Christmas is coming!!
Here are some photos of our recent holiday merriment. We promise we have been eating too but nothing photo worthy.

First off - here is David making his annual gingerbread house with our beautiful tree in the background.


Here are our finished houses


This past Friday we braved the -20 wind chill and went to the ballet to see the Nutcracker. It was fabulous and we were the best-dressed couple there.



Last but not least here is a photo of our Christmas tree all decorated.


Hope all is well and everyone is getting ready for Christmas.

Lots of love
Abby and David

Our First Tree

Sorry for the lack of recent posting on our blog, everybody. We’ve been in full Christmas sweatshop mode trying to get all the gifts together and in the mail. We’re finally done and everything is going out today. Anyway, on to our first tree—well, our first tree as a married couple.

Here in Western Montana, you can buy a $5 permit from the forest service and cut your own tree from the national forest. So last Friday, we grabbed a saw and some rope and ventured out into the forest.

Here’s Abby standing next to the tree we chose and then me cutting it down.


The tree is home and decorated, and I promise that we’ll include a photo of it all decorated in our next post.

Also last Friday was the Big Sky Brewing Company Christmas party. It’s a costume party and this year’s theme was super heroes. Abby and I decided to go as the Jolly Green Giant and Sprout. A few sweat suits, some green RIT dye, and lots of green felt later…



I have to admit that it felt a little weird walking from the car to the party downtown on December 5th, but we fit right in once we got there.

We hope everyone is having a good holiday season so far.
Love,
Abby and David

Happy Eating Thanksgiving Edition

We had our Thanksgiving dinner on Friday this year because Abby was working on Thanksgiving day. We divided up the cooking and made most of the dishes earlier in the week. On Friday, we got up and made the pies and turkey. Here’s a photo of all the food.



Beginning at the turkey centerpiece that Abby crafted and going roughly clockwise we have a basket of onion bread and crescent rolls, carrots with onions and bacon, pumpkin pie, homemade cranberry sauce, the Angermeier family green bean casserole, a brined turkey breast, corn pudding, a huge amount of stuffing, mashed sweet potatoes with a pecan streusel topping, the Zander family green jello salad, pecan pie, and mashed potatoes. You can also see the Elizabeth Spencer Grenache we had with dinner. And we did have gravy, but we couldn’t fit it on the table.

If you can’t tell, we made enough food for at least 8 people. We barely made a dent in any of the dishes during dinner. At this point we’re just hoping to finish our Thanksgiving food by Christmas.

This is what the table looked like when we removed all the food and sat down to eat.



Here are photos of both of us in our turkey headbands that Abby crafted for us.





We hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving and we want all our family and friends to know how thankful we are to have you in our lives.

Love,
Abby and David

David's 30th Birthday Week

My 30th birthday was last week (on the 11th) and my lovely wife made sure that I’d have a present every day of the week leading up to the big day. Here are some photos of my presents.

This is the beer and books that I bought with the mad money I got from various gift givers. I had a great birthday shopping spree looking around the beer store and the book store. Thanks to Grandma Carol, Jeff and Holly, and Ann for the fun shopping and all the drinking and reading yet to come.

This is me modeling the beautiful kilt I got from my folks, my birthday t-shirt from Abby, and my birthday beer glass from Aunt Martha. (I’m also wearing my hand-knit kilt hose from Ann as a wedding present. I’m still incredibly impressed by them.)

I got this t-shirt from Abby. It’s from Wilson’s, a BBQ spot we ate at on Route 66 in Oklahoma. It’s kind of hard to read, but the slogan is one of the best I’ve ever heard—“You need no teeth to eat our beef.”


And now for Happy Eating!

For our birthday entry, we have campfire pie. It was my favorite dessert in Napa Valley from Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen just a half block from our house in Saint Helena. We made our own version. It’s an oreo crust painted with homemade chocolate sauce and then layered with homemade marshmallow fluff, chocolate pieces, toffee pieces, and oreo pieces, then more marshmallow, chocolate, toffee, and oreos, and finally topped with another layer of marshmallow. Then we browned the marshmallow under the broiler. I think that it’s safe to say that it’s the tastiest and most unhealthy pie in the world. Here’s me blowing out my candle.

For non-birthday happy eating, we rubbed a pork shoulder with roast garlic, mustard, and herbs and put it in the slow cooker. We shredded it and topped it with mole, avocados, radishes, and cilantro for tacos. We accompanied it with some braised red cabbage and a Hennepin (Belgian-style beer called a Saison) from Ommegang Brewery in NY state.


Hope everyone is well.
Love,
David and Abby

Our Day Off Hike

On our mutual day off David and I went on a hike, and by hike I mean picnic. Those of you who know my know I'm not so outdoorsy, so a hike with the promise of food at the end is right up my alley. We drove up into the Blue Mountain Recreational Area and hiked (300 yards tops) into a pretty overlook and had a yummy picnic. Here are some photos.


Lots of love to everyone
Abby and David

Happy Eating and more!

Well, we're sneaking this entry in just under a month after our last post. Sorry it's been so long, but our last blog-worthy food got posted my Mom in her blog over at http://hookingbookie.blogspot.com. We do have some good pics of their visit though...


These pics show my parents, Don and Barbara Malcolm, playing Wii bowling like it's going out of style. I almost had to check their luggage to make sure they weren't making off with our Wii!

We also have the final photo from the 1st annual Big Sky Brewing Company Face Off. This is my facial hair after one month of growing as I groomed it for the competition. I'm proud to say that looking through everyone's photos was like a yearbook from a skid row gentlemen's hotel.

They're tough to see, but I had mutton chops down to my jawline on both sides. And I thought the narrow moustache really added to the creepiness. (Don't worry, Mom. I shaved it off the next morning.) The photos got posted in the tap room for the public to vote on. The results haven't been posted, but the prize money is around $150 and the loser gets his entry fee back. I'll let everyone know if win the grand or the booby prize.

Finally, here is this entry's installment of Happy Eating. At the last farmer's market of the season last weekend, I made a great find and picked up some absolutely gorgeous lobster mushrooms and some Jerusalem artichokes. Here are some pre-cleaning photos of the mushrooms. They're 1/4 pound apiece--the mushrooms, not the photos.



For dinner, we stuffed a chicken with lemon, onion, and garlic and then layered bacon on the top. We roasted it and added the mushrooms and Jerusalsem artichokes to the roasting dish about halfway through the cooking so they'd cook in the chicken juices and bacon fat. We also baked some potatoes and accompanied it with a lovely Scapegoat Pale Ale brewed by yours truly.


I think that dessert is worth mentioning, too, even if we didn't make it. We enjoyed some fantastic Haagen Dazs Toasted Coconut Sesame Brittle ice cream.

Hope everyone is well,
David and Abby

Happy Eating

We have two installments of happy eating for today. First, our dinner from Saturday. We made bacon cheeseburgers on the grill topped with caramelized onions, lettuce, avocado, and barbecue sauce. We also made cole slaw and sweet potato oven fries. We paired it with a delicious Obsidian Stout from Deschutes Brewing in Bend, OR.

Second, this is our breakfast from Monday. We've been feeling very autumnal, so we made caramel apples with apples from the farmer's market. We dipped some in crushed chocolate toffee squares, although as you can see in the photo, they kind of slid down to the bottom. But that makes the first few bites extra good! The caramel apples made a great breakfast with a cup of coffee.


Hope everyone is well,
David and Abby

Arts and Crafts Time

Abby and I decided that we needed something to lean against when we read in bed, so we made ourselves a headboard this week. We found instructions for an upholstered headboard online that seemed to match our construction skills. We drove to Lowes and took advantage of their saw for the wood and picked up hardware. Then we went to Joanne's for fabric, batting, buttons, and foam. We didn't get the foam because it was $30 a yard and we would have needed at least 4 yards. That $120 would have defeated the purpose of our DIY project. So, in a flash of common sense (if not brilliance,) we realized that a foam matress pad would work fine. After a quick trip to Wal Mart we had all the materials.

