Early Bird

Matt has been going through some stressful weeks at work as they prepare for their weeklong out-of-town conference, so this morning he got up and went in to work about an hour early to try to get a jump on the workday. I got up too, in a show of solidarity, which is how we like to do it when we can, and we actually enjoyed a nice morning together. Starting our relationship with schedules 180 degrees apart has given us a deep appreciation for the ability to spend these times together, and we're thankful for that.

Once I saw him off, I dialed into what I still think of as "work," the hospital back in Iowa, and chatted with a few long-lost friends, which was lovely. We're beginning to formulate plans with friends for over the holidays, which will include approximately 3 days in each Iowa and Wisconsin, and are really looking forward to the trip. Time will be tight but it should be lots of fun.

Last night, in homage to the aforementioned stress-filled workday which didn't end until around 7pm, we went out to the Old Siam, which is rapidly becoming one of our favorite places to eat. It's nice to have found a place nearby that's cozy and nice, but not fancy; quick with the food (and oh, how we love Thai food); and the home an excellent mojito, the likes of which I haven't had since we moved away from the Atlas. Then we came home, climbed in bed (the only warm place in the house since we've resisted turning on our heat up to this point, preferring to rely on sweaters and the frequent workouts we give the stove and the oven), and put a Six Feet Under DVD on the MacBook. Whether this technically violates our self-imposed year of no television depends on how much of a purist you are, I guess, but it made for a snuggly evening in followed by an early night to sleep, which was what we both needed.

Two nights ago we finally had the pumpkinfest we'd been waiting for. We made the following (picture ours):

My Best Pumpkin Soup

2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1 medium Onion, chopped
2 cloves Garlic, minced
1-1/2 teaspoons Garam Masala
1/2 teaspoon Black Pepper
1-1/2 teaspoons Ginger, grated
1 can light Coconut Milk
2 cups Pumpkin, pureed
Salt, to taste
1–2 cups Water or Vegetable Stock
1 Lime, juiced

Heat olive oil in deep pan over medium heat. Add chopped onion and sauté until soft and translucent. Add the garlic and sauté for 1 minute. Add the garam masala, black pepper and ginger, and sauté 1 more minute. Add the coconut milk and pumpkin, and stir to mix thoroughly. Place mixture in blender, and puree until creamy. Pour soup back into rinsed deep pan or soup pot. Cook for 15 minutes, adding salt to taste. If needing to be thinned, add a little water or vegetable stock to desired consistency. Before serving, mix in the juice of one lime.

– Recipe by WAC Nutritionist Shana Hopkins

We didn't actually do the lime juice at the end, because we forgot, and we bumped up all the spices because that's just what we do. We also topped it with toasted pumpkin seeds, like croutons. We both really enjoyed it. We were surprised that it didn't come out...orange-r, because the pumpkin puree was certainly vivid enough.

For the broth, we used a batch of ginger stock that we made out of the peelings of two pounds of ginger that Matt convinced me would be much more economical to process ourselves in the Cuisinart, instead of buying fresh ginger puree like we usually do. He was right; at about $2.39 for four ounces, the ginger wasn't prohibitively expensive, especially since most recipes don't take much; but the raw ginger was $1.28 a pound, and out of two pounds, we got easily at least eight times, maybe ten times, as much as we would have in the jar. Plus it made the apartment smell wonderfully gingery for an evening. Now have enough fresh ginger puree to last us a long, long time; not to mention the stock, which is perfect for times like this!

The other thing we made was this pumpkin pie (notable because it uses honey and cream/milk, or in our case half-and-half, instead of sugar and evaporated milk; we appreciated the difference) with this crust (because I'm not a huge fan of traditional piecrusts). It turned out delicious, but, since we had no pie pan, we just baked it in a regular square glass pan and in order to get the filling in the middle cooked, we had to make the sacrifice of a rather toasty crust. Bummer. However, we got to experience the joys of make a crumb crust in the Cuisinart (like falling off a log, as opposed to the old "cutting butter into the flour/crumbs" method that I have NEVER gotten the hang of!). And our big discovery of the evening was after we used the spice grinder (read: old coffee grinder) to grind up some cloves to add to the filling (there weren't any in the recipe but we thought there ought to be) we decided to whip up some impromptu powdered sugar for our whipping cream in there too. So we threw some Sucanat on top of the remnant clove powder (because we were too lazy to clean it, and also had an inkling it just might be good) and whipped that into the heavy cream and hot damn, ended up with the most deliciously subtly clove-y whipped cream to plop on top of the pie.

Today, I'm working hard to drum up the motivation to study that has been MIA for, oh, weeks now. As my mom would say, it's the end of the grading period, no time to let down, and I know that. I know that my entrance into midwifery school likely hinges largely on the kinds of grades I get at the end of this semester, which is no less pressure (and in fact a far more important one, to me) than that to "grade onto" law review. So. It's 7:30, I've blogged, I've had a cup of coffee, and now it's time to hit the books.