Page 71: Valentine’s Weekend 2016

February 15, 2016February 15, 2016 Libbyabout me, breakfast, brunch, friendship, galentines day, recipe, valentines day, weekend1 Comment

I first wrote of my love of Valentine’s Day earlier in the month. I believe in love. I believe that it is a powerful and healing force. I also don’t believe that love is only for people who have squishy, lovey dovey feelings at each other. I think that love begets love—in action and in feelings.

So on Saturday, I had some of my best lady friends and their best lady friends over for a Galentine’s Day brunch. We ate a lot of carbs, listened to this playlist, gave one another gifts, read to each other, talked about the hard stuff and the cheap stuff and it was wonderful and lovely. I got barely any photographs because I was having too much fun.

And a lot of people asked me for the recipe for the frittata that I made. Which is sometimes hard for me to do as I barely follow a recipe. I mostly just follow my instincts. But I remember everything exactly this time. So if you’re interested in a recipe with no photographs to back up the lovelieness of this dish and you’re willing to just trust me, here you go!

Galentines Day Brunch Frittata
(Served the 11 people at my house with about 25% leftover)

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into a small dice
1 small yellow onion, diced
2 large red peppers, diced
2 or three large handfuls of fresh spinach
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon salt
light sprinkle of red pepper flakes
1 cup shredded itallian cheese blend
10 medium-sized eggs
¼ cup half-and-half
1 ½ tablespoon seasoning of your choice. I used McCormic’s Belgian Style White Ale spice blend (which I love because of the combination of citrus flavors and bold pepper).
½ cup crumbled feta cheese

I used my 12” cast iron skillet—it’s important to use an oven-proof skillet, however. If your oven-proof skillet is smaller than this, I recommend scaling back on the eggs because that will create a more veggie-dense dish.

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F.
Over medium high heat, warm olive oil and add sweet potatoes. Cook for several minutes until they just begin to soften and brown. Add in onions and red peppers and stir to coat with oil.
Once onions begin to sweat and soften, stir in spinach. It will feel like way too much spinach but once it begins to cook down, it will shrink up considerably. Stir in nutmeg, salt, and red pepper flakes and turn off heat.
Stir the mixture around so that everything appears evenly distributed throughout the pan. Sprinkle the shredded cheese over the top.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, half and half, and whatever seasoning you would like.
Slowly, pour the egg mixture over the veggie mixture in the pan. Do not stir! Sprinkle the feta over the top and quickly move the pan into the oven.
Bake at 350*–checking at 30 minutes for doneness. The frittata is done when it begins to brown around the edges and when you shake the pan and the center barely jiggles. Let it sit for at least 10 minutes before serving to ensure that the eggs are all set up.

After that, my husband and I cleaned up only the most important food items, packed our bags, and drove to Wichita where he’d booked a room and I’d made dinner reservations.

I don’t foresee the rest of our Valentine’s Day celebrations going so extravagantly but between me recently moving to a work-from-home position and our house being in a not-that-relaxing, there-is-so-much-to-be-done state of affairs, Ryan thought it might be best for us to just get out of the house for a night. Which was the right move, if you ask me.

I was/ am obsessed with this grey chair. I want one just like it at my house.

Funny story, though! As soon as we walked into the hotel lobby we found that not only were we staying here but also hundreds of young teenagers! Someone thought that Valentine’s Day Weekend would be the perfect time to book a bunch of teenagers into a fancy hotel for a youth conference!

I had to be very active in recognizing that my expectations are my own business. Maybe I expected to not have screaming kids outside of my door all weekend long—I didn’t run that by anyone else. It’s not their fault I had that idea. They had other ideas. Ryan and I put ourselves into their positions. Being a kid at a youth conference was one of my greatest joys in my childhood and we were going to let them enjoy it. I didn’t stick my head out of my door and scream “shut the hell up already!” even one time! With that perspective shift, I was able to laugh with them instead of scream at them. I’m proud of that.

Also, since we are usually stay-at-home on Valentines Day people, we didn’t realize that my favorite restaurant was going to transform into a seriously expensive, extra fancy place for the weekend! It is no exaggeration to say that we ended up spending more than either of us had ever spent on a meal, before.

I was really proud of the way that we rolled with the punches, though. Rather than getting upset and anxious, which is my natural way, we found a way to just go with it, enjoy ourselves, and not stress at all. And in the end, you know what? We had an excellent time! And our entire dinner was decadent and inspiring (I ate a grilled salad, you guys!!). There wasn’t a single part of it that I didn’t love. The place was packed, too. God bless those servers.

Then, because we weren’t quite ready to go back to the room just yet, we stopped at the hotel bar.

The next morning we slept in so late and watched tv and took long showers. We went to brunch and then to stall going home, we went out for more coffee, and stopped at a bookstore where I found this beautiful copy of Flannery O’Connor stories. I’d given away my original copy so I was really excited to find this magnificent replacement.

And now it’s back to every day real life. It was such an exciting weekend! It was a constant exercise in c’est la vie.

So after that lux, relaxing weekend, this announcement! We are moving to a new house this weekend!! With that being said, things might be really quiet around here for the next few weeks while I get my house and my office set up but I promise that when I come back, it will be so good. Thank you for sticking with me though this transitional phase.

What do you think about Valentine’s Day? Did you do anything to celebrate? Tell us about it!

