February 2014 Archives

February 23, 2014February 23, 2014

The world over dinner

We have a world map over our kitchen table. It’s not on nice canvas or even framed. It’s covered with all these little white arrows pointing to different locations. People coming over the first time often ask if all those arrows point to the places we’ve traveled. I wish! They span much more of the globe than Phillip or I have ever visited.

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In college, Phillip took an anthropology class called Peopling of the World. The final was a long list of places you had to find and label on a world map. This was pre-Google maps, so even as an open book test, it was surprisingly difficult. I barely knew Phillip at the time, but my roommate was in the same class. I remember her map stretched out across our living room floor, and Serenity furiously searching through a stack of books and notes to figure out where her little multicolored Post-it labels should go. Phillip printed out his list of places at the one of the school computing labs and cut them into arrows.

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When we moved into our current home and he hung it up over our kitchen table, I wasn’t sure about it. I liked the world map, but did it need to be right there in our dining room?

But it grew on me. We find ourselves dreaming over Sunday morning coffee about places we’d like to visit. Or breaking a quiet moment at the dinner table with, “Did you know all of India is north of the equator? Why did I think it was farther south than that?” Or “Spain really does come close to northern Africa.” And we’re geeks so this gets us talking.

So, the map has stayed. One of these days, maybe we’ll even get around to framing it.

February 12, 2014January 4, 2018

6 Sweet + Simple DIY Valentine’s Day Ideas

Maybe all you need is love. But adding a few special ingredients – like a nice meal and a thoughtful surprise or two – never hurt. Here are a few simple DIY ideas for celebrating whoever warms your heart this Valentine’s Day.

1. Chocolate: This easy 2-ingredient recipe for homemade Kit Kat Bars comes from the brilliant minds at A Beautiful Mess.

2. Wine: Have you tried making my Super Sangria yet?

3. Flowers: Make paper roses with this tutorial from Dozi.

4. Love notes: Fold up a mini envelope (like I did for the Craft Hack flyer) and tuck a tiny card, a few conversation hearts, or some small sentimental mementos.

5. Ambience: You can make a fun heart backdrop, like this one on designlovefest, from some 1 x 2s, chicken wire, and paper napkins! (Seriously!)

6. Dinner for two: To avoid crowded restaurants, pack a picnic! Maybe head out to a scenic spot outside of your normal stomping grounds. Wherever you go, this washi tape and paper bag utensil holder from Making Home Base is a super cute way to keep forks and spoons in place. (You know I love brown paper bags, but red ones would be fun too!)

Happy Valentine’s Day, friends!

February 6, 2014June 2, 2014

4 Ingredient Super Sangria

The Super Bowl party invite said to bring a beverage to go with wood fired pizza. I took that as my cue to make sangria.

My sangria-making habit started after my semester in Spain. My friends and I used to go to this Chinese restaurant that had the best sangria in town. (Yes, Chinese food. In Spain. With amazing sangria. You with me?) We developed kind of a routine of stopping in every week or two, starting with a pitcher of sangria, improving our Chinese food in Spanish vocabulary while looking over the menu, eating a meal that tasted strikingly similar to Chinese food back home, and then my friend would finish off the fruit at the bottom of the pitcher. By the end of the semester, I was hooked on sangria and excellent at ordering Chinese in Spanish.

These days, I think of sangria as a summer drink and usually make it with more citrusy and peachy flavors. But we had a delicious apple and pear sangria when we were in Tucson last month (I’d link to a post about that, but it’s not written yet), so when we got the party invite, I was ready to try making a winter sangria.

I kept it simple with just four ingredients: apples, pears, red wine, and blood orange Italian soda (yep!). The soda had a very light flavor, so it wasn’t overpowering. It also contributed the bubbles, extra sweetness, and a nice clear glass bottle to make the sangria in, so our friends wouldn’t have to remember to return a pitcher to us later.

I poured most of the soda out of the bottle to start with, added the other ingredients, and then added some back in after tasting.

In the meantime, I started slicing apples and realized the slices were just a little too big to easily fit through the opening of the bottle, so instead I did kind of a chunky matchstick cut. “Chunky matchstick” may not be an official culinary term, but it might make a good band name and pretty much describes the way the fruit was cut in our Tucson sangria.

I slid the pieces in the bottle one at a time until it started looking like there was a whole lotta fruit in there. Then I poured in the wine through a funnel, so I wouldn’t spill it all over. But I almost did that anyway, because I was taking photos while pouring. (Blogger problems.)

I filled the bottle part way, so I’d have room to adjust my ratios after a taste test.

That’s probably about the time I realized I had all these produce stickers on my elbow. And the waistband of my hoodie. Because I am awesome.

Also probably because I stuck them all on the counter before I washed the fruit. (Am I the only one who does this?) Then I’m guessing I leaned right on them while I was taking photos of apples.

See what I go through for you guys?

Anyway, so after tasting, I added a little more of everything, then tasted and adjusted a few more times until it was just right. I had looked at a recipe, but then I didn’t really follow it. It’s more authentically Spanish if you don’t follow a recipe. Drinking wine while you make it helps too, ~~even~~ especially if it’s only lunchtime.

I gave it a few hours to chill in the fridge.

Finally, I covered the soda label (which I hadn’t had time to remove properly) with navy blue paper, because I wanted both Seahawks fans and Broncos fans to feel free to partake. I labeled it ¡Super Sangria! (The upside down exclamation point makes it Spanish.) Then we headed out to watch the not-so-Super Bowl. At least there was plenty of wine at the party.