minnesota winter

I went shopping with Paul today, and we stopped at REI.  For those of you unfamiliar, it is a store that sells gear for camping, skiing, rockclimbing, and other outdoors activities.  It was my first time there, and as someone who wants to get more into outdoors activities and try things like snowboarding or hiking, I was fascinated by the amount of gear they deem necessary to do anything outdoors.  There were even boots for dogs that were especially for hiking on rocky terrain.  I thought about getting them for my dog since she has sentitive feet in the snow, but at $40 I thought that she could stick with the low quality ones for now.

I’ve been wanting to try out snowboarding, skiing, cross country skiing, or snowshoeing, and that visit was really motivating for me.  It’s one thing to think about doing these activities and talk about it once in awhile, but it’s another to see the skis and snowboards on either side of me.  Because I wasn’t really sure what I wanted for Christmas, I decided that I want Dan to buy himself some snow gear so that he can come with me.  I have no doubt that snowboarding alone could still be fun, but since I’ll still be learning, I will want someone to whine to.

I’m excited for the winter in Minnesota because everybody here seems to embrace it.  There are festivals and parades, and REI was packed with people buying their winter gear.  I don’t really have to worry about doing too much research concerning what goes on around here because people at work seem more than happy to talk about it.  It’s great that they embrace the cold here instead of run from it (which is what I am constantly inclined to do).  I do need to get my wardrobe caught up, though.  I bought a downed coat, mittens, scarves, and hats, but I still have to get some snow boots.  I’m eyeing some Uggs.

 I think the worst thing about living here in the winter is that this weekend it was 20 degrees, and I thought it was nice.  It was below or around zero (not including wind chill) every day last week.  With all of those flight benefits, I’m going to have to take a vacation to Hawaii for a week to warm up.

i love glee

I am a huge Glee fan.  I plan my Wednesday nights around it.  I bought both albums the day that each one was released on itunes.  I will probably be preordering season 1 on DVD.  I follow all of them on Twitter.  When I’m bored, I watch their interviews.  And you can bet that I will probably go to their concert if they end up having a tour. 

Why do I like Glee so much?  Because I think it’s hilarious.  I enjoy the singing and dancing.  I also have a bit of a thing for Cory Monteith (don’t tell Dan).  For any other Gleeks out there reading this, here is a link to a blog with Glee music if you don’t have the funds right now to buy the music.  Personally, I think a lot of their versions are better than the originals!

http://www.gleesongs.com/

thanksgiving – the food

Dan and I were extremely proud of the food that we managed to make!  For a very first Thanksgiving, it wasn’t too bad (if I may say so myself).  Here are pictures of our dinner for two:

 

The whole shebang: 

 

Green Bean Casserole (Dan wanted his with cheese):

 

Cornish Hen stuffed with stuffing:

 

All of the sides (stuffing, mashed potatoes, and corn):

 

 

My plate of food!  I definitely didn’t finish it, but we each got our own cornish hen anyway:

 

The pumpkin pie I made!!

 

We had tons of leftovers and will certainly be eating some tonight.  Overall, we’re very proud of ourselves for not setting the whole place on fire or filling it with smoke.  And we’re also glad that nothing got screwed up and everything was edible – we weren’t sure if we were going to end up looking for a Denny’s!

I’d also like to bring up that, with the pumpkin  I made pumpkin puree with last month, I was able to make 6 loaves of pumpkin bread and 1 pumpkin pie.  Not bad for a small pumpkin!

Maybe in the future I’ll throw up the recipe to some of these things (like the pumpkin pie that was made with real maple syrup), but today is not that day.  I’m too tired from my black friday shopping.  I will probably write a little about that tomorrow – lets just say that I’m not quite done yet since a lot of the sales are carrying over into tomorrow. 🙂

pumpkin bread for the soul

So let me just start this with “OH MY JEEZUS, THIS PUMPKIN BREAD TASTES AMAZING!” As I said, I bought a pumpkin at the farmers’ market so I could try to make some pumpkin bread.  I have never made pumpkin bread before, but I found what looked like a good recipe given the 2,971 great reviews and 5 stars that it had.  It was called Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread.  You can click the link to see the original recipe, but I made a few changes based on a few of the reviews, and I am going to share the final recipe that I used.

