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I am so thoroughly pleased because the folks over at Becks & Posh thought enough of my version of the pasta with caramelized onions and gremolata to include me in a post on the subject. How nice is that? I’ve been secretly smiling at myself for two days now. I think it’s starting to wear on Ben. I remade the recipe today in self-celebration and it was just as good as the first time.

Between learning the fundamentals of pasta by watching hours upon hours of Lidia, learning how to caramelize onions properly and now how to make gremolata, I think that I can pretty much just whip up this recipe any old time. Which is to say, whenever friends are a-comin’ I can always rustle up a mess o’ somethin.

Chase had steamed broccoli and basmatti rice for dinner. In spite of the terrible things people say about it I usually just make parboiled (Uncle Ben’s) rice at home when I need a quick side or for burrito fixins. Continue

“All of the proceeds,” she says, “go to the victims of FEMA… I mean Katrina.” Oh, those law school moments. Oh, to be paid to stand in front of a room full of people just to say things like that and to carry on and on about whatever popped into my mind. This was a comment made in relation to the purchase of what was described as an entire case of Steven Colbert’s wrist strong bracelets. It appears that proceeds actually go to the Yellow Ribbon Fund but that’s besides the point. What’s really important here is Continue

Not me, not yet anyway. So we had friends, wings, plenty of beer, the eagles, and cake to celebrate Mr. Sterling’s decent to triptigenerity. It was great. I got him a custom jersey that says “STERLING 30″ on the back. Get it? It’s very clever but I can’t take credit for the idea. The eagles even managed to pull out a win over the jets. You’d think it would have been easier. We had some jets fans here. I love the picture of the guys together. I call it “united in pizza”. Continue

Adapted from Cookies Year Round by Rosemary Black

These cookies were very tasty but moist to the point of being hard to handle. They were also much flatter than they appeared in the picture. In the future, I would refrigerate the dough prior to baking. The recipe doesn’t specify the type of apple to use and frankly I can’t remember what type I had but that may also be a factor. The flattening is sometimes a factor when butter is substituted for margarine but the original version of this recipe calls for butter. The original recipe also calls for icing the cookies but that would just be overkill. Continue

It was cold today! We wore our fall jackets and shoes that covered our feet entirely! Of course you know that there’s only a very small window of time before the novelty wears off and I start complaining that it’s been cold for far too long. This morning at the library was awesome. Chase’s favorite librarian Betsy is back and she was very, very happy. She laughed and carried on the whole time and really showed the other babies how it’s done when it was time to play the maracas. Continue

It’s Thursday AGAIN! I can’t wrap my head around how fast the weeks go. It’s more than a little ridiculous. I noted something both sad and funny this afternoon. The new season of the Office has been on for two weeks and it just hit me today that I have a class that interferes with it. What does that tell you about my attendance? Nothing, because it’s stellar but per the usual class was canceled again tonight and so I have yet to miss an episode.

Like our picture? I’m fumbling my way through ideas for some potential Halloween shots. It’s a work in progress, we were just playin around in this one. I want Chase to wear the wig I have on because well on me frankly it just looks like my hair. Also, pay no heed to my udders. I was showing a little much for the internet it may have been a little too Girls Gone Wild. Continue

Not much going on here. It’s been raining the last couple of nights but has still be as humid as ever. We’ve just been doing real slap dash dinners to try to get through the week and while we’re eating pretty well it’s nothing to write home about. Chase is picking up steam with her crawling and is really starting to climb and explore now. She particularly loves the rug in the basement. I didn’t realize how confined she was in the living room. I wonder if we had finished this space earlier if she would have crawled sooner. Everything in the living room is sort of within arms reach. Well, I’d love to stay and chat but I have to run. Any minute now Ben could shut down his computer and make a dash for tooth brushing and bed and then there’d be me unprepared and sleepless with no tv. So, off to my 30 minutes of glorious sitcom viewing I go. Until tomorrow.

Up to now, Ben’s had the run of the basement and my desk was upstairs. First it was in the dining room, then it migrated to the living room. Having the run of the basement wasn’t much to brag about. The fact that it was dry was about the only thing it had going for it. So we cooked up this crazy scheme. We would finish the basement and turn the main area into one big joint office space. Ben worked on it exclusively by himself getting things done here and there when he could which means that the place was in shambles for an eternity. After about a month working in a pit really starts to get to you but her persevered getting the drywall up and spackled. Which brings us to this weekend… Continue

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I don’t think I ever answered the question re: Italian prune plums. I remembered tonight while I was cooking my knoedels and so I thought I would finally follow up. You can see some pics of the plums here. I was just going to make the dumplings and then freeze them but I could smell all of their potatoey goodness while they were cooking and decided that I would have to try one. It was worth every minute spent waiting for water to boil and pulling tiny pits out of unwilling fruit.

Chase has finally got the whole crawling thing down. I took some video of her today taking her tiny knee-steps across the floor only to find that she was behind the coffee table the whole time. Maybe to say that she has it down is an overstatement but she definitely has a better grasp of it today than she did last week. She’s on a roll now that’s for sure. Continue