Christmas Recap

Alex and I had a very nice and quiet Christmas this year. It was the very first time we spent the day all to ourselves. We made a huge turkey dinner the night before and had left overs for almost a week. We decided to only exchange a few presents between the two of us, but we got lots of gifts from our families. My mom sent us a huge sampler from Omaha Steaks.

It included 2 filets, 2 pork chops, 6 hamburgers, 2 sirloin steaks, 4 twice baked potatoes, and a chocolate cake. Each one tasted AMAZING! Not one item was freezer burned or stale and all the meat was probably of the highest quality that I have ever had. It also came with a huge block of dry ice. I filled the kitchen sink and watched the smoke billow out of a good 20 minutes. I was so giddy that you would have thought I was 5 or something. I guess for a moment I was and it was great. The dog was not impressed at all.

My mother-in-law came down for Serbian Christmas which falls on January 7th. From what I understand, Serbian religious holiday's are based on the old Orthodox calendar which fall about 2 weeks after ours. Christmas is the 7th, New Years is the 14th, and I forget the date of Easter. Now I know how Santa delivers all the toys to all the boys and girls around the world. He has a two week delay for all the Orthodox families in Europe to meet his dead line. I guess his night isn't that long after all. Anyway, Mom wanted to cook dinner for Christmas Eve (January 6th) so I turned the kitchen over to her. She made some incredible baked beans, the best cheese pita I have ever had, a cabbage salad, Serbian peppers, and grilled salmon.

Then for dessert we had an assortment of stone fruit (raisins, dates, figs, cranberries, prunes), walnuts, oranges, and chocolate. We barely had room to snack after dinner and we still have left overs.

Of course, Christmas day is not the same without a few presents. We surprised Mom with a few little trinkets before we headed out for a day of shopping at the mall. That's one of the great things about Serbian Christmas... you get to take advantage of ALL the sales and then some.

On Mom's first day here we had a fajita feast complete with freshly made mojitos. I couldn't resist getting a picture of Mom with her extra large drink standing nervously next to the dog. She looks somewhat comfortable here but really she's scared to death. She hid in the bathroom twice when she couldn't find me only to discover that the dog waits outside the bathroom for you to come out. By the end of her stay she felt a little more at ease. I hope by the end, she realized that Davey is completely harmless, regardless of how big he is.

Here is the fajita buffet line. The menu included beef and chicken, sauteed bell peppers and onions, refried beans, shredded cheddar cheese, lettuce, sour cream, Mexican style rice, and Alex's tomato salsa and freshly made guacamole.

Mom loaded up her tortilla and then picked up her fork to eat everything off her plate but was quickly reprimanded for doing so. The fun part of enjoying fajitas is eating with your hands. Never having enjoyed one before, it was quite a delight to watch her try to keep all the good stuff where it belonged. We giggled a bunch and ate until our hearts were content, watched a few episodes of Mad Men, ate some pie, and then called it a night.

As always, it was great to have my mother-in-law come for a visit especially for the holidays. It seems this time all we did was eat and watch movies but it turned out that's exactly the rest and relaxation that we all needed. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and that 2010 will be more amazing than anyone would have ever guessed.

Ugly Bread

I'm not sure what the heck got into me yesterday, but I decided that I was going to make bread from scratch for the very first time ever. Out of all my cookbooks only one had a few recipes that did not require currant berries, orange peel, or freshly grated nutmeg. I followed along as best as I could. It seemed easy enough. The recipe called for some yeast, some water, a tablespoon of sugar and salt, and 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 cups of flour. Not the exact measurement I was looking for given the fact that when I bake, or follow a recipe for that matter, I am as Type A as they come. At least for the first time because how else will I know if I did it right, right? Well, a semi-rational person would probably start with 3 1/2 cups of flour and add more. Nah, not me. I went straight for the 4 1/2 cups. I reasoned that it must truly need all 4.5 cups of flour or else the recipe would have stopped at 3.5. (Oh. Okay. Sure.) What I got in the end was the ugliest bread I have ever seen.

It was impossible to mix, impossible to kneed, and was hardly the light and fluffy dough that I remembered as a kid, but it did expand at least half its size in 2 hours. I tossed it in the oven and presto! 35 minutes later I had one super-dense, lumpy, bread-looking clod. The outside heel wasn't too bad. It tasted like a hot fresh pretzel but that's probably because I used kosher salt and it didn't really mix in all that well. The rest was, well... it was so dense that my jaw ached after chewing a few bites. And I don't think it was cooked all the way through. Needless to say, I tossed it this morning and decided to try again except I used a slightly different recipe and only used 3.5 cups of flour and not an ounce more. I even basted the top with an egg white and water glaze. Attempt #2 turned out to be delightful and fluffy.

Bread try #2 tasted so much better but not quite as good as my Dad's bread. It's a strange thing. I can't tell you exactly how his bread tasted or even really describe it but I know that when I bit into this bread my memory taste buds said, "Good, but not quite right." I decided to drown their little voices out with a nice, steamy bowl of corn chowder.

