Fancy Pants

So, we'll probably have kids eventually. That will most likely be a thing. But in the meantime we don't, and I'm pretty ok with that. One of the wonderful things that not having kids has let us do recently is go on a fancy date night with just the two of us.

We started off with a fancy pants dinner at Palomino. We've heard lots of good things and thought it was worth checking out, especially during the Devour Downtown promotion we've talked about before. Everything was delicious and Leslie now wants to go back - there were too many good things for us to try it all in one trip.

We continued our fancy evening after dinner with an Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra show. I had never been to the Hilbert Circle Theater for one of their shows before, so it was extra fun for me. We got some sweet tickets through Yelp (because I'm awesome) and sat nice and close. This made watching the show, and especially the soloist, pretty great. They played a fantastic show with music by Rimsky-Korsakov, Khachaturian, and Prokofiev (who has a special place for Leslie and me). It was a great experience and hopefully won't be our last ISO show of the year.

And that's at least some of what we've been up to - just enjoying the DINK life. Thanks for reading and we'll see you next time!

Winter Pets

Our animals aren't bears - they don't hibernate. Instead, they cuddle up and help keep us warm during these cold winter months (even if the Indy area has actually had some pretty good weather recently).

Ellie still likes cuddling with her mama.

Or just hanging out on top of furniture.

Frank is all about the blankets.

Or clothes in the closet.

Leo loves warming up in Leslie's blanket with her.

Or helping her write recipe cards.

They're all pretty great pets. A bit weird... but that's why we love them. Thanks for reading and we'll see you next time!

Forget Paper Or Plastic...

...we're using foil bags here. This is the first food post of 2015 and the first time we used any of the fish we brought back from Canada! We decided to try something a little different than the pan-fried prep we usually have up north for something a little fresher. Cooking in bags is a common enough thing - and so useful that there's a whole Good Eats episode about it (S7E8, for those of you wondering). This is based on a Jamie Oliver recipe and can be found here.

The Recipe

Fish in a Bag

1 Bulb Fennel

1 Lemon

8 Cherry Tomatoes

2 Fish Fillets

Olive Oil

Sea Salt

Black Pepper

White Wine

Make a bag out of foil (or buy them, as I think they sell premade bags now...) and place it on a baking sheet. Prep your fennel by cutting off the stems, but reserving the fronds, and then trim the bulb and slice it. Then thinly slice your lemon and cut the cherry tomatoes in half. Place these all in a bowl with the fish, a bit of olive oil, and sea salt and pepper. Gently combine everything with your hands and then place in the bag. Top with fronds from the fennel, add a few splashes of white wine (I used a Pinot, but use whatever you have on hand), seal the bag up, and stick it in an oven preheated to 400 for 20 minutes. Once it's done, take it out and move the contents to a bowl to serve. There will be a delicious sauce from the wine and lemons and tomatoes, so be sure not to waste that.

The Results

This is another very easy, yummy dish to make that seems really impressive, even though it's really easy. The smell of it cooking is wonderful and the finished product, besides tasting great, looks really nice. It's also an easy one to make a day or two ahead of time and then just preheat the oven, splash in the wine (wait to do this step until you're ready to cook), and you've got dinner in 20 minutes. I did exclude the potatoes and olives from the original recipe, but you could always add those back in if you wanted (I just didn't have any potatoes and don't like olives). But overall, this was a very good dish and was very easy. Definitely a good way to use some of our Canadian goodies.

Wrapping Up Christmas

Hello people! Hope everyone had a great holiday season and all that. We've been running around doing this and that for the last few weeks, so I figured I'd finally post a quick update on what all we've been up to.

A few weeks ago we went to the Christmas at the Zoo event at the Indianapolis Zoo with Leslie's sister, niece and nephew, and parents. Of course this was only after a tasty dinner at The Tamale Place, because that's how we roll (and it's delicious). The zoo really goes all out for this stuff and it's pretty cool. They've got lights up everywhere and even bring in a reindeer, which doesn't seem all that impressive considering they have cooler animals there... but hey, it's Christmas.

Last year, Leslie and I traveled all over the place to see family at every opportunity. It was great, but pretty exhausting by the end of it. This year I had to work the Friday/weekend after Christmas so we elected to stay home for Christmas day. We slept in, had a delicious brunch (Leslie made the awesome cinnamon rolls that I love so much and some pomegranate mimosas while I made an egg casserole), and then opened presents all by ourselves. And yes, we even got presents for the pets. We then spent the rest of the day in our pajamas (new, Christmas pajamas we opened on Christmas Eve from Santa) watching A Christmas Story and messing with our new toys. It was lovely.

