Let the holiday traditions begin

Christmas Eve has arrived! I'm actually a little disappointed in myself, I really didn't have Christmas on my mind much until yesterday. For those who don't know, we finally heard the 4th and last rotation for the program I'm in will be in Danbury, Connecticut. We will move the first week of February.  With such a short timeline the last few weeks and days have been full of distractions and the sudden urge to make sure things wrap up smoothly with this rotation. It wasn't until yesterday I realized how unprepared I was for the Christmas. I shamefully admit I was one of those people running frantically through stores picking up 'last minute' gifts yesterday. One would hope I had made more progress since my teenage years when my brothers and I would go Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve; one day is all the progress I can report.

Luckily, we are staying in Michigan for both Christmas and New Years. We will be starting our own family traditions as this will be our first Christmas with a child, away from family. We kicked things off today with a Christmas Eve Aebelskiver brunch. You may remember me mentioning my family making them for Christmas in an earlier post. We received the strange and ever so helpful Aebelskiver pan as a gift this year and couldn't wait to put it to use. You can find the recipe I use here. What are some of your favorite holiday food traditions?

He really liked them, despite his the disgust on his face.  It's really just his camera smile.

We wrapped presents and braved putting them under the tree today. Ira has been good about not playing with them. He can feel the excitement in the air, and loves all the sugary things to eat. He's been pretty cute and funny the last couple of days. What would a family post be without some highlights of him.

He loves helping out in the kitchen. He insists, "No, I do it"

You can't let those beaters go un-licked!

He likes all the shiny and glittery ornaments everywhere. We decided to do some Christmas Art with some old glitter glue we had lying around.

The Ira in boots picture of the day. He's still obsessed with them. Since he can put them on himself you never know when he will come around the corner and be wearing them.

We wish you all a Merry Christmas!

Pumpkins, Parties, and Pudding

Happy October!  

We've been having fun, and as you'll see below, eating a lot of sugar.  

Ira has been obsessed with cars for months now, so I've been looking forward to making a car cake for his birthday in January.  That is, until he's broadened his horizons to include trains and trucks, both of which would also make really fun cakes.  So, I wanted to clear the car cake space in my brain so I could move on with other January plans.  Below is Ira's non-birthday cake: my second attempt at using fondant.

Ira was especially thrilled with the eyes.  When he ate the headlights he started calling the tires eyes and just sat at his high chair talking about them, not really eating anything. 

Ira helping Dad fix his bike.  Ant's bike has had a couple of run ins with the insane pot holes around here.

Dirt pudding!

We had lots of fun with our pumpkin carving party.  Unfortunately I forgot to take pics of our friends that came, but a couple from the ward and a friend from work showed up.

Jello Brain.  Maybe it's all those psychology classes in college, but I really look forward to making this thing every year.  When Ira's old enough I'll use it to lecture him about the difference between the prefrontal cortex and the occipital lobe. 

Cookies:  Ira seems to young to be spooked out by anything that's supposed to be spooky...fortunately.  He's recently kind of grasped the idea of monsters, loves the scary giant in Obiyoyo, and when strangers try to get him to smile and say hello, he usually responds with a little roar.  

Back to the party.  Here are three of the final products.  Left to Right: Anthony's, mine, then Maurice's.  My owl turned out kind of lame in comparison.  I even forgot the beak.  But in my defense I was putting Ira to bed and making sure everyone had enough cider.

Anthony's pumpkin not lit up.  I know, looks kind of crazy.  So cool when lit up though!  He found a way to take a photo on the computer and morph it into a pumpkin stencil.  He picked a kind of piggish picture of Ira and worked from there.  

Ira playing in the leaves after church.

In other news:

* We've been bowling every Tuesday night with Anthony's co-workers.  One of his teem-mates has never showed up, so I'm the sub.  Everyone's really nice despite my low average.  But this week I broke my record with 116!  Woohoo!  I think my average is 75, and somehow our team is in first place right now...out of maybe 15 teams?

