My New Outdoor Table!

Just wanted to brag about my fancy new table from World Market that I decorated with a runner and some hurricanes/lanterns, also from World Market. I love that place.

Gotta enjoy it before the devil mosquitoes take over the yard!

:-)

Avocado Henge

(a.k.a. Don's food art)


While we were waiting for a delicious Tex-Mex casserole thing to bake last night, Don cut the avocados for us and decided to really take his food art to the next level.

I almost didn't want to eat them! .....almost.

KitchenAid

OMG I am the worst blogger ever, it's been almost a month! Don't hate me. It's not you, it's me.

I promise I will have more recipes in the coming weeks, but for now I just want to brag about my Christmas present from Mom and Dad: a KitchenAid!!

Isn't she beautiful? Pistachio, too! Matches my kitchen almost scarily.

I haven't cooked with her yet but I promise you'll know as soon as I do. First up on the list is ciabatta bread. I actually started it tonight but the yeast that has been in the cupboard too long is decidedly dead. My bad on the whole "refrigerate after opening" thing. So once I procure some yeast from the store, we will try again.

Until next time, friends! Happy New Year!!!

Quake!!!

Unless you are living in another region or under a rock, you probably know that a 3.6 magnitude earthquake hit our area this morning at 5:04am. Crazy!

WaPo has an article about it and an interesting user-created Google Map where you can add a placemark if you felt the rumble.

This was my first experience with an earthquake and it turns out that I do not handle them very well.

The shudder woke me up out of a dead sleep and I must have been dreaming something scary because when I looked over at the hallway, the reddish glow of the bathroom nightlight made my brain go "FIRE!" I jumped out of bed yelling "Oh my god fire fire fire!" and running over to the stairs to investigate. Don jumped up, freaked out by my freak-out, but almost immediately realized that I had lost it and started trying to calm me down. My brain did click on after about 10 seconds but it took me quite some time to relax.

Amazingly, the cats didn't seem the least bit disturbed by the quake. I think I spooked them more with my yelling! However, they didn't hesitate to jump back into bed with me and cuddle me back to sanity.

Did you feel the quake?

Everyday Food Challenge

I always look forward to my Martha Stewart Everyday Food magazine. It's nice and compact and has great recipe ideas, all of which are relatively quick and easy. It's not a recipe book for crazy exotic food, but it has lots of great spins on classics including many healthy ideas. If you don't get this magazine, I definitely recommend it especially since it's only $10 per year!

Each issue has a "Grocery Bag" feature, in which you'll find a convenient rip-out grocery list containing ingredients for 5 quick weeknight meals. I've always wanted to try it but never got around to it until this week.

So! This week I'll be cooking the recipes from the July/August issue, although I must confess that I'm omitting one and I've already modified another so I'm cheating a little bit. I did "replace" the omitted one with another recipe from the same issue; I think it counts.

I plan to post on each of these recipes in the next week. All of the recipes can be found on her website so I don't think I'm breaking the law by posting them.... I hope. Enjoy!

Live Music!

Many Friday nights at our house begin with a search for live music in the Wheaton/lower MoCo area. We spend a good amount of time going to the websites of different bars that we know often have live music. It's a pain!

So I had an idea. If I can put this information into a calendar and post it to my website, I might be able to save a soul or two from having to do the same thing.

To view the calendar, click on the "Wheaton Goings-On" page on the right sidebar of the website (or click here). Keep in mind this is a work in progress and since I'm no web designer, the embedded calendar isn't the prettiest. I'm working on it!

For now it's just showing music events, since that happens to be my weekend activity of preference, but I envision a calendar that has all sorts of weekend events, from entertainment to cultural to nature hikes. However, I don't have nearly enough time to be searching the web for all this info so please share this with your friends/family in the area and ask them to contribute! I'd be glad to post suggested events.

Biking in Wheaton

When Google unveiled its new bicycling feature on Google maps, I decided to test out my work commute from Wheaton to Rockville. As I thought, there is really no option for me besides to ride on Veirs Mill the whole way. If you know Veirs Mill, you know that there are no official bike lanes and several sections have no shoulder whatsoever. I think I'll pass on that, considering I'm not the most hardcore biker.

I entered a few other routes around the Wheaton area that would be nice to be able to safely ride and it became glaringly obvious how little Wheaton offers as far as bike routes. If I want to bike from Wheaton to downtown Silver Spring, Google maps tells me to take Georgia the whole way. No thank you.

We do have several nice park trails in the area (e.g., Rock Creek or Sligo) so I can't complain about that; but, it would be great if there was a safe way to get from my house to those trails without hugging a non-existent shoulder on Georgia, University, or Veirs Mill.

Two Lil' Somethings to Brighten Your Day

These new endangered clouded leopard cubs (more pics here!) at the National Zoo are quite possibly the cutest things in the whole wide world. Just another reason to go to the zoo once it gets warmer out!!

For information on the campaign to build a new clouded leopard home, visit the National Zoo website here.