Getting married and all

Hey,
I'm getting married 10/10/10 to this girl I met in a poetry class over 4 years ago.

She's a strong wonderful beautiful lady and now she's ALLLLL MIIINE.

Been a very busy month, really. But I haven't posted anything about this huge awesome thing Amy and I are doing. Here's the basic story of me proposing:

Location: Wagon Hill
Time: Mid-day, New Year's Eve
Weather: Very snowy

With Amy throwing a huge stick for Leela, I decided everything was way too nice to save for whatever we'd be up to at midnight, my original plan. I was thinking of going extra cliche and giving her a ring as the year changed. But the snowflakes were very fluffy, and we were having a lot of fun. And I was smart and had the ring (well, 2 rings, actually) in my pocket, ready to go.

The first ring, and my original idea, was made by me out of birch bark. Amy has a special connection with trees and we love nature in general, so it was a perfect idea. It is the REAL engagement ring. So I had this one in my pocket inside of an emptied out floss container. This was to prevent it being crushed.

Amy saw me get on my knee and pretended to not know what I was doing. She forgot to say yes. After she put it on, I then busted out a cool ring I found with a sapphire as the main jewel and some dinky diamonds around it. Green sapphire, which I picked for the similarity to Amy's stunning eyes. A clean green. There is an imperfection in the jewel, which at first infuriated me, but then after I realized how it just made it more perfect since one of Amy's eyes has a small spot, a sort of imperfection of its own, and this being reflected in the ring really made me happy. So after the birch ring was wrapped on her ring finger, and we broke from a long embrace, I gave her a ring that would be a backup in case the first one fell apart, which it would, of course, since it was quite brittle. Note that the cleverness of it being "a backup" was actually the way Amy told the story once. What I really said was much less awesome. So let's just pretend I said it was the backup. It's a cool ring. Ask Amy sometime if you want to see it. After she had both rings on, she remembered to say yes.

We had already talked about getting married, and the whole let's be engaged formality was all my doing. For the months before the proposal, Amy was wondering why we weren't telling our families that we wanted to get married. We even decided on the cool 10/10/10 date before I proposed. But I had to act like we shouldn't tell anyone yet so I could surprise her. She didn't even want a ring, or at least that's what she said. TOO BAD.

So now I'm Amy's fiance, not just her boyfriend. It's pretty great.



Curious about the potential significance of mid October for our relationship when it started (we officially celebrate the anniversary of our first date on 10/28, the day we met up to go to a TheatreSports show in the MUB), I browsed through old blog/livejournal entries. I found this post, which had the following ominious line:

"October just started for me, I think."

By "October just started" I'm referring to something that's actually too secret to write about, but I will sum it up as this: in October every year, extra effort was put into meeting and spending time with girls. Me saying that October just started in an entry on 10/12/2005 is VERY interesting, especially knowing that 2 weeks later I would be out for the first time ever with my soon to be wife.

BRIAN OUT.

Cunning Ham

Cooked the ham in Dr. Pepper... It was a little dry, but very tasty. The rest of the dinner was great too (especially the pumpkin risotto Amy made!).

Alton Brown told me to use my saw so I did.

See? Dr. Pepper. About half the bottle to cover half the ham.

Two nicely sprung garlic sourdoughs for hors d'oeuvres with the potstickers

The ham shrunk, A LOT

Here's everything: oven roasted broccoli, steamed carrots, mashed sweet potatoes, pumpkin risotto, and, of course, the ham.

BRIAN OUT.

Potstickers

So Amy's mother and sister are coming over for a Christmas-y dinner tomorrow (Sunday), and we had to figure out everything we're going to cook. Never had to do that for guests before--pretty exciting. Since we have a wonderful ham from our half pig share (from New Roots Farm in Newmarket, to save you from asking), we figured, what better time is there to use it than Christmas? We have the main protein for the meal figured out. Stay tuned and I'll most likely post pictures of it.

But dinner isn't just one delicious hunk of meat. We had to figure out vegetables, a starch, and I had to remember to feed my starter soon enough in advance to have fresh bread in time.

Something that I didn't think of until yesterday morning (3 days before the meal), however, was an appetizer. We have these cool dips I got off of Woot about two months ago, so we'll do those with some garlic sourdough (whoa gotta take the firm starter out of the fridge! OK all set), but that didn't seem fun enough, so we're also going to do pot stickers, too! Never made anything like them before, but we have PLENTY of ground pork, and I've read they're easy.

Not wanting to try something new on THE DAY of the dinner, I decided it would be best to have a trial run and just eat the results for dinner with Amy. The recipe we used is Alton Brown's, but I think it has too much of a ketchup/mustard thing going on and will modify it, so good thing we did a trial run! Not that these weren't freaking awesome, because they were, and I ate too many of them.

Did not make the won ton wrappers from scratch, sorry.

Set up a workstation to bust all 50 of these out

We were kind of shaping them according to rules, but in the end it really doesn't matter that much, trust me.

Let them cook 2 minutes untouched over medium heat. They sure do stick to the "pot".

This is cool; add some chick broth (we used stock, maybe not even from a chicken?) and cook for 2 minutes, covered, on low. It ends up giving them that wonderful slimy stickiness, plus it kind of vacuums out all of the air remaining inside.

Amy came up with a pretty great dipping sauce

After you finish a batch, you let them stay warm in the oven. How rustic is this picture?

This is supposed to be the sexy closeup, showing the inside just after I dipped it. So glad we're going to be making more of these tomorrow!

I love this woman! Thanks for your help Amy! She did actually made most of the potstickers, with her superhuman speed and skill with won ton wrappers.

BRIAN OUT.

Let's Play Christmas Songs!

OK I'm ready now, here is the first Christmas recording for this year:

Jingle Bells (2009 recording):



"Wow what was the deal with that?" you are probably asking yourself. Well, truth is, I need to be creative right now, and busting out weird recordings of Christmas songs is really fun and releases a lot of creative energy that is pent up. And really, for me right now, the weirder, the better. If you hate it, good. If you love it, great.

Hungry for more? Here are my xmas recordings from the past in case you forgot:

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen:



Jingle Bells (2008):



Frosty The Snowman:



Little Drummer Boy:



Silent Night:



O Holy Night:



Jingle Bells (2006)



This isn't actually featuring anything by me, but I made a Christmas video in 2006. It is half awesome and half embarrassing. But I have no regrets for anything I've created, so here it is:



BRIAN OUT.

Fresh Pork Chops

So we got a half of a pig from New Roots Farm in Newmarket, NH. Here is the freezer WITHOUT the ham and bacon (which we are picking up soon now that it is done smoking):



Last night for my birthday we decided to start in on our super local and hopefully super delicious meat. Two pork chops, coming right up!





The darker meat was excellent, as was any meat around the bones. I think I may have overcooked the chops as a whole, though.

I am going to start planning out meals for all of the other cuts we have, including the trotters (that's right, the feet). Keep an eye out in this album for updates on the wonderful things we cook up. I'll probably also post them all here tagged under local pork.

BRIAN OUT.

Thanksgiving Project: Upside Down Apple Pie

Amy found a recipe for upside down apple pie and I couldn't resist, it looks so great. Recipe is here.



It came out really great! The gooey butter-sugar-pecan topping that cooked underneath the pie was everything I'd hoped it would be. And it was REALLY easy, so it is highly recommended for people who are frustrated by traditional pie.

Below is my Thanksgiving plate of food. It was, as usual, excellent.



For not that many more pictures I took of food from Thanksgiving at my mom's house click here. There may also be pictures of humans.

BRIAN OUT.

San Diego

I went to San Diego on business. I was there for just over 24 hours. I was pretty busy the whole time, but did take a couple of hours early one morning to explore San Diego Bay. Here is a panoramic:



Click here to see more photos. I got some interesting shots from the flight over, with views of the entire NH coastline, as well as the Rockies and other stuff along the way.

BRIAN OUT.