Jerm and Pan Do the Nelson-Atkins
Pan has a week off from doing her medical rotations, so we decided to get out and about in Kansas City. Since we live only about 10 minutes from the
Nelson-Atkins Art Museum here in Kansas City and neither of us had visited in years, we figured this was as good a place to visit as any. The Nelson also just recently opened the
Bloch building addition, so it was nice to see the new digs for the art.
In no particular order, here are some pics:
This is the restaurant area of the museum, from the 2nd floor view.
This is me standing (like a dork) in front of a giant-sized Buddha.
If you squint really hard, you can see a speck of a person standing next to the shuttlecock on the north lawn of the museum, near the reflection pool. This is Pan.
We went to the museum on a fairly miserable weather day, but this garden to the south of the building was still looking pretty good.
This is the view from the South entrance to the museum. You can see the famous shuttlecocks in the distance.
Labels: Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins, touristy
A sewing FO!
Well, still not much knitting going on around here, though I did just start a baby blanket for a friend. More about that later. There was another bridal shower for Katy last weekend, so I was working on a project for that, hence very little knitting. I did have time to knit up these two Mason-Dixon dishcloths for the bride's mother.
This is the project I was working on for the shower! I sewed Christmas stockings for Katy and Clay. These stockings are a family tradition of ours, and I know we didn't have any Christmas decorations our first Christmas, so I thought this would be a fun gift. Plus, I learned to hand-embroider for the names. Fun!
Ugh, this picture was taken before I figured out how to turn the flash back on. Hopefully pictures from here on out will be better lit!
Knitting update coming sometime. I have a baby blanket that I made a while ago that still needs to be blogged. And I owe you a garden update! We have 28 tomatoes growing!!
Labels: knitting, sewing
Homemade Tortillas
I decided that I would prefer to have cheaper, better tortillas, which prompted me to buy some masa in order to make my own. It was actually pretty easy, just mixing the masa with water, rolling out the dough flat, then cooking them for about a minute on each side, before covering with a towel, in order to keep the tortillas warm and moist.
Here is Pan rolling out the dough. I tried earlier, but was rather unsuccessful.
The tortillas are cooking on the reverse (flat) side of our grillpan. Only a minute on each side.
The finished, delicious products. I definitely recommend it, as the masa was pretty cheap and the tortillas were better than any tortilla I've bought from the store.
Labels: cooking, tortilla
Bridal Shower
This is the reason I haven't been posting much lately! I hosted a bridal shower for Katy last Saturday, so between the prepping and recovering, I haven't blogged lately!
Here are the hand-made invites. On the left is the closed view and on the right the open view, minus important identifying details. You know, to ward off the creeps.
The shower was quite lovely, if I do say so myself. It featured tons of good food (all homemade) and three awesome homemade cheesecakes. I was a bit worried about one of the cheesecakes, as it was a new recipe, but they all turned out great!
Black Forest Cheesecake
Toffee Chunk Cheesecake
Vanilla Bean Cheesecake
The damage!
A few shots of the tablescape, if you will. And I think you will!
Last but not least, Oreo Ball Truffles that I made for favors. Yummy!
Making all this food just encourages my plan to someday open some sort of cafe. I'm thinking it can be combined with a knitting store, right next to my future office!
Labels: bridal shower, cheesecake, food
Grilled Chicken a la Jerm
This isn't my proudest creation, because it didn't exactly turn out ideally. Basically, I bought a whole chicken, cut it in half, removing the wings, seasoned it, grilled it over hickory and charcoal, but I applied my homemade barbecue sauce too early, so it resulted in a thick charred exterior, although the interior remained juicy and flavorful. It was still pretty good, but it would have been better if I applied the barbecue sauce when the chicken was more fully cooked. Oh well, c'est la vie.
We also had to grill a bunch of tomatoes for a spread that Pan was making for Katy's bridal shower, so we grilled the tomatoes along with a red pepper, pablano pepper, and banana pepper that will be used in a future homemade salsa. The picture stinks, because either the lens was smudged from the smoke or it's just another of the recently-taken blurry pictures from this camera.
Labels: cooking, food, grill, peppers, tomatoes
Change is the Spice of Life
First off, Happy Father's Day.
This last week was a busy one, especially for Pan, so that we weren't able to make very many delectable dishes. It also means that we will likely have a mini-onslaught of blog posts to make up for our lack of posts lately.
Anyway, we had to re-arrange our house for Katy's bridal shower which Pan hosted at our house, so we decided to change up our dining and living rooms to keep things interesting and hopefully create a more wide-open space. Preliminarily, this is what has resulted: (sorry for the blurry pictures, but I think our camera has been wacky lately)
(dining room)
(living room, for now)
This is how our house will appear for a little while, at least. It seems to make everything feel a little bigger, but I'm not sure how much better it will be from a functional standpoint. Trial and error, I suppose.
Labels: house
Our cat is weird
Labels: cat, Gizmo
Where's the beef?
So, I wasn't originally planning on blogging this, because it's not really all that special, exciting, interesting, etc. But, then I saw and tasted the finished product, and Pan ran and got the camera.
Basically, we took a roast, marinated it in a marinade recipe from Pan's mom, and grilled it over charcoal and hickory. This is the first time I've actually used wood in my grilling, and I think it may have spurred me to use wood every time I grill. The hickory smoke was extremely strong and helped get the fire hotter than charcoal normally does. It made for a very tasty roast and a very hickory-smelling me for the rest of the evening.
(Action shot!!)
And here was the finished juicy and delicious product.
Labels: beef, cooking, grilling, roast
Look what I made!
That's right, I knit this shirt. For those of you in the knitting know, it's Soleil from Knitty (spring 2005). Pardon the goofy expression. I haven't actually blocked this yet, but I'm wearing it anyway. I hope the knitting police don't come to get me!
Here's a close up of the lace at the bottom of the shirt.
I knit this over Spring Break and then sort of forgot about it. I tried it on once at knitting group and felt fat, so I stuffed it in a bag. But I pulled it out again this morning and decided to give it a go. It's a little shorter than I would like, but I have issues with wearing my shirts too long, so there you go. I also left the shoulder straps plain, without any crochet edging. I sort of like the way they curl, and I think the narrower strap is more flattering. I may add something later, we'll see.
The yarn I used was Classic Elite Premiere, in some numbered colorway. I could go look on the ball band, but I'm lazy. It took around 4.5 skeins, I think I have 1.5 skeins left over, what should I do with them? I love this yarn. It's a cotton/tencel blend and is incredibly soft with a very nice drape. I would definitely use this again, it's perfect for a summer top!
