Sickies

Between all the hustle and bustle of the last month and the season change, I manged to get sick. Yuck! I was feeling pretty miserable yesterday. I spent the day sleeping, coughing and being cranky. Van was the perfect hubby and made soup for me and made sure that I was drinking lots of water. I was so bad that I even fell asleep watching the LSU / Auburn game. And that was a really exciting game.

Thankfully, I'm feeling better today and I'm hoping that by tomorrow I will be back to normal. The silver lining was that I was able to sit still and work on thank you notes and the slideshow for the reception in Ohio next weekend. I will put the link to the slideshow on the blog as soon as it's finished.

Happiness

If you didn't get the hint from my decor, I have quite the sweet tooth. So for me, one of the best things about our wedding was our fabulous cake! We loved the yellow cake with lemon curd and raspberry filling at Jean Jacques Bakery so much that we got it for all four layers. As luck would have it, we ended up having plenty of cake left after the wedding.

The wonderful thing about Jean Jacques is that they give couples a gift certificate for a free cake on their 1st anniversary so there isn't any reason at all to try to save the top tier in the freezer for a whole year. Which, let's be honest, creeps me out. Anyway... since there wasn't anything holding us back we have been sneaking small slices every few days. Each and every slice brings back happy memories.

Fall, Football and Food

The summer flew by with a storm of wedding activities and now that everything is over I have landed right at the start of my favorite season. I love Fall. I live for the football games, holidays, spices, cooler weather, sweaters and comfort foods that come with this time of year.

During the summer, it often seems unbearable to stand in front of the hot stove as you spend hours working on a dish. In the Fall, the warmth of the stove or oven seems like a cozy place to spend a Saturday. Last weekend, I completely indulged myself by watching the Ohio State game and cooking a fabulous chicken.

I decided to start working my way through the new cookbooks we received as wedding gifts. I picked up Kylie Kwong’s Simple Chinese Cooking and found the soy sauce chicken recipe. Using light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, Chinese rice wine, spring onions, orange peel and cinnamon, I made a stock that I used to cook a 3 lb free-range chicken.

The slow-cooking process (3 hours) made the chicken extremely tender and flavorful. Not too mention how fabulous our kitchen smelled as the stock simmered away. The stock was awesome on our jasmine rice and all together it was an excellent meal. I even attempted to chop the chicken in the Chinese-style demonstrated in the book. I definitely need more practice, but it wasn’t bad for a first try.

I definitely earned the good wife award for this dish so it comes highly recommended.

The Assembled Stock

My Attempt at Chopping the Chicken Chinese-Style

Now That I Have My Mrs. Degree

I know that I have been MIA. I took a bit of a sabbatical while I was out earning my Mrs. All of our hard work paid off and we had a gorgeous wedding. I know, I'm a bit bias. We both agreed that the day couldn't have gone better. Now that we are back from our honeymoon and everything has settled down, I am planning on getting back to my blogging routine.

Superficialious

I recently discovered Polyvore, a site that lets you build collages from items found in stores online. This site is a shoppers heaven and I have to admit - superbly superficial. I love it. You can add items that you already own and mix and match with new items from other stores. Check out how cute this sequin chiffon top from Charlotte Russe looks with my Sass and Bide jeans.

Coq au Vin

My extremely generous bridesmaids gave me a beautiful Le Creuset French Oven at my bridal shower and I have been dying to test it out. Yesterday, I made Coq au Vin for dinner. The chicken was perfectly cooked and delicious. The left-over wine wasn't bad either!

My Favorite Kind of Promotion

M&Ms is launching a new line of ice cream treats and to get the word out they were giving away free icecream bars by my office yesterday. I was lucky and snagged one before they ran out. I have to admit that it tasted pretty darn good, but then again, who doesn't love free icecream on a summer day?