To kick off our Winter Solstice and the holiday, Earl and I threw what I hope turns into a yearly winter bash.  Feastivus:  a big schmorgashborad of chowing down with a bunch of our dear friends.

It took a whole day of shopping, (I am NOT exaggerating here, it took 5 hours straight of shopping at four stores, Earl was about ready to kill me by the end of the day!), an entire day of prep work and cleaning and then another whole day of cooking to pull it off.  And pull it off we did!  Despite last minute fears of not having enough food, having too many people show up (do you know how nerve wracking it is to hem and haw over whittling down a guest list, finally settle on who you are inviting, and send out belabored invitations only to have 2/3 of your guests ask “I can bring a date, right?”), not having enough places for people to sit or enough silverware and more essentially NOT HAVING ENOUGH BOOZE, things went off without a hitch.

The success of Feastivus supports my theory that as long as company is true, the home is warm and welcoming and there is plenty of food and booze to go around the party will survive any major kerfluffle.  I figured worst case scenario we could dole out a bunch of tequila shots and order a couple of pizza pies. 

Blessedly, it did not come to that!  I spent approximately 12 hours net in the kitchen and by the skin of my teeth pulled off a fabulously complicated and intimidating gourmet meal which I siphoned the recipes from a secret professional chef who shall not be named.  What follows below is the photo and text documentary of how things went!  I hope you enjoy the write up as much as Earl and I enjoyed throwing the party.

Just to recap, here was the planned Feastivus menu, in all it’s arduous glory:

• Appetizers: mulled wine, devilled eggs, hummus & pita chips, pickles, jams
• Entree: stuffed pork roulande in puff pastry, ratatouille
• Sides: creamed carrots, pecan wild rice pilaf, greens & berry salad with a pumpkin vinaigrette
• Dessert: Grand Marnier bread pudding, poached pears, spiked eggnog

Going into the night before the party, the only thing I had changed on the menu was to sub in a vegan olallaberry pie for the poached pears.  Upon doing menu prep (the dreaded “do I have enough pots and pans to get all this food ready at the same time” calculation) I realized that poached pears were far too labor intensive for a dinner party and I would much rather spend my evening schmoozing and socializing with my guests than reducing and re-reducing a poached wine sauce.  So, you could say I cheated and took a shortcut because Earl and I picked up the vegan pie pre-prepared from Rainbow Grocery, the hippy grocery store.  We’d actually served the same exact pie the last time our vegan friend Dom came over to dinner, and it was STUPENDOUS- even better than a bunch of non-vegan pies I’ve had, so we knew it would be a failproof hit.

Enough chatting, let’s get to the cooking.  I actually had MAJOR problems getting started with cooking this meal.  I don’t know what it was!  I was puttering around on Monday morning, delaying the inevitable, to the point where Earl, who was at work by this time, found me on gchat and asked “what are you doing online?!?!? Shouldn’t you be cooking by now????”  My friend Tracy- the inflabbable type you can always lean on in a crisis- fielded my frantic “help I am throwing a dinner for 14 people and I can’t seem to get started!  What is wrong with me?” phone call with skill.  She pointed out the astute observation that I miss the hectic pace and pressure of the trading floor i-banking environment and therefore seek out and create these high pressure scenarios with cooking and parties so that I may sink or swim under harsh deadlines.  She has a point.  She ORDERED me on the phone to get started.  “While we are talking, you better be chopping,” she barked.  “Are you chopping?  I don’t hear chopping!”  Tracy got me out of my rut while we chatted and caught up and soon I was peeling carrots, dicing onions, grinding up oranges and on my way.  In a sense, you could say she is the Woman Who Saved Feastivus.  I owe her a thank you letter!

First thing I made was the “stuffing” to go in the pork roulade.  It is an orange cranberry reduction with herbs and spices.  The base of it is five oranges ground up, then sautéed with two bags of fresh cranberries while you add a bunch of herbs.  Because my trusty Magic Bullet blender is currently BROKEN and we have been too cheap/lazy/busy/forgetful/unorganized to order a new part for it, I had to slice, dice, cut, chop and otherwise peel and pulverize into faux-ground up mush FIVE ORANGES BY FREAKING HAND!!  This took a while- long enough for Tracy to tell me all the ins and outs of her new life in Utah while I developed a massive neck cramp from holding the phone between my shoulder and ear while I chopped.  The results of my labor:  Mush of Five Oranges (and I also threw in zest of one orange peel for taste), ready to go!

