Sweet Yet Sour

Hallelujah! I finished a book!

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 | The Daily Special | 2 Comments

First, for those of you reading my blog only for the pictures of Anna, there will be no need to read further.  I am going to try to complete a series of posts that have very little to do with the kiddo.  As adorable as she is (no bias here), I want desperately not to become one of those mothers who have nothing to say about themselves and can’t complete a sentence without mentioning their children.  In general, when you have a cute kid like mine (again, no bias), you have a tendency to feel like you are the tree holding the baby.  People ignore you and pay attention only to the baby, even addressing questions like, “How old are you?” to a child that cannot possibly answer for themselves.  If I only do blog posts about Anna I might as well put leaves on my head and try my best to blend in my surroundings.  But I digress, suffice to say, come back another time Anna devotees…

For Valentine’s day, Mike who is the best husband in the world, at least for me, bought me a book.  A nice, thin book that I might actually be able to finish with the limited time that I have to read.  Bill Bryson, of “A Short History of Nearly Everything” fame, and many others, has written a book on Shakespeare for the Eminent Lives series: “Shakespeare:The World as Stage”.

Now I have to admit that although I do like Shakespeare when I read (and can understand) his work, I generally don’t seek it out to read.  It reminds me too much of high school English class where I was forced to read volumes of Shakespeare.  I do own a three volume set of Shakespeare’s “Complete Works”, but I am a person who sometimes buys books because they smell nice and this was the case for these books.  It’s a lovely hardback set and smells old – I couldn’t resist buying the set.

Despite my general lack of devotedness to Shakespeare, I really enjoyed Bryson’s book.  Bryson is quite frank that the volume is thin because we really know very little about Shakespeare and he’s not going to make stuff up.  I was actually amazed at how little we know about Shakespeare and how much conjecture Bryson had to wade through about his life.  With ease and humor Bryson pieces together what is known, dispels as best he can myths and fairy tales and still leaves you feeling as if you know much more about Shakespeare than you did before you opened the book.

Having a background in anthropology and a special interest in linguistics, the best parts of the book were those where Bryson discussed Shakespeare’s profound influence on the English language.  I had no idea how many phrases and words Shakespeare either first documented or made up himself.  I use the phrase “One fell swoop” all the time, without ever having a thought to the fact that this is a phrase that I borrow from the Bard.

I highly recommend this book for anyone even slightly interested in Shakespeare or the English language. It was fun, enlightening, and best of all for me, short!

Happy Birthday Mike!

Thursday, February 12th, 2009 | The Daily Special | 2 Comments

Happy Birthday to you Mike!

Birthday boy

Don’t cry about being one year older… We have enough of that around here.

Don't Cry!

I promise you will have a nice birthday. Maybe later we can make mohawks…

Mohawk

And you and Anna can spend some quality time at the computer.

Quality Time

And then Brendan can show you how to properly eat your cake…

Cake!

Happy Birthday to the best husband in the world!  Love – Dorrie

Dinner with Friends

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 | Cooking, The Daily Special | 2 Comments

We Munhalls needed a break and a nice evening with friends and we got that on Saturday night.  Nate and Laura came over, we had a great time and we had some good food too.

Once they arrived, Mike and Nate went off to buy supplies for Mike’s latest hobby, home brewing beer.  I’m sure I’ll be posting later about the smell that this produces in our house, but for the moment Mike and Nate are really excited about sharing this fun.  And since Nate has recently won an award for his home brewing efforts, I’m sure he’s the best person for Mike to ask when he needs advice.

While Mike and Nate were gone, Laura and I went through the four bins of maternity clothes I had for her to look through.  Anna helped by pulling things out of the storage bins or sitting in the empty bins while we packed clothes around her.  By the way, it’s not like I really had all those maternity clothes, two of the bins belong to my sister; I wanted Laura to have the full benefit of plenty of clothes to borrow.  It’s silly to buy clothes for a fairly short period of life when you will wear and look good in maternity clothes.

