Thanksgiving - A Day Late

We were in Lisbon and flying back to London on Thanksgiving this year so we had our big dinner on Friday. Brent, Charlotte and I cooked literally all day except for a 30 minute break in the middle while the roll dough was raising. It was fabulous fun. Brent moved the computer to the kitchen table and we played Christmas music (kind of wrong but technically *after* Thanksgiving).

The Guests:
Brent and Me (of course)
Charlotte
Calvin and Carike

The Menu:
"Churkey" (Ok, it was 2 chickens but we couldn't get a turkey due to a grocery situation and the local butcher shop which carries mallard, wild pheasant, hare, pigeon and other various strange sounding wild game but requires a pre-order for turkeys which we did not do. Living in a foreign country is weird sometimes.)
Stuffing
Mashed Potatoes & gravy
Yams with apples and marshmallows (I combined both of our mom's recipes to create the yummiest, most unhealthy yams you'll ever have)
Strawberry apple jello
Veggie tray with herbed onion dip
Wheat rolls with honey butter
Pumkpin and apple pies (with homemade pastry crust and all)
Wassail (B's mom's recipe is the *best* wassail recipe ever)

Everything except the cranberry sauce, gravy and ice cream was homemade. It was my first time to cook and host an entire Thanksgiving meal and it turned out great and everything was done at 7:00, just like we had planned. When does that ever happen?

Assignments:
Brent was in charge of procuring the meat, putting together the veggie tray, making the honey butter and the mashed potatoes.

Charlotte helped me with the rolls, pies, setting/decorating the table and made the yams.

I did the meat, stuffing, gravy, jello, wassail and the other stuff that Charlotte helped with.

After dinner, we played Pirates of the Caribbean Life and had pie and wassail.

It was really fun to once again share one of our favorite holidays with our international friends. They were all so excited to experience a real Thanksgiving. I hope we delivered.

Giving Thanks

**Since we're out of the country (both our own and the one we currently live in) on Thanksgiving, I've scheduled this to post. Hope it worked.**

I saw this video on the church website (you should check out this particular page) and it made me laugh and smile and cry a little bit. I love some of the answers, especially the ones who are obviously struggling with life right now but still found something profound to be thankful for. Even if it was just the hope of something to be thankful for sometime in the future.



What are you thankful for? My answer: A truly amazing husband who wows me everyday at his capacity to love crazy ol' me.

Soup of the week

Chicken Noodle Soup
Difficulty level: Super Easy
Cook Time: 10 mins of chopping, 20+ mins of cooking depending on how long you let it simmer
Serves: 6

2 teaspoons butter
1 cup sliced celery
1 cup chopped carrot
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 small potato, diced
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
4 (14 ounce) cans chicken broth
2 teaspoons chicken bouillon
4 ounces egg noodles
2 cups cooked chicken
parsley

Melt butter in large pot.
Sauté the celery, carrot and onion for 2 minutes.
Add potato, thyme, poultry seasoning, chicken broth and bouillon.
Bring to a boil.
Add noodles and chicken and cook on low for 20 minutes.
Sprinkle with parsley

Results: Best chicken noodle soup I ever had. Seriously. I think it's because there's no water, just broth. Charlotte had never had chicken noodle soup before (What?! How do Brits get through a cold with no CNS?!) and was pleasantly surprised. I guess she had been picturing something completely different when I was explaining it to her a few days before.

Adjustments:
•Left out the potato
•Substituted herbs and seasonings (they don't make poultry seasoning here) for 2 tsp "mixed herbs" which is thyme, marjoram, parsley, oregano, sage & basil
•Used veggie broth instead of chicken broth
•Used more veggies than called for (not much, just 1/4-1/2 cup more than written)
•Let broth, veggies and chicken simmer on low for 2 hours then added the noodles 20 minutes before serving.
•Oh, and I put in way too many noodles because I didn't measure, I just dumped. I suggest measuring.

Exam weekend

So... Brent took another exam a few weeks ago. If you still haven't caught on to this whole ordeal and are trying to figure out why a guy who graduated from college 4+ years ago is still taking exams, you can read about them here, here and here.

