First off – I wanted to mention that my little sister, Emily, is currently in the midst of a very long voyage from upstate NY to New Zealand where she’s going to be studying abroad for several months (she’s a junior at Cornell and this is an exchange program).
You can follow her on twitter, but if you feel you need to get acquainted with her before you make such a commitment please go here and watch some of the videos we made together. She’ll also be blogging soon which I’ll keep you posted about. She gets to enjoy 2 summers this year. I’m going to try to stifle my jealousy. Here we are at my wedding, she was my Maid of Honor.
Also, are you following us on twitter? Just checking. 
We’re just beginning day 3 of being completely snowed in. All of Joe’s classes are canceled today and my work is shut down. Our car is still stuck in its place and our street and the surrounding ones have not been touched.
Yesterday we didn’t leave the house except for Joe’s brief trek out to see if any of the roads were drivable. Sadly they were not and we had to miss Joe’s brother’s Super Bowl party out in the suburbs. And to top it all off I’ve accumulated some nice pressure in my head and nasal area. Lots of sneezing and dripping and icky things.
Our Super Bowl celebration was pretty pathetic. I made pancakes for myself and Joe had leftover red beans & rice from three days ago. We ended up doing our activity at half time and went with something very easy… we didn’t really have many options!
Race to finish a Word Search
But not just any word search – a word search full of some of the most frequently used words on our blog. I generated a tag cloud from our blog and picked 24 of the most used words. They must go with the most recent words because our cloud was really loving CHEESECAKE.
If you have a blog I recommend making a tag cloud, they’re pretty interesting to look at.
I used another website to generate our word searches and printed out two copies.
We each had a red pen, Joe did a countdown, and we were off….
Now, Joe’s usually really good at this type of thing (puzzles) and always wins. I’m happy to report that this was not the case last night. I finished while he still had at least 5 words left…
I gloated, just a little bit.
And yep, I was in my pajamas for the entire day yesterday hence the glasses, whispy hair and bathrobe. That’s what happens when you’re snowed in!
Since our fridge is nearly bare we might have to trudge through the snow down to our Giant Eagle which isn’t too far away. I’m actually a bit sick of cheesecake at this point and our only other options are condiments or cereal without milk. Ugh. And we have to come up with a creative new activity for today as well… Hmm…
We’ll see you soon!
If you saw our post from earlier today you know that we’ve been dealing with 2+ feet of snow here in Pittsburgh. I’ll get to our new activity in a bit but first let me take you through our snow day.
Around 1pm we decided to venture out to see what the rest of our neighborhood looked like, and to find a place for lunch. It was so BRIGHT from all the snow and the streets were filled with people – not cars. Everyone was being very friendly and we ended up helping a couple people dig out their cars. Although they weren’t supposed to be driving!
We walked down Negley Ave. (a usually very busy street) and this was our view to the left:
And to the right. Joe enjoyed spinning and sliding around in the street.
We made it to Walnut St., a nice shopping street that’s also usually very busy. Again lots of people – very few cars. We saw people cross country skiing, snow shoeing, and even wearing full sized skis. It was all a little bit weird.
A view of a side street off of Walnut:
Just a couple places were open but we were in the mood for pizza so we turned up S. Aiken at the end of Walnut and went to the S. Aiken Bar & Grille which was pretty packed with patrons.
We ordered a large white pizza with tomatoes, artichokes, spinach and feta cheesem and Joe ordered a “Carnivore’s Calzone” for good measure (this food was to be our lunch and dinner).
It was all delicious and perfect for a snowy afternoon. We enjoyed watching all the different people walk by out the window – lots of people with sleds and snowboards and lots of happy dogs.
We walked home with a pizza box full of leftovers which got us lots of ooos and ahhhs from people on the street.
We dropped the food off at home and continued on walking to my work where I had to make a couple of cancellation phone calls due to the weather. The grounds of my building hadn’t been touched so we had to trudge through knee high snow and shovel our way to the front door.
This is also where our new activity comes in. After I finished what I had to do for work we decided to start on our project.
Build a Snowman
Yes, we’ve never done this together before, surprisingly. We brought all the necessary accessories and got to work on our 4 tiered man. I didn’t take any pictures of the process but here’s the final product. Our snowman complete with pipe, Davey Crockett hat, charcoal eyes & buttons, and Pittsburgh pride:
He turned out really well and it was a nice way to work up a bit of a sweat. The day could not have been more beautiful with the sun shining down on the snow.
And one more shot which I love, Joe with his shovel on our walk home:
When we got home we dug out our car as best we could, but we still don’t have any intentions of actually driving it for a while. The streets are a mess and we’re perfectly content to stay inside and watch movies, eat leftover pizza & cheesecake and just RELAX!
Off to do some more of that….
We woke up as usual this morning, around 7:15 am. Normally we’d be heading down to the Strip to do our weekly shopping but what we saw out the windows made us gasp – to say the least.There was no way we were going anywhere.
In our combined almost six years in Pittsburgh, neither of us has ever seen this much snow here. We’re from upstate New York, though, so this feels just like home.
I begged Joe to go outside with me and take pictures since we were up already. It was a hard sell but I finally convinced him to do it. We bundled up and out we went…
It was so beautiful and barely touched! Not a car or soul in sight.
Joe demonstrates the difference of depth between the street and around the cars:
Yep, we’re in up to our knees folks!
I did bring out the video camera, too, so you can see our car and our excited little faces.
Look for the snow plow up on 5th Ave. near the middle of the video.
See you soon!
You don’t need me to tell you that Pittsburgh is getting a makeover right now… blizzard style. And we’re not the only city, I know many of you are reaching your max capacity for the white stuff and I hope everyone is staying safe!
We walked to an opening at my work tonight (about a 1/2 mile away), and on our way home we saw 2 fender benders. We were happy to settle in for the night and have no plans to drive in the near future. I took this pic through my back screen door around 9 pm. There seems no end in sight…
I’m anxious to see what it will all look like in the morning.
So what’s a newlywed couple to do on a Friday night, all snowed in? Get crafty of course. Tonight’s activity brought me right back to my childhood.
Making homemade play dough
My mom used to make this stuff a lot and while I remember playing with it, I don’t remember ever helping with the process of making it. Joe has no memories of homemade play dough so this was all new to him. I think he was a bit fascinated by it.
The recipe was easy enough: 2 cups flour, 2 cups warm water, 1 cup salt, 2 tablespoons vegetable oil and 1 tablespoon cream of tartar. They all cooked together on the stove going from creamy to lumpy to clumpy. We dumped the mix onto a piece of parchment paper and kneaded it into smooth, elastic dough.
It smelled and felt just the way I remember: very salty and very soft. But we couldn’t leave it plain white, of course.
We separated the dough into 4 balls, dropped in the food coloring, and got to work on kneading in the colors. Unfortunately I’d used up all the yellow last year making my Steeler cake for the Super Bowl so we were unable to make yellow or orange.
I got a bit ambitious with the red and at one point my hand looked bloodied up.
Eventually the colors all blended together nicely and we had four brightly colored balls of dough.
Joe and I each got to work on our scenes and characters. I went with an animal theme and Joe went in a bit of a different direction.
Here’s some of my creatures:
I ended up with a pig, a frog, a rabbit, and a collapsed tree. The pig and the frog were my favorites.
Joe had more of a complete scene, which he carefully crafted. I continue to be amazed by his creativity and interest in these types of projects. He’s an artist at heart, I believe.
He ended up with a complete scene of a fisherman, a pond with three fish, and a lovely tree with lots of tiny leaves. I was quite impressed.
When we were finished Joe got up to do the dishes and I stole his tree and worked on a little addition.
Cue the sappy music and “you two make me sick” remarks.
Not your typical way to spend a snowed in Friday night, but we had a good time.
It’s now 10 pm and Joe just told me “It looks absolutely INSANE outside.” He’s right, it’s actually starting to get a bit surreal, I’ve never seen so much snow here in the ‘burgh. And we didn’t stock up on anything at the grocery store… thank God for that cheesecake!!
See you soon!
Yesterday I couldn’t wait to get home and spend some time in the kitchen. I had a tasty dinner planned and our new activity was food related. After I picked up Joe and we got home, I headed straight to the kitchen to decompress.
On tap for dinner was a Spicy Red Bean & Rice dish. I’m all about beans lately – buying them dry from the bulk section and soaking them overnight. I like actually cooking them instead of further mushy-fying them when they come out of a can.
I did hit a bit of a snag, though, when I realized we were out of brown rice. We had arborio rice (risotto rice), which I figured would be a fine substitution. I love arborio rice but I’m not all that crazy about the stand there and stir it for a half hour process. It was worth it though.
Instead of a wet bean mixture soaking into dry cooked rice, this dish took on a universally creamy texture, which was delicious. Success!
A couple hours after dinner we got to work on our new activity for the evening. Can you guess from these ingredients what it was?
After the ladyfinger fiasco on our tiramisu night I thought I’d go with a recipe that seemed pretty foolproof.
Make Cheesecake from Scratch
I pulled out my Joy of Cooking and turned to the “Creamy Water Bath Cheesecake” that I’d seen some other bloggers make and rave about.
We started by rubbing our springform pan with one tablespoon of unsalted butter. Then we shook around graham cracker crumbs until they stuck and coated all the sides.
I liked the idea of this “crust” because it was more of a coating instead of the usual graham cracker + butter baked crust.
Next we pulled out my beloved stand mixer and got to work on the filling. We whipped the heck out of the cream cheese and then added in the sugar and the eggs (one at a time, of course).
I did the first 3 eggs and left the last one to Joe, who thought I’d be cute to pull a Rocky Balboa and down the egg raw.
Or at least pretend to. I assure you all 4 eggs made it into the batter, not into Joe’s stomach. Blech.
The one tedious part of the process was the constant scraping down of the sides of the mixing bowl. We were up to our elbows in cheesecake batter and this spatula got quite the sticky abuse.
The last ingredient to go in (after sugar + eggs + sour cream + heavy cream + vanilla), was the special flavor enhancer. Also one of my favorite things ever…
Oooo yes, lemon zest. I have a huge crush on lemons. Every morning I juice an entire lemon into my green tea. I swear it does wonderful things for my body, in addition to tasting amazing.
When the batter was done and sufficiently blended into creamy goodness, we poured it into the graham cracker coated pan.
The pan was wrapped in foil and placed in a roasting pan because boiling water was poured into the roasting pan right before baking (hence the name Creamy Water Bath Cheesecake).
Now comes the part where we were required to exhibit the utmost patience. Look what we had to go through:
1. The cheesecake baked for 60 minutes.
2. The cheesecake sat in the oven for another 60 minutes with the oven off and door ajar.
3.The cheesecake was removed from the water bath and placed on a cooling rack – another 60 minutes.
4. The cheesecake was placed in the fridge OVERNIGHT.
Why do I keep choosing recipes that we can’t eat until the next morning?? Needless to say this morning I was practically clawing my way out of bed to get to that cheesecake.
Yes, we had cheesecake for breakfast.
I thought, if we’re going to eat cheesecake at 7 am we might as do it in style. When we got engaged almost a year ago my parents gifted us with a beautiful cake stand with matching plates and a serving knife. I’ve yet to use it but I thought this was the perfect occasion.
Here’s the cake stand before the cheesecake was lovingly placed atop it. The set is botanical themed and I’m absolutely in love with it.
The cheesecake unmolded from the springform pan without a hitch, and fit perfectly on the stand.
The top didn’t look so perfect because the graham crackers were a bit too crumbly and a couple drips from the water bath hit it, but it looked good enough to us.
I pulled out two plates from the set and admired their designs.
And the last bit of the set, the serving knife, ready to make its first cut.
The first cut was a bit hairy (isn’t it that way with every cake?), but they came out mostly intact.
Oh baby. Hello most delicious breakfast EVER.
It was everything we’d hoped it’d be: creamy and light with perfect flavor and a hint of lemon. It reminded us of the deep fried cheesecake we ate on our honeymoon.
Writing this post has made me realize just how wonderfully ridiculous this whole project is. Never before would Joe have joined me in the kitchen for baking projects, and we definitely would never have eaten cheesecake (or tiramisu) for breakfast. I’ve always wanted to make cheesecake but never had a reason. I think my new motto may be that I shouldn’t need a reason to make or try something, I should just do it!
And if this supposed snow storm hits us tonight, we have a delicious cheesecake to live off of for the rest of the weekend. Bonus.
TGIF!
