Pumpkin Pie

Posted on by Jordan

This post is a few days late in coming, as Heather and I attempted the pies over