Vacay - The Result

Home now. Eleven days held almost more vacation than we could handle and we're still sleeping ten hour nights in recovery. I know how much fun I had by the lack of pictures. Here are all six (only showing a fraction of the people we saw and things we did).

We hung out with tons of cousins on both sides. We love how our cousins remain some of our closest friends as we grow older - our lives, goals, and interests still seem to match and intersect.

We stopped in for a quick cocktail at the Hotel Lucia where we spent our wedding night so I had to take a picture in remembrance.

My brother in law Daniel just moved into a concrete dome in the Oregon hills, everyone appropriately calls it 'The Hobbit Hole'. He'd been telling us about his 'dome' but we had no idea how awesome it was until we saw it.

Living room with sleeping loft above and kitchen through the arch.

View from the living room - and above those windows is a rooftop porch. Head up there on a cool evening with a glass of Daniel's home-brewed Kolsch and watch the meadow views. It's absolutely perfect.

After the Eugene weekend we spent four days with Zeb's family at Black Butte Ranch. I got two pictures - tennis at twilight...

And wonderful Em reading to the freakin adorable kids.

The next weekend in Boise we said goodbye to the 'Little Wierenga's' who are moving to Illinois, we saw Joe and Lauryn get married, we stayed at my parents luxe new house, and we saw a bit of the better side of Boise. There's quite a bit more there than I remembered. It probably helps that I'm over 21 and have a driver's license.

It was wonderful and a whirlwind. We loved every minute but we're a bit glad that we're home again. I guess that's just about right.

Vacay

Out for ten days. Might pop in, might not - we're on vacation baby!!!!!

P.S. Too funny - Pride and Prejudice Twitter Style

Bread

Some people amaze me. They seem to be calm, stylish, and able to do every interesting thing in the world at once. You know, the mom who has 2 babies, helps her husband with his business, is writing a book, keeping up two blogs one of which chronicles her efforts to read 200 books a year, cooks from scratch, writes for local magazines, and will be starting graduate school in the fall. Seriously, she's real, her name's Amanda, she's my twitter friend though not real life friend yet, and she talks about life here and here. There are many such people in my life. Yours truly, of meagre margins, attempts to not quite keep up because that would imply a fair race, I grab a coattail and hope I get dragged into neat things. Which is what happened with the bread. Women and men I admire bake bread and they got me all intrigued. So I now bake my own bread. I have 6 different types of flour and two different types of gluten. I'm really into it.
Bread is such an impressive tool - you offer to bring homemade bread to a gathering and you get an appreciative ahhhh. It's quite gratifying for moi whose sink is full of dirty dishes and who still has to finish wedding thank you's two years late BUT I HAVE FRESH BAKED BREAD!

No one needs to know that it is actually made with a bread machine, except now everyone will know because everyone I hang out with reads this blog. Unfounded or not I feel that making my own bread is a feat and I'm going to stick to that, no matter how it happens.

I've got this wonderful huge cookbook and from it I've made Brioche (pictured) Proscuitto Mozzarella Bread, Black Olive Bread, Halepeno Bread with Longhorn Cheese, Beer Bread with Cheddar, Roquefort Cheese Bread with Walnuts, Ricotta and Fresh Chive Bread, Italian Lemon-Ricotta Bread, Chickpea Flour Bread as well as numerous others.

Marianne over at Prepare to Eat challenged readers to make their own bread in May. Marianne's method is a distant dream for me at the moment. She soaks her flour, she hand kneads everything, she doesn't use much white flour or any sugar. Sigh. I like to think that someday when I'm home for more hours of the day than I'm at work I, too, will do bread the ideal way. But really, won't I just find other excuses (kiddos, the sink of dirty dishes, Arrested Development on Hulu?) I'll probably still use the bread machine. But I'm OK with that. I don't think it's cheating, it's just a different way and I'm still coming out ahead. Those fancy loaves that I mentioned above would have cost approximately $6 per loaf here in the DC area, and I make them for half that or less. A cheap loaf of bread makes a meal of lentils actually filling. And all the ingredients in my bread I chose and I can pronounce.
One of the best parts is that I now have a perfect and designated use for one of my favorite wedding gifts - the bread/cutting board handmade by Aunt Mimi and Uncle Gary who are, themselves, die hard every day Zojirushi bread bakers. Also I finally got to buy the little butter dish I've been wanting.

Honfest 2009

When the Parkers decided to move to Baltimore they exhaustively researched every neighborhood before they decided on colorful Hampden. They immediately felt at home. Hampden is traditionally a very working class neighborhood but hipsters and yuppies have moved in and the together they form a delightful mishmash of genuine Baltimore. Last weekend we caught the best of it all at the HonFest.

The Honfest or Hampden Festival has something to do with honoring Hampden's roots with outrageous sixties housewife style costume (former Hon Queen on the left). There are also bands and sidewalk flea markets and funnel cakes and all that.

These Hons sang in four part harmony.

They set up Glamour Tents where anyone could get a beehive 'do.

You're supposed to say 'Hon' (short for 'Honey') after everything.

Like: I said 'Thanks for letting me take your picture.' She said 'Sure thing, hon.'

The guys don't get costumes. They just get burritos and beer. They were OK with that.

The Best Crab Cakes

Six years ago I lived in Tennessee and I visited Annapolis for the first time for a teacher training conference. What impressed me the most was not the perfectly preserved Colonial streets and buildings, though I was charmed by those, but a meal I had at a waterfront restaurant called Phillips Seafood. The crab cakes were recommended so I dutifully ordered them with a glass of chardonnay. They were absolutely amazing (and cost a small fortune at $29 for two small cakes with no sides!) Everyone claims that their crab cakes have hardly any filler, but at Phillips it was true. These crab cakes were really something else. Four years later I moved to Annapolis and I knew I wanted to work at that crab cake place. And I did, for years, until a few months ago. Privy to the inner workings of the prep kitchen I got a pretty good idea of what was in those famous cakes. The exact recipe is closely guarded but here is my best adaptation (with Lisa's help using our leftover meat from the birthday feast) based on stolen glances over shoulders in the back of the house.

The Best Crab Cakes

(An audacious claim I know, but I'm just repeating what everyone around the table said.)

2 eggs

2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

2 teaspoons lemon juice

2 teaspoons crab seasoning ( I prefer Phillips Seafood Seasoning rather than Old Bay and I'm not just saying that)

2 teaspoons fresh parsley chopped

2 heaping tablespoons mayonnaise

1/4 teaspoon dry mustard

1/4 teaspoon dijon mustard

2 pounds jumbo lump crabmeat, picked over

2 cups Ritz crackers, crumbled

Mix all the ingredients except the crab meat. Carefully add in the crab meat at the last minute. Form into 2 inch balls and place on a cooking sheet. Refrigerate for an hour. Broil (or bake at 550 degrees) for about 7-10 minutes or until the tops are browned.

The Birthday/Crab Feed

First off, we opened that bottle of wine. It took two strong men and an assortment of knives and wine openers. But they prevailed.

Val thanked them. OK, we all thanked them. We managed to finish the wine and now I can't let go of the empty bottle. It's so neat. And useless. I need a Throw Away That Special Yet Empty Bottle of Wine Day next.

The Chesapeake Blue Crabs were amazing. A local fisherman caught us a bushel of crabs that morning, steamed them that afternoon and delivered them to us hot.

We poured the Old Bay and hammered away.

The wonderful thing about blue crabs is that it takes hours. They're nothing like king or snow crab legs or even bodies. They're smaller for one, the flavor is different of course, and there are techniques and toxic body parts and it's laborious and extremely rewarding. The crabs are delicious hot when you start out and still hours later when they're cold. You dip them in Old Bay and butter. And it's a very drawn out and relaxed event. You just sit and talk and pick crabs and eat potato salad and coleslaw and talk and drink beer or wine and melt more butter and pick more crabs as the sun goes down.

Molly's 'Please give me more crab meat' face?

And things wind down.

Tadd's stories keep us laughing.

There's really nothing picturesque about crab bones and guts, but there it is, how ends one of the best birthdays this 28 years has seen.

P.S. I couldn't decide - we had both avocado and sweet corn ice cream for dessert, both yummmmm!

Year Two

It just keeps getting better and better.