Just a wee reminder to enjoy your holidays, however you see fit, doing whatever strange things make you happy. For us, last year that meant going to Mexico City. For us, this year that means staying home, not doing much, and possibly photographing some fireworks.
-D & T
We’ve been burning the midnight oil, here: between D’s work announcing all sorts of things and our concerts (finished the last one just this evening) we’ve been swamped. One more week and then we’ve a week off to stay home and do … basically nothing. Maybe ride bikes, take some pictures of any wildlife we can find. Stay home.
-D & T
Rehearsal for December 2 and 3 performances.It’s holiday performance season, so last weekend we had a concert on both Saturday and Sunday (which you can watch here and here). We had a brief performance yesterday, in Livermore, with the whole choir as a warm-up to the Nutcracker and the women as chorus during part of the ballet itself. We have a performance next Saturday with the Fremont Symphony and then D. has been roped into singing with a madrigal group on Sunday at the retirement home associated with the San Jose Mission. And then concert season is over until February!
We are really looking forward towards the week of Christmas, just to do nothing. We’re tempted, of course, to go somewhere exotic … but then we remember that everybody really wants the week off, and services are really wonky during the holiday, and that we keep telling ourselves that it’s a bad idea to go anywhere over Christmas. But we’re tempted nonetheless.
D’s work has been rather chaotic, with multiple changes in management and with the company announcing all sorts of news. We need the break to just relax and do nothing, maybe ride the bicycles through the wilderness trail system, take some pictures.
And, of course, we need today to make more fruitcake, as most of the last batch has already been eaten!
-D & T
Sometimes, food just isn’t that attractive. It’s a sad reality, and probably the reason why our entire photostream – 34,214 pictures as of today – contains just two pictures of lasagna. The one above suffers from being an unattractive specimen (although quite tasty, thank you). The one below is obviously from a restaurant (at The Blue Lagoon, in Iceland) but we feel it’s cheating just a bit because it’s not really lasagna, it’s layers of eggplant pretending really hard that they’re lasagna. But, it’s vegan – our first experience with vegan lasagna many years ago… And now you can get it practically everywhere on this end of the state.
As the week begins, D. will be cycling to work for the first time. Well – for the second time, as we made the trek there and back yesterday, to see how it would go. This is the first time in maybe ten years we’ve had bicycles, and we went for something much more rideable than our previous cycles. They’re low enough to the ground that even the shortest among us can cope, they have lots of gears for hill-climbing, yet still let us sit up straight, and cruise.
The ride in to work takes about 10 minutes, just having a leisurely cycle. These are designed so the rider sits upright rather than hunching over the handlebars. They’re also designed to really keep on rolling, so you don’t have to pedal constantly to keep going anywhere. They’re rather like the bicycles of childhood, and we’ll be enjoying taking them out on the weekends as well.
It’s time to go bake cranberry orange bread/cake to take in to work tomorrow. We’ll save aside a few slices for ourselves, in celebration of our 23rd anniversary.
-D & T
Once again we went to the Oakland Museum of California … and failed to make it through the whole thing. This isn’t even because they keep changing out the exhibits, either – this is because there’s just so much there, and it’s all so fascinating!
We met up with one of D’s former coworkers there, had a good wander, and D and J had a good chat about all of the craziness that working in biotech seems to entail. For example, D has now had 2 layers of management removed from above him (in less than 3 months) so he currently reports directly to a VP. It’s a bit nerve-wracking, but both D and J have job options and good names in the business, so they’re not worried exactly … but the chaos has both of them wondering whether they want to stay in this industry much longer.
On the other hand, with Halloween coming up there will be a pumpkin carving competition at D’s work and he’s going to see what kind of pictures he can get. Hopefully people will dress for the occasion.
Have a good week!
-D & T
Our choir is having a Christmas concert, December 2nd and 3rd. We are (as always) required to sell tickets. Please let us know if you’d like to come and we’ll be happy to have you along! (You can buy tickets through us, or online, but if you buy from us then we’ll get rid of the 20 we’re required to sell.)
