nostalgia wednesdays: sister birthdays

My sister and I were born two years and five days apart. Growing up, people even mistook us for twins, which, honestly, is hilarious, because we fell pretty far apart on the appearance spectrum (blond haired, blue eyed, pale vs. brunette, brown eyed, and tan), and I don't think we were ever that close in size until we got older. Aesthetic differences aside, we tended to celebrate our birthdays as if we were, in fact, twins. My parents always made sure to get us essentially the same things, just in different colors, so that no one felt favored or left out. 


I don't know if we fully appreciated the proximity of our birthdays at the time, but I really, really miss celebrating my birthday with her now that we're grown up and live apart. This year we'll be in Denver for our cousin's wedding a week after her birthday, so I imagine we'll attempt a belated celebration. 


If we were home in NC, I'd totally make her/us these cookies. 

I've had a go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe since I was in middle school. In general, I'm very "no, this recipe is acceptable, decent or good, even, but I'm not going to branch out from the safety of its mediocrity." Analyze that as you wish. I'm busy eating my new recipe's cookies. 


I'm not sure what convinced me to put my old recipe aside and take a new one for a spin. Maybe it was the effusiveness of the blogger's description of the cookies. It certainly wasn't the universe, which was clearly trying to tell me something the day I decided to make these suckers. 


I had forgone my lovely bright pink rain boots that morning in favor of flip flops, deeming the 30% chance of rain negligible. A comically torrential downpour set in shortly after my detour from the metro to the grocery to get the last few ingredients, when I was about 2 blocks from my apartment, nearly safe and dry. In a mere two blocks, I was soaked up to my waist, even with an umbrella. It rained so hard so quickly that the rivers of running water were ankle-deep. I was so tempted to toss my umbrella aside, kick off my flip flops, and just splash around like a kid.  


The two new bags of flour, cake and bread, that I had just spent $8 on to concoct these supposedly life changing cookies, were soaked. I had forgotten, again, to restock my toilet paper supply, and had to meet one of my Venice friends for dinner in two hours, but by God, I was going to make those dang cookies. Or rather the dough, for the recipe demands that you wait at least 24, but preferably 36 hours, to bake them. 


You should check out the original blog post about the recipe. It lists all sorts of secrets to the success of the world's greatest cookies, all of which I attempted to adhere to strictly. I even followed the blogger's lead and tested the dough at various points in the process. 


I can't lie, my go-to recipe will always hold a special place in my heart, and I'll always think of the cookies as the dessert that stoked my love for baking. But these newbies are pretty amazing. They're an awfully significant time commitment, and there's the whole need for two types of specialty flour, but they are awfully sinfully good. Sister birthday good, you might say.


I hope you have an occasion to give them a try, even if the universe does its best to dissuade you, too. In the meantime, happiest birthday to my beautiful sister. See you in a week!

welcome, 26

I've always been fortunate to feel really loved and celebrated on my birthday. Except that one year when my Mom forgot it was my birthday. Kidding, she totally would've remembered eventually had I not obnoxiously reminded her at the gas station on our way to the OBKB lodge for the annual May birthdays/Memorial Day weekend. I was, after all, something like eleven years old, and birthdays were an even bigger deal back then, right? 

Anyways, while I really missed being at the lake with my family this year, I genuinely had an amazing weekend. I feel like I packed a ton of summery events in, got a little tan in the process, and spent time with some really great friends. It all wrapped up last night with a great little Monday dinner with Sophie and Hong-Nhu. 

I made my new chicken recipe for the THIRD time in, I don't know, a week, Hong-Nhu brought a great salad, I heated up some of the smoked gouda mac and cheese I set aside from a cookout I went to on Sunday, and Sophie brought dessert. Not just any dessert, mind you, but peanut butter pie, a long-time favorite of mine, which was so sweet of her to remember. She even brought candles, which valiantly managed to hold their own despite the fact that the pie succumbed a bit to the oppressive heat. 

