Monthly Archives: August 2011

Aug29

South of The Border

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Holy weekend, Batman! It’s not to often I say this, but this weekend was actually refreshing. We took long walks as a family on the greenway and area trails, we diddle doddled around town, and went to the always amazing Sunday Evenings in the Park to listen to some free Latin mambo and accoustical jazz.  Without a monstrous house or yard to maintain and upkeep, we actually had free time.  Amazing!

The purpose of today’s post, however, is not to gloat that our weekend was close to perfect.  Instead, I wanted to share  a dish I made the other night that was (almost) as good as our weekend: black beans and egg burritos.  I realize that combination might not initially sound appealing, but, as Aaron is my witness, it was rather stellar.  To give you a little more confidence to make the dish yourself, please know that this is not something I made up on my own.  I saw it in a magazine although by this time I’ve forgotten which one!  Regardless, here it is folks:

Ingredients:

  • 1-2 tbsp. Olive Oil
  • Minced Garlic
  • Sliced Leeks (white part), seperated
  • 2 cans black beans, drained but reserve some of the liquid in a seperate bowl
  • Homemade or jarred salsa.  I used chopped roma tomatoes and red onions with a dash of salt.
  • Taco seasoning
  • 4 egg
  • Mexican blend cheese
  • Fresh cilantro
  • Condiments: flour tortillas, sour cream, fresh salsa, and hot sauce

Directions:

In a heavy bottomed pan, pour 2 tbsp. olive oil in and heat over medium-high heat.  Add your garlic and cook to you smell the aroma. Don’t brown.  Add your leeks and cook until soft and slightly translucent.  Add your beans and taco seasoning (I used about 1 tbsp). Stir ingredients together and cover.  Cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally so mix doesn’t stick to pan.  Add reserve liquid if you need.  Add salsa and stir in, covering for 8 minutes.

Make 4 wells in your mix and crack open eggs in wells.  Cover for 8 more minutes, or until egg whites are cooked but yokes still runny.  Add cheese blend by sprinkling on top.  Cover and reduce heat to low-medium for 3-5 minutes.  Remove from heat and serve with warm flour tortillas, sprinkling fresh cilantro and salsa on top with a dollop of sour cream. Eat and enjoy!

Aug26

Tour of Homes

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As promised, I am back today with a few photos of our new pad.  Of course, you are only going to see the rooms that are in at least a semi-acceptable phase of livability- you’ll just have to stay tuned for the follow-up post that reveals the remainder.   Yesterday marked a week from the first night we stayed in the new place and I am content with how far we’ve come.  With furniture in place, pictures and chotchkies (sp?) hung on the wall, and rugs down it’s starting to feel cozy and comfortable.  Without further ado, here it is!  (Feel free to share your thoughts or suggestions for making this rental more…interesting.)

Living Room

A picture you’ve already seen, but I feel compelled to show regardless :)

 

Kitchen

Kitchen Bar (not that I can enjoy it since I’m pregs, but a nice little filling station for the hubs and our guests)

Dining/Eat-in

Back Porch

Back Patio

 

And that’s all you get for now!  I’ll create another post next week to showcase the bedrooms, bathrooms (exciting! *sarcasm*), front view of the house, etc. Til then my friends, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and get in touch with your creative side.  Cheers!

Aug24

And we’re back!

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Hello, folks. It’s been a while  and it is good to back to blogging! Let’s just say that there has been a lot of chaos, stress, and anxiety over the last 2 1/2 weeks.  Last post I mentioned we sold our house in less than 24 hours.  Well, yesterday we closed and the sale of our home was complete!  Not to say that a lot of hard work was not put in during the waiting period.  Between the desperate hunt for a new home, to packing up all our stuff, moving it into the new place, and trying to get through the inspections of our old house…whoo!  The good news is that we did find a place and are leasing a cute little house that reminds us both a lot of our old homestead in Charleston, South Carolina.

The game plan is to do a post later this week giving a pictorial tour of the new place, but at this point there’s still a lot to organize and put away.  So as to not to deprive you of a complete tour, I’ve decided to feature a project I just did the other day.  It involves…are you ready for this?……a stencil.  Now, I’ve tried to use stencils before and not with much luck.  Maybe it’s the design I chose or just my impatience, but the results were less than stellar.  After stumbling across Cutting Edge Stenicl’s site, however, I was ready to give it another try.  I eyed their collection for what felt like forever until I finally settled on the Casablanca.

