First World problem of the day

Between the two of us, CameraMan and I have thousands upon thousands of digital photos, taking up virtual space much like my parents' boxes of photo prints (and slides, remember those?) take up physical space. What are we ever going to do with all these photos? Sure, we could upload them to some other virtual location, but they'll just end up sitting there without us looking at them again. So I'm always looking for ways to display our photos, you know, in our actual house. Of course, we could just print and frame them, but sometimes I want to go for something more creative.

Here are a few ideas that I've come up with so far:

On one wall of our bedroom, I've hung a magnetic photo rope  with pictures of our love locks that I added the city and date to and then printed at CVS. The wall decal is by Shanna Murray. (Sidebar: we bought another lock so that we could lock it on the Tower Bridge when we were in London for a day, but apparently all the locks got cut off to prepare for the Olympics. So our love lock number is still 2.)

At ixxi, you can upload your photos, crop them into squares on the website, and in a couple weeks they'll send you a stack of square cards and a bunch of little plastic doohickies to attach them to each other. Then you hang it on the wall with adhesive that they provide, and voila! Art. This guy hangs on our huge dining room wall, which needed something dramatic. I chose all black and white or sepia toned photos, but the possibilities are endless.

We are also awash in Instax photos. I rigged this little installation in our stairwell using string and silver mini binder clips. It makes me smile every time I climb the stairs.


We use these adhesive frames on one wall of our living room (we thought it would be temporary, but now we love them). I also made CM an album of our wedding photos for his birthday last year at Pinhole Press, and it's completely gorgeous.

Tell me, what are you doing with all your photos? I'd love more ideas.

Real Housewife of Houston

At this point it seems crazy that I worried about not having enough to do while I was here, that the time would be too long. I'm fully ensconced in our at-home routine now, and I can't believe it's only a couple weeks until I have to leave again. What exactly have I been doing with my time, you ask? How have I been housewifeing it up? Here's how.

• Making a concerted effort to see all 25 of Entertainment Weekly's 25 Movies You Need to See Before Oscar Night. Before Oscar night. 12 down...
• Fattening up CM's co-workers with baked goods.
• Reading in the tub.
• Tuesday night tap class (srsly).
• Watching any and all BBC crime dramas on instant Netflix. (Luther, anyone?)
• Braising meat.
• Obsessing over jobs for next season.
• Snuggling my kitten.
• Contemplating hanging things on the walls. Only contemplating, unfortunately.
• Zoo dates with my friends' kids.
• Honing (get it?) my knife skills.
• Racking up morning run mileage (my first race is Saturday!!).

I could get used to this...

Frohe Ostern!

It's been a nonstop, four-day vacation over here in Wien. CM had Friday through Monday off from work, so I've been pretending that his only job is to hang out with and entertain me. It's been going well. We've balanced indoor time of the lazy afternoon movie-watching variety with adventurous exploration time consisting of long walks (and a bike ride!) around parts of the city we don't know as well.

Yesterday we had friends over for Easter brunch, for which I made Mama Bossy's Braided Loaf (delicious as ever) and Smitten Kitchen's Spinach and Egg Strata (RECOMMEND). We bought good dark bread from our favorite bakery and laid out an assortment of cheeses, meats, spreads, and veggies. Nobody left hungry. I think this is my new favorite way to host brunch—one hot dish that can be prepared the night before, and everything else bought at the market. Oh, and our friend Laus will need to always be invited, because he makes the very best crispy bacon, and bacon is a must for brunch.

Since it's our first Easter here, we didn't know quite what to expect, but it turns out Austria does the usual basket/bunny routine. I even saw jelly beans in the store alongside the many chocolate eggs. I did take pictures of the few special holiday things that made it into our apartment.

Bunny buns from our bakery. The crunchy sugary ears were especially delicious.

Bunny cookies. Not nearly as yummy as they looked, sadly.

Our grocery store carried these dyed eggs in the case with the other eggs. I medium-boiled them to eat in cups at brunch. I couldn't remember ever seeing these in an American grocery store, but I love them!

I hope you all had a fabulous Easter!

Sick day

Just when I had adjusted to this time zone and normalized by sleep schedule, I got sick. I've been feeling it coming on for a few days, and last night I was finally felled by a wicked Erkältung that kept me in bed all day today, sleeping, reading, and miserable. The day didn't look all that different from last week—I didn't accomplish significantly less than usual or sleep significantly more. Somehow, though, a luxurious lazy day and a sick day feel miles apart, and I'm longing for an end to the latter and a return to the former.

