Blog
Writing, notes, and occasional rambles.
Sewing class
I’m currently taking a sewing class at JoAnn Fabrics. I thought that since I’ve been teaching myself and learning as I go (and as I make mistakes), it would be good to take a class to fill in the blanks. It’s been great. We are making a skirt. I will finish it tomorrow - it seems the hem on mine is going to be fairly tricky. I will post a picture when it’s done. The education coordinator at JoAnn has also agreed to do a serger class. A family member and a friend are interested, so I think we will all do it together. The instructor has been awesome, and I’ve learned quite a bit. I would recommend trying out their classes, if you are interested.
Sep 2011Gluten free dogs
We have two dogs - a maltipoo (Maltese poodle mix), and a cockachon (cocker spaniel, bichon frise mix) - and they are terrifically adorable. Zoe and Wash have been part of our family for over a year now. Wash had all sorts of problems when we first got him. He had parasites and bronchitis and a high susceptibility to fleas. We took care of everything, except that he was really itchy. He scratched so much that he broke skin a few times. It was horrible. We didn’t know what to do, but we decided to change food. They were on Science Diet, and first we tried Avoderm, but they didn’t like it too much, so we settled on Blue Buffalo, which is a high quality, grain free food. His skin got a lot better, but he was still scratching. We had him on an antihistamine, and if he didn’t get it for a day, he would start scratching a lot. We finally decided to cut out all grains, including from treats, thinking that maybe it was more than just going to a higher quality food that had helped him. And it has been great! Wash no longer scratches, and we haven’t given him a pill in over a week. Blue Buffalo makes some grain free treats, and so do some other brands. We also discovered that Wash (but not Zoe) LOVES raw carrots cut into thin slices. Crazy, right? Both of the dogs also love duck jerky. So now everyone in our house is gluten free, except that I keep a loaf of bread and some crackers around. I will need to make GF dog treats now, beyond raw carrots. Liver treats, perhaps? If you have pets, and if you are feeding them Science Diet, do some research. I think we went to dogfoodadvisor.com .com when we were looking for a new food. We were surprised at what goes into dog food.
Sep 2011Amaretto cake recipe
As promised in my prior post, here is the recipe for the gluten free amaretto cake I made last weekend. 1 box devil’s food cake mix (Betty Crocker makes a gluten free one) 1 3.9 oz pkg instant chocolate pudding 1/2 c vegetable oil 1/4 c water 3/4 c amaretto (Hiram Walker’s is gluten free) 4 whole eggs 1 egg yolk Crushed almonds to coat Bundt cake pan Preheat oven to 350F. Mix wet ingredients together in a big bowl. Add cake and pudding mixes. Sprinkle crushed almonds into greased cake pan. Pour mix into pan. Bake 1 hour. Invert onto plate and poke lots of holes into cake. (LOTS of holes) For the glaze: 3/4 c brown sugar 12 T butter 1 c amaretto Bring sugar and butter to a low boil, stir to make it creamy. Remove from heat and add amaretto. Pour glaze slowly over the cake, allowing it to seep in between pours. Let cool 1 hour before serving. I had a lot of glaze that didn’t seep in, so I cut the cake into slices, let each side sit in the glaze for about a minute, and then arranged the slices nicely on a plate… Mmm, cake soaked in amaretto.
Sep 2011Gluten free amaretto cake
A few weeks ago, some friends and I participated in a trivia night fundraiser for Metro Lutheran Ministry. Part of the evening was a dessert auction, and one of the desserts was a “boozy amaretto cake.” We didn’t win - the trivia or the cake - but on Friday, MLM emailed out the recipe for that cake. It called for a cake mix, and luckily enough, Betty Crocker makes GF devils food cake mix. That was the only non-GF item in the recipe (certain brands of amaretto are GF, so that wasn’t difficult), and voila, we had the amaretto cake on Saturday. It was delicious. There is a LOT of amaretto in it, and less than half of it has any heat applied, so the alcohol is all there. I will post the recipe tomorrow, but I wanted to write about it tonight. I think it is a good example of how easy it can be to make something gluten free. Frequently, you can just do a straight substitute, and really, even when you can’t, adding in four other flours to get the right consistency is just not a big deal. The real problem comes from contamination, in my opinion. That seems like a good post for later this week. Carl thinks I should write more about cake, but I will let you discover its deliciousness for yourself. Tomorrow.
Sep 2011after more than a year hiatus...
… I’m back. Pretty sure no one has noticed my absence, and that’s fine by me. I’ve spent the last year fully embracing the domestic life. I took up sewing, I’ve dived deep into gluten-free cooking, and we spent a good portion of the year doing yard and garden work. I plan to update my blog more frequently from here on out and write about more substantive things, contrary to the whining that I too frequently fall into. Here’s to another beginning!