Add this to saute with two bags of fresh cranberries:

You add cinnamon and ground chili powder while stirring continuously for about 15 minutes over medium heat.  Secret Chef instructed that the cranberries should “pop naturally” as they cook, and that you want to end up with a mixture where most of the cranberries have popped and the result is “semi-solid.”   It eventually looked like this while the house started to smell sooooooooooo good:

Here is the final result, almost a gelatin, in a bowl, set aside ready to be stuffed into a pork loin roast:

Next prep work:  Toast a gazillion pecans!  You are going to need them for your greens and berries salad and also your rice pilaf.  By the way- pecans are freaking expensive!!  Despite buying all these nuts in (supposedly cheaper) bulk, they really killed our budget.  I knew the roast would set us back, but who would have expected pecans to be the next most expensive thing on the menu!  And they’re really just a freaking garnish!!

I seem to have trouble with “toasting” nuts.  I always end up burning some of them and then others in the pan not reaching sufficient level of toastiness.  I’ve tried both my toaster oven and real oven to unimpressive results.  Now when I toast nuts (and this even happened with my green apple green chili pie from yesterday!  I still can’t get this right), I expect, unfortunately to ruin about 1/4^th of them.  Add some more room to your budget to accommodate burned, inedible nuts!

Next, I got started on other things I could prepare early and then just warm up at time of eating.  Unlike the roast, I knew a rice pilaf and creamed carrots would both heat well after having been prepared in advance.

Now, holy cow, this rice pilaf.  It was SO GOOD, but I think I discoved the secret as to why restaurant food tastes so amazing.  At this point, following Secret Chef’s recipe, my jaw was agape at learning you basically BOIL THE VERMICILLI IN A HALF POUND OF BUTTER.  You know how you normally bowl pasta in WATER?  Sometimes salted water?  Or water with a bit of olive oil in it?  Ohhhhh noooooo.  Here, for the richest rice pilaf recipe in the world, you are going to BOIL YOUR RICE AND PASTA IN BUTTER.  At this point I realized poor Dom was not going to have any of the rice pilaf as it was decidedly NOT vegan!  Here is the vermicelli, broken up into 11/2 inch- 2” pieces, boiling in butter for about 10 minutes while stirring constantly, until it reaches a nice “toasty” color:

Yeah, that’s not water it’s boiling in, prep for cardiac compromise because it’s ALL BUTTER!

At this point I think I got a little into the cooking “zone” and lapsed on the picture taking.  I think it’s because I had about 4 different edible Irons in the Fire and was more concerned with not ruining any more food than photo-documenting for this blog.  I’ll just tell you what I did.

After the pasta is “toasty” looking, add rice and-surprise- more butter and boil them both in the butter for another 5 minutes while stirring constantly.  Then add three cans of Cambells undiluted chicken broth, stir for another minute, reduce heat to a simmer and cover for 30 minutes.  Open the lid only once and add 2 cups chopped and toasted pecans, fluff with fork, recover and let sit until serving time.  Good god this recipe is a heart attack in a pot.  It’s supposedly Secret Chefs’ mother’s recipe from Armenaia and it’s the first time it’s been translated into English.  Maybe something critical- like ½ pound of butter really meant two tablespoons was lost in conversion.  Regardless, it was a lucky, if unhealthy mistake because holy cow the rice pilaf tasted like a DREAM.  I was hesitant to tell my raving guests exactly how it was prepared lest they accuse of me trying to give them MIs at the party just to show off my EMT skills.

The other thing I prepared without really photo-documenting was the creamed carrots.  For them, you peel and boil three pounds of carrots until they are tender but not mushy.  This took about 15 minutes.  Secret Chef did not specify the boiling time in his instructions, leading me to frantically consult google “how long boil carrots” several times in a frenzy as I worried about overcooking them.  That’s the problem with vague Chefs.  They can be brilliant and their obscure instructions yield delicious bounties, but cause an intrepid beginner cook like myself many anxieties and headaches!!

Carrots boiled, add butter (only ¼ lb of butter in this one- what waistline watching restraint!) , cream cheese, heavy cream, and cinnamon and blend.  Or, if you are a fool like me with a broken blender, utilize some elbow grease and your Capririnia masher to get the job done.

