Leaves, and How They Fall

This was the backyard last year in the Fall.  The colors were really pretty but at this point most of the leaves had already fallen.  For some reason the tree closest to the porch didn't get the memo that it was time for the leaves to turn colors . . . I bet he was texting . . .

See?  All the leaves are on the ground.  Mom gets so sad when this happens.  One of her favorite pass times is to sit on the deck and just look at the trees so when the leaves all fall . . . well let's just say if there was a seasonal leaf-fallage disorder my Mom would have it!

Ah the bird feeder.  We have the special weight sensing bird feeders so that no squirrels can eat the bird feed.  Birds are light enough that when they sit on the feeder they can eat, but when the squirrels try to sit on them, they're too heavy and it closes the holes where the bird feed is. 

Btw, those birds eat like you wouldn't believe!  Dad will fill it up on Sunday and it will be gone by Tuesday morning.  High maintenance little buggars.

Here's the magnolia out front.  I actually took those photos right before Hurricane Sandy was going to hit because I knew once all the wind and the rain was finished we'd have no more leaves left at all.

Here's a little birdie taking a bath during Sandy.  It was just the cutest thing bouncing around on our front steps!

 

And this is our backyard in the Winter.

HA!  Just kidding!  This is our backyard in the SPRING!  Yep folks this picture was taken in April.  Go figure.  Since we didn't get any measurable snow during the winter, though, I was ok with getting snow in the spring.

Ahhh back to leaves again.  Once the snow and the cold went away the leaves just popped out.  It's like they were waiting until the cold weather completely left and once they knew it was safe they made up for lost time.  I barely noticed buds before all the leaves were suddenly there.  Now we just have to wait for summer and everything will be covered and shaded by leaves!

Gardening Start

Alright, it has taken me forever to get a new blog post up, but I have a lot of posts back logged so I'll have lots up this weekend (hopefully).  Here's a quick one to tide everything over to the weekend.

Over the winter we've had a couple new additions to the family of plants that dad doesn't water.  I swear, he buys plants constantly and 80% of them would die if I didn't water them!  I can't tell you how many times I've heard "when was the last time we watered the plants?"  (sigh) I deal with so much. 

First off this is a lovely avocado plant!  I think Dad got this for mom for Christmas?  Or he randomly bought it on a whim?  Who knows, but it's been growing like a weed which is awesome!  I'm not sure if it will grow fruit any time soon (there are no flowers or buds, just leaves) but it's nice to have it growing.  It's a nice change to have plants in the house that aren't those stupid house plants that sit on the top of peoples' shelves and grow more dust than leaves!  But by golly they grow even if you don't water them. 

This little lovely is a lemon tree.  Dad got it for mom for her birthday.  It has been growing really fast as well and has a ton of flowers.  None of us know if it's self-pollinating or if it needs bees to pollinate it, so I've been dragging it out to the porch to hopefully entice the bees to it.  Sadly it's been chilly these past few weekends so I put the little lemon tree out on the back porch and the poor thing got all droopy because it was too cold.  Come on weather, it's MAY!  It's supposed to be WARM!  Sheesh.  I'm not sure if this one is going to produce fruit either (they say it takes three years) but the flowers sure smell nice!
 

And lastly, this is our garden!  Well it's what will be our garden.  Nothing is sprouting yet but these are what I've started the seeds in that we will transplant to the garden.  I've planted zucchini and squash and beans and pumpkins and herbs.  They need to sprout soon or I will be depressed.  Side note:  I'm totally installing a permanent perforated hose in the garden before we put plants in so all I have to do to water is hook the hose up and turn on the water and walk away.  It will get the water right at the base of the plants where it's needed and it will mean that I won't have to stand there for over an hour getting the whole garden!  

Holy Week Cookies!

It has been a busy few weeks!  First Sarah came home for spring break, and we celebrated Mom and my birthdays, and then Rebecca had her spring break, and then it was Palm Sunday and Holy Week and Easter!  Now, for normal people, Holy Week wouldn't entail much other than going to church and fasting a bit, but for people in choirs is entails a lot of singing and piano playing.  A LOT of singing!  Let's see, Mom and Dad were doing Palm Sunday mass on Saturday night so Mom played piano constantly and practiced with Dad who was doing a solo/meditation piece along with all the regular songs.  Then they had a bass practice at the house for all the basses in the choir (and some of their alto wives who tagged along) to practice their parts for Holy Week and Easter.  Then there was the practicing and going to mass to sing the songs.  So there has been a lot of music generated in the house these past two weeks.  Which is just fine I guess.  I do miss singing in a choir.  I'm sitting there listening to all this music (btw Good Friday music is my favorite music of all time) and I miss college when I belonged to a choir and would go to all the Monday night practices for Holy week starting pretty much a month before Easter along with the regular week practices (then there was that one year where we had Holy Week practice, regular practice, AND trip choir practice!).  I haven't found a choir I want to join yet here.  All the choirs I've heard sing boring, unenlightened songs and they're full of old people.  Siiiiiiigh.  Oh well.  I did find myself pulling out the music I used to sing and belting out the soprano parts this week while plunking out the notes on the piano and trying to figure out the flats (seriously there must be a rule where all Holy Week songs are in keys will a million flats!).
So this brings me to the point of my post!  Since I miss singing with my college choir so much, and since I can't justify buying a plane ticket to fly to Manhattan for one Friday and then fly home in time for Easter, I decided to send cookies to the choir instead!
I had to plan the cookies out and figure out what I wanted to make and get the cookie cutters ordered from Amazon (which worked out nicely since I ordered them at the same time as Mom's birthday presents.  What didn't work out so nicely was that packages would come in the mail and I would open them thinking they were cookie cutters and they were actually presents for me!  I closed the box up and told Sarah to tell mom she opened it . . . ).  I mean what type of cookies say "Holy Week"?  It took some brainstorming but I finally came up with what I thought were some good ideas!

