Consolation Prize Pear Bread

Dilemma #1
Joe is at work. My mom and my best friend have just informed me via text that they are together in sunny California, eating delicious Mexican food and shopping at the outlet mall. I must find a way to drown my sorrows/keep myself busy for the evening...

Dilemma #2
Abel & Cole keeps sending us pears. Last week I put some in the Thanksgiving cranberry sauce. I've put them in a smoothie. I've poached them and eaten them with ice cream. I had thought there might be a reprieve from pears this week, but no go. Apparently it is Pear Season around here. I must find a way to use all the pears before they go bad...

Dilemma #3
Catching Fire came out last weekend and even though I have no one to go with I think I'm going to go tomorrow night when Joe's at work. As is tradition, I must watch the preceding film before seeing the newest installment...

Solution: Spend Friday night watching Hunger Games (because Joe isn't here so I can because I have the TV to myself) and baking pear bread!

I found a recipe from Taste of Home that looks yummy (ie had a good preview picture) and didn't require any crazy ridiculous ingredients. I had to borrow a loaf pan, but if it works out well I may go ahead and buy one.

Ingredients

• 3 Eggland's Best Eggs (that's convenient! Abel & Cole sent me organic eggs to try this week!)
• 1-1/2 cups sugar
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 cups finely chopped peeled ripe pears (about 4 medium ALL of the pears I have from this week and last!)
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice (didn't have lemon juice. oh well.)
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

1. In a bowl, combine the eggs, sugar, oil and vanilla; mix well. Combine flour, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda and salt; stir into the egg mixture just until moistened. Toss pears with lemon juice. Stir pears and walnuts into batter (batter will be thick).
2. Spoon into two greased 9-in. x 5-in. loaf pans. Bake at 350° for 55-60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks. Yield: 2 loaves.

super thick and goupy but smells great already

With limited space to keep things in my kitchen, I don't buy ingredients without a recipe in mind usually; I can't afford to have stuff taking up room (and potentially going bad) if I don't know how I'm going to use it. That's why I was excited to find little one-teaspoon sachets of baking soda and baking powder at Sainsbury. My baking cabinet at home is stocked with large containers of all the essential ingredients for home baking, but here I just don't invest in ingredients I'm not 100% sure I'll use.

Now we wait...

Looks tasty!

Yummy!!

I am not a big fan of banana-flavored sweets, so this quick bread is the ideal solution. It's moist and salty-sweet like banana bread but flavored with the mildness of pears instead. So yummy! I probably could have diced the pears into the smaller pieces, but generally (since chopping is my least favorite) I will deal with chunkier pieces rather than spend the extra time.

Take that, Friday night!

Update: when Joe got home he thought it smelled so good
he didn't want to wait to slice a piece off...

Tuscan Vegetable Soup

(This post is a little delayed because I forgot I needed to add the pics and hit publish. Oh well. You get the idea.)

As I've already mentioned, one of my goals during my time in London is to improve my cooking. Under the umbrella of that goal is the London List checkbox for using all of the fruits and vegetables that come in a single week's delivery within that same week. This can be surprisingly difficult, depending on the variety Abel & Cole offers and our schedule. For weeks we were sent clementines that we kept forgetting to eat. Sometimes we have so many carrots that I just can't get through them all in 7 days. (Then I look up a ton of recipes to get rid of a particular ingredient and end up having to buy more at the store in order to make all of them...)

This week, I think I may have done it!

The box included:

     - Fair Trade bananas (eaten and in smoothies)

     - Green curly kale

     - Carrots

     - Apples (eaten in Joe's lunches)

     - Pears

     - Red Pepper

     - White Mushrooms

     - Red Potatoes

kale this gorgeous can only mean one thing: veggie soup time!

Recipes of the Week

Poached Pears

with sugar, vanilla, and lots of cinnamon

Thai Red Curry

using A&C red pepper and mushrooms

recipe here, I added zucchini

Tuscan Vegetable Soup

using A&C carrots and curly kale, served with roasted A&C potatoes

Tuscan vegetable soup is a staple for me at home. My mom has doctored the original Panera recipe a bit, as usual and I usually make it as a lunch to take to work. Joe literally begs for "kale soup" at home, so he was happy to come home from work to the British version when I made it here.

