New Year's Resolution

Mojito Cake

I really miss cooking and baking.  Back in NoVA I cooked all kinds of fun stuff.  At one point, Miss Mississippi and I had an unofficial "bake-off" going.  My specialties included Mojito Cake, Plum Port Tart, Cheesy Cauliflower Soup, Shepherd's Pie and Tikka Masala (ok- that may have been Mr. Ginger's specialty.)  Point being, we moved, I got knocked up which led to lots of food aversions, and then Grandma Steve started cooking in bulk so that I could survive what I fondly think of as the Dark Age and... I stopped cooking.  But I love, love, love to cook.  It's so therapeutic and rewarding.  I love using all of the gadgets and experimenting with interesting ingredients.  When I bought the Cake Love cookbook, I read the entire thing because Warren Brown not only provides the recipes to his cult classics, but he also includes lots of cooking and baking lessons between cakes.  If you have never experienced a Cake Love cake, I highly recommend a trip to D.C.  If that's not feasible, just order the cookbook.  You'll be glad you did. 

Now that I am a WAHM (work at home mom, in case you're checking me out in the singles ads), I want to get back into the habit of cooking.  Most days Grandma Steve comes over to help with daycare, and sometime around 2:00 pm she says, "So what should I make you for dinner?"  Is this awesome?  Yes.  Are you jealous?  More than likely.  And although I by no means plan to stop taking advantage of this glorious situation, I need to get back into the swing of things.  The reason my mom is the best cook ever is because she cooks.  I want the Dude to refer to me as the best (or maybe second best) cook ever, so I think I'd better step up my game. 

Here's the plan:
1) I am going to participate in my cousin's baking club called Bake 52.  When it is my turn to host, I will blog here about the recipe I have chosen.  Every other week I will post pictures/comments to that host's blog.  This means that in 2012 I will bake at least 52 items.  That's probably more recipes than I have cooked and baked in the last year combined! 
2) I am going to attempt to cook at least one vegetarian recipe per week.  If you have any suggestions, please let me have them because this is a big goal for a carnivore like me and other than Cooking Light I don't know where to start.

So, a month early, here is my official and public New Year's Resolution.  I am going to cook.  Often.  And if you bring the wine, I'll feed you.

Fall.  Autumn.  Also know as the segue between Hot and Cold.  Fall is like...it's like when your hot chocolate gets too cold drink as hot chocolate, but it's still too warm to talk yourself into believing it's just chocolate milk.  Or, maybe it's like when you have the flu and you have a fever so you know you need to cool off, but you're somehow freezing and you just want to crawl into bed and shove a blow dryer under the covers near your feet.  It's this weird in between season that doesn't really have that much to offer.  School is in full swing, there aren't many vacation days happening, the sun starts to disappear and your body starts to crave everything cream and butter just when you drop a pants size.  No?  You don't feel that way?  You think Fall is amazing?  Huh.  That's weird.  I'm pretty sure Fall is just the price we have to pay for Summer and Christmas, but to each his own.

Here in San Diego, Fall is both Indian Summer and cold/flu/allergy season.  The Santa Ana's blow through and dry everyone out, but at least we get to bask in a few stolen days (ok, weeks) of hot hot heat when we know deep down inside we should be wearing boots and scarves and attractive hats.  In October we had three, maybe four, really cold rainy days and in my haste I put all of the Dude's shorts away.  I promptly pulled them back out when the thermometer reached 80°.

For a few years now I have been trying really hard to jump on the Fall bandwagon.  I think that eventually it will happen.  (I'm simultaneously trying to learn to love a Bloody Mary, and I wonder if the two could maybe join forces to help foster a love for one another other?)  I love Halloween (which was like, 78° here) and I think soup is the perfect food.  Those two factors alone are not altogether a bad jumping off point.  It is slowly growing on me.  I think my relationship with Fall will progress as my waistline widens.  So here is my game plan for loving Fall:

1.  Make Persimmon Cake again (did this once when we were part of a CSA, and ate the whole thing- I was pregnant.  Back off.)
2.  Craft the perfect Mulled Wine
3.  Take more pictures of the Dude being adorable in knitted outfits and other absurd baby sundry.
4.  Spend more time on Pintrest looking at cool Fall crap that I won't ever actually make myself.
5.  Start a not necessarily Fall tradition that is 100% fail proof awesome and schedule it for Fall so that it becomes a Fall Tradition and I can feel like I cheated the system. (i.e. Wine Tasting)
6.  Buy some skinny jeans and a pair of Frye boots to stuff them into.
7.  Continue NOT teaching, in which case Fall does not represent the loss of freedom.