Jun 2010JD
Within a month or two after starting law school, I was at a career services thing, and they spent a minute stressing that the degree we were pursuing is a Juris Doctor, not a Juris Doctorate. Although I understand that some people might be confused, people should know what their own degree is. I was given a pamphlet about a Republican candidate today (the Republican part isn’t important, but still…), and one of the statements in there was about him receiving a Juris Doctorate from Washington University. That just irritated me. Thought I’d mention it, because I’ve seen “Juris Doctorate” on a few attorney websites and all over our Luther class letter.
Feb 201017 days
17 days. Yes. 17. And then I will be married. I’m both excited and terrified, naturally. Preparations are coming together, but I’m having trouble understanding how I’m supposed to focus on work while this is going on. If I had been made to feel less important at work, I would probably just take off the next two weeks. :) As it is, they seem to like me, so I can’t really just disappear for a while.
Jan 2010work-life balance
This will be a short post, as I have to be at work in seven hours, meaning that I have five hours to sleep, but I wanted to say a quick word about balancing work and life. In the legal profession, or at least in private practice, balance seems to be actively discouraged. All through law school and while looking for jobs, I told myself that being balanced was very important. And it is. However, it seems to be a struggle to maintain it, and my job sometimes feels like it is a little kid on a teeter-totter who keeps moving closer and closer to the fulcrum. I’ve joined an orchestra and a gym, and I have taken over the music director position (“position” being a very loose word) at LCM as well as looking for a new church home in Overland Park. Also planning a wedding and starting to look at moving to KC (well, Johnson County really). And making time for friends. I should be able to do all this, right? It seems like these things are essential to my well-being as a person as well as a lawyer. And yet there is never ever enough time. As I write this, it seems more like I took too much on rather than work is demanding more of my time than it should reasonably have, so maybe I’m just whining. Today was just a hard day, and I’m starting to think that this struggle for balance, and this ideal of working at the office and not working outside the office is just that, an ideal.
Nov 2009a long pause
It’s been a long time since I’ve written, and a lot of things have happened in the meantime. The rest of my time in Europe was WONDERFUL. It was so good to be with Carl, and the traveling was a lot of fun. I flew home (that was an ordeal) at the beginning of September and started my job a week later. I was excited about my job before I started, and it has turned out to be even better than I thought it would be. I work with great people who support and challenge me, the subject matter is surprisingly interesting, and I get to do things that big firm associates don’t see until their third year. Also, I went to Miami this last week for a conference on asbestos medicine. Six of us went from the office - I only went because one of the attorneys couldn’t at the last minute - and it was a nice combination of educational lectures (including a video of a extra-pleural pneumonectomy - yuck), networking, and relaxing (mostly on the day before the conference actually started). I had a great time, and I felt really lucky to go. Asbestos is a complicated area, and so getting the chance to learn more in a focused context was really good for me. In other news, Carl moved home a few weeks ago. It’s so good to be back together. Wedding plans are gearing up, though there is still a lot to take care of. We’re also just trying to sort through the house. Between the two of us, who lived alone for three and four years, we’ve accumulated a lot of things, many of them duplicates. We have more tupperware (in a generic sense) than anyone should ever need. I also picked up the vestiges of my youth from my mom’s house about a month ago, meaning all of my childhood books, yearbooks, journals, stuffed animals, my baby blanket and baptismal blanket, and assorted items like a music box from my grandmother and a salt-covered rock from the Dead Sea. That is all now added to the pile of things to sort through. It is literally a pile, similar to a small hill, though much more fragile. I started to go through things today, but I didn’t get very far, because I started reading my journals from high school. Oh my goodness, those were drama-filled years. I’m very glad I’m past those years. So in closing, life is good, and I’m enjoying this journey into real adulthood. Oh, and Carl and I got Motorola Droids a week and a half ago. Awesome. We love them.
Aug 2009a week and a half into my vacation
After the horror that was the bar exam, I came over to Europe to spend a month with Carl. It’s been fabulous so far. We were in England for a little over a week, and now we’re in Munich until Friday. My brother’s down here visiting us, and this is time to just relax and sleep in. It’s wonderful. I was looking at some of the pictures we took in England, and I was shocked by how happy I looked. I’m not sure if I’ve smiled so much in the last three years as I have in the last week. When I get back to the States, I’ll have a little less than a week before I start my new job. This has been a welcome break between finally being done with school and entering the real world. I think Cort and I will head over to the Deutsches Museum today. And go shopping. Ah, what bliss. And Carl will be working, of course. He only has off for the first and last weeks of my visit. But he’s being sent to Dublin next week, so we’ll have a grand time there - I’ll go see exciting things while he sits in a server room. :) So that’s life right now. I’ll update more later…