Intentional Happiness

Life has been a little frustrating around our house lately. Mostly, it's jobs. I can't even get a call or email about any of the teaching jobs I'm applying for, no matter how many times I update my applications. I'm not unhappy with my current jobs-- babysitting and The Chopping Block-- but in terms of schedule and pay, they are jobs I can't sustain on forever. We've been living pretty comfortably regardless of my minimal income, but after doing so for over a year, things are starting to get tighter. I won't bore you with all the details, my point is just that I'm frustrated. I want a real, "grown up" job again, and I want it to be in a school setting. Joe is also feeling a bit stuck at his job, with frustrating management and not any obvious place to get to. So between the two of us, there have been some crabby evenings around our house!

That's where intentional happiness comes in. I first saw the idea of it on my friend The Kitchen Witch's blog, and I commented on how I've been trying to pick out the positive aspects of my life recently. She sent me a !!! card to keep in my wallet, and I've been trying to actually pick out and document some of the !!! moments in my life. Here are just a few things that have made me stop and appreciate my life this week.

This year I have been growing some herbs and tomatoes on our back porch. Not only have I not killed the plants, but they're actually edible! These tomatoes were the first on the plant to turn red, and Joe and I were so excited to eat them. That's major !!!. I also had enough home grown basil to make a batch of pesto, which is now in cute little containers in my freezer, waiting to be eaten.

A great !!! for us is homebrewing. Making beer is a hobby that I am happy to share with Joe. We have so much fun working together to see the process from beginning to end. This is bottling day, which is always fun.

I've been cooking a lot of farm-fresh produce lately, from our CSA share and from farmer's markets. Cooking always brings some !!! into my life. No matter how broke we get, I have a hard time compromising on food. We're mostly eating vegetarian at the moment-- cheaper AND healthier for us and the earth. This was an amazing recipe I made up for grilled polenta squares with collard greens and spring onions, topped with zucchini and white bean tomato sauce.

My jobs have random hours and are low paying, but they allow me !!! like this. 3:00 pm, on the back porch... Get Up Kids on my ipod, homebrewed beer standing by, and a book to enjoy. Ok, so I didn't really enjoy the book (The Sun Also Rises), but I get to feel !!! for relaxing out back in the middle of the day :)

I'm sure I'll document some intentional happiness again. It's a good exercise in counting my blessings, which are many! What made you appreciate life this week?

Recent brewing experiments

I don't remember exactly when we brewed our first batch of beer, but it was sometime after Joe's birthday last summer. His birthday is towards the end of August, so we're still more than a month off from a year's worth of brewing. In the last eleven months, we've brewed 8 batches of beer. I'm proud of that fact, because it shows that we found a hobby we enjoy, and are really working on getting better at it. I've helped Joe with just about every batch, not only because it's easier with two people, but also because I really enjoy the process. It's so similar to cooking and baking, and I savor the end result with a sense of accomplishment. Within the next few months I would like to take the lead on a batch of beer, and to see it all the way from recipe selection to sanitation and bottling. Don't worry, I'll blog all about that experience!

We have gotten a little more bold with our beer making with recent batches, now that we're more comfortable with how the process works. We just tasted our "doctored up" IPA, which was a pale ale kit with our own hops added. I saw this as being similar to taking a boxed cake mix and adding ingredients to make it more gourmet, and I think this beer turned out a lot like that. It wasn't the best beer we've made, but it was not bad at all. When we went to bottle it, the fermented beer was very murky, which we attributed to the dry hop pellets. Next time, we'll use whole leaf hops or somehow contain the pellets before dropping them in. We attempted to filter the beer, which was a long and somewhat successful process. We were really cautious about avoiding contamination, but this was still a risky experiment. Thankfully, the first couple bottles we've tasted have been good. It's a very strong IPA, almost more than I can handle. But as a slow sipping beer, it's not bad. Nothing like the Dogfish Head IPA recipe from our Extreme Brewing recipe book, but not a bad attempt at adding our own touch to a recipe.

We also recently made a Belgian double that called for two pounds of honey along with the malt extract. We haven't tasted the final product yet, but the dark brown color and smell of honey and malt was pleasant and enticing when we were bottling it. I can't wait to taste this one!

Birthday Celebrations!

Last Tuesday I turned the big 2-7. As Joe has pointed out numerous times, this means I'm in my late 20's... and this kind of freaks me out! 30 is around the corner, which is crazy to me. So I guess I better live it up for the next couple years, because life ends when you turn 30, right?!

