Even Tom's leftovers are good

Yesterday, before work, Tom made me a turkey & lettuce wrap with cranberry compote. Mmmm.... leftovers.

Cranberry compote pulls double duty

Over ice cream, no brainer

Harnessing the power

The power of the new kitchen has enabled me to work much more efficiently. thanksgiving dinner was two and a half hours start to finish
(excluding the twelve hour brine for the breast) unfortunately for my dishwasher (Elise) this is often the aftermath of whirlwind cooking.

Happy Thanksgiving

Some of our favorites, Brined turkey breast, cranberry compote,wild rice dressing, steamed green beans and baby carrots with a butter brown sugar glaze, crusty bread, And lots of leftovers, Yea!

Suds?

No, it's the first snow that has stuck this year. Sarah and Erik missed it by one day.
The wheelbarrow in the picture is from West Virginia and is destined for mom's house
in Phoenix.

Hot drink season

We have started the holiday season with a new hot drink called the gingerbread man.
A ginger syrup with hot coffee and whipped cream(with sprinkles). We Irished it up a little with some Bushmills.
This was followed by the movie Elf and some online shopping, HO HO.

seasoning is important

Even if you are going to put your sausage into casings (which really isn't required; you can cook it up as patties), seasoning is important. Tom recommends to grind up the meat & fat with the grinder -- he also puts any garlic or fennel into the grinder with the meat & fat. He adds salt & pepper afterwards. But the important tip (as shared originally by Sherry) is to always cook up small amounts and TASTE TEST to decide if you have enough seasoning. Especially if you're going to go through the work of putting the sausage into casings, you don't want to spend all that time, and then realize that your sausage is underseasoned!
For more tips, I'd refer to Sherry & Mike (we have a link to their Menu in Progress from our blog).

makin' sausage

My cousin Aaron recently requested some sausage-making tips. Tom's tips:
1. Make sure you use enough fat! Tom recommends 30-35%, which can be added as pork fat (to any type of meat). Most "regular" grocery stores won't sell you pork fat any more, but the "ethnic" grocery stores will....
2. Breakfast sausage only requires sage & black pepper, plus a little bit of salt
3. Italian sausage is seasoned with garlic & fennel, plus salt & pepper
4. You can add any seasonings you want, really....
I intended to put up a whole bunch more photos, but (as seems to be the norm recently) I'm having serious blogger-photo issues, particularly with trying to put up more than one photo at a time. So I'm going to seriously limit my entries....

progress every day

Today Erik & Tom got a lot done with regard to the trim. As you can see, we have doors, and quite a bit of door-framing, as well as some baseboard trim. Once Erik leaves, Tom will be responsible for staining the trim -- so it's going to end up darker than this photo.
The doors that are shown here are the bathroom (on the left), the linen closet, and the spare bedroom (which will have a shade over the window-part). Tom decided to put French doors on each room that has an exterior window, to try to allow some natural light into the main room of the basement.

success!

the wet bar is now wet

we have doors!

OK, we have some of our doors... the rest of them are back-ordered. But the ones that came today look great: Erik hung 6 of them. Now Tom has to stain them...
The color "swatches" on the left were our test-paints. We are going to use the top two colors in Tom's studio (beige & brown), and the blue in the control room. The main room is going to be beige, and the bedroom is going to be a beige/blue combination.

2 mos in CO winding down

We sure are going to miss Sarah & Erik when they leave....

Continental Divide view

While we snacked on hot tea & cookies, we had a great view of the Boulder Canyon, the Continental Divide, and Long's Peak.

dried golden meadow grass

The colors were really spectacular today -- the sky, the trees, the grasses -- even things that were dead were beautiful.

reapplying sunblock is very important

even on cold days!

final push up the hill

It felt quite a bit warmer on the way up than on the way down....

Perfectly Blue Skies

Walker Ranch continues to be one of our favorite hikes, no matter what time of year. We had a beautiful day today -- a bit chilly, but overall - perfect.

Week 8: the bar evolves

I realized today that although I've been putting up basement progress photos, I've forgotten to keep labelling them by week. Well, this is week #8. We've had two minor snags this week: so far the trim and doors have not arrived (and were supposed to be here a couple of days ago) so Tom and Erik have gotten a little delayed. Also, there was a miscalculation regarding the wood flooring, so we had to re-order more -- and are also waiting for its delivery. So while Tom & Erik are waiting on these things, they are working on finishing as much as possible with regard to the bar and the bathroom.

I've started painting

This is the future storage room/wine room. If you've been in our house before (either in Phoenix or here in CO) you know that we have several pieces of Cost Plus furniture (a coffee table, bookshelves, etc.) that are a dark-stained wood. I envision that we will have shelving/wine storage that is a similar dark-wood stain to our existing furniture: so I am thrilled with this rusty-orange color, because I think it will be wonderful against the wood.

flooring!

This is the main room in the basement. And yes, it is absolutely huge!!! There are now lights throughout, and flooring on about 80% of it. The area that is shown in the foreground is going to be furnished (some time next year!) with a couch and TV -- this will be a rec-type area. In the background, you can see a cut-out area, that currently has a cabinet (which isn't really in place/installed yet). That's the bar -- it's going to have a sink/wet-bar, and a kegerator. (Oh boy!) Then, in front of that, will be a free-standing bar (again, in 2008 -- i.e., when we can afford to buy things again!) and I assume a couple of barstools, etc.
The two door-openings on the left: the first is for a linen closet, the 2nd leads into a spare bedroom. Once we get the bedroom finished, Sarah & Erik figure they'll be ready to move in downstairs: the bedroom will be large, there will be a bathroom, plus the bar (and Tom's goal is eventually to have the kegerator filled with home-brew) and TV, plus the studio... what more could you need?

pork on pork

Last week Sarah made us a dinner fit for Queens & Kings. (Really, it felt like an early Thanksgiving!) She was very creative about how to use what was in the fridge: a pork loin, sausage (which is what is the "topping" on the roast), rice, peppers, and a puree of sweet potatoes and carrots. Mmmm.

Honky Tonk gig

Tom had 2 country gigs last weekend. We went on Saturday night -- and although country is not my most favorite genre of music, I must admit I enjoyed the musicianship immensely. The vocals were excellent, and the guitar, bass and steel-pedal-guitar were phenomenal. Of course, the drumming was superb!

Cyclo-Cross racing

Erik is a fan of CycloCross racing -- which is kind-of a hybrid between mountain biking and road racing. We went to an elite Cyclo-Cross event last weekend, which was tons of fun. As you can see, the weather was (predictably) fantastic. At the end of the day, we went to one of the food vendors to buy some hotdogs. They were closing up -- so for the price of 2 hotdogs, they gave us 10! We spent the next 15 min (or so) passing out hotdogs to random strangers, which was actually really fun.

technical difficulties

As you can see, the last couple of weeks have been frought with technical difficulties in the Brown-Post household. First, we had a "memory card error" -- which resulted in the majority of our CA photos being "lost." I was devastated! But Tom (also known as the household I.T. guy) downloaded some "memory card recovery" software, and was able to recover 99% of our photos. This one wasn't quite perfect, but I ended up liking the final effect.
Next, I've been having MAJOR Blogger issues. Hopefully, these have been resolved (again, thanks to Tom). So now I'm trying to catch up with photos from our trip... and I'll also try to update our CO-goings-on, and of course, the basement progress.
Never a dull moment.