Ingredients

1/4 c  pancetta

2	T olive oil
1½	c chopped red onions (I use white usually)
2	c chopped celery
2	c chopped carrots
4	large cloves garlic, minced (Or more. Really, you can't have too much.)
¼	t red pepper flakes (didn't do this here in UK)
1	can (28 oz) plum tomatoes in puree, chopped with juice (at home it's always San Marzano tomatoes from Sprouts. They make a HUGE difference in the taste - SO good. Here I just did the best I could)
8	oz kale (tuscan cavolo nero or lacinato kale)stems removed, leaves coarsely chopped
8	oz grean chard, stems removed, leaves coarsely chopped (I couldn't find chard here so I used a second kind of kale, cavola nero, or flat leaf kale)
2	c cooked or canned cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
7	c chicken broth
¼	c chopped fresh basil
½	t salt
3	c Panera country or sourdough bread cubes, crust removed (optional)
¼	c grated Parmesan cheese (instead of grating cheese, which just makes a big, sticky mess, cut off the rind and throw it into the soup when it's cooking. Remove the rind afterwards. All the flavor and very little of the mess.)

Directions

Heat the oil in a large soup pot over med heat. Saute the pancetta until crispy. Add the onions, celery and carrots and cook until the vegetables begin to soften 6-8 min. Add the garlic and pepper flakes and cook for 1 minute. Add the chopped tomatoes (with juice), kale and chard, and cook until the kale is wilted. 8-10 min (At home my mom uses a 10 quart stock pot to make this soup and I borrow hers when I make it myself. Here, of course, I don't have such a tool. Thus, I had to add the kale in stages and put the lid on the pot to make it wilt a little faster so I could fit more in.)

phase 2 of kale additions

Puree 1 c of the beans and 1 c of broth in a food processor. Add the beans, undrained and unrinsed, to the soup along with the remaining 6 c broth. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 20 at least 60 min.
Stir in basil, salt, and bread cubes (if using) and simmer until bread thickens the soup about 10 min Sprinkle with the cheese

barely fit in my soup pot...

This soup is great for any time of year, really. I especially like it as a lunch with garlic bread on the side. We have also had it as our vegetable side with dinner a few times. Either way, it's delicious and packed with super healthy vegetables.

An American Thanksgiving: aka Whole Foods Saves the Day

Another checkmark on our list of London and Beyond Activities!

As soon as we knew that we'd be spending this year in England, I knew that having an American Thanksgiving dinner would be one of my essentials for an Autumn spent abroad. Not only is this an exciting cooking challenge for a newlywed who is learning to be comfortable in the kitchen, but I also thought it would be fun to share with our new British friends and fellow American expats alike.

I won't lie: I pictured a big, festive event with about a dozen people. This, of course, is highly impractical for a lot of reasons. First of all, our flat has only 4 chairs. Secondly, as a first-timer and someone who admittedly becomes a crazed perfectionist when hosting parties, that would have been more of a headache than it would be worth.

The Surprises

Joe got a Sunday off work and it coincided with an off-day for a co-worker he wanted to invite

Whole Foods, an AMERICAN grocery chain, has half a dozen locations in London and one of them is literally between the two grocery stores I frequent most often. This meant that I had access to several essential ingredients in my known American brands without having to look very hard. Libby's canned pumpkin, Carnation evaporated milk, French's fried onions (to which many an American ex-pat has searched for months without luck according to the expat and cooking blogs), and whipped cream in a spray can were all available with a simple visit to the store. I was also able to procure whole, fresh cranberries and Campbell's cream of mushroom soup. #winning

Marks & Spencer sells British butter-basted turkey breasts in 4 sizes. As an amateur, I do not feel quiet ready to take on a full-bodied turkey without my mom's presence in the kitchen if something goes wrong, so I was especially relieved at this couldn't-be-easier option for the main event.

our first time hosting a major holiday!

The Challenges

After finding the canned pumpkin and deciding to homemake a pie, I had no idea how difficult the secondary-but-still-necessary-stuff for this task would be to find. Brits make lots of pies, but they are of the savory, filled-with-meat variety, so the pre-made crusts I found were all savory. (They are also OBSESSED with mincemeat pies at this time of year. These and other British holiday staples are so disgusting I feel like I should devote an entire post to them in the future.) With my small kitchen and limited supplies, I did not feel ready to make a from scratch crust for the first time on Thanksgiving. I decided on a graham cracker crust and then realized that Graham Crackers don't exist in the UK. I googled alternatives (while standing in the cracker aisle at Sainsbury) and found that people in Not America use digestive biscuits instead (something that sounds gross but is really basically the same thing). Fine. Okay. Now for a disposable, alumin[i]um pie tin. No go. Those don't exist in our grocery store either. So then a trip to T. K. Maxx (not a typo) in Charing Cross to procure a pie plate. Nope. Three shelves-worth of spring form pans, but no pie tins. The best I could come up with is a tart tin with a removable bottom that is just a bit too shallow.... See the results:

This is when I realized that I forgot to include the eggs when I made it. Panic and an emergency Saturday-night trip to Whole Foods rewarded me with another Whole Foods save: a real pie plate!

Joe graciously labeled our dessert in case any non-Americans
didn't know what it was. Jane pointed out that
it really should've read "American pie"

As well outfitted as my kitchen is, I am still missing a lot of the stuff I'm used to using at home. This meant a lot of adjustments and flexibility on my part, a willingness to see multi-functionality in all of my kitchen supplies. For example:

     - Pumpkin Pie Spice does not exist in the UK = sub "Mixed Spice"

     - no rolling pin = use a potato masher to crush digestive biscuits for crust

     - no mixing bowls in the kitchen (no really) = use pots

     - I thought I ordered Cranberry Plum chutney with my vegbox this week, but it didn't come = make fresh

     - Abel & Cole sent pears this week and we have too many = add them to the Apple-Cranberry sauce

Thanksgiving is such a Big Deal in the American cooking calendar, that I was kind of intimidated at taking it on by myself. Joe was a lot of help cleaning and preparing and he's a fantastic host once people arrive, but realistically I knew I would be doing all the prep myself. I was happily surprised that it wasn't as overwhelming on the day as I'd expected. Instead, we spread out the necessary tasks over several days, making it all much more manageable.

As we could reasonably only accommodate 6 people, Joe and I each invited a friend plus a partner. We own 7 dinner plates and 6 dessert plates total. Our dining table has 4 chairs. We may be able to fit more bodies in our flat, but we could not serve them dinner. I invited Tammela, my American friend from school and her German boyfriend Fabian. Joe invited his coworker Kieran and his girlfriend Jane, both Brits. It was the perfect blend of people who know what to expect on Thanksgiving and people who don't.

The food came out awesome! Tammela brought sweet potato casserole (her mother's recipe) and scratch buttermilk biscuits to finish out the traditional menu. I was excited that everything was mostly hot at mostly the same time and everyone was eager to try all the dishes, even the ones I would totally think were weird if I hadn't grown up on them (green bean casserole??). And we didn't completely run out of anything except gravy before people had a chance to take seconds. I consider that a win!

a blurry pic but you can see our pop-up paper turkey, Tyrone, at the end of the table

all the essentials and it tasted like home!

After dinner we played games for hours. I was relieved that everyone got on so well and the conversations flowed so easily. (Joe was surprised I had even worried about this and he was right.) With 6 people from different backgrounds and experiences, it was fun to hear the variety of perspectives on issues but then come together on the humor of Cards Against Humanity. Some of the night's topics included:

- What is a graham cracker? (which became What is a s'more? and involved an in depth description of how graham crackers are perforated so that you can break them into perfect squares)
- Biscuits: savory versus sweet
- Michelle Obama's arms
- dealing with letting agents in London
- the experience of being a foreigner (anywhere)
- customer service (particularly the overzealous kind in America and the non-existent kind in the UK and Europe)
- accents
- cuddling: it's a trap!
- cling film

This is what a group selfie looks like with a big camera and a wide-angle lens....

This year I have a lot to be thankful for, so even though Joe balked at my idea that we go around the table and all share our gratitude, I'll share some here.