This time he attempted Exam 9, the last one, if he were taking them in order. Which he is not. Mostly because the CAS only offers 7 and 8 in the spring and 9 in the fall so unless you are planning to take a year off in between 7 and 8 (which he can't, Farmer's Actuarial Student policy requires he take one at every sitting unless it is an authorized break for medical, family, etc reasons). He can usually tell right away if he passed or not but he said this time it's a close one. So we'll be waiting until the end of next month to find out. He sure studied a lot. He reached the 250+ hour region so hopefully between that and the trillions of prayers, he passed. Woo!

The Casualty Actuarial Society (the group that does this whole thing) is an American society so his co-workers don't have exams the same time he does, in fact the British exams are set up totally different. Brent and the few other members of the CAS in London take the exams wherever the CAS can rent an office space and pay a local actuary to proctor the exam. This time it was in Mayfair, which for those of you who don't know (I didn't), is the "Boardwalk" equivalent on the UK Monopoly board. Sweet! The office was in a building above a Bentley dealership. I think. I can't remember but there were Jaguar, Bentley, BMW and Mercedes dealerships (the fancy kind where it's just a big office with a few choice models inside, no lot or anything) on that street and I know he was above one of them.

After the exam was over, I met up with him and we ate at a Brazilian run cafe in Mayfair then walked around the area for awhile. We passed the Wellington Arch and walked through a corner of Hyde Park.

After our walk we saw Fantastic Mr. Fox. That was seriously one of the best movies I have seen in a really long time. It was so clever and unique and funny! So good. You should all be looking up showtimes at your local cinema.

The next day Brent went back to work but we met at the train station afterwards and went to the temple. We booked a room in the accommodations centre on temple grounds which we've been wanting to try out for some time now.

After we got checked in, we walked down the street to a local pub. Kind of strange, right? Well, pubs are all over the place and usually have really delicious food and this one was actually more of a family restaurant than a pub. It reminded us of a TGI Fridays or similar place. The food was fabulous and the dessert was big enough to feed an army. We got the "Mega Sundae for 2" and we had to laugh when the waitress brought it out. This thing had 2 scoops each of vanilla and chocolate ice cream, 4 cream puffs, 4 brownie squares (with a caramel/fudge center) tons of whipped cream, strawberry and chocolate syrup and it was sprinkled with Cadbury crunchy nuggets and buttons and had sticks of chocolate poking out of it. Woah, I'm remembering the overstuffed feeling just thinking about it. It was scrumptious and we of course did not finish it.

When we got back to the accommodation, we just enjoyed our great view and went to bed early. In the morning we did a session at the temple then took the train home. We're definitely going to do that again.

So there you have it. Exam, awesome movie, way too much delicious food and the temple. I'd call that a pretty good week. Especially since I get my hubby to myself for a few weeks now.

Thoup of the week

In honor of our niece Molly, we didn't have soup this week, we had thoup. (She has a lisp, you see, and is 4 and very, very cute.)

This week's thoup: Herbed Potato which we served with bacon crumbled on top and garlic bread to dip
Cook time: 20-30 minutes Yield: 5 servings

2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
2 cups water
1 large onion, chopped
1/4 cup butter, cubed
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon dried rosemary, crushed
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 1/2 cups milk

~Place potatoes and water in a large saucepan; cook over medium heat until tender. Meanwhile, in another saucepan, sauté onion & butter until tender. Stir in the flour, salt, thyme, rosemary, and pepper. Gradually add milk. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes. Add potatoes with cooking liquid; heat through.

Result: SO yummy and creamy and warm. Because of the rosemary and thyme, it felt very autumn-y. It's not so much for the health-conscious as the cold-and-want-something-warm-and-filling-conscious.

Adjustments: I diced a rib of celery and a clove or 2 of garlic and sautéed them with the onion. The flavor was a bit mild so next time I may substitute veggie broth for some or all of the water. Or up the herbs, or both. Actually, now that I think about it I'll probably drain the potatoes, add them then just stir in veggie broth until I like the consistency/flavor. Oh, and I'll double the recipe. We did *not* have enough leftovers.

