The Stitch Up

Mayo Magnifico

We've had a rough April but May has started off a little more relaxed, with some happy moments and some good food.

We started getting our yard and gardens into shape.  We're a little late on getting some of our herbs and vegetables planted, but we're hoping that they'll still have time to grow and give up some fruit before the end of summer.

We built a raised garden box that we'll fill with vegetables.  I can already taste the heirloom tomatoes.

As a reward for all our hard work in the garden we made a delicioso Cinco de Mayo meal.  The husband made an AWESOME carne asada:

I whipped up some guacamole that was pretty much gone as soon as it was finished.

I made a pan of enchiladas but we attcked them so fast I didn't think to take a picture until we were going back for left overs the next day.  Behold the aftermath:

It was a food massacre.

I've got my first craft tutorial planned for my next post and I'm excited aobut it.  I've had a great time planning it out and I hope everyone will enjoy it.

Virginia Booze Adventure

It's Fall in Virginia which is always a perfect time for a drive out to the country.  And as long as we're headed out to the country, why not hit up a winery and a distillery?  With the rolling green hills and the leaves changing color, it's my favorite time of year here.

We hit up Willowcroft Farm Vineyards first.

It's in a very pretty location and they have a good selection of wines.  After trying a few we set up a little picnic to enjoy the view.  It was brisk, but that crisp, Fall air is what we've been craving for months, so we enjoyed it.

After our impromptu wine and cheese party, we hit the road to check out a local whisky distillery.  This is something Virginia does right!  We tried Catoctin Creek Distilling Company.

The name comes from a local creek that the company uses in their distilling process.  It's a small business and one of the owners was there during the tour and tasting.  Apparently in addition to whisky they make brandy and their pear brandy sells out immediately.  I'm keeping an eye out for the next time they have it in stock.

After all that drinking we were ready to eat so we went to downtown Purcellville.  On the way I snapped a few pics of the barns and farms we drove by.

I love the worn exteriors among all that green.

Downtown Purcellville is small and charming with a couple of good restaurants and some cute shops.  

We ate at Magnolia's at the Mill and had a great lunch.  Everything was good and the interior is warm and rustic.  The building was built in 1905 and served for years as a flour mill.

Even with all that relaxing and eating and drinking, I got some stitching done on the drive.  Pics of finished projects are on the way!

What I Ate On Vacation

There was no end of great food in Latvia.  We tried several traditional Latvian restaurants which I would describe as a combination of Nordic and German food - but with it's own distinct flair.  Our hotel had great food and put on a good breakfast every morning with tons of smoked fish, potato salad, radish salad as well as traditional breakfast foods like bacon and eggs.  Needless to say we were not hungry until late in the day after stuffing ourselves at breakfast.

Riga is a pretty hip city and had any kind of food you'd like.  We hit as many places as we could.  One of the best was a Belgian restaurant - Cafe Bon Vivant.  We ate sausage and mussels until we could barely move and washed it down with delicious Belgian beer:

This was the SMALL sized sausage.  The waitress told us that the large is three times as big.  Holy smokes!

Bad focus, but these mussels were fragrant with tons of fresh herbs and cooked to perfection.  The fries were pretty great too!

Across from our hotel was another great restaurant - Restorans 1221.  I think I would describe this as Latvian fusion - it was delicious.

I had veal with what I think was a lingonberry sauce with green peppers and it was so good!  Served on the cutest cow pan!

What I ate most of in Riga was pastries.  We found so many good bakeries and everything I tried was perfect!

Most of the bakeries offered pastries that reminded me of German tarts and cakes - lots of fluffy crusts and sweet berries - but we also hit a french bakery:

The solarium eating area was so pretty and quaint and sunny!

and the baked goods were delish!  My raspberry, white chocolate tart melted in my mouth and I grabbed a few bites of the husbands chocolate cherry tart before it was gone.

We also found a great donut spot that provided a nice, mid-morning fuel up for our sight seeing - Ze Donats

These were boston creme, caramel and cappuccino - but choosing a flavor was pretty tough as they had a big selection.

The other great thing about Riga were the many nice places to just stop and take a break and have a beer.

I let my matryoshka doll get in on the act.

Although we'd surely packed on enough calories in Riga, we continued our spree in Germany.  I had planned in advance to eat as much schnitzel and bratwurst as possible while there as there is just no equivalent in the US.  

My brother and his family took us to the oldest bratwurst restaurant in the world in Regensburg - the Wurstkuchl.  They do one thing and they do it well: bratwurst.  You line up, tell them how many and then you get out.  It had a soup nazi kind of vibe to it, but I could feel for the ladies cooking up the brats as it was HOT in there!

The bratwurst were a big hit with the whole family

Since we had a big day of sight seeing in Regensberg we had lots of time for eating and really, we needed the energy.  So, a doner sandwich break happened as well.  Yeah, eat and walk people, there's lots to see:

Man those sandwiches were good.  We did sit and eat, or sit and drink - but we relaxed a bit as well:

Schnitzel got love too.  I ate it everywhere but had a great one at the cafe by the salt mines:

And of course always the German beer

The kids were drinking soda.  Just FYI.

A disturbing discovery while visiting my brother and his family was that they live down the street from a chocolate factory.  I mean - really.  As if the non stop pastries, beer, bratwurst and schnitzel were not enough, a chocolate factory was calling my name.  I responded:

Siedl Confiserie was full of dangerously delicious candy and animatronic jungle animals.  I don't know why, but the candy was so great I didn't ask a lot of questions.

These are rum balls, coconut covered macadamia nuts, kir royal balls, chocolate bars, and chocolate coins.  There were some chocolate covered marzipan balls and some chocolate macadamia nut crunch that did not make it past the flight home.  It is all so good!

So we brought a taste of Germany home with us and as much as I will miss the awesome schnitzel and bratwurst I think it's good we can't get it here or I'd be big as a house.  I love vacation eating but it's good to get back to the occasional salad!

Wilkommen zum Oktoberfest!

Despite the fact that summer reared it's hot and sweaty head again here in Virginia, the Hubby and I found some fall activities to enjoy this weekend.

In our continuing effort to visit every tiny town in the Northern Virginia area, we made a bee line for Lovettsville, VA for their annual Oktoberfest party.  Lovettsville was apparently originally settled by German immigrants in the 1730s.  It's a cute little town that is very proud of it's German heritage.  Our first stop was the food and beer tent of course.  There was bratwurst, knackwurst, and bauernwurst with sauerkraut, potato salad, pretzels, strudel and of course beer!  The food was delicious - as good as anything we had while in Berlin.

(I just want to make it clear that the two sausage platter belonged to the Hubby!)

After grubbing, we took a walk to the main tent where they had German dancers and music.  Everyone was having a lot of fun.  

We also took a walk around the town center.  They had a mini market with even MORE food on offer, but we were too stuffed.  I even had to turn down funnel cake which pretty much never happens.  The town itself had some pretty buildings.

I thought the painting on this shed looked like a quilt block.

This church was originally the St. James Evangelical and Reformed Church established in 1733.  It's now the St. James United Church of Christ and still seems to be very active.

After Oktoberfest we headed out for a little antique shopping at the Antiques Heydey Fall Market in Virginia.  It was sort of...meh.  It was advertised as four buildings full of amazing antiques, but really it ended up being about one and a half buildings filled with pretty average stuff I'd seen before.  Despite the somewhat meager offerings, the antique market was at the Loudon County 4-H fairgrounds and it was kind of fun to walk through the buildings that normally house cows, pigs and chickens and see vintage china and furniture instead.

Our first, fun, Fall outing of the season.  As soon as the weather catches up with the season, things will be perfect here in Virginia!  

Fall Round Up

It seems a little late for any kind of Fall post, but it's actually at least a week before Winter officially kicks in so I figure I have a little time.  Plus, I had so many pretty Fall pics that I couldn't post because of the ugly Dell computer crashing thing that now is my first chance to share this stuff.

The hubby and I had a ton of fun around Virginia this Fall.  We took a leaf color drive up to the Shenandoahs which are just gorgeous in the Fall with pretty views everywhere you look:

 

 

 

An awesome tip I just learned from my friend Abigail is that there is a yummy diner called The Apple House near the entry to Shenandoah park that makes the greatest apple butter donuts that just melt in your mouth.  We ate about a bagful while driving through the park.

Our other fun Fall outing was to Leesburg, Virginia.  It's a cute town with lots of great shops and on the outside of town is Temple Hall Farm.  It's a regional park with a petting zoo and seasonal activities.  In the fall it's a corn maze, pumpkin patch and hay rides.  It is the perfect fall location:

 
 

 

The air was crisp, the pumpkins were the perfect shade of orange, and all in all it was a wonderful Fall outing.  Plus, on the way back into town, we caught this sunset:

I promise now that all posts will be Winter/Christmas related.  I hope to absolutely OD on Christmas by the time the holiday actually comes around.  Next up - my Christmas inspired craft projects!
    

Birthday Excitement

Now that most of the projects I'm working on are for Christmas I don't have a lot to share.  Luckily I did have a little excitement surrounding my birthday!

First, a concert I've been wanting to see for about 20 years.  I love, love, love Van Morrison and yet every time he's been in concert near me something has happened to prevent me from going.  Years ago when I was in law school he played in San Francisco which was not too far from Sacramento where I was studying.  However, the concert was at the same time as finals and I just couldn't't bring myself to throw caution to the wind and party all night at a concert and hope that I'd still do well on my tests.  So I missed him.  Then again in Madrid, he was playing at a venue just around the corner from our apartment, but we had already planned to be out of town that weekend and it was too late to change plans - so once again I missed him!  But now finally, 20 years in the making, Van and I finally had an evening together!

And it was awesome!  The concert was great and well worth the 20 year wait. 

The same week I also had another outing.  I went to see Real Madrid play DC United with my friend Piedad.  We were in the DC United section but we secretly routed for Real Madrid.  I can't pretend I'm particularly interested in soccer - but I do think Cristian Rinaldo is pretty cute so he got my support.

 

 

Unfortunately I did not get any close ups of Cristian Rinaldo - but Real Madrid did win the game 3 to 0 and it was a fun outing!

I also threw in a massage and a fun night out for fancy cocktails at Le Bar in DC to round out my birthday week.  It was a great way to celebrate!

Hmm, I need to come up with one or two projects that won't spoil Christmas surprises.  I'll see what I can scrounge up and post them here soon!

Herbology

After my fairly successful pesto experiment I realized that 1) I should do more with the herbs I've grown and 2) the basil and oregano in the backyard are out of control. 

I was looking for recipes that would use fresh herbs and came across Kalyns Kitchen.  This blogger gives instructions on how to freeze fresh herbs.  Perfect!  I would love to be able to use my own fresh herbs in the winter rather than buying it in the grocery store, shipped from goodness knows where, so I decided to do a little freezing experiment.

To freeze basil you apparently proceed almost like pesto - you clean and dry some fresh basil, pop it into the blender, cover it with olive oil and blend like crazy.

 

After that you can either put it into a container or freeze it in an ice cube tray so you have a tablespoon sized portion of fresh basil (with a little olive oil) whenever you need it.  Perfect!

 It actually looks a little gross in liquid form but it's going to taste delicious! 

Freezing Oregano is a little more straight forward.  You wash and dry fresh oregano, lay it on a cookie sheet and freeze it whole.  Then you break off the individual leaves and store them in a container in the freezer for later use.  Easy peasy!

 

Since I was on a roll I decided to roast a little garlic using a method my friend Eva recommended.  You cut the top off the garlic head, pour a little oil over it and then bake it in the oven for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

 

The garlic then pops out of the head all warm and delicious!  I had intended to pop most of this into bags for freezing and using it in soups in the fall, but it was so good I ate a bunch of it, warm out of the oven spread on bread instead.  So yummy!

 

Despite my little foray into herb freezing I did have time to finish up the potholder that has been half done for years and years:

 

Doesn't look too bad and I needed some additional hot pads.  But while looking through my scrap fabric - I found this:

 

ANOTHER half done potholder??  I spoke to Lianne last night and asked her if we really took two potholder classes when we were starting our quilting.  It seems a little sad that we actually needed to take two potholder classes and that we didn't finish either one in the class - but I think that's the case.  So, one more potholder to finish and then on to some other crafting!  I've started to plan out some Christmas gifts.  I realized that I'm actually behind if I want to get things done by December.  How crazy is that?  I'll update with my non-Christmas gift crafts (can't spoil Christmas!) as I finish stuff.  Meanwhile - have a great weekend everyone!

Snow Day!

It's a Snow Day!  Well, not quite.  It started to snow this morning, but the poor kids in the DC metro area only got about a 2 hour reprieve on school instead of a complete pardon.  I on the other hand, just finished a contract job, have yet to start a new one, and am home to enjoy the pretty, chilly scene outside:

 

 

Those of you from states that actually get a good amount of snow are probably not too impressed with this little dusting.  And really - this is about as much as we're going to get.  It's already started to rain instead of snow and the newscasters are calling this "conversational snow". 

But it is more than enough snow for me justify snuggling on the couch to finish an embroidery project AND to make a yummy, stick to your ribs, winter meal.  I am trying to decide between cream of tomato soup, potato soup or spaghetti with a nice meaty bolognese. I'm leaning toward the potato soup as I have been on a quest for a few years to make the perfect potato soup.  Something with a kick of flavor as potato soup can often be a little bland.  Plus, I have all the makings for cornbread in the pantry which is the perfect addition to potato soup.  This was one of my favorite meals that mom used to make on yucky days back when we were kids and I still love it!  All right - I have a game plan.  But I might have to venture out in the snow for a few ingredients.  Oh who am I kidding?  Most of it has already melted.  Potato soup - it is on!

Cookie Exchange

I've done a lot more cooking since we arrived in Spain and my most recent plunge into domesticity was really fun! A few of us from the embassy and the university got together and did a cookie exchange. About 6 of us were involved so we all made 6 dozen of a specific type of cookie and then brought it along to the cookie exchange. We then got to taste everyone else's cookies and box up a combination of every type and take it home to pass out for gift plates. I handed out a dozen or so varied Christmas cookies to our portero (doorman - who is actually a woman), my law office, and the hubbys office. (we kept one or two cookies for ourselves as well...) Everyone was thrilled with the results and the whole afternoon was pretty fun.

My contribution to the cookie exchange was thumbprint cookies. There are a few steps involved but overall it's a really simple cookie to make.My recipe made about 3 dozen cookies, so I prepared 3 dozen the night before and 3 dozen the day of the cookie exchange.I filled the cookies with plum jam and they looked festive and tasted yummy!
The cookies the other ladies brought were fantastic: Iced oatmeal cookies, brownies frosted with peppermint frosting, sugar cookies shaped like candy canes, some yummy swedish cookies, lemon cookies, oatmeal chocolate chip, chocolate with peanut butter chips - I was stuffed after trying everyone's treats but it would have been rude to pass any up, right?

The host, Kate, threw a great party and made some fantastic chile to counter-act the sugar high we were all suffering shortly after diving into the cookies. Another of the women from the embassy brought a Betty Crocker cookbook from 1963 that her mother had passed on to her (she used the recipe in the cookbook for the candy cane sugar cookies) and it had a suggestion for a cookie exchange party. It was kind of funny reading the description in the book of how to throw a great cookie party - it included having all of the ladies go around the room and describe where their cookie recipe came from, what it meant to them, etc. I think most of us had just downloaded the recipe off the internet and didn't have any nice story about our recipes. But we did have a nice time chatting about 101 other things. As many of the women work at the embassy in the political or economic division, they have interesting perspectives on a variety of things going on the world now. Eva, having spent 18 years in the mortgage industry had some great insight into the current mortgage crises, and the rest of us are pretty ready to hold forth on just about any topic that pops into our heads. I imagine it was a different type of conversation than might have been had back at a cookie exchange party in 1963, but maybe I'm wrong. The basic enjoyment of getting together with friends for good food and conversation is the same now as I imagine it was 40 years ago and will probably be the same 40 years from now. The future cookie-exchanger Louisa, Kate's little one year old, already seemed to enjoy the fun and will probably head up her own cookie party sometime in the future.

Turkey Day

This was our second Thanksgiving in Spain. Last year, we had only just arrived and as I didn't have any pots or pans, we really couldn't cook a big meal. One of the couples at the embassy was nice enough to invite us over to a large Thanksgiving party she was having which gave us the chance to meet quite a few new people. But we were still settling in and trying to find our way around, so the holidays were a little stressful.

This year we went to a friends house for Thanksgiving and had a great time. Our hostess was one of the lovely ladies from both the craft club and the book club. Eva is also a fantastic cook and has given a couple cooking classes for us. So you can imagine we were pretty excited to have Thanksgiving dinner at her house. Everything was delicious! She made a wonderful turkey, cornbread stuffing, home made rolls and fantastic mashed potatoes. The rest of us ladies chipped in with green bean casserole (me), the best sweet potato casserole I've ever had (Katie) and pumpkin pie (Tara - which she made with a pecan crust and was phenomenal!)

The whole afternoon was wonderful. Although we couldn't be with family this holiday we did have the next best thing - time spent with good friends stuffed to the breaking point with yummy food!

Here's a photo of our festivities. The men roused themselves from their turkey comas long enough to take some photos of us cleaning up after the meal.