A New Year of Projects

I don't make resolutions. They only set you up for disappointment. I am however constantly trying to make myself a better, happier, more productive person. One step to take towards "happier" for me would be to make more art. I have been so lazy the last few months. Not lazy in the sense that I just lay around doing nothing (I could barely stand to do that when I had the stomach flu last week!)--I just haven't been making time for my art...which prevents me from getting better at it. Practice makes perfect and I will work on it. I have so many good ideas for drawings and paintings but I just get so frustrated when the first drawing doesn't work that I kind of give up on it. My perfectionism will be the end of me. "If I can't do it perfectly right away, why bother?" (which is completely ridiculous! I know!) I don't even think I do anything perfectly which goes along very well with the title of my blog. So this year I'm just going to keep on trying everything and working on everything regardless of who is doing it better than me. In fact, I should seek out people who do things better than me and learn from them. That's what smart people do, isn't it?

Another thing that makes me incredibly happy that I've only discovered in recent years is cooking. Reader, look forward to more posts about my crazy kitchen endeavors (i.e some big cheese-making plans)...crazy because almost everything is new to me. Mom got me my own small pressure-canner for Christmas (which I love!) and I look forward to canning whenever I feel like it.

I don't know, I guess we'll just see what the year holds--hopefully more art, reading, school, a beautiful, well producing garden with a pantryful of canned goods, a triathlon in July and possibly a homemade holiday 2... Whatever comes my way in 2009 I hope we all get through it together in good health.

Happy New Year everyone!

Wake n' Bake

(not my biscotti--pictures forthcoming)

Counting down to Christmas and the only big thing left to do is make all the pasta for our baskets. The other night I experimented (along with some of my ladyfriends) with biscotti-baking and it turned out beautifully! We made cranberry-almond biscotti dipped in 70% dark chocolate...sooooo good (especially in the next morning's coffee). We ended up eating quite a bit of it that night and I've already given away a lot too, so this morning I had to hop out of bed and make up another double batch before heading to work. This time I made vanilla-black walnut biscotti. I have had so much fun making it I might make another batch to freeze for Tony and I.

The Limoncello is absolutely delicious. I've already filled 7 bottles and there's still a ton of it. Here's the recipe, which I more than quadrupled:
Giada De Laurentis' Limoncello
10 lemons
1 (750-ml) bottle vodka
3 1/2 cups water
2 1/2 cups sugar
Using a vegetable peeler, remove the peel from the lemons in long strips (reserve the lemons for another use). Using a small sharp knife, trim away the white pith from the lemon peels; discard the pith. Place the lemon peels in a 2-quart pitcher. Pour the vodka over the peels and cover with plastic wrap. Steep the lemon peels in the vodka for 4 days at room temperature.

Stir the water and sugar in a large saucepan over medium heat until the sugar dissolves, about 5 minutes. Cool completely. Pour the sugar syrup over the vodka mixture. Cover and let stand at room temperature overnight. Strain the limoncello through a mesh strainer. Discard the peels. Transfer the limoncello to bottles. Seal the bottles and refrigerate until cold, at least 4 hours and up to 1 month.

(Since I realized that my vodka bottles were liters and not 750s after the fact, I just did 14 lemons to the liter and 31/2 C. Sugar 41/2 C. Water for each of my batches. I get the feeling Limoncello is hard to mess up. You could even cut the sugar it's pretty darn sweet)

Giada De Laurentis' Holiday Biscotti Recipe

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
3/4 cup pistachios, coarsely chopped
2/3 cup dried cranberries
12 ounces good-quality white chocolate, chopped
Red and green sugar crystals, for garnish
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Line a heavy large baking sheet with parchment paper. Whisk the flour and baking powder in a medium bowl to blend. Using an electric mixer, beat the sugar, butter, lemon zest, and salt in a large bowl to blend. Beat in the eggs 1 at a time. Add the flour mixture and beat just until blended. Stir in the pistachios and cranberries.
Form the dough into a 13-inch long, 3-inch wide log on the prepared baking sheet. Bake until light golden, about 40 minutes. Cool for 30 minutes.
Place the log on the cutting board. Using a sharp serrated knife, cut the log on a diagonal into 1/2 to 3/4-inch-thick slices. Arrange the biscotti, cut side down, on the baking sheet. Bake the biscotti until they are pale golden, about 15 minutes. Transfer the biscotti to a rack and cool completely.
Stir the chocolate in a bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water until the chocolate melts. Dip half of the biscotti into the melted chocolate. Gently shake off the excess chocolate. Place the biscotti on the baking sheet for the chocolate to set. Sprinkle with the sugar crystals. Refrigerate until the chocolate is firm, about 35 minutes.
The biscotti can be made ahead. Store them in an airtight container up to 4 days, or wrap them in foil and freeze in resealable plastic bags up to 3 weeks.

(Since I don't like white chocolate much, I used dark chocolate instead and completely skipped the red and green sugar crystals because that's kinda goofy. I think you can tweak this recipe well to your liking, it is superb.)

Well, that's all I got. Have a lot of label-making and pasting to do. Hope you all have a happy holiday. Next post will contain finished baskets...which means a finished project. Just saying...

Let it Snow...I Guess

Back from Vail! We got home around 9 last night so travel was really pretty easy. We left 2 feet of snow and negative temperatures...came home to even more negative temperatures (golly I forgot about this!) and woke up to more snow. We had such a good time (pictures forthcoming once Tony and I find the USB that hooks his camera to my laptop) but it's really nice to be home. I have a lot of preparation yet to do for Christmas (which also happens to be the next day off I get...ugh). Tonight I plan to finish up the Limoncello and I'll bottle it this weekend. Tomorrow night I'll be baking and finishing my Christmas Cards...who knew I'd be so possessed by the Christmas Spirit? What's next, liking Christmas music!? ...cough...

Wanted to take the Compass test next Monday, but SCC's out so I'll have to jam it in the first week of January and register for classes right away. Oh the hoops they make you jump through! Crossing my fingers that they'll be able to get me into the math class I need.

And finally, after five days of no swimming, biking, running I'm feeling pretty achey (weird that that's what happens when you don't do it) and I'm really anxious to get back in the pool tonight after work. Last week after a half hour of 100 yd sets, I swam 500 breaststroke nonstop. Felt really good and I still had plenty of energy after my hour was up...thinking maybe just maybe in 6 months, Triathlon will be possible.

That's all,
Hannah

Taste-Test

So, we bottled the vodka yesterday morning--after tasting of course. I thought all of the vodkas tasted pretty nice. The winners were easily the Bloody Mary mix and the Vanilla -nut. an honorable mention goes to Caramel-Apple for being a drink in itself. Citrus is very nice and within the proper drink parameters the pomegranate-basil is very good too (it just tastes so strongly of basil I'm not sure what to do with it--pineapple juice?). Hot Chocolate (nutella with only 1 dried chile which Tony later informs us was a habenero!) is just...so hot. The first taste you get is definately very chocolaty, but then you're slapped in the face/mouth with some serious heat. Katie and I were thinking if you put in in a hot cocoa with a little cream or like, a white russian, maybe the lactose would cool the pepper. Not something I, of the delicate stomach (when it comes to dairy), could put to the test. Sterilizing the Grolsch bottles was a chore. Put an itty bitty bit of bleach in the canning pot, and boiled them for several minutes. Than filled them with the nectar, THEN I had to soak the bottles in hot water for a long time to get the labels off. It all came together though and I'm excited about the finished product.


Thursday morning we are leaving for Vail, Colorado for a nice 5 day vacation with friends. No skiing (no health insurance) but it sounds like Scoie (my friend we're visiting) has some good ideas. Though, she has plans to take Matel and I to a bikram yoga...otherwise known as "hot yoga" similar to hanging out in a sauna, but doing yoga in it. Sounds like something I'd faint doing. We'll see, I'm kind of interested.
Anyway, I chose Devil in the White City to read this week (I think I'll even have some time this weekend in Vail), still have a little to go in Neverwhere which is really really fun to read.

