December 2010

A Look Back {2 Months Later}

by Lisa on December 30, 2010

It’s hard to believe that two months have passed since our wedding! Here are some pictures from the day. Enjoy!

I LOVED my flowers!! They were all seasonal and incorporated herbs. Since Jeromy and I love to cook, we grew sage, rosemary and thyme for the centerpieces and used herb names for table names.

A view of the back of my dress. It was the 8th dress I tried on and I knew it was my dress as soon as I stepped into it.

All of the girls and my parents got ready at my house. It was so nice to just relax and sit around at home until it was my turn to get pretty.

As soon as I had my dress on I was Ready.To.Go. Jeromy and I talked on the phone for about 2.5 seconds earlier in the morning, but I was dying to see him and get married.

It didn’t match perfectly, but I had my florist wrap a rosary around my flowers that my great-grandparents gave to my mom from Jerusalem.

Finally, we went to the church!! Traffic was horrible so we ended up delaying the ceremony for a little while, which was making me crazy My dad and I just hung out in the minibus waiting, trying not to talk too much so that neither of us cried. I come from a family of criers and I cry at everything but I was determined not to cry down the aisle and ruin pictures! Of course, I did cry a little during the ceremony.

And then, we were married

Next it was on to pictures and the party!

We stopped along the Mount Vernon Trail for pictures on our way into Old Town Alexandria.

It was pretty cold, but my bridesmaids were such troopers. I think we were all excited to get back on the minibus and head to the reception.

Where we danced together for the first time as husband and wife. We chose How Sweet It Is by James Taylor for our first dance. The song is very us and it’s not super slow, so we could still have some fun with the dancing. We did not practice at all, but we did sing the whole song to each other.

After dinner, the party started with the Greek and Lebanese wedding dances.

We cut our gorgeous cake. And no cake was smashed in any faces.

The surprise of the night for me was when all of the guys serenaded me with You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling. It was fantastic.

All in all, we had an amazing time at our wedding, it was just over too fast!! I wish we could do it all over again

All photos courtesy of James Bowman Photography.

Confession: we had two wedding photographers. My friend Candice is an amazing photographer and she is starting a wedding photography business. She was gracious enough to lend her talent to our day. I might need to do just one more wedding picture post so I can show you what she captured!

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How To {Roast a Chicken}

by Lisa on December 24, 2010

I’ve had friends tell me that they are intimidated by the idea of roasting a whole chicken. How will they know when it’s done? There are bones, what do you do with those? This post is for them, and for anyone else who thinks roasting a whole chicken is kinda scary. Follow these simple steps and you will have a whole roast chicken in your house in no time!

There are some great advantages to working with a whole chicken versus skinless, boneless pieces. 1) The skin and bones provide a lot of flavor while cooking (but you don’t have to eat the skin and bones) 2) It’s less expensive to buy a whole chicken than packages of pieces because a whole chicken does not go through as much processing. 3) It makes for GREAT leftovers and the bones can be used to make stock!

You’ll need:

1 whole chicken, 4-5 pounds {for leftovers!}
2-3 tablespoons of butter, softened
2 onions
4 small carrots
1 lemon
3 cloves of garlic
a few sprigs of rosemary
a few sprigs of sage
a few sprigs of thyme
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

First, prep the roasting pan. I’ve roasted chicken with a roasting rack and in a cast iron skillet. Great results with both, but this time I tried roasting the chicken on a bed of veggies.

Thickly slice 2 onions and 4 carrots, distribute in one layer in the bottom of the baking dish.

Remove your chicken from the package, take out the packet of gizzards that is inside the cavity. We usually fry these up and give them to Dixie for dinner. She’s a lucky cat.

Rinse your chicken inside and out and pat dry.

Prepare the ingredients that will be stuffed in the cavity:

Sprinkle salt and pepper inside the cavity, then stuff in a lemon quarter, a garlic clove, the herbs, then the other lemons and garlic cloves.

Next, get in there and rub the skin with the softened butter.

I put some pieces of butter on the top to make sure the skin gets crispy. Finally, sprinkle the whole chicken with salt and pepper and place it breast side up in the roasting pan.

{I had some mushrooms so I threw them in the pan too.} Put the chicken in the oven for 1 hour. Don’t touch it, just let it cook and brown. After an hour, you’ll have this:

A gorgeously roasted chicken! I took the chicken out so Jeromy could carve it, stirred the veggies and put them back in the oven for a few minutes. But then I forgot about them. And this is what happened:

Luckily, I had made mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts to go with the chicken.

As you can see, anyone can make a whole roasted chicken! Just follow these steps. Good luck!

___________________

Posting has been really light this week, I am very sorry, but I haven’t been cooking! I’ve had a bit of a stomach bug which makes it hard to cook and document food. Posting will continue to be light as we’re heading to SE Virginia to celebrate Christmas with family today.

Thank you all for continuing to read my little blog. Very Happy Holidays to you and yours!

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Greek Eats {Kalamata Olive Tapenade}

by Lisa on December 18, 2010

For the cookie swap last weekend, I went with a Mediterranean menu: hummus, tzatziki, tapenade and pesto. Olive tapenade is one of my favorite appetizers. I’ve never been able to prepare it before because I didn’t have a food processor and I was not going to finely mince all of the olives This recipe is adapted from here. I omitted the anchovy paste because I knew there would be vegetarians at the party. You’ll need:

2 cups pitted Kalamata olives
2 tablespoons capers
juice of one lemon
2 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon fresh thyme
1 tablespoon fresh oregano
1/2 cup of olive oil
freshly ground black pepper

This recipe really couldn’t be easier. Put all of your ingredients into a food processor:

And process. I did mine on pulse to make sure it was a good consistency.

I serve the tapenade with cut up vegetables, fresh pita chips or crackers. Honestly, I can eat this tapenade on anything

I ordinarily have all of these ingredients on hand, so in a pinch I can have an appetizer ready in 5 minutes!

What about you? Do you keep any ingredients on hand that can be put together quickly? Share in the comments!

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Holiday Traditions {Laying Wreaths}

by Lisa on December 16, 2010

Ordinarily when I walk around Arlington National Cemetery, I can let myself be removed from what it actually is and appreciate the beauty of the landscape. If I don’t go to the section where the most recently dead are buried, I can pretend it’s only a place of honor, not of sorrow. I can pretend it’s not a place where kids whose lives were cut far too short are resting in peace. This is not a political blog so I will not make political statements here, but I think we can all agree that when someone is killed in a foreign land at a young age, it is just sad. Brave, honorable, noble, to be sure. But also, sad.

Jeromy and I saw this program on the news last year, Wreaths Across America, and we signed up to participate this year. This happens across the country. If you live near a national cemetery, please consider laying wreaths at the holidays. Just click on the link for more information.

We were blown away by how many people were there. There were trucks full of wreaths, all donated, parked around the cemetery. Each person was given one at a time which made the process a bit cumbersome. Even so we were happy to be there despite the cold, making our small gesture of thanks to the men and women of our armed forces and their families that have sacrificed too much. I spent a lot of time crying while we did this, but it was so worth it. And we’ll do it again every year–our new family holiday tradition.

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Something Sweet {Cranberry-Chocolate Cookies}

by Lisa on December 15, 2010

My contribution to the cookie swap this past weekend was chocolate-cranberry cookies. I prepared a batch in the traditional way, according to the recipe and another batch that was gluten-free and vegan. The original recipe comes from my friend Sheila. We grew up together in Duxbury and lived together in Arlington for a year and a half. She made these cookies once around Christmas and I loved them.

You’ll need:

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup milk
1 egg
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3 cups cranberries, chopped {I use one bag, no measuring required}
1 1/2-2 cups chocolate chips {again, one bag, no measuring required}

Preheat the oven to 375.

Put the butter, sugars and vanilla into your stand mixer.

Cream until it looks like this:

Add the egg, milk and beat until incorporated:

Sift all of the dry ingredients together and mix into the batter. Once all of the dry ingredients are incorporated, remove the bowl from the stand mixer and fold in the cranberries and chocolate chips.

Scoop batter onto cookie sheets. The cookies don’t spread very much as they bake.

Bake for 15-18 minutes, depending on your stove. 17 minutes worked for me, just look for the tops to be starting to brown a little bit.

Be sure to taste one, just to make sure they’re good

{Can’t believe I just put this picture out there. Lisa without makeup = YIKES Being honest, no makeup happens a lot.}

To make these gluten-free and vegan, simply make the following substitutions:

Instead of 3 cups of all-purpose flour, use an equal amount of brown rice flour
Instead of chocolate chips, use an equal amount of vegan chocolate chips
Instead of an egg, use one flax egg {1 tablespoon flax mixed with 3 tablespoons water and set aside to thicken}
Instead of milk, use an equal amount of almond milk

Can you tell the difference between the traditional and the gluten-free/vegan batch?