I am pleased with my choice, but I still have a hankering to order the Birch Forest stencil.

My stencil arrive merely days after I placed my order, which of course made me happy.  Who else can’t stand waiting for a package to arrive?  Anyhoo, I pulled out the stencil and laid it flat so it could straighten out after having been rolled up while in transit.  Once flat as a pancake, I read the directions included in the package and chose my victim wall.

This bland wall needed exactly the pizazz Casablanca could lend…and so I got to work.  Let’s just say that it wasn’t as easy or as quick a project as I originally anticipated.

 With a little fortitude, however, I managed to get (most) of the wall done.  I finally hit a point where I was just aggravated and ready to call it a day.  Nevertheless, I am pleased with the end result and found myself going back to eye my work every five minutes.

The last step in this project will be to mount our small flat screen in the center of the gold frame.  Maybe if I sweet talk Aaron enough, he’ll do just that tonight!   I’ll be back soon with a feature post about our new digs.  Til then, cheerio!

Aug8

Sold!

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Whew! That was the sound of me taking a deep breath after the whirlwind of events that have taken place over the last several days.  The whole timeline of what I’m about to relay started last October.  We decided that while the house we were in was beautiful and well-built, it was simply too big.  I realize that sounds completely adverse to our modern thinking, but the house was 4,000 square feet with 4 bedrooms, a formal living room, dining room, humongous kitchen, finished basement, two car garage, on a half acre lot.  For a family of three (soon to be four), it’s just too much.   Half my weekends were spent on yard work instead of spending fun time with the family.  Cleaning the place to my specs (note: I can be a little OCD about cleanliness) was enough work to keep someone busy full time.  With Aaron and I working full-time, the time consumption this house was having on our free time was just getting overwhelming.

Let’s backpedal in time to last October.  We contacted the wonderful realtor who helped us purchase the home originally to help us list/sell it.  The house was on the market for three months and we only had one person tour the place.  One!  I made an executive decision to take the property off the market for several reasons: 1) I’m impatient; 2) I wasn’t quite ready to say good-bye to our home; and 3) having your home on the market is stressful and makes you feel like a guest in your own home.

Fast forward to two weeks ago.  Roscoe will be school age next August and I am keen on having him in a Montessori style-learning environment.   After research, I identified a school with amazing scores, curriculum, and reviews.  The catch 22?  It’s in Downtown Greensboro, a full 30-40 drive away from our current location.  That type of commute everyday is not only unfeasible; it also places him outside the school district. This realization was the tipping point that convinced me to sell our home.  This time, however, I was going to try and sell our home myself.

I prepared a flyer, ordered a digital lock box, bought the for sale by owner sign, and paid a service to list the house on MLS.  On Thursday night we placed the for sale sign in the yard.  On Friday, we had a formal offer for full asking price.  I KID YOU NOT!  We sold our home in less than 24 hours. I am still in a state of shock right now. The pressure is now on to find a new place (we’re going the rental route for the short term), pack up, and begin a new adventure in Downtown Greensboro.  Because of the excitement of the next several weeks, I will be a little MIA on this blog.  I will attempt to post updates on our progress, trials and tribulations, etc., but will have to delay any craft projects for the time being. See you all (sporadically) in the next few weeks!

Aug3

Homemade Fig Bars- Yum!

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Last week I gave mention to the ridiculous amount of figs I have ripening in my yard.    Yesterday evening alone I collected at least 3 pounds of them, which means that tonight I’ll be making a second batch of fig preserves.  I am big fan of these delicious little fruits, but having to cook/prepare them every other night to circumvent over ripening is starting to become a little tedious.  To keep myself motivated I just remind myself that I’ll be quite thankful come Christmas when I’ve got  couple dozen jars of homemade preserves to hand out as gifts to family, friends, and co-workers.  Anyhoo, today I’m recapping my effort at making homemade fig bars.

