A Little of This, A Little of That

I have several ideas for blog posts floating around in my head and none of them are really long enough or fully developed enough to stand alone, so I thought I would combine them into one post today.  I apologize in advance if this post is a little all over the place--hopefully you will be able to follow me!

First, a little weekend recap:

Friday:

• Celebrated J finishing law school with his law school friends over lunch at Mi Ranchito
• Continued celebrating after I got off work first at Mi Ranchito (they were still there!) and then at a friend's house and finally at a bar in Soulard that had a tab for 2Ls and 3Ls (second year and third year law students) courtesy of the Student Bar Association
• Topped off the night with some late night breakfast at Uncle Bill's Pancake House

Saturday:

• Got woken up early by this character, never mind we got home at 2:00 am on Saturday mornings
• Since we were up, we watched some TV we had tivo'ed from Friday night before heading to the Farmer's Market in Ferguson
• While we were there, we bought three heads of Napa Cabbage and a dozen farm fresh, free range brown eggs--all for $6.00!
• Since it was still early (darn cat) we decided to check out the Tower Grove Farmer's Market as well.  There we bought a bunch of gorgeous red radishes for salads this week and checked out their other wares.
• We spent the rest of the afternoon lounging around watching TV and napping before watching The Kentucky Derby
• My pick didn't win but I think Animal Kingdom has great promise as a potential Triple Crown winner!
• We made lemon-green garlic spaghetti for dinner with some of the green garlic we got last week at the Farmer's Market

Sunday:

• Again got woken up early by Woods (are you sensing a theme here?) 
• Made bacon and eggs (fresh from the Farmer's Market) for breakfast before power cleaning the apartment
• Wiped down all counters, cabinets and baseboards and swept and Swiffer-ed the floors which I can now cross off my to do list!
• Scrubbed the shower in the bathroom--another to do list item complete!
• Rewarded ourselves for cleaning the apartment by going out to lunch at a local Vietnamese restaurant, Pho Grand
• Started watching a new-to-us show, Weeds, on Netflix Instant.  Eight episodes later and we are hooked which is good considering we are almost caught up with Mad Men and need a new show to watch!
• Made turkey burgers (topped with avocado and whole cranberry sauce) and an oil and vinegar slaw using some of our radishes and Napa cabbage for dinner
• Talked to my mom and learned she got a brand new Smart car convertible for Mother's Day!
• Watched the Detroit Red Wings game with some friends before playing a round of Scattergories

My mom (and brother Alec) with her new Smart car!

Next, a little note to my mom.  I've read so many beautiful and touching letters to moms this weekend and while I talked to her yesterday, I thought I would write a more in-depth note to her here as well (since I am better at expressing myself on paper err computer and I know she reads the blog)!

Mom, there are hardly words to describe how thankful and blessed I am to have you in my life.  I could write volumes and volumes but for now, here are a few things I am especially thankful for today:

1. For giving up your career to be at home every day with us.
2. For making me a big sister.  One of my most cherished roles in life is that of a sister.  Thank you for making this possible!
3. For always making family a priority, even family who lived far away.  I have wonderful relationships with my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins because of your dedication to putting family first.
4. For Sunday night dinners and late night conversations.
5. For rides in the car, sometimes with a purpose and sometimes without one, where I could always share my thoughts, dreams, successes and failures with you.
6. For making me go to Church each Sunday even when I didn't want to.
7. For driving me to the barn multiple times a week for my riding lessons even if it meant you were in the car most of the day between all of us kids' activities.
8. For taking such good care of Pal for me when I was in college and for being there when he died and I couldn't.
9. For giving me the freedom to move back to the Midwest to be with J and for driving my car across country with me--twice!
10. For being such an integral part of the wedding planning process and for your enthusiasm when I would call daily to update you on wedding planning!
11. For giving me my dream wedding and for all the work you did to make it run smoothly.  It was the best day of my life and I couldn't have done it without you.
12. For giving me your looks and height--I didn't always like being 5'2" growing up but I love that we look so much alike!
13. For walks with the dogs, sushi lunches, reading books by the pool, getting our nails done together and all the things that make our relationship special.

My mom and me at our wedding last June

I only hope one day I can be half the mom you have been to me!

Our song, The Best Day by Taylor Swift


I'm five years old and it's getting cold
I've got my big coat on.
I hear your laugh and look up smiling at you
I run and run.
Past the pumpkin patch and the tractor rides
Look now the sky is gold.
I hug your legs and fall asleep on the way home.

I don't know why all the trees change in the fall .
I know you're not scared of anything at all.
Don't know if Snow White's house is near or far away
But I know I had the best day with you today.

I'm thirteen now and don't know how my friends could be so mean .
I come home crying and you hold me tight and grab the keys.
And we drive and drive until we found a town far enough away.
And we talk and window shop till I forgot all their names.

I don't know who I'm gonna talk to now at school .
But I know I'm laughing on the car ride home with you.
Don't know how long it's gonna take to feel okay
But I know I had the best day with you today.

I have an excellent father .
His strength is making me stronger.
God smiles on my little brother.
Inside and out he's better than I am.

I grew up in a pretty house and I had space to run
And I had the best days with you.

There is a video I found from back when I was three .
You set up a paint set in the kitchen and you're talking to me.
It's the age of princesses and pirate ships and the seven dwarfs.
Daddy's smart and you're the prettiest lady in the whole wide world.

Now I know why all the trees change in the fall .
I know you were on my side even when I was wrong.
And I love you for giving me your eyes.
Staying back and watching me shine and I didn't know if you knew.
So I'm taking this chance to say that I had the best day with you today.


Finally, some Menu Monday goodness!  All of this week's recipes have been taken from our new Food Network cookbook.  Here's what is on our menu this week:

Monday: Vegetable Stir-fry with Bacon
Tuesday: Garlic and Greens Spaghetti--photos and recipe to follow!
Wednesday: Chicken with Apple, Onion and Cider Sauce
Thursday: Udon Noodles with Tofu and Asian Greens--photos and recipe to follow!

How was your weekend, friends? Did you watch the Kentucky Derby? Have you discovered any new shows we should be watching? What's on your menu this week?  Tell me everything--I'm dying to know what you've been up to!

Last Final Ever

Today marks J's last final ever.  After 20 years of formal education, he is finally finished!  All that stands between him and his diploma is graduation itself which is two weeks from today.

We are celebrating today by getting Mexican food (and drinks for the grads--I have to go back to work) in a little bit.

Congratulations J!  You have worked very hard to get to where you are today, including the many hours you spent away from me and our family--hours when I know you would have much rather been with us--to get to where you are today.  You should be very proud of yourself and your accomplishment--I know I am.  I love you and can't wait for this next chapter in our lives to start!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Organize: The Kitchen Pantry

Over a year ago, our kitchen pantry looked like this.

At the time I bought a variety of baskets from the Dollar store without much consideration of how they would fit and what function they would serve inside our pantry.  Most of them never worked quite right and because of this, it didn't take long before our pantry was a disaster area again.  I could never find ingredients I could have sworn we had and every time we open it, I prayed something wouldn't fall on my head.  Nice, right?  This weekend I decided to do something about it.

That's really how our pantry looks.  I'm a little embarrassed to show this on the blog!

I began by taking absolutely everything out of the pantry, tossing expired products into the trash can as I went.  We had more expired items in there than I realized, enough to fill one recycling bin and two trash cans!  Then I began assessing what items we had left.  Most of them were dry goods such as cake flour, lentils, pinto beans, and so forth.  That's when inspiration struck me.  I remembered seeing Jenn use labeled mason jars in one of her posts on her blog a home in the making and decided that was the route for me too! 

I had a few small mason jars on hand because my grandma often uses them to send me home with food when we come to visit so I decided to experiment with some of my smaller items first.  I poured the green split peas and whole grain wild rice into the two jars (I had a little under half of a small bag of each) and labeled them with some labels I had lying around the house leftover from our wedding.  For the whole grain rice, I also wrote down the preparation instructions since I was throwing the bag that had the original instructions away.  Inspired and excited by how it looked, I quickly counted up how many additional jars I would need and hopped in the car.  $11.00 dollars and a trip to the grocery store later, I had 16 large mouth Mason jars ready and waiting to be filled and labeled. 

Then I remembered seeing large rectangular plastic jars on clearance at Target earlier that week.  I often troll the clearance sections of Target just to see what's available.  At the time I had thought, these would be perfect for pastas like spaghetti and cereals.  At 4.99 a jar (down from 9.99) they were a good deal but at the time I wasn't sure I needed them.  After cleaning out the pantry, I realized I could in fact use them.  After the grocery store, I made a beeline for Target and hoped that the jars were still there.  Lucky for me, they were!  I grabbed three of the taller ones and one smaller one and headed back to the house to put everything back together.

Once I had filled and labeled everything (I also put expiration dates on the labels where applicable so we wouldn't be consuming spoiled or stale food) I surveyed the land before putting things back in its place.  Three things I knew I wanted to accomplish were finding a better place for our kitchen drying towels since many of them ended up on the floor or stuffed behind things never to be found again, getting our KitchenAid stand mixer off of the counter and making our staple ingredients (rices, beans and other dry goods as well as our oils and vinegars) more visible.  Our poor stand mixer had taken quite the beating as I was constantly wiping flour and other sticky substances off of it since it was directly in front of one of our main food prep areas.  I also discovered in the process of cleaning everything out that we had two honey bears of honey and three rice wine vinegars (one was expired and was immediately thrown out).  This can be attributed to the fact that I could never find anything and when I thought we were out of something, really I just couldn't find it in the mess of our pantry.

