the Northern Hemisphere trip

** Sorry for the technical difficulties- YouTube didn't approve of my original musical accompaniment. It should work now!**

We got back from our epic Northern Hemisphere whirlwind trip about a week and a half ago and we are still glowing from all the fun...and finally not jet-lagged. I had just over three weeks of family time, friend time, birthday time (hello 30!) and treat time with some favorite American delicacies (hush puppies! Carolina BBQ! Reese's peanut butter cups! bagels!). Big B was gone a bit longer what with his trip to Brown University (a total success by the way). Our return wasn't the smoothest- more in a later post- but it is great to back home in Cape Town, enjoying the beautiful weather, catching up with friends and family, and setting our sights on spring.

There was just too much goodness to share conventional blog style so instead here is the under four minute highlight reel! Enjoy!!

3 things

Tomorrow I begin the Great Northern Hemisphere Tour of 2011. There will be visits with friends & family, hot weather (at least once I get to the US), oodles of good food & wine, a special wedding, belated, future, and on-time birthdays to celebrate, a reunion with Big B who left nearly two weeks ago, and a birthday of note for yours truly. I'm beside myself with excitement. I'm even taking my famous guava swirl cheesecake on the road, where it will be making guest appearances in York and ol' Virginny with the two fams. Good times.

But before I say adieu for now, here are three quick stories of the recent goings-on around here.

Brendan has been an all star in the birthday department (which will be getting its own post next month). We went away to Franschhoek a few weekends back for a pre-bday celebration as I won't be seeing him until after the big day. Among the many wonderful gifties I received were two pizza baking trays, thus ensuring Brendan with an abundance of my absolute favorite savory treat food for years to come. I wanted to take the trays for a test drive before he left, so I dug out a pizza crust recipe and got to work. However, being winter here, it was a cold, drizzly day and I was nervous the dough wouldn't rise properly. Time for Plan B: I filled a hot water bottle, rested the dough bowl on top, tucked it into our bed, swaddled it with the duvet, and voila! Parker and I might have crawled under the covers to spoon the bowl, enjoy the warmth, and have a nap at some stage too. The end result was delish. I highly recommend the snuggle-your-dough-to-make-it-rise method.

On said weekend away we came to possess about 30 lemons. I'm not going to go into details about how these lemons came to join us, but let it suffice to say they became ours after a champagne tasting at the Graham Beck Estate*. After a few glasses of pre-lunch champagne, anything sounds like a great idea. So last weekend I made lemon curd with my friend Annabelle. It is tart and bright yellow and the next best thing to sunshine on a winter's day.

*As an aside, the Graham Beck Brut was the sparkly stuff we served at our wedding in Connecticut AND it was the bubbles of choice for Obama's inauguration. I can't believe he took our idea. I bet he gave our wire beaded animals as favors too.

Finally, a lesson in parenting. When asked what he wanted for his birthday, or nephew James asked for a dog. Kate, being the generous mom that she is, responded that James could have Digger. James was thrilled. Digger is her parents' dog, who lives in South Africa (while Ant, Kate, James & Matt live in England). James is now a proud "owner" of a dog that his parents never have to care for. Best parenting move ever! To continue this trend, Brendan and I decided to give him a "cat", so James got a large printout of Parker to call his very own. As James prefers chats with Parker to us on Skype, this seemed a great plan. So Parker now lives a double life, and James got two pets for his birthday. 

Enjoy the rest of June. Have a glass of champagne on the 23rd for the youngest looking 30 year old around!

Friday movies

*sorry for the glitch with the movies- should be all better now!*

It has been a great week! Write Our Future is off the ground and doing well. As of last night we have raised funds to feed 12 schoolchildren for the year, and we trust that that this achievement will only multiply further. Thanks to everyone for their support. To keep up with our progress, go to our website (www.writeourfuture.org). From there you can click to follow us on Facebook and receive email updates- two more great ways to stay connected!

Since it is Friday and since we are off to the movies tonight, I wanted to share a couple of home videos with you. The first is from my family's visit to Cape Town. On New Years Eve we had dinner at an awesome restaurant at Spier wine estate called Moyo. We sat in a treetop table and enjoyed all the fun entertainment...some of us more than others as evidenced by this video.

The other is of our super nephew James having a bit of fun by the pool with Brendan. This might just have to make another appearance with the little fella turns 21!

