Best Of 2007

So here it is. Rather belated, yes I know, but we’ve been very busy traveling around Europe and such. Below is a fairly comprehensive list of what we consider to be the “Best-Of” list for 2007:

Top 5 Musical Releases:


Maylene And The Sons Of Disaster – II

This release has been in very regular rotation, to include me learning to play most of the songs on guitar. If you’re new to Maylene, they play a sort-of hard, raw southern-rock-meets-metal; extremely catchy and extremely head bangable. Highly recommended for driving down country dirt roads at 90 with all the windows down and the volume turned up to 11.

Standout tracks: “Memories of the Grove”, “Plenty Strong and Plenty Wrong”, “Darkest of Kin”, and “Raised by the Tide”.


Over The Rhine – The Trumpet Child



We liked this one so much we bought it on plastic, vinyl, poster, and t-shirt. Beautiful album, wonderful songs of life and love, and as I always say, I have no idea why this husband-wife duo aren’t huge.
Standout tracks: “Trouble”, “I’m on a Roll”, “Let’s Spend the Day in Bed”, and “Desperate For Love”.


Misericordiam – Unanimity and the Cessation of Hostility



As you might have guessed by the band name, these guys play death metal, and the mere six songs contained therein are not only the heaviest/tightest I’ve heard all year, but also they rank in the top ten best of all time. Which is saying a lot for such a saturated, talent-critical genre. Hailing from Las Vegas, Misericordiam absolutely pummel from beginning to end and, as far as I know, all four members are under 20. Recommended if you like Beneath The Massacre, Despised Icon, Carnifex or Job For A Cowboy.
Standout tracks: All


The White Stripes – Icky Thump



I credit my friend Andrew Exum for getting me into The White Stripes back in 2002 when we were in the Army together. I credit myself for getting him into Sleater-Kinney, but that’s another story.
I’ll have to admit; I didn’t really care for the Stripes at first, as their earlier works were a bit rough around the edges. Icky Thump is just a great, all around record. A perfect follow-up to 2005’s impressive Get Behind Me Satan, Icky Thump starts right in with the title track, what I would consider to be the best on the record, and also a rather funny music video. The songs are varied from rock to blues to what I would term, a 'romping-bull-fighter’s-post-fight-anthem (see “Conquest”)'.
Standout tracks: “Icky Thump”, “You Don’t Know What Love Is”, “Prickly Thorn But Sweetly Worn”, and “Catch Hell Blues”.


The Innocence Mission – We Walked In Song



I think every single one of The Innocence Mission’s albums are classics, and they’ve done it once again with this year’s release. Karin Peris has a voice like non other and Don Peris’ effortless compositions offer the perfect accompanying sound track, making for a truly beautiful thing that has to be heard.
Standout tracks: “Brotherhood of Man”, “BRCD939”, “Into Brooklyn, Early in the Morning”, “Song For Tom”, and “Since I Still Tell You my Every Day”.


Honorable Mentions (alphabetical):

