Tag Archives: cooking

Valentine’s Day Date

Holidays, , , , , , , ,

This year we kept with our new Valentine’s Day tradition of making a fancy meal and eating it together on a picnic in the back of the car. If you’re observant and noticed that we skipped a year, it’s because last year I was pregnant and dealing with morning sickness and some huge work project deadlines, so sadly neither Josh nor I can quite remember what we did for Valentine’s Day. Not cook a fancy dinner and take it on a picnic, we know that much.

Anyway, this year we were better. We really liked the French-themed meal we made two years ago, so we decided to do it again with some new recipes: gratin des aubergines, des haricots provençales, and tapénade on a baguette. Yum yum! Our favorite was the gratin des aubergines (an eggplant gratin dish). With sparkling cider and chocolate covered strawberries to top it off, the meal was delicious!

Audrey and Brenn came over and babysat Carson in the basement while Josh and I cooked, and then we were able to leave to a scenic overlook and eat our picnic in the car. The weather was even so nice that we left the back open. We loved getting to spend so much time together, just us, doing something fun. It was a wonderful, fun, tasty Valentine’s Day date. :)

Christmas break

Holidays, Vacations, , , , , , , , , ,

Christmas break was in Texas this year and was a blast. We loved seeing the Ellsworths and enjoying time off from school. The weather was really nice, too. A little rainy at first, but later sunny and so warm and nice (except for those few eerie foggy nights).

Anyway, let’s start with pictures!

First of all, isn’t he just the cutest baby ever?

 We sure think so.

Carson did awesome on the plane ride home from Houston, but he didn’t do so hot getting out there. We don’t blame him: it was a long day of travel with a five-hour layover in Denver (turns out we’ll do about anything for the cheapest fares). It was a long day for Carson and all of us, but we all survived. Here’s Carson on the first leg of the journey.

Carson also got his first haircut over the break. Nothing major, he just had some long stringy pieces that I trimmed. I’ve never cut anyone’s hair in my life, but I don’t think I messed up.

I got a haircut, too, from my sister Brenn. Well really, like 4 haircuts. She would cut it, and we’d both say, “Let’s go a little shorter.” Then she’d cut it again the next day or so. It was fun, and now I’m a whole new me! I’m liking the short hair.

We really liked seeing family over the break. Carson gave us lots of good laughs, especially for grandma, who just can’t wait until he can talk and play.

Carson also met his great grandma, my mom’s mom. We went to visit her at her new house in Houston.

There Carson also met Aunt Melissa, our number one blog fan. :) Thanks for always being the first to comment, Melissa! Melissa’s five-year-old son Byron got some great laughs out of Carson, too. Also, Byron is a Star Wars fan, and we are Byron fans. Yeah, Byron, Star Wars rocks!

Below: Mom and Jennie at Grandma’s house (and a great photobomb by Brenn).

And finally, we had one awesome sushi night, our last night in Texas. It’s kind of become a tradition when we all go home to make homemade sushi. This sushi night was probably the best of them all. I mean, look at all this deliciousness. We went all out. One of the best parts is how everyone gets to name the sushi roll they make. (My favorite name was Brenn’s Rick Asltey roll…get it? Rickroll!) We even had homemade fortune cookies by Jennie. (Yes, I fully realize that sushi is Japanese and fortune cookies are…well, American wanna-be Chinese, but, hey. Perhaps our sushi nights aren’t the most authentic, but they sure are tasty.)

It was a great, wonderful break. Very relaxing. And Christmas morning with Carson was probably the best of all. Even though he’s too young to do much besides grab for the pretty wrapping paper, having a kid on Christmas changes everything and makes it so much more special and fun.

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s too!

Lost Bread

Just Life, , ,

So these pictures and this experience is over a year old, but I just found the pictures on my computer and remembered that I had meant to post about this.

Last summer while we were in Dallas, somehow we had a loaf of French bread that went stale before we could eat it. Such a pity, too, because Josh and I love a good loaf of French bread. But then I remembered that Josh told me French toast actually comes from the poor class of people back in the day in France, when they would have bread that was too hard to eat but they were too poor to buy more, so they saved their bread by soaking it in egg to re-soften it and then cooking it, and it was called pain perdu (which translates to “lost bread”). I decided to see if I could recover our lost bread by making authentic French toast, and it worked! Yay! So now you know what you can do with stale bread, besides just feed it to ducks. :)

Dinner a Really Long Time Ago

Just Life, , , , , , ,

So these pictures are really old…like, last October, I think, but I realized we never posted them. Every other Sunday, we try and have our siblings over for dinner. Josh’s brother Caleb and my sister Brenn joined us for dinner and then cupcake-making afterwards. We thought we’d try out a book Heather gave me for my birthday with the cutest cupcake decorating ideas I’ve ever seen: Continue reading →