*  Ant's project is moving along.  He has a big project that seems to be progressing.

* The pregnancy is going well.  I feel pretty great, just sleepy still.  We babysat a friend's 3 month old this week and Ira was really cute with him.  He spent most of his time bringing toys to him, blowing him kisses, and talking about his eyes.  Hopefully he'll be as excited when our baby comes.

*  Ira's cute as ever.  Not as excited about the potty lately, but saying a bunch of new words.  I'm worried I won't be able to get his Halloween Costume on.  Every time I whip it out, he runs away with an assertive "NOOOOOOO!"  Oh well.  Have a good week everyone!

Sharon

De-fuzed

It's a cool autumn evening and after a long walk around the small ponds with Ira (he has short legs) enjoying the fall colors I prepared a big sippy-cup of watered down juice made from concentrate for him to drink, thinking I was so clever to give him something he loved so much, but in a rationed and controlled way. However, it dawned on me that I might be doing my son a dis-service, preparing and training him to only recognize and consume beverages that aren't all they profess to be.

Okay, so I'm exaggerating a bit, but I was really surprised this week with a small discovery. A friend I frequently eat lunch with at work has been sporting some fancy fuze fruit drinks lately, whose packaging oozes with the image of some amazing fruit drink with exotic flavors, like my beloved Brazilian Acai. I inspected the packaging expecting to see some marketing to the effect of "With this fruit drink you get XX servings of fruit". Luckily they weren't that blatant in their deception.

They had above the nutrition facts boldly printed 5% juice. Clearly they must be pumping it full of the vitamins a real fruit drink would give you. As I moved to the ingredient list I was extremely surprised that there were only two, that's right, two ingredients that made up 99.5% of the drink. Water and apple juice. The packaging then declared that 'less than .5%' of a long list of stabilizers, mostly foreign sounding (unless you are a chemist), and flavoring made up the rest.

I inspected several flavor varieties of the drink over the next few days of lunch and noticed they all had only two main ingredients, water and apple juice. I asked him, 'They are basically selling you watered down apple juice. Do you feel ripped off?' I was stunned at his reply. 'No. It tastes like the flavor I expect to taste. I can't complain.' I suppose that will do in some circles.

As I reflected I wondered what other products I might be consuming that are less than what they claim to be. Thoughts?

P.S. I wanted to work something in here about Mio, which I guess is this dye you squeeze into water to make juice? I don't even know. All I know is that when I see the yellow dye defusing through the water in the ads on hulu I'm a little disturbed.

Boston Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is the best time of year. It's a time of

 Playing Games, Ira playing his favorite new game with mom.

Being with friends and family. Amber,thanks for a great Thanksgiving.

Giving thanks; I'm so Thankful for a beautiful family.

I'm thankful for an adventurous son who love to explore.

A time for feasting on, and giving thanks for, ...

Casseroles,

Vegetables,

Turkey and Potatoes, 

and all other steaming and delicious food. 

Happy Thanksgiving, Eat Responsibly.

Eating Apples

As I've mentioned before, Ira is loving the idea of feeding himself. Enjoy the short clip we threw together. I love to watch him exploring the world and see him learning.

The only downside with him trying to be more involved with the feeding process is the mess afterwards. I guess it's a small price to pay in the end.

Portland, ME

There are a lot of places that we want to go to in close proximity to Danbury. One of my best friend, Dave Sutherland, was finishing a short medical stint in Portland, Maine so we decided to make our first trip up there to see him. It was great to visit with Dave and explore a little piece of the eastern most state. The weather was beautiful and the food was wonderful. The pictures below tells our story well.

We drove half way up Thursday evening and stayed the night in Massachusetts. The campground was nice, I think we missed all the summer traffic. We stayed in this one room cabin for the night, it made things easier with Ira.

Friday we finished our drive up and meet Dave on the Eastern Promenade. Ira was a good sport, so was Dave. We were happy the got along so well.