All Star United – Love and Radiation
Nicole Atkins – Neptune City
Beneath The Massacre – Mechanics of Dysfunction
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Baby 81
Blindside – The Black Rose
Carnifex – Dead In My Arms
Castanets – In The Vines
Cold War Kids – Robbers and Cowards
Steven Delopoulos – Work To Be Done
Delta Spirit – I Think I’ve Found It
Demon Hunter – Storm The Gates Of Hell
Despised Icon – The Ills of Modern Man
DJ Micro – Past Present Future, Vol. 2
Gasoline Heart – What Now
GRITS – Redemption
Hem – Home Again, Home Again
Impending Doom – Nailed.Dead.Risen
Iron & Wine – The Shepherd’s Dog
Solomon Jabby – Firmly Planted
Leng Tch’e – Merasmus
Limbeck – Limbeck
Lovedrug – Everything Starts Where It Ends
Mad Caddies – Keep It Going
Main Line Riders – Shot In The Dark
Mamady Keita – Mandeng Djara
Sarah Masen – A History of Light And Shadow
Sarah Masen – Women’s Work Is Alchemy
Sarah Masen – Magic That Works
Matt Death and the New Intellectuals – Demo 2007
Sophie Milman – Make Someone Happy
Mirror Of Dead Faces – Demo 2007
MxPx – Secret Weapon
Oblige – Expectants
Over The Rhine – Live From Nowhere, Vol. II
Oh Sleeper – When I Am God
Elvis Perkins – Ash Wednesday
Peter And The Wolf – The Ivori Palms
Psyopus – Our Puzzling Encounters Considered
Rilo Kiley – Under the Blacklight
Sotahuuto – Ihmisen Jälki
The Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
The Dillinger Escape Plan – Ire Works
The Dingees – Planet X Mix
The Famine – Demo 2007
The Showdown – Temptation Come My Way
Rosie Thomas – These Friends of Mine
Toby Mac – Portable Sounds
Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza – Danza II – The Electric Boogaloo
Jason Truby – Waiting On the Wind
Tumbledown – 3 Songs
Virgin Black – Requim – Mezzo Forte
Patricia Vonne – Firebird
Zikrayat – Live At Lotus


Favorite Christmas Albums (purchased, though not necessarily released in 2007):


Nat King Cole – The Christmas Song

Josh Groban – Noel


Don Peris – Brighter Visions Beam Afar



Veggie Tales – The Incredible Singing Christmas Tree





Anticipated 2008 Releases:

Marcus Aurelius – Requiem of An Empire
Eluveitie – Slania
Exhale – Untitled
From A Second Story Window – Conversations
Good Night, States – Short Films on Self-Control
Michael Gulezian – Untitled
Impellitteri – Good And Evil
Jet – Untitled
Matisyahu – Untitled
Over The Rhine – Live From Nowhere, Vol. III
P.O.D. – When Angels And Serpents Dance
Society’s Finest – Untitled
Spitfire – Cult Fiction
The Famine – Untitled
The Von Bondies – Love, Hate and Then There’s You
Thieves And Liars – When Dreams Become Reality
Virgin Black – Requiem – Fortissimo



Favorite Movies of 2007:


Hairspray



Knocked Up



Superbad



The Bourne Ultimatum







Favorite Books from 2007:

Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises and a Revolution of Hope, by Brian Mclaren



Playing For Pizza, by John Grisham



They Like Jesus But Not The Church: Insights From Emerging Generations, by Dan Kimball

Lavellla plays with yarn

Most of you who know me have seen me knitting a time or two, right?


Well it seems that someone else has noticed as well.







(She actually crawled around with this sock for a good while, and now whenever I wear them she wants me to take them off so that she can have them.)

Yesterday, I left the room for about 30 seconds and came back to find this:


The boys love to sit in my lap while I spin (wool into yarn), and each have their own pair of knitting needles stuck into a ball of wool so that they can "knit" next to me. Now if their tiny hands can just get coordinated enough to actually make the stitches...

Fun in the snow: Switzerland

Greg had 4 days off this past weekend, so we headed off to Switzerland to play in the snow. (To skip this post and go straight to the entire album, click here. The photos in this post are just a few selected from the many.)

Cast of characters:

Riding up in the cable car or "gondola" made my stomach lurch. I'm really not a huge fan of heights. Or speed. Or snow. Ah well, Swiss Alps, here we come.

At the top of this particular mountain is a daycare/childcare where you can leave your smallest members for 11 Franks an hour (about $8 USD). Lavella was cool with this arrangement.


Then we rented two sleds. Greg took Andrew on one, and Elijah and I got on the other.

Some of the slopes were pretty steep, and the only breaks for the sled are the boots of the person sitting on it.


At night, whenever I closed my eyes to sleep, all that I could see was the edge of the trail, and imagined Elijah and myself hurtling off of it.

The view was fantastic though.