I'm thankful for the health and safety of those who mean the most to me, something that was far from guaranteed this year. With serious scares for both Joe and my mom in the last 6 months, I have been reminded not to take these people for granted.

I'm thankful for the love and support of our friends and family, near and far, especially those we don't get to see often but can always count on to be there for us when we need them. Many people travelled great distances to celebrate our engagement and wedding with us and it has been humbling to have those people make us feel so important. 

I'm thankful for the extremely close friendships I have cultivated over the last twenty-plus years of my life. One thing my closest friends have in common is the longevity of our relationships and I am grateful for the mutual understanding, acceptance, and respect that comes with that kind of shared history.

And of course, I'm thankful for the opportunity of this year abroad and everything it entails. I'm thankful for the chance to take a year out of my career to study literature and remind myself why I love what I do. I'm thankful for the many travel experiences we get to have and how they will enrich our lives. I'm grateful for new friends who open our eyes to different ways of viewing the world. And mostly I'm thankful for this year to be here with my husband, doing all of it together. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Dublin: Have a pint of Guinness every time you sit down!

After all the posting I did during Reading Week to catch up so that I could post about Dublin IMMEDIATELY when we got home, this happened:

For the last two weeks, the reading has been non-stop (and it's not over). 
- two novellas by Henry Green (Nothing and Doting)
- Ulysses, that classic tome by James Joyce (plus his short stories, Dubliners)
- two books about photography (not pictured since I got them from the library)
- readings on Impressionism (also not pictured)
- two novels and a biography on Virginia Woolf (due next week)

And oh yeah, my Harry Potter article revisions are due at the end of this week. And so is my first major paper proposal. And we're hosting Thanksgiving tomorrow (yes, on a Sunday).

So, yeah, there's been a considerable delay and instead of taking me a day or two to get to telling you all about Dublin, it's been closer to two weeks. ::shame::

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After nearly two months on a shelf,
the peacocks were ready for some adventure.

We arrived in Dublin on Friday afternoon. Joe had spent the last seven days in a row working closing shifts and fighting a cold, ultimately losing his voice during his final shift before our vacation. All day on travel day, I had to do all of the speaking for both of us: all of the direction asking, order making, question answering, and checking-in everywhere we went. Because of this, we decided to play our first night extremely low key. We went to lunch at a gastropub recommended by Anthony Bordain called The Chop House (where there was a private office Christmas party happening on November 8) and then retired to our hotel for the rest of the day and night.

Food was good but pricey.
Turns out London is not the only expensive city.

Our hotel room was AMAZING. After months in a tiny double bed that requires the inside sleeper to crawl over the outside sleeper to get in and out of bed, our excitement at our king-sized, I-swear-it-was-bigger-than-our-bedroom bed was kind of ridiculous. We stayed at the Schoolhouse Hotel based on a recommendation from my friend Colleen. Located in a converted school house (duh), each of the rooms is named for a famous Irish writer. We stayed in Brendan Behan's room. William Butler Yeats was next door. James Joyce was down the hall.

a little out of the way for most sites but worth it

I could stretch my arms out completely on both sides and barely touch the edge of the bed on one side and Joe on the other. It was heavenly to have so much room to sleep.

Dublin was much more about experiencing the people and the feel of a place than specific attractions and historical sites for us. Neither of us is very familiar with Irish history and we weren't in the mood for museum-going or the bike-touring this time. Instead, we spent a lot of time in pubs, listening to live music (mostly Irish), drinking beer (mostly Guinness), and soaking it in.

I really wanted to see more of Ireland than just the capital since there is usually so much more to a country than it's biggest city. Our travel destinations so far have been capital-heavy (Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, Tallinn, Copenhagen, Berlin, Prague, London, Dublin), so it's important to me to break out of that and see more when we can.

We were expecting rain during our trip, so we booked a coach tour of county Wicklow for the day we anticipated the best weather. The bus picked us up in the morning and headed south along the coast making several stops on the way to Glendalough. We drove for several hours in the Wicklow mountains, the national park where Holly and Gerry have their meet-cute in the movie P.S. I love you. We saw (and smelled) peat moss growing on the side of the roads. There were sheep and cows and green rolling hills and it was exactly as you'd expect Ireland to be and more.

shamrocks!

on the P. S. I love you bridge!

visiting in autumn added another layer to our experience of Ireland: orange!