A Little Piece of Home...But For a Price

With the holidays coming up, I have been planning the glorious feasts I get to cook. Yes, you heard me, *get* to cook. Living so far away from anything even resembling family, I get to be hostess for all of our holiday meals this year and I'm quite excited about it. I've been making lists and menus and planning when/where I need to buy all of my ingredients. The problem is, there is no Thanksgiving here so the shelves at my local supermarkets are NOT stocked with a few of the essential items like pumpkin (canned or otherwise, they stopped selling pumpkins the day after Halloween or I'd just buy one and make my own puree), marshmallow fluff (for fudge of course!), cake mixes (specifically spice cake mix for pumpkin cookies) and several other items that would make holiday cooking much easier.

Now don't get me wrong, I fully intend on attempting many traditional English recipes for Christmas but I NEED some of my tried and true ingredients. So I asked a few American ladies at church and was directed to this website. Holy Moly! Jackpot! I found Libby's pumpkin, Duncan Hines cake mixes (*the* best cake mixes, btw), Crisco, marshmallow fluff, and tons of other stuff. AND the shipping is really affordable especially if you spend more than £50, then it's free. The problem is everything is so expensive that it was way too easy to spend £50+. I could have spent hundreds. They carry so many of our "favorite" things but I restrained myself. Do I *really* need to spend £4 for a tiny jar of Jiff? Or £11 (which to put in perspective is $18) for a 12 pack of A&W? Or £4 for a box of Kraft Mac N' Cheese? The answer to all of these questions is NO! I was willing to pay ridiculous prices for items that I *have* to have for holiday baking/cooking and a few one time treats but that's it. I'm going to attempt to only order from this website a couple of times a year and only in baking related emergencies.

I'm really excited to get my shipment though because not only will I be able to cook some of our holiday favorites, it was nice to see products I'm familiar with. Have you ever gone on a vacation out of the country and had to buy food from a local grocery store and all of the products and brands were totally foreign and new and you weren't sure if they'd even be what you were looking for? Well that's me, on a pretty constant basis. Luckily, we've lived here long enough and the food is pretty good (generally speaking) so I've been able to pick out a set of "regular" items and brands that I know won't fail me but sometimes I think the labels might as well be in Turkish because I have NO clue what I'm looking at.

So in conclusion: americansweets.co.uk is a lifesaver even though it made me miss home a little bit more and it's really expensive.

...at least the shipping was free.

Soup of the week returns!

Soup of the week has been going strong around here these days and I'm loving it. For the past 5 weeks we've had soup once a week. It's been so yummy!

There are 3 contributing factors to the high rate of success over last year's attempt:
1 - Since we have a lodger who is paying us for food, I feel much more of a "motivation" (read: guilt) to cook proper meals.
2 - It is rapidly cooling off and will stay cold until March/April
3 - I found some interesting recipes and ingredients that I don't usually cook with due to the whole "living in a new country" thing

I only have pictures for the last 2 weeks but here's the list.

~Beef Stew (I don't really use a recipe, I just put stuff in a pot and let it simmer for a few hours) - It turned out really well because although I'm not a huge fan of the flavor of English beef, it was SO tender. There were no weird chewy pieces.
~English Minestrone - Pretty much the same as regular but with cabbage instead of pasta. It was really yummy. Minestrone is one of my favorite foods.
~Chicken and Pumpkin Chowder - Surprisingly good. The pumpkin didn't have tons of flavor and it was way too soft so if you're going to let it simmer on the stove for longer than the recipe says don't put the pumpkin in until 20-25 minutes before you're going to serve it. I think less cooking time will save more of the flavor too. Charlotte isn't a big fan of all things creamy so she had her portion before I added the cream, making it more of a soup than a chowder.
~Tomato Basil Bisque - (I learned a super easy way to peel tomatoes for this time. Can't believe I had been doing it the hard way for all these years!) Always a hit. Took the leftovers to a Relief Society pot luck dinner and someone asked if they could take the extra home. The night we had it at home, I also tried my hand at homemade wheat rolls. It was my very first time and they turned out quite nicely. The recipe is called "Never Fail Rolls" so I had high hopes. I'm going to keep making them every few weeks because I am hosting my very first Christmas this year (Brent's parents and youngest sister, Camille, are coming) and I want the rolls to be perfect.

