It's still winter

So we haven't had a lot of snow this year. But we have had a lot of ice. It's lovely. Well in some ways it is, but in most ways it really is not. My least favorite part about it is having to scrape off the car. It's pretty impossible to scrape a sheet of ice off your car. At least I've been able to get the door open every time and then can turn the car on to get the heater going and that helps to solve the problem. I guess I'm actually getting pretty good at it now that I've had to do it so many times. I cannot wait to have a garage! Although that doesn't really help if it ices while I'm at work. Oh well whatever. It does look pretty neat on the trees.

Speaking of a garage and our new house, we got to pick out all the stuff for our new place earlier this month. I was sort of nervous about making so many decisions since it's not always easy to tell what it will really look like when it's all put together and then you have to live with your choices. But they had a designer work with us and she pretty much approved our choices or at least gave us several options that would work if we didn't know what to choose. I'm pretty excited about it all now. I think I'll like the decisions we made. Now I'm scouring design books from the library and magazines and the internet to get inspiration for how to decorate and what colors to paint each room. Unfortunately since we'll have a bigger mortgage, we won't be able to expand the budget much to include new furniture or decorative items, so it will have to be a gradual process I guess. I like to be creative, and I know what things I like when I see them all put together, but pulling it together myself, I'm not as good at. But it will be home and there are definitely worse things that having an imperfectly decorated house. :) It makes me feel superficial and materialistic to be thinking about these things so much but yet I have this urge to meet a certain standard. It's hard to know where to draw the line between making it nice and being extravagant. Especially when I feel this sense of guilt over having so much when I know there are others who have so little.

I finally did something that I've been planning to do for a long time. Make a monthly menu. Scott and I were so tired of getting home and not knowing what we were going to eat. Which was then getting us into the habit of just going out, which with much frequency, ends up being too expensive. So I wrote out a list of all the recipes that we both like and then divvied them up between the days of the week. One of the original problems is that I don't have a real big repertoire of recipes (that we both like) to start with. So I went to my trusty website http://allrecipes.com/ to find some new recipes to add to my list. So far the ones we've tried have been a hit - so now I get to add them to the rotation! We've made 'Spanish Rice Bake', 'Curry-Coconut Shrimp', and 'Braised Balsamic Chicken'. All very yummy and recommended if you'd like to try them. The Balsamic Chicken is pretty balsamic-y so I cut down a bit on the amount that I added of that. I love allrecipies.com because other people can review the recipe and give suggestions of things they would change about the recipe and tell how well they liked it. I chose recipes that had a lot of good reviews so they were pretty sure to be keepers. It's just up to personal preference if it ends up being something that you don't like. I keep forgetting to take pictures of the finished products. I'm just too excited to sit down and eat it. :) The Curry-Coconut Shrimp had a sauce with coconut milk that reminded me of what our house-helper would make for us in Sri Lanka - except she made it with either chicken, potato or green beans - not shrimp. But it gave me that taste of Sri Lanka that I've been craving for years. And I used Jasmine rice which I've not used before but it was very aromatic and delicious.

Actually I did take a picture of the Spanish rice bake, but I need to work on my food photography because sometimes these things look better in person - or at least they taste better than they look. :) I guess this particular angle turned out ok.

I figure making up a menu also helps us to eat healthier. Most obviously because we're not eating fast food and secondly, because we're eating more vegetables. See, previously I would buy a bunch of vegetables (we're not big frozen veggie fans) - intending on using them up at dinner - whatever we ended up having, but inadvertently I'd end up making something that didn't call for that cucumber or tomato and they would go bad before I could use them. So I wouldn't keep many vegetables on hand except for the things we used in most recipes like onion and green pepper, or that we would use as a side dish, like broccoli. And then we'd get tired of eating the same three vegetables at every meal (carrots, green beans and broccoli). Or at least I would. But now I can plan my meals around the vegetables and plan to use up the rest of the tomato at a meal or two down the list. And then I can plan to buy whatever I need next only when we're close to being ready to have the next meal that calls for particular vegetables. I know, I get way too excited about these things. :) It's a very simple concept, it's just putting it into action finally that I'm enjoying. Yeah, then we do move things around on the menu when we don't feel like eating what's on the menu that night or I don't feel like cooking, but so far it's working out pretty well. I hope that was terribly interesting to someone. :)

Check out this really cute picture of Tobey. I posted in on facebook, but I can't help but post it again here. Doesn't he look so cozy? Don't you wish you could look this cute when you sleep?

Oh and, (sorry this is turning out to be a particularly long post since I haven't posted for a while) Scott and I went on a hike last weekend. It was up above freezing. I don't remember - it must have been 40 or 50 degrees or so and it was pretty nice weather for a brisk hike in the woods with a light jacket and warm hat. We didn't take the dogs because it was pretty muddy but the winter-y trees were quite beautiful. Don't you think?