Saturday

Happy Saturday!!!

So....

I should probably blog more....Oops!

Her name is The Barefoot Contessa, and you will never be like her. Starting with the barefoot part...

We have been busy lately!
I made some blueberry cobbler and it was delicious!! It wasn't an Ina recipe, but it was super good. Also, it was pretty easy to make. Too bad I cannot find cinnamon ice cream in Columbus, because it would have been delicious!!
I have been pretty infatuated with German Chocolate Cake lately, so maybe I will make that next...
I really enjoy baking the only problem is that Dan and I are the only ones around to eat it!





Dan and I decided that we should try gardening a few random weekends ago. We don't really know much about it, but thought it would be fun to try. We picked out some herbs and planters. It has rained here almost everyday the last 20 days, so I was getting worried our plants would not grow. But when we got home from Chicago on Sunday, I looked in the planter and saw some sprouts. It is pretty exciting! Maybe someday when we have a yard we can have a real garden.






My nephew turned 4 last month and to keep up with my crafty traditions, I made him a Lawerence Welk Shirt. Dan made the design. I think it is pretty schnazzy! Next, I am going to try and crochet a pug toy for my niece, as her birthday is up next!



This last weekend we went to Chicago. I went to bachelorette party for my friend from college. We went to the Cubs/Reds game and out to dinner and out around town! It was a lot of fun! I miss my friends a lot, and I am glad we were all able to make it. Dan stayed with his friend and had a great weekend as well. We also got to visit with some of our friends that moved away last fall! It was great to see them all!



Other than that, not a lot going on with us!

The Manda/Ina Project

Back in December I talked about Julie/Julia, and what neat idea I thought she had. So with this entry I feel like I pretty much ripped off the idea, but it was fun!

I wouldn't call myself a cook or even a baker. I baked a lot when I was younger, mostly for the Hardin County Fair when I was in 4H. My mom is a great cook! She made most of our meals and desserts growing up, and even convinced my siblings and I to eat beet cake.

In High School I would bake, but it wasn't from scratch but it was easy enough and I would get brownies out of the deal.

In college, I really didn't have an interest in cooking or baking...
Over the least few years I have developed an irrational fear of baking for others. What if someone finds my hair in their food, they wold clearly know it was my hair! Also what if everyone hates what I make, but feels bad and eats it anyway? Or worst of all what if I get everyone sick?

So lately, things have been a little stressful at work. And as most people do, you vent to other coworkers. One of the other managers for another department and I have been spending a lot of time together lately, mostly because we are trying to implement new procedures and our departments directly effect one another. I notice every time I go to her office she has baked goods. I always ask her why she bakes so much an she says is it is relaxing for her and she ENJOYS doing it. I always tell her how I should bake more...

A few weeks ago a mini-series on HBO called Mildred Pierce started. I honestly didn't know much about it, but it took place in the 30s (I like the hairstyles and dress of that time) and star Kate Winslet, so I thought why not...I won't tell you about the story, but Mildred does a lot of cooking. She made really good pies! As I watched the show, I kept thinking to myself I could/should make a really good pie! It also made me think of the movie The Waitress with Keri Russell and she also made pies. And when I watched the movie I was like I could/should do that!

Like I said earlier, work has been pretty stressful lately. I like to bring bagels or doughnuts for everyone when things are like this, but this time I wanted to do something different.
When I lived in Milwaukee, my roommate Alli always made the best scones. They were the best scones I had ever had! I asked her the recipe and she sent it. I also found a a recipe for orange cranberry scones (my favorite) from Barefoot Contessa (Dan's Favorite ;0)).

Dan was playing in a concert for most of the day Sunday, so I decided that would be the best time to start baking (you know what they say about too many cooks in the kitchen!).
And bake I did... I made a lot of scones and a few muffins (in case someone did not like scones).

I knew I was probably in over my head, because I wasn't even sure how to zest a lemon, or what that meant really...Thankfully Dan was able to educate me.
Once I got over the initial fear of actually trying something new, I was fine. I really enjoyed it!! And Holy Moly do we have a lot scones!!! They were a big hit, so I will probably keep up the tradition!










Earlier this week, Dan was at band practice again and we still had some lemons ( I am a zesting machine now!), so I decided I was going to try some lemon bars from Barefoot Contessa...

Though I hit some snags (my room temperature butter was a little too warm, I mixed the sugar with the flour at first instead of the butter, etc.) I think they turned out great!








I learned that we should probably invest in a zester, whisk and probably a nice mixer. the hand mixer does not do well with cold butter! And most importantly, there were no hairs in scones, no one got sic, and everyone liked them!

So what should I try next? I am thinking the chicken salad!

Spring has Sprung!

And now it is April!