Glendalough is known for it's tenth century monastic site, visible in the distance

The last stop on our tour of Wicklow was at the oldest hand-weaving mill in Ireland, Avoca. There we learned about the history of the mill and got a demonstration of how weavers still make things today. Joe and I were both a bit surprised by how much we loved the products at Avoca. We quickly knew we had to set a price limit for the store attached to the mill and were thrilled when the shades-of-blue blanket we had been eyeing on the tour fell right into our acceptable range! 

Charlie getting cozy in one of Avoca's trademark brightly-colored blankets

Charlie and Bert blend in with our blanket! And they made a new friend: Murphy!

That evening, Saturday, we were dropped off in Temple Bar and made our way to Porterhouse Central, one of two locations of Porterhouse brewing recommended by friends and our Top 10 book alike. The place was packed due to the Ireland v. New Zealand rugby match happening that night in the city. As Joe ordered at the bar and I hunted for seats, I was lucky enough to catch the eye of a gentleman who offered me the two free chairs across from him and his wife. We were lucky to be met with the hospitality of this couple, with whom we chatted for more than two hours, but their behavior was rather typical of Dublin. Everyone we talked to was friendly, open, and accommodating. They wanted to help, to get to know us, and to make sure we had a lovely time in their city. From the customs agent on the way in to the taxi driver on the way out. Everyone was nice.

Pat and Susan, our hospitable tablemates

Pat and Susan even helped explain rugby to us and told us about the important players

Sunday was a bit of a bust in many ways. We started out later in the day but had an awesome plan. Knowing that corned beef is an Irish thing, I had been looking forward to mounds of it everywhere I went, especially in sandwich form. But the restaurant I had looked up didn't exist where it was supposed to, and it's sister restaurant was closed. We were stuck in the wrong part of the city to change the plan, it was getting dark, and everything was closed. We gave up and headed to the other Porterhouse bar for consolation drinks.

When it came time to eat, we headed to O'Neill's, another pub I'd circled in the Top 10 book. There, we were excited to find American football on tv for Joe, and corned beef (not in sandwich form) for Sarah!

and it was a CHARGER game no less - do you see how excited he is?

the orange mushy vegetable is... carrots! and the mustard is burn-your-sinuses spicy but oh-so-good!

Monday was all about getting to the Guinness Storehouse. Because it was a nice day, we decided to walk instead of taking the bus or getting a tour. On the way, we stopped at St. Patrick's Cathedral, another Dublin must-do. The cathedral was built in consultation with the architect of Salisbury's cathedral and there were many similarities.

The Guinness Storehouse is like a beer-themed amusement park. Actually, "beer" is too broad, as there is literally only one variety on tap here. There are 7 floors to this site open to the public (this does not include the actual brewing or bottling facilities on the 50 acre Guinness campus); 1 floor is the Gravity bar (with a 360 view of Dublin), another includes a souvenir shop, two include restaurants, and 3 are part of an extensive, self-guided beer tour. The tour includes many features. We rushed a bit in the "how beer is made" section since this is old news for Joe, but the sections on the history of Guinness advertising and the interactive Drink IQ game were pretty good.

Look! I have hops on my shirt (Stone Brewing) and there are hops in this case! We match!

Charlie enjoys a drink.

What we learned in Ireland: 
* The River Liffey (pronounced with a short i) should totally be pronounced Lifey. It'd be better that way.
* Do not order cheesecake or vegetable soup in Ireland. The cheesecake is disgusting, oily and mousse-y. The vegetable soup is pureed and tastes like baby food. Both of these things happened at multiple locations.
* Corned beef sandwiches, which should be in abundance, are elusive in Dublin. Very disappointing.
* The people make the place. Dublin was lovely because the people were lovely.
* Guinness really is better on draught in Ireland than anywhere else.

Dublin was friendly and relaxing, a welcome break from our routine in London. We were also surprised to find that when we were ready to leave Dublin and go home, both of us were thinking of our tiny flat in Camden and the comforts it affords us. Ireland was a beautiful break, but we were happy to get back to the cozy life we've established here.