The News of the Year*

*according to my husband

One morning this week Ross yelled to me excitedly from the other room.
"Meg!?" he yelled, "Brace yourself for some very exciting news."
He came into the bedroom with a gleam in his eye and a spring in his step.

What could this news be?  It must be something thrilling.

Well, my friends, it was.

Oh happy day!

Yes.  It's true.  Buca di Beppo has come to the UK!

We love Italian food and Buca is one of our absolute favourite places to eat it.  We love it so much that it's where we had our rehearsal dinner.  We made a trip to Dallas to celebrate our first anniversary.  While we were at it, we celebrated the anniversary of our rehearsal dinner with dinner at Buca.  That's how much we love it.

The laid back atmosphere and kitschy decor is fun and provides a great feel for a party.  All the food is served family-style which keeps the table sharing food and conversation!  Here are some photos from our rehearsal dinner:

Personal photos

This is Ross' favourite dish.

Personal photo

A salad.  Surprise, surprise... so simple. So delicious.

Yummy bruschetta!

Personal photo

We had tons of pasta:

Personal photos

And even their fancy "Celebration Cake" to finish off the meal:

Personal photo

Needless to say we're planning a visit to our nearest location soon and crossing our fingers that we get one in the neighbourhood soon!

Word of the Week

Elevatorlift

Love in an Elevatorlift

Definition:  the magic room that lets you travel from floor to floor in a building

Used in a sentence:  Was that a muzak version of Raspberry Beret that I heard on the elevatorlift earlier?

A project...

So today at Sainsbury's I found a great deal on picture frames.  (I'm working on a grand plan for a photo wall in our living room.)  This particular frame has spots for 3 pictures.  Kinda like this:

  They didn't have it on Sainsbury's website, so this'll have to do

I had a great idea of how to fill it.  Look at these awesome pictures from our parents' weddings!

My parents (personal photo)

Ross' parents (personal photo)

Surely, there would be a similar picture from our wedding to mount in the 3rd hole.  It would make an awesome multi-generational-sentimental-decorative-wall hanging!

Not so fast.  These are the best pictures we have from our cake cutting:

Oh, that's nice.  But landscape.  The other two are portrait.  No go.

 Portrait orientation, smiling bride and groom.  It's the a shot up the rubber duck's butt though... bleh.

 Ross is concentrating very hard.  I'm very nervous.  Not a classic.

What is this?  A photo of us both smiling, cutting the cake.

Sure- it was landscape, but I cropped it into submission.

I think this just might work afterall.

(All of our wedding photos are courtesy of Shari Hunt Photography)

Really Very Exceptionally Good Apple Cake

Personal photo

When I made this cake Ross took a bite before I did.
I asked him how it was.
He said without thinking about it  "It's good."
Then he paused and thought about it and said, "No.  It's really very exceptionally good."

Personal photo

So moist, tasty, and fairly easy to make.

Ingredients*:
4 medium dessert apples
200 grams (14 tbsp) butter
200 grams (1 cup) golden caster sugar (super fine sugar)
3 large eggs, beaten
140 grams (1 cup) self-raising flour
50 grams (1/2 cup) ground almonds
2 tbsp brandy, plus extra to drizzle

for the glaze:
1 tbsp brandy
2 tbsp apricot jam

1.  Preheat the oven to 355°F/180°C/160°C- fan assited.  Butter the inside of a 20" round cake pan.
2.  Peel, slice, and core the apples.  Slice them pretty thinly. I used a handy dandy apple machine like this:

thing-a-ma-bob

3.  Melt a small spoonful of butter in a pan.  Put in the apple slices and cook them for about 5 minutes, until they are soft.  Pour over the brandy and then set aside to cool.

4.  In a food processor, cream the butter.  Then add the sugar and beat it until it's well-mixed.

5.  Add the eggs to the mix a little at a time.

6.  Add the flour and ground almonds.

7.  Gently stir in half of the apple slices.

8.  Spoon into the cake pan.

9.  Sprinkle the rest of the apple slices on top of the batter.  Press them gently into the cake.

10.  Bake for 1 hour.  Check it at 45 minutes to see if the top is browning too quickly (if so, cover the top with aluminum foil).  The cake is done when a knife comes out cleanly.  The cake still looks a little wet at this point, but as long as the knife comes out clean, you're good to go!

11.  Poke little holes all over the cake, then drizzle with a little brandy.

12.  Melt the apricot jam and mix with the brandy to make the glaze.  After the cake is cool, brush the glaze over the top and serve.

13.  Say, "MMmmmmm!  Yummy!"  and try not to eat too many slices at once :)

*British recipes do things in weights.  The conversion depends on when substance you're measuring.  It's pretty easy to google the conversions, but I'm so nice that I've done it for you.  You're welcome.

My Drug of Choice

  soooo good

So I've been making an effort to cut back on my soda consumption.  The hubs is irritatingly healthy and never drinks anything carbonated.  He especially dislikes anything with "fake" stuff in it.  He'd rather I drank full octane soda than the diet stuff I crave.  I always told him that I'd stop drinking it when I got pregnant.*  (No, I'm not making any announcements!)  I figure I'd rather quit now than go through withdrawal while I'm all hormoney too.  So for the last few months, I've been weaning myself off of my precious Coke Zero.

In the days before I got married, it was not uncommon for me to have 3-5 diet drinks per day (usually Diet Dr. Pepper).  So out of control!  When I moved to England I switched to Coke Zero.  I started limiting myself to one a day pretty easily.  I kept telling myself I would cut back but it never happened.  I made a decision to stop buying soda for the house and only have it if we were out.  That took will power out of the equation, but I was still have a soda nearly every day.

So a year went by and I'd made no progress.  Cue 2011... baby making was getting closer to a reality and I decided to kick it up a notch.  I put myself on a plan.  Gave myself rules.  I could have a soda if we were out at lunch (which we are most days, grabbing a sandwich at Pret a Manger) on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturday OR Sunday.  This worked super well!  I was still getting my fix, but I had structure and accountability.

So after a few weeks of my 3 per week schedule, I decided to go even further.  I'm now down to a Wednesday/Weekend schedule.  The ultimate goal is to be soda-free in the next couple of months....
Hopefully my willpower will stay strong!

Check out the scary article that made me feel a little better (and also more scared!) about how hard it is to quit my addiction.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/03/01/diet.soda.health/index.html

*Ross is not forcing me to quit anything.  He's a great guy who repeatedly tells me he doesn't want me to do anything just because he'd prefer it.  It's totally my choice to be healthier- which he approves of whole-heartedly!