This year Fall looks pretty promising.  Here is what a GingerWeaver Autumn looks like so far...

Xerox Gingers at the Pumpkin Patch

Not loving the slide with Aunt Mint

Grandma Steve and Grandpa MacGyver

Hi-Five to Ice Cream!

"Will this llama help keep the weeds down?"

Brad and Janet GingerWeaver

Aunt Columbia

Mini-Mummy Bites

Pizza Ghoulies

Grandpa "Goose" and Grandma Nature

IncrediGingers

Anyone want to go camping? Last chance...

Let me first start by saying that I am perfectly aware that I lead a charmed life. Ok. Now onto the post.

We love our house. It is the Brady Bunch Dream House. Maybe not as swanky or pink as what Barbie landed, but we have plenty of fake brick and faux-rock accented walls. Join us for s'mores around our avocado green, mosaic tiled, round fire pit which is fully loaded with two electric burners and a 1978 Susan B. Anthony for effect. Take that Barbie. What we DON'T love is that our house floods. Every. Time. It. Rains. Don't believe that "It never rains in Southern California" malarkey, either. I have the pictures to prove otherwise. You see, the guy we bought from (we'll refer to him as Douche) is well, a douche. He did a helluva job covering up every last little bit of evidence that would show signs of water damage/flooding. Oh yeah. I'm totally calling Mike Holmes.*

Anyway- after months of work by our amazing attorney, Uncle Esquire,  the fate of our home repairs lie within Douche's ridiculously large, terribly expensive but not terribly valuable, 5th wheel toy hauler. You know what I don't need in my East County driveway right after I've died my hair pink?  The only thing worse might be a Fox Racing tattoo.

But guess what?!  Wednesday is the day that we get rid of the Beast.  It's on Ebay with no reserve.  We want it gone.  And come Wednesday, I will once again be able to change The Dude's diaper in the morning without staring at a 40 foot reminder that life is not fair.  You can be a lowlife liar, who is fiscally irresponsible and still walk away with no real ramifications.  He wasn't sad to give us this thing.  He couldn't afford the insurance or registration anymore and it was about to get repo'd.  And that's when I stop to remember.  Karma's a bitch.  He may not have had to fork over the cash it will cost us to fix this house, but he's definitely paying the piper.   I have this awesome house and he has a pending bankruptcy, an ugly divorce, an estranged daughter, a failed business and a $500 hitch he doesn't need.  Am I happy?  No.  I'm not.  His misfortune doesn't lessen my burdens nor does it bring me joy or a feeling of justice.  But it does put things into perspective.

This really is a fantastic house. We can have killer parties here and The Dude gets to play in a huge backyard.  I have 10 different vegetables and fruits growing in my gorgeous raised beds.  The dogs have opportunities to catch bunnies and gophers (but that's another blog post altogether) and someday I will have a chicken coop.    I make lavender lemonade from the Meyer lemons in my backyard. Sometimes coyotes wake us up at 4 a.m. And yet, I'm about 15 miles from the ocean and 20 minutes from just about anywhere in San Diego. It is as perfect for us as anything could be. I'm not thrilled at the idea of ripping out my driveway and the amount of money it will cost to "fix" the problems correctly.  But it really isn't so bad, and on Wednesday it'll be even better.  Life is good.  After all, not everyone has a coin collection embedded in their masonry.

*Turns out Mike is pretty popular, and therefor rather busy.  There are also some filming regulations or something so they only film in Canada.  At least I tried to "Make it Right."