We are off to see Black Swan tonight. There is a significant delay in the release of movies here as compared to the US, so I hope we can at least get most of the top contenders in before the Oscars roll around. We saw Winter's Bone (good, albeit depressing) on Tuesday, and are off to see The King's Speech next Friday. Do you have any favorite Oscar contenders?

Happy Thanksgiving!

This day always serves as a wonderful reminder to stop and take stock of the multitude of things I have to be thankful for: good health, an peach of a husband, wonderful family and incredible friends who are like family, one seriously hilarious kitty, a beautiful home in a beautiful country, wonderful food, upcoming visits with loved ones, great books, inspiring travel, peace and joy and happiness....and pumpkin pie for breakfast in the morning!

Brendan and I have agreed that every Thanksgiving in our future will start with pumpkin pie for breakfast. I've planned a wonderful little feast for our first Thanksgiving in Cape Town: roast turkey, peppery whipped potatoes, gingered green beans, apricot and hazelnut stuffing, caramelized corn with mint, that jiggly cranberry sauce from a can that I just can't get enough of, and pumpkin pie for dessert.

So be thankful for all the good things you've got, enjoy the day, and have some pie!

soccer, mustache, eggnog

You were sold on this post as soon as you read the title, right? What do these three things have in common? They were part of our life in the past week (or, in the case of the 'stache, the past month).

Last Wednesday we went to the absolutely lovely new stadium in Cape Town to watch the USA soccer team play South Africa for the Mandela Cup. Big B and I got totally decked out.

Our seats were *incredible*...and this is coming from the world's least sports fanatical person. I enjoyed my status as the odd one out in red, white, and blue while the other 59,999 people around me were in green and yellow. The USA won- go figure. I also had a quote on the front page of the Cape Times the next morning where I was blabbering on about how the USA was going to win. Clearly I missed my calling in high stakes sports gambling.

For more pictures of our dress up silliness click here.

It is now the fourth week of Movember, and thus time for your latest 'stache update. In a show of solidarity, I decided to participate myself. That's the kind of wife I am.

All this in one week! I continue to amaze myself.

And finally, I've been thoroughly and completely bitten by the holiday spirit bug. I am out-of-my gourd excited for Thanksgiving tomorrow (my absolute most favorite holiday of all time). The Elf soundtrack has made it's first (and second, and third) appearance. And I made homemade eggnog. I have very wonderful memories of my Grammy making eggnog for the family at Christmas time. She and my grandpa would get milk delivered to their house in glass bottles, and she would save up these bottles and fill them with the goodstuff. It was just heavenly. So I dug deep into my Schrier genes and made some pretty good eggnog myself.

Eggnog

serves 2 generously

2 cups milk

2 eggs, well beaten

2 tablespoons honey or confectioners sugar

a splash of vanilla extract

a few good shakes of cinnamon

one shake of nutmeg

a healthy glug of whiskey, bourbon, or brandy (if you are into that sort of thing, which I am. besides, i reckon it offsets the raw egg)

Mix all these fine ingredients together. After vigorously whisking in a bowl, I poured it into a milk jug and shook the living daylights of out it just to be sure it was properly mixed.

Enjoy by the glass, or on top of your morning oatmeal as I did this morning (pointedly ignoring the fact that there is whiskey in it). What's better than that?

last post from this side

Well, this is it! We are sitting in the Sheraton at JFK getting ready for our final night's sleep in the USA for a while. Was a bit of an eventful day (finding out your car has a dead battery the day you are leaving is not stress reducing), but it ended well (help from great friends and a new battery) and here we are. Parker has no idea what is in store for him, but is enjoying looking out the window from our 5th floor room.

We'll keep you all posted from the other side, once we are settled into our new CT of Cape Town. Thanks for all the love, support, encouragement, and good wishes everyone has shared!!

Over and out!

birthday celebrations, part 2

Friday we zipped out of town to Vermont for the weekend. I love the Green Mountain State and Brendan hadn't been there, so it seemed just the place for a joint birthday getaway. Parker, however, was none too pleased to see us leave. He watched from the window as we packed the car up.

pre-departure snap

we've arrived!

We stayed at a bed and breakfast on an 18th century farm. 

There were chickens, goats, horses...all very delightful and farmy. The B&B was on the Battenkill River and had a few miles of walking trails on site. 

Saturday was Brendan's birthday and we had big plans. I tip toed downstairs to sneak us up some tea in bed, and then he opened presents and got some birthday skype wishes from the fam. After a very hearty farm breakfast we were off for a canoe trip on the Battenkill.