After I blew out the candles, we ended up scooping it straight out of the pie pan, bits of oreo cookie crust and all, as we watched yet another awful episode of The Bachelorette, transfixed and horrified by the cheesiness unfolding before our eyes. It was the perfect way to kick of my twenty sixth year, which, not to totally jinx it, is off to a great start. Twenty five had some serious curve balls, but coming in to this birthday, I've never felt so happy and content. You could even say I'm glowing.    

the anti-bbq

What better timing could I ask for than to share a birthday with a long holiday weekend every year? While I'm not off at the beach or the lake, I'm enjoying a little staycation in DC, full of random things like a new favorite cookie recipe, concerts by the water, furniture painting, pool time, and cookouts with friends. If I can't be celebrating with my family at the OBKB lodge, I think this is a pretty good back up series of festive events. And, I kind of feel like they're here in spirit since they so sweetly sent a dozen cupcakes for me to enjoy with my friends this weekend!  

I'm sure you're all equally occupied with inaugural summer activities, so here's quick little red curry recipe to whip up when you've tired of burgers and beer. Actually, it goes pretty well with beer. 


Anyways, I started with this recipe, but ended up just adding enough curry paste and coconut milk until I liked the taste and consistency. I tossed in red peppers, carrots, and green beans as the sauce was simmering, and ultimately mixed it all together with basmati rice and some fried tofu. It doesn't have the same complex flavors of restaurant curry, but it's a perfect quick weeknight concoction for when you're short of time (and funds).


Happy Memorial Day to all of you (and happy birthday weekend to me)!     

"man, you really like butter"

When it comes to cooking, my biggest problem used to be that I simply refused to cook. When I gave up eating out for Lent, unexpected post-work plans were often my biggest challenge. Now that I cook on a more regular basis, portion control is the issue du jour.

I'm not a total idiot, I realize that most recipes are designed to serve two to four people. And somewhere in the back of my rapidly atrophying brain, there's a part of me that can do basic divison. But, I'm my mother's daughter, and as such, inherited her irrational but omnipresent fear that there won't be enough food to go around the table. Even if, in my case, the table is only set for one. 

So most nights, but especially on nights when I feed more bodies than just myself, I have an abundance of leftovers. Luckily, this makes lunch the next day a no-brainer, and, it means that my coworkers are kind of bribed in to liking me because I feed them. 

For this week's Monday dinner with Sophie, I tried two new recipes. One was for mac and cheese made with quinoa in place of "mac." I was skeptical, especially because the recipe calls for an egg (I know!). But, with a little buttery, bread crummy crust on top and gooey cheese underneath, you basically forget you're eating an egg mixed in with a superfood. It's super filling, and even with soy milk and skim cheese, it's tasty. The recipe, by the way, is not at all lying, not even close, when it says it makes 8 servings. Two of us ate it for dinner, and three of us ate it for lunch the next day. I still have more leftover than I can use.

Anyways, the other recipe I tried was for "moist chicken every time." I know, I know. The name is, well, cliche, and, far from humble. But, I was mostly curious to see if I could abide by the recipe's demand that you cook the chicken for one minute on medium, flip it over, turn the heat to low, and leave a lid on for twenty whole non-stop don't you dare lift that lid minutes. Ten of those minutes, the heat is on low, and the other ten, it's off. Look, I don't know what kind of magic happens in those twenty minutes, but it's some perfectly cooked chicken you're going to pull out of that skillet. And, because you dredge it in some flour and spices beforehand, it's not flavorless like many, many a skillet cooked piece of chicken ends up being. Awfully titled recipe aside, consider me a convert.

While I like to think of this as a healthy dinner, the truth is, there was a decent quantity of butter involved. When we were all eating the leftovers Tuesday, my one coworker asked me how the chicken was so good. I described the aforementioned cooking process, mentioning that it starts with a healthy pat of butter in the skillet, and before I could keep going, he looks at me in a mix of admiration and disgust, and goes "man, you really like butter." 

