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.