Ok, I'm really not that freaked out about getting older. I do like to use my birthday as a good excuse for a totally fun day with no work and lots of playing, and this year I did an exceptionally good job making it a fun celebration. The day started with my good friend Cathy, who is my favorite buddy to hang out with mid-week, since we both have jobs with random hours. We went to Kuma's Corner for some amazing heavy metal burgers, which were fantastic. Then we switched to girly mode, and went to a nearby salon for some mani/pedi pampering. It was such a treat, and a perfect way to spoil myself on my birthday!

Cathy and I have decided to use our weekday lunchtimes to explore popular Chicago restaurants that are usually packed. We've done Hot Dougs and now Kumas, and I have a feeling we'll continue this tradition.

I got the Megadeath burger, and it was to die for. The Kuma's burgers are hard to beat!

BLT Salad for dinner, with pretty painted toes on the side :)

I made dinner for Joe and I using some of the fresh produce from our CSA share, then we headed down to Lincoln Park to see one of our favorite bands, Mates of State. They aren't from Chicago, but happened to be playing a Lincoln Hall on my birthday. It was a great show, and Joe and I had so much fun! Officially a great birthday celebration!

We officially celebrated on Saturday night, too, with a party at our house. We used it as an excuse to share our home brewed beer, which our friends seemed to really like. There was plenty of beer to go around, and we celebrated our youth with a rowdy game of flip cup (which my team won!). We enjoyed the nice weather out back until a neighbor shushed us around 2:30, and slept in pretty late the next morning in an effort to recover. I had so much fun hanging out with all of our friends, and have to say this was the best birthday I've had in recent memory!

A sad day in beer land

So about a month ago we bottled our Rail Yard Ale clone, based off the most popular brew at Wynkoop Brewery in Denver. It tasted decent, but was a bit more bubbly than most beers we've made so far. It wasn't a big issue, though, so we have actually been saving most of it to share with our friends at a party this weekend. At least, we thought it wasn't a big issue...

Then I was cleaning the house this morning, and came across this, kind of under the bed in the guest room:

This is a picture of a bottle of beer without a bottom on it. That means at some point in the last couple days, we had a bottle burst. And it blew with enough force to blow the bottle right out of the cardboard box it was being stored in! We were in Iowa with Joe's family for the last couple days, so I think it happened while we were gone. Must have been a crazy noise, though!

Now we're chilling the rest of the beer, to relieve a little pressure. Then we're going to try to take the caps off, let off some pressure & foam, and then rebottle them. We'll see if there is any carbonation left at that point, or if we end up with a lot of bottled flat beer. There might be a lot of PBR served at my birthday party on Saturday night...

Attempts at Urban Gardening

For the last few years I've been talking about attempting to grow some herbs on our back porch, but for one reason or another we've bailed on the plans each summer. This time we were out of excuses and decided to bite the bullet and give urban gardening a try! I love cooking with fresh herbs, and was excited at the idea of having them available to me right outside the door. Also, to know that I've grown a part of the food I'm eating is an exciting concept that I wanted to try.

We decided to get our garden started on Memorial Day, when Joe and I were both home from work. Unfortunately, this ended up being a relatively rainy day, but I refused to wait any longer! So we got soaked while wondering around Gethsemane Garden Center, and them embraced the rain while planting at home.

This is a Czech Bush heirloom tomato plant. They recommended it for our small space, because it grows like a bush and doesn't need the typical steaks for a tomato plant that grows up. I also couldn't resist the cute little gnome to watch over our plants!

We bought two kinds of basil. Typical sweet Italian basil, and also lemon basil. It has already been growing a ton, and I used some of the basil in a pasta sauce I made last week. We also are growing French thyme, which I added to the quinoa loaf that I blogged about. The herbs taste fresh, and it's wonderful to just cut them straight off the plan while I'm in the midst of my cooking. Below is the final product. The tomato plant is already sprouting some small green tomatoes, which we've been checking in on every day. I can't wait to taste them!

Washington D.C.

Last weekend Joe and I had the chance to visit friends in Washington D.C. I hadn't been there since I was a teenager, and Joe had never visited, so we took the opportunity to really make this a vacation. We soaked up the touristy requirements around the mall, and took in plenty of history at the various Smithsonian museums. Our friend Nick suggested a Segway tour of the main sites around the Mall, and we decided it was a great idea. Not only was it totally fun to ride the segways, but it was also a quick and easy way to see so much in just 3 hours. It was a perfect overview of the important buildings and monuments in D.C., and our tour guide made the whole experience a lot of fun. This was a great way to start our trip!