XOXO, Lib

Page 56: I Don’t Do Resolutions, But…

January 6, 2016 Libbybake, brunch, bucket list, eat, explore, give, goals, ideas, Kansas, McPherson, New Year, resolution, to-do, Travel4 Comments

This is the part where I tell you, like everyone else does, that I’m not really into resolutions, but…

Here’s the thing—I don’t need to make any resolutions. Did you read my last post?? Enough is going to change in 2016 on its own. Other years, resolutions have been important. This year though, the concept is utterly unnecessary for me.

That being said, however, I love a list of goals. I love a good bucket list. So instead of resolutions, I’m going to write a to-do list. And I want to encourage you to do the same! This is a list that only includes one-and-done items. There’s nothing (well, not much, anyway) about this list that encourages a habit. I think that’s the important distinction between a list of resolutions and a to-do-list.

So here we go with my list of 25 things that I want to do in 2016:

Have a pot-luck style brunch party with my friends.
Take a long road trip with my husband.
Really, really figure out how Evernote works.
Monetize this blog.
Bring a new plant into the house.
Drink a Sazerac in New Orleans
Send out gift cards randomly to people.
Do a 30 Days of Yoga Challenge
Have a BBQ.
Interview my friends.
Go to an Indian Restaurant for the first time ever in life.
Meet Jamie for lunch ½ way between where we both live.
Walk all the way from Wall Park to Lakeside Park on the walking trail (it’s not hard, it’s just something that I’ve always wanted to do and never done).
Find a perfect lipstick.
Donate a bunch of clothes.
Explore cool things in Kansas.
Explore cool things in Kansas (I want to do it at least twice).
Put away all of the laundry in the bedroom (it has literally never all been put away before).
Have my nephew, Owen, stay the night.
Pay off my dental bill (this one might actually not be very reasonable).
Paint—this time with watercolors, maybe.
Finish a book (I didn’t finish many books last year and I mean to change that).
Bake something with a kid.
Make a really good homemade pizza.
Make choux pastry.

Full disclosure: there are a few other things that I am going to do this year that I’m just not going to tell you about but they will happen and when they do you’re going to be so pumped! Probably. If I know you like I think I do, and I think I do.

What do you think? Are there any one-and-done things that you want to make sure that you try this year? Anywhere you want to visit? Any food you’ve been dying to try?

I really do hope that all of your most reasonable (and a few of your wildest) dreams come true this year.
XOXO, Lib

Page 9: Current Events

April 11, 2013April 11, 2013 Libbybrunch, cookbook, cooking, dinner, French toast, inspiration, Joy Wilson, recipeLeave a comment

Currently listening: Band of Horses, Infinite Arms
Currently drinking: ginger ale
Currently watching: my cat bat around a hair tie

Remember when Xanga was a thing? Xanga was my very first introduction to the idea of blogging. This was in college where there were a lot of feels happening to a lot of people who all lived very close to one another. It was horrible. But there was always a spot in the format of writing the post that said, “Currently” and you could pick “listening to”, or “reading”, or “watching”, or something. And so you got to say, “Sure, I’m a typical emotional college kid but look at this cool, obscure band that I found that no one else has ever heard of.” I swear, there were months where I thought Fall Out Boy was supremely indie just because I’d never heard of them before. Nope. I was incorrect about that. Now, though, I don’t even care how obscure the band is that I’m listening to. Did I download The 20/20 Experience at 6:00 am on the day it released? Do I have regrets? Not really but, frankly, half of that album is a little disappointing to me. I mean there’s a song about space boning. You can’t possibly be serious, Justin, right? I mean, tell me this is a song that was rejected by The Lonely Island.

Currently, I’m riding high from the dinner I just made. The thing is that when I was thinking about what to have for dinner, I was like “well I have eggs and I have a loaf of bread that I should probably eat.” So I’d resigned myself to plain, ordinary scrambled eggs and toast.

And then when I got home, there was a package on my door step. My frozen, stupid, ice encased doorstep. I opened it to find my copy of the Joy The Baker Cookbook! I’d forgotten that I’d even ordered it! Honestly, I haven’t even had a chance to flip through it, yet. But I think that it was something about having Joy sit there on the counter with me that prompted me. I whisked up the eggs, sliced my bread and then thought, “Woah! I’m nearly to French toast!” But I’m not a huge lover of sweets. Not to the degree that I want to eat them for dinner. I saw an onion and a vine of tomatoes on the counter and boom–that was it.

And here’s the closest thing that you’ll get to a recipe:

I caramelized the onions in a little bit of butter. Recipes will tell you that it takes 10 minutes to caramelize onions but they are liars. It takes half an hour over medium heat.

When they’re done enough (trust your discretion), slice up one tomato and mince a clove of garlic, toss in salt and pepper and dry basil and oregano. Let them sit with the lid on for a little while. It’s done when the tomatoes get sweet and fall apart and it generally looks like a mess.

Whisk up two eggs in a bowl with a big pinch of salt and a medium size pinch of black pepper and a small pinch of cayenne. Soak two hunks of grainey bread in the egg mixture and then fry them in a skillet with 2 tablespoons of butter.

Then you just put it all together. I put a little of the tomato-onion stuff (I’m sure there’s a better word for that. “Compote?”) on the plate. I set one hunk of bread on top, a little more of the tomato mixture, and the last hunk of bread. And then I rained freshly grated Asiago cheese (which I bought on a whim last week and have not even remotely regretted despite knowing nothing about it at the time of purchase) down over top.

Frankly, it wouldn’t photograph well even if the lighting was excellent in my house, I’m pretty sure. But after every bite, I thought, “Oh my Lordy!” And to think that I was going to have plain, ‘ol scrambled eggs for dinner. Thanks for being my spirit animal, Joy.