my husband is really the best

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Saturday Superlatives

Once again, I am awarding superlatives for the week.

Biggest Success: My husband and I designed and ordered our holiday cards!!!! Holiday cards are my favorite thing about December, but I am rarely thinking too much about them this early. This year, cards feel extra urgent because we just moved. And I have not had it together enough to send out change-of-address cards, so the plan is to send out holiday greetings that also alert people to our new address. We did not take any new photos. My husband took complete ownership of this year’s card, and found photos and card options for us to choose from, put the card to together, found a coupon code, wrote the copy on the back, and placed the order. I had some input, but it was really his thing from start to finish. Is it exactly what I would have made? No. But it’s good enough and it was extremely pleasant to have him take over a task that is usually my purview, and which I usually have to beg and wheedle and prod him to focus on. We (he) ordered our cards Sunday and they arrived Thursday! Some very well-organized people on my recipient list send out their cards immediately after Thanksgiving, so we have to get these babies in the mail! My plan is to get them out the week of Thanksgiving. I already mailed two, including one to the person whose card arrives earliest every year. 

Most Delicious Thing I Made: My parents came over for dinner one night, so I experimented on them. I made cider braised pot roast with crispy sage butter potatoes and, of course, my favorite fall salad. First of all, this meal is SUPER EASY and yet it tastes like it took hours to prepare. I mean, it does take hours, but the oven is doing the work, not you. I was a little worried that it would be too sweet, but it wasn’t, it was meaty and perfect. The onions turn into jam and the potatoes – while I could have crisped them up a bit more – were delicious. I don’t even LIKE sage, and I loved the potatoes. I highly recommend this as a tasty, super easy, prep-in-advance dinner to prepare for company. Also, my husband RAVED about it. He is always very nice about the food I make, but I can’t remember him being so enthusiastic as he was about this dish.  

Most Panic-Inducing Realization: At some point this week I realized that Thanksgiving is TWO WEEKS AWAY. Family will be arriving at my house in eleven days. This is… too soon. We still have boxes EVERYWHERE. There is no lightbulb in the guest room lamp. I have not yet located the guest towels. My daughter’s bathroom (which she will be sharing with my niece and sister-in-law) has no towel rack. We have A TON OF WORK to do in the next eleven days, and that doesn’t even include all the normal Thanksgiving prep! At least Past Me had the foresight to order a turkey. Whole Foods offered a pre-brined version this year, which removes an onerous step from my prep list. 

Best and Most Comforting Decision: I made another batch of pumpkin bread. I was a little worried that the first batch was good through the magic of Beginner’s Luck, but no. It is just delicious, delicious bread. 

Longest-Time-Coming Completion of a Task: I would have counted this as my biggest accomplishment of the week, but I’m not because the whole thing is so dumb. I have been trying to end my relationship with a financial institution for TWO YEARS, and, in fact, thought that I had finally done so last winter. So imagine my surprise when I got a statement recently that listed assets the financial institution supposedly was still managing (no) and charged us a $30 maintenance fee (ARGH). But! I think we have finally finally cut ties with this institution. Unfortunately we are not getting our maintenance fee back, but it is money well spent if I never have to talk to the plan administrator (who never administrated ANYTHING) ever again.

Current Most Perplexing Home Maintenance Issue: While the new house is flush with perplexing things (why does the laundry room smoke alarm, which is wired into the house’s electrical system, chirp constantly and why is there no way to turn it off?), my husband and I have encountered a new one this week. We are trying to hang things like artwork and the aforementioned towel bar, but twice now our efforts have been thwarted. My husband will begin to drill into a wall, and will hit something. He thinks it is somehow our ductwork, because it sounds and feels like flexible metal. HOW did the previous owners hang things? There was a towel bar in my daughter’s bathroom, for instance; the painters removed it to paint, and then when they reinstalled it, found that the screws were stripped. So we asked them to simply remove it, patch the wall, and then we would install a new towel bar. (To make this boring story even more boring and also longer, the existing towel bar was very small, and there is no linen closet near my daughter’s room, so we wanted a double towel bar on which to hang multiple towels.) So there WAS a towel bar there, and my husband is trying to install the new towel bar in virtually the same place… how did they make it work?! So weird. 

Any superlatives you need to award this week?

I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join the fun, check out San’s blog here. 

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Lemony Desserts

Last year’s birthday cake order did not go as planned, so this year I am reluctant to outsource my birthday dessert. My husband has kindly volunteered to make me whatever I want with two exceptions: he will not make a cheesecake (He made a lemon curd cheesecake for my birthday a few years ago, and it was WONDERFUL but he said it was A Whole Big Deal and would rather not go through that again.) and he will not make a cake.

(This is a little disappointing, I have to admit, because what my heart really desires for my birthday dessert is the cake I wanted last year. A vanilla cake with lemon curd filling and a cream cheese frosting. I would be fine with a cupcake matching that description, honestly. But my husband does not make cake and he would not be able to make it until the day of my birthday anyway, so. No cake. Unless I want to make it myself, an idea which I have contemplated and discarded for its high probability of making me feel grumpy and resentful.)

(My husband did come up with a list of local bakeries that we could try instead of the one we used last year. Carla and I dutifully visited one a few weeks ago, to sample the cupcakes. They did not have anything with lemon curd, so that was a disadvantage right out of the gate. But also the frosting wasn’t my favorite – I like a cream cheese frosting, not a simple buttercream because I am picky – and the vanilla cake was just okay. The other bakeries either don’t have cupcakes available for sampling [and by “sampling” I mean buying, as one would normally procure a cupcake] or they don’t have a cream cheese or lemon option in the lists of cakes they offer. So I think we decided that spending $40 on a cake that MIGHT be okay wasn’t the best use of our money or calories.)

