amused ourselves in the car by starting a John Iriving book on CD, The Son of the Circus, and whiled away the time chatting. It was lovely seeing everyone, going for morning walks, swapping presents and sharing photos. We even had a few inches of snow for Christmas! We got an assortment of much needed kitchen gadgets (and also TSA locks) that have already become much used, and a couple of pairs of winter gloves each that likewise were very appreciated. We were also given a Cajun cookbook, The Commander's Palace, that we've already made our first two recipes from (chicken with artichokes and mushrooms in wine encirched sauce, and bananas foster) as well as a dessert cookbook, The Best of Baking, that we made a pecan pie from and will be having apricot slice from tonight. We had also exchanged gifts with Julian's side of the family and will be enjoying the lovely assortment of books, CD's, blu-rays and clothes that came our way. I'm especially fond of my aubergine TOG-64 and knitted winter hat. My crocs have seen a lot of use and have been customised with gecko charms.
Also among the Christmas treasures, our mutual interest in charcuterie has pressed forward with the introduction of two novel kitchen toys - a stand alone Waring Pro meat grinder and a portable Bradley smoker. The latter has not seen use yet, it being severely wintry outside, but we have already sucessfully made two batches of sausages - Polish and Italian. I'm excited about trying a selection of sausage meat recipes in the coming months and as soon as more clement weather arrives we will begin our experiments with smoked charcuterie.
For New Year's we helped make and eat a Turducken. We brought a macque choux, made the cornbread stuffing and Julian helped by boning the chicken for the center. The results may have to be repeated again next year.
Having adapted to using the i-Pad as an e-book I have finished reading a handful of classics including Notre Dame de Paris, Tarzan of the Apes and the first two Sherlock Holmes Novels, A Letter in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four. Julian is steadfastly making his way through War and Peace and making heavy creative use of the music creation tools on the i-pad. We also both just finished the suicide mission ending of Mass Effect 2. Like the first in the series the disk did not leave the drive during the weeks of game play (except to swap disk 1 for disk 2!). We also did an intense watch through of seven seasons of The Shield.
We've had some severe weather since the start of the new year. Last week we had a chillynor'easter that left us housebound for a day as twenty inches of snow quickly piled up around us. Considering the rate of the snowfall the apartment did an excellent job of trying to keep the road and sidewalks cleared but we did have to heave-to and shovel out the car from thigh deep drifts that covered the tires and reached the door handles. Today we've had another four inches of snow that is changing over to sleet and freezing rain. Temperatures this weekend are expected to be very cold, possibly with windchill pushing into the negative.
Luckily we did have sunny, albeit cold weather for the weekend as we were visited by my childhood friend Liz who stayed as our guest before having to go down to Plymouth for a work conference. After her arrival in the morning and a warming bowl of butternut soup for lunch, we went up to Salem to the Peabody Essex Museum to see a special exhibition of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter. For dinner we had an Escoffier recipe for fish, and a bread and butter pudding. Sunday we took the T to the Harvard Museum of Natural History. The mineral collection and glass flowers were astounding as ever. We made pulled pork and cornbread for dinner and played an epic game of Foodie Fight, an epicurian trivia game. Before parting I was able to finally give Liz a cross-stitched unicorn that I had made for her in 1994 that had been mislaid and never delivered.
Also among the Christmas treasures, our mutual interest in charcuterie has pressed forward with the introduction of two novel kitchen toys - a stand alone Waring Pro meat grinder and a portable Bradley smoker. The latter has not seen use yet, it being severely wintry outside, but we have already sucessfully made two batches of sausages - Polish and Italian. I'm excited about trying a selection of sausage meat recipes in the coming months and as soon as more clement weather arrives we will begin our experiments with smoked charcuterie.
For New Year's we helped make and eat a Turducken. We brought a macque choux, made the cornbread stuffing and Julian helped by boning the chicken for the center. The results may have to be repeated again next year.
Having adapted to using the i-Pad as an e-book I have finished reading a handful of classics including Notre Dame de Paris, Tarzan of the Apes and the first two Sherlock Holmes Novels, A Letter in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four. Julian is steadfastly making his way through War and Peace and making heavy creative use of the music creation tools on the i-pad. We also both just finished the suicide mission ending of Mass Effect 2. Like the first in the series the disk did not leave the drive during the weeks of game play (except to swap disk 1 for disk 2!). We also did an intense watch through of seven seasons of The Shield.
We've had some severe weather since the start of the new year. Last week we had a chillynor'easter that left us housebound for a day as twenty inches of snow quickly piled up around us. Considering the rate of the snowfall the apartment did an excellent job of trying to keep the road and sidewalks cleared but we did have to heave-to and shovel out the car from thigh deep drifts that covered the tires and reached the door handles. Today we've had another four inches of snow that is changing over to sleet and freezing rain. Temperatures this weekend are expected to be very cold, possibly with windchill pushing into the negative.
Luckily we did have sunny, albeit cold weather for the weekend as we were visited by my childhood friend Liz who stayed as our guest before having to go down to Plymouth for a work conference. After her arrival in the morning and a warming bowl of butternut soup for lunch, we went up to Salem to the Peabody Essex Museum to see a special exhibition of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter. For dinner we had an Escoffier recipe for fish, and a bread and butter pudding. Sunday we took the T to the Harvard Museum of Natural History. The mineral collection and glass flowers were astounding as ever. We made pulled pork and cornbread for dinner and played an epic game of Foodie Fight, an epicurian trivia game. Before parting I was able to finally give Liz a cross-stitched unicorn that I had made for her in 1994 that had been mislaid and never delivered.