Butter melted, cream and cream cheese blended, add four full very thin-sliced green onions to the mix.  This came out AMAZING and I really think the tartness of the green onions contrasting to the smooth creaminess of the carrots is what made the dish.  Here it is, in all its pre-prepped glory done gloriously in advance so that I could concentrate on the rest of my labors.  See those thin sliced green onions in there?  Don’t forget to add them, they are the secret ingredient that MAKES this dish.

Next!  On to the Grand Marnier bread pudding.  Chop up one loaf of French bread into 1” cubes.  Because the booth at the Farmer’s Market only had a teeny tiny French loaf (what gives??), I also threw two cubed brioches into the pudding as well to round it out.  The farmer’s market baker assured me that brioche makes a great bread pudding as well.  I figured- heck- add enough heavy cream and Grand Marnier and nobody could tell the difference anyways.

Sliced up bread:

Meanwhile you whip SIX eggs with two cups whole milk, two cups heavy cream, cinnamon and 1 cup of Grand Mariner.  You pour this mixture over the bread, then spoon and mix in 2 cups of golden raisens.  Bake the whole thing in a 375* oven “until the top is toasty brown.”  … :-/  Took me about an hour.

You are going to mix up some orange marmalade with another cup of Grand Marier, pour this over the top of the bread pudding and rebake for another 15 minutes right before serving.  This recipe was perfect for a big dinner party because it let me do the bulk of the prep in advance and then just add booze and marmalade on the top and heat right before serving.  Easy, peazy.  Screw you, poached pears!!

Onto le pork!  Ever heard of a “Z-cut?”  Me neither.  Fortunately, my butcher had.  He prepped two loins into z-cuts (to accommodate the stuffing) and even threw in a bunch of butcher’s twine for me free of charge.  This is what a z-cut looks like:

Get your cranberry l’ronge stuffing and stuff up that pig!  Use bakers twine to tie it all up, then wrap in foil. 

Into the oven these piggies go, at 375* for one hour.   Note- make sure to wrap REALLY well cuz otherwise cranberry orange mush and pork juis will drip everywhere.

Next I worked on chopping and prepping these veggies (red peppers, green peppers, basil, garlic, eggplant, tomatoes, yellow squash, green onions, yellow onion and parsley) for the ratatouille.  If you’ve ever seen the movie Ratatouille, you may be like Earl and I and expect this dish to be super complex and hard to cook.  Perhaps I had a doozy of a recipe (this one was an online find from Emeril, not Secret Chef- Secret Chef doesn’t “do” Vegan), however this dish couldn’t be more simple!!  You basically slice and dice a gazillion veggies, throw em all in a saute pan, add some spices and cook em up!  The ONLY hard thing about it is getting the order down that you throw the veggies into the mix.  Ones that take longer to cook (onions, eggplants, peppers) get added before ones which cook faster.  Guess they got it right in the movie- so easy, even a rat could do it!

Waiting to be chopped, sliced, and diced:

While you’re running around trying to clean the house and organize your nerdlove’s piles and piles of math annotations on various scraps of paper that float around your home and also HAZMAT clean up his dirty-bomb of Trident Spearmint gum wrappers, your pork roasts are done (with phase 1)!  Here’s a peak under the foil of what they look like after their 1 hour bake:

Do I have to even tell you that the HOUSE SMELLED SOOOOO GOOD??????

Next what you’re gonna do is the coolest step of this entire meal.  One of my guests hit the nail on the head.  You are basically making “fancy pigs in a blanket.”  These stuffed pork roulades get wrapped in puff pastry and re-baked.  I used Pillsbury crescent rolls.  Secret Chef calls for Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry, however Luckys only had Pillsbury crescent rolls, and 4 hours in to our epic shopping trip I was mitigating a long day and grumpy overshopped boyfriend, so that would have to do!

They did.  Here are piggies wrapped up in their crescent rolls.  I even schmanced it up using cooking cutters (actually, must give credit where it is due, E got home from work by this time and was helping out, HE decorated these piggies all by himself!) to have some little puff pastry hearts and stars on the tops.  Beat two egg whites together and brush liberally over your wrapped piggies and puff decorations to “glue” everything.  You could go as crazy as you want with the decorations.  Seeing as time was short and guests would be coming soon, we went with the cookie cutters we had on hand.

See those egg whites glisten!

By this point I had worked so hard and was so irrationally emotionally invested in these stupid pork roasts that you would have thought I had given birth to them myself!

