2010: A review through food

I'm not a big New Year's Eve partygoer. I've been to some parties over the years, but generally I prefer to snuggle up with my husband, watch a movie, and avoid all the drunk drivers. Also, my husband is usually asleep by eleven.

I decided this year to make a great dinner for my husband to ring in the New Year, and I had the brilliant idea to make a dinner buffet that reflects all the things we did over the year. The highlight was our trip to Spain, of course, so I decided that tonight would be the night to attempt paella. And what goes better with paella than sangria!

Spain wasn't the only place we traveled, however. We went to Charleston, SC to celebrate our eight year wedding anniversary. We splashed around at the beach, had a carriage ride, and topped our evening off with dinner at the Peninsula Grill where we ate an amazing dinner of upscale, southern comfort food and the most delicious coconut cake ever baked (it's so famous you can order it online!). Naturally, I had to include coconut cake in the review of 2010 menu.

We also went to Atlanta for a baseball game, and what represents Georgia better than peaches (which we incidentally picked up at a roadside stand on our drive down). Naturally I had to make a peach cobbler, following the recipe of a good ol' Georgia girl, Paula Deen.

We also visited a few places in North Carolina, like Raleigh and Asheville, and had our share of visitors as well! One of our favorite places to bring visitors is Mac's Speed Shop for some Carolina BBQ. I've learned the difference between Western Carolina, Eastern Carolina, and South Carolina bbq and am happy to share my knowledge with visitors as they choose from the variety of sauces available at Mac's. Naturally, our New Year's feast had to include some pulled pork with a choice of Western or Eastern Carolina bbq sauce.

I rounded out our feast with chocolate frogs to remember my sister's visit to Charlotte for the opening of the newest Harry Potter movie. We both love Harry Potter, and it only seemed appropriate that her first visit to Charlotte coincide with the opening of the movie. I made chocolate frogs when she visited, but I tried a new recipe this time around and they were quite delicious.

I had a great 2010 and it was fun reminiscing about all the fun times as I ate some pretty darn good food. I hope you had a safe and fun new year as well!

(Pictures and recipes to come...)

Lego Harry Potter (or "How did you do that?")

After a day of football, homework, and cleaning out the closets, my husband and I were not in the mood to go anywhere on Saturday night, but we still wanted to do something. We tossed around a few ideas of things to do, but ultimately rejected all of them. A few weeks ago, I suggested buying a Playstation3 game that my husband and I could play together, and my husband was all for it. Unfortunately, finding a game we are both interested in and that I can actually play is a lot more challenging than it may seem. My gaming skills peaked with the original Nintendo. However, after much research, I decided that I could probably manage the Lego Harry Potter game.

Saturday night we walked to Walmart to buy it. Unfortunately, we waited for more than twenty minutes for someone to open the case and then gave up and walked home, and then watched Invictus for the fourteenth time. Thank you, HBO.

However, I was still determined to get a game that we could play together, and Sunday afternoon we went to another store to buy my - I mean, our Harry Potter game. And after watching a half of awful Carolina Panther football, we decided to play the game for a little while. That little while became two hours. It's a lot of fun and completely addictive.

We paid a good chunk of change upfront, but we now have hours of entertainment ahead of us. I'm sure I'll play the game on my own, but I really like that we have something we can do together. It's fun to figure out all the tricks and the spells, and laugh hysterically when we just can't do something. It may seem silly, and it's definitely a little childish, but I'm excited to have something we can both enjoy on our lazy nights in.

Happy Halloween!

That title is about the only thing I have to say about today. I'm not really a Halloween person.

I like candy. I like pumpkins. I caramel apples. But somewhere between college and now, I've just lost any semblance of enthusiam for Halloween. I don't get dressed up and hit the bars for costume contests, although I did invest in an orange Happy Halloween $5 tshirt from Target this year. I buy candy, but end up eating it all because even though every year I'm told "you'll get a few trick or treaters," I never get any. I decorate for fall and not Halloween because I'm lazy and I don't want to dig out two sets of decorations for Halloween and Thanksgiving. I hate scary movies. And as much as I love Harry Potter, I don't really associate it with Halloween.

