A Month of Fundays: Day 27 – Garden Party or Barbeque

I had visions of making this the last blog post for my fundays and filling it with pictures of a great big garden party in my backyard with lots of homemade Mexican food a la Rick Bayless; including a river of Sangria and a mountain of fresh salsa. All of my friends would be gathered around and we’d talk for hours – but honestly, that was my wedding and this is normal, every day life. Oh, and we had Italian at the wedding.

Then I wrote this post and realized it was the same as the dinner party and the hanging out with friends and also, possibly I have a social eating problem – my really fun, relaxing times tend to deal with food. Because when I’m at home by myself I have things like tea with toast and grapes with cheese as a meal. I deleted that post and will try again.

No fancy garden party – tonight we did a Matt & Mara dinner night – but with BBQ! Actually, that’s not unheard of because Matt makes the best hamburgers on the grill and we ask for them repeatedly. There was quite a crew tonight – Matt & Mara with their baby Xander, and also Chris & I and my mom, and then both Shane and Amy made it as well. Full house of fun times – especially when you toss in the two Labradors – Kayleigh and Riley.

There IS something about eating outside – it makes the food taste better or something. Plus the bunnies and squirrels become much more interested in you when there’s food around. But really, in the end my fun day activity revolves around boring you with how lucky I am some days. I complain about money, and the part-time job-hobby, and the lack of being published and the economy and politics and my country and the world and SO MANY things. I complain a lot, trust me. And then for 31 days I decide to do something fun – not expensive or really that out of the ordinary for me – and discover that I am one lucky girl when I DO stop and think about it. What exactly am I complaining about? Today I got to spend the evening chatting, eating, looking at baby pictures, petting cuddly dogs and playing with a baby and all while spending time with some of my favorite people in the entire world - people whom genuinely care about me. Before I wrote it down I never realized how many of those people I’ve included in my day to day life. SO LUCKY!

The BBQ was fun – a garden party would be cool too – but mostly, tonight, I’m just happy to be me and spend time with those people embracing everything fun I’ve done this month. I’m even lucky to be old, yo – because it takes a while to collect those people into your life and even longer to enjoy having them there.

Picture: What are you serving at the garden party/BBQ? How are you decorating? What music are you playing – yes, that’s not a picture; it’s a question though…feel free to answer.

Song: I’m obvious again: Going with Ricky Nelson’s “Garden Party”; and also leaving you with Nelson’s version – which is more like a memorial for their dad, but still quite good. I think I might have underrated Nelson.

Tomorrow: Wander around a Museum

PS – I know the month is over, but I’m still a few days behind so you’ll get blog posts musing for the next few days to finish up. I did the things, I might as well write about them!

A Month of Fundays: Day 16 – Celebrating My Wedding Anniversary by Taking Time for Tea

Perhaps I should explain the idea of the mini-break in August is to celebrate our wedding anniversary – August 16th. I have a horrible (read: super-fantastic awesome) husband who wants to go somewhere every year, just us, to celebrate. Really, I don’t know how I cope with him sometimes. Last year we did a similar road trip, but headed to The Apostle Islands in Wisconsin, then straight through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to Mackinac Island and finally down to Door County, WI. We met a couple celebrating their 45th anniversary on Mackinac last year and the woman pulled me aside to give me some advice:

Keep a journal, or at least a list, of where you go on your anniversary trips. Write in it each year and then remember to read through it after your entry for that year.

Well, you’ve probably figured out how I feel about journaling by now. Of course, I haven’t actually started said journal because I also have strong feelings about procrastination, but here’s a perfect place to record honeymoon and the first three anniversary mini-breaks. I’ll put them in a journal at some point. Promise.

A List of Trips:
2008 – Honeymoon: Land and sea Disney World trip included 4 nights in the parks and 3 nights aboard a Disney cruise ship in the Bahamas. It was hurricane season, but we lucked out with the hurricane/tropical storm occurring during our land stay and beautiful blue, calm seas during the cruise.

2009 – A long weekend in Chicago by Millennium Park and The Art Institute.

2010 – The road trip I mentioned above through WI and Michigan.

2011 – Another road trip. Well, last year was fun so why not. Also, in the many years Chris has resided in America, he hasn’t seen much of it; mostly stemming from my constant need to travel outside of the US. But since my husband is actually interested in seeing the country he’s chosen to live in, USA travel is on the agenda. Oh, and his passport expired at the end of July. It takes a really long time to get a new one when you don’t reside in the country it’s issued in. A really long time.

So here we are, anniversary mini-break, hiking to a waterfall and lazily wasting time. We began with a two mile hike into Jay Cooke State Park over the swinging bridge, to a waterfall and beyond. I’m not sure what we chatted about, but we walked and talked and enjoyed each other and our surroundings and set precedence. The rest of the mini-break could be coined: “Waterfalls of MN”.

After the day’s morning hike, we decided to go to Grand Marais and poke around with the tourist collective. I don’t know what else to call the meandering tourists who inevitably congregate in Grand Marais during their North Shore trip. You will congregate like the seagulls on the shazam (I don’t know the actual name of the bank, but “shazam” was printed on the ATM receipt) bank – the only building I could see with poky, anti-seagull structures on the roof. It’s unavoidable; you can’t fight it; just give in, drive down Highway 61 to Grand Marais and join your peers. We walked into a bunch of shops, skipped rocks on the lake, perused Drury Lane Bookstore, visited the artist colony – looked at pottery, jewelry and quilts, then debated where to eat lunch: Sven & Ole’s or The Angry Trout. In the end it was too late for lunch and we wound up at Chez Jude for Afternoon Tea.

I would like to blame this on the British man, but I can find tea anywhere; even Grand Marais, MN. If you would like to hear me expound on tea and why I love it so, go here.

While we were sitting on the porch of Chez Jude sipping tea and eating an amazing scone with even more amazing homemade lemon curd, it dawned on me that afternoon tea is an anniversary trip tradition. We’ve made a tradition without realizing it! No seriously, on our honeymoon we had tea at The Grand Floridian in WDW, the next year we had tea at The Drake in Chicago, and last year we had tea at The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island (That’s right, they don’t have cars but they do have afternoon tea).

Apparently I’m a 60-year-old English woman from 1955. Who says reincarnation doesn’t exist?! So yes; thankfully I married Chris who doesn’t mind the occasional tea outing. And also that I have friends like Tera and Megan who love it as much as I do. And also that I have friends like Matt, Mara, Shane and now Anna who willingly partake in tea rituals and the cornucopia of yumminess when we travel.

Back to our anniversary and the afternoon tea at Chez Jude in Grand Marais; well, I feel I’ve used awesome a little too much during the month of funday blogs, but that’s exactly what it was: AWESOME! After the mouthwatering scones came a delightful turkey cranberry concoction on a cibatta roll, followed by a delectable chocolate cake and a luscious lemon cake.

I hope you find time for a nice cuppa today – or a scone, or tiny sandwiches, or even a cup of coffee with a friend or two. We don’t take enough time to sit down and actually hear our friends and family – or be heard, for that matter. Yes, it turns out my fun activity for today is active listening. Apparently you just can’t take the customer service trainer out of me.

Picture: Tea pot, coffee cup, afternoon tea table setting, who you’re sharing this extra bit of time with.

Song: Chris and I had a string quartet at our wedding and I made them play two contemporary songs. Or, I found sheet music for them so they could play two songs during the recessional. We’re going with those today: Enya’s “Wild Child” and U2’s “Beautiful Day”.

Tomorrow: Discovering Waterfalls by Day and Searching Stars by Night

Month of Fundays: Day 3 – Cook or Bake Something YUMMY

At this point you think I’m the most boring person alive, don’t you? Or, I’m working under some dystopian-type propaganda where I tell you work is fun and you believe me and go along doing it; helping society come back from some sort of fall-out, life-as-we-know-it-ending type thing. Seriously, when I get to the point where I tell you mowing the lawn and doing laundry is the fun activity for the day, you should stop reading these. Neither of those things is remotely fun. Ever. No matter what I might say.

But cooking and baking…All types of fun to be had there. No? Maybe you’re just not doing it right?! I have the tiniest kitchen known to man – it’s a galley style, miniscule thing. I get cranky and angry when other people enter the kitchen while I’m creating (read: destroying the cleanliness) yummy masterpieces. This really is my fun activity for the day. And here’s how I roll:

Cooking – Today’s recipe is a potato & leek soup concoction. The recipe comes from my friend Catherine. Catherine is very green and a little hippy-like in a Wiccan sort of way. In other words: perfectly lovely. She and her husband – and their two kids – grow a lot of their own vegetables. They have a green house as well as earth boxes all along their deck. I’m not sure what any of that has to do with me cooking, but usually I come home from their house with an arm full of fresh veg! The local Farmer’s Market is also a good place to get things like leeks and potatoes at a low, low price. Growing your own vegetables and buying local produce are also fun activities…no, really! That’s not just my propaganda speaking.