They go in a 400* oven for 20-30 minutes, uncovered.  I waited for the guest to arrive before I even started this last step.  Who wants to eat straight away when they show up at a party?  I figured it would be more fun to give people (and myself, heh) time to leisurely chat, get to know each other (we had a mixed crowd of my skiing friends and Earl’s coworkers) and sip cocktails before the main eating event.

Speaking of booze, on to the mulled wine!  I must admit, this was my favorite part of cooking this crazy meal.  For your next winter or fall themed dinner party, I implore you to make some mulled wine.    Did you read me?  I said,  I IMPLORE YOU TO MAKE THIS MULLED WINE.  It was faaaaaaaaaaabulous.  And it looks so good!  Doesn’t it look soooo good????  Smelled superb, too:

The recipe for this mulled wine called for a lot of foreign sounding foofaraw of which I had never heard.  Cardomon pods?? WTF are cardomon pods??  To the hippy grocery store, we go!  Same deal with liquorish root.  I thought liquorish was this black candy that my mom loves (in cute Scottie Dog shapes!), not anything that came with a root.  Here is the recipe in full for you.  You basically simmer a bunch of red wine (for our drinking purposes and per people’s suggestions on TGR I tripled the amount of wine in this and halved the amount of cider.  I advise you to do the same).  Simmer some wine with a bunch of oddball spices- sliced oranges, fennel seeds, cardomon pods, black peppercorns, cinnamon sticks and a whole vanilla bean to yield this wonderful looking mixture.

Guests started to show up!

The roast was done!  Like my apron?

Sliced up the roast and ready to eat.  We didn’t even tuck into that second one.  Ratatouille is also looking nice.

The spread!

My plate.  Did I mention we served everything on paper plates?  A bit backwoods… but didn’t change the deliciousness of the food.

Some of our guests digging in.

Last stage of the bread pudding- with the extra Grand Mariner and orange marmalade mixture poured over the top and re-baked.

It didn’t last long (nothing did!)

This tired pooch is worn out from socializing.

Here’s to good food, great friends and a holiday filled with warmth and love.   We survived 2009!! Cheers until next year!

Just a quick preview of the pie I made that we’re taking to my Aunt’s house in a few minutes.  It’s a green apple, green chili pie and it has brown sugar, cinnamon, chili powder and toasted pine nuts in it.

Here it is before going in the oven.  Looks good, no?

I’m excited to see how it turns out!  That’s the problem with pies.  No way to taste them without giving away that you stole a bite!  E and I did taste test the filling, though, and that was great.  Hope it all melds well.  I am thinking served a la mode with vanilla bean ice cream.  Then again, I like *everything* a la mode.

Merry, merry to all!

Hope you have a Wonderful Holiday!
All our love,
Santa Ceej,

Reindeer Dog,

Elf Lucy,

and Santa Nerd

and a bonus shot of Santa Woof

(Too much fun tonight with props!)

Yesterday being Winter Solstice, I figured it was time to take stock of how far I’d come this fall with my Fitness Challenge.

I ran a mile pace test today and was 10:39. While that doesn’t feel all that fast to me, it’s still a whopping 34 seconds off my last pace test in September.

Other results thus far:

Total pounds lost: 24
Inches lost off tummy: 4.5 (WOW!!!)
Inches lost off hips: 1
Inches lost off bustline: 3
Inches lost off thigh: 2.4 (each!)
Inches lost off wrist: no change
Inches lost off upper arm: N/A because didn’t take this metric back in September (but now I did, so I’ll have it documented for next time I record these stats).

My body fat %, oddly, stayed the same according to my home scale. That could be a glitch or it could be my diet is still poor. But either way, with the rest of the stats, I will take it!!

The best thing about these numbers is that I didn’t really make any major changes to get them. To be completely truthful, my diet is still pretty junky. I was just telling a story last night about how I was scarfing Taco Bell on my drive home from work I think mostly these positive results were more from just WORKING and doing physically hard, manual labor now as part of my daily job. Getting in and out (and in and out) of an ambulance is like doing a bunch of deep lunges. And picking up patients in the gurney is doing squats. Not to mention walking the halls of various hospitals (and they always keep the dialysis centers in the waaaaay back or in the basements, so many of my “bread and butter” calls have long walks involved!).