Anyway! Cake is passe. An entire world of lemony desserts lies at my fingertips! And yet I cannot choose among them. Care to join me in a genial overthinking of the narrowed-down (yes, I speak the truth) list of considerations? Perhaps you have strong opinions about which way I should lean? Or perhaps you have other lemony desserts to recommend that sound even better!

Lemony Options:

Lemon Bars

Pros: Delicious. Easy to make. Probably freeze well, if there are any leftover.

Cons: But which recipe??? Are they too simple to feel special? 

Magic Lemon Pudding Cake

Pros: My husband has made this before and it is truly delicious.

Cons: I am just not feeling it this year.

Lemon Curd Yogurt Cheesecake Bars

Pros: A marriage between cheesecake and lemon bars – both of which I love.

Cons: I am unfamiliar with this recipe and the blog, so can’t attest to quality.

No Bake Lemon Curd Cheesecake Bars

Pros: I am sensing a theme, and that theme is cheesecake in bar form, and this addresses both points very succinctly. 

Cons: I am unfamiliar with this recipe and the blog, so can’t attest to quality. Also, I apparently have a weird and heretofore unknown bias against “no bake” recipes for some reason???

Mini Lemon Curd Cheesecakes

Pros: This might be a way to sneak around my husband’s no cheesecake restriction. 

Cons: Again, a new-to-me blog and recipe. Also, I’m not sure if a lemon curd swirl would give me the burst of lemon curd I’m craving. Also, should I really be trying to trick my husband into making something he does not want to make?

Lemon Curd Dessert

Pros: This looks lovely in photos, and I like the idea of pillowy whipped cream. This also has a lot of elements that seem to be popping up in my “that sounds yummy” list this year: cream cheese, lemon curd, shortbread crust.

Cons: What IS it, exactly? A bar? A pie? 

Lemon Curd Mousse

Pros: Finally, something that isn’t cheesecake adjacent! This looks light and yummy and wonderful! I have never had a lemon curd mousse before and it seems like I really SHOULD do.

Cons: Will this feel about as special as eating Jello on my birthday? Hard to say.

Lemon Curd Tartlets

Pros: This is exactly the kind of thing I would buy from the pastry case of a fancy patisserie. Plus, they are very cute. 

Cons: Perhaps I would eat one and think, “Is this all?”

Lemon Supreme Pie

Pros: This looks magnificent. 

Cons: Can I really ask my husband to make a PIE from SCRATCH?

Lemon Tiramisu

Pros: I love tiramisu. Many lemon tiramisu recipes call for limoncello, which I do NOT like, and this one doesn’t. 

Cons: I am suspicious of the pudding ingredient. And…there is no CURD.

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How I Met My Husband 

Nicole posted this question on my Ask Me Anything form: How did you meet your husband?

My husband and I met at college in fall of 2001. Oh my goodness, that is eons ago! 

The short answer is that he knew my former roommate, so we met through her. But, if you have been reading this blog for more than five minutes, you know I am no good at short answers. So here’s the full story:

One of my college friends (who had been my roommate for two years) and I decided to go to a concert. We were juniors and I had never heard of the band before – and have never listened to a lick of their music since – but I was enthusiastic. I even bought a T-shirt with the band name on it, a little pink thing that barely covered my navel. Ah, those long ago days of baring my navel without a thought!

We went to the concert. My sole recollection of the concert was that it was Very Loud. (I am not much for loud music, or concerts in general.) We may have had some beers, I can’t recall. In any event, we were STARVING after the concert. So, together with a few other concertgoers, we went to a local convenience store that sold sandwiches and then all trooped back to somebody’s dorm room to eat them. I do not remember how many of us there were, all I remember is that one of them was a very cute boy with shaggy brown hair and gorgeous blue eyes. He’d ordered hot peppers on his sandwich, but for some reason didn’t want them, so I ate them. 

That was it. That was the spark that ignited what has become a decades-long fire. 

After the sandwiches, this very sweet boy walked me home. He was very sweet, and very gentlemanly, and simply walked me to my dorm room and left. Didn’t even try to kiss me. 

After that, we’d see each other at meals and wouldn’t talk. We’d catch each other’s eyes, and blush, and resume talking to whomever we’d been talking to. 

We went to a big fancy black-tie party in early November of that year, and that was the first time we’d kissed. I still remember what I was wearing: A black dress with a hot pink layer underneath, and a frilly bottom edge that revealed the pink when I walked. I still remember kissing him on the dance floor, all those weeks of flirtatious glances finally coming to fruition. 

After that, he’d come over to my dorm room almost daily, so we could watch Seinfeld together. Then he’d traipse back to his own dorm to do his homework. We were still shy around each other in public. We each went our separate ways over winter break – I went back to my hometown and he flew overseas to where his family was living at the time – but we emailed every day. When we got back to campus in January, we each sat whatever exams we had (I had learned by that point how to avoid ALL exams and only write papers; the major benefit of being an English major) and I had a full week left before classes were to resume. So I drove with him back to his hometown – which is where we live now – so he could do something with his car, and so I could meet his mother, his aunt, and his sister. I had to sleep on a trundle bed in his sister’s room and it was all a little awkward, but it was wonderful, too. 

One night, I sat on the edge of my trundle bed in the dark, talking to my mom on the phone. I wanted to tell her I thought I was going to marry this boy, but it sounded too outlandish so I swallowed it down. We’d known each other for two, maybe three months at that point, but I was already in love. I’ve loved him every day since.

How did you meet your partner, if you have one?

It seems as though I am doing NaBloPoMo this month, which is 30 blog posts in 30 days. (Will I make it??? Only time will tell.) Details at San’s blog here.