Two blunders to kick things off right

For John the Vicar's New Year's Eve celebration I made my Guinness stout gingerbread.  Baking it starts out as a fun science adventure.  The baking soda will hugely react with the Guinness - or is it with the molasses?  Or both?  Either way, you gotta get it to react fully and completely in a pot before making the rest of the gingerbread.  Otherwise it will boil over while baking in the oven.

To do so, bring the Guinness and blackstrap molasses to a boil in a very large pot.  Then, while stirringstirringstirring, add in 1/2 tablespoon of baking soda.  It will froth up like you've never seen, and you gotta keep stirring to break the bubbles so it doesn't go over.  Hence using a very large pot. 

Now, I often eyeball ingredients and it usually is not a problem.  Rather than suffer the tedium of measuring three 1/2 teaspoons in order to achieve 1/2 tablespoon, I instead grabbed the full tablespoon and eye-balled what looked as half way.  And luckily I thought it would be fun to get the process on video....

Did you know I'm a genius?  Because I am.  My doctorate degree says so.  *Cough* *Clear throat* *Cough-loser-cough*  Luckily, as though more luck were possible in this situation, since the bulk of it was carbohydrate it cleaned up really easy with a little hot water and soap. 

Now for the more serious stuff.  I pulled up last year's similarly veined post to compare to 2011 stats and found, in true form, that last year's post describing 2011 data was instead labeled as 2012 in nice big bold print in the title. 

Awesome sauce.  Typo now fixed, one year later.

Anyways, things definitely bumped up a notch in the real 2012.  Many months my walking mileage was about the same or higher than my running mileage from '11. 

I like that my two week off season and the start of winter maintenance mileage is evident by the decrease in last year's November and December values. 

Blue = 2011 run.  Red = 2012 run.  Green = 2012 walk.

2011 running total: 1583 miles
2012 running total: 1770 miles

2011 walking total: 535 miles  *only recorded for 1/2 year
2012 walking total: 1605 miles

2012 grand total: 3375 miles

That's about the distance from Los Angeles to Maine.  I'll take that.  Better news with which to start the new year than a couple of blunders.

Fa-la-la-la-la....

Nathan and I are stuck in town for work, so we decided to have some friends over for Christmas Eve dinner.  We were six in total, which is the largest group for which I've done a holiday meal.  I usually make more than what is needed in one meal by default (good at proportions of ingredients to one another, not so good at overall proportions to the size and number of bellies present at a meal), so this time I purposely shot big so that we'd have leftovers after all the effort. 

I forgot to get a shot of the appetizers.  Black eyed pea salsa (homemade), tortilla chips, hummus, chana (dry roasted chickpeas), black pepper cashews, and banana chips.

Dinner included a chickpea tart with cranberry sauce; apple, sage and walnut stuffing; roasted rosemary red c and sweet potatoes; and kale slaw with fennel, carrot, raisin and almond curry dressing.  Hazzah.

I had asked for a new, full sized food processor since my current one was only 4 cups and would over heat with a few minutes, so when I saw the size of a box sent by my parents I decided to open it early yesterday morning.  Used it to make the crust for the tart, the tart filling, and the slaw dressing.  And from visiting Nathan's grandparents last week we acquired the white Corningware, two large serving spoons, and a couple bowls that I used for the salsa and whatnot.  That means dinner's success was thanks to a few generous people.  Nathan and I did not register for our wedding, nor have we ever contemplated a china set before, but luckily we had enough to make a rustic set of six without having to seek out extras.  And, luckily, it all fit on my little table without feeling crowded.

From left, clockwise: Laura, Davis, Brian, Molly, and Nathan

Laura and Davis brought fixings for lightly fried banana and chocolate wontons with ice cream, and Molly and Brian brought a pumpkin pie and big fruit salad.  Laura also brought Prosecco, which I - the constant lightweight of gatherings - left to the others.

I'm loving the fact that the work involved with entertaining means 1) our apartment is the cleanest it has been in at least a year, 2) we have lots of food ready to go for today, and 3) the commute home and to bed was a mere ten steps. 

Today's plan is much more chill.  Morning run, check on the cats I'm kitty-sitting, movie (likely Hyde Park on Hudson), and yummy leftovers.  I'm going to pull out Charlie Brown's Christmas cd, and we'll probably also watch some more Antiques Roadshow. 

To bid you all a humor filled holiday, here is Nathan managing to stop laughing just long enough to mimic my Gramma's holiday card.  Between the card and our own silliness we were rolling for a good ten minutes....