Housewarming

Our housewarming party lived up to its name: 20 people, lots of baking, and the rare 90 degree Seattle day meant it was hot. Here's the menu:

• Green chile (pork and tomatillos)
• Red curry with tofu and string beans
• Baba ghanouj
• Tomato and bread salad
• Kale with peanut butter
• Various breads, plus some naan from dough which was to be bread but came out much too wet
• Blueberry buckle
• Homemade honey wine

A housewarming present.

Lindsay shapes a pretty loaf.

The honey wine was fizzy and sweet, and it had a faint mint flavor. My guess is that it was something like 3 or 4% alcohol. Next time I'll let it ferment in my closet until it's dry.

Honey wine with a slice of lime.

I finished up my calculus class and Lindsay finished up hers; our students did pretty well. Things are calm now, as illustrated by this still life:

After Lindsay's prelims in September, we will rush off on the train to Vancouver. Any restaurant (or other) recommendations?

Apartment in Order and Apricot Sorbet

It's hard to make an apartment look neat in pictures! (Or in person, for that matter.)

I thought our place was looking tidy, but what I notice first in this picture is the precarious pillow. What I notice second is the cables. Last I see all the things I like about our apartment, like the vast windows and the staircase behind our kitchen table.

Our bedroom comes off a little bit better:

My favorite part of the apartment is the kitchen, which Lindsay and I have kept busy improving. If you look out the door in the bedroom picture, you can see a spice rack that we put up. This picture is what you see if you walk out that door and turn right:

This is what we've been eating for dessert lately:

Lindsay made the cake. It's a perfectly executed Reine de Saba cake from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The stuff on the side is an apricot sorbet that I adapted from a Martha Stewart recipe for cherry ice. I traded apricots for cherries, roasted them, and put the whole thing in an ice cream maker. Here's the recipe.

• 2 pounds apricots
• juice from 1/4 lime
• 1/4 cup and 2 tbs. honey
• 1/2 cup white wine

Tear each apricot in half (along the seam, of course!) and lay them in a single layer in a roasting pan, torn side up. Put them in a 450 degree oven for 15-20 minutes, until they start to brown in spots. Remove them, let them cool a bit, and turn them into mush by whatever method suits your fancy. I used an immersion blender, but even a potato masher should do a decent job. Add the remaining ingredients and taste. You might need to add more honey. Remember that it will be less sweet when you freeze it, and so it should really taste sweeter than you think is right. Let it cool off for a few hours in the fridge, or for thirty minutes in the freezer if you're really impatient like I was, and freeze in a quart-sized ice cream maker. It's soft but still great after this, and after an hour in the freezer it will really be terrific. It stays reasonably soft in the freezer, probably due to all the wine in it.

Apartment in Disarray

I spent last month moving into a new apartment with Lindsay. Here's our bedroom the day of the move:

The living room was also a mess:

It's been fun watching it turn into a lovely place. I'll take some more flattering pictures tomorrow afternoon when the sunlight drifts through our living room windows (they face south). For now, here's a good look at me and our shower curtain.