We’re told that the Sunday concert is always more full than the Saturday one, by the way. We hope to see you there!
-D & T
For all of you out there who read this in a feed reader, apologies if you’ve just seen a whole bunch of our posts reappear: we’ve changed our hosting provider and gotten a new URL ( hobbitsabroad.com ). For everybody else, you’ll likely not notice any change, as all of the content that was hosted on Sonic is now hosted on LaughingSquid, at the new URL (well – you’ll notice that the site loads a million times faster than the old one, which is why we switched).
Enjoy these boats, for your troubles.
-D
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THIS BREAD. THIS. BREAD. OH MY.
OK, we’ve found something wonderful in including sundried tomatoes in our olive bread. And, no, there’s not a recipe – go play with bread, that’s what it’s for.
This bread includes garlic-stuffed green olives, olive oil, Kalamata olives, minced garlic, a bit of crushed red pepper (what else do you do with leftover pizza toppings?), and a couple of handfulls of sundried tomatoes chopped coarsely. It’s primarily white whole wheat (in case you didn’t know: there’s a mutant strain of wheat which has a white hull, so you can have whole wheat that looks like white flour) but also includes about a cup of actual all-purpose flour (the end of the bag, from making carrot cake).
The fantastic rise on this isn’t from anything special – I think it’s because I didn’t weigh this down with flaxseeds and rye berries. It’s also because I decided that 4 cups of water gives 4 rather meager loaves, so I went with 3 loaves instead. It also might be because I left them sitting on top of the oven while the carrot cake was baking, so they were kept nicely warm throughout the rise.
The tomatoes add a wee pop of sweetness, offsetting the saltiness of the olives. This is awesomely tender (due to the olive oil) and makes fabulous toast. Next time I’ll opt to add the olives and tomatoes by hand, rather than throwing them into the stand mixer, because they’re a bit broken up from having been kneaded in with the dough hook. On the other hand, this is just so tasty that maybe it doesn’t matter that the olives are broken.
It may be time for lunch, now, and some sandwiches made on this bread. Or maybe just some cheese, so as not to obscure the flavor of the bread itself.
-D
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Of all the cakes I bake to take to my coworkers, the King Arthur Flour, Everything But the Kitchen Sink Carrot Cake has to be the one that disappears the fastest. I used dried pineapple this time, instead of using canned and crushed … and I think I prefer the canned, believe it or not. Yes, the bursts of sweetness from the dried fruit are nice, but I think that I prefer the slightly tart bursts of raisin (or currant, in this case) with the pineapple more evenly distributed throughout.
Since this one started out to be a double recipe but ended up being a quadruple recipe (I doubled the flour in my head … and then doubled it again), I decided to play a bit with the sugar and only include 3/4 the amount of sugar. I find that this actually worked out quite well – that the cake is not so over-the-top sweet this way. I adjusted the spices a wee bit, as well, with more nutmeg than called for, and less allspice.
I pre-sliced it before frosting it (it’s a 14″ x 14″ cake pan, so I went with a 6 x 6 slice). This is the first time I’ve tried this, and I think it’s something I’ll do again, particularly with such a large cake. This cake isn’t going anywhere, it’s so dense, and this will definitely make life easier when trying to serve pieces at work. I had initially thought to leave it in the cake pan, but that’s been problematic in getting pieces out, and this way I could put chopped nuts around the edges (to let people know, very clearly, that there are nuts in this cake).
We’ll see how long this lasts, tomorrow. With 36 pieces, I’m guessing it’s going to last until lunch … but I’ll make a point of emailing around to let people know that they can can come visit for cake.
As always, when using this pan: this is a huge cake. It’s always rather surprising (although it shouldn’t be, when considering that the pan won’t even fit in any of our cabinets).
-D
The funny thing about living here is that we’re cooking … differently. We’re doing more prep ahead, making casseroles for the week (and freezing 3 when we make 4), we’re having protein smoothies in the morning, and we’re not really cooking as much. We know this not just because we see what we’re doing but because we encounter things like these onions. Left to their own devices, they decided it was time to sprout, even though they’re in a cool, dark cabinet.
-D