Short Ribs

These short ribs are another Smitten Kitchen recipe, and cooked for 3 hours at low temperature in the oven. 

It was my first time making short ribs and I thought they were great! Even better was the accompanying parsnip purée. I was totally shocked at how much I loved the parsnips, given that I don't like them roasted at all. 

Smitten Kitchening

Some of my friends have started a project wherein collectively we're going to cook the entire Smitten Kitchen cookbook this year. So far I've made a few things I probably wouldn't have bothered with otherwise, so I think it's going to be a fun and positive experiment. 

We had friends over for dinner last weekend and I made a butternut squash and caramelized onion galette, which was fantastic. 

Then for dessert I made lemon bars, which use an entire puréed lemon. They were really good! They were light and fluffier than most lemon bars but very tart. 

Those two dishes together contained an entire pound of butter. So it's going to be a challenge to not gain a million pounds this year. 

Last night I made the grapefruit olive oil pound cake, which I thought would be a good thing to make for Ben since I don't like grapefruit. Alas, it turns out that I like this cake nevertheless. 

It's also relatively healthy for cake, containing lots of good citrus and not too much fat. Winner!

Tonight I'm making braised short ribs so stay tuned for that. I had to ask the guy at the grocery store for the ribs because I didn't even know what they look like. 

Happy New Year!

It is really really cold here. We have a space heater to try to keep it reasonable in at least one room because our electric heat pump does a frankly terrible job of keeping up when it is 12 degrees outside. Papaya knows what's up.

For Christmas this year we drove back to Kansas City. We got to go through West Virginia, one of the states neither of us had visited before, and it was beautiful. It is really, really long drive to Kansas City, though. We are going to fly on subsequent trips.

The kids really liked Uncle Benny.

Partially because he is maybe the world's greatest expert at Super Mario World for Wii.

Harry doesn't look too sure about me here but I assure you he was very friendly.

We saw some sights in Kansas City one day with Ben's dad and brother - the World War I Museum and Liberty Memorial - Adam took a family portrait at the top, featuring his foot.

And then we spent a weirdly long time at Harrah's Casino, where fortunately my friend Marci was able to come out and chat with us for a while. Because for most of the time, Ben and I were sitting quietly watching the horror that is your average Harrah's patron. One good thing is that they have free Diet Coke.

We also ate dinner there and Adam and I split a large bottle of special Royals-themed beer! Then the check came and we discovered it was $25.

Christmas morning was super fun!

Sully's a big fan of wearing gloves in the house.

We took Banana to the vet for the trip, so he would be monitored and also so the pet sitter wouldn't have to be at our house three times a day giving medicine to my cat over Christmas. It did not go well. He hardly ate and they said he "hid behind his pillow" the whole time. Poor buddy!! We were wracked with guilt for days afterward. Fortunately he seems to have suffered no long-term effects, but we are not going to be doing that anymore. I'm going to leave him at home and have the pet sitter come three times a day and tip her well and leave it at that. He still has had no seizures since August 23rd, and even though he is taking pills now about half the time (in lieu of the medicated treats he will only bother with when he's sleepy, for some reason), he's used to the routine and it's not a big deal. We are lucky; a lot of cats wouldn't be happy at all about pills three times a day but Banana sits there like a good boy and is and purring again a few seconds after he swallows it.

So! Now that we have that all straightened out, we are going to Copenhagen in April. Yay!