I'm sure if I had kids or liked haunted houses or got trick or treaters or felt compelled to be a slutty nurse and pick up guys at a bar, I'd be more excited about Halloween. But for now, I live in a complex with only a few kids and none of my own, get nightmares about haunted houses, and don't need to dress up like a slutty nurse because I already have a cute husband. So I'm spending the day watching football (but sadly not my favorite team because they're playing at the same time as the Panthers), dipping sliced apples in homemade caramel dip, and thinking about how long I have to wait before I can put away the fall decorations and take out the Christmas ones.

Because I am definitely a Christmas person.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

I confess - I'm obsessed with Harry Potter. It's not a surprise to anyone who has spent any time with me, but I feel I must confess it in order for anyone who hasn't met me to understand this blog.

I enjoy reading a lot and always have. I don't read for fun very often, and I definitely do not have sophisticated taste in books, but I love to immerse myself in a well-written story. That's what I love about Harry Potter. The books are written so well, and tell such an interesting and detailed story, that I easily become lost in the stories of the young wizard and his friends.

I also love how the books matured as Harry matured. The first book was absolutely a children's story, and each one became more sophisticated, nuanced, and mature as the main character and the assumed reader grew up. Instead of outgrowing the books, which happens with most series, the books grow with the reader, creating a fictional friend along for the ride to adulthood.

I think this is what attracted me to the series. A friend of mine, who does have sophisticated literary tastes, recommended the books to me. Her first story as a newspaper reporter was to cover the release of the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. She read the first few books as research and thoroughly enjoyed them, and convinced me to read them too. I fell in love with them. I bought the first two and read them on the L around Chicago as I commuted between school, my social work internship, and my student affairs internship. I told myself I would wait to read the third and fourth books later. I think I lasted a week before I read the third book because I was so eager to know what happened. I just fell in love with this innocent, orphaned wizard who had been treated so poorly in the Muggle world, but who was so remarkable in the wizarding world.

By the time books five through seven came out, I was one of the people at Borders waiting for my book at midnight. In fact, I lived in the Eastern time zone for the last book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, so I was home with my book before they even went on sale for my sister in Iowa. I admit it, I felt a great deal of satisfaction at having my book first. I might be a little competitive. That's another blog.

The books became movies of course, and I love those as well. I'm particularly fascinated with the behind the scenes features that come on the special edition DVDs. I feel like those give great insight into the story being told which adds to my enjoyment and appreciation of the movie. Yes, I know I'm a dork.


Naturally, I love to share my obsession with others. I convinced my sister to read the books and she became obsessed too and my husband has read them too. However, I've been impatiently waiting to pass along this magical world to someone else and I finally had the opportunity last week when my nephew turned six.


I wasn't sure what the appropriate age was to start reading the Harry Potter books, but I did some research and found that age six is generally accepted as a good age to read aloud. I decided months ago that I was going to get my nephew the book to read aloud. Then I found out about the Harry Potter Lego video game. My nephew is obsessed with the Lego video games so I was pretty sure that he'd be interested in the Harry Potter one. Sure enough, a couple months before his birthday, he called me (well, my Harry Potter fan sister who was visiting him called me) and asked for the Harry Potter Lego Wii game for his birthday. I knew I could accommodate that request.

However, it was important to me that he be introduced to the book first and hopefully engage with the wizarding world in his imagination, not just in the video game. We read a few chapters before his birthday. I think it was difficult for him to process without any pictures to guide him, but he seemed to enjoy the story, especially when strange things happened that couldn't be explained rationally. I enjoyed asking him "How do you think Harry did that?" and waiting for him to whisper, "Magic" in response. We also drew our own pictures to help him visualize all the different scenes we read about, and that seemed to help as well. After a few days, he seemed to grasp the story more and was eager to find out what happened to Harry.