There were some snowmen built,


we watched parachuters land,

and had a pretty great time. There was one unfortunate incident in which Elijah and I took a wrong turn and ended up having to sled down the entire mountain, but even from the distance of a few days don't really want to talk about it. It took three hours out of my day, about 3 years off my life, and I'd rather delete it from my memory.

Will we go back? Now that I've got some sleep, I can say with certainty, "probably".

Travel with Grace

When the blog gets quiet, it's usually an indication that I'm swamped, which would mean that I have TONS of stuff to blog about...sigh. When I have all the time in the world, I have to come up with things, but then when I've got really interesting stuff going on, I can't even manage to upload a photo, much less discuss it. Anyway, this past month has been busy and wonderful. Grace (one of my sisters) flew in on Christmas Eve and just flew back to the States yesterday morning. We are 9 years apart, but somehow she always challenges me in all the right ways, and motivates me to actually do the things that I say I want to do. (To skip this post and go straight to all of the pictrures, the entire collection of 4 albums is here.)

Now that Lavella's a little bit older and doesn't need to nurse as often, it's a little easier to actually go out and do stuff, so we did! First, we did a little bit of shopping in Kaiserslautern, where I got this:

(Click for photo page, then hover mouse over picture for flavor information.)

Next, we went to Saarbruken, where I finally found this beautiful little yarn botique I'd heard about (and hadn't been able to find last time), and...a shop called Chocolate.

From left: truffles, cocoa beans covered in chocolate and dusted in cocoa powder and cinnamon.

Another day was spent in Trier, home of the Porta Nigra and The Cathedral Of Trier (Dom St Peter).


The high point of our trips was in Brussels, Belgium, where we spent last weekend (a trip that Greg could finally come with us on). We took so many pictures there that I'm just going to give you one here -- click for the entire album (most of the pictures have descriptive titles if you're interested).


While there, we got a bunch of chocolate:


Finally, we finished out her visit with a day trip to Luxembourg City.

I'm not a history buff, but whenever I visit a new city and/or country, I'm suddenly interested to know more about it.

Luxembourg is only 998 square miles, and has a population under half a million, yet it was a founding member of both the United Nations and NATO. In school they are taught three different languages: for the first few years are Luxumbourgish, which then changes to German. By high school, they've switched to French. From 8th grade, they're also taught English. In Luxumbourg City, however, we found that most everyone speaks French, and a tiny bit of English, with (sadly) no German speakers to be found. The more proficient I become at German, the more I miss it when I'm in a foreign country that does not speak it.

Grace flew back to New York yesterday, and arrived there sometime this morning. We miss and love you Grace, and we had a great time with you this past month!

Christmas 2007

Here are some pictures from our Christmas celebration. (Clicking on any of the photos will take you to the Flickr set where there are even more shots that I didn't feel like including in this blog post.)


I love Christmas morning. There's something magical about gathering around the tree, anticipating each person's reaction to a special gift, opening up surprises, watching my children's faces.



Grace rolled out of bed just in time to open gifts. Here she is, wearing the scarf and gloves I knit for her (the hat is in her lap). She's holding a book that Aunt Terry got me called Hardware: Jewelry From A Toolbox, and it's rather cool.

I don't usually wear jewelry at the moment because it tends to be impractical with maintaining the little people, but this book makes me want to hit the hardwear store and make turn it all into wearables.


Lavella, wearing a hoodie from Jom.


The entire outfit from Jom. (Jonathan expressly asked to see a picture of her in it within the first three days. You asked my dear, and here she is.)


Greg got this big guitar pedal from his family, and as soon as we were done with gifts, he hooked it into his system upstairs to test it out.




I love these books!


A dinosaur set!


Greg surprised the boys with a set of drums.


The Tiny Beautiful, playing drums.


And of course there was cooking. Grace and I managed to pull together a dinner that was not too time consuming, yet very special. The menu:
Romaine Salad with Pears and Cheese
Bread Pudding with Wild Mushrooms (made with Brioche)
Oven Roasted Brussel Sprouts
Tomato Sherry Confit
Broiled Flank Steak with Soy Citrus Mayonaisse

Greg bought a delicious, round red Reisling which complemented the meal well.

