This is life

I'm lazy.  I am often wasteful of resources, or do a subpar job at household tasks, simply to avoid expending too much time and effort.  But today I was sick of dog hair everywhere. Sick of salt and wet boot and paw marks on my floors.  So I meticulously vacuumed.  I moved furniture and even used attachments to get the pesky hairs hiding in corners and crevices.  We ran out of Swiffer wet mop pads, which hardly work anyway, so on my hands and knees I scrubbed the floor.  It was hard not to feel like my mother, using vinegar and water to clean my (faux) wood floor. Using a towel to keep my knees from bruising and to dry the water as I went.

And the entire time I felt eternally grateful.

To have a home that keeps me warm.

To have a dog who loves (and sheds) unconditionally.

To have parents who set examples for how to work hard and play in balanced measure (note: retire before you get old!)

To have in-laws who came and helped us build shelves.

To have a husband who cares so deeply about our family.

To have a nice table to gather friends and family near.

Chairs still forthcoming.

Come, have a toast with us to all life's blessings.

Valentine's Day

We are not very sentimental.  Anniversaries are sacred, because for the last 3 years they have meant Hawaii vacations! But Valentine's Day, we can take and/or leave.  For example, last year on Valentine's day I had a work deadline that lasted til 3am.  If anything we use V-day as an excuse to go to a nice dinner.  This year we wanted to stay home and enjoy our new house so we had a fancy night in. We dressed up and poured some rose and ate fondue!  (Warning!  This is definitely not a vegan blog anymore!)

Why yes, I did make a cheese plate as an appetizer for our fondue dinner.

There are a million cheese fondue recipes on the internet and most of them are essentially the same.  I used a variation on this one: http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2010/11/making-swiss-cheese-fondue-recipe/.

The spread! Fondue, plus broccoli, brussels sprouts, bread, mushrooms,
cauliflower and potatoes for dipping.

For dessert, I made mini molten chocolate cakes from this recipe: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/dining/141nrex.html. I didn't really think it was necessary to make 6 servings for the 2 of us, so Kevin was very helpful in doing the math for halving 1/3 and 3/4 cups. There were spreadsheets involved.  The cakes turned out amazing and I even whipped some cream and added strawberries:

Those cakes!  So molten!

And for breakfast this morning I turned the leftover cauliflower, potatoes, mushrooms and brussels sprouts into a hash with a little cheese and some scrambled eggs.

Repurposed!

I'm off to San Francisco next week, just in time for the heat wave to hit Michigan (Highs above freezing!  And even in the 40s and 50s!).  But look forward to more posts about our new home, and life in the "country".

I believe I promised some French Onion Soup?

Surprise! I didn't forget!

French onion soup is such a perfect winter food - sweet and savory with caramelized onion, bread and melty cheese.  I had actually never had it before I made it for the first time a few months ago. It took a little while to grow on me, but now it is one of my favorites, and a perfect dish for the first week in our new house!

That's right, we officially moved in on Wednesday.  It snowed about 4 inches Tuesday night and on into Wednesday morning as the movers began to carry our stuff down the precarious flight of external stairs up to our apartment.  Things only got crazier when the movers got to our new house:

Ooops!  The moving truck got stuck in our neighbor's
lawn/driveway!

But now we're here, almost entirely unpacked (bless you, Kevin and your type A tendencies!) and cooking delicious meals in our new kitchen.

Chopping onions makes me sad

Don't worry, I'd still be crying even if I wasn't chopping pounds of onions!  It's those darn Olympics! Even in years not marred by human (and animal!) rights abuses (ugh. Russia!), the Olympic Games regularly bring me to tears.  There's something about a person devoting his or her life to a sport, and having the skill to achieve the extraordinary that makes me weepy.  Kevin will attest that I even cried tonight watching a commercial of Bela Karolyi carrying Kerri Strug after her historic vault… Damn you Olympics!!  I'm crying right now just thinking about it.