On another note, I must have ran out of body lotion some time this week. For whatever reason, I take much warmer showers in the winter which over dries out my skin to the point of an irritating discomfort. I dug through all of my secret stashes for something that resembled lotion. Nothing, not even a single drop of body butter left over from the ghosts of Christmas past insight. I wasn't about to use my small, yet expensive bottle of Clinique facial moisturizing gel or my even tinier bottle of Mary Kay Satinhands hand cream to douse the fiery dry skin that was slowly spreading across my body. All I could find was a huge bottle of Clinique's Water Therapy Foot Smoothing Cream that my mother-in-law gave Alex a year ago for his heels. Desperate times call for desperate measures. So I generously lathered it all over myself and now smell like I jumped into a hot tub with my good friends, Burt's Bee's Peppermint Lip Balm and Vick's Vapor-rub. The dog keeps licking the air as he walks behind me. I haven't breathed this deeply in months.

Two Lifetime First's

{Sung out of key and in various octaves while dancing throughout my house causing an unnatural stirred frenzy in my ever-growing puppy}

I GOT STRAIGHT A'S!

I GOT STRAIGHT A'S!

I GOT STRAIGHT A'S!

I GOT STRAIGHT A'S!

I GOT STRAIGHT A'S!

And one of my professors wants me to submit my research paper on Julius Caesar for competition! Plus, with all these A's I've made the Dean's List again. Two lifetime first's in one month! I can barely stand it!

Go Ahead. Call Me a Dead-beat.

• $9,800 spent on books and tuition

• 54 class periods

• 12 books

• 139 chapters read (sorry, I'm not counting the number of pages for you)

• 5 science labs

• 2 map quizzes

• 52 chapter activities

• 4 3-page reflection papers

• 7 8-page research papers

• 1 presentation

• 1 interview with the Department of Education

• 3 tests

• 4 mid-terms (the icky take-home essay kind and 2 of them had to be at least 7 pages long)

• 3 finals

• 12 all-nighters (at least)

• 12 headaches (at least)

• and 16 weeks later...

I can finally sleep in for a month.

I had sensational teachers again this semester. I could tell you all the things that I've learned but then I'm sure you'll be bored to death but I have to hand it to my professors. They have inspired me in great ways. This was by far my most difficult semester because I've never had a work load like this before, and honestly, I hope that it will be a very, very long time before it ever happens again. I'm crossing my fingers that the above list equals a few A's and a B. The 2009 Fall semester is officially over and done with! Only 4 more semesters to go...

All Things Chicago

Last night we were craving pizza. Not any old pizza, but good old fashioned, Chicago-style deep dish pie. We've tried this at home before but this time it was sooo much better. I think we've finally got the recipe down right. We cheat a little. Instead of making the dough from scratch I buy two Pillsbury thin-style pizza dough's. I line the spring form pan with the first dough and then Alex adds grated cheese, caramelized onions and green peppers, and sausage, and some more cheese. Then I put the other dough on top, shape it, cut it, and pinch the two doughs together. Alex adds the sauce and some seasoning. Here's what it looked like before we put it in the oven.

We baked it for about 25 minutes and then let it rest for about 10. Here's what it looked like out of the spring form pan.

And here's what the inside looked like after we had our first piece and were going back for seconds.

It was so tasty and it cost about $15 to make instead of the regular $28 or so that we would have paid to a restaurant.

But all this food got me thinking about the things that I miss about Chicago (other than the pizza) so here is my list of top 5 things that are unique to Chicago.

1. Dad's Cooking:

There is only one word for Dad's cooking: Yummy! Nothing can replace creativity, experience, and the secret ingredient: Love.

2. A fenced in backyard for my pup to run around in:

He was so tiny and wrinkly here. And it just so happens that he and the stick were the same length. He is a good 6 times the size now and maybe next year we'll have saved up enough for the rod-iron fence we'd like to put in our back yard so he can run free again.

3. Forest Preserves:

Chicago is filled with these little havens for rabbits, deer, and mosquitoes. Anna, my ma-in-law 2, says that they are the "lungs of the city". She's probably right. I would have liked to walk down more of the trails that had been made over the years but the mosquitoes were just to thick even when I was covered in an entire can of Deep Woods Off. Maybe next time.

4. Decorated cell phone towers/water towers:

This one from Randhurst is just one of the dozens of painted and pretty water towers scattered across Chicago-land. There's no reason why a water tower (or cell phone tower) now-a-days should be an eye sore or ugly. A good can of paint and a little creativity goes a long way. Plus there are enough struggling artists out there that would love the chance to advertise their talent. Should it matter if it's 20 stories in the sky and can be seen from space? Nah.

5. Blue fire hydrants?:

Yep, that's right. Not only are they blue but I've seen them green and yellow too depending on what village I'm in. Plus, they all don't look like the typical shape of a fire hydrant. I thought they only came in one size, shape, and were all painted the color red. I guess not.