Yesterday, we laid out the fabric, batting, foam, and plywood and stapled the fabric to the board. Then we attached buttons with a needle and thread and screwed on legs and some supports. We intended to attach the legs to our bed frame, but it seemed pretty sturdy just being held up against the wall, so my laziness won out. We're quite happy with it, and it cost us less than $100.

Here's before:

Here's after:

And here's Abby giving it a test lean:

It looks like it works to me! We're very happy with ourselves and we feel like we have a real grown-up bed now.

Hope everyone is well,
David

P.S. Mom, I feel like a bum.

Happy Eating and David’s Facial Hair

Eating First –
Last week we ate pretty well even for our standards! I had Tuesday-Friday off, so I made chicken cordon bleu, which is just fun. I bought a family pack of chicken breasts, ¼ # of Swiss cheese and ham from the deli and made breadcrumbs from leftover bread ends, which was free bread from Le Petit. A quick note on that, make don’t buy your breadcrumbs, the canned ones taste like it, and are too fine in consistency. Instead indulge your inner frugality (I can always feel my grandpa Roy smiling down on me for being so resourceful) and use up the ends of bread! So I stuffed my little chicken breasts, then seasoned flour, egg wash, and bread crumbs. A quick spray with the oil mister and into the oven for 30 minutes they went. We enjoyed them with roasted cauliflower, and green beans steamed with a little o.j. As a starch I made a brown rice salad, which was pretty delicious. I got the idea from a bulgur wheat salad recipe from Real Simple magazine. The rice was cooked and cooled and drizzled with olive oil, and lemon juice, and tossed with flat leaf parsley, dried cherries, and toasted pecans.

I also baked a cinnamon swirl bundt a la my mom. She was still in Ireland, so I searched the interweb for a recipe and I think I found a pretty close one to hers. Here is the link, and enjoy the photo.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Cinnamon-Swirl-Bundt-Coffee-Cake/Detail.aspx


Saturday we found ourselves again out of food for dinner. I was hungry for something with a lot of spices, so I found a recipe for Moroccan beef roast on foodtv.com. It was a slow cooker recipe so David threw it in the slow cooker in the morning, while I was at work, and he headed for the farmers market. The pot roast was super tender and very flavorful from all the spices and the apricots and parsnips that it had cooked with all day.


Yummy with a little Elizabeth Spencer Pinot which we just received last week!! David decided that a dessert in Gourmet magazine was too interesting to pass up. It is watermelon sorbet on the bottom and a topping of sweetened condensed milk, whipped cream and lime juice and zest. Here is a picture, and again the recipe is in this month’s Gourmet, (with the blackberry dessert on the cover)


Today David and I had the whole day off together. We had grand plans to do some serious hiking, but we woke up to 50 degrees and raining, and I am a fair weather hiker at best. Sooo we decided to go out for lunch at a deli and then came back to make eggplant Parmesan. I talked to my mom today and she requested my eggplant parm recipe, because she enjoys it a lot. The recipe is in my head, so here it goes.

First slice the eggplant. Try to pick small normal egg plants (not the expensive cute Japanese ones) cut them into ¼ inch slices and sprinkle them with salt on both sides. Put them on a cookie sheet on the counter for 15 minutes.

While the eggplant is hanging out, make bread crumbs with 4-6(ish) slices of bread, a few old hamburger/brat buns or whatever you have. Process in the food processor until they look like bread crumbs, pour onto a jelly roll pan and toast in a 350 oven for 7-10 minutes.

Now rinse the eggplant under cold water, and set up a breading station. 3 pie plates, 1 with flour with a little salt and pepper in it, the second with an egg or 2 and some water, and the third with the bread crumbs mixed with some Italian seasoning if you would like and grated parmesan cheese. Coat eggplant slices in flour, then egg, then crumbs, and then pan fry in batches or spray with cooking spray and bake for 10-15 minutes.

Now you could go two ways, you could make a casserole or you could keep all the components separate which is usually what David and I do with stuff that gets soggy because we eat it for a few days and by day 3 the eggplant and sauce will become one soggy breading mess.
Either way, sauce and noodles are needed. If the casserole road is taken mix noodles with pasta sauce and place eggplant slices on top cover with mozzarella cheese and bake until cheese is browned. If the individual road is taken take two servings of eggplant slices that you have baked or pan-fried, and top with mozzarella and place on a cookie sheet in a 450 oven until hot and cheese is brown. Plate on top of pasta and tomato sauce. Yum yum. I hope this does it for you mom, and devoted readers.

Here is a photo of the finished yummy product.




The facial hair part of the title of this post is because David has entered the Big Sky Brewing Co. First Annual Face Off. The boys are seeing who has the best facial hair after one month of growth. They all had to be clean shaven on Sept 17th.
Here is David on the 17th.


Now here is David on the 22nd


He looks, as my brother would say, like a mountain man. 5 days down, 25 to go. I’ll keep you posted. While David is consumed with his facial hair, I have begun the daunting task of scrap booking the wedding festivities. I hope to get it done and off the kitchen table by the time David’s parents Don and Barbara come to visit on October 9th.

Everything else is going well with us, and we hope all is well with you.
Lots of love to one and all
Abby

Happy Eating 2!!

David has been a busy boy!! Last Saturday he bought a large box of peaches and a flat of blackberries. They were quickly turned into jam. The bulk of the peaches found there way to the freezer thanks to our new food saver (hurray for wedding presents). Saturday is also our evening off together, so in celebration we made grilled pizzas with mozzarella, roasted peppers, and sausage and basil from the farmers market. After dinner we had a little ice cream from cold stone (thanks Aunt M!!) We had a ton of basil left so Tuesday we made a big pan of lasagna which we are still working on.

In other news we are doing well and were both enjoying our jobs. We are though finding it hard to meet people and make friends. I'm going to start going to church and check out there young adults group, and David and the boys at the brewery are trying to find time to all get together and hang out. Its hard for David because he works alone at the brewery during his shift, and the folks at the bakery (the two couples that I work with) have known each other for years and seem like a tough club to get into. I'm trying to really focus on getting the whole bread thing down and not worry about it.

David and I have been trying to get out and exercise a few times a week and have been playing a lot of tennis and going on walks on a river front trail before work.

Hope everything is well at home, where ever that may be, and we miss you all!!
Abby

Photos from this week

Pretty sunset from our patio.


The white stuff on the mountain yeah, that is snow. It rained in Missoula on 9/1 but above 6500 feet, it snowed! How awesome is that!

Last Monday David and I took a nice long walk on the down town trails in Missoula. It goes through a bunch of parks and one had trout sculptures in it. My husband, ladies and gentlemen.

Omnivore Meme a la Abby
This is a list of 100 foods that every omnivore should eat sometime in their life. The idea is to bold the ones you've eaten.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters - ick
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl – A bite in San Fran – Im not big on clams
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea – At the plaza hotel in NYC with Mom!
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects – Wild berry culvers ice cream. The legs stuck in my teeth! Eeww.
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth $120 or more – Again a sip of dad’s
46. Fugu- yikes, and no
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel--disgusting
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut – still warm, insanely good
50. Sea urchin – thanks cooking school
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi – Japanese plums – I had them pickled
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine – I freakin love poutin! Jan 10 I will be stuffing my face with it!
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake – yes to all 4
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost – the most disgusting cheese I have eaten
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky--Men's Pocky is the best!
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant – French Laundry has to be 3 stars!
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

82 for me! Thanks culinary school!

A New Blog Addition!! Happy Eating!!

A new blog addition, introducing Happy Eating! David and I make some pretty awesome food together and we thought we would share with you all what we are up to in the kitchen. I also was a little envious about Ann (David's sister) and her new blog feature "Caturday" about her new cats, having no pets to blog about I will talk about yummy food instead.

Last Saturday David and I went to the farmers market and purchased some pretty cool stuff. For dinner Saturday night (photo above) we grilled a huge T-bone steak which we split, made smashed purple Peruvian potatoes with horseradish imported from Shawano. For the veg we cooked a French apple sausage in some olive oil and then tossed a ton of yellow swiss chard is the sausage. The bread is from Le Petit, and the wine is Elizabeth Spencer Cab.

