Christmas tree trimming

with the girls supervising...

all dressed up

Playing on clean new carpet

Thanksgiving

Some turkey day pictures

Black Friday

Meribel spent her black friday tearing up catalogs:
rip shred tear
fold spindle
Mutilated

Flying monkeys

Big girls at Costco

Sitting side by side carts in their tandem carts!

New outfits

My computer has been at the shop -- one reason why there are less posts -- but here's a picture of the girls new outfits from uncle Andy.

They are getting excited to see everyone at thanksgiving.

Christening at St Johns

Here are some pix of the girls Christening

Diwali Festival

Here is a slideshow from November's Divali festival.

Halloween Pictures

The girls got all dressed up for Halloween -- Ilsa as a monkey and Meribel as a penguin. If you click on the picture, you can see what fun they had all day.

A new play mat

J. went to the twin mothers swap meet yesterday and came back with a multi colored play mat for the girls, which is imperverious to their drool. Here's a short clip of them playing on it, although I missed them smacking the weeble wobble penguin. The poor penguin makes a happy sound when they do that, so Meribel particularly loves hitting him.

It's been a warm October out here -- we have not even turned off the A/C yet -- and some of the fall rituals we used to do in Vermont are no longer necessary here.

A trip to the pumpkin patch

The girls went with their grandma to the pumpkin patch yesterday.

They picked out a nice big pumpkin, went for a hay ride, walked through a maze, and also brought home a bag of fall vegetables.

The twins had a great time, and came home tired and ready for a long nap.

If you click on the picture above, you can see the slide show.

Be Gentle

This weekend the girls went to their nonny's, where they played with
Pablo, the dauchshund. At first, we had to tell the dog, 'Be Gentle'.
So he was polite and only licked their feet. But then the girls
started grabbing at him, especially his long ears, and by the end of
playtime, the girls were the ones being warned to 'Be Gentle'.

I guess that's progress.

The picture with the girls should come with sound, so you'll just have
to imagine the monkey shrieking that accompanied it. They have
healthy lungs indeed. Tonight they had their first vegetables --
roasted pureed butternut squash. They liked it, especially the change
in color from their usual goop.

The paella was from the same recipe that has been in J's family since
the Nixon era. I cheated and took a few short cuts, but it was still
quite good, and J's parents enjoyed it. It's also a good excuse to
pull out the ridiculously large pan we make it in, as well as the
pricey saffron spice jar. And the last bottle of a favorite Rioja.

Felonious Feline

So last night the girls grandparents arrived, and I made lavender stew in the pressure cooker, along with mashed potatoes and sauteed patty pan squash. The lavender stew is in fact made with a tablespoon of lavender and has that unique and delicate flavor infused in it.

This morning we had bagels and sockeye salmon lox. While we were munching on this in the living room, Zamfir had been greedily observing the slab of salmon, and hopped up on the dining room table (and channeling Lena) and started chowing away. I was annoyed since it was a $20 piece of fish and I had assumed we'd have it for both weekend days, but there wasn't much we could do other than consign the rest to the cats. It's a little salty, which he craves, so I hope it doesn't make him sick.

Thing 1 & 2

Here's Thing 1 & 2, who are getting hungry for their supper.

Here's Thing 3, who wants to lick the other things toes.

We left all the things at my mothers, and took J's visiting friend out for some sushi, an example of which is above. We have found a hole in the wall place up in Citrus Heights that is pretty much as good as anything I've had in NYC. It's called Yui Marlu, and the two times we've been there, we've been the only table that didn't have someone Japanese at it. The presentation in particular is superb.

Girls just want to have fun

With J's new birthday gift, a Flip camcorder.

Press the arrow button in the middle to watch them.

Come back - this time it will be different

Even good natured pets don't like their ears being grabbed.

Reading on a Sunday afternoon

 

I want that!

Yesterday's was J's birthday, so the girls made her breakfast in bed: spiced tea, cloudberry stuffed french toast, and grand marnier tossed strawberries. Later that night we went to La Boheme, which was reputed to be the best French restaurant in the city. It was excellent - I had escargot, rabbit, and then we split the cherries jubilee, prepared table side. So it was a lot of fun, and much better than the last special occasion place we went to here.

While we were there, the girls stayed at my mom's where they played with my sister and the dog (who they now outweigh).

If you click on the picture above you can see some more pictures too.

What have we been cooking recently?

Now that we are back home, we've been able to go back to using all our cookbooks and kitchen kaboodle.

Last week we made:

Lamb and chicken biryani
Ham and 13 bean soup
Roast sole over rosemary potatoes
Chicken tetrazinni
A mixed grill of lamb chops, fennel, and zucchini

I used a Jamie Oliver cookbook for the italiczed ones of those, and although it's a visually appealing book (lots of great pictures etc) I don't find the recipes to be anything special, or worth making again. They are vexingly imprecise too. The bean soup recipe was from our battered Sheila Lukins (of Silver Palate fame) book, and it was outstanding, although it took 8 hours to make.

The baby on the left is Shelly's new son, named in honor of Kaiser Wilhelm, the last emperor of Germany.