After the segway tour, we spent the rest of Thursday just hanging out. We started drinking around 2:00... are you impressed? We had a great time just wandering around the city, bar hopping and sampling different beers and food menus. My friend Janice, who I've know since second grade, met up with us after work. It was so fun to catch up on the last few years! We also got to hang out with our friend Jay, who used to live in Chicago. His girlfriend Becca was busy starting her own law school graduation celebrating, but did get to meet up with us towards the end of the night. I wish we could get this crew together more often, because it was so much fun to hang out with everyone!

Friday was our super tourist day, and we made the most of it. We started at the American History museum, where we saw Julia Child's kitchen, Michelle Obama's inauguration dress, the Beastie Boys boombox, and other important American artifacts. We did a quick tour of the Air & Space museum around lunchtime, then met Nick at the Native American museum for lunch. We enjoyed a little relaxation at a quiet sculpture garden, then braved the lines for the National Archives. Seeing the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence was facinating and well worth the wait!

We met up with Danielle that night, and had a fantastic dinner at Marvin. Joe had the southern experience of Chicken & Waffles, and we got to sample some fresh, local soft shell crab. More bar hopping followed, with special cocktails at a sorta secret throwback bar called the Gibson. The weather couldn't have been better, and we loved exploring the nightlife in a new city. U street was packed with people, and seemed to have something for everyone!

Saturday Danielle teamed up with friends to make an amazing brunch at her house. The food was out of this world, and that combined with breakfast cocktails made for some major sleepiness by early afternoon. We forced ourselves off the couch, though, and spent the afternoon exploring Georgetown. I couldn't stop commenting on how much I loved the whole neighborhood! We managed to stuff our faces a little more when Danielle brought us to her favorite cupcake bakery, and then went home to relax a little before a very late dinner. The pizza and small plates we had a 2Amys was some of the best food of the trip, and this relaxing dinner was a perfect end to a busy trip.

Thanks Nick and Danielle for hosting us! We had a fantastic time!

Celebrating across the Midwest!

My cooking blog has been a bit slow lately, because in the last two weeks my personal life has been a whirlwind of traveling and seeing old friends. My Abstract Algebra final was May 5, and as soon as it was over I started running around like a crazy person! My good friend Chris came to town to be sworn in as a lawyer with the Illinois bar, and we joined him and his parents to celebrate his accomplishment. What a fun night we had! The next day I taught a cooking class with Common Threads (which you can read about here), and then we joined a group of friends to celebrate our friend Dan's graduation from grad school. After a busy semester of studying and working too many nights and weekends, I really enjoyed just hanging out and catching up with friends!

Joe & Chris enjoying some brews at Rock Bottom

We decided to check out The Roof at the Wit Hotel. It's an open patio bar on the 27th floor of the hotel, offering amazing views of the city. We agreed this was an awesome spot to go, even if we were under dressed and totally not cool enough to really hang out there!

Congrats Dan!

After all that celebrating in Chicago, I took the train down to St Louis for the next week. My mom was on her last few days at the rehab hospital, and I was able to help my dad get the house ready for her homecoming. I also made easy, portable, healthy dinners to bring to the hospital, since my mom had grown really tired of bland hospital food. I was so happy to have the opportunity to go down to lend a hand, because I knew the last month had been really challenging for my family. I was there when my mom finally came home from the hospital, and helped her start the transition back to living at home. Thankfully, the wheelchair is only temporary, so she's only having to learn to live this way for a measured amount of time! Joe came down for the weekend, and we all joined together to celebrate my sister Colleen's graduation from high school. It was so uplifting to celebrate these accomplishments with the people who are most important to me!

Welcome Home Mom!

Celebrating with my sisters... brother didn't make back to StL until waaay later that night.

My aunt and grandparents also came to St Louis to see my mom and celebrate with Colleen.

After Colleen's graduation party, Joe and I snuck out to see some old friends. Josh was Joe's college roommate for 3 years, and was in our wedding. We've known him and his girlfriend Christy for years, and it was fun hanging out like old times!

Once things calmed down in St Louis, my sister Laura and I went to Kansas City for a couple days. Laura and her husband Dan are starting grad school at KU this summer, and Laura needed to find a place for them to live. Since I lived in Kansas City after graduation, I volunteered to help her with the apartment hunt. I also knew this trip would be a chance to catch up with other old friends, like my college roommate Jess and our friends Kieth and Tara. We also had lunch with Joe's brother and his wife, who are expecting a baby this summer! Once again, it was a wildly busy two days... with a lot of fun thrown in the mix!

Jess just bought a townhouse, and we were honored to be her first guests!

Kieth and Tara have an adorable little guy named Jack, and I finally got to meet him. He looks pretty darn cute in this picture, and is really even a million times cuter than that. I had so much fun playing with him!