To accomplish this, I decided to move some of our lesser used kitchen items like J's coffee roaster and coffee supplies, our blender and our fondue pot off of our microwave cart and put them in the pantry.  This freed up space for the stand mixer as well as all of the mason jars that were filled with non-baking related items and the cereal/pasta bins and still left room for bread.  Bonus!

Woods inspects my progress

Next I grabbed one of the green plastic bins from before (one of three that made it back into the cupboard) and placed all of our kitchen towels (the ones that were clean anyway) in them and placed them in the bottom of the pantry.  I also placed our lunch boxes and another green plastic bin down there and filled it with the leftover dry goods that wouldn't fit in the jars.  Eventually as we use up what is in the jars, I can refill with these bags and get rid of them too.

The burlap bag corrals some paper bags for art projects, groceries, etc.

Then I started to work my way up the shelves.  The next shelf now stores J's coffee roaster and other coffee paraphernalia as well as our rice cooker and some of our cookbooks.  I stacked the cookbooks this way for some visual interest and to make it easier to find the one I'm looking for.  Who says a kitchen pantry can't be pretty as well as functional!

The next shelf holds all of our oils and vinegars which I tried to group together matching like with like (all the oils together, all the vinegars together, and so forth).  It also houses the base to our blender and the six Mason jars that are related to baking (cake flour, whole wheat flour, chocolate chips, coconut flakes, etc.).

As you can see, the shelf after that holds the rest of the cookbooks and some other pantry items.

The yellow bin holds some more baking related materials such as vanilla extract, baking soda, baking powder and food coloring.

The final shelf holds some bigger pantry items as well as our fondue pot.

Here's a look at the whole pantry.

Much better right? 

After a few days I still love the new organization and have (surprise, surprise) been working harder to put things back in their place after I use them!  Seeing everything clean and organized has definitely made me want to reorganize other areas of our house which is good because I have quite the list to get through in the next two weeks!

Have you done any major cleaning or reorganizing lately?  Got any tips or before and afters to share?  I'd love to hear about it!

Derby Horses

Today I am over at Jennifer's lovely blog blue-eyed belle talking about one of my favorite subjects, horses!

Image via

I share a bit of history about the Derby and the star of the Derby, the Thoroughbred, in addition to my prediction for who is going to win on Saturday.  Click here to check it out!  (If you place a bet on my pick and lose, my apologies.  I never claimed to be an expert!) 

Coincidentally, today would have been my horse Pal's 26th birthday--how's that for timing?!  I've blogged about Pal before and the timing of Woods' arrival into our lives.  Pal was part Thoroughbred himself--he was a registered Quarter Horse but had a great-grand sire (father) who was a Thoroughbred, which made him what is called an Appendix or Running Quarter Horse.  This is where he got some of his height (average height for a Quarter Horse is 15 hands--Pal was almost 17 hands tall!).  His height and build led many to believe he was a Dutch warmblood which always made me laugh since that breed is far more fancy and expensive than my little ole American Quarter Horse. 

He looks two-toned here because he had just gotten a trace clip for the winter!

Are you planning on watching The Kentucky Derby this weekend?  Care to make any predictions yourself?  I'm all ears!

Recipe: French Onion Risotto

We are big fans of risotto, as is evidenced by the number of risotto recipes we have shared on the blog, so it should come as no surprise that the first recipe we wrote our own recipe it was with risotto.

Together we created the following recipe based on the classic French Onion soup.  It is delicious on its own or with a simple salad or served as part of a meal along with a protein such as steak.  The melted cheese on top is a must as it adds a creamy finish to the meal!

French Onion Risotto

Ingredients:
1 yellow onion, sliced
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup of red wine
1 cup of arborio rice
3 cups beef stock
1 cup water
Slices of Swiss cheese--Gruyere would also work here but Swiss was what we had on hand!


Kitchen Supplies:
Medium stockpot
Large 4 cup measuring bowl
Wooden spoon
Ramekins or another ovenproof bowl for melting the cheese under the broiler
Oven mitts

Melt butter in stockpot over medium heat and then add onion.  Allow to soften and caramelize until the onions become golden brown, about 15-20 minutes.  Add rice, stirring constantly for 1 minute or until the edges become semi-translucent.  Add wine, again stirring constantly until it reduces down by half, about 2 minutes.  Add 1 cup of the stock-water mixture, stirring--you guessed it--constantly.  Once it is almost completely absorbed, add 1/2 cup of stock-water mixture at a time over the course of 25 minutes, allowing it to reduce each time before adding the additional mixture.

 Ladle into soup bowls and top with three slices of Swiss.  Turn broiler on high and place bowls under the broiler allowing the cheese to melt and bubble.  Remove carefully and serve.

Serves: 4

This recipe was truly a team effort and I love that we came up with this recipe together!  Not only that, this meal means I can cross another item off my 130 Before I'm Thirty list:

27. Write my own recipe for one dish 

And the best part, at least for us, is that we have enough leftovers to eat it again for lunch today!  I will be pairing it with some fresh greens from our Farmer's Market trip and perhaps a small piece of blackberry pie for dessert.  Yum yum!

 P.S. Today marks two years since we adopted Woods.  Happy Gotcha Day Bubba!

Weekend Review and Some To-Do's

As I alluded to in this post, we had a very busy yet productive weekend.  Here's how it played out:

Friday

• Bought two new pairs of pants (jeans and khakis) at Old Navy during their BOGO half off sale
• Made ham and bean soup with leftover hot ham and this jalapeno cornbread, substituting smoked gouda for cheddar
• Had JY over for drinks and conversation.  He brought some delicious chocolate whoopie pies which we consumed quickly!

Saturday

• Woke up early and went to the first Ferguson Farmer's Market where we bought garlic greens, kale, andouille sausage and a bag of gorgeous mixed greens!
• Re-organized our kitchen pantry--details and photos to follow!
• Took a nap
• Made kale chips in the oven which were delicious and quickly consumed with some cold Schlafly beers (Kolsch for me, APA for J)
• Made lemon-garlic green risotto for dinner with fresh lemons from my parents' backyard and garlic greens from the Farmer's Market

Sunday

• Got up early again and finished season 3 of Mad Men--only one more season and we are all caught up!
• Meal planned and grocery shopped for the week
• Went to church
• Took a nap--are you noticing a theme here?  I can't seem to sleep in past 6:30 or 7:00 on the weekends which I make up for by taking naps in the afternoon!
• Saw the movie Prom with my Little
• Came home to J making a roux for our andouille sausage and shrimp gumbo
• Two and a half hours later, after lots of chopping and stirring (and dishes), we finally sat down for gumbo!
• Ate happily and went to bed

J's law school graduation is a few weeks away and as such we will have lots of family in town: my parents and grandparents, J's parents, uncle, and more--a total of 12 people! His graduation will take place on the morning of Friday, May 20th and as such, most if not all of our guests will be in town starting Thursday afternoon (Wednesday afternoon for J's mom and my mom!).

Since many of our family members have not seen our apartment, we are going to have an open house with drinks and appetizers on Thursday night.  This also means we have a lot of work to do around the house to get it in tip-top shape for our guests in addition to shopping and preparing for the open house itself.  To keep myself accountable (and sane), I thought I'd create and share a to do list of projects to complete before our guests arrive.

Clean out kitchen pantry
Clean out and wipe down the refrigerator
Clean and pare down closets--two in the hallway and one in the office/guest room: one closet down, two to go!
Reupholster our dining room chairs with fabric I've had since January!
Reorganize bookshelves and dining room hutch
Clean all surfaces including baseboards: spot cleaning of apartment needed week of graduation
Wash slipcover on couch
Plan menu: Taste of St. Louis theme
Set up bar
Shop for said menu and bar--my dear friend Ashlee has said she will help with this!

Whew!  I'm tired already.  I think many naps may be in my future!

Image via

How was your weekend, friends?  Any major to do's on your plate this month?  Do tell!

Weekend Teasers and Menu Monday

We had another busy but productive weekend around here--I'm beginning to wonder if there is any other kind!  I'll be posting a full recap post tomorrow but for now I thought I'd share a few teaser photos and our menu for the week.

First, the photos...

Saturday project

Our wares from the Farmer's Market

Lemon and garlic greens risotto

Now, the menu...

Monday: Leftover Sausage and Shrimp Gumbo with local andouille sausage courtesy of the Farmer's Market--recipe and photos to follow!
Fresh Blackberry Pie 

Tuesday: French Onion Risotto with fresh salad greens from the Farmer's Market--if our original recipe works, we will be posting the photos and recipe as well!

Wednesday: Vegetable Fried Rice with Bacon--recipe and photos to follow!

Thursday: In honor of Cinco De Mayo, Steak Fajitas, Black Bean Salad and dos cervezas (beer)


What's on your menu this week?