dear troy, shannon, john and michael:

i carried on a fifteen to twenty minute conversation with the owner of my company today about beer, and i think i made a good impression. i mentioned some he had not tried, he gave me some suggestions as well. he seemed very impressed with my goal of trying 200 beers at the saucer. among other things, i used terms such as “hoppy”, “framboise”, “duvel”, “barley wine”, and “malty” and i think i sounded like i knew what i was talking about. i sat in awe of the words that came out of my mouth as i listed my favorite breweries. (i have favorite breweries?! what?!) so from the first hefeweizen (which took me 3 hours to drink) to the ESP beer requests that almost always result in a knock on the door with a 6 pack in hand, to the delicious pink beer that made happy hour even happier, to the informative and engaging lectures about how beer is made, a big thanks to my quaternary of beer mentors.

seems as though 50% of regular blog readers (which comes out to approximately 3) are runners, i thought i’d post my favorite songs to run to. its amazing how a good playlist can make you go faster. i’m also discovering that my running music is a completely different catalog from what i used to consider my “favorite music” ie. what i listen to when i drive…

5. mute math: chaos

4. bloc party: helicopter and bloc party: banquet - yeah, cheating, 2 songs. sure, the singer sounds as though he has a speech impediment (brian says its just because he’s british, but i think there’s more to it), but the beat is good.

3. john mark mcmillan: make you move - it really does make you move, no joke. this song came on halfway through my last race and gave me an unexpected bout of energy. who knew?

2. the darkness: get your hands off of my woman - i didn’t know i liked running to this song until it randomly came on one day, and i’m a little (a lot) ashamed of it. total guilty pleasure song. if you’ve heard it you know why. if you haven’t, you are probably better off not hearing it. but, if you ever need a good laugh, go to itunes and listen to the clip (just go ahead and go for the explicit version) and think of me running around my neighborhood listening to this. be prepared to not want to be my friend anymore. it makes me laugh, sometimes almost audibly, when i’m running which helps me forget what my lungs feel like.

1. jimmy eat world. i realize that’s a band and not a song. there are too many good ones, if i listed them all separately i’d have taken up all five spots with jimmy eat world songs and that’s no fun. the tempos are perfect and the lyrics sometimes just motivate me enough that it pushes me to go a little faster or farther than i thought i could. bleed american and pain are both good songs, but my favorite jimmy eat world song of all time is lucky denver mint. if i ever do a long distance race for real, i’d consider just listening to this song on repeat.

This time it’s on my own.
Minutes from somewhere else.
Somewhere I made a wish with Lucky Denver Mint.
Hurry go on ahead.
Good things won’t let you wait.
I’ll catch up when we get home.
At home I’ll leave.
A dollar under water keeps on dreaming for me.
You’re not bigger than this, not better.
Why can’t you learn?

load your mp3 player up with only your very favorite songs from your very favorite albums…get in your car…plug in the player…then audibly say “yessssss” and congratulate your mp3 player for being so wonderful every time a song you like comes on, even though you know you are going to like every song? just wondering if i was the only one.

i’ve recently become an avid reader of drivl.com. its run by some funny people (who are lucky enough to all get to work together doing search engine optimization here) and they write some pretty hilarious stories and accept user-submitted articles as well.

the other night (after a couple of beers) submitting an article to this site seemed like a really good idea, so i did it. today i found out that they actually posted it! if you are one of the 4-6 regular blog readers here, you may remember this story…

drivl.com | an open letter to welch’s regarding their spokeschildren

so anyway, now on to the lies. the subtitle on drivl’s site says “the naked truth. written by naked interns.” for the record, i am not in fact an intern, nor was i naked when submitting or writing the article.

the turkeys

Originally uploaded by xetark.

happy birthday to brian! you can see him in the picture above (back row)

pancakes from the oven

Originally uploaded by xetark.

i’m not a huge fan of pancakes - the only pancakes i’ve ever tried to make are the bisquick ones and they always taste like…well, flour. i’m also not a huge fan of really sweet stuff for breakfast, so dousing the floury cakes in maple syrup or brown sugar doesn’t appeal to me. the exception is the sugar and spice pancakes from the pancake pantry, which, if i’m in the right mood i find really tasty.

i found a recipe for german pancakes today courtesy of the smitten kitchen blog and they looked so good i had to give pancakes another shot. they couldn’t be any simpler to make. plus, when you bake them in the oven you can literally sit there and watch the bubbles grow and brown. not that i sat on my kitchen floor with a blanket with the oven light on staring in the window for twenty minutes or anything…

they have a lot of flavor compared to other pancakes - only a little sweet but really eggy tasting - delicious. this was a spur of the moment thing, so i opted for welch’s raspberry jelly as my topping of choice. brian had powdered sugar. next time i think i’m going to fry some sausage and onions and peppers and top them with that and some cheese…yummy.

