DON'T PANIC

Imagine that title in large friendly letters. . . In case you don't get it, it's a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. If you didn't get it, then you probably also didn't get the reference to the book under Interesting topics relating to our wedding on our wedding website. What's that?! You never clicked on the link?! Well here it is reprinted for you:

According to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, our wedding date is the binary equivalent of the "answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything." Can you think of a more auspicious wedding date?

I even wrote about the importance of the wedding date in our wedding announcement for the Anchorage Daily News. You probably didn't see it there though. Since I never actually sent the form in. In case you're interested

SRH and SPK will marry in Boston on 10/10/10. SRH’s especially excited about this date; according to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, their wedding date is the binary equivalent of the "answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything." They will have an Alaska reception July 3, 2011. SPK and SRH met while volunteering for a homeless outreach program sponsored by Park Street Church. They are both board members of The Network of Community Food Providers in Chelsea, MA and continue to serve the underprivileged on Boston Common with their church. By vocation, SPK is a senior draftsman at McNamara and Salvia, Inc. By avocation, he’s a landscape photographer who looks forward to yearly visits to Alaska. SRH is a reference librarian at the Insurance Library Association of Boston. She is the daughter of DMH and KLH, of Anchorage, and a graduate of East High. SRH is a 2001 graduate of Hillsdale College and 2002 graduate of Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science, where she earned her masters degree. SPK is the son of GK and DK of Halifax, PA and a 1995 graduate of Pennsylvania College of Technology.

I know, it's not thrilling, but my mom REALLY wanted me to publish it in the paper, so hopefully, four months late, that fulfills that dream.

Anyway, I used the above title to let you know I won't be posting for a bit again, we're going to Central PA. I don't want to accuse it of being the hinterlands, but there's only dial up Internet service where we stay. . . It would be impossible for me to type all this drivel on dial up (aren't you ever so grateful for technology now :)).

Have a good President's Day weekend!

C is for Cookies, S is for Stories so long and boring you'll want to shoot yourself. . .

This weekend I had a "girl's night" with women from my Thursday Night Outreach Group. I had planned on making a variety of cookies for dessert but one thing led to another and I was so far behind by the time Saturday rolled around that the only thing I'd managed to make ahead was a sad looking ice box cake.

The ice box cake was originally going to be chocolatey and yummy, like smitten kitchen's, but I couldn't find the chocolate wafers. Instead I found Anna's Ginger Thins (total aside, but, for a little anna's fun, you can take their cookie quiz). I also saw a tip from kitchn lifted from the LA Times that suggested using a food processor for making whipped cream that stayed stiff. A few more googled attempts and I decided on a maple flavored cream to go with the ginger flavor. Once it finally came time to make the whipped cream I decided to add a little brandy too.

The problem was I haven't really ever made whipped cream before and the directions from the Times and Kitchn weren't really step by step. . . my cream was not really whipped in the end, but it was a nice flavor. It didn't really fill the bowl well though for layering. My boy stepped in with our new whipped cream maker, but it only takes half a pint at a time and each use requires a new nitrogen cartridge so that seemed pricey and useless after two tries. I knew that the cream was going to sink over night, but it was a pathetic little "cake" that greeted us the next day. Since we'd been given the trifle bowl from one of the women coming, I was determined to sit my super sad looking pile of goo out. Luckily, the flavors worked well and the women are the super supportive kind!

As the week heading toward Saturday progressed and I hadn't prepped any food nor made a move toward cleaning my house, I remembered that palmiers we're fairly simple to make and that a blogger I love, Joy the Baker, had written about them awhile ago. The blogosphere blew up about them briefly just before Valentine's day ruining any attempt at originality I might have had, but I've already mentioned who I was cooking for, so it wasn't a huge deal :). To dress up my palmiers I used a little raspberry jam and shaved on some chocolate (using a microplane we also got for our wedding -- I LOVE that tool) . I am not sure that you could taste the chocolate but people seemed impressed by the palmiers.

Instead of the original 13 women I'd planned on, in the end there were only six of us. Four of the women brought another dessert to share. Chocolate chip cookies, brownies, a red velvet cake and flourless chocolate torte all came to keep my contributions company. I may not have been successful at providing a cookie buffet, but we certainly had plenty to feast on.

I was thinking about all of this today when I saw this blog post on Serious Eats. They apparently got the idea for cookie stuffed cookies from this blog, but then they took it so much farther! I wasn't sure how I felt about the cookie stuffed cookie idea, but it did remind me of this salon article about cookies and pizza . I was horrified about the idea at first when I thought they were combined, but apparently they are only packaged together, like a killer lunchable.

Anyway, there's a fairly lengthy blog post for you on basically nothing, but I'd totally welcome your thoughts on cookie stuffed cookies or even DiGiorno pizza and cookies. Heck, I'd take your thoughts on any subject really, it's just good to be getting back into the blogger swing of things.

More on Homelessness

Yeah, still no real posts, but I thought I would pass on this link to a Salon article somewhat related to homelessness because I thought it was mildly interesting: http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/02/15/what_i_learned_pretending_to_be_homeless/index.html

Enjoy.

So two posts in two days! That's pretty big time folks. Today's is kind of a cop out post. A friend who used to be involved in our Thursday night ministry wrote a post for her new ministry's website and I thought I would re-post it here since I haven't talked about Thursday night outreach in awhile. It was a timely post, since I'd just been thinking about the person she was describing. I have a terrible scan from a newspaper of him (he's the one in the middle) on my computer that I'd just come across yesterday (I've posted it on my blog before).

Souce: The Boston Metro

It's been so long

Yes, I know that I always write that or some variation after a long hiatus. I have been asked yet again if I ever plan on posting. As always, the answer is don't give up on me, I'll get back to posting at some point! Clearly a lot has happened since 9/28/10 and I owe all of you loyal readers who haven't already written me off a lot of blog posts.

The thing is, I can't make up for the four months of not writing all at once so I'm starting slowly (I mean come on people I still owe half of you thank you notes from our wedding and shower still!!!).

I will try to write about how I think the Franklin Park Zoo is the best deal in town for events (and how maybe they should charge more -- gasp!-- since they're looking for suggestions).

I will also try to write about how our wedding was PERFECT. I know lots of brides say that, but mine really was. We struggled to come up with something to put on the survey as something we wish had gone differently. I finally answered that I was disappointed that the pink cotton candy I had requested TWICE in writing and was assured in writing we could get was instead blue cotton candy, but really when that's your biggest problem, you're really grasping.

I will even try to post some pictures here of the big day (you know, now that we have a computer up and running and can look at some pictures). Until then, you can definitely look at some teasers here and here if you haven't already seen those.

Anyway, all that to say I'll be back. I know I have stuff to write about, but I'm just not ready yet. In the meantime, I wanted to share this fun link with you: http://www.acme.com/heartmaker/ so you can go have some Valentine's fun (like the kind I had at the top of the page). My boy and I had our first date on 2/13 so we already celebrated v-day, but we hope you enjoy the link on this, the proper day to celebrate.