snaggle tooth!!

snaggle, originally uploaded by thecakewife.

check out the flickr stream for more cheesy grins…

the second tooth came out yesterday, and she pulled it out herself. she says it was upside down in her mouth, and needed to come out. exaggeration, a slight one, but it was definitely ready. i think this is the last tooth for a while, none of the others show the same movement.

zoë opened a few presents from grammie tonight, clothes and shoes with clothes specifically for her birthday day – opening them this weekend means i can get laundry done in time for her actual birthday. they were all a hit, and the little shoe fiend was quite excited to get a couple more pairs.

we’re planning on breaking in some of those new clothes tomorrow, maybe at the park – when the weather is 65 and sunny, you gotta be outdoors as much as possible.

anyway, short update, it’s been one of those weeks, so we’ve not been up to much. next week will see me prepping for her birthday party, and posting birthday pics on thursday or friday, with the party on sunday. maybe a recipe or 2 before then, who knows.

Gran-oh-la-la

so while i’ve not been posting a lot of recipes, there has been a good bit of cooking and baking going on… i discovered gojee.com the other night, and it’s quite handy for using up what you have in your pantry – tonight we had potato and queso fresco tacos, with tomatillo avocado salsa and black beans with a mango relish. both recipes from gojee, and helped me use up some avocados that were getting too ripe, potatoes that were sprouting, and a can of black beans i’ve had for months.

this recipe however, is not from gojee. it’s from melissa clark, new york times food columnist. i’m using her granola recipe as a very bare template, because the possibilities of substitution are endless. the original recipe can be found in her book “in the kitchen with a good appetite,” one of the better cookbooks i own.

this is the second time i’ve made it, and it’s lovely. and it makes a good bit, so i might just use it for christmas presents this year. and for me to make something twice is saying something, as i have previously made mention of my propensity to only try new things. it’s not super expensive to make, and because you can substitute just about all of the ingredients, it can be done for almost any taste. the secret ingredient is olive oil, and a decent amount of salt, making it quite an addictive little treat. she recommends serving it with berries and ricotta, although we’ve been eating it with plain greek yogurt. yum!

Olive Oil Granola

ingredients:

3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

1 1/2 cups chopped raw macadamia nuts

3/4 cup pure maple syrup

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup packed light brown sugar

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

3/4 cup chopped dried apricots

3/4 cup chopped dried dates

directions:

preheat oven to 300F.

in a large bowl, mix up the oats, nuts, maple syrup, olive oil, brown sugar, salt, cinnamon and ginger.

spread over a large baking sheet with a rim ( i use my jelly roll pan at 11×17 inches) and bake for 45 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes. you want it well toasted, and not wet, but still golden brown.

once it’s cooked, transfer to a large bowl or container, and add the fruit, tossing to combine.

enjoy!

there are a lot of other combinations you can do with this, and if you’re a chocolate lover, some mini chips would be divine. if you add in chocolate, decrease the brown sugar a bit, or it will be sickly sweet. here’s some potential other combos, and note that all the fruit should be dry, not fresh:

apricots—cherries—pistachios—pumpkin seeds—cinnamon—cardamom

apricots—dates—walnuts—cinnamon—cardamom

cherries—figs—almonds—coconut flakes (the dry kind)—cinnamon—ginger

blueberries—mangoes—almonds—cinnamon—ginger

cranberries—apricots—walnuts—cinnamon—ginger

 

the toothless wonder!

january 2012, a set on Flickr.

so on thursday of last week, zoë lost her first tooth. well, the first tooth that came out without dental intervention.

so she was at school, crawling under a table, and bumped her head on the underside of the table – it made her mouth snap shut, and her tooth came out. needless to say, she was super super excited when i picked her up from school, and promptly began wiggling the tooth next to it. money is a great motivator to lose teeth, as i know this well myself.

we’ve been to chuck-e-cheese, during my last couple of days before school started… we still had some leftover tokens from the last trip, so it was a cheap afternoon together that yielded us a silver plastic dollar sign ring and a lollipop. the lollipop got dropped on the floor and the ring was missing before we even got home. making memories, right?

school has started for me, and it looks like it’s going to be a wonderful semester. very relaxed – i’m all for that. i’m borrowing a loom from a friend for the semester, and i’m looking forward to getting a head start on christmas presents. priorities, y’all.

so that’s the last 2 weeks so far… i’ll do a quotes roundup in another week or so.

expectations and outlooks

so it’s 2012. as far as i can tell, it’s not a good bit different than 2 days ago. however, the change of the calendar makes us turn to resolutions, forward thinking and expectations – who am i to buck the trend?