Potato & Leek Soup
4 to 5 baking potatoes – baked and cubed
1 to 2 bunches of leeks (base this on taste preference or the size of the leeks themselves) – cleaned and sliced
1 to 2 tbsp of sauté liquid (like bacon grease, butter or olive oil)
14 oz of chicken stock (or vegetable stock if you want a vegetarian recipe)
1 can of evaporated milk (a vegetarian recipe where the veg-eaters in question also eat dairy. Boy, are you screwed if you’re lactose intolerant.)
Optional (read: don’t do this step, herbivores): Some pre-cooked meat – such as ham, bacon, or chicken/turkey. I use bacon (hence the bacon grease for the sauté liquid).

NOTE: for every 14 oz of stock, use 1 can of evaporated milk. There’s some (read: oh, my god – so much) starch in this soup, so I tend to always use double the liquid to get the final consistency I’m looking for.

BEFORE PREP:
-Bake the potatoes (I always forget this part and then get angry with myself, because the recipe clearly says “baked and cubed”. Tack on an hour or so if you’ve forgotten to bake the potatoes before you get to the soup making part).

-Clean and slice the leeks. If you’ve never worked with these, they are very dirty and have lots of layers; I promise they are easy to work with. Here’s a video on how to clean leeks.
-Cook the optional meat – only if you are using it though. It’s just a time-waster otherwise.

SOUP MAKING:
Saute leeks until well sweated and slightly browned. I use a small stock pot. Add stock and evaporated milk. Mix well. Add baked and cubed potatoes and optional meat. Mix again. Cook on medium low heat. Stir as needed. Once the potatoes are thoroughly cooked (Yes, I know. They’ve already been baked, so they are cooked thoroughly. Just use your best judgment. It doesn’t take long.) and soup has reached the desired consistency; serve with your favorite carb vehicle (sourdough, biscuits, brown n’ serve rolls, baguette).

PS – once everything has stewed/heated up for a while, take a potato masher to it for smaller pieces and really, just to release more starch. This makes the soup easier to eat; it has an amazing texture your taste buds will love.

…Yes, soup in the summer. I don’t know why, but I always find myself craving a hearty cup of soup or stew when it’s hot out…

Baking – I thought about making cupcakes, but I just did that and scones sound much more appetizing today. Perfect paired with tea or coffee, this is not the recipe I’d use for added fresh fruit. For that, I use another recipe that looks and acts more like the big, triangular scones you find in most American coffee shops. The one below is just a nice, sturdy scone that holds up to clotted cream, jam, marmalade, lemon curd or even, just butter if eaten fresh from the oven.

Basic Tea Scones
Don’t let the name fool you; these are not basic at all. The recipe has been tweaked and tried numerous times. Most scone recipes are similar with the best ones having only a few basic ingredients. Here is the result of many a scone baking. To be fair it is about 75% Harrods scone recipe. It’s not like I went into Harrods and asked them for their recipe – so most likely it came out of a cook book or off that new-fangled internets-thingy. It tastes like the scones I’ve had at Harrods though.

3 cups (15 oz / 470 g) all-purpose flour
2 tbsp baking powder
6 tbsp (3 oz / 90 g) cold unsalted butter (seriously, DO NOT take this out and get it to room temperature) – cut into small pieces
3/4 cup (6 oz / 180 g) granulated sugar
1 cup (8 fl oz / 250 ml) milk

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). In a medium bowl, sift the flour and baking powder together, and then stir until well blended. At this point you should brew a nice of cup of tea. Using your fingers, rub the butter in until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Drink your cuppa tea and then remember you are making something to eat whilst drinking tea. Fists of fury. Then stir the sugar into the butter / flour / baking powder mixture and mix well. Quickly stir in the milk to make a firm dough. Yes, it is too sticky and there’s lots of flour not incorporated into the mixture yet. At this point you should swear because you’ve forgotten to flour a work surface, prepare the baking pan and/or remove the biscuit cutter and rolling pin from the drawer you keep them in. Un-goo your hands with lots of soap and water and do all of the forgotten things. Have another cup of tea to calm your nerves.

Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and knead until smooth. You can make a well and add all of those crumbly bits that didn’t adhere to the big ball of dough at this point. Roll out (I hate to say use a rolling pin, because you can almost pat this out with your hands. If you have a small rolling pin left over from an Easy Bake Oven or something; that would be your best bet.) to a 1 cm thickness (I eye-ball this, so 1 cm is probably more like 3 cm for me) and cut into 2 inch rounds with a pastry/biscuit cutter.

Place the scones 1 inch apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet (Yes, the parchment paper is mocking you. It will roll up onto itself and be cut at an awkward angle no matter what you do. You can win! You will show it who’s boss!), brush with milk and dust with super fine (castor) sugar. Bake in the oven for 14 – 16 minutes, or until lightly golden, remove from oven and let them cool on a wire rack. I use the matching tiny spatula from my Easy Bake Oven set to remove the scones from the pan. Or your hands work too. Makes 12 – 16 scones.

These scones are really versatile. If you must add golden raisins, regular raisins, currants or other dried fruit, go ahead. I also make these in the fall with a can of Libby’s pumpkin added for a rustic flavor.

To eat: Brew another cup of tea and then slice open – putting clotted cream then jam on each half. Or, if you are my husband, slather with butter and lemon curd and smash both halves together, you Crazy British Man.

The point is to have fun baking, cooking. Enjoy your time in the kitchen, put in your earphones and dance around the kitchen while cooking. Creating something yummy to eat is one of those endorphin-infused moments you can be proud of. If you have kids, cook and bake with them. These are the moments I remember from my childhood. Kitchen time with mom was always a good day in my book.

Picture: Look! I took pictures today. You should take a picture of whatever it is you’re making.

Song: Not surprisingly, I tend to listen to music while I’m in the kitchen. Today was a Mary Chapin Carpenter day (also not surprising). I’m going with “Passionate Kisses”.

Tomorrow: Relaxation. Spa Day!

Week 4 – The end is in sight - but really confusing, and may actually be the beginning.

This week I drew (don’t laugh) a blueprint of SuperMug – the big box store my novel mostly takes place in. I even showed it to my husband – the artist – who tried really hard not to laugh at my lame attempt at a straight line. But it helped – my writing, not my budding career as an architect. The visual picture of where and how each character interacts with others and their surroundings spurred me onto another 2000 words in no time flat. Of course I still have about 15,000 words to go in 6 days – but that’s actually really doable. Right? Yes, totally doable.

I noticed during week 3 and this part of week 4 (I’m including the last three days – or week 5 – into this final week stretch) how many ups and downs this action packed week has taken. The words between 25,000 and 40,000 are the most rewarding and hard-to-get words there are...EVER. I can’t wait to hit 40,000 when suddenly the last 10,000 words will slip out of my subconscious and find themselves on my computer screen without me actually doing anything. Fine, that’s never going to happen, but it has to be easier than 30,000 to 40,000 words – it just has to be.

I know it sounds like I’ve jumped off the deep end. I sure have spent a lot of time cyber-stalking high school classmates (see previous blog post for the non-crazy definition of that sentence). I’ve also spent the week reading and watching this season of HIMYM on-line; I washed 6 loads of clothes this week and spent about an hour going through recipes for the infamous Thanksgiving Day breakfast. You see, I’m married to an Englishman who is fairly lukewarm about this American holiday – he’s going to make a pizza with all of the ingredients you find in a traditional mid-western turkey day meal and we’ll choose some random movie marathon to watch (after the national dog show – Hell, you have to have at least one tradition and I choose you John O’Hurley, you and the Irish Wolfhound presenting tomorrow). Every year I get up and make a breakfast – something like scones or waffles or crumpets or french toast – something revolving around bread apparently, and we hide from the rest of the world. But really all I’m going to do all day is tuck away into the bedroom and write. I’m really good at cranking out like 5,000 words on T-day, ignoring all things food, football, balloon and thankful – all for my extremely unthankful novel.

Tomorrow it ends; all the procrastination of November boils down to MY day of writing with abandonment – and for that I AM thankful.