In a brilliant stroke of terrible timing, I committed to starting a detox diet/cleanse today, just for the week, to see how it goes. I'm cutting out sugar, alcohol, and white flour, in the hopes that it will give me more energy, fewer cravings for pastries and gummy bears, and a svelter physique. Of course, today was the day I would have gotten organized and gone grocery shopping, both of which responsibilities my trusty CameraMan took over after his evening rehearsal was miraculously canceled. So I was able to start the diet today despite being sick, and was undoubtedly helped through the first day by having almost entirely lost my appetite.

Vienna is a good place to be if you love carbs, take it from one who knows. Cookies and tortes and marzipan, dumplings and spätzle and so much amazing bread…it's all here, and it's all delicious. I haven't baked much lately,  since I started developing my interest in cooking, but Friday night I was walking home from a late lunch with CM and friends when I was hit with an overpowering urge to make Strudel. For the first time. So I nipped into the Billa on my way home and picked up Strudelteig (strudel dough: this is a normal thing that exists here in the refrigerated aisle), Topfen (a cream cheese), and Vanille Zucker (vanilla sugar: everywhere here, though actual vanilla extract is nowhere to be found). I brought it all home, chopped up some apples we already had, and managed to whip up something resembling Strudel, all without a recipe.

14/365

It was fine. Not great, not amazing, just fine. I of course ripped the dough right off the bat (strudel dough's main characteristic is being very thin, supposedly so thin you should be able to read the newspaper through it, although I'm sure if I had tried that I would have ripped it even more). Also, I think I added too much egg to the Topfen, so the baked filling resembled nothing so much as apples with scrambled eggs. Still, we ate it (obvs), and I think it was not a bad first attempt. Next time I'll find a recipe.


Not this week, though.

(Insert sad trombone sound effect here).

Opera Girlfriend

To get you up to date (and scroll down if you don't care about the minutiae of my schedule), I'm in Virginia keeping CameraMan company for the next month. Then I'm flying back to H-town (I know, I know, I JUST left), picking up my car and getting my hair done, and driving to Santa Fe, where I'll be spending 5 glorious weeks making a new opera and rooming with The New Oregonian. And consuming huge quantities of guacamole and margaritas, obvs. Then it's a hop, skip, and a jump back to Houston, where I'll ship some boxes to Vienna (the one in Austria—are you still with me?), fly back to my CameraMan, and we'll have 3 days before we cash in our one-way ticket to Europe. Phew. I'll save the rest of the year's schedule for another time (but, quickly, I'll be here, here, and here).

For the moment, I'm enjoying a few weeks of sweet, sweet vacation. The real kind, with no boxes to pack, no belongings to organize, no deadlines to meet. I'm prepping for my next few shows and studying a little Deutsch, but my main task is being Opera Girlfriend. CM is already hard at work—that boy never gets a vacation. So I'm busy setting up house in our corporate apartment, driving him to and from work (we're a "one-car family," as he likes to say), and cooking along with all the jobs that go with it: meal-planning, grocery shopping, etc. We have cocktail hour and appetizers after CM gets home, and then I've been making real, honest-to-goodness dinners. Last night was Toasted Pita Salad and Baked Salmon with a White Wine Marinade, with Fresh Peaches and Yogurt for dessert (everything sounds fancier with capital letters, doesn't it?). Tonight: Crispy Baked Drumsticks (we had too many appetizers to eat a salad with it—oops), with Lemon Sorbet and Berries for dessert. Who knows how long this attack of domesticity will last, but for the moment I am loving my life of leisure.

The first few days in a new place are always a flurry of activity, as we stock up on the essentials and figure out where everything is. Usually the Bossy Cat is very adaptable, sniffing every corner and quickly sussing out her favorite spot to lounge. This time, for some reason, her favorite spot was under the bed. Oh, she'd come out to eat or use her litterbox or snuggle for a few minutes, but then she would dive right back under the bed. I was starting to get worried—would she stay there all summer? Then finally this afternoon she emerged, and she's been happily exploring (and sleeping on the balcony, the armchair, and the carpet) ever since.

Yes, we're settling in quite nicely here at the Trap, thank you very much.

Mama Bossy's Easter Braided Loaf

Is there anything in the world more satisfying and comforting than baking bread? It's so basic. Of course I enjoy the sense of accomplishment I feel after cooking something with 50 steps or baking something incredibly fussy, but I love everything about making bread. For me, it's especially the moment when you're kneading the dough with your hands, and it's a little crumbly or shaggy, and then all of a sudden it isn't: it's stretchy and shiny and smooth. You've transformed it with your hands. And then the anticipation, the slight panic that maybe this time it won't rise, the relief when it inevitably doubles in size like it's supposed to. And the smell! The aroma of baking bread wafting through the apartment feels like home to me.

