Super Bowl :(

Like almost every Hoosier I know, I'm thoroughly disappointed that the Colts lost... I really did not see that happening.

It was a bit of a long game for me, sitting that long makes my back start hurting, so I had to keep getting up and moving around. Cori loved stealing Brian's seat in this picture.


Even though it was just Brian and I, the food is still my favorite part of the Super Bowl.
First, we had left over leg of lamb from yesterday, so Brian wanted to make some sandwiches out of the chopped meat. He wanted to make his own bread, and he did a great job making these Kaiser-like rolls from scratch. They were pretty fabulous, and made the sandwiches great.

Second-we had ham roll-ups, my family favorite. Nothing fancy this time, just ham and cream cheese rolled up together.
Third-we made my Grandma Knight's famous cheese dip. It was pretty close to hers, and was delicious.
The final dish we had were brownies... I thought that I was making these brownies, but it turned out that I made a box of the double-chocolate variety. Brian thought it was pretty hilarious b/c he doesn't like nuts in his brownies, but I do. And I didn't even realize we had two different boxes in the house.
We were going to make a cookie pizza for desert, but we were too full.

Newark Restaurant Week 2010

This year we thoroughly tried to embrace downtown Newark's Restaurant Week. January is a great time in Newark because most of the students are not in town (UD has a full J-term) and that leads to better parking, less crowded restaurants, and incentives to get us into stores.

We made a pact to try and go to completely new (to us) restaurants, or at least ones we had only been to once before. The following was our week:

Monday Lunch (MLK Day-no school): Wanted to go to Ali Baba, but realized it is not open for lunch. Went across the street to Klondike Kate's instead.

Shannon: French Onion Soup, Country Club
Brian: Jalapeno Beer Cheese Soup, All Tied Up sandwich

Wednesday Super: Finally went to Deere Park Tavern... "Newark's oldest restaurant featuring hearty and savory dishes in a beautifully restored historic hotel frequented by Edgar Allen Poe."

Shannon: Homemade Fried Fierro Mozzarella (Brian looooved the herbs on top.), Buttermilk Fried Chick with Mashed Potatoes & Gravy (I could eat mashed potatoes and gravy every day of this pregnancy if Brian let me).
Brian: Black & Blue Steak (as normally, not quite blue enough for Brian, but I think he liked it).

Friday Super: Dined at Home Grown Cafe. Found out the place is a little bit restaurant, a lot bar. And it was a little crowded. But once the crowd thinned out we were able to enjoy ourselves, and Brian really loved the flavors here. The band was pretty good too-The John Bryne Band (folk rock). "Home Grown Cafe is an independently owned and award winning restaurant. We focus on providing our clientele with an eclectic unique experience that will be memorable for a diverse spectrum of tastes. With fresh local ingredients, internationally inspired menus, beers and wines from around the world. Home Grown is a great place for families, students, professors and travelers. We make 99% of our menu items from scratch, utilizing local and seasonal ingredients. We have a friendly, professional and knowledgeable staff. Home Grown is truly an enjoyable experience for all.

Shannon: Burger
Brian: Baba Ganoush, Waffle Crusted Chicken, Brandied Pear Bread Pudding

Sunday: We went to the Stone Balloon Winehouse, hoping to get soup, but found out they only had a brunch menu on Sundays. We went with it anyway, and had a very fancy Sunday brunch.

Shannon: Day Break Potatoes
Brian: pastry platter, Crab Cake Benedict

Reading Log

Kids Books:

The Hunger Games: My librarian read a teaser about this on the announcements last year, and I've wanted to read it ever since. I got it from my Aunt Jorita for Christmas, and was done with it before the holidays were over. It is a pretty depressing book, but it just draws you in to it.

Chasing Fire: And it turns out, there is a second book that follows Hunger Games. I think I read through this one even quicker-and can not wait from August when the next book comes out.
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Historical Literature: My other goal has been to read some of the "classics" that I have not read. It takes me quite a while to get through most of them, but I finally got through all 634 pages of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Once I got used to reading the dialect, I was finally able to get into the story. It seems so strange the book was really written so long ago, before emancipation. I can see how this book spurred people into action.

Winter/Christmas 2009

Picture of the Atlantic snowstorm:

Dec. 19. Saturday: I wake up early to find the entire complex covered in snow. It’s been coming down pretty hard for a few hours, and no one has really mussed up the streets yet. I make Brian get up to see it, and Cori loves bouncing around in the snow. The car dealership closes, so we can’t take our car in to get its oil changed like we had scheduled. We take our Christmas card picture with the windows open so everyone can see the snow. “The Blizzard of 2009” ends up being pretty substantial, definitely setting some records for the area. I see on facebook that our church has canceled services for the next day.

