forever summer

when not knitting, reading knitting blogs or daydreaming about future knitting projects and the fabulous yarns i will use to create them, my free time is often spent reading cookbooks and scoping out recipes. if a modest home cook such as myself can claim to have a culinary muse, mine is nigella lawson. her how to be a domestic goddess is the source of the banana bread recipe i use, which never fails to win compliments (the secret is the rum-soaked raisins!) and it also inspired an afternoon experiment in bagel making (successful!). for a short time, my cable package included the style network and i was always excited when i'd flip through the channels and find her show, nigella bites (frustratingly, it never seemed to have its own reliable scheduled air-time). the best parts of it, for me, were the reality TV-esque segments where they'd show nigella standing in front of the fridge and eating a cold midnight snack with her hands made out of whatever she'd prepared earlier in the show. her cookbooks are the most fun to read. it's like having a phone conversation with a friend who's sharing a recipe for a dish she truly loves to prepare and eat. in forever summer's introduction to the instructions for cheesecake ice cream she writes, "striving for originality is frankly a grievous culinary crime. never trust the sort of cooking that draws attention to the cook rather than to the food." i love that.

i received nigella's forever summer as a shower gift from sarah, my co-conspirator in the bagel boiling and baking. as i was paging through it earlier this week, i decided that i would make it my primary source for recipes this season (my own less-ambitious and less-comprehensive julie and julia: 365 days, 524 recipes and 1 tiny apartment kitchen, which i have yet to read, anyway) and consult its contents before heading to the grocery store and farmers' market (starting next week!). i already made one dessert recipe the other night--caramelized pineapple with hot chocolate sauce--to use up the remaining half of a bargain priced whole pineapple.

blogging is teaching me that amateur food photography is tricky business. my paternal grandfather was a commercial photographer for a time and did a lot of food shoots. i know a few of the camera tricks (eg. raw meat + soy sauce = looks like its cooked), but not much about lighting, so you'll have to bear with fairly unappetizing food photos and take my word when i say the results were tasty.

this recipe probably would have been better had i used the coconut-flavored malibu rum she suggests adding to the chocolate sauce--my sauce had a little of the captain in it. also, the turbinado sugar syrup-coated, grilled pineapple slices stuck hard to the plate i transfered them to at first, but they eventually loosened up. the pineapple's tart sweetness becomes more intense with the grilling and is delicious. giada de laurentiis does a very similar recipe, but with a nutella sauce, which makes it even easier and adds that yummy hazelnutty flavor. i have a lot of chocolate sauce left over, which i made a milkshake with last night and will use as a makeshift fondue for strawberries (99 cents for 1lb.! samantha says they're already in season in NC!) later...

some recipes to come: sicilian vinegar chicken, mauritian shrimp curry, lomo de orza (pork traditionally marinated in a terracotta dish), and raspberry ripple ice cream...

in the yard

we spent a lot of time doing lawn and garden stuff this past weekend. here's our bed of tulips--protected from the rabbits, which is more than i can say for the decapitated ones in front of the house--and there are also some tiny daffodils in there. we can't take any credit for the lilac and flowering crabapple on the other side of the fence, but they make a pretty nice backdrop, i think. take rob's frustration with not being able to mow in the early morning plus his environmental consciousness and a smattering of old timey gadget nostalgia and what do you get? our new push mower! it doesn't have the precision of a motorized mower, but it's definitely quiet and easy and efficient. on saturday we also fashioned a composter out of a 32 gallon plastic garbage can by digging a 1.5 ft. deep hole next to the garage, drilling holes in the bottom third of the can and putting the holey can in the ground. i had absolutely no idea it was so easy. i know that you can buy lovely composters from gardening catalogs for over $100, but i'll take the less aesthetically striking blue trashcan stuck in the dirt for $8. i'm excited about the backyard alchemy of vegetable scraps + leaves and clippings + worms = soil!

here's some summer bulbs being planted--tigerlilies and stargazer lilies. when i was a kid we had some tigerlilies that grew in the stand of pine trees behind the house (which made a great enchanted forest with just a bit of imagination), so those are a sentimental addition. we also had a clematis that trellised nicely up a lamppost, so i'll keep an eye out for one of those at the garden sale next weekend. the irises (greenery only) in the foreground are last year's transplants from sandy and will's garden and they're thriving. joyce and jean have also offered up some hostas, black-eyed susan, dutchman's breeches (the flowers look like little pairs of pants!), and bluebells that will get planted soon and add to our perennial diversity.

a wool scarf in 60 degree weather

my first knitting project--a garter stitch scarf in green merino wool--is finished!
i'm hooked.
by the way, i think we need to get oscar a modeling agent and start building his portfolio.i taught myself how to purl yesterday using the very helpful how-to video clips here. as much as i enjoy reading the copy of stitch n' bitch i took out from the library, written instructions and diagrams just don't do it for me. up next will be a baby blanket for the preemie project with this good, old fashioned red heart variegated acrylic yarn on circular needles.

easter

this post will let the photos do the talking. without any further ado, some highlights from our weekend in chicagoland:
cute smooshy face...