Reading is a fundamental skill that all kids need to learn and can therefore seem like a chore. I hope that by introducing my nephew to this amazing, magical world that he can visit whenever he wants, he'll develop a love and appreciation of books. It's a gift I was given as a child, and the one I hope to pass along to all the kids in my life.

Frequent Flyer

I am an impulsive person - or at least it seems that way. I'm actually not as impulsive as a I may seem to others. Really, I think about decisions a lot- almost obsessively - but I don't always vocalize my thoughts, and sometimes I'm not even fully aware that I've been tossing the idea around in my head. So I know that it often makes it look like I made an impulsive decision.

Take today, for example. I just booked a flight to Milwaukee and I'm leaving at 9:30am... tomorrow. My nephew's birthday is Thursday and I'm going to surprise him.

But really, I've been thinking about this for weeks. I wanted to visit, but flights are expensive. Plus, I didn't know if I would have a job, so I didn't want to make plans too early. Unfortunately, the closer to departure, the higher the price of the flight so it quickly became cost prohibitive and I didn't think I would be able to do it.

However, I do have frequent flyer miles.

A little known travel secret - sometimes it is possible to book last minute trips for a minimum number of frequent flyer miles, especially in the middle of the week. If the flight isn't full, airlines would rather fill the seats than leave them empty.

So I'd been tossing around the idea of visiting for a while, but didn't think it was possible. Then my husband told me he was going to be out of town in a couple of weeks, and I thought, "Hmm, maybe I can go somewhere too." I started looking at flights to Milwaukee but realized the timing of the trip probably wasn't great because my nephew would be starting school. That change in schedule would be disruptive enough in his life without my visit. So I started thinking about this week again.

Last night, my husband and I started planning some other trips so I was fooling around on the travel websites. I thought about this week again, and decided to check on flights using my miles. I was shocked to see that I could book a last minute roundtrip flight for the minimum number of miles and decided that was a good enough deal for me to go. So in less than 24 hours, I'll be in Milwaukee!

I'm very lucky to have these options available to me. I love having the freedom to just pick up and go, and I love having the resources to be able to do it. I try to be responsible with money so I'd never drop $1000+ on a last minute flight unless it was absolutely necessary. But I flew a lot last year and accumulated a lot of miles and I think a trip like this is a perfect excuse to use those miles. I wouldn't be able to do this if I wasn't a housewife.

I'm so excited to give my nephew his present in person and welcome him to the world of Harry Potter!

Nothing to say

I have sat down to write a post at least once a day over the last week, but haven't been able to formulate a complete idea. I contemplated writing a post full of the random things that pop into my head, but decided nobody needed to be exposed to the unedited ramblings of my brain. At least not yet.

Instead, I've been staring at my little box on Blogger, trying to figure out what to say. And I still have nothing much to write about, so I guess I'll just fill you in on what I've been doing over the last week.

Nothing.

That's not true actually. I've been very busy writing an article for publication, and my writer's block seems to be lifting. However, my interest in the topic I'm writing about is rapidly decreasing, so that has the potential to be a problem. At this point, I just want to finish it so I don't have to worry about it anymore.

I'm also applying for jobs. I think I sent out five resumes in the last week. I don't think I'm cut out for this housewife business, at least not long term. I've been at home for almost a year, and I think I'm reaching my limit. I can't say I'm more "housewifey" than I was a year ago except that I am actually in my house more than before we moved to Charlotte, and I don't think that really counts as a housewife activity.

I also watched Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince about sixteen times last week. It's in the HBO rotation, and I have 14 HBO channels so it's on television quite a bit. Most people would probably get sick of a movie if they saw it sixteen times in one week, but I still felt the need to watch it On Demand this afternoon. Nevermind that I also have it on DVD. And I decided to re-read the book. I believe that is what is known as hyperfocus.

If only my research or cleaning were as exciting to me as Harry Potter...