Dec. 20. Sunday: I bake pretty much all day… We get a call in the afternoon that Appo has already canceled school for the next day!! Get a lot of wrapping and letter writing done.

Dec. 21. Monday: The baking continues. I’m making up for last year, when I didn’t get any Christmas cookies made at all… I get another call saying that Appo has called the next day as well, and am officially on Christmas vacation! Get the Christmas letters mailed.

Dec. 22. Tuesday: Bake a few more things… decorate our sugar cookies! I normally don’t have the patience to decorate, but tried to make them cute this year.

Dec. 23. Wednesday: Wake up to find a tragedy in our fish tank. Apparently a bubble fish anemone has attacked our Nemo fish. Brian got it knocked off, but by then the fish was pretty much a goner. We hoped he would perk back up, but he never did. Good-bye Nemo fish.

Started on our way home. First stop is the Gap cheese shop, to pick up some extra aged gouda (Rembrandt) for Brian’s sister. We also add the following to our cart:
· Campo de Montalban (semi-hard Spanish cheese, made of cow, goat and sheep’s milk)
· White Stilton with Mango and Ginger (AGAIN! We always get this)
· And one of Bill’s Christmas Cheddars (Beecher’s Flagship Reserve, Seatle, WA)

We then decide to stop for lunch at the Gap Diner, since we always drove past it. We finally get going, and make the following progress, averaging 30 mpg. The cat and dog actually traveled very well together. No fighting, hiding, or getting sick.
· Left Newark at 10:17 AM
· Estimated Drive Time: 10 hrs, 43 min, Estimated Total Mileage: 627 miles
· Actual Drive Time: 12 hours, 33 min, with 2 hr, 44 min in stops, and actual mileage of 637 miles · Arrived Huntington at 10:50 PM

Dec. 24: Thursday: Spend the morning in Huntington, and head up to G & G B’s for our early Christmas. We then head to my old church for communion, and then up to Roanoke for a Lutheran Christmas Eve service. We sleep at Brian’s house. I’m too tired to make sure someone put out cookies for Santa.

Dec. 25: Friday: My mother ends up not having to work another shift, so we do get to have Christmas morning with my family when she comes home from being at the hospital from 7 pm-7 am.

We then head to Grandma Knight’s and see some of the family there. Little cousin Madison does a good job of leading Cori around like a steer and tiring her out.

Then we make it back up to Huntington to spend the afternoon with Brian's family, including Grandpa Eddie, excluding Mike and Ashley.

Our last stop of the day is the Banter Christmas that evening, where we get to meet baby Dylan.

Dec. 26: Saturday: We head to Ohio for Brian’s family Christmas. After a freakish car malfunction that left us sitting in a parking lot for about 45 minutes, we make it to the party. After eating, the Hutson aunts do an awesome job showering us with gifts for the little one.

Dec. 27: Sunday: Brian and I attend my church for worship, and then I have a “last super” (before one of us is a mother) with Mariah and Ashley. Following this we head to my second baby shower, hosted by my sister. She did a great job with it! We did the candy-diaper game, one where they had to guess my girth, a guessing game, and also the game where you lose your necklace if you say “baby”. It was cute, and pretty fun. My older sister in Alaska got to attend over the internet through Skype, which was really cool. I’m not much for video cameras, and this had the same feeling to it, so it took a while to get used to, but it was really awesome. Nephew Aydan acted like it was totally normal for him though. Good food and great gifts rounded out the shower.

(Pictures from the showers to come...)

Dec. 28: Monday. This was our first break in a while. We returned one double gift we got, went to the Bath & Body Yellow Sale (a personal favorite of my mothers, and a big surprise to Brian-“This normally costs $12????” Everyone in the store heard his opinion on the price for a bottle of lotion), and ate at Biaggi’s for lunch (you can now get refills on the soup!!! I have not had the chicken Florentine in years and was very excited). I got to read through most of “Hunger Games” and Brian spent most of the night playing poker with Matthew and my father.

Dec. 29: Tuesday. We ended up going to see my mother’s new hospital unit… see more in baby update posting. We then headed up to Huntington to have our official Christmas dinner with all of Brian’s siblings.

Dec. 30: Wednesday. Hung around in Huntington all day… I finally finished this needlepoint for baby Alison. I almost had it done with she was born, but it took me forever to get the last details done. Picked up “Chasing Fire” to start reading.
Cori had a lot of fun playing with Gus, most of the time. She had more energy to play than he did though, and he got grouchy about it a few times. Here they are in her cage together.... they both went in together on their own.

Dec. 31: Thursday. We had a busy day, having breakfast with my grandparents, and then eventually heading over to Megan and Ben's for a late lunch. She made us really tasty chilly, and we enjoyed some time with them. My sister thinks she is moving to Germany soon to live with Ben while he is still in training, but I'm not thinking about that until I see the actual orders in her hands.