We took a ferry to Peaks Island to explore the Island life of the Northeastern United States. Ira was cute on the boat and maybe a little sea sick...

There were these cool scooner boats you could get rides on, we didn't do it this time around.

Dave was our Portland, ME expert tour guide. I really enjoyed hanging out with him.

After about three years of searching for a good sun hat, Sharon finally found one on the island.  It turns out to be the old lady hat of choice there. 

The guys exploring the Island coast.

The ferocious coastal wildlife. Don't be deceived.

Saturday morning we headed out to the Bradbury State Park and did this grueling .3 mile and couple hundred foot elevation hike to the top of Bradbury Peak. Okay, so it wasn't all that scary, just Dave at the top. You could see the ocean off in the distance.

Fate would have it that on our way to Bradbury we discovered a little community celebration of Fun Day! That's right, Fun Day. We couldn't help but humor fate by stopping in to get in on the fun. The main(e) event was the local dog show complete with course. We enjoyed the fire departments juicy hamburgers and I quote, their "wicked good, fresh, dug up three days ago from a local farm" french fries. I might be biased as an Idahoan, but they weren't all they were hyped up to be. The hamburger and root beer float were excellent.

 I do have to insert the irony of the state of ice cream in Maine. While on the Island the day before we got some great fresh fruit pies 'a la mode' (with ice cream) however, the ice cream was more...I mean all cream and no ice. We decided later that night to try again at the famous Friendly's restaurant, but to our great astonishment the ice cream didn't make it intact yet again. The irony of the story comes in at Fun Day. The ice cream in our root beer floats was solid and as icy as ice cream comes, the one ice cream dessert where you really just want the cream to make your root beer more tasty.

A trip to Maine wouldn't be complete without a visit to a lighthouse. This one is the most picturesque in all of Maine. It was very scenic. It was also nice to sit next to the ocean and listen to the waves crashing on the jagged shore.

What am I buying?

Being in a new place makes even the tiniest things stand out, even if they are common place. For some reason the marketing/product design/value of some items have stood out to me the last few weeks.

First, Concord Foods, 'Smoothie' mix. The "JUST ADD" directions are what got me. It says, "JUST ADD: fresh strawberries, milk, and ice", So why am I buying a mix? Here is the website description since the picture is small: "Create your own thick, creamy smoothie with our Strawberry Smoothie Mix. Refreshing strawberries loaded with vitamins! Blended with strawberries, milk and ice, each packet contains enough mix to make 1 quart of delicious tasting smoothie. Use skim milk for a low fat option."

I did not buy this because I really couldn't see what I was getting from it.

Second, Galliker's Milk. We bought it because it was the only option at the little store we stopped at to get milk our first night, but the yellow jug almost had me going to another store. If there is one color I don't really want to associate my milk with it's yellow.

Anyone else observe any good/ odd items on the market lately?

Acai update

I posted a little while ago about the Acai. Since then I've been keeping my open for other ways this fruit has penetrated the US market. While meandering through the frozen food section of Whole Foods I found a puree form.

 Sambazon is the company. They had three different 'flavors'.
1.) 'Pure Unsweetened', as you can guess it is just the fruit nothing else really.
2.) 'Pure Fuzion', this has another fruit called 'Acerola' which has a ton of Vitamin C.
3.)  'Original Rio Blend', is sweetened with cane juice and Guarana (another Brazilian fruit). This was my favorite.

The nice thing about these packs is that they can be thrown into the blender with some milk, soy milk, ice cream, yogurt, and other fruits to make a great shake/smoothie. They've been great for in the morning. You can also do it like they do in Brazil and put Banana and granola on top.

I also tried the kind in a container. I got the Rio Blend in a pint container. It is nice because it is sweetened perfectly with the cane juice and guarana. I can take it out of the freezer and take a few bits for dessert.

Panettone

If you couldn't tell I enjoy cooking. I've finally had some time to play around with some new stuff and try out some recommendations from people. The next few posts are about some of the current foods I've been trying.