The other thing I changed is that I added lifting to my weekly routine. Earl and I have been meeting at the gym pretty regularly which I LOVE. We don’t do the same machines or anything, but for me just knowing that someone else is meeting you there is motivation to get up and go. I haven’t been nearly as consistent about lifting as I should; my goal was to go 3 times a week, and I had been pretty steady at just ONCE or twice for a while, but you know… I think even doing that has been enough to cause some changes.

Oh hey! Speaking of lifting, here are some more metrics I can document. These are the increases in my lifts since September: This is what I am at lifting for 3 sets of 10 reps, NOT MAX OUT:

Benchpress: @ 85, increase of 20lbs
Leg press: @ 230lbs, increase of 40lbs
Lat pull downs: N/A, because we just added these to my routine last week
Skull crushers: @30lbs, an increase of 10lbs
Shrugs with bar: @ 90lbs, increase of 70lbs (!!!!!)
Seated row: @ 80lbs, increase of 30lbs
Calve raise: @ 105, increase of 30lbs
Curls: @ 20lbs each hand, increase of 10lbs

So look at that. I am undeniably getting a lot stronger. That shrugs thing is CRAZY. I think it’s mainly because Earl (sometimes) lends me these little wrist grabber-y thingers that help you hold more weight. That way it apparently more your muscle strength maxing out and not your grip strength. I like those little grippers. I asked Earl for my own pair in my stocking this year, we’ll see what happens

On that note, I think I should add some grip strength stuff to my routine, mainly because grip strength is such a HUGE part of my daily job of being an EMT. We basically grab sheets and blankets and PULL. And it’s so, so important to have a locked down grip on the drawsheet because slippage could not only injure yourself, but also your partner and the patient.

As for my fitness-related goals from here on out, I am scaling back a bit on some things, and ramping up on others. At this point, I am not *so, so* concerned about the NUMBER weightwise, and am just going to be trying to get overall healthier and more fit. And while I do have a “goal” number which I would like to weigh under, I am not putting a time crunch on it, which is very contrary to how I have conducted myself previously. If it takes me until the spring, the summer, or heck even next fall to get there, so be it. I am not feeling any pressure or any rush. Here are my fitness goals for the upcoming year:

- weigh under 150lbs
- run 50 miles in a race
- bike 100 miles (have done this many times before, but sooo far away from where I am now!)
- pass the CPAT
- join a cycling club here in SF
- do yoga consistently
- lift 3x a week
- finish within the cutoff times for the Ohlone 50k
- hike or run a Peak a Week and report them here

Also, my Race Calendar for 2010 looks like this:

Feb: Woodside 10k
March: Pirates Cove 20k
May: Ohlone 50k (“A” race)
July: Headlands Marathon
October: Dirk Collins 50 miler (“A” race)

I picked mainly ultras and trail runs mostly because their registrations are so cheap! Coming from the world of triathlons, these races, often at $40 a pop, seem like a downright steal. Very refreshing And very within my budget!

I am so excited for the new year, happy with my progress, and proud of how far I’ve come. Bring on 2010!

Tomorrow awaits. Feastivus dawns! I still have to clean top to bottom, prep food and get a-cooking. I see why people hire caterers for this kind of stuff!

It makes me wonder how my sisters and mother successfully threw many a holiday party our our families and their in-laws over the years. They never seemed this stressed out! The older I get, the more I realize how amazing those three women are. Never a ruffled feather, those ones. I, on the other hand, have this nawing feeling that I am teetering on the brink of disaster.

Our final headcount: 12 people! Well, 13, but our friend Julie is just stopping by for a cocktail before she catches a flight out of town. So 12 eaters, 13 total.

Our table doesn’t even fit more than 6! I think I am taking a page out of this Rita Konig article, Let’s Eat In, and am going to pile a bunch of pillows on the floor and have everyone cozy up on the rug. I’ll act like this was intentional… Feastivus is an intimate, shabby chic kind of affair! Perhaps that will also explain the paper plates? (sheepish)

All stressing aside, I am just excited to see all our friends, and figure as long as there is lots of food, booze and warm company, everyone will have a good time even though we don’t have fancy plates and there are not enough chairs.

As a Feastivus preview, this is how full our fridge is after FOUR HOURS of grocery shopping today! We went to a bunch of different stores to get everything we needed: Rainbow Grocery for spices, the farmer’s market for produce, Lucky’s for cheapo basics and Guerros Quality Meats for the GINORMOUS x-cut pork loin.

Oh wait- after this was taken, I reconfigured and fit EVEN MORE in!!