Before Anna went to bed I started the pizza crust for dinner; my plan was to simply make pizza crust and have every possible pizza topping (except anchovies) available for us to put on the pizzas.  The pizza crust is really simple to do and is made quickly in the food processor.  It really doesn’t take that long to rise, only an hour to an hour and a half.  Here is the recipe:

Food Processor Pizza Dough:

In a small bowl let sit until the yeast blooms:

1 Tablespoon yeast, 3/4 cup warm water and a pinch of sugar (this works best when you put the sugar on top of the dry yeast and then add the water)

In a food processor mix together:

2 1/2 cups flour and 1 tsp salt

Once this is mixed, add while the food processor is going:

3 Tablespoons olive oil, the yeast/water mixture and cold water.  The tricky part here is to add the water 1 Tablespoon at a time, slowly, until the mixture begins to form a ball.  Add the water, let the mixture whirl around and then add another tablespoon of water if it hasn’t formed a ball.  The amount will depend on how moist the air is, etc., so it’s hard to judge how much you will need to put it in the processor.

Once the ball has been formed, take it out and put it into an oiled bowl (this is best done by pouring a little olive oil in a bowl and then swirling it around or spreading it with a paper towel).  Let it rise until double.  Roll out and put onto a greased pan and bake at 350 for 7-8 minutes and then top.

In addition to pizza we made a salad to get some veggies to balance out all that cheese we were having on the pizza (along with the pepperoni, etc.)  Nate and Laura really liked the honey-mustard dressing that I had made, so I’m including that recipe as well.  This is good as a salad dressing as well as a dip for chicken nuggets, etc.

Honey-Mustard Dressing:

Mix together: 1/2 cup mayonnaise, 1/2 cup prepared mustard, 1/2 cup honey and a dash of worchestire

Dinner at my house is not complete without dessert.  I really feel like I am best at dessert and every once in a while I think if we win the lottery I’d open some sort of dessert or pastry business.  I like experimenting with new dessert ideas when people come over and Saturday was no exception.

I made my chocolate sourdough cake in two 9″ layers (sorry, I’m not going to include the recipe since you need sourdough start for this) and then once they were cooled, I cut them in half.  In between the two halves I spread Nutella (chocolate hazelnut spread) and in the middle I spread apricot all fruit spread.  So from the bottom the cake went: cake layer, Nutella, cake layer, apricot spread, cake layer, Nutella, cake layer.  To top it all off I frosted it with ganache.  Ganache is an easy and yet pretty way to top off a cake, and after all that work with the cake layers, I went the lazy way with the ganache.  I got this from the Joy of Cooking and it’s the best:

Chocolate Ganache:

Warm in a heavy sauce pan on medium heat until just boiling: 3/4 cup heavy cream.

Once the cream is boiling, remove the pan from the heat and add: 8 oz semi-sweet or bitter-sweet chocolate chopped into small pieces (chocolate chips will do just fine). Stir until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is a smooth and shiny.  Let it sit out or in the fridge for a few minutes to allow it to be spreadable, otherwise, it will simply be to liquidy to use as frosting.

Here is what was left of the cake after Nate and Laura left:

Yummy cake

We sent them home with both cake and pizza, but there was obviously plenty of cake left for us to devour.  I just finished the last piece while I watched The Biggest Loser. If that doesn’t say anything about my motivation to lose weight (almost nil), I don’t know what does.  I don’t think I’ll make this cake a lot, not because it wasn’t good, but because it was so good that I couldn’t resist the temptation.

After a long evening, especially for the poor pregnant Laura, who really should have been in bed by 8, we shipped them off with clothes, pizza and cake.  It was a lovely evening!

Keystone Trip Wrap-up

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 | The Daily Special | 4 Comments

We have returned relatively unscathed from our trip to Keystone.  But as soon as we all got home, everyone took a nap…

We were invited up for the weekend by Nate and Laura with the purpose of Nate and Mike going to the Vail Beer Festival together on Saturday.  Meanwhile, Laura, Anna and I were going to have a relaxing time hanging around Keystone. Laura is so kind, she made it sound like Anna was such a good girl. It’s a bit of a stretch of the truth…