We have been keeping busy with visitors already this month! Don, Dan's Dad, came and visited us last weekend. It was really great to see him. We ate a lot of good food and went to a Blue Jackets game. We had the highest seats in the place, and we got some free food. Even though the Blue Jackets lost pretty bad, there were some good fights, and the whole day was pretty fun!

Our friend Sarah, who moved to Kansas last fall, is here this weekend for a conference at OSU. It is great to hang out again. We have also decided we are gong to make our own reality show much like the Real Housewives on Bravo!, keep your eye out for us!

Our bowling league has ended, and our team got 4th out of 8 teams! We are pretty proud of ourselves.

March Madness is over, which means College Basketball is over. The tournament was crazy with all the upsets and my bracket imploded, but I really enjoyed the watching the games. I took Friday the 18th off work and watched Basketball and crocheted all weekend! It was amazing!

Dan and I got a Kinect a few weeks back. Pretty much it is a Wii, but better, because you don't have to have a controller. We have the Sports game and Dance Central. It has been a lot of fun. The sports game has Bowling, Track and Filed, Beach Volleyball, Soccer, Table Tennis, and Boxing. It is a really good workout! It will be interesting to see what other games will come out.

Dan has been blogging away on his other blog: Advertisements Explained. Please check it out and pass it along if you haven't already!

We have also been throwing the idea of moving closer to home someday. I think we just miss our families ad friends and would like to be closer to home. Fortunately, we have good jobs here and don't have a real reason to move just yet. Hopefully, someday soon we can make it closer to Iowa! If it was meant to be then it will happen, I guess!


That's all for now!

Vacation plans

We've been trying to plan a vacation for a while now, but we couldn't bring ourselves to decide on a destination. Also, Amanda was still waiting for her new McCurley passport to return from the State Department, so we weren't really in a rush to book anything in case there was a problem with that. Now, however, the McCurley passport has arrived, and we've finally decided on a destination. It's a perfect storm.

Our destination - can you guess where we're going?

We had been trying to decide between a few different destinations: Sweden, Spain, Iceland (again), Canada, and Scotland/England were all in the running. Especially with Amanda's brother's family moving to Germany soon, we thought we could go to Sweden and then use Europe's outstanding transportation network to travel down to visit them for a while, too. We kept checking fares as we were waiting for the passport, but, just like flying to Iowa in December, flying to Europe is really expensive. If you're going to sink that much money into a vacation, it should be a long trip, and we were only planning to be gone for 7-10 days due to our jobs (as well as our anemic paid vacation allowances - Go USA!). So, we decided Europe might not be the best bang for our buck.

Once we made that decision, we decided to check out Canada. I have been there twice - once when I was young and we just drove across the border for about 30 minutes, and the second time when I went to Quebec City for a linguistics conference. Neither time was a real vacation, so we thought it would be cool to spend actual vacation time in Canada and see what there is to do/see. Plus, we were able to get round-trip tickets and hotels for the whole time for about the same price as just the flight to Europe. Also, the short flights from Ohio to Quebec will let us use more vacation time on the ground, instead of spending a whole day traveling across the Atlantic.

So, in early autumn, we will be traveling to Montreal and Quebec City, both in the province of Quebec. We're spending a few days in Montreal, then taking the VIA train from there to Quebec, where we'll spend the rest of the vacation. Thanks to Expedia.com and their great multi-city, multi-hotel search tool, we were able to get flights into Montreal and out of Quebec and save some travel time. Also, the same search let us find hotels in each city for the exact dates without any extra searching. Seriously, I've used Kayak, Priceline, Orbitz and other searchers to do multi-city flights before, but none of them have the same integrated hotel search as Expedia. I really recommend it if you're looking to schedule multiple-destination vacations!

Why do we want to go to Montreal/Quebec? From what I've read (and experienced from my linguistics conference trip), it's like going to Europe but here in North America. Plus, I've always wanted to go to Montreal since we watched the cultural video about it in French I at UNI. If you want to see what it's like, here's a two minute video from the Montreal Tourism site:

Also, Montreal supposedly has the most restaurants per capita in North America, so we should be able to eat pretty well! Quebec (the province) is especially famous for one dish in particular: Poutine. Poutine is a dish made up of french fries, gravy and cheese curds:

There are many varieties of poutine, and I'm sure we'll try more than our share of them.

Those are our vacation plans. Now it's just a matter of counting down the days/weeks/months until we get to go... Luckily, we have a few weddings and other trips to make this summer to hold us over in the meantime. Also, if any of you have been to Montreal/Quebec, we'd love to hear any recommendations or suggestions for the trip!

New Advertising Blog

Hey everyone,
I actually followed through with something and started my new advertising blog: Advertisements Explained. You can check it out here: http://advertisementsexplained.blogspot.com

Let me know what you think, and let me know if you see any terrible ads that you'd like to see in the blog!