And, tomorrow morning I'm swimming laps, possibly Wednesday morning too. I'm really enjoying it and already see some improvement, so I'm going to keep on with it. Maybe there's a YMCA in Vail I can go swim at some morning. Probably wouldn't get to it even if I wanted to. Anyway, hope to post again before leaving, but maybe not.

Swimming Update

So, my solo swimming session went very well. I was even mistaken by a fellow swimmer for...a fellow swimmer. That, or he was hitting on me. I don't know. What I do know is that so far I swim 2 laps, then kick board across to get my breath back, then swim another 2 laps and so on and so forth. Tuesday I went for nearly an hour. The routine works for now while I'm still getting comfortable with all of it, but at some point in the near future I'll need to develop some sort of training schedule for all of this triathlon bidness.

Presently it's coffee-time at my house. I had planned on getting up this morning and going for a swim,but after spinning twice this week and the fact that today is a 12-hour workday I thought it'd be okay to forgo the chilly walk downtown to the Y and the pre-work shower I hate. Depending on how late I'm stuck working at the bar, I want to get into a morning swim routine. That would require um, ah...oh! Discipline. Working on it.

Almost finished this week's book...not a very impressive one. A reissued 3rd book in a mystery series by Charlaine Harris Shakespeare's Christmas . I'm doing double-duty this week and finishing Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere too. I had tried reading Alice Sebold's (author of The Lovely Bones ) new novel Almost Moon but it sucked too much and after reading 100 pages (a fairer assessment than I'd give most authors) and conferring with Gunter I gave up. So that's why I'm so behind in my book a week adventure. I bought a big ol' pile of books at the thrift store and haven't decided on next week's book yet.

Until next time,
Hannah

Fasten your Swim Caps...Hannah's Learning to Swim!

Not that I'd ever drown--I could always pass for a decent swimmer, I just lack form and proper breathing techniques. That's where my good friend Matel came in. We spent a couple hours last week going over those things and once I understood what it was good swimmers were doing in the pool I felt much more confident that I could do it as well. In fact, the biggest help was merely a pair of goggles. The next day we went to Scheels so I could buy my very own googles and swim cap (which I'm still not sure how to put on...). I spent like, $20 on the goggles because they promise to keep my eyes dry--important since I wear contacts. Both the goggles and the swim cap are TYR. I don't know jack about swimming brands (though my swimsuit is one I've heard of: Speedo--thanks Beca btw) so hopefully the saleslady--they are so nice at Scheels--wasn't feeding me a line when she said TYR was really great. They let you try on the goggles and her tip was, if they stick dry and hold to at least one eye they will work really well for you. Very interesting.

So, since I have these grand plans to participate in the Cornhusker State Games' Women's Triathalon, I figured I'd have to learn to swim correctly. Roughly, it's bike 13 miles, run 3 and swim a 1/2 mile. I'm already comfortable enough to do the biking and running but the swimming portion is definately daunting to me. After figuring out the math (via online calculators) I'll have to be able to swim 33 laps in the pool at my YMCA and still have tons of energy left over for biking and running. It's more than 6 months away (July), so I can do it provided I stay injury-free (hard for me).

Anyway, tonight is my first sojourn into solo lap-swimming. No matter how in-shape I may be (and I like to think I'm pretty in-shape...the wii fit thinks so too), swimming is incredibly hard. I was out of breath pretty quickly. Perhaps though, that is also just my brain feeling over-worked (thinking about stroke, breath and pace all at the same time is exhausting). We'll see how it goes and I'll definately report on it.

As for my vodkas and limoncellos...they are chillin' out in the basement. Anna and I snuck down there to sample them the other night and the "hot chocolate" made me cough uncontrollably so... hm. We'll see.

Til' next time,

Hannah