At then end of January, I went out of town for a few days for a conference. I crossed paths with Hubby, taking him to the airport to leave for a conference of his own the morning after I returned. As I walked to the back of my car to help him unload his suitcase (see what a liberated woman I am?), I noticed that the left rear corner of my bumper was at an angle. Um, what? That wasn't like that before!! My beautiful, perfect car that I love very much had been marred, and the best we could figure was that someone had run into it in our apartment parking lot while I was gone. And, sigh, they of course left no note, no information...only a little bit of white paint and a crack through my taillight and bumper.

I am not usually a person who gets angry very often, but this lack of integrity riled me up. I can imagine myself backing into something, or misjudging my space and swiping a bumper on my way into a parking spot. But what I cannot imagine is then just continuing on my merry way, especially if I then had to see the marred bumper every day. Now, you might argue that someone could have not noticed they hit me. That's true. And you might argue that perhaps it was a visitor to the apartment complex, who therefore was not wracked with guilt at the daily sight of my car. That's also true. But assuming they did notice, they darn well should have left me their info, and maybe an apology. I wouldn't expect them to knock on all the doors to find the owner or anything, but a post-it note would have done just fine. End of story.

I walked around the lot a few times trying to spot the culprit, but to no avail. There was no unequivocal evidence, and I didn't know of any other avenues to go down. So, we sucked it up and began the process of getting it fixed. We took it to a body shop that our insurance agency recommended, and it was a very clean, nicely decorated, professional place, nothing like the grungy, seedy body shops of my imagination. The estimate was less than I had feared it might be, though still quite a chunk of change, and they ordered the part for us and had us bring the car back in a week. I was carless for only 3 days, 2 of which I drove Hubby's car, since he works from home now. All in all, it was a pretty painless experience, though one I would argue I shouldn't have had to have at all, since the damage wasn't my fault. But I digress.

A large part of why it was painless, though, is because Hubby and I employ....wait for it...a budget. This word used to be scary to me, but I have come to thrive on spending right up to my limit in a certain category in a given month and no more. I enjoy seeking out coupons and bargains, and it is comforting to know exactly how much we have available at an given time. And, conveniently, we created a "car repair and maintenance" savings category that had a relatively sizable amount of money in it. Thus, having to shell out to fix my car was mentally painful but did not financially cripple us. By preparing for the worst, we were able to express anger over the situation but not have to stress over scraping together the money. Though this might sound flippant or boastful, I truly don't mean it to be. I simply mean to extol the virtues of thinking and planning ahead, so that when life happens, you are prepared.

Now we have to work to rebuild that savings, but I think my coupons can help us a bit with that...:-)

I place great importance on having a "place." I was blessed with a childhood that let me set down roots in Jackson, and even since then, with my transient moves from dorm to dorm and my room at home in the summers, I've managed to feel settled in many different places. While I was at MSMS, I decided that rather than letting myself feel homeless after my parents' move, I would consider myself "home-ful." Everywhere I went, I built different memories and had different modes of creating comfort.

Our apartment in Huntsville has a little sunroom with some built-in bookshelves that was one of the selling features for us. We had the option of an apartment model with either a screen porch or a sunroom, and we chose the sunroom, thinking we would use it much more than a porch. (Plus, the sunroom is where the extra storage closet lives! And the aforementioned built-in bookshelves!) I had a vision for making it into my cozy nook and searched long and hard for the perfect armchair. I wanted something that would sit catty-corner facing the window, with room for a lamp behind it and a little table next to it. In a world where all furniture seems to be overstuffed and oversized, I managed to find my perfect little chair and ottoman at a furniture consignment shop. It was a rather lurid floral print, but I purchased a SureFit slip cover in a tasteful taupe that even goes with our couch (which is in the other room, but who knows? They might sit next to each other some day.). The cover is too big (note comment about the world of overstuffed furniture), but with some tucking it does the trick. Though Hubby sits there sometimes, I consider the chair "Mine," which fits in well with my need for a Place.