 

It was a lovely warm morning, and we had the river to ourselves for most of the 3 hour journey.

After a quick clean up, we were off to a local pub for the USA vs Ghana game. 

Sadly, the USA is out but it was a great result for the African continent. We resolved henceforward to support Ghana fully. 

That evening there was a birthday dinner, a candle blown out, and a wish made that will hopefully come true.

Sunday brought another walk, another fun farm breakfast, and another game of soccer (England's loss prompted further resolve to root for Ghana). We made a slow trip back home, stopping at all sorts of places along the way, including the famous Vermont Country Store.

This classic old general store-style shop has all sorts of things, ranging from the very useful to the very silly but still fun (I would put their Yodeling Pickle in this category).

The masks also fall into that latter category.

And, it being Vermont, there was plenty of maple syrup to be had.

We tried maple mustard, maple cheese, maple dips, and maple cookies.

There were more stops at farm stalls and country shops picking up goodies (I'll do a separate post on the food later on), and posing for a funny photo here and there.

Our final stop was just outside Brattleboro at a river we spied on the way up. We had a picnic lunch and a dip in the cool water before getting onto the highway. A great end to a lovely weekend.

birthday celebrations, part 1

Our birthdays are 3 days apart, so each year brings a bundle of joint festivities and this year was no exception. Let's begin at the beginning...

Wednesday was my birthday, and I woke up to tea in bed and loads of fab pressies. I was seriously spoilt by the wonderful people in my life...and I just love it! Later that morning was the USA vs Algeria game, and I am happy to report that the anniversary of my birth brought the boys some good luck.

After the game, we returned to my office to share some coconut custard birthday pie (my fav) with the work friends. Yum.

The day ended splendidly with a great meal at home. I'm much more apt to want to cook a really decadent meal at home than go out, and we had a fun time cooking, singing, and dancing around the kitchen together. Being the mildly food-obsessed person that I am, I planned a menu a few weeks ago that included some of my favorite ingredients and dishes. 

We started with rosemary peach champagne cocktails (recipe at the end of the post). Nothing tastes more celebratory than champagne. 

prosciutto and melon for a starter

veggie and shrimp paella for the main course

and berries and cream for dessert

The courses fit wonderfully together, were really scrumptious, and provided some tasty leftovers. All in all, it was a great start to the end of my 20s!

Rosemary peach champagne cocktails

(adapted from Cooking Light magazine)

1 bottle champagne or sparkling wine

2 peaches, diced to 1 inch pieces

1 spring rosemary

honey

1 cup water

Put water, rosemary, and honey (I eyeballed this, but estimate I used about 1/4 cup) into a small pot and bring to boil. Let boil for roughly 5 minutes, then remove from heat and cool to room temp. Remove rosemary. Place peaches and rosemary simply syrup into blender and blend until smooth. Pass through sieve to remove any pulpy bits (and use this pulp in a smoothie- it's delish!), and then let this rosemary peach puree sit in your fridge for 4 hours (better if overnight). I made these up by putting 4 Tbs of the peach mixture into a glass and then topping with champagne, but the champs really reacts with the peach and gets very foamy and hard to pour. Instead, mix half the peach mixture with a bottle of champs in a pitcher, taste, and add more peach as necessary. Garnish glasses with a rosemary spring, and enjoy!

weekend in review

It's been a great, albeit tiring, few days around here. I am starting to think that's how we are going to feel about most days from here on out.

World Cup excitement continues. Friday was the USA vs Slovenia game. My fantastic boss let me leave work for a couple hours that morning to enjoy the game (she's the best!). We shouted and cheered as the USA came back from their deficit, were shocked by the bonkers ref who disallowed their winning goal, and generally had a fun time of it all. Brendan has really shown awesome spirit for his adopted country :)

Saturday brought our enormous moving to Africa yard sale. Pricing and set up was a very long and tiring process (especially since we live on a third floor apartment and had to shlep everything down), but it was a tremendous success. We managed to off-load 80% of our remaining stuff, and a friend/neighbor is holding a benefit yard sale next weekend (proceeds going to support an orphanage in Haiti) so he will be getting our remnants later this week. 

The neighboring kids on both sides were out as well. Two of them decided to maximize on the hot day and steady stream of customers by setting up a lemonade stand. Gotta love those budding entrepreneurs!

Our other neighbor, Ayo, harnessed his creative juices.