Veggies

Namely tomatoes, green beans, corn, and zucchini.

The Saturday before our trip, my cousin called to tell me about this "market on the move" where you can buy up to 60 lbs. of produce for just $10.  Too good to pass up, I took Emily and Megan with me to get some.  We came back with a boat load of vegetables, far too much for us to consume before it went bad.  So, at the encouragement of others, I again ventured into uncharted waters for me:  putting up food for storage.

 
I borrowed my cousin's hot water bath pot and did a few jars of tomatoes.  I also prepared several pounds of green beans for freezing (I didn't get to them all, so my sweet mom did some for me too while we were on our trip).  I also shredded up a bunch of zucchini for bread.  I used some to make two loaves (not so delicious when trying to go the healthy route of using apple sauce and less sugar), and froze the rest for future batches of hopefully more tasty bread.  I also cooked up corn cobs, sliced off the corn, and froze it too.  Whew!  I feel so domestic!  I didn't do it all at the same time; some was before our trip and some was after - thus prolonging that wonderful domestic feeling for much longer.

This next bit is not about veggies, but it's about food so it gets thrown into this post.  I very rarely post about things I make.  What I cook is never exciting or interesting to me, so clearly it won't be of note to anyone else.  But these little goodies are note worthy.  They are a blast from my past; a one-time experience with my Grandma Harbaugh, who is one of my heroes.  If we exalted people to sainthood in our religion, she would be one in my family.  Well ages ago, my grandma made aebelskivers for us.  They were oh-so-delicious and I haven't forgotten that one time I tasted them.

I have an aebelskiver pan from who knows where.  Maybe from my mom or Dan's mom?  We've lugged it around all these years completely untouched.  A few weeks ago we had stake conference, and therefore no 5:30 a.m. bishopric meeting for Dan and no 8:30 a.m church for us.  I thought I'd try my hand at making some just for fun.

In the end, they didn't taste as quite good as I remember Grandma's tasting, of course.  And, of course, mine were a far cry from looking beautifully picture perfect like everything she made.  But, just like she did that day for us, I drizzled some homemade raspberry jam and sprinkled a little powdered sugar on them.  YUM! 

New York City (Part II)

I can't do three jam-packed days' worth of New York City in one measly post.  I won't.

When we looked out our hotel window on the second morning of our trip, the weather was reminiscent of the day before: cloudy, cold, and wet.  Much to our delight, however, it wasn't actually raining.

We didn't stay on Manhattan.  We chose a hotel in Queens for a couple of reasons: 1) It was a gazillion times cheaper this way;  2) It was by the airport, which made it convenient for our late flight into NY and our early flight out.  So, we hopped on the subway to go into the city for our first stop of the day: the TEMPLE.  As we went to bed the night before, our first night of bustling "big city life", we looked forward terribly to going to this place.

It was absolutely wonderful.  Calm, quiet, reverent, clean, light, peaceful, heavenly.  I loved how I couldn't even hear a single decibel of the goings-on of the noisy city outside those walls.

Next was the American Museum of Natural History.  It was phenomenal.

For dinner we found a Japanese restaurant we thought would be fun to try.  It was authentic.  We were the only non-Asian people in there and the menu only had a few words in English.  We ordered some yummy food and, props to me, I ate my entire meal with chopsticks - a first.  I've tried in the past, but have given up mid-meal because I just can't get it.  Well, this time I didn't have a choice.  There was no silverware provided!  It was painstaking and slow, but I did it.

After that came something we were looking forward to probably more than anything.  It's another one of those I'm-the-last-one-left-on-the-planet-to-do things: seeing the very popular Broadway musical WICKED.  It met and exceeded all our expectations (we didn't really know what to expect as we hadn't learned too much about it, other than everyone who sees it absolutely loves it).  Seeing it on Broadway was certainly a highlight of the trip. 

 After the show, we walked to Times Square.  Holy cow.  I can't figure out if or when people sleep in this city, the aptly-named "city that never sleeps".  Are they all tourists, which means they don't have to get up and go to work in the morning?  Okay, that makes a lot more sense.  But if not, how do they have functioning lives on such little sleep?  Perhaps I just require more sleep than a lot of people...

 

We got to bed at about 1:00a.m., delightedly exhausted.

While We Were Gone....

.....this baby girl finally - at 16 and a half months - decided that WALKING is the way to go!

This is typical Hannah, who loves her baby dolls and has at least one in her clutches at all times.

New York City!!

There are a few things in life that I'm pretty sure I'm the only one left on the planet who hasn't done them.  Visiting New York City was one of those things.  But, I can finally check that one off! (A couple of others I can't and probably won't check off are getting on Facebook and owning/wearing skinny jeans.  Seriously, why would I purposely wear jeans that would make my bum look even bigger?  I digress...)

Two years ago, Dan and I had planned on taking a trip like this one.  But, it turned out the timing of Hannah's birth would be too close for comfort, so we had to bag the idea much to my chagrin.  Last fall we started talking about doing a big trip again and this time it actually worked out.  We even got free air fare with Dan's travel miles.  Woo hoo!  My sweet mom came to watch the kiddos and we were off to The Big Apple as first-time visitors!  It was incredible!

We awoke that first morning to a cold, rainy day in spite of encouraging weather forecasts.  The first stop on our itinerary was to see the Statue of Liberty.  But before we could do that, we had to brave the underworld of the subway system.  It was my first time riding the subways.  The other passengers seemed to ride them without a care in the world, but as rookies, we found them to be confusing, frustrating, and stressful at times.  We could tell in the few days we were there that it gets easier with practice, but the whole subway thing wasn't my favorite.

Going into the actual statue was out of the question as it was closed for renovation.  So, we opted to take the Staten Island Ferry, which is free and goes right by Lady Liberty.

I thoroughly enjoyed all the beautiful architecture of the old buildings that is so prevalent.

I was so relieved that by the time we took the ferry back to Manhatten, it had stopped raining so we had a much better view of the Statue of Liberty and the city's skyline.

After that, we mosied through Battery Park.  It was so picturesque.  Sometimes I think I'm just not meant to live where I do.  I LOVE lush, green, and flowery foliage, and big, lovely, shady trees - all of which are nonexistant in my neck of the woods.

After the park, we walked over to see Wall Street.

Then we walked over to the Southside Sea Port.  It has fun shops and yummy restaurants.

We had an excellent view of the Brooklyn Bridge.

I also really love being by the water, and boats, etc. - also nonexistant where I live. 

One thing we had really looked forward to was going to Ground Zero of the September 11th attacks.  They have a lovely memorial there and we actually got tickets to go onto the grounds, which are hard to come by evidently.

The two huge fountains are in the exact spots the Twin Towers used to be.

Printed on the borders, if you will, are the names of all 2,977 people who died that day.

There is a lot of construction going on around the site.  Four new buildings plus a museum are going up.  This one will be new World Trade Center and will be the tallest building in the U.S. upon completion.  It will be even taller than the original Trade Centers.  It's height already is truly staggering!

The grounds were really very pretty.

This is what is called "The Survivor Tree" because it somehow survived despite being nearly demolished at Ground Zero.  It was taken and replanted only to get uprooted during a storm some time later.  It was then re-replanted here at the memorial.

Our next stop was Grand Central Station.  It was grand indeed - huge, beautiful, and busy!  I liked this old, gold letter box.

For dinner we went to a place Dan's coworker recommended: the very famous Carnegie Deli that boasts enormous sandwiches.  We thought it quite fitting to order a Ruben (another first for us both) since we were in New York City.  It was enormous!  Even though we shared it, we hardly made a dent in it. 

On the way home, we stopped by quaint Serendipity for their famous frozen hot chocolate.  It was yummy!

It was probably early by New York City standards when we called it a day, but we were pooped!  We'd had our fill of fun, sight-seeing, walking, and food for one day and pretty much fell into bed.