For the past few days we've been baking cookies and cupcakes, so instead of a big, rich dessert, we decided to eat cookies, and have a post-dinner appetizer course of interesting cheeses, crackers, and shrimp cocktail. After the children were in bed, we mixed up some Mojitos and watched the movie "Waiting". Fun times.

It was a wonderful Christmas, but we missed all of you back home. Much love to our family, and thank you all for the lovely gifts!

Gingerbread Village

At the beginning of the week, the boys and I finally made our gingerbread houses. Actually, we ended up doing graham cracker houses, using the tutorial at Martha Stewart's site. I created a whole little village! (Click for gallery if you care to.)

Next year I might play a little more with miniature realism, but I really like the way these came out.

Setting up to decorate:

A pallet of candy.

My tiny elves, working away at their houses. This kept them busy for over an hour.

I found that by giving their houses a thick spackle of royal icing, that then they could just decorate by themselves -- whatever they pushed into the icing stuck right there.

So much fun! (Andrew's is on left, Elijahs' is right.)

I'm nearly done with all of my Christmas knitting. That should be finished tonight before bed, and then tomorrow is baking. I've already got dough in the fridge for 2 different kinds of cookies all set to go.

I hope that you all have a merry Christmas!!

Spicy Curry Noodle Soup with Potatoes and Chicken

Here's a soup I made about a week ago (from my new Bon Appetit subscription -- thank Aunt Terry!!). Greg and I agree that it's a keeper. I'll be making this again soon, when Grace is here to enjoy it with us.

Brilliantly orange-yellow and pungent with spices, this soup is warming and invigorating all in one.



The recipe called for sweet potatoes, but I used white potatoes instead, and it was quite good. My husband is not overly fond of sweet potatoes, but I think that the spice quotient is high enough that it might balance the flavors out, so I might try that next time. I used my own chicken broth instead of the low-sodium canned stuff. There is also supposed to be a teaspoon of hot chili paste in the soup, but I think that I might have singed my nosehairs off if I'd done that. Recipe is adapted from Jan '08 Bon Appetit (my changes are reflected below).

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 tablespoons chopped shallots
3 garlic cloves, chopped
2 tablespoons minced lemongrass (from bottom 4 inches of about 3 stalks, tough outer leaves discarded)
2 tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger
2 tablespoons Thai yellow curry paste
2 tablespoons curry powder
2 13.5- to 14-ounce cans unsweetened coconut milk, divided
5 cups chicken broth
2 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 teaspoons sugar
3 cups snow peas, cut into 1/4's
2 cups 1/2-inch cubes peeled white potatoes (about 2 smallish ones)
1 pound dried rice vermicelli noodles or rice stick noodles
3/4 pound skinless boneless chicken thighs, thinly sliced
1/2 cup thinly sliced red onion
1/4 cup thinly sliced green onions
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
3 red Thai bird chiles or 2 red jalapeño chiles, thinly sliced with seeds
1 lime, cut into 6 wedges


Preparation:
Heat oil in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add next 4 ingredients; stir until fragrant, about 1 minute. Reduce heat to medium-low. Stir in curry paste, curry powder, and chili paste. Add 1/2 cup coconut milk (scooped from thick liquid at top of can). Stir until thick and fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add remaining coconut milk, broth, fish sauce, and sugar; bring broth to boil. Keep warm. IF YOU WANT TO DO AHEAD: Can be made 1 day ahead. Refrigerate until cold, then cover and keep chilled.