Some days I sit there and just feel unabashedly happy. The view out the window (other apartment buildings) isn't anything special, but it's mine. When the sun is setting, I can just glimpse its pinks and oranges over the tops of the buildings, and when the leaves change, they explode into my line of vision with God-glorying brilliance. This past Sunday afternoon, Hubby turned the glider around from the living room and sat there with his laptop while I read Rebecca in my chair. I kept putting the book down on my lap to just savor the feeling...the happiness. My nook is my reading place, my leisurely Saturday morning with a cup of tea place. The room might not be the pinnacle of interior design, but it is chock full of my favorite books and wedding photos...and it is mine.

I'd been contemplating getting up earlier for awhile, even though marriage (read: having another person around from Moment 1 of each day) has forced me to acknowledge that I am not a morning person. Mornings are hectic time for me. It seems no matter my intentions, I cannot get out the door before 8:00, if even on the hour at all. So I decided to get up a half hour earlier, but not to commence rushing around. I've set up the table in my nook with my Bible, some devotional printouts, inspirational books, and my journal. Each morning I'm planning to come and spend some time there, in quietness, to try and capture the "leisurely Saturday morning with a cup of tea" feeling for every day and carry it with me. I've done it twice so far, and while I can't say I've felt anything, per se, I'm confident that it's in the stillness that we can best hear God. So I will snuggle myself into my chair each morning as the sun rises and see what whispers I may discern. And then my place will grow into a memory that I can carry with me for all time.

I find it somewhat annoying when people start out their blogs with an apology or exclamation about it having been so long since they blogged, but I am now finding it hard to resist the urge to type, "Wow! I haven't blogged in over a month! I don't really know what happened!"

So. There's that.

I decided last night that a criterion I would like to look for in a new apartment is some expanse of counter that is wider than my cutting board. I've cooked a lot lately, including some semi-fancy meals that required a lot of ingredients and bowls and such, and it's tough in a small kitchen! I very quickly run out of space to put things, like spoons, vegetable peeling refuse, and, oh, you know, cooling racks. Thus, I often end up using the stove as a counter-extension, which has led to more than one melted plastic mishap. But what's a girl to do?! I know apartment kitchens are notoriously small, so I'm not holding my breath, and I won't turn down a great apartment just because it also has a small kitchen, but I can sure dream. And measure.

That said, it's been a great cooking week (you know, since the kitchen, in all its postage stamp-ness, is my happy place). Sorry there aren't any pictures--I wasn't necessarily intending to put all of this in a blog post. Thursday it snowed AGAIN, so I did not go into work in the morning, and I decided to start preparing for our Valentine's feast Saturday night. I made parmesan-basil muffins from plainchicken.blogspot.com. I love her recipes. They smelled fabulous, but once we actually ate them, I wasn't blown away. My thoughts are that they either needed less beating, or that they really needed to have been eaten fresh. I can't help the beating--I just feel so powerful when I'm wielding the electric mixer!

Friday night Hubby and I made a cheesecake together. It's actually really easy! The hardest part is smashing the graham crackers, but luckily I had this wooden smusher thing that my mom gave me for Christmas. I think it is meant for garlic, but it worked very well on the graham crackers. I used the Better Homes and Garden classic cheesecake recipe, which was great...I just recommend if you make it that you immediately wipe from your mind the amount of butter and cream cheese that's in it so you can best enjoy your dessert. ;-)

Our "feast" on Saturday included pan-seared strip steak with shallot-wine pan sauce (from Bon Appettit), muffin pan potato gratins (again from Plain Chicken), green beans almondine, and the aforementioned muffins. We had the cheesecake for dessert, with strawberries and shaved dark chocolate. My mom also gave us a microplane grater for Christmas, which I didn't think I would use much, but I have been LOVING it. It makes beautiful parmesan cheese. I spent a fair amount of money on the groceries for the meal, but still not as much as if we had eaten out. And since Hubby isn't crazy about fancy restaurants, I'd say we enjoyed it more than we would have at a restaurant! So it was win-win.

