Currently

My lapses in blogging usually mean I have a lot on my mind. When I have a lot on my mind writing about house stuff seems so unimportant. Somewhat tangentially, I really like our house and working on it but I really actually despise decorating and I kinda suck at it and it's super expensive. If anyone wants to visit and decorate for me, please feel free! :)

Anywho I thought I would update on life right now with a list of randomness. Enjoy.

• I miss my people. 
• Women are awesome and often struggle with things and never tell one another - why do we do that?
• I am super energized by the work I'm doing at the grief center here and it makes me realize how much I miss counseling, supervising counselors and teaching counselors. 
• One of the things I miss the most is having awesome intellectual conversations with other counselors and educators. 
• I was super lucky to go to awesome masters and doc programs where I met and learned with even more awesome people.
• I miss that.
• I'm going to the national counseling conference this month and I'm excited!
• Next month I get to hang out with my mom in Baltimore and I'm excited about that too!
• I'm on a granola kick and make a ton every few weekends. My go to recipe is here but I of course switch out stuff depending on what I have in the pantry. I usually use almonds instead of pistachios (which are awesome but expensive), no coconut b/c the husband dislikes it, and dried cherries or cranberries instead of apricots.

• We're going to remodel our bathroom this year (probably) and hopefully we don't kill each other in the process.
• As part of that remodel we are considering replacing the carpet in our bedroom with laminate that matches the laminate in our house.
• I hate that laminate. And it has spots on that look suspiciously like roaches. Who designs floors with roach-looking spots?
• We have so much of the laminate in our house, it would be too cost prohibitive to replace it so we're stuck with it. Sad.

 That's it for now!

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!