~Taco Soup served with plenty of avacado, tortilla chips, and sour cream- Also always a hit. I was interested to see how it would taste because they don't sell "Taco Seasoning" here so I bought a packet of "Mexican Spices" whatever that means. It was yummy. More fajita-y than taco but I think it was better that way.

I didn't feel like typing out the other recipes so if you want them, let me know and I can email them to you.

**Guide to English cooking:
cornflour = cornstarch
courgette = zucchini
single cream = light or regular cream
bacon lardons = not compatible because bacon is totally different here, just crumble your bacon after cooking
400g tin = 16oz can (roughly)

Best. Birthday. Ever.

I turned 25 a week or so ago. Woo! 25! Maybe now I can *start* to feel like an adult?

Anyway, I've been really excited about turning 25 on the 25th since I was in high school and my friend Amanda turned 16 on the 16th. For her "golden birthday" she got 16 presents. Cool, right? So...I always thought it would be sweet to have my own golden birthday, and not just for the presents.

Poor Brent has had to put up with my relentless "reminders" that my 25th birthday was approaching for probably the last 3 years. Now, I'm much more tactful than to insist on 25 presents (because I honestly don't expect OR need that much), but I think I did get a few hints out there that I wanted him to make a big deal of it. And boy did he deliver! Must be because his family does the whole "golden birthday" thing.

He is always really great around my birthday. In fact, for the past couple of years, since he's had exams near my birthday he makes sure to tell me "Happy Birthday" everyday starting around the 10th of the month. Strange boy. This year it was on a Sunday so he took Charlotte and I out to dinner the night before.

On Sunday, after he finally got home from church (he was gone for like 8 hours) he cooked dinner.

While dinner was in the oven we carved pumpkins which sadly got rained on that night and turned to mush with in a matter of days. Brent's is the big one with the giant smile. He free handed it and was finished in less than 5 minutes. Charlotte and I took a bit more time drawing and planning. Mine is the one in the middle. By the time I got the pictures taken, she was kind of mushy so you can't see her tiny vampire teeth anymore but she is cute nonetheless. Charlotte's makes me laugh. It's so goofy. It looks like it's saying something dumb.

Brent inhaled his dinner and then ran upstairs while Charlotte and I finished eating. About 10 minutes later, he called me upstairs to help him with something. I walked into the bedroom to find 25 individually wrapped presents on the ground that he needed help carrying downstairs. I was totally surprised because I didn't expect it and he'd been so busy with work and studying I didn't think he'd even have time to get me a card. All of the boxes could have been filled with socks for all I care because the best part was that Brent was so excited about it and proud of himself for being so sneaky. He put so much thought into it.

There were all kinds of gifts. Here's a small sample: chapstick, hair rubberbands, chocolate, cookies, travel guides, tickets to Les Miserables, and about 1/3 of the gifts were pictures of things he either didn't have time to buy or didn't know what to buy like boots, a dress, a winter coat, an external hard drive to backup all of our pictures, a coupon for a bookstore so I can get a proper English cookbook, and lots of other things. The funniest part was that the picture gifts were all wrapped in random containers from around the house. One was wrapped in a cup, one was in the box for my tripod, one was in the cell phone pouch Brent detattached from his backpack...

Charlotte got me chocolate and The Pursuit of Happyness. And throughout the week before and the week after I got presents and cards in the mail from various family members (Thank you!!). Brent's family sent me a package with all of the materials and patterns to make a cute stuffed animal and this wall hanging.

After the presents we talked to family on Skype and one of my very favorite things from the whole day (possibly the whole month...year?) is when the Gordon girls sang me the birthday song. It was SO cute! Man, I love family!!

So to sum up: I'm *finally* 25 and I had the best birthday ever. Seriously, I haven't had that much fun on a birthday since my mom threw me awesome themed parties when I was little.