Living Room 2.0

Last week we mentioned that we were going to redo our living room, so we wanted to share an update with you! Once again the house looks like a small war was fought in it with small paths dug through the knee deep wreckage. Holes line the walls and a fine layer of rubble covers the floor. What a mess. However, there IS progress! Lets look at what we started with! Living room 0.5:

This is the living room back in early 2009 after we've taken down the wall paper and painted

Swiss Chard Pizza

Lets face it, Swiss Chard is pretty. Purples and yellows mixing with and accenting the green leaf helps to add a bit of color to our garden. Surprisingly it also adds quite a bit of flavor to one of our more unique pizzas too. Eric was a little hesitant at first, as he is more of a pizza purist (he believes that pepperoni is really the only topping a good pizza needs). How did he actually react? 3 slices later he just couldn't eat any more, so he had another for good measure. With that said, we're finally gearing up for house 2.0: making our house a full blown grown up person's house. Kind of a scary thought, that whole growing up thing but something thats got to happen at some point. It will actually be fun to give the whole house an overhaul, which should be finished just in time for our desire to change something else all over again.

Printable Recipe

Kale Pesto

Kale has flown well under the radar for quite some time now, not really making waves or getting much face time in the American consciousness. Not until home gardening and the desire for local or home grown food started to take off the last couple of years. Rooftop gardeners and backyard horticulturists quickly came to discover Kale as one of the most nutritional, easy to grow super-foods on earth. Its harder to grow weeds than to grow Kale, which actually thrives when it gets a touch of frost. A terrific winter food, Kale brings so many nutrients that in WWII Kale was pushed hard as a way to make up for nutrients otherwise lost to rationing. In fact, during this time the British had a warship named the HMS Kale, named after none other than the River Kale in Scotland that may or may not have anything to do with the plant. This is Eric trying to come up with some completely trivial, utterly useless fact and falling flat on his face but now you know something new about a boat that got sunk and has nothing to do with the most amazing pesto we've ever made. Thats right, the most amazing. Usually, pesto is pesto is pesto. Sometimes it comes out extra special, sometimes it doesn't come out quite right but most of the time its tasty and expected. This one though, not only stood out, but brought us back for thirds. Ok fourths. Okay, we licked our bowls THEN licked the pots. Don't tell anyone though ok? 

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Home and Garden: Garden Growing

So when Eric sat down to over-engineer the garden beds he was focused on two things: the maximum garden space possible while being able to reach everything and building boxes that would withstand the apocalypse. One hammered thumb and two years later the boxes are done, filled with dirt and fenced in. Eric's job was done and Charisse took over. After a great deal of reading and research she decided to go with the square foot method of gardening, which is a pretty darn cool way to grow a ton of stuff. She dug around the internet and found a great online resource to help plan your garden out. It's free and printable and a pretty awesome tool for the planing stage and adaptable to your box dimensions (in one foot increments), an important tool when you under-estimate the size of your garden beds. After the planting and watering and yelling at the bugs to get out (doesn't work) we're ready for the great reveal! As you can see from the pictures, the garden is four boxes that are eight feet by four feet by one foot high. We built a picket fence to keep the dog out (and had to add some chain link fencing in other areas where the dog found her way in), one day this will be painted white. We also have a morning glory growing over the arbor, which should be very pretty when it takes over and starts blooming. Hit the jump for more pictures, and the list of what we have growing! 

Sweet Potato Pancakes with Maple Whipped Cream

So after an entire spring of working on getting the backyard put together, getting the garden done and growing, we ran into another problem... weeds and bugs were everywhere! We had truly created a nightmare there in our little garden. Every day Charisse would go out and check it, and find some new plant that some new bug ate or have to pick out some new weed that popped up and grew 3,856 feet tall overnight. "You're no help" was the response from Charisse when Eric replied to her cry for help taming the garden was "I build just build it. Besides, you like doing this kinda stuff right?". Turns out Eric did get to tackle the weed issues, by "building" the pebble bed around the stepping stones. Apparently hauling thirty 50 pound bags of rocks from the cart to the car and from the car to the garden counts as "building", which serves him right. She also got some seriously good advice from our friend Christina over at Dessert for Two (Charisse says thanks again!) we were able to sort out what was doing the nibbling and get some solid bug control going on in a pet and people friendly way. So after a hard day of working, what could be better than breakfast for dinner? Yeah not much, especially when breakfast is pancakes made with sweet potatoes. And homemade whipped cream. YUM. 

Printable Recipe

Russian Leek and Cheese Bread

We're back! Well, okay we didn't actually go anywhere but Blogger did last week for a few days. Posts vanished, comments died, who knows what else broke over in Google land, but its tough to complain about a free service. Anyways, Bloggers back, we're back, lets get back to work, starting with Russian Leek Bread, and a Mother's day recap. First off: Mother's Day was the other weekend and we hosted a surf and turf brunch of both families. Nothing beats lobster, tri-tip and mimosas at noon on a Sunday. Even the cat liked the menu. Or the menu liked the cat. We're still not sure about that one.
What we are sure about is that somewhere along the line Charisse decided that Russians all like Leeks. Confused? So was Eric but by the time he was done taking photos what Russians like didn't matter, what mattered was how quickly he could stuff this slice in his mouth. For those of you wondering, the answer is very quickly. Really though, Eric was sold as soon as he got the shopping list:

we need cream cheese 1 carton
goat cheese 1 log
sour cream get light 1 tub
ricotta cheese get 2% 1 tub


Seriously how could someone not get excited knowing that all of that will somehow combine with leeks and bread? 


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Blueberry Cornbread

It seems like every time we dig down deep and pull out the cast iron skillet, theres cornbread involved, this time cornbread invited it's good friend blueberry to the party and what a party that makes. For anyone who's ever had blueberry pancakes on a Sunday morning and gone through the rest of the day feeling happy and full of good feelings should be prepared to have that experience at the dinner bell. With every bite you hit a pocket of blueberry goodness and it makes the world seem that much better. Especially on days when the time leading up to that bite has been a little rough. Like on Monday when Eric decided he would bring the dog to the office. What an adventure. By adventure we mean disaster. We got Koda all set up in the morning: bowls for food and water, some toys a bag of treats and a blanket to sit on. After a quick stop at the Vet (reminder, don't introduce your dog to a new environment right after a visit to the Vet) it was off to work. After some introductions and a quick tour Eric settled in and Koda... didn't. She was very chatty with everyone so Eric decided to exercise her with a laser pointer in the middle of the office. It was quite entertaining until she hit the breaks and with everyone watching, did her business and once again proved that she is a great farm dog, not a city dog. Heres a short video of Eric's co-worker turning around and discovering a dog on his desk.

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