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