So on the agenda for tomorrow is a big, big cleaning session, hopefully a 6 mile run, lots of prep work and COOKING COOKING, COOKING! Then partying

At some point, probably later tonight, I’m going to write up a little something to say to everyone for before we eat dinner. I want to convey something along the lines of how it was a rough year, but here we are, still smiling and that we got through it. About how happy and thankful I am to have all our friends who are coming, how lucky I feel to have them all enriching our lives and also some schmoopy sentiments about Earl and how amazing he has been over the past year. Then end on a hopeful note about how brighter times are ahead. I’ll probably get weepy and be over the top, but that’s how I am. Probably better that I put a little something together now than attempt it off-the-cuff tomorrow night, lest we end up with a mulled-wine infused, “laughing through tears of joy” Ceej. Oh, who am I kidding, that is probably gonna happen nevertheless

As you may remember, a while ago I found myself very frustrated with the lack of good Jewish food here in San Francisco. After sampling multiple duds, I finally got fed up enough to make my own matzoh ball soup. Here is the TR!

I decided to use a recipe from what I deemed an authentic source- Sheila Rosenbaum’s “No Fail Floaters” from my New York Cookbook (I *love* that cookbook, and am determined to attempt just over 300 recipes from it).

This is also where I got the recipe for my soup stock, New York Penicillin, which apparently was served to the NYC Subway Guardian Angels for many years to keep their spirits up and hunger at bay while they were out helping others in the grime and dirt of the five borough subway systems.

New York Penicillin is a little labor intensive, but this “miracle cure” nutrient-loaded soup base helped me through enough colds to think it’s worth it. Give yourself about half a day to get through this baby (and, may I suggest even though we don’t have one- get yourself an immersion blender if you want to save yourself some time and scald burns).

Next I was off to the House of Bagels in the Richmond district and buy some Mazoh Meal. Despite all my kvetching that there is no good Jewish food in this godforsaken city, this place was legit! I learned about House of Bagels on Oy, Bay, where they assured me would have mazoh meal no matter what time of year.

The base of my matzoh balls:

Mixing up the mazoh meal, per Sheila’s directions. I think the biggest reason Sheila’s balls are “no fail” floaters is that her recipe calls for a TON of whipped up, separated eggs.

Forming the balls- delicate hands! Delicate! No “smooshing!” Keep those babies light and fluffy! Soft hands, SOFT HANDS!! Don’t pack ‘em like a meatball. These sentiments were running through my head the entire time, per everyone’s advice on TGR.

Here they are simmering in the pot! I need another big pot. My only other big pot was taken already cooking up the NY Penicillin for the soup base/broth.

Pat those babies down and flip em around so the ones of the top also absorb a bunch of the broth.

I roasted a turkey breast to go in the soup. I got this turkey breast free when I bought $100 worth of groceries at Luckys. I ADORE shopping at Luckys. Going there is like a super fun field trip!! When you are used to crappy, cramped NYC grocery stores with no selection, the wide and variety-filled aisles of Luckys are a DREAM.

Turkey soup base looking good. In it- parsnip, New York Penicillin base, carrots, celery, onions, half a can of leftover corn I had open already and some pasta shells.

Add those matzoh balls to the soup, and let’s eat!

Served with apple cider, makes a scrumptious and perfectly filling fall meal.

Add a little salt and pepper and DANG so good. Not even that hard to make, either! Who would have thought! These are totally going into the frequent file repertoire, to be pulled out whenever anyone I love could benefit from some “love in a bowl.”

iEl fín!

As always, I am mega behind on uploading photos from my camera and catching my dear readers up on them and what I have been up to. Please accept my apologies, and I hope you enjoy the following smorgashboard, which dates alllllll the way back to Halloween! Ack

For Halloween, we threw a bit of an impromptu dinner party for our friends Matt and Amy, then we walked down over to Belvedere Street and hit up a bunch of spots on the party circuit.
Matt Preparing the drinks. We served Stone Fences, which are a mixture of whiskey and apple cider.

Dinner was great- we made pumpkin fritters from this recipe. Amy actually ended up cooking most of the fritters while I rushed around and got in my costume (Earl and I were running late coming from the gym).
Amy fries up some fritters

The (still steaming) fritters! They’re basically a thicker pumpkin pancake. Served with cinnamon sugar (optional maple syrup, for those with a fierce sweet tooth).