...cute regular face!

my mom and franklin make friends


betsy and the new birdbath (our housewarming present)

fun with paas!


the easter saturday dinner table--ham, polish sausage, scalloped potatoes, asparagus and jello with dyed egg centerpiece
all gussied up (or, our sunday best)

icia 4.13.06.

thursday night brought five tornadoes to iowa city. our east-side neighborhood dealt with heavy rains, hail and wind, but the twisters didn't reach over here. on friday morning, rob and the rest of the city inspectors set out with their cameras to document the damage and map out the course the biggest (category F2, 150 mph winds) tornado took through town from walmart and menard's on highway 1 all the way to hickory hill park. here are some of the images rob captured...

rob specifically wanted to get a photo of the wrecked dairy queen on riverside drive and the old neon sign out front that's still defiantly standing. there were clean-up volunteers on the scene picking up the myriad red plastic DQ spoons that littered the parking lot and river bank. i love the photo the press citizen got of a kid handing out dilly bars on thursday night before they melted.
this is a shot of ralston creek taken from evans street. there was a creek clean-up scheduled for this weekend. i can't decide if that timing is totally awful or completely perfect.
in her college days, my mom was an alpha chi omega sorority sister. she suggested with a smirk that we offer up some of our basement space to a few of the displaced UI alpha chis--their house got a pretty bad beating, as you can see. it's a good thing the university has set up alternate housing for students whose housing was destroyed--i'm not sure i could handle such a rapid influx of gauchos, uggs and big sunglasses into my living space. not-so-happy joe's. the former pizza joint's roof is totally peeled back, and that apartment building in the rear, which also housed tony's grill (a popular breakfast place), has been condemned and is destined for a tear-down.
this is st. patrick's catholic church. i'm totally dumbfounded by that gaping space where all the bricks were blown away and the bare bones of the roof are exposed. looking past that initial visual shock, click on the photo and check out the wooden beams that have inserted themselves into the adjacent building and the chunks taken out of those walls by flying debris from the church. i lived on this block of hudson street before in moved in with rob. despite all the damage to property caused by the storms, there was only one reported fatality and relatively few injuries. still, iowa city's tree population took a huge hit. the stately oaks of college green park are mostly gone, as are many of the trees on iowa ave., college st. and around the johnson county courthouse.

you can see more photos of damage and recovery at the daily iowan online and at the press citizen link above. we'll keep you updated as clean-up continues and rejuvenation begins...

oscar & gunner

this afternoon, oscar got to play with gunner, our neighbors kelli and david's great dane. you can tell best from the middle photo (they're sniffing the snarly pit bulls that live on the other side of that fence) just how much bigger gunner is than oscar. he's still growing 5lbs. every week. i think our dear little westie is a bit intimidated by his towering stature and enormous paws. apparently, one of gunner's favorite passtimes is gnawing on big sticks. he's a hoot.
spring temperatures made for a puttering around the house kind of weekend. leaf blowing, gutter clearing, storm-window removing, summer bulb and birdseed buying, etc. now that we're having days in the 60s, i'm getting greedy and already thinking about t-shirt and sandal weather and saturday-morning trips to the farmers' market (sigh).

growing

springtime is slowly but surely making it into our backyard. i decided to rake around our little garden plot and get it cleaned up so the daffodil and tulip bulbs i planted in the fall could really soak up some sunshine. in the meantime, i discovered this lovely little hyacinth by the back fence that i don't remember being around last year. it's flower magic! we had a good deal of rain yesterday and everything seems to have grown at least an inch overnight. last year's attempt to grow some vegetables in the very same plot was, i hate to admit it, a big, fat failure. it was mostly neglect on my part (is it super lame to blame it on wedding planning?), but our shady trees also bear some responsibility. now that we just spent a lot of money getting those trees trimmed (if this whole public health/anthropology thing doesn't work out, i'm buying some professional-grade loppers and a cherry picker and going into business) i might give it another shot and promise to be a more diligent weeder.


my scarf is also growing! it's really a prettier, more vibrant shade of green than this photo would have you believe. i fear that i will never read another novel because knitting will completely and utterly take over my leisure time. fortunately, knitting hasn't even put a dent in my reality TV habit.
har de har.

betsy, pete & henry's big move

this weekend we ventured to the chicago suburbs to help betsy, pete and henry move from their condo into their adorable new house. i hope i'm not breaching blogging etiquette by writing about this before betsy does, but i'm sure she'll be spending at least the next few days or so unpacking boxes and feathering the nest with nary a moment to spare on blogger's slow photo uploading speeds. keep an eye on her blog for more moving news--for now, here's a taste of saturday's excitement...
when we planned the trip, we anticipated lots of lugging and heavy lifting, but since they hired a hilarious band of professional movers, we mostly just hung out with henry (see photo of rob, henry and rob's toasted coconut donut--the breakfast of champions), spent the afternoon being fed sloppy joes and chocolate cake by pete's mom and chilling out in the new digs.
the pros were well under way with the hoisting and hauling by the time we arrived and soon, rob and i were saying our last goodbyes to the orange living room and the rest of the condo (they don't close till the end of the month, so they'll continue to empy the cupboards and make way for the new owners) and making our way to the new neighborhood. the house is within walking distance of a big park, waterslides and a velodrome (aka bike racing track)--how many homeowners can say that? we love the floor plan, big windows, screen porch, and backyard. there are beautiful hyacinths blooming outside the kitchen windows right now--a nice spring touch.
betsy and pete are already choosing paint colors and deciding how to make the space their own. like any decades-old home, this one has plenty of quirky features that inspired a good deal of laughter on saturday--the unique wicker fixtures in the bathroom, the beeping ceiling fan that mysteriously builds speed seemingly of its own will, and the medieval-inspired murals in the third bedroom which we will refer to as "prince kyle's room" long after it's painted.
it was really fun to see pete and betsy's dream of a more spacious, family-friendly place of their own come to fruition and to be a part of the big day!