Park Slope, Brooklyn

We continued to look for a new place this weekend and explored Park Slope in Brooklyn. It has a ton of streets like this, and Wikipedia has a great synopsis of the area: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Slope,_Brooklyn

Bubble and Squeak

After dinner, there was a lot of talk of "bubble and squeak" for the next day - not a bad idea for leftovers!

Bubble and squeak (sometimes just called bubble) is a traditional English dish made with the shallow-fried leftover vegetables from a roast dinner. The chief ingredients are potatoand cabbage, but carrots, peas, brussels sprouts, and other vegetables can be added. It is traditionally served with cold meat from the Sunday roast, and pickles. Traditionally the meat was added to the bubble and squeak itself, although nowadays the vegetarian version is more common. The cold chopped vegetables (and cold chopped meat if used) are fried in a pan together with mashed potato until the mixture is well-cooked and brown on the sides.

The name is thought to be either a description of the action and sound made during the cooking process, a reference to the gas "bubbles" the dish causes and the "squeak" one's body makes upon releasing them, or from the fact that the ingredients are leftovers; 'the bubble of the stew and the squeak of the pig'

Christmas 2007

Although we weren't with our families, we still had a wonderful Christmas! It started with stockings and presents (of course!) I'm particularly proud and excited about this gift for Dirk - hopefully it will help us be just that much neater:

After we opened presents, we headed to Brooklyn to Jo and Dan's for an amazing dinner! Jo cooked for 11 of us, and we had quite the spread: 5 chickens, potatoes and root vegetables, broccoli, pea pods, stuffing, lots of desserts and a cheese plate! Let's just say I haven't been very hungry the rest of the week.....

Post Number 1

I am still not as good with keeping up with everyone as I ought to be, so I thought this would be a good idea to start the new year right and come up with a solution. Not that this will take the place of good-old-fashioned phone calls (Mom and Dad - we are still on for Wednesday and Sunday), but it also makes it easier to show pictures of things rather than trying to just explain them over the phone. Hopefully you all agree. Expect a lot of pictures of Emily, and there will probably be some pandas, dachsunds and other animals mixed in. Don't forget that you can post comments back to me, too! 

PS - The color green really does compliment the color magenta (one of my favorites, as you know) on the color wheel, which I thought was a nice coincidence.