We then have a quiet New Year's celebration with each other. For TEN years (!!!) Brian and I have visited the Marion lights every New Year's eve. We continued that again this year, and then headed to Ivanhoe's for tenderloins and ice cream. It was fantastic, and a nice little quite night together. We then headed to my parents where Brian worked on cooking meatballs and I fell asleep long before midnight. Brian missed waking me up to see the ball drop, but we said our "Happy New Years" a few minutes later.

Jan. 1: Friday. We partipated in my cousin Joel's 8th Annual Meatball Contest. There were 13th entries.  Even with crumbled bacon on his, Brian was not able to pull out a win. Afterwards we spent over an hour packing the car, getting almost all the Christmas and baby gifts in the car. We finished with dinner at BWW with Kari & Josh and Mariah & Kory. Even though it was absolutely FREEZING out, we finished off with DQ ice cream. My ribs hurt quite a bit after today-I think it was all the giggling.

Jan. 2: Saturday. We attended our last Christmas party in Toledo at Brian's grandpa's. Afterwards we drove straight through for nine hours and finally arrived home. Unpacking and getting our house back in running order will be on the agenda until we go back to work on Monday.

New York Hot Bagels

We decided we better start trying out all the restaurants around the hospital. New York Hot Bagels is located very close, and was another great bagel place. There seem to be a lot of those around here. And they are open super early, so I may even be able to go before I go to work in the morning.

My Favorite Things (Sound of Music, anyone?)

Recently I was thinking about things that make me happy. Material things mostly. There are a lot of non-material things as well, but this list is those physical things that you can feel and touch. The things that can bring a smile to my face anytime....

• Sending and Receiving Mail
• Coca-Cola classic (this transferred to me from Brian)
• Reading good books
• Pan-fried popcorn
• ICE CREAM!
• Making chocolate chip cookies
• Buying and using new kitchen gadgets and spices
• Watching my kitten and puppy “play”
• Needlepointing, quilting, and other crafts
• Going camping

• Limonata
• Genealogy
• A really good pen
• Black Cherry Soap (Especially in rest stops!!)
• Rewatching good old movies
• Butterfingers & Reese cups
• Making lists

Newark Winterfest & Saengerbund

We finally attended a Second annual event in our still-new home of Newark. We made it on time to see the Christmas tree lit this year, and again enjoyed the free cookies and hot chocolate. It was still so nice out though, that it didn't really feel like winterfest.

The following day it finally SNOWED and snowed. It eventually stuck to the ground, but was mostly gone by the next morning. It was pretty exciting though.

We also got in the holiday mood by going to the Delaware Saengerbund Christmas concert. The lure of German cookies (more free cookies) and coffee got Brian there as well.

Sugar Rush

A cute new cafe opened in Newark. We visited Sugar Rush after church a few Sunday's ago. I went for the loaded baked potatoes, and was delighted that they also had lemonata available to drink. Brian really liked the cannoli he had for desert. I think he's even gone back for more since.

Getting Ready For Baby

We brought back my bassinet at Thanksgiving. All the kids in my family used this one. I'll probably try to get around to making a new cover though-with less lace. My sewing pile is a little overwhelming right now though, so no guarantees.

Megan made these super cute shower invitations. We finally registered a few places... I think Brian is pickier about things than me.

Thanksgiving Happenings

Thanksgiving weekend went by in a flash like always.

We headed to Toledo to Brian's grandpa's on Wednesday afternoon. We left at 1:00 pm and drove the 512 miles in 9 and a half hours. We had about an hours worth of stops in this trip. I took an apple pie with us, having an excuse to finally use my new pie carrier. We then got a really good nights sleep there.

On Thursday, we had lunch with all the Eddies (except Brian's dad who wasn't feeling well). We then drove the couple of hours to my great uncle Dave's house and had dinner with most of the Banters. My sisters then dragged me to see a late showing of New Moon. I made them wait a whole week since its opening, and Erin couldn't stand to wait anymore. Brian and I spent the night at my Banter grandparents this night.