I'll have you know he ate every last piece of chicken.    

tour: part II

A couple weeks ago, I subjected you to a whole bunch of wide angle snapshots of my place that were from the the real estate listing, and promised that we'd eventually get around to the "after" photos. Well, I imagine I'll never be fully done decorating and tweaking, so I give you what I consider the "in progress" pictures, juxtaposed with the "before" in each room. 

celebration station

Neha and I at her birthday party on a rooftop in the shadows of the FBI building. So very "DC"

Sophie's and my birthday party at Churchkey

Last night was full of birthday festivities. I think over 50% of my friends and family have birthdays in May, so it's always a month full of celebration. We kicked off yesterday with a joint birthday party for Sophie and I in the afternoon at Churchkey, a local beer-tastic bar in the popular 14th Street corridor. Although we didn't come up with a hilariously embarrassing theme like the 30th birthday party across the bar from us, we still had a great time, and I left reminded of how lucky I am to have such amazing friends. 


Later in the evening, I went to a joint birthday party for my coworker/friend Neha, and one of her close friends. Their party was on the roof of her friend's building, which just so happens to call the FBI its neighbor. So while that top photo is too dark to see the details well, trust me, we were a stone's through from the Bureau's headquarters. Not that any stone we could have thrown would have done any damage. The whole upper part of the building is ensconced in weird tan colored netting. Very odd. It was a gorgeous night for rooftop celebrations, and the whole experience seemed very DC. The fact that I could then walk home just made it even better. 


So today I've done a lot of little projects, like cleaning my room, painting a bench, and snapping all sorts of "in progress" photos to follow up on "before" shots I shared a couple weeks ago, even though I'm still sleepy from yesterday's adventures. Despite the lingering tiredness, I forced myself to venture in to the LKTC and concoct a real dinner.     

I know, it's nothing fancy at all. No recipe involved, even. I tend to be pretty hard on myself for nights when I make the non-fancy stuff. I feel like I should always be trying out something new and complicated. But, there are just nights where the motivation and/or time isn't there, and I need to remind myself that on those nights, something simple is better than something fried and sold in a bar. 

So tonight, instead of eating my second bowl of ramen noodles or ordering take out, I sautéed olive oil, onions, garlic, cayenne pepper, salt, black pepper, and then poured in crushed tomatoes. I separately boiled my go-to veggie (peas) and this new Barilla pasta, which is tee tiny, and apparently infused with a full serving of veggies in each 100g portion. I was more enamored with the size of the mini wagon wheels than the advertised health perks, but, it was a nice bonus. For as often as I consume some form of pasta, it's good to know I can procure a slightly more nutritious variety at the grocery down the street.

I think, by the way, that it's pretty funny that in the span of a couple hours, I can get equally excited about child-sized pasta and 99 cent furniture paint. I think I'm simultaneously resisting turning a year older in a week and giving in to the fact that I'm a boring old lady who snaps up clearance paint for her new apartment. I suppose there are worse ways to kick off my birthday week... (yes, week).     

cheers!

(from here)

Let me just tell you, closing on a place and having a birthday all within a week and half was the best accidental sequence of events I could have ever planned. Everyone is being so nice to me. And while acquiring a mortgage is one of the most intimidating things I've ever done, and has fanned the tiny flickering flames of commitment phobia, everyone I know is congratulating me as if I just climbed Mt. Everest or something similarly awesome. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm excited about the whole thing (although to be honest, having lived in the apartment for three weeks now, it seems a little anti-climactic), but it feels so wrong to accept all this praise for something that mostly required a lot of signatures. And don't even get me started on the guilt complex over everyone wanting to buy me a drink or lunch or the like. Just for signing a piece of paper (or a million)!

But, the celebratory spirit is contagious, and I'm definitely in that "puppy love" phase. You know, when you first meet someone new and think that person is the best thing since Google and you walk around smiling like a total goof ball? Yeah, eventually that wears off (especially if you meet the kind of men I do), but while you're in that phase, it is awesome and all-consuming. And that's where I'm at with home ownership. I just want to run around shouting "I finally live in DC! And I love it! So much more than I expected to love it! And I don't have to pay rent anymore!"

I suspect this enthusiasm will spill over and make for the best Jenny-Sophie joint birthday party yet. We apologize in advance to anyone who encounters the twelfth annual celebration this weekend!