links: recipes

Apparently I have a thing for chocolate and mint! I want to try these:

January was a busy month!

We made a quick weekend trip to the state of Maryland, and pretty much saw all of it! There was a Heavner family brunch scheduled for Sunday in Cumberland, MD. We decided to extend our trip a tiny bit and spend Saturday in D.C. Lucky for us, Ben’s Uncle Ron, Aunt Janet, and cousins Gracie and Lucy live in Middletown, MD, and let us stay with them!

On the mall...

We arrived in Middletown on Friday evening. We got up Saturday morning, and Uncle Ron helped us plan a 4 mile loop. (We are training for the Skunk Cabbage Half Marathon). The run was great! There were beautiful views and interesting old buildings. We then headed in to D.C.. We parked at a park and ride, and took the train in – super convenient. In D.C. we went to the National Museum of the American Indian, saw the National Archives, the Mall and the National Sculpture Garden (we love yard art!). We then had a delicious dinner of Ethiopian food and headed out to pick Ben’s dad up at BWI. Betsey, Kori, Taariq and Naadir had arrived at Uncle Ron’s while we were in D.C.

Ben in the national sculpture garden.

This map shows the extent of our driving and explorations of Maryland.


View Larger Map

Next up: yurting!

Durango Pics!

Here are some highlights from Durango!

Playing in the snow with the nephews!



Continue reading Durango Pics!

Christmas!

Ben and I had a wonderful Christmas break that was filled with friends and family! It was a long trip, so this is a long post, with lots of links and links to pictures…

Friends on Pearl Street!

Ben wishes he had Sunglasses!

We started off our trip by spending a few days with Wendy in Denver. The weather was beautiful, and we were able to see some of the places we frequented when we lived in Colorado. We had coffee with Aspen, who I played soccer with when I lived there, and we had a great dinner with Wendy’s parents. Ben got to take a welding class at Club Workshop in Denver. Club Workshop is this cool place where they have any tool imaginable for woodworking, metalworking, and more! You can be a member, or pay by the day. It was cool!
Continue reading Christmas!

Winter Wonderland!

Ithaca has been a winter wonderland since we got back from our Christmas traveling! We have been cross country skiing 4 times in the past week. The weekday skis have been little 30-minute jaunts at the park near our house where the dog park is and where I play soccer. Today, we went on a 3-hour ski at Yellow Barn State Forest. There were 10 of us, including 5 who had never cross country skied before (and maybe had never skied at all)! It was awesome. Maddy did a great job with the skijor setup, too. Click the picture to see more!

Punita, Maddy the dog and Gretchen ski!

links: recipes

These recipes look delicious, and they all have something to do with chocolate and peppermint!

New Years Resolution!

Ben and I made a New Years resolution to post to this blog once a month! New design, new resolution! Look for Christmas and New Years updates soon. Bug us if we are slacking off!

Wow it’s been a long time…

It seems we forgot to upload this blog entry at some point….

Well, apparently we can only manage quarterly blog updates. So here goes…

We spent Thanksgiving in Nashville with Bestey, Jim, Kori, Heri, Taariq, and Naadir. We had a ton of fun hanging out and went to the zoo. Our favorite part of zoo was the playground that was big enough for big kids!

Nashville Zoo playground

Birthday Cheese!

So, for my birthday Tamara gave me a cheese making kit! It has everything you need to make mozzarella or ricotta, minus the milk. We tried it out, and it worked great!

We made mozzarella – and it was pretty easy. First you put citric acid in the milk and heat it up – but not too much – it is just barely warm.
heating milk

Then you add the rennett and let it sit for a while. It gets a texture like custard, sort of solid. You then cut this up and put it in a bowl, trying to separate it from the whey. You knead it, kind of like bread, and microwave it a little and it becomes stretchy like taffy!
kneading cheese

That is when it is done. You then mold it into a ball and put it in ice water to cool off. Pretty easy and fun!
taffy cheese

Then we made pizza! The dough is homemade in our fancy schmancy bread machine with spent grains from making beer, and whey from making the cheese. The basil is from our garden – and we made the mozzarella! It was super yummy! Here are pictures before and after baking.
unbaked pizza
baked pizza

4 months? 8 months!

If we keep doubling the time between updates each time, soon it will be infinitely long… Perhaps we shouldn’t go that route.

Of course, it’s been a busy 8 months – that’s how our lives go. And we seldom have our camera with us. We did more than knit, crochet, and climb; however, here’s a few things we did take pictures of: