green

Ted’s dad volunteers weekly with the Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity and we spent part of the day touring some of the subdivisions he’s been working on, including the organization’s 200th home.  They’re really great looking neighborhoods, and their program has proven very successful in getting families into permanent homes.

Since the storm knocked out power and paralyzed much of the city for several days the annual Faber Cookie Extravaganza had not yet entered full swing, so we spent part of yesterday and today making up for lost time:

Asheville had gotten hit hard earlier in the week with the biggest snow storm they’ve had since 1993, getting about over a foot of snow in a 24 hour period.  Power lines snapped, streets were  blocked by motorists abandoning their vehicles, and recovery resources severely taxed as efforts to plow streets and restore services slowly spread throughout the area.  In Ted’s parents’ area, they were without power for about 36 hours; their street remained snowy, icy in parts — in fact, the visitor they were expecting this morning couldn’t get up their hill, so Ted and his dad went down to help her out.

After a truly amazing breakfast at the Sunny Point Café, we visited Ted’s sister Bethany at work, where she gave us a tour of the Brumit Center and award-winning Hot Food Team facilities.  A little touring around the area, then back home to start making the Christmas cookies…

A fun day just hanging out with the family.  G & K prepared a wonderful dinner — carne asada with all the trimmings (including a multitude of salsas and bean dip from Big Rock), plus tres leches cake and graham cracker/frosting sandwiches for dessert.  Then Yahtzee and Wii games into the night…

Christmas doughnut.

New toy!

Are there any more presents for us?

When Ted’s uncle came for a visit recently, he noticed our plum tree was producing lots of fruit and mentioned that his mom used to make plum pierogies. I’d only had savory pierogies like potato and cheese, but the idea of a sweet pierogi was intriguing. It wasn’t mentioned again, and he left for home.

Meanwhile, I continued harvesting bowls of plums and made a couple batches of jam when we received a letter from John with the following enclosure:

an annotated copy of his mother’s recipe for German Piroghy. Neat!

I’ve never made these before and the recipe isn’t long on details, so I did a little investigation on the Web to help fill in the gaps for a novice pierogi-chef like myself:

• For the dough
• For the mushroom filling
• For the plum filling
  The original recipe didn’t have any instructions for the filling, so I looked online. Most plum pierogi recipes called for either plain white sugar or a combination of sugar and cinnamon; I used a 1-to-4 ratio of cinnamon to sugar. Peel the plum, halve and remove the stone, add about a teaspoon (or less) cinnamon/sugar in the center, then roll the plum in the cinnamon/sugar mixture.

The original recipe also called for melting a stick of butter and adding 1 cup bread crumbs, cooking until slightly browned, then rolling the plum pierogi in the butter crumb mixture. We were going to try this, but Ted ended up buying Italian-style breadcrumbs and I didn’t think that would go so well with the sweet plum so we just made them plain.

They. were. Delicious. I mean, really good. The pierogies I’d had before were the frozen kind that you microwave and serve, which are great if you need a pierogi-fix quick (making them from scratch for the first time took close to three hours from start to finish — it would likely be considerably less time next time around, but still well over an hour). But these are like a completely different food. The dough is fantastic, the filling so flavorful…

Big thanks to John for sending this our way. Great recipe!! Would make again!!1!

I finally got to meet Ted’s uncle, John, during his short visit while passing through Los Angeles. After staying the night, Ted took him up for a little sightseeing tour around the LA basin. Fun!

Ted and I played tour guide to six of my relatives from Japan this weekend. They arrived in San Francisco half an hour early; Mom (the bilingual one in our group) arrived 5 hours later. We were able to get everyone and their luggage piled into our two rental cars and checked in at the hotel without problem, but since Mom’s arrival had gotten bumped we needed to feed everyone. And considering how little Japanese I speak, it was an adventure.

We dined at Max’s, a local restaurant in Burlingame the hotel’s front desk staff recommended. Ted and I sampled their fare the night before and were impressed by the food, so we returned with the group the next day. When we arrived, we asked the wait staff if anyone knew Japanese, but no dice. Still, our waitress was a trooper and we managed to get an order together. Most had pasta with shrimp (except for my cousin, who ordered a pulled pork sandwich) and everyone seemed to enjoy. They all remarked at how enormous the portions were, to which our waitress said “Yeah, Americans are fat.”

Heh.

Lunch at Max’s

Mom arrives

Ted has been watching the skies and has decided to take advantage of a clear window in the weather by leaving a bit early. Weather in Asheville will be stormy starting tomorrow so we’re hoping to avoid it. We’ll be passing through a small front, but after that it looks like clear skies through the west coast.

We spent the earlier part of the morning waiting for the freezing fog to lift. After breakfast and some scrambling, the weather cleared and we were good to go.

The flight started out swimmingly, and we made our way to our first stop in Huntsville, AL. We expected it to be a quick stop for fuel and facilities, then on our way.

Outside Huntsville, AL

As we took off from Hunstville, Ted noticed he was leaking fuel from the gas cap, so we turned around and landed to have a look.

Leaking fuel

It didn’t seem like much fuel was lost, and maybe it was leakage due to the tanks being overfull, so we decided to head on and keep an eye on it. We left for Little Rock.

Eventually the leaking subsided and all looked well, but then we started encountering considerable turbulence and headwinds that slowed us down to a crawl. Ted decided to take us down in Olive Branch, MS to refuel, take a break, and re-group.

Olive Branch Tower

Fast moving clouds

Our original intent was to fly back to McKinney today and spend the night with my family (primarily because we were worried about hotel availability on New Year’s Eve, but also because it would be nice to share the holiday with family instead of holed up in a Holiday Inn). But things weren’t looking good. It would be another couple hours to Little Rock, then 3+ more to McKinney. We already had a late start to the day, we’d be arriving in Little Rock after dark, and if the weather was as bad as we’d just been having, it would be a very long haul. Ted decided it would be OK to fly another leg, but McKinney was probably out.

Once again, we have nothing but good things to say about the folks in Mississippi. We come bursting in, unsure of where we’re going or whether we’ll be staying, and they helped set us up in the lounge, called a local hotel, and were generally friendly and helpful to us during a somewhat stressful juncture in our trip. Bless their hearts (and I mean that in the nicest, truest sense).

We called ahead and got a reservation at a hotel in Little Rock and made the decision to press on. Again, we had leaking fuel, but no worse than before. Happily, the sky cleared, the winds calmed down, and we had a blissfully uneventful trip to Arkansas.

Dined at Boston’s, a place adjoining the Holiday Inn where we were staying. It was just what we needed – hot food, cool drinks, friendly service staff who were efficient but not overbearing. The place had just opened, so it had that New Restaurant Smell, too. I celebrated New Year’s Eve with a couple Guinness and spicy pasta; Ted had pizza.

They also brought out their dessert tray, filled with lifelike plastic samples of very large sweets. We didn’t partake, but I did enjoy the fact that someone signed the plastic cheesecake: