I've moved

I've moved, come find me at hannaheats.blogspot.com.
The new location is all about food, my favorite topic.

Christmas of Projects

What a wonderful Christmas and holiday season so far. Went to NC most of last week, saw 24+ family members and friends, and managed to survive intact.   

Can't seem to get the picture uploader to work but it has been a busy season for baking... For an advent gathering made this and these, then, for the family made these and these.  The macaroons were especially popular, and I got great delight of watching certain family members sneaking cookie after cookie out of the jar!

Post-holiday, am embarking on several projects, including washing and skirting a sheep fleece, and growing mushrooms, courtesy of M.  Photos to follow.

Some photos of recent events:

Cake for Obama.... worked like a charm!

Halloween as Hg (mercury). Not the best of photos but you can see my periodic table square.
Pumpkin carving last week. Mine's the wasp.

Updates

List of things to report

1) Zelda and Boo seem to be increasing their friendship and decreasing their distance. See photo.

2)  I love my new macbook. 

3)  I have now also added one more tomato and one more jalapeno to my harvest.  Those squirrels are evil.

4)  I got my absentee ballot in the mail yesterday.  Don't think there's any question as to who I'm voting for.  I also get to vote on some sort of amendment that would state that life starts at the moment of conception.  Interesting...  I'm very excited to vote and very excited to vote in CO as it's an important state this year.

5)  Lots of knitting.  Cant show pictures of any of it as is all top secret

6)  Yard sale tomorrow!

Labor Day

Celebrating the end of the summer with a casual bbq with some friends.  I've tried to take it easy and only made deviled eggs and a potato salad and bought some burgers, dogs, and beer in cans.  Should be a fun way to spend a not-so-sunny day off!

I loaned my camera out but once I get it back need to post some pictures of the newest addition to my garden, a jalapeno!  So far the squirrels have not eaten it (knock on wood).

And, I finished knitting something but it's top secret, so I can't show you any pictures. All will be revealed at a later date.

So, so bad

Whoops! Two months have elapsed since the last post. Bad me. The first part of that can be chalked up to a crazy travel schedule: Denver, Holland, Costa Rica, New York (work, work, fun, fun), and the second part can be chalked up to work (tomatoes, jalapenos, serranos), but still, I do wish that I were a little bit better at this blogging business.

Here's some Costa Rica photos.

The tomatoes in the picture are not implicated in any outbreaks. Those are the sum total of my tomato harvest this year. Thanks, squirrels.

Cooking up a storm

Yes, I know that I’ve been weak on posting recently, but in part that’s because I have been so busy cooking. I’ve always loved cooking but between graduate school and then two years of EIS, it seemed that my time to play in the kitchen got more and more limited. I’m actually probably busier now than ever, but the beauty of things is that it’s a little bit easier to leave my work at work, so my cooking has flourished. With the wonderful farmer’s market here, all sorts of unique ingredients are easily at my fingertips. And, thanks to my continued Bon Appetit subscription from C and M, I have been stockpiling recipes to try for years and years. It also doesn't hurt to have a highly appreciative audience.

The past few weeks have been all about grilling and Mexican food. It started out with these carne asada tacos, accompanied by this salsa. IG and I loved these so much that I made them again. And again. I find that making the perfect salsa always takes a little tweaking but I finally got it right on the third try. I think using red wine vinegar rather than limes (which I forgot to buy) may have been the key.

Last weekend was K’s birthday, so I used hosting a party for her as a guise to experiment with some more taco recipes. Easily made the night before and then grilled at party time, I made these incredible tacos al pastor with this salsa, fish tacos with a salsa verde, and grilled shrimp with rosemary. In the spirit of experimentation I also made pickled onions which IG loved and I thought were good but everyone else seemed too scared of to eat. Of the lot, the pork tacos were by far and away the crowd favorite, and despite my usual fear of fruit in my main courses, the pineapple was a great addition to the marinade (although I did forget in the hustle and bustle of things to grill the leftover pineapple). The two-chili salsa was quite good, but I think the consistency put some people off (rather thick and pasty). I am going to try the leftovers as a marinade for chicken or fish. The fish tacos were also great, but I am still not convinced I’ve found the perfect salsa verde.