german pancakes

• 4 eggs
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 2/3 c flour
• 2/3 c milk
• 2 tbsp softened butter

preheat oven to 450. grease 2 - 9″ cake pans. blend the eggs in a blender until they’re fully mixed and light yellow. add the rest of the ingredients and blend again. divide mixture between the two pans. bake at 400 for 20 minutes then at 350 for 10 minutes.

no knead bread take two

Originally uploaded by xetark.

i am not going to lie. (what a horribly cheesy post title by the way) when i first read all these accounts of people making no knead bread, i laughed a little at the ones who said things like “i’ve made 4 loaves of bread this week” or “i make this stuff every day”. but here i am, on tuesday, and i’m currently enjoying the scent of my second attempt at no knead bread. here’s the update:

• used a little more salt this time (maybe 2 tsp)
• used a little less water (1.5 C)
• added some thyme (we are out of rosemary)
• let the dough rise for a full 24 hours in the oven (turned off) with the light on - it was pretty warm in there
• this loaf is definitely prettier than the first. will be tasting shortly

i’ve never attempted to make bread before today. but i’ve been reading about the amazing no knead bread on various blogs for months now and decided it was time to try. it turned out really well; crusty on the outside, chewy on the inside, and the house smelled great. here are my tips/things to know:

• i used regular pillsbury all purpose flour, fleishman’s rapid rise yeast, and white cornmeal (for the outside).
• it says to leave the bowl somewhere warm. no where in our house is especially warm and it didn’t seem to make a difference. i let the dough rise for 18 hours.
• when folding the dough in step 3, the dough was really sticky - no worries. it turns out ok
• after the two hour wait, the dough didn’t appear to be twice as big to me, but i proceeded anyway.
• i don’t have a dutch oven, and used an 8 qt roaster instead. one of the cheap ones that’s black with white specks. i think this is why it turned out so crispy and a little overdone on the bottom; but it was still quite tasty.
• i left it in the oven at 450 for 30 mins covered and 30 mins uncovered - would probably just do 15-20 uncovered next time.
• found this video after i already put the bread in the oven. probably would have been helpful earlier in the process

next time…going to try adding some rosemary to the bread and getting some dipping oil. mmmmm…

yeah, that’s right, you heard me. in a really dorky move, i just spent a few minutes excitedly reading an article on vanilla beans, hanging on each word and blurting out the highlights of the article to brian, who at least did a good job of pretending: a. he was interested and b. i wasn’t the biggest dork in the world.

so if you don’t want to read it, here’s a synopsis of what i learned:

• vanilla comes from an orchid that takes 10 years to mature, has to be fertilized by hand (unless in mexico where one species of bee will do it) and is the second most expensive spice, after saffron
• synthetic vanilla is 100x cheaper than real vanilla
• two studies by cook’s illustrated have shown that pastry chefs and bakers can’t tell the difference between synthetic and real vanilla in the dishes tested
• those specks in the vanilla bean ice cream are actually vanilla beans, but they have no flavor!

i am not sure why i found this article so riveting, but it certainly sucked me in.

also, speaking of ice cream, if you ever run out of hershey’s chocolate syrup here’s a handy substitute. (i have been out for 3 weeks and there has been NONE in the ice cream topping area at the store - what is going on? is hershey’s syrup the next jello-pudding-pop-style casualty of snack food?) i was mocked when i first made this, but turns out brian and shannon actually prefer it to the real thing.

1 tsp hershey’s baking cocoa
1 tsp sugar
dash of salt
1 tsp milk

just mix it up together. it doesn’t seem like enough liquid at first, but keep stirring

i have no idea why i know how to do this. i think i made it up during the summer after 6th grade, when i ate ice cream at 11am every morning while watching the price is right.

tonight’s our last night in our condo that we’ve rented for the past 3 years. moving from an apartment complex in a not-so-nice neighborhood to arguably one of the nicest neighborhoods in nashville was really exciting for us. once we signed the lease and were waiting for move in day, we would find reasons to drive by here just so we could look at where we were going to live. we know god provided this place for us - the rent was unbelievably cheap and the wonderful people who own the condo didn’t raise it once in three years. they were incredibly flexible with us in making plans to move out. if they hadn’t wanted to move back in, i know we would have stayed, but it was our time to move on.

tonight, when we got to the house that we’ll be renting our new landlords had left us a small gift and a note saying they were sure we were the right people to rent the house they had just renovated and were so glad we would be part of their neighborhood. so far, these people have been amazing. god is good

i went through my flickr account to find some of my favorite memories from living here. turns out its more about the people in the house than the actual house…

family portrait night

board games

christmas!

our building from behind some ice

lots of naps

lots of socks…everywhere

lots of computing

cooking in a tiny kitchen (that was bigger than our last kitchen)

altricia’s fantastic landscaping every spring

bird nest in the mailbox

our parking lot

a mentos and coke experiment in the lacross field behind our building. we pretended it was our backyard

birthday parties

hobbies

good times…

a good starting point for my runs

old people humor

a window disaster

friends coming to visit

our street

city wildlife

not a new neighbor, just someone stealing a spot in our lot

christmas again!

many, many kitchen experiments. some good, some not so good.