First, I wanted to write about my holiday venture, Panettone, which was inspired from a recipe my oldest sister sent me. The origin of the bread is Milan, Italy, but I was introduced to it in Brazil where it is a traditional Christmas/holiday bread. It is a light fluffy bread with a sour dough flavor. It usually has raisins or other dried fruit in it. What made me excited about this recipe is that it had chocolate chips in it, yumm.

It turned out well for a first try. Sharon and I loved it. We gave it out to some people, but we didn't really get any feedback from them. I think the one thing I could have done better, especially with the big loaf, would be to keep it in a warmer area so that it would raise more. I think it was supposed to be a little taller and a little more fluffy.

Mini Panettone

Big Panettone

The recipe is involved so I won't type it out, but you can follow this link to the recipe online.

good food + fun travel + baby Ira = happiness (Sharon)

-Sharon Update-
Hello Family!

It feels like it's been ages since I've written.

* Ira makes us smile constantly. We took him to the pediatrician today for his check up, and he's now 22 inches long, and 11 lbs! That's up from the 20.5 inches, and 7 lbs 8 oz he was born at. Yep, he's chunking up nicely. The doc called him "alert" and "very sturdy." He's moving his head around really well, and sometimes isn't content unless he's standing on our laps with some help. AND he's starting to sleep longer stretches at night which is a pattern we're hoping continues.

* Food: Anthony and I have had fun cooking lately. I've made pesto, and palak paneer, and stuffed shells for the first time. And today I attempted and failed at my first sponge cake. It was a little mix up between the word egg 'yoke' and egg 'white.' Details details. Maybe next time. Anthony made some rocking gnocci from scratch the other day. Mmm.

* Movies: We still haven't cancelled our netflix "trial," and have seen some good flix lately. We're watching "A Room With a View" as I type. I think the whole Ellsworth side has seen and loves it, but we keep talking about how much the Quinns would love it, especialy you Valine.

* Williamsburg! We had a great week with the Quinns (Valine, Paul, and Mckay) in Virginia. I guess it was a couple of weeks ago now. We were able to spend time in Colonial Williamsburg, Yorktown and Jamestown. We "touristed" like crazy by day, and feasted upon the Olympics by night. For those of you ever planning a trip there, I'd suggest a trip to Monticello, Jefferson's house. It gave Anthony and I lots of architectural ideas for our future estates. :) The snow gave Mom and Dad a break long enough to come down and meet us for Ira's baby blessing on Sunday. I felt incredibly blessed to have such a strong support of priesthood holders on both sides of the family. It was sweet to see Ira surrounded by such kind, loving, righteous men.

Alright, gotta go feed the little bambino. Blame any typos on my being distracted by the movie. Love you all!

Sharon

P.S. O.k., so Ant and I just got to the part in A Room With A View with nudity. It's really innocent and funny. But, it's definitely nudity. So....just wanted to throw in that warning and disclaimer. Actually now that I think about it, it reminds me of Quinn male bonding skinny dipping rituals I've heard tales of. :)

Take a Survey about Home Automation

Home Automation
The project I've been working on this semester revolves around Home Automation. That means having the ability to control things in your home from one central location. That includes being able to control things in your home remotely through a smart phone, like the iPhone, or from your computer. It is pretty cool stuff.

We are trying to get a feel for what peoples perceptions and demand for a product like this would be, including what they would be willing to pay and what channels they would consume it through. We put together a small survey and we are looking for a wide range of opinions and thoughts, so please take the survey and pass it on to others:) You can click here to take it, or click the link below.
http://www.eSurveysPro.com/Survey.aspx?id=e4ceff1c-7295-4862-9900-09f56094c847

As an incentive we have secured a $100 gift certificate from restaurants.com. People who have submitted a survey will be put in the drawing to win that certificate. The survey won't be open for long so go quickly.

Thanks.