2012 is going to be a great year for any number of reasons…

zoë has her first wiggly tooth, one that promises to come out on its own, rather than through dental intervention. in fact, i would be surprised if the tooth lasted the month. she’s overjoyed with the prospect, and keeps showing me her tooth (and drooling all over her clothes in the process).

zoë will be going to kindergarten in the fall. i can’t believe the sweet little meatloaf we brought home just shy of 5 years ago has grown so much, so fast. i can’t imagine being in my mom’s shoes, looking at the little girl i could have sworn was 6 just 10 minutes ago having her own little girl. although mom has always had a much better grasp on time and the fleeting nature of it than i ever have, so maybe the analogy is not exact.

i’m going to be graduating college, at long last. this has been a decade in the making, and while my degree in english literature does not promise me loads of money or even a particularly satisfying job, i’m happy. i’m completing a project that i have returned to off and on for years. what comes after? i don’t know. i’m applying to grad school within a few days, but honestly, i’m done having to do homework. i want to go to a job, do my work, and leave it there. which means i won’t likely be in management anywhere. no loss.

we’re settled here in athens. truly settled. spencer and i have moved so many times, and we always felt a bit disjointed, out of step from our surroundings. that didn’t mean we didn’t make good friends, or attempt to find our place, but living in athens has provided a community, a home for us in a way we’ve not yet experienced. it’s no different than any other smallish, liberal leaning, academic town – we have insufferable hipsters, and snooty townies, and a fairly large homeless population, and a host of other social problems, but we’re home. at least for now. ha. one day, we’ll leave athens, there’s no doubt about that but until that day – this is home.

 

so looking at resolutions, and all the other things we’re supposed to do at the new year, i don’t know that i have any. this year is going to be a good one even if i fail or succeed at every resolution i make. i will try to blog more, although i’m pretty sure i made that resolution in 2011, and we all saw how that played out. thanks for joining me on this journey, and here’s to many more years of my ramblings.

christmas day

christmas day, originally uploaded by thecakewife.

well, the big holiday is done. zoë is in her room, pretending she’s a mountain climber stuck on a mountain top with her stuffed animals as her rescuers, and ever so often she comes in here, bouncing on her blow-up ride on dinosaur.

we opened presents and ate dinner yesterday with spencer’s folks, his sister and her fiancé, and his uncle. it was a lovely, low key family gathering, and as always, the food was excellent. spencer’s parents are fantastic cooks, so we quite enjoyed dinner. zoë got all sorts of fun presents, ranging from cute tights to hello kitty backpacks, craft supplies to fuzzy scarves. all in all, it was a long day, but a good one.

after talking to mom yesterday, i realize there may have been some ambiguity on the gifts of money zoë received. we added it to her piggy bank and took her to target to pick something out for herself. she bought a princess barbie doll and a la-la-loopsy figurine. it was actually really good for her, because we got to discuss what her money would and wouldn’t buy, and why she had to choose things that fit her budget. learning opportunities y’all. ha.

well, i need to go rescue my intrepid mountain climber from the rivers of lava flowing in between her bed and desk, so click the picture to go to the christmas set. all the pictures are up, and because zoë is so wiggly, some of the pictures are a bit blurry. sorry for that.

christmas traditions

every year, for most of my childhood or at least as much as i can remember, we ate scotch eggs on christmas morning. we would excitedly dig our small presents out of our stockings, wolf down scotch eggs and get back to playing with our new presents. if my parents were anything like spencer and i, they were drinking coffee, feeling bleary and wondering how long the present-induced silence would last.

there are few things in my life i can say are childhood traditions – i have our old manger scene and figurines, the birthday girl or boy gets to pick the dinner meal, and we open christmas presents on christmas eve as i did as a child. but scotch eggs bring back a host of memories, all of them as warm and bright as this day. here’s the recipe, in the hopes you can enjoy these as much as we do.

 

Scotch Eggs

ingredients:

one dozen eggs, divided

2 rolls of reduced fat sausage (we use jimmy dean, but 24oz of any breakfast sausage will do)

1 1/2C seasoned bread crumbs, or a mix of plain panko and italian seasoned bread crumbs

directions:

preheat oven to 350ºF.

hard boil 10 of the eggs by placing them in a pot large enough to hold them, cover with 1 inch cold water, add a pinch of salt and bring to a boil on the stovetop. as soon as the eggs boil, turn off the stove, cover pot and set aside for 10-15 minutes. drain pot, run cold water over eggs in a colander, and peel as soon as they’re cool enough to handle.

whisk the other two eggs in a small shallow bowl until well combined. put the bread crumbs in a separate shallow bowl.

each roll of sausage covers 5 eggs. take a piece of sausage between pin pong and golf ball sized, flatten into a pseudo-bowl shape and press hard boiled egg into the middle. wrap sausage around the egg, making sure to completely cover it. roll sausage covered egg in the raw egg, until lightly coated, and then roll in bread crumbs until well coated. put on a cooking spray coated baking tray or 9×13 baking pan. repeat for all ten.

bake eggs for 50-55 minutes, until sausage is cooked through. let cool for about 5 minutes, and enjoy!

a few more pictures

presents, originally uploaded by thecakewife.

just a couple more pictures from yesterday and today.