Back at it

After work tonight I managed to:

• hit the pool for physical therapy
• watered all the living plants
  
• dig up the garden box on the west side of the house and add mulch. Planting will hopefully commence soon. I have to thank my neighbor for bringing us the mulch. And telling me what to do with it. And lending me the tools. I'm so lucky to have such good neighbors
  
• Clean the bathtub
• Wash, fold a couple of loads of laundry
• Cook dinner (ok well maybe it was just heating soup)
  
• Pay the trash bill
• Search Jon's birthday present
  

That may not seem exciting, but for much of the past 2 months my typical night at home was: take my shoes off, take pain pills, go straight to bed. It's hard work healing up and I wasn't capable of doing much. I'm glad my body is now healed to the point that I can return to working on the house and being a useful, helpful spouse.

Long Haitus

I know its been a very long time since I've last posted. There's a good explanation- Jon and I were involved in a motorcycle accident the weekend before Memorial Day. Jon was taking me down to an appointment in Pasadena on our motorcycle when a car suddenly pulled out in front of us. Jon suffered a cracked rib, but I ended up in the hospital with a moderate concussion and a broken leg. I've been spending much of the past 6 weeks recuperating. Needless to say, I haven't been doing much homemaking of late. I'm suppose to get my cast off on Monday, and I'm hoping to get back to working on the house, cooking, and blogging.

Soup

Jon and I receive a basket of vegetables and fruits from the local farmer's market every other week. They're delivered by Auntie Em's, and everything we get from them is fabulous. Lately I though, I haven't been cooking as much, so I was sad to see the bunch of asparagus I received in our latest basket had gone limp. It still tasted great, so I decided to try my hand at cream of asparagus soup. I love the taste of roasted asparagus, so I made up this recipe:

Cream of Roasted Asparagus Soup
3 celery stalks (chopped)
3 cloves of garlic (pressed)
1 medium onion (chopped)
1 bunch asparagus (~ 1lb) (ends cut off, cut into small chunks)
3 golden potatoes (chopped)
1 can chicken broth
4 C water
3/4 C half and half
2 bouillon cubes
3 T flour
1 T soy sauce
3 T Olive Oil + more for roasting
Salt & Pepper

Brush the asparagus with oil and roast in the oven under a high heat (500 F or on broil). While roasting the asparagus, heat 3 T of oil in soup pot on high and saute the onion and celery until onion begins to brown, stirring occasionally. Add minced or pressed garlic, saute for 30-60 seconds. Bring heat down to medium high. Add flour and cook for 1 minute, stirring to prevent burning or clumping. Add chicken broth, water, and boullion cubes to pot and bring to a boil. Asparagus should be finished roasting at this point. It should be turning golden brown in places and appear slightly shriveled. Once soup is at a boil, add potatoes and half of the asparagus. Bring down to a simmer and cook until potatoes are just tender (~ 10 minutes depending on how big the potato pieces are). Add the remaining asparagus into soup and then add soup to food processor in small batches until soup is thickened to personal preference. Add the cream, soy sauce, and season to taste. Bring to a just under a boil to incorporate the cream.

I tried the soup before cream was added and it was wonderful, so one can forgo the dairy and vegetable stock can replace the chicken stock for a tasty vegetarian/vegan meal.

It was so tasty, I couldn't bear to eat it alone. I wrapped the soup up and brought down to Caltech for a picnic dinner to Jon. Jon has been working many late hours in the lab lately preparing for the upcoming PhD Candidacy exam, so it was nice to have a meal with him last night.

Brush with Death (kinda)

This evening I had a close encounter with one Altadena's more unpopular creepy crawlies-the black widow spider. They're all over up here, so one must take care thrusting a hand into dark corners. However, I didn't expect to see one crawl out from under my fingers as I turned the door knob to the front gate this evening. At first I thought I'd imagined the thing skittering away since it was dark. But a set of long, knobby-kneed legs were visible from around the back side of the knob suggested otherwise. Closer inspection confirmed that indeed, there was a huge black widow spider a hairs breath away from where I'd just grabbed the handle. The spider seems to have settled there because it was in the same spot an hour later when I grab this candid photo. Its was taken with the point and shoot, so its not the most clear. Perhaps that's for the best though.

The house as it was

My cousin Renee pointed out that I hadn't posted pictures of the house yet, which is quite remiss of me. Mostly I've been very busy at work, but I'm adding a link to the early pictures we took of the house when we were buying the place- we tried to catalog all the things that needed fixing, so the houses warts are over represented. Here is the link to the "before" pictures. "After" pictures will be forthcoming.

Here's a goggle image of the front of the house. It pretty much looks the same right now.

First Mortgage Payment

We had our first mortgage payment taken out of our checking account today- well technically our second since we payed our first month at closing. Only 358 more payments to go.

Weekend Garage Sale Find

Jon and I checked out a few garage sales this weekend and we found this nice table/wine rack.We paid $30 for it, which I think is a great deal. It's painted with a green, antique-looking stain so it looks really nice with the greens in our tile. It replaces an old Ikea shelving unit that we inherited from Neal and Ashley when they moved to Chicago.

The new table is going to hold our new rice cooker, which is a belated wedding gift from one of Jon's friends. We didn't want to keep the rice cooker under our wood cabinets for fear the steam might damage to wood, so the wine rack seems to be a good spot- I'll replace the temporary mat under the cooker with something nicer to protect the wood. The new rice cooker works great and I'm looking forward to trying some of its more advanced features, one of which is an "off" button. I won't miss having to unplug the cooker to turn it off like our old one.

Moved Again!

Today I found myself moving again-but it was only down the hallway. I got a nice, new office at work. For the past year, I shared a windowless office with a coworker and an overly-active air conditioner. My new office has lots of windows that look out on our tree-filled courtyard. It faces west, so I get a lot of afternoon sun. I'm hoping I can retire the sweater collection and space heater I kept at work.

I didn't really add any personal touches to my old office because it was a shared space, so I'm looking forward to putting my stamp on my new office. I already have my "Lightening at Kitt Peak" picture hung. I also bought a plant today at lunch and will get some more if I can keep the first one alive. I also ordered some prints from one of my favorite artists, Heather Brown, and eventually I'd like to get some more pictures of friends and family up.

Even though the new office isn't a promotion, it feels like one. It was especially gratifying this afternoon to have a senior co-worker from another field office stop and feel like I had a very professional space to invite him into for our meeting. Hopefully, I'll get to stick around in this office for a while.

Busy Sunday

We had a busy Sunday both in and out of the house. We went to South Pasadena for lunch at Mike and Anne's and then we went to the Mission Street Arts festival. I got a great hat with blue buttons. I'm very excited about the hat because I have a hard time finding hats for my small noggin. Afterward, we took an afternoon cat nap with the cats.

With all the fun things we did today, I'm amazed that we got some house projects and chores done, but we did! Jon got the cat door installed and hung our pot hanger in the kitchen. I finished painting the bathroom and managed to cover the hideous aqua-colored primer- more on that later. I also finally took Jon to the Super King market, which is the amazing Armenian grocery store down the road. He's converted. For dinner tonight, we had a salad with arugula, brussel sprouts, cranberries, blue cheese and toasted almonds with lemon vinegarette. We also had freshly made hummus and pita from Super King's bakery. Tasty!


I'm hoping to get some of our pictures from the weekend projects posted this week, but in the mean time you'll have to be content with just me and the new hat.

Welcome

My husband, Jon, and I just took the next step into adulthood by diving into the California real estate market and buying a home. It's a little 1950's starter home up in the hills of Altadena. Like many of the homes in the area, it has some quirks, which we continue to discover. This blog is meant to be a record for us and our friends and family on the progress we're making in turning this strange little house into a home. Thanks for reading.