Traveling with an infant is never exactly what you expect and Anna certainly played her part in this follie.  Here are some of the items that must be taken when traveling with an infant: Playpen and all associated bedtime items, including play pen sheet, baby quilt, bear, silkie, and bedtime books; breastfeeding pillow, travel highchair, rice cereal, oatmeal, formula (for mixing with the cereal), several jars of baby food, bowls, spoons, bibs, washcloths, finger foods, including sweet potato puffs, organic cheerios, and saltines, along with several toys, enough diapers to get through three days, wipes, butt paste, infant Motrin, sippy cup, and at least five outfits.  We also took our cooler with Anna’s yogurt, the fruit that she is eating, and the things we needed for breakfast Saturday and Sunday.  Oh, and then Mike and I took some clothes and underwear…

With the car packed to a hilt we headed off on Friday with the hope that Anna would sleep in the car.  She slept for 1/2 an hour of the almost 2 hour trip.  When we arrived we let Anna play for a little and then I put her down for a nap.  Instead, Anna screamed/cried for an hour while Mike and I prayed that no one was in the condo next door.  After an hour we gave up, and headed out for an early dinner.

This is what my kid looks like when she hasn’t napped and is trying saltines (without salt on the top) for the first time:

No nap!

She’s still cute, but looks a little sleepy.

The first night in the playpen Anna discovered that mom and dad were in the same room and cried when she saw us, cried when we turned over and cried when we breathed heavily.  I’m sure she figured if we were in the room we should be playing with her and not sleeping. Mike and I spent much of the night trying not to make a sound. She had a good nap on Saturday morning, followed by no nap on Saturday afternoon, an early bedtime followed by 3 hours of crying on Saturday night.

Fortunately, Nate and Laura sleep through almost anything and missed most of the crying.

On Saturday Mike and Nate had a great time at the beer festival and Nate won a silver medal for one of his beers.  As expected though, they drank a lot.  Mike and Nate and both nice drunks though.  Nate just talks loudly and then passes out.  Mike told me he loved me a lot more than he normally does and that’s really fine with me.  I have some incriminating pictures of drunk Mike and Nate, but I’ll resist posting them on the web. I have them backed up in case I need to black mail either of them later.

I’m glad Nate was drunk on Saturday night,  (he would have probably slept through a snow plow going through the room) since Anna cried for so long. I think Laura used the time to catch up on her reading.

Mike did take a picture of me in my new glasses on Friday night that looks pretty good.  As an explanation, I have not worn glasses since 8th grade when I was allowed to get contacts, until now.  A few months ago my eye doctor and I determined that the hormones from nursing Anna were causing my eyes to be so dry that I can no longer wear my contacts.  At least if I have to wear glasses, I can try to look hip:

New glasses

All in all, this trip was a good learning experience as a pre-cursor to our trip to Dallas in February.  I think mostly we learned that our days of sleep deprivation are not entirely over, but that we can all nap when we get home.

A few of my favorite things…

Thursday, December 11th, 2008 | The Daily Special | 1 Comment

I hope that title got the “Sound of Music” song stuck in your head, because it did that to me and I think we should all suffer together.  “Brown paper packages tied up with string…”

I used to watch Oprah religiously until I discovered that I hate her for being so “my way is the best way, I’m so great” about everything.  My favorite show used to be the “Oprah’s Favorite Things” show, but now that I hate her I realize that the show is all about crap that us little people who don’t make Oprah’s salary can’t afford or don’t need – like Champagne bubble bath…

Anyway, I’ve decided to compile my own list of my favorite things (and I am working on a list of my least favorite things as well – Oprah is at the top of that list).

1. Online shopping and more importantly free shipping.  If you have not checked out www.freeshipping.org – go there now before you do any more online shopping. It’s an awesome site that has all sorts of codes and info about almost every major (and minor) shopping site on how to get free shipping.  I’ve used it frequently this shopping season.

2. Reducing my junk mail and therefore the waste of paper.  Last year I signed up with GreenDimes to opt out of a junk mail and I gave it as a gift to a few relatives.  It’s been awesome and I have really seen a reduction in our junk mail.  Plus, they have great re-usable grocery bags that come in cool colors, fold up into themselves and come with key chain sized carabiner.  It’s really easy to sign up and I can testify that it works!

3. Giving gifts to the world through Kiva.  Kiva is an organization that allows you to donate/make a small loan to someone in the developing world for their business.  For example, today Kiva is featuring a woman in Peru who is requesting a loan (it will be paid back) to help her purchase some cattle.  Ever wonder how you can help people in other countries while still sitting on your ass on your comfy couch?  Try giving someone $25 to help them buy cattle…

4. Heifer International is similar to Kiva, but it has more of a “help a community” ideal. My mom grew up on a farm with a goat as a pet (whom she loved), so every once in a while we buy a goat or two from Heifer in her name.  Those goats go to a needy community who use their milk, fur, whatever.  You can buy cows, sheep, pigs, bees, etc. and really help out a community in need.  And then you can say, “I own a cow in Africa” and it would be true!

5. Here’s a picture of my two most favorite-est things (screw you Oprah – they’re all mine) -

Favorite Things

P.S. on the Compost

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 | The Daily Special | No Comments

I’m feeling a little badly today that I didn’t make it clear enough that Mike and my dad built, by hand, my compost bin.  It took them three long days, multiple trips to the hardware store, and Mike driving back and forth to Colorado Springs three days in a row to complete the bin.  The bin has no sharp edges, thanks to a lot of router work by Mike, and has very little metal in it – real woodworking at it’s best.  Oh, and there was an incident with a chisel, so Mike also had to get five stiches to make my beautiful bin.  He even continued working with gauze on his thumb all day after the chisel incident and then didn’t go to get the stitches until we got home.  Now that’s a wonderful husband!  Thanks Mike!

You can put your eggshells in there…

Monday, November 24th, 2008 | The Daily Special | 4 Comments

Check it out! I have a compost bin!

Check out the beautiful compost...

This weekend Mike and my dad (along with Mike’s friends Andrew and Matt) installed my new compost bin.  It’s really awesome!  And really pretty too.  All handmade with redwood; you wouldn’t think of throwing old vegetables in there it’s so beautiful!

Such a pretty compost bin!

This was supposed to be a surprise Christmas present for me, but it’s kind of large and my dad wanted to get it done so that we could put our fall leaves in it and get that compost brewing.  It has two bins and removable slats in the front of each bin to make it easier to turn the compost and get it out when I need it.

Of course the nasty HOA says that we have to have a lid on the compost bin, so Mike will need to make that at some point.  But, we put it on the side of the house where the next door neighbors rarely go and hopefully we can maintain the compost well enough that it won’t smell.

Just another (slightly expensive) step that we are taking to reduce our household trash waste.  And next summer I can use the compost for the vegetable garden I have planned.  Yeah for compost!

4 Years!

Thursday, November 13th, 2008 | The Daily Special | 3 Comments

Yep, it’s official, I have 96 more years left to spend with this guy… Let’s hope that there’s a renewal clause at the end of 100 years.

Anna’s New Quilt

Monday, November 10th, 2008 | The Daily Special | 3 Comments

When I was pregnant my mom told me that she wanted to make some quilts for the baby.  Together we looked at some ideas and settled on two: one bright color block quilt and one blue and yellow quilt with a bunny on it.  For the first few months of life babies don’t see very well and what they do see best are bright colors, so we thought the color block quilt would be a nice thing for the baby to have on the wall.  And mom and I love blue and yellow, so we decided the blue and yellow one could be the baby’s sleeping quilt.

When mom got sick the quilts were put on hold and for a long time my mom wasn’t well enough to work on the quilts.  But as she progressively got better and better she was able to get back to working (hand stitching) on the quilts.  Today, as a testament to how much better my mom is, Anna got her color block quilt.

Here is Anna rolling around on her new quilt:

Anna on the new quilt

Beautiful eh?  And the back is nice too; a lovely purple flannel with trees and sheep.  Here is Anna trying out the soft flannel side:

There are more pictures of Anna and the new quilt on Flickr; just click on the “Anna’s Mom’s Pictures” link. Thanks mom, we love the quilt!

The Main Attraction

Thursday, November 6th, 2008 | The Daily Special | 2 Comments

I have been reminded lately by many people that Anna is the main attraction for them to my blog, and most importantly, pictures of Anna.

For those people who like to view lots of pictures of Anna I have updated the links (look to the right) with links called “Anna’s Mom’s Pictures” and “Anna’s Dad’s Pictures”.  These are links to our Flickr collections of Anna pictures.

I’ll try to keep my Flickr pictures updated so that I upload every time I take the pictures off my camera.  I take a lot of pictures of Anna (as well as video) so this should be fairly often. Enjoy!