Kitchen activities

David is an excellent baker. Mostly he bakes bread, but sometimes we get carried away and make cakes and muffins. I have contributed (thanks to a shipment from Mom) to the baking of corn bread and corn bread muffins. Tonight I'm planning to try out chocoloate creamcheese muffins. Yum!

We have also experimented with sour dough. After a few false starts (involving a fair amount of mold) we got our culture in high gear. We made several loaves of rye sour dough bread and rye sour dough rolls before we moved on to wheat sour dough bread. That was good! It was an excellent compliment to either turkey or cream cheese with tomato slices and (home-grown) alfalfa sprouts.

I have made a large number of dinners that stretch to lunch for several days. After about a month of various combinations of canned corn, crushed tomatoes, kidney beans, onions, and ground beef, I moved on to more interesting food. We've have been eating pan-fried salmon, totally awesome orange chicken, various stir fry dishes, quiche, and last night was avgolimono soup.

Since we are both coffee connoisseurs, we made the decision at the beginning of the year (really over the summer) to grind our own beans. This takes time, but our coffee is definitely worth drinking, compared to pretty much everything else. Recently we received an order of loose-leaf tea and have been happily enjoying having options that suit all our warm beverage needs.

These culinary delights have led to a huge pile of dishes. Both of us are generally uninterested in washing them, so they stack up until we can't avoid them any longer. Our plan is to acquire a used dishwasher after the holidays to save us time and stress. I can't wait!

Birthday

Last Saturday was my birthday. In an effort to get prepared, I baked two cakes (well one cake and brownies) on Friday. Ok, the cake didn't really bake so much as rise up out of the pan and get burned while remaining completely liquid in the center. I made the decision to rescue the party by making a new cake, learning from the lessons of the first one.

On Saturday, I made cake. And Birgit made cake. And Mona brought cake. Eventually we had six cakes and ice cream to complement the dinner I made.

Dinner was deviled eggs, a couple of quiches, rice, and salad. I'd invited roughly eight of my friends for dinner and everyone else for dessert and party afterward. For me the highlight of the evening was sitting at the head of the table while everyone stood and sang the Norwegian birthday song!

The party continued until long into the night. We played games. We played fiddles. I got to talk to lots of people. It was a lovely way to spend my birthday, even though I missed my family and Seattle friends.