I had to work the rest of the weekend, so Leslie traveled up to see family through Sunday. In her absence, Leo, the cats, and I watched a lot of guy movies and ate leftover cinnamon rolls. That was also pretty lovely.

We then headed up to see some of my family on New Year's Eve. We did our annual dinner with the extended family on my dad's side up in Michigan and it was amazing. This place had smoked chicken that was incredible. So good. Then we went back to my grandparent's place to open presents. My cousin had me in the annual gift exchange and, as is tradition, made the wrapping as ridiculous and hard to open as possible (mainly using lots of duct tape). After gifts and some hanging out we headed back down to my parent's house to ring in the new year. And then went to bed shortly after.

The next day, New Year's Day, was my immediate family's Christmas. We went out for lunch, saw the latest Hobbit movie, and then opened presents. It was a nice, relaxed day. Plus we got some cool stuff (and lots of gift cards, which is always welcome).

We spent the next day at Leslie's parents place, just hanging out. Leslie's sister and her family came over that evening, so we got to play with the kids and even all watched Jeopardy. We stayed there overnight and then, after some more hanging out on Saturday, headed back home. And that pretty well ended our holidays this year. They weren't too wild, but we got to see a lot of family and it was fun.

And that's all for this post. Thanks for reading and we'll be back soon!

Here We Come 2015

Welp, it's another new year. 2014 came and went, and here we are at 2015. We accomplished a lot this past year and have some plans for this year. So what do we have planned, you may ask? Hold your horses, partner, let's take a minute to review this past year first. Remember our plans from the start of last year? If not, then click here.

What We've Done

We set out to put a dent in the long list of improvements the outside was asking for. While we didn't accomplish everything, we did manage to get at least a few things done. These included replacing the mailbox, removing some trees and planting some new ones, and a little trellis project. We didn't get as much done as we would have liked, but it's a start.

We did manage to do a better job getting stuff done indoors. We got the upstairs hall and stairwell painted, installed new fixtures, and did that bathroom remodel we talked about. We also got the purchases we talked about made, meaning that comfy chair for me and a music corner for Leslie. We didn't get around to figuring out a wine bottle storage solution or expand the storage for our movie collection, but those aren't the most urgent of problems.

We made a good effort to accomplish the other goals we set for ourselves. Somehow we managed to post all 20 promised recipes to the blog and cooked even more new things than that. Reading, for me at least, didn't go quite as well as I'd hoped. Leo, while a wonderful little puppy, wasn't very understanding about reading time. He's starting to grow up and calm down a little now, so hopefully this coming year will be better for books.

What We'll Do

We've got a few things we'd like to accomplish this coming year. Obviously there are lots of things left to do (see the Our List page for more details), but some of them we really want to finish are getting the garage organized, making the rec. room awesome, redoing the upstairs guest bathroom, and starting a garden. These are all somewhat involved projects, so hopefully we're able to get everything done.

We also really enjoyed experimenting with new recipes and plan to continue that. I'm not sure we'll make a point of hitting a certain number, but will continue to share nifty recipes with you guys. I'll also try to read more this year, but I won't bother posting the embarrassingly low number of books I get through on here - I'm still counting on Leo being somewhat high maintenance for awhile. We'll see how it goes.

We're also going on our first big vacation that's just the two of us since our honeymoon. It's been wonderful to have family vacations these past two years (Disney and Canada were both great), but it'll be a nice change. Plus our planned destination is pretty spectacular, so we're really looking forward to that. We'll also attempt a few auxiliary vacations - maybe see some family and friends down south, maybe visit my sister in California, maybe head east to see some other family, who knows! No matter what, I'm sure it'll be a fun year for vacations.

Well, I think that's it. But why not cap it off with some memorable pictures from this year?

January - Kitty cuddles

January - Puppy's first walk

February - Adding new light fixtures

February - Pretty Pretty Princess

March - Starting puppy classes!

April - Bachelor party madness

April - Portraits of the kids in the stairwell

May - One of the ten weddings we attended this past year

May - Lots of time spent outside with the pup

June - Wineries and friends are always a good combination

June - Birthday celebration for my lovely wife

July - Spending the 4th with family at the lake

July - Completing a great photo wall

August - Fishing in Canada

September - Triple date with some wonderful couples

September - Anniversary trip to Mackinac

October - Ghost stories at the cemetery

November - Working on the bathroom

November - A few Yelp events to end the year

December - The whole family all together

Thanks for reading and we look forward to sharing with you all in this New Year.