And it’s not too late for you either. I don’t care if you have 4, 083 or 16,000 or 42,000 there is still hope and a novel in each of you. Eat your turkey, visit with your family and then go type like you’ve never typed before…don’t even get me started on Black Friday – I forbid anyone who reads my blog to go shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. Don’t fall for the marketing ploy – you can shop again. Promise.

If you aren’t reading this state side, and you think that my turkey rant was a little bit scary, then you are probably Jeff and somewhere in Australia reading this. On the other side of the world you have one less day to type, so keep writing already! Here’s hoping every NaNoer reading this has pure adrenaline; enough to make it to the writing finish line!

For the rest of you patiently waiting for HP Mondays to start up again, I will try to write something for this Monday. Monday is still November, so I might be desperately trying to get to 50, 000, watching my fingers bleed over my keyboard and screaming any lyrics of Bon Jovi I can think of; in that case you’ll get a Harry Potter blog post on Tuesday. That would be book 4 for those who’ve forgotten. Go, go Goblet of Fire!

Speaking of Harry Potter, one of the things I read this week was a short story/novella by Maureen Johnson called “The Jubilee Express” inside the collection Let It Snow. That little British wizard is just everywhere:

Debbie had to get up and slice me a thick piece of cake before she could answer. And I do mean thick. Harry Potter volume seven thick. I could have knocked out a burglar with this piece of cake. Once I tasted it, though, it seemed just the right size. Debbie didn’t fool around when it came to the butter and sugar.

Here’s hoping your slice of pumpkin pie tomorrow is Harry Potter volume five thick!

Taking Time for Tea

I spent a quarter studying in London as an undergrad. It was a literature and theatre program, and like all study-abroad experiences it changed my life: I fell in love with the art of afternoon tea. Well a lot of other stuff happened too, but for this blog post we’ll stick with the tea.

I had my first afternoon tea with two girls on that trip – Megan and Tera at Harrods (paid for by friends at home – shout out to 415 peeps! – who wanted me to enjoy the experience). Looking back now, it’s hard for me to imagine what I was like before I lived in London – this is why I love travelling, you set out to discover another place, another culture and you end up revealing a little bit more of your own soul.

So, tea is still a pretty big part of who I am and I still enjoy it with my friends Megan and Tera: Apparently unlike Vegas, things you do in London don’t stay in London. Wow, how do you all take me seriously? Yeah, so tea; good stuff in many different forms! You should try it if you haven’t – herbal, black, green, white, rooibos, chai or oolong, there are so many different kinds out there to treat yourself to.

I received a wedding shower gift last year in the form of a tea of the month subscription. Every month I get two boxes of tea in the mail. I decided this would be a great gift for my tea friends, but turned it into tea-and-treats-every-time-we-get-together. Last week I baked some Amish Friendship Bread and packed it up with some summer type teas like White Peony and Pomegranate Oolong.

There’s something about baking or cooking for friends. Finding the right combinations of tea and tea snack goodies is really a lot of fun (even if some of their husbands eat all of the goodies before anyone else can…it just means it was really good bread, right?!). I think the bread came out well – if you’ve never tried the friendship bread, it has a cinnamony coffee cake flavor…but so much better. The starters are out there – and if you don’t have a starter, or you let yours go, there’s plenty of websites with recipes on them. You can also put different stuff in, try different versions and even make muffins instead of bread. I’ve tweaked my recipe a little, but it’s mostly the original recipe I received. Plus, wow does it smell good.

What’s so great about afternoon tea you ask? Well, it takes a good hour and a half to two hours if you do it right. There’s lots of tea, some fun and tiny sandwiches, yummy desserts and scones. Most importantly there is lots of talking and sharing with friends…the best part of afternoon tea by far. Taking time for tea every once in a while is actually like slowing down time to look around and enjoy what life has to offer. It’s both energizing and reflective at the same time.

Like everything else I’ve been reevaluating lately, my extensive knowledge of tea, little tea shops (for some reason I want to say shoppes in reference to tea) and tea sellers makes me think this is something else I can be – and should be – writing about. There’s my next goal/new idea – putting together a tea book. Since this means trying out lots of recipes, as well as different gathering/tea themes – you may be getting a lot of tea related blogs in the near future. Alas, you can’t all try the baked goods to tell me which ones are best, but your input will be greatly appreciated.

Oh, book club themed teas…I might have to start with that!