Grandpa woke us up with good smells of pancakes and a roaring fire on Friday morning. I then did a little bit of Black Friday shopping with my grandma, mother, and sister. And shared an awesome Butterfinger milk shake with Erin. I'd never really had a milk shake before, and this one definitely made me get ideas for my new blending obsession. I got to hit up East of Chicago later that evening with Mariah and Ashley. We really could just talk for days and never be totally caught up with each other. Too bad we can't see each other more. Brian avoided these girly activities by spending time with his siblings, and watching a new toilet get installed. It was his parents birthday gift. Cori enjoyed playing with her cousins. I absolutely love this picture that I stole from Emily... Cori looks like she is such a good girl. We spent this night at my parent's house. Saturday put us back in the car driving to Uncle Charlie and Aunt Marrianne's. We made pretty good time, and enjoyed the Hutson Thanksgiving there at noon. There were at least half a dozen kids under 2 there... the Hutson family has been exploding with kids lately. Our boy will have plenty of older second cousins to play with, most of them boys. Being the dork that I am, I decided to graph this population growth. This chart shows the growth (through marriages and births) since I started dating Brian nine years ago. We got a couple of our first official baby gifts here, including this beautiful quilt from Brian's godmother.
This is a graph of the family since I started dating Brian in 2000. I'm one of the data from 2006.We then had to leave early to head to Fort Wayne for my cousin's wedding. The wedding was held at a Lutheran church in Fort Wayne, and the reception at the Hayloft in Hoagland. I really liked this venue, and we had a really good time at the wedding. The dj did a good job of getting us all dancing and having fun. Everything was really nice and pretty. I was dead on my feet by the end of it. We headed back to Huntington and spent the night at Brian's house.



Sunday we awoke to the smell of pancakes again. Brian's dad sent us off with a breakfast of these and some maple syrup to go. We later realized we should have been cooking for him, considering it was his and Brian's mom's birthday! After a stop to fill our cooler with meat, we headed back to Newark. We left at 10:08 am, drove the 615 miles through the day, and got to Newark at 10:28 pm. The worst traffic was where the Pennsylvania turnpike runs along with 70. We made a total of six stops that took about an hour and a half altogether (including lunch at Steak & Shake).

And after a very tiring work day on Monday, we vowed to never get back within 10 hours of having to be at work.

Blenders Amaze Me

So, Rachel Ray inspired me to try another fall soup recipe this year. This one called for the ingredients to be blended with an immersion blender in the final step. I have never used one, but really wanted an excuse to buy one, so when my mom sent me a Target birthday card for the exact amount of an immersion blender I wanted, I finally had an excuse Brian couldn't argue with. (He thinks I get too many kitchen gadgets that our tiny kitchen can't handle and I never use. I say we can deal with it.)

I picked out this immersion blender while I was down in Dover for a training earlier this week, and hunted down the vegetables I would need to slice and dice for the soup Tuesday and Wednesday. Technically, I never did find celery root. My encyclopedic husband tried to tell me that celery root was just a fancy name for celery. I however, have discovered that it is a different ingredient altogether.

On Wednesday night I commenced making the soup-remembering why I made Brian cut up the butternut squash last year (it is impossible!). By the time my husband got home (soaking wet from the rain), the soup was just about ready to be completed. I was too skittish to actually try my new gadget, so I let Brian do the honors. He had a lot of fun with it. Luckily, I picked out a really good one, that was pretty powerful. And we had a pretty good, healthy soup, full of nutrients, blended to perfection.

Following that episode, I decided I should actually use our full size blender as well. We got this awesome one from Brian's Aunt Linda for our wedding, and it hasn't got to see much counter space. On Friday morning I made a strawberry/orange smoothie that Brian said tasted like Jamba Juice (which is just what I was going for-I wish we still had these in DE). It amazes me how the blender can combine all the ingredients so quickly with just the turn of the switch.

Now I'm looking for more recipes so I can keep blending...

Last Birthday before the baby...

Brian took me out to Ole Tapas for my birthday. We haven't been here since our anniversary when I told Brian we were expecting, but we had the same waitress and table, and just as good a time. I always like taking pictures of the food here. The menu had a lot of new things and we tried a few new tapas. Our entire dinner included:

• Chefs Complement: an eggplant tapa
• A trio of cheeses including: Valdeon, Queso Jerezano (seared Miti Caña goat cheese with Sherry reduction), and Curado Pimenton

• The Empanada of the day
• Chiluetas Cordero (baby lamb chop)

• Higos Cabrales (bacon wrapped figs with Cabrales)

• Serrano Croquetas (ham croquettes)
• Fish N Chips (the only one we don't recommend.... we're not big fans of smelt apparently)
• Bread Pudding & Espresso (with cinnamon ice cream)

We had a little more ice cream at home, so I could make my birthday wish.

We also hit up the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon. It is a pretty cool marketplace, you see a glimpse of it in National Treasure (when the girl is hiding from the bald guy). We ate a gold old fashioned meal served by Amish women at the rib place, and browsed the many cheese and meat counters. We bought a few spices at the Spice Terminal, and some more seeds for Brian to plant our own herbs. We also took part in the Unforgotten Food festival, mostly so Brian could have some Teaberry ice cream. Apparently, teaberry is a local thing, it grows on the mountains in PA. Brian loves it. We tried a few other things, including another local specialty:  Pepper Pot Soup. I'm now looking for a recipe for this tasty dish, preferably one that doesn't include tripe.

25 at 25

I'm almost to the last third.... here I am 25 weeks pregnant at 25 years old.

Cori wanted in the picture too!

Halloween 2009