At the Bossy homestead it's mostly Papa Bossy who does the cooking these days, but in my childhood Mama Bossy was a baker extraordinaire. It was she who taught me how to make a braided loaf for Easter. I have such strong memories of baking this bread together. She taught me how to knead the dough, how to grease the bowl for the dough and cover it with a wet towel to help it rise, how to tap on the loaf to listen for the hollow sound that means it's done. I still make it just how she taught me.


Mama Bossy's Braided Loaf
Makes 1 big loaf or 2 small loaves

Ingredients:
1 packet dry yeast (MB used cake yeast, but I can never find it)
1/4 cup warm water
2/3 cup milk (we used whole milk when I was little—I use skim now and it works just fine)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, melted, plus extra for greasing the bowl and pan
4 eggs
4 1/2 cups flour, plus extra for flouring the board
sliced almonds

Directions:
Scald (bring almost to a boil) the milk on the stove. Take it off the heat and allow it to cool.

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water. Put the sugar, salt, and melted butter in a big bowl and pour the cooled milk over it. Add the yeast mixture, 2 eggs, and 2 egg yolks. Save at least 1 egg white for later—I always forget and end up on a grocery run to get more eggs. Add 2 1/2 cups of flour and beat thoroughly. I have successfully made this with a KitchenAid mixer, a hand mixer, and a wooden spoon, so you don't need any special tools. And 2 more cups of flour.

Turn out the dough onto a floured board and knead it until it comes together nicely. Form it into a large ball.

Grease a large bowl and put the dough in it, turning it over so it has butter on all sides. Cover the bowl with a wet dishtowel. Place in a warm place until it has doubled in size. You might as well walk away for a couple hours—it takes a while.

Grease a cookie sheet. Divide the dough into 6 parts (4 big, 2 small) for 1 loaf or 12 parts (8 big, 4 small) for 2 loaves. Roll out each part into a rope. Braid the 4 big pieces, and twist the 2 small pieces and lay them on top of the braid.

Mix an egg white with a little water to thin it and brush the top of the bread. This is what will give it a beautiful golden crust. Sprinkle sliced almonds on top. I like to press them in a little so they don't all fall off when they're baked. Let it rise again while you preheat the oven.

Bake the bread in a 350° oven for 45-50 minutes (a little less if you make 2 smaller loaves). Tap it—it will make a hollow sound when it's done. It's better to underbake it than to overbake it, so don't obsess too much about what sound it's making.

201-203/365

Remember this? Second time around it didn't turn out quite so well; apparently I didn't use enough butter to grease the pan. Didn't stop me from eating it, of course—just from sharing it.




The Bossy Cat, looking regal and exotic, don't you think?




I was sitting on the lawn at the opera with one of my friends when this prehistoric creature the size of my hand landed on my friend's leg. He wouldn't let me leave it there while I photographed it, but the creature seemed content to sit on the grass next to his leg while I found its best angle. THIS is why I bring my camera everywhere.

195-197/365

The classic game of cat and mouse is played on my bed at all times of the day and night. In this stage, she pretends to ignore the mouse, just to see what he'll do. Usually, not much.





The opera company has a softball team with a variable roster, and they play in a league with other community groups. On Wednesday, I went to a remarkably short game in which we lost, despite bleachers full of eager (read: loud) fans. We even had our own cheer: Trout trout! Bass bass! Let's go, Glimmerglass! Catchy, huh?





Dinner for one. Sigh. Thank goodness for delicious recipes.

182-184/365

Another antiquey detail from my summer house: this is the living room chandelier, complete with cobwebs.




This is a little something I've added to the house. I like to think it improves the ambience. What do you think?




Being out in the country brings out my domestic side. Freshly baked banana bread with chocolate chips and candied ginger. Delicious.

161–163/365

This look could either be interpreted as "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!?!?!" or "Who are you? CameraMan is the only mother I know," depending on your point of view.




Silly presents I brought home for CM from Paris. Yes, they are champagne flutes that say "tchin tchin" on them.




We've made this delicious recipe for Orzo with Garlicky White Beans and Chicken Sausage twice now, and I heartily recommend it. In fact, I could totally go for some right now.

138/365

My latest adventure in the kitchen: Baked Lemon Pasta from Ree's recipe. I added chopped asparagus and threw some fresh basil in with the parsley. It was delicious!