In this months bon appetit magazine they gave Thomas Keller's fried chicken recipe form his restaurant ad hoc in napa. The restaurant was our favorite when we lived in napa last year, and we adored the fried chicken, so we just had to make some for ourselves. Sunday we had fried chicken with the left over purple potatoes and chard. Served with a delicious Big Sky IPA beer it was quite a meal.

In addition David has been a pickle making machine this past week! He has made bread and butters, harbin dills (a spicy dill pickle), spicy pickled carrots called firecrackers, and curry pickled cauliflower. The last two are refrigerator pickles so we are already enjoying the pickled carrots.

Hope all is well with everyone and happy eating this week!

love
Abby

Abby's New Job

What a view, right? So as this beautiful picture suggests that dark cloud that surrounded my employment has lifted and I found a new happy job. I am working at a bakery in Missoula about 5 minutes from our house. Its a really fun job and I'm learning a ton about bread baking. The website for the bakery is www.lepetitoutre.com. I'm working the same hours (ish) as David so we are both soo much happier. My boss said I was doing an awesome job.

In other news, my mom and dad came to Missoula last weekend. Dad and David braved the heat wave and went white water rafting, while Mom and I shopped the Missoula boutiques and had a delicious Mexican lunch. We had a blast and it was sad to see them go on Sunday.

I hope all is well with everyone!
xoxoxo
Abby

Lots to catch up on!

Well, we've been hearing that people still check our blog and want us to keep posting, so here goes. (We're not at all sure that we're interesting enough to keep blogging, so read at your own risk.)

After the wedding, which was pretty much the most fun we've ever had, we had to face reality and find jobs. I (David) posted my resume online and found a job with Big Sky Brewing in Missoula, MT. We packed up our stuff again and drove to Missoula, and I started work one week after the day they offered me the job. I'm really enjoying my job; it's a great group of people and I get to make about 3300 gallons of beer every day.

Abby found seasonal work at a luxury camping resort outside of town, but is still looking for another job for when this one ends. She's got promising leads with a local bakery and another restaurant here in town.

We spent our first week living in a hotel room while we were looking for somewhere to live. We found a great apartment on the south side of town and were able to move in after a week. Here are some photos.

First, our kitchen with a bit of our dining table visible at the bottom.

This is a view of our living room with the other side of the dining table visible.

This is our couch and coffee table. I included this photo because I'd like to point out the incredible tiling job that Abby did on this table. We got it without any insert for $5 at a thrift store, and Abby tiled and grouted it herself. It is my favorite piece of furniture in the house.

Next is the master bedroom and spare bedroom/office space.

Here is a shot of our porch and the view from the porch. We have chairs, a table, and our grill out here.

Finally, for house pictures, here is the autographed lyrics of Take the Money and Run from Steve Miller that I got from Wade and Ali for my birthday last year. I'm thrilled to have it displayed in the house.


Today, Abby and I decided to hike up to the M. Up the side of Mt. Sentinel, adjacent to the U of Montana campus, there is a huge concrete M. Evidently, these letters are common in towns across the western US. It is probably the most popular hike in Missoula and was voted the best view in the Missoula Independent newspaper. We were huffing and puffing due to our low level of physical activity lately, but we had a great time and enjoyed the spectacular view.

Here is a photo looking down the M to the campus and city below. Abby is standing at the bottom of the M. She's really there, I promise.


Here's one of me hiking down from the top of the M. Yes, I'm wearing my khaki kilt and I really appreciated the breeze on a hot, sunny day.

This is both of us at the bottom of the M.


And finally, here is a bonus photo. This is from our trip home down Route 66. This is a famous truck trailer in a small town in Illinois. I believe that it is from the Cambell Trucking Company. It may be the greatest slogan I've ever seen and it has launched me into a search for a t-shirt. I made Abby get out of the car in the rain to take this photo of me.


Hope you enjoyed, and we'll try to keep up with the blog.
David and Abby