A gift

One of the husband's birthday gifts (way back in November) was a framed world map. Of course, the framing didn't happen until after his birthday and it took us some time to hang it in the den. Naturally it then took me awhile to actually take some pictures of the map! But I finally did and here they are!

I ordered the map from National Geographic and had it framed at Michael's.

It was framed without glass and with a foam board backing so we can add pins to it. We decided to pin places we've lived together and places we've visited together. We think it will be a fun way to keep track of our life together!

The map fits the space above our little bar area quite well. (The Roomba's home is under the bar area)

Cooking together

We often 'celebrate' things by cooking together. Early in our first year of marriage we agreed to keep the gifts we give each other to a minimum. While giving and receiving gifts is fun, we usually stick to exchanging cards and cooking a meal together. Cooking can be a great way to spend time together or it can be terrible. Just in time for Valentine's Day, A Couple Cooks wrote a post with helpful tips on cooking together. Several of the tips stood out to me as challenges we've faced and moved past (most of the time).

I am notoriously over-ambitious in the meal-planning area, especially when we're planning a "fancier" meal than our everyday stuff. Often this would result in a scenario where dinner would be later than I wanted and I would be hungry and really stressed. This is not a fun way to cook. Over the last couple of years I've working on keeping myself in check during the planning process.

Part of this process has been deciding to slow down and allow myself more time to cook. Feeling rushed (usually by my need to get things done 'on time') is unnecessarily stress-inducing. This change alone has made the times I cook so much more enjoyable.

While we aren't perfect at the meal planning and cooking thing, we have really gotten to a place where it is far more enjoyable - allowing us to really enjoy the gift of cooking together. Now if only I could get the husband to clean as we cook (best-ever advice from my mom and echoed in the blog post I mentioned above).

With that in mind we decided to make lobster ravioli for our Valentine's celebration. The husband is great at making pasta so we knew what to expect with that part of the meal. I also opted for a relatively simple dessert that I could prep ahead of time.

We knew that the husband would be working on Friday and that we wouldn't get started on pasta making until he got home. This meant that we would eat later. I made sure that we had a snack on hand to compensate for our later dinner time.

We did not have a side to the meal and kept it simple with just the lobster ravioli. Four raviolis were plenty of food and included some veggies! :) We modified this recipe for the lobster filling and it turned out really well. We did not use lentils or crab meat. The husband insists on non-pasteurized crab meat and it was really expensive so we compensated with more lobster (it was on sale)!

My grandmother was awesome and tracked down a recipe for the sauce. She had lobster ravioli at Violino Ristorante Italiano and loved the sauce. She called the restaurant and the owner/chef kindly provided her the recipe for the sauce!

Lemon Sauce a la Violino Risterante

Pour 1 glass (I would imagine that to be about 1 cup) white wine into sauce pan. Add a pinch or so Rosemary. Reduce slightly. Zest 1 lemon, keeping for later, and add juice from lemon to pan. Add 1/2 cup of heavy cream and 1/4 cup of butter. Salt and Pepper to taste. Pour sauce over dish and sprinkle with lemon zest and grated Parmigiano Reggiano.

We completed the meal with Milk Chocolate Souffles with Nougat Whip. While the recipe had really great reviews it wasn't my favorite. The nougat whip was pretty good but I didn't think the souffle had enough flavor. I prefer the Cooking Light souffles I made a few years ago (and you can freeze those). Oh well!

We really enjoyed our dinner and the time cooking together. It made for the perfect celebration!

The other stuff

I tend to blog mostly about what we're doing around our house but we also do other, non-home related stuff. For instance, in the last month I went to the Lady Gaga concert (fun) and we headed to the zoo for a Flock event.

Two of our friends are members of Flock, which is the Houston Zoo's young supporters group. The group hosts social events at the zoo for members and guests throughout the year. Flock held a Mardi Gras themed brunch a few weekends ago and we had a blast. It included a yummy buffet and interaction with several animals. The zoo keepers walked around with an iguana and a snake and tried to do the same with a cute little porcupine but she was scared of the bass from the DJ. There was also an educational piece with one of the zoo's cheetahs. The zookeepers brought out one of the cheetahs, talked about their program and involvement with international programs and then answered questions about the cheetahs. It was really neat! Unfortunately it was rainy that day so we opted to leave the camera at home. All of the pictures below are with my iphone!

After stuffing ourselves and enjoying the talk, we walked around the zoo. It was our first visit and it was a lot of fun. The zoo is much smaller than the Asheville Zoo but as a result you are much closer to the animals.

This lion is hilarious - the entire time we were at this exhibit he laid on his back and seemed to scratch his tummy!

Happy Valentine's Day

From our family to yours.

We are admittedly not big celebrators of consumer holidays BUT we don't mind celebrating love. Friday we will cook a little dinner at home. We're going to try out something new - lobster ravioli. I'm sure I will have an update on how that goes next week!

My little brother

 Isn't so little any more.

Happy 30th - I hope this year and the many to come treat you well - you deserve happiness!

Remembering

In the next week I will begin volunteering as a grief group leader at a local grief center. It, of course, has me thinking about my grandfather and realizing that I want to remember him more purposively and with more regularity. So I think I will occasionally share a story here.

My grandfather was not much of a talker. Don't get me wrong, he could talk but he often chose not to. Or, a more plausible explanation is that he probably didn't have a lot of space to talk with Honey around! :)

One of the very first things that surprised me about the husband (before he was the husband) was the way he treated my grandparents. My grandfather had an affinity for the husband and he would often spend quite a bit of time talking with him at family get-togethers. I will always cherish the memories of the times when I would peer into the next room and see the two of them talking. As my grandfather became less capable of remembering and conversations became repetitive, the husband's gentle way with him - his compassion for him - was heartwarming.

After my grandfather's funeral, as we were all busying ourselves in an effort to fend off grief, it was the husband who found my grandmother alone in the dining room and sat with her and comforted her. I will always remember the way they looked together, sitting at the dining room table, Honey in her head-of-the-table seat and the husband in what is normally my seat. Forever I will remember how he looked when he turned to face me and, when we were by ourselves later, how upset he was when he told me that she was alone, that we had left her alone.

Home processes

The process of making a house a home is more involved than I imagined. And more expensive. Plus, I have the attention span of a gnat so it is sometimes hard for me to focus on one thing. I'll give you an example here: I am currently re-organizing the office which includes piles of papers, etc on the floor AND I am organizing our recipes which involves piles of papers, recipes and magazines. I started both of those "projects" last weekend. Really, what was I thinking? Apparently not much. Oh well.

While I am in the midst of two organization projects, my brain is wandering to other projects because what's the fun in actually completing something? Anywho, I have been contemplating the many options for our tv wall in the den since, oh, the day we moved in and put our tv on the same old Ikea tv stand. Ugh.

What I like:

Top row: Restoration Hardware, Bottom Row: Pottery Barn

I honestly don't want to spend that kind of money on a media console so I'm considering different options including some projects from Ana White. She has plans for the RH Printmaker's media console (middle top) as well as a plan for an apothecary style media console like the bottom right. The husband and I are also somewhat curious about welding and one of our neighbors is apparently somewhat skilled at it (which would open up the potential to do something like the top left). The weather is warming up and I'm itching to do a project so we'll see what the next months bring us. Of course, maybe I'll just work on finishing one of my current projects! :)