Sunday I baked a ham that I had gotten on super sale some time after either Thanksgiving or Christmas. The one at Thanksgiving worked so well and yielded so many meals that I decided it was definitely worth it. It's been chillin' (ha ha) in the freezer taking up space ever since I bought it, so it was nice to finally remember to take it out in time for it to thaw and to have a free afternoon to get it cooked. We ate some with leftover potatoes and green beans on Monday, and then last night I made an impromptu pasta carbonara. (We conveniently had leftover heavy cream from the Valentine's potatoes.) I mostly followed Rachael Ray's recipe, though I left out the wine and added peas to Americanize it and because I wanted to. Her tip about adding hot pasta water to the eggs so they wouldn't scramble seemed unique to me, and worked very well. It was so delicious--I would definitely try this again. Plus we made it with whole-wheat pasta, so it was totally healthy.

Okay. Well, it sure seems like all I ever do is cook and eat! I'll have to start paying attention to my life and finding other fodder for my blog. :-)

For some reason, over the holidays I got a hankerin' for latkes. (Yes, I just said I got a hankerin'.) I've had them a handful of times over my lifetime, as my mom's family is Jewish and we tried to celebrate Hanukkah once or twice. Most of what I know about Hanukkah comes from Lamb Chop's Sing-Along, so I consider myself an expert. (P.S. Actually, according to Wikipedia it was called Lamb Chop's Play Along. Who knew?!) Anyhow, on Saturday, I finally got to doing it. I didn't follow one specific recipe; I read several online and sort of combined ingredients and tips from all of them. Here are most of the ingredients:
I think I somehow ended up with two different kinds of potatoes, which I discovered once I relieved them of their skin:Weird. Anyway, the first step was to grate them. I did it by hand, because ehow told me only the weak would use a food processor. I was NOT going to let an inanimate website think I was weak! Let me tell you, potatoes sure have a heck of a lot of water in them. Grating them was a very strange experience. Another recipe counseled me to put the gratings in a bowl of cold water to prevent them from getting discolored, so that's what you see next to the grater. I think soaking them also did something like removing starch (which would explain why the water turned sort of milky colored) so as not to make the cooked pancakes soggy.
The next step is to wring out the grated potato bits. Did I mention that potatoes have a lot of water? I smushed them in a colander, wrung them out in a dish towel, and they STILL soaked through multiple paper towels as I shaped them into cakes. The cakes also included grated onion (which was not nearly as painful to my eyes as I was afraid it would be), egg, a bit of flour, and some seasonings. Here's batch two cooking, with batch one in the background on a cooling rack:
It took me until about the third batch to 1) figure out how to keep the lumps intact so that they would turn into actual pancakes and 2) figure out how to turn said lumps without causing disintegration. The technique I eventually settled on included a spatula and a stiff-edged other utensil thing to push each cake (GENTLY) onto the spatula and stabilize it as I flipped. I felt pretty professional as I did it. Other keys included keeping the pan greased enough (these ended up with a TON of vegetable oil in them, oops) and letting them "set" for long enough (around 5 minutes) before trying to flip them. I also don't think it hurt that the pan was hotter with each subsequent batch. Here's how dinner turned out:

(served, ironically enough, with baked pork loin and some classy Barefoot Bubbly)

I won't say I'll be opening a deli any time soon, but they turned out delicious and quite crispy, I'd say! Hubby said this setup looked like something off the Food Network, so I'll take that as a compliment! There are still plenty leftover in the fridge, which I hope will reheat okay in the toaster oven to eat with dinner tonight.</p>

To further enrich our cultural experience, we read about Hanukkah here. Probably they ran out of oil in the first place because someone used it all to keep her skillet greased for latkes...</div> </div>