This is how much snow and ice it takes to shut down Austin. No snow day for me, sadly. I can make it down the hall to my office just fine.
Tag: postaweek
Pinochle at the pub.
We headed down to our nearby pub after work to grab dinner while playing a few rounds of cards with Tom and Doray. This hand was typical of most of mine all night. “I pass.”
Applebuttery goodness.
I have had a hankering for apple butter lately. My HEB has a poor selection. The only one they stock was full of multi-syllable chemical ingredients, and high fructose corn syrup. I couldn’t bring myself to put it in my cart. When I was a kid, apple butter was one of the many delicious things my mom would make and I would help her with the cooking and canning. So, i decided to make my own apple butter.
There were many different recipes online. I wasn’t looking to go the whole canning route, as I just wanted to make a small batch. Some recipes started with apple sauce. But I wanted to go as close to the good old fashioned way as possible. I found a recipe that sounded minimalistic and simple. I halved the original recipe, and it yielded 2 pint jars (i recycled some Bonne Maman 13 oz jam jars) of applebutter, which have a fridge life of about 2 weeks. Or could be frozen up to a month.
I’ll start with a picture of the result, to get your mouth watering, and follow with the recipe:
You’ll need a crock-pot and an immersion blender. Here’s the before:
You may want to use a variety of apples. I used mostly gala, which are on the sweet side, and mixed in a few red delicious which are less sweet. I also have one of these awesome contraptions, which makes peeling/coring/slicing the apples a breeze:
Crock-pot Applebutter (yields 2 pints)
3 1/4 lbs apples, peeled, cored & sliced
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c brown sugar
1/2 T ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 T vanilla extract
Place apple slices in crock pot. In medium bowl, mix sugars, and spices. Sprinkle dry mix over the apples and stir gently to coat apples and combine.
Cook on low, covered, for 12 hours.
Stir in vanilla extract and puree with immersion blender until smooth. For thicker applebutter, can cook on low another hour with lid ajar.
Cool and place in jars. Store in refrigerator for up to 2 weeks, or freeze for up to 2 months.
Imitation is the finest form of flattery.
We love to make homemade pizza at the house. Monte has longed to have a wood-fired pizza oven of our own. We opted out of one when we remodeled the kitchen a few years back. For Christmas this year I got him a Kettle Pizza kit for making pizza outdoors, on the grill. It had great reviews and seemed to be worth checking out.
We also love the pizza from our local Brick Oven pizza restaurant. We like to call it the second best pizza in town – next to ours. 🙂
There is one pizza they make that is fantastic and we have always wanted to try making it ourselves: the Tuscan Truffle.
So…tonight we fired up the kettle and gave it a go. And…. We NAILED IT!
Here is a shot if our first try in the kettle:
Tuscan Truffle pizza
The “sauce” is a mushroom pesto – made out of sautéed mushrooms, parmesan cheese and truffle oil puréed in a food processor. The toppings are prosciutto and mozzarella cheese (just a little, not much of either). It only took about 5 minutes in the kettle pizza oven. After removing, add arugula and grated asiago cheese on top to wilt / melt from the heat of the pizza. Drizzle a little more truffle oil on top and VOILA! Delicious.
Framed.
I finally got around to framing a print that I bought on my last visit to Pike Place Market in Seattle. The artist is Leone Ardo.
Monte made the frame out of western red cedar. It turned out nice, I think.
You know it’s cold when…
…the neighborhood gargoyle is wearing his woolies. 🙂
Back to work.
We’ve survived the flu! We were supping on Tamiflu for two in the week since Christmas. Not what I had imagined for the end of my vacation, but…. it is what it is. And we are all better now! Just in time to get back to work. 
Temps have been dipping low again in the 20s overnight. We are keeping warm with hot cocoa, and a dose of mini marshmallows, of course. It makes the work day go by faster.
A most excellent Christmas Eve Eve.
Yesterday was the first day since my vacation started that I didn’t have anything already on the todo list. It was all my day. So I lounged around in the AM, hit the gym, did a little bead shopping, made some shepherd’s pie (yum)…. Just relaaaaaxed.
An extra treat was to see a couple of friends that stopped by the house: first Rob, and then Marty.
THEN in the evening we headed downtown to Donn’s Depot to listen to the amazingly talented Chris Gage during his weekly gracing of the stage there. WHAT a great show. Chris was joined onstage, as usual, by a host of other musicians in the house singing rockin’ Christmas songs til the wee hours – his wife and music partner Christine Albert, the King of Hillbilly R&R Jon Emery, newly Grammy nominated Kym Warner of The Greencards, David Carroll on upright bass, Jeff Tveraas, and the incredible Marcia Ball… It just can’t get better than that.
I saw my friend Winker, and I ran into my friend Kathy who I haven’t seen in at least a couple years. It was fun to catch up with her.
A simply perfect night.
Albert and Gage are one of my all time favorite musicians. Chris has a brand new instrumental christmas album out, Ornaments, which I’ve played a few hundred times already this year 🙂 And A&G have a Christmas album called One More Christmas that I bought last night which is fantastic as well. Check out all their stuff whether solo or together, you’ll enjoy them. By the way, A&G are playing the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar at noon today…go see ’em!
Here are a few pics from the night…not great, since I didn’t want to use the flash, but you can see the awesomeness of the night…
Sunday ups & downs.
The ups:
A trip to the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar.
The music was really nice, as usual – the band Sons of Fathers was playing while I was there.
This afternoon we found a nearby bar that the local Seahawks club meets up to watch games, which was a fun experience.
The downs:
The Seahawks lost 😦
Next week I guess…
A mind is a terrible thing to lose.
I have been impatiently waiting to make christmas cookies. So, when I passed the rack of cookie cutters at the store I picked out 3 shapes I liked, because I was sure I didn’t have any at home. I got home and….
I already had the exact 3 cutters that I just bought. Early alzheimers, I fear. Oh well.
I soon got busy making some sugar cookie dough. The before:
And the after:
Ever wonder why they’re named “red” oaks?
This is why….just beautiful….happy winter solstice!
Trail of Lights.
We made it to the Trail of Lights tonight in Austin’s jewel, Zilker Park, for the first time in probably 5 years or more. We used to go more frequently, but it has either not been easy to get down there in recent times, or it has been postponed for financial reasons. I remember, in the good old days, being able to decide at the last minute to go, and just zip down to the park and park for free on the grassy field and walk over. No more. We had to plan ahead. I got a parking pass online which made it a little easier, but the traffic was really crazy, and the crowds were enormous.
In any event, the lights were simply lovely.
This is the tunnel at the entrance…
This is a view of a bunch of different lights, with the Zilker tree in the background.
I love the tree lights.
So pretty…
And one last look back towards downtown. It’s a little blurry, but you can see some of the Trail lights, some of the city lights, and the waning Cold Moon.
The ginormous grapefruit are here!
We ordered another load of giant ruby red grapefruit – finally using up the generous gift certificate mom gave us last year from Pittman-Davis. They arrived today. They are so delicious. I wish we could get them year-round.
Teri and Jim are on their way home. It was so great to see them.
Upriver.
It was another beautiful day. Clear blue sky, temps in the 60s. We went back out to the lake for a sail with Teri and Jim. The lake is at 628.23′. Up about 10 feet from our low this year. Not nearly enough, but I can tell the difference.
Keep it coming!
This is a shot of the breakwater in front of Lakeway Marina as we sailed past.
Sheila365 