Greek Frappe

When Caleb and I were in Greece, we had a hard time finding good coffee. Greece is not like Italy with little coffee shops on every corner where old men in felt hats swig cappucinno at corner bars. In fact, we were surprised to discover that the national coffee of Greece is Nescafe. Yep, that's right--Nescafe.

Even at the Athens Hilton, in our $300/night room (paid for by the university, not us), there was an exquisite assortment of craft teas, a hot water carafe, and packets of Nescafe.

The coffee shops actually did have great cappuccinos, but the counters were fast-paced, and the menus were in Greek, and Caleb and I would get flustered and order the first thing we saw, which was usually a Frappe with milk and sugar. And I have to admit that it was really good--in the same way that ketchup is good--as in, you know you shouldn't like it, but you do.

My favorite memory of the trip is a particularly long day that involved lots of ruins, hiking to a hill at the top of Athens, and then ending up lost in a public park looking for the cave where Socrates was held prisoner--but instead, witnessing a drug deal--then hurriedly rushing away and trying not to look too conspicuously touristy, and....finally, relaxing in a coffee shop in a quiet little neighborhood with ahhh....Frappe.

I found this recipe on the Nescafe website for Greek Frappe, and it's pretty authentic. I made it in a Margarita shaker. It's a kind of tacky treat that should probably be reserved for particularly bad days, but I highly recommend it.


Greek Frappé
Preparation Time: 2 minutes Serves: 1Ingredients2 tsp NESCAFÉ Classic 2 tsp sugar Ice cubesPreparation:
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Pour 10-15ml of water in the shaker (preferably not chilled, but chilled will still do)
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Add two tea-spoonfuls of Nescafe Classic and one tea-spoonful of sugar, or more if desired.
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Shake strongly until all the water becomes foam. Potential use of an electric hand mixer, instead of a shaker, will make a more nice, shiny and creamy foam.
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Pour into a glass of 250ml, add 3-4 ice cubes and chilled water to fill the glass for black NESCAFÉ Frappé. For white NESCAFÉ Frappé, add 20-30ml chilled milk. Ideal serving temperature 10 degrees Celsius.
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Enjoy your NESCAFÉ Frappé!
Hint :The quantity of water in step 1 plays important role in creating qualitative foam. Very small quantity will not produce enough foam while large quantity will produce soapy foam.If you desire different dosages of coffee and/or sugar, the exact quantity of water in step 1 should vary accordingly.Milk should always be put after stirring otherwise the foam loses all its stability.

Operation Kitchen

Everybody who knows me knows that I hate our kitchen. Caleb and I love to cook, and I mean, love to cook. We're what you might call "foodies." Unfortunately, our kitchen is not a foodie's kitchen. It's more like a "college student who lives off of ramen noodles" kitchen.

The counters and cabinets are all made of matching off-white melamine, which Jenny just informed me is the poisonous substance in Chinese kitty food.

The counter space is minimal, at best, and made worse by the fact that there is a long window in the middle of it that means one counter only comes up to a tall person's knees.

The sink is one bowl, and it has this crazy trash trap in it that harbors all kinds of liquid and bacteria and begins to stink if not cleaned regularly.

And there's more, but I won't bore you with the details.

I love the rest of the house, but the kitchen drives me crazy, and for the next few years (at least), a remodel is not anywhere near our budget. So in an effort to make our kitchen more livable, we're slowly taking on little projects.

For a Christmas gift this year, both sets of our parents donated towards our kitchen project, so this week, we tore out some of our old cabinets and installed open shelves. Besides being ugly, these cabinets were located in a deep corner, and it was nearly impossible to access 90% of the space in them. Because they were so hard to reach, they had turned into a nasty catch-all where we threw dishes in whichever spot we could reach at the time.

Here is a picture of our cabinets in a different corner. You can see how ugly and sterile the doors are.

Here is a picture of the cabinets we tore out. Caleb had already removed the doors, but you can see how mish-mash the clutter was in them.

And here is a picture of our new open shelves. They are organized and lovely. Hopefully, they will stay that way.

Belated Christmas and Vacation Post

Okay, I'm super lax about posting, but here are some Christmas pictures--nearly a month too late. We had a great Christmas. Caleb and I both had a month off, and it was wonderful to be able to give Reed plenty of undivided attention. This was the first Christmas we've ever spent in our own house, and it was really fun to come down in the morning and see that "Santa" had come. Reed was super excited. Later in the day, we went to Caleb's grandma's house and enjoyed lots of food, family, and more present opening. The next day, we celebrated Christmas with Caleb's parents. We really missed my parents this year, but we look forward to spending next Christmas with them. Here are some photos of Reed with his presents, grandparents, and cousins.

We also went to Pittsburgh for a weekend. For my birthday, my friend Kelly launched a fundraising drive and got us a hotel room for the night of my birthday, but since my birthday is on Christmas and we were all tired, we decided to save the room for a night that we could really enjoy. We stayed at the William Penn Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh. It is the oldest and nicest hotel in Pittsburgh. We had a great time. We went to this Pittsburgh Landmark called the Church Brew Works. It's a brew pub located in an old Catholic church. It was pretty fun, and the food was decent, but I think Caleb's homebrewed beer is better.

We also went to the Andy Warhol museum on a Friday night, which made me feel like an adult again.

The next day we went to Trader Joes and H & M, my two favorite stores, and we had dinner with our friends Andy and Carrie that night. It was a great weekend, and I think we deserved it! This past semester was a bear, and I'm pretty sure the next will be worse. Thank you to all of our friends and family who contributed to this wonderful gift and made it possible. Also, thanks to Kenny, Diana, Miranda, and Shale who watched Reed.

Okay, so that's my acceptance speech for the day.

Could It Be?

While waiting at my local gas-station Subway for lunch, I noticed a man in front of me in line. He looked exactly like Anthony Bourdain--and I mean exactly. He was with two blonde women, and they were all ordering sandwiches. When he paid, he sounded exactly like Anthony Bourdain. I thought, hmmm, I wonder if that guy knows how much he resembles Anthony Bourdain? Then one of the women called him "Tony." Could it be? Anthony Bourdain at a Subway--ordering a BLT!?

I must admit that this part of Morgantown (just off the freeway) only has fast-food chains like Long John Silvers and Burger King, so if Tony Bourdain was going to have a quick lunch, Subway would probably be his best option. Also, when I went to my car, I took a look at the cars in the lot, and sure enough, there was a big, black Escalade with New York plates. That said, we see lots of New York plates around here, and lots of New Yorkers seem to be Italians with names like Tony.

But really, could it be? Anthony Bourdain at a Subway? I should have taken pictures to sell to the National Enquirer. They wouldn't care if it was Bourdain or not.

Cousins

We live only 2 hours away from Caleb's sister and her husband who have 2 children around Reed's age, so he gets to see them often. He especially loves Carrick who is only a few months older. Reed says that Carrick is "the best friend of Reed." He says everything that way. For example, I'm the "mommy of Reed." That gives me some interesting things to think about concerning grammar and linguistics, and how in America, we all think that our Subject+Verb+Object sentence structure is just the way it should be, but that's not even how we necessarily learn to construct language in the beginning.


But I digress.

So anyway, Reed gets to see his cousins all of the time, and this is great, because he will likely be an only child, and I want him to know how to share and have all of those great qualities that come with having siblings. This is not to say that "only" children don't turn out great, because I have some wonderful friends who are only children, but I don't want him to grow up feeling lonely or as though he's missed something.

I was lucky to have a great older brother who let me bully him into playing with me, but I rarely saw my own cousins. We lived in Idaho, and my cousins lived in Texas and Arizona. Every summer, for a while during my youth, my cousins from Arizona would come to visit, and I just remember those times as being crazy fun--even though now, as an adult, I can imagine that having 6 kids and 4 adults was pretty stressful for my parents considering that we lived in a 3 bedroom ranch house. But for me, those are some of my favorite memories, and I'm glad that I can provide similar memories for Reed.

Here Reed is with Carrick. See how his face just glows.

In this picture, Carrick, Reed, and Alivia were playing under our dining room table (which is unusually high). Reed was yelling at his train set "Go Thomas, Go Thomas, Go," and everytime that Thomas would go over the bridge, they would all cheer. Even little Livie cheered, although it was obvious that she was just cheering for cheerings sake.

And here is Reed bonding with his other friends: George the Monkey (as he says it) and Pig.

Kids are really fun. I highly recommend them.

Birthday's over.

Reed turned 3 on Friday, November 14. Caleb and I took cupcakes to his preschool on Friday. The kids were really cute.

Then on Saturday, we had a party with family. I made a this lovely Thomas the Train cake. Maybe I actually have a domestic side.

Reed only liked the frosting.

His grandpa and grammie Winters gave him a Home Depot Employee outfit. It's pretty funny, but we were all bummed they couldn't find a Lowes outfit. Caleb's Dad is a union organizer, so we care about stuff like supporting businesses that use union employees. This is, in no way an advertisement for Home Depot. However, the outfit is really cute, and I spend lots of time at the hardware store trying to keep Reed from playing with the display model glass doors while the employees look on in horror, so he's familiar with the uniform.

He'ss now old enough to understand what "birthday" means, and all week, he kept shouting "birthday coming up!" Of course, on Sunday, I had to explain to him that his birthday was over. On Monday, he looked at me sadly and said "birthday's over."

Caleb Breaks Family Record!

Yesterday, Caleb, Reed, and I made our monthly pilgrimage to Pittsburgh to go to Costco; not too exciting I know--I would rather be going to the Andy Warhol museum, but duty and Cabot Vermont white cheddar dictate that we must go to Costco. The roads were really bad with a combination of a snow storm and about 40,000 college students headed home to New York and New Jersey, so we were stuck in traffic for 3.5 hours. To put this into perspective, the drive to Pittsburgh is usually an hour. In order to alleviate our boredom, we started playing 20 questions.

This is where the record breaking comes in; Caleb guessed the answer with 0 questions! It's a miracle. 0 questions. It's like we're psychically linked.

Or maybe I'm just really transparent. I was hemming and hawing over what to pick, when all of a sudden, I said "Okay, I'm ready." Caleb immediately said "Is it milk?" I guess picking milk may have been an obvious choice when we were stopped in traffic next to a milk truck.

I did beat him with Princess Diana though, and he beat me with Werner Herzog, so maybe we're not psychically linked after all.