Lemon Curd

After finishing up with our wedding photographer duties, my friend Carina and I made lemon curd on Friday.

After warnings on the internet not to attempt to can and preserve lemon curd (due to the eggs, I suppose), I now have a whole lot of curd to get through in the next few days.  Does anyone want some?

Maybe spring?

I am having a hard time the last week or so.

Maybe I’ll have the energy to write more about it here later, but school is crazy, life is crazy, and work is just really sad.  One of the moms I’d been helping with breastfeeding (she had twins), had one of the babies die this week.  Now the other baby is refusing to breastfeed, so I’m going to be working with them next week.  Don’t know how I’m going to do that…

I need springtime.  Really, really badly.  So it was so sweet to see these two oranges hanging over our fence, tied together with string, from our neighbor.

What to eat?

I’m funny about food.  I will snack on anything and everything, but I also feel like I need Meals.  At least three of them a day, and I strongly prefer that they are hot.  I’m not saying I won’t eat cold food, but particularly if it’s cold outside I just feel funky if I don’t eat a warm meal every few hours.  This has never been a problem before, because I’ve always had access to a microwave or some other means of heat when I’ve been at work or school.  But now I’m in school from 8am-5:30pm every Monday & Wednesday (and apparently some Fridays if I don’t want to be a big failure, but more on that later), and I don’t have anywhere to heat up lunch.  I feel like a big whiner bitching about my lack of warm food, but I am having a giant lack of inspiration about what to bring with me to eat that will leave me feeling satisfied.

Mr. Bento lunch.

On Wednesday I took a bunch of nuts and some fruit to snack on, and ate an almond butter & honey sandwich in between classes.  It worked, but wasn’t particularly exciting and I can tell it will get old pretty quick.  I also don’t really like any other form of cold sandwich.  I used to have a Mr. Bento (see above) that I used to take lunches in.  I believe that things can stay warm in them, but there is the whole plastic leaching thing to think about.  I have yet to see a glass bento box, but might be convinced to invest in a metal one if someone can convince me that they actually stay warm.

Anyone have cold meal suggestions?  Or suggestions for how to transport warm meals (and keep them warm)?

Painting our Bedroom

We hate the color of our bedroom.  It was never meant to be light, pale, purple (but it is).  It’s also oddly shiny, though I don’t recall buying shiny paint.

I want our room to be gray, but I can’t decide how dark I want it to be.  I started out thinking I wanted it really dark, but I’m now leaning more towards something in the middle.

I love that color (Yolo Colorhouse, Stone 6), but when I look at an in-person swatch of it, it looks really dark.  See below:

It's the swatch in the upper right corner. See how shiny the wall is now! It's crazy.

What do y’all think?  Dark gray?  Light gray?  Something else entirely?  I have this theory that if the walls are darker and flatter, it will mask their weird texture and imperfections. Right now I feel like our bedroom walls look really cheap.  Can walls look cheap?

Soup weather

While my parents are living it up in Hawaii, and did not hesitate to remind me how beautiful it is at their beach-front vacation house when they called to gloat yesterday, their children are stuck here in this nasty storm that rolled through.  I’m still not feeling particularly well so I decided this called for soup.

Ever since this new organic grower appeared at our farmer’s market last week carrying loads of asian veggies, I’ve been eating bok choy about every day.  I also happened to have some miso paste that I’ve been experimenting with, so I decided to make a very simple miso soup.

I turned out very yummy, and insanely easy to make.  I boiled soba noodles in water, and while that was cooking chopped up the bok choy and some cilantro (from the same farmer’s market vendor).  I threw the veggies in a bowl with a tablespoon of the miso paste, and when the noodles were done cooking poured them on top with some of the water.  I mixed it up, and that was that.

I made some for my sister this afternoon, and added cabbage, carrots, and onion to hers.  It was so good I may actually make it for dinner as well (maybe with the addition of some ginger or garlic to help with whatever I’m fighting off).

Turn up the heat please.

While it would be nice if the outside temperature was warmer, I’m specifically wondering about my internal temperature.  Every morning at 6:30 am I wake up and stick a thermometer in my mouth in a sleepy daze.  I then check the temperature by the light of my cell phone and either a) read the email on my phone because I can’t go for more than a few hours without checking my email or b) fall back asleep immediately.  It’s a giant pain in the ass, but for those of you not in the know about natural family planning, this is normally an excellent way to tell when you have ovulated (see here for more detailed info).  Normally people’s charts have this nice normal looking curve to them.  Something like this:

Here is what my charts look more like:

Crazy looking, right?  Fertility Friend (the site where where I chart) added in an ovulation line that month, but really, with all those crazy ups and downs, it’s pretty unlikely that I did.  This month is looking similarly bumpy in terms of my temperatures.  Those of you who have temped before may have some idea of what I’m talking about.  It’s pretty hard to wake up every single morning to a “WTH” kind of moment when you see what the thermometer spits out.

So if you wonder why I’m grumpy first thing in the morning, there you go.  Sometimes I’m actually tempted to over or under-inflate my temperature by wearing more or less to bed or heating the house to a certain temperature, but I suppose that’s not really the point.

I haven’t been writing that much lately because I’m not sure whether or not this sort of thing is too personal for the internet.  But after some good talks with friends (and P.) about my comfort level, I’m pretty sure I think that the “personal is political,” aspect of sharing about women’s health is important enough to give up some personal boundaries and write about it a bit more.  So there you go.

Today I feel like poo

But this is really funny:

Printers are from Hell.

And I’m done editing photos from the wedding I took pictures at last weekend (did I mention that I took pictures at a wedding last weekend?)

Citizens

My wedding photographer (Bradford Shepherd), just started up a new project called Citizens.  He’s photographing and blogging about a new person every day in 2010.  See here.

Love the pictures and interviews so far.

Betty Draper Dress

I’m not, but I wouldn’t mind being just a little bit pregnant so that I can get away with wearing adorable outfits like this:

Grosgrain (who is always posting adorable things), made the dress for a 1950s party and styled it after Betty Draper’s pregnancy clothes.  Please no spoilers!  We are stuck on season two (we watch them on DVD), so I just barely know she’s pregnant.  Regardless, you can enter to win the dress on her site.  I know I have a few pregnant followers, so you should all head on over.

Go here to see more pictures of the dress (with cocktail & cigarette in hand).

Impressive

Not that I’m surprised, but Ginger Elizabeth, a local chocolateier, was recently written up on David Lebovitz’s blog.  He calls one of her chocolate bars “insane.”  That’s high praise from someone who I’d say is pretty much the pinnacle of pastry chefs.

While we don’t know each other very well, she lived in my room at T Street (the place I lived before I met Paul), until she moved in with her then boyfriend, and I moved into it to replace her.  The room later came to be known as the marriage room, due to the trend of people moving into the room, quickly finding a partner, and moving out to get hitched.

Eating a salted caramel macaron in Ginger Elizabeth's shop

Mr. Lebovitz is a smart man.  Her chocolates are insanely good (along with her macarons, cookies, hot chocolates, and pretty much everything else she cooks up).  If you haven’t been into her shop and you live anywhere close, get yourself some chocolate ASAP.