Even though Amy did most of the cooking, I somehow managed to pose taking credit for them in this photo. Doesn’t it look like *I* cooked them in this photo?

Amy and Matt getting ready to hit the down. Look at those abs on that woman! That is what being a semi-pro level triathlete will get you, apparently Amy is rocking my old latex cop uniform (a holdover from undergrad sorority days) which I coerced her into wearing.

The handsome knight of my heart and his unicorn steed. The “unicorn” didn’t last very long on the streets as he was a little overstimulated with everyone running around trick or treating. This was basically a pre-party walk! He got walked home and hung out while we hit the town.

Bustiers and pizza. Pepperoni, naturally.

Matt, Andrea and Mattius (Andrea was a tree, if you can’t tell)

Bearded lady! The theme of the first party we were at was Old-Timey Carnival. These people pulled out ALL the stops!

Here is the woman who gets shot out of the cannon.

En route to our second party, I was assaulted by a very naughty (and perverted) cookie monster! If you can’t tell, I was a dragon, same as last year.

By our third party of the evening, Amy and Matt had gone home and I had converted into a devilish dragon. The full-face dragon mask, while a lovely work of art, made it hard to consume beverages. Here we are with our ski friend Spencer, who is a music journalist and gets to interview all kinds of stars.

We were certainly tuckered out after this evening. Let’s slide right into Thanksgiving, shall we?

For Thanksgiving, we went out to my wonderful Aunt Mimi’s house in Pleasanton, CA. My friend Amy, who is from CT though going to Stamford for their PA program right now, came with us as she wasn’t going home to see her family.

I lobbied Amy to meet me at my Aunt’s house early, at 9:30am, so we could do this awesome 30 mile ride through Palomares Canyon loop.

Ride starts out on Foothill Drive- look at the peaceful serenity of this beautiful road! Who says there are no fall colors in California?

Amy’s self-portrait on the hill. She doesn’t even look like she’s breathing hard! This girl is a machine.

Amy spent a *LOT* of time waiting for me to get my out-of-shape butt up this hill. Eons. She was bored enough not only to mess around with taking self portraits, but also to take this amusing video:

On the way up Palomares Canyon, Amy (who is holding the camera) spots this sign. What does it MEAN? Looks like a drunk guy crossing the street, right?

At the summit! This is a long, slow climb. Amy actually got a flat tire here from parking in the gravel.

Back from our ride and showered up, we are greeted by quite a spread.

Hey! Down here! Lemme have some! I’ll take some! Don’t want that stuffing? Just a little crumb?

Post meal scritches lead to corgi grins.

Bellies full, Earl and I pile onto the couch to zonk out for a bit.

Earl has been instructed not to read this (seeing as he’s the administrator of this site, it’s impossible to keep secrets from him if I want to write about them here).

But, I will let you all in on a surprise, as he’s promised not to read.

Guess what? Over New Years, I am taking my beloved away on a romantic trip! Our first real vacation in over a year and a half!!! This is very exciting because it punctuates the end of my period of “unemployment” and “career change” and “being broke” and all the sad, empty wallet and second guessing/soul searching side effects that come with that decision.

We’re heading down the coast to a bed and breakfast Pescadero and Ano Nuevo State Park to see elephant seal mating season. Star watching, oceanside picnics, mountaintop hikes, bottles of champagne, wine tasting and potbellied pigs are all on the agenda. You heard right. The bed and breakfast we’re staying at has a pet pot bellied pig! So cute, right? We’re even bringing Linus, so I wonder how he will react when meeting the pig, who is apparently housebroken and lives in the main house, using his own piggy-sized doggie door to come and go at his leisure.

Here is the “room” (it’s a 2-story tower! we get the whole thing) where we will be staying:

We shall be sitting on that balcony at midnight on New Years Eve, looking out over the ocean, sharing a snog and toasting to the new decade!

and here es le oinker:

I am so, SO excited for this trip and all that it represents. It fills me with joy to be able to pay for us to do something like this myself, FINALLY. Even though this trip is just a small weekend, it makes me very happy to do something special for Earl after all of the love and support he has given me over the past year and a half.

Here is to a marvelous start to 2010!

ROCK ON, MY SOUL SISTER!!!

Here are a few photos of Linus sitting on a bench, just for you.

Mr. Drool Spot and I had an invigorating 2-hour jog along the ocean today. We found so many sand dollars! I just can’t run past those beauties, I have to stop and beachcomb a bit. Probably why it took two hours