 Ingredients for Bread:

• 1 (15 oz) can pumpkin puree
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/4 cup oil
• 1/4 cup applesauce
• 2/3 cup water
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 cups white sugar
• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger

 Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease and flour three 7 x 3 inch loaf pans
2. In large bowl, mix pumpkin puree, eggs, butter, oil, applesauce, water, brown and white sugar until well blended.  In a seperate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger.  Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended.  Pour into prepared pans.
3. Bake for about 50 minutes in preheated oven.  Loaves are done when toothpick inserted comes out clean.

I waited all day for Dan to get home with the cloves and ginger that I needed, but then I realized I had a pumpkin, not pumpkin puree.  

  

  Thanks to the power of the internet, I figured that out pretty quick.  There’s not too much to it.  All you do is cut the pumpkin in half, remove all of the seeds and stringy stuff, and then put each side in a pan with 1 cup of water.  Then you bake it at 350 degrees F for about 90 minutes or until the pumpkin is very melty (not really the term I want, but it’s easy to scoop out with a spoon).  Then you scrape out the insides, stick them in a blender or food processor and puree, and wala!! You have pumpkin puree. 

 

 

 After I made the pumpkin puree, I called in my assistant to help me follow the recipe and mix all of the ingredients together.  She did a great job… watching from the floor… but she was especially helpful during cleanup.

So all of the ingredients were mixed per the instructions and the batter looked and smelled delicious!  I admit that I had a small taste of it before it was in the oven — I couldn’t help it.  I had to keep the bread in the oven for longer than 50 minutes, but not too much longer and it gave me time to warm up my glaze.

I made a glaze to put on top of the pumpkin bread.  It consisted of butter, cinnamon, and lots and lots of sugar.  I had a bit of the bread when it was done, and it is 100x better with a glaze than without.  My glaze was pretty crappy since I don’t really know how to make it and I didn’t take the time to look it up, but even though it was chunky, it still did the job.  Next time I’ll probably put a little more effort into it.

The recipe made three loaves, and a lot of the reviews said that they froze very well.  I plan on sending Dan to U of M with one of the loaves, freezing one of them, and then we will continue picking at the one that we have already eaten over half of.  I’m assuming it will be gone by tomorrow afternoon.

Anyway, in conclusion, this is the best pumpkin bread I have ever had in my life.  It has to be.  I mean, I just stayed up until 2:15am ranting and raving about it.

the saint paul farmers’ market

Dan and I are fortunate enough to live next door to one of the many Farmers’ Markets in the twin cities area.  We usually sleep in on weekends and don’t get up in time to get to the market, but today we made it over there at about 11:30am.  As we walked the aisles, we were inspired to make a beef stew.  Lucky us – this was probably going to be the last weekend for a lot of the vegetable vendors. 

 

We found carrots, onions, potatoes, and celery for our stew.  We also got a small pumpkin so we could make pumpkin bread and some wheat bread for us to use for sandwiches.  As with all of the Farmers’ Markets I’ve been to, there were at least 10 vendors with the same types of vegetables, and there were also 3 or 4 stands selling meat.  I got to talking to one vendor, and he alluded to a cheese stand being somewhere, but we never found it. 

 

Overall, the Farmers’ Market was pretty nice.  There wasn’t really anything unique or hard to find (except some cute decorations made in tiny pumpkins), but maybe all of the special stuff stays indoors when it’s 45 degrees out. 

 

Photo courtesy Saint Paul Farmers' Market

The stew we made turned out to be fantastic.  We’ve never done it before, but I am definitely glad that I kept the crockpot despite Dan’s whining about how unnecessary it is.  He’s right, we could get by without it, but it makes such delicious foods!  Aside from the vegetables and meat, I added water, beef stew seasoning, and beef broth. 

Our beef stew

I’m excited to try to make some pumpkin bread! I hope it ends up tasting as good as I’ve been dreaming about.