Anyhow… back to the soup.  It's based on this recipe: http://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/french-onion-soup-with-comte.  I half the recipe, so that it makes one dinner and one set of leftovers, and I cook the onions on medium (or medium-low, given the power of my new stove's burners) so that they brown without burning. 

I enjoy watching a huge pile of onions slowly cook down

and caramelize

To become:

Soup!

Hope you all are enjoying the winter, in whatever form you may have it (polar vortex, California drought, or even 2-inch snow day!)

Happy New Year!

For New Year's Eve Kevin and I went out to a nice dinner, as is our custom since we're not really party people.  We had a leisurely meal and reflected on the past year - all the changes that happened, the high points and the low points (thankfully there were more of the former).

Some of the best things, you already have read about:

We moved to Michigan!

We got a dog!

I got to spend two weeks in Idaho this summer with friends and my whole Nothwehr family!

I ran really really fast! Twice!

Now we're looking forward to 2014.

I love New Year's Resolutions - or "goal setting" as I prefer to call it to avoid negative connotations.  It involves two of my favorite things: making lists (and sublists! And if you're lucky calendar appointments!) and fostering positive intentions. I try to set somewhat ambitious but still achievable goals, but don't get discouraged when some fall by the wayside.

So here's a sampling of what 2014 has in store for me:

1) I have been itching to do a half-ironman since watching the Boise 70.3 about 3 years ago.  In the meantime I tried a sprint triathlon, with mixed results (swimming in open water is scary!)
But I'm biting the bullet and signed up for a half-ironman distance race in Grand Rapids, Michigan this summer: http://mititanium.com.  I've already started having nightmares about the swim, but my pool sessions have been encouraging, and I'm joining the local tri-club, who does weekly open water swims once all the local open water stops being frozen over.

2) Once we move into our new home (closing on Friday!) I'm really looking forward to some homesteading.  We're inheriting some chickens (and a kick-ass coop) and I'm already plotting my veggie garden.  One of my goals is to take classes - there are organic gardening and cheese-making courses at the local community college and beekeeping classes at the botanical gardens.

3) We're going to work on training Canyon more! As in "Canyon! Don't bother those chickens!" or  "Canyon quit peeing in the garden!"

4) Reading 2 books for fun each month.  I'm already at one and a half books in 5 days, so I think this one will be manageable.

And I'll definitely try to blog more!  Including one tomorrow about French onion soup.  Hooray!

Giving Thanks

Growing up we did not have many Thanksgiving traditions. Our family of four lived many many miles from our nearest extended family, and thus the Boise McKinleys tended towards very low key Thanksgivings.  Sometimes we would just have the four of us, other times we'd gather a rag-tag band of other turkey day loners - family friends, high school boyfriends, circus school dropouts.

The one McKinley semi-tradition (as in something that happened once or twice over the years and I adopted it as law) was listening to Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant".  And I've picked up some Donovan traditions as well - including Home Alone after dinner - complete with recitation.

Despite the lack of a strong Thanksgiving tradition, it has become my favorite holiday.  A holiday that revolves around food suits my planning/cooking sensibilities.  I hosted Thanksgiving for the 3 years we lived in San Francisco, and I relished planning the menu, shopping for ingredients, mapping out the exact timing in the week leading up to and the day of, shopping again for the ingredients I forgot the first time, and executing my plan.  Of course there are minor traumas and mishaps thrown in for good measure - like my first turkey, which taught me that I did not know how to properly insert the thermometer (and I almost served a medium-rare bird).  Or the time when I thought self-rising flour was the same as regular flour and I ended up with pancake-like biscuits.  Through successes and failures, I relish the chance to share my hospitality and love of food with the people I care about.

I have so much to be thankful for these days.  We're still settling into our new Michigan lives.  We're in a small-ish apartment, but should be closing on our first home around the end of the year (more on that soon!)  So we spent Thanksgiving in Commerce Township, MI at the Bartmans' house (Kevin's aunt Susie and uncle Greg) along with their son Andrew, daughter Sarah and her husband and seven month old son, and Kevin's parents and brother.  And we did our best Arlo "Kiiid!" in the car on the way there.

I brought my two current favorite "tried and true" Thanksgiving dishes:

Italian mother-in-law stuffing (I stuck to this recipe, except used less butter/oil):

The Bartmans' dog Emma scarfed down on the leftovers when we weren't looking.

Pecan browned-butter tart (I couldn't find golden syrup, so just used regular corn syrup):

There is nothing in the world quite as tasty as browned butter.
(btw, I'm not so vegan these days)

In which we moved to Michigan and got a dog

I planned a couple different versions of this post.  It was supposed to be about our drive across the country and settling into our new home.  One potential post extolled the virtues of Cedar Rapids, IA. (Short version: dining is cheap, people are nice, and I love trains, rivers and trees… luckily all but that first part apply to Ann Arbor as well).  One was about why not to plan a trip to your favorite national parks when a government shutdown is looming.  Case in point:

This is the same face I make in Denver area traffic.

Another was about how I assumed our movers would arrive shortly after us (rather than 10 days later) and neglected to pack ANY kitchen gear.  I bought the bare minimum items (knife, cutting board, soup pot, stirring utensil, baking sheet) at Target and proceeded to make such gems as stir-fry in a soup pot:

It was a pretty blurry stir-fry.

But then we drove 2,500 miles and slept on an air mattress for 2 weeks and I forgot to actually take a break from work.  We had to switch our insurance and go to the DMV and buy me a car (!!):

I think my hybrid's sexy!

Oh and our stuff finally arrived, so I had to unpack my kitchen:

As ridiculous as it sounds… it's smaller than our SF kitchen!
I have 3-4 boxes of gadgets in storage.

And in that time, an entire season flew by!  Sweet fall in Michigan, how beautiful and how fleeting:

Cider and doughnuts… the quintessential rite of passage for fall!

But all hopes at me posting about our trip flew out the window when we met this guy:

The dude knows how to stretch!

Our dog-friend Canyon:

He's pretty sweet!

Now, I promise this won't turn into a blog about my dog. (although he IS the best and the handsomest doggy ever).  And yes, I do plan to continue writing about food and life and whatnot with more frequency!  But for now we're just settling into the new family Sunday paradigm:

Canyon is really into the Sunday NYTimes.  And Kevin's side of the bed.

Movin' on up...

I feel like we haven't talked in forever. You've been busy, I've been busy. No one's at fault, but I'll be the bigger person. I'm here to break the silence.

So here it goes: We're moving!! To Ann Arbor!!  (Yes, again!)

I hate saying "back to Ann Arbor" because it makes it sound like this is not forward movement.  Like we're giving up our city paradise for winter and salted sidewalks and mega-portions of carbs.  Don't get me wrong, we've thoroughly enjoyed our time as city folk - fog, jacked up rent and all, but I'm ready for the next thing.  And our next thing is not here.  We want a house with a yard and a dog and kiddos, sans a crippling, life-altering amount of debt.  Plus family and all.

And that's not all that we've been busy with!  I sense a photo post coming on...

That sister o' mine came to visit!

We went wine tasting!!

And I had tapas with Lisa's torso!

The bridge was closed so we took a ferry to Alameda

We spent "Mark day" visiting a distillary

And touring the USS Hornet

Then Kevin and I went on a house hunting trip to Ann Arbor
(moral of the story: buying a house is HARD WORK y'all!)

We celebrated our impending move at Jolly Pumpkin

We instituted a new Donovan family football mantra

We learned not everyone on campus is involved
 in drunken debauchery!

I found my official work-from-home uniform

Speaking of work, it's pretty lonely 'round these
parts, with my comrades off in Europe

We celebrated our favorite kiddo Justin's very first birthday!

I'm running in the Napa Valley Ragnar this weekend, and I'll probably post about that!  I also am planning to do a photo a day for our last week here of things I'll miss about San Francisco. And once we're settled back in Michigan I'll get back to my regularly scheduled programming!