Cook snow peas in large pot of boiling salted water until bright green, about 20 seconds. Using strainer, remove peas from pot; rinse under cold water to cool. Place peas in medium bowl. Bring water in same pot back to boil. Add sweet potato and cook until tender, about 7 minutes. Using strainer, remove sweet potato from pot and rinse under cold water to cool. Place in small bowl. Bring water in same pot back to boil and cook noodles until just tender but still firm to bite, about 6 minutes. Drain; rinse under cold water to cool. Transfer to microwave-safe bowl. IF YOU WANT TO DO AHEAD: Can be made 1 hour ahead. Let stand at room temperature.

Bring broth to simmer. Add chicken; simmer until chicken is cooked through, about 10 minutes. Add sweet potato; stir to heat through, about 1 minute. Heat noodles in microwave in 30-second intervals to rewarm. Cut noodles with scissors if too long. Divide noodles among bowls. Divide snow peas and hot soup among bowls. Scatter red onion, green onions, cilantro, and chiles over soup. Garnish with lime wedges and serve.

Garlicy Polenta Breadsticks

Today is brisk and cold, but we can actually see the blue sky peeking through the clouds. A perfect day to curl up together with some gingerbread tea and read books like "The Gingerbread Baby" (by Jan Brett).

Bread is baking in my bread machine, making the house smell like my mom is here. It's a good day.

Besides opening a door of an Advent calendar each day in December and coloring Christmas themed pages (great ones on the Jan Brett site!), I've also started reading Christmas books to them, and next week we're going to make a gingerbread house together.

In my last post, I promised a recipe for breadsticks. I've finally finished most of my Christmas knitting, so I have (a little bit of) time for blogging again.

Crisp, slightly chewy, salty and well seasoned. Who doesn't like a good breadstick? I got the original recipe from the blog Baking Bites, and adjusted it just a bit. I don't like to separate eggs if I don't have to, especially if the recipe doesn't use the other part of the egg, so instead of using two egg whites, I used one whole egg. Also, I didn't have garlic powder, so I omitted that and the salt, and substituted two teaspoons of garlic salt instead. They turned out wonderfully! And you've gotta love a recipe that can succeed even with extensive help from a toddler.


These are quick to whip up -- no yeast and waiting for things to rise -- and they taste great. I could easily see these with chili, soup, or a huge dinner salad. This recipe can be easily adjusted by changing the seasonings to suit whatever you'll be serving them with (i.e. chili powder and finely chopped pickled jalapeno peppers for Mexican food, finely chopped rosemary for beef barley stew, basil and oregano for Italian inspired bean soup, etc.)

Garlicky Polenta Breadsticks

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup cornmeal

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp sugar

2 tsp garlic salt

1 tsp dried dill

1/4 tsp ground pepper, to taste

4 tbsp butter, chilled and cut into small pieces

1/2 cup milk

1 egg

1 egg, lightly beaten, for brushing

garlic salt or coarse salt, for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 425 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment or foil.
In a large bowl, whisk together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, sugar, garlic powder, dill, salt and pepper. Add butter and rub in with your fingertips until mixture resembles sand and no large chunks of butter remain.
Combine milk and egg whites in a small bowl, then add to flour mixture, stirring until a dough is formed. Roll dough out on a lightly floured surface until it is a 10×12 inch rectangle and approximately 1/4-1/2 inch thick (about 1 cm). Trim rough edges. Use a pizza cutter or sharp knife to cut into 16 even strips.
Transfer strips to baking sheets, leaving room between them. Brush with beaten egg and sprinkle generously with garlic salt (or regular coarse salt).
Bake for 10-12 minutes, until golden brown.
Allow to cool before serving. Leftovers can be wrapped and re-crisped in the oven for 5 minutes at 400F.
Makes 16 sticks.

(Full credit to Baking Bites blog)

Cute fellows

I don't have time to blog today, so here's some cute pictures of the boys:

Elijah, giving some breadsticks and egg wash.




Andrew, showing off a "special" outfit he put together, all on his own (can you tell?)


No pics of Lavella, but she's yelling to me from her room, so I'd better go. I'll post again when I have time, along with the breadstick recipe, which was yummy and simple. It's a version of something I found online recently. Look for it soon!