I came across a recipe sometime ago in Ready Made for Homemade Fig Bars.   It met all  my requirements for a feasible recipe: not that many ingredients and not that many steps.  Count me in!  In reality, the process to make the fig bars was tedious and not something
I plan to do again in the near future.  Just in case you want to give it a whirl yourself, I’ve outlined the directions that I modified from Ready Made’s original recipe.   I would recommend doubling the amount of dough you make so you can use all of the fig mixture (note: the amount in recipe is not doubled!).  I had a good bit of fig mix leftover that I used to make spicy fig chutney, FYI.

Ingredients:

  • 3     c.Flour , sifted
  • 1/2  tsp salt
  • 1/2  tsp cinnamon
  • 2/3  c. butter, softened to room temperature
  • 1/2  c. Brown sugar – dark, firmly packed
  •  1/2  c. Brown sugar – light, firmly packed
  • 2  x Egg whites
  • 1  tsp vanilla
  • 3  c. figs, fresh, finely minced
  • 2 Tbps. each of orange and apple juice
  • 2 Tbsp. Sugar
  • 2 Tbsp. Lemon Juice

Directions:

Sift flour with salt and cinnamon.

Cream butter and sugars till very fluffy; beat in egg whites and vanilla. Slowly work in flour; wrap dough and refrigerate 2 to 3 hrs. Meanwhile, prepare filling. Simmer the ingredients together, stirring frequently, 5 to 7 min till thick. (note: I mashed mine with a potato masher since mincing fresh figs is all but impossible).  Cool the mixture, but don’t chill.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Roll out dough, a small portion at a time, 1/4 inch thick and cut into pieces about 2 1/2 inches wide and 3 inches long. Place a level tsp. of fig mix in the center of each and fold dough around filling. Flatten cookies slightly and place seam down 1 inch apart on ungreased baking sheets; bake about 12 min till lightly browned and just hard. Cool on racks.

Aaron and Roscoe loved the cookies so I suppose this effort wasn’t a total waste of time.   They weren’t necessarily my tastes, but I swear that’s all Aaron ate for dinner that night.  I guess everyone’s allowed a cheat night now and again!

Aug2

Beautiful Living

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Whoa- this weekend did me in!  I still feel like I am recuperating from the whirlwind of travel, projects, cooking/canning, and general life that occurred during the last few days.   I have a backlog of projects to share with folks, but I prefer to use today to recap our trip to Asheville, North Carolina for Bele Chere.

If you haven’t heard of or been to this festival before let me give you the low down.   It’s basically a 3-day conglomeration of craft, art, and food vendors coupled with musical performances, street performers, and amazing people watching.  I read that between
300,000-400,000 people visit the festival annually and, despite the heat, there were probably at least that many this year.

Our weekend started with us packing up the VW Westfalia and heading to the mountains.  The VW doesn’t go as fast as our modern cars and it doesn’t have AC.  Lucky for us, 65  mph still generates a hefty breeze that is capable of cooling down the core body temperature.

When we made it to Asheville around 7 pm, we headed on over to Homegrown Café which is adamant about using local, seasonal ingredients.   Just my type of place!  After a delicious and light dinner of fish tacos we headed over to the campsite and were blown away by the views.  Can we say stunning?!

 

We settled in to our site at Campfire Campground and soon called it a day to get some much needed shut eye.  In all honesty, the evening was a bit too warm for my tastes.  I’m the type of person who likes my sleeping arrangements to feature cold temps, the dark, and quiet.  At least I got the dark!  We woke up the next morning and headed on down to Downtown Asheville and Bele Chere.   Since it was a little early, we stopped in to Mayfel’s for some beignets.  Yum!

After our healthy breakfast, we had a full morning of walking around and enjoying the festivities. 

By late afternoon, we were just about exhausted after the festival, visiting French Broad River Park, a flea market, antique stores, and a pit stop at Whole Foods (love that place).
The heat had gotten pretty much unbearable by that point and I realized that no one was going to get a good night’s sleep on such a muggy evening.  Aaron and I made an executive decision to pack ourselves up and head on home to our air conditioned room and comfy
bed.  While it was a great visit and fun time had by all, I can say with certainty we did not regret our decision!  I’ll be back tomorrow with info about my fig shenanigans.  Until then, Cheers!