First thing I thought of was a cross, but I knew that there was ABSOLUTELY NO WAY I would be able to draw a recognizable Jesus using frosting.  I wouldn't even be able to draw a decent Jesus unless it involved three erasers and many, many sheets of paper.  So I went with a less literal translation but I thought it was still pretty meaningful.  I liked the idea of turning the nail holes into roses because what the nail holes signified was so beautiful.

I'd never piped roses before and after running to Michaels for new frosting tips and trying for an hour to figure out how to pipe roses small enough to fit on the cookies, I wound up just using a star tip and making a swirl and adding a dash of green for a leaf (to make people go "Oh!  It's a flower not just a red swirl!).  I think they looked enough like roses to convey the point though :)

Now, since I was sending these cookies to my old choir I HAD to include a music note cookie (we already had a music note cookie cutter, go figure).  I didn't really want to send just a cookie with black frosting.  Woo Hoo Beth is so talented she can ice a cookie!  Lol so I added a red flower to match the cross cookies.

Now I was excited because I got to try a new technique for these cookies!  I think it's called brushed embroidery?  Anyway, it's where you draw a line of frosting, then take a small brush dipped in water and blotted on a paper towel and brush the frosting down.  It's kinda hard to explain but I'll post pictures of the process so it will make it clearer!


  

But I liked how they turned out.

The final cookie I did was a lily.  When you think Easter you think white lilies but it wasn't Easter just yet so I went with somber colors and still made a lily.

This is a starfish cookie cutter btw.  In case you ever have to make a lily cookie you can use a star fish cookie cutter and it works just as well!

Oh and all this dark icing to match the somber mood of Holy Week?  Yeah it can color your teeth!  I suggest chewing with your molars and brushing your teeth!  (no worries it won't stain your teeth, it will just turn them pretty colors and cause the people around you to amuse themselves at your expense).  I included gum and Wisps in the box to clean off peoples' teeth in case they were worried.

Here are all the cookies together!  Not a bad group of cookies if I do say so myself :)
So I mailed the cookies last Monday and the post office promised me that they would get there on Wednesday so I didn't have to pay for next day shipping.  Well it turns out they didn't get there till FRIDAY when of course everyone was fasting and couldn't eat them.  So I hope they ended up tasting ok and I hope none of them got broken.  It's stressful sending cookies!
Word of advice, the Manhattan post office is pathetic and always send cookies way in advance.  Sigh.  But in case they were a total bust this is what they were supposed to look li

Olive Oil Trails and Travails

Ahhhhh, every time I look at this olive oil topper, I smile :)  First of all it's gorgeous.  Second of all, I got it in Italy.  Specifically in Assisi.  And I LOVED Assisi.  Out of all the towns I visited in Italy Assisi spoke to me.  It was a beautiful, historic, peaceful city and just a really special place.  I recommend going there for anyone who travels to Italy.  So I guess I'm a bit biased about this olive oil topper, but it elicits such good memories! (If I went back I could literally show you the exact place I purchased the topper).

The problem is that I only purchased the topper. They didn't sell empty olive oil bottle to go with the toppers.  So once I got back to the US I had to find a bottle to fit the topper.  But see that cork down at the bottom?  Yeah apparently it doesn't fit every bottle!

And apparently they don't sell that many plain olive oil bottles either.  Actually they don't really sell ANY olive oil bottles, lain or not.  This is one of the bottles we tried (we tried a few others but mom knocked those off the counter and they broke . . . ).  Isn't it gorgeous!?  I'll answer that for you.  No, it's NOT gorgeous.  It's pretty hideous actually.  But at least it worked.


 

This is actually the topper that came with the bottle.  I think my first thought when I saw this topper was "Seriously?!  What were they THINKING?! Whose kitchen does that even MATCH?!" Can you even guess what that is?

It's a peach.  A weird, cumbersome peach.  Because every time I see a peach I immediately think olive oil . . . not.

These were some of the other oil toppers from the broken bottles.  They weren't the same size as the cork one that's for sure.

Medium Well had the idea to use a balsamic vinegar bottle and that worked for a while, but the topper kept falling out.  Then I had the idea, a wine bottle!  Wine bottles use corks so the cork should fit.  Wine bottles are dark so they don't let as much sunlight in (you're supposed to keep your olive oil in a dark container but I don't think that matters for me since the quality of my olive oil isn't that spectacular . . . I mean come on I get it from the grocery store!).  And wine bottles are big and hold a lot of olive oil so I don't have to refill the bottle that often.  It pretty much was a match made in heaven and has worked perfectly :)
So if you ever find yourself with an olive oil topper from Italy and no bottle to go with it, take one for the team and drink a bottle of wine, wash the bottle out (preferably after the effects of consuming the bottle of wine have worn off), let it dry, and then fill it with olive oil, add the topper, and voila!  Perfection!

Risotto, It's What's For Dinner

I love risotto!  It's yummy and you can honestly put ANYTHING in it.  Mushrooms, asparagus, carrots, peas, cauliflower, broccoli, ham, chicken, mozzarella, basil, rosemary, etc etc etc
I'll show you the base that I make and the vegetables that I added, but honestly you can change up what you add to it.

I start by prepping the vegetables that I'm going to add so they can cook while I'm making the risotto.  Here I'm doing a risotto primavera.  So I'm roasting carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower.

For every risotto I make I always add onions.  I make them in the same pan that I'm going to use to make the risotto so I only make one dish dirty AND all the flavor from the onions cooking stays in the pan.

Speaking of pans.  This is our new risotto pan!  I used to make it in a big pot but then I saw this Essential Pan by All Clad from Williams Sonoma.

It's a massive pan but it's a great size for cooking one pot meals.  More surface area too.

And it's deep so nothing sloshes over the sides.  Btw, did you know that All Clad pots and pans are all made in the USA?  I'm always looking for products made in the USA and these pots are some of my favorites.  But they're also expensive so I've been getting my parents one or two for each Christmas, birthday, or mother's/father's day for a year or so.

 Ok, back to cooking.  Saute the onions until soft in olive oil.

Then add a package of mushrooms once the onions are semi soft (mushrooms take less time to cook than onions do).

While you're waiting for the mushrooms and onions to cook, put 5-6 cups of chicken broth on a pot on the stove and start heating it.

Aw, the mushrooms and onions are now soft.   Take them out of the pan and put them in a bowl over to the side.

Now, in the same pan, melt two tbs of butter.

This is arborio rice.  This is a short grain, starchy rice and it's pretty much the only rice you can use for risotto.  It's sold at pretty much every grocery store though so no worries.

Add 1-1/2 cups of arborio rice to the melted butter and stir till all the rice is coated in butter.

Then add 3/4 cup of white wine.  Mix that in (it will absorb pretty fast).  Then add one cup of the hot chicken stock.  This will take longer to mix in.  

Stir until you can run your spoon/spatula through the risotto and it holds a line for a second (one mississippi) pictured above.  Then add another cup of the warm chicken broth and stir until you can run your spatula through and it holds a line, then add ANOTHER cup of warm chicken broth etc.  Keep adding the chicken broth and stirring until all 5 or 6 cups of broth are gone.  I like my risotto creamy not al dente so I add 6 cups of broth.  If you like al dente things you only need to add 5 cups of broth.

 Ah, look at the mess I have to clean up.  Joy.  Not.

By now the roasted vegetables are probably done (roasted on 450 for about 20-25 minutes) so take them out.  Here they are next to the bowl of mushrooms and onions from earlier.

Once all the chicken broth in incorporated you can add another 3/4 cup of white wine.  This is just to taste, so if you don't like wine you can leave it out.  But I like wine.  Yummy!

This is what it will look like when all the liquid has been added.  It looks a lot bigger than it did to begin with!

Here's a really blurry picture of the rice granules.  The one on the left is the uncooked rice and the on the right is the cooked rice.  It's plumped up and it's let off all it's starch.


 

Now you can leave the rice the way it is or you can add cheese to it.  I like to add a cup of Parmesan cheese and 4oz of goat cheese.  The parmesan cheese just melts right in and adds a little saltiness so I'd suggest adding that no matter what.  The goat cheese is more a personal taste preference.  It makes it creamier but it also makes it tangier.  It pairs nicely with the white wine and I love goat cheese (P.S. warm goat cheese on a salad is delicious!) so I add it.


  

Once all the cheese is mixed in, add the roasted vegetables and the onions and mushrooms.

 Look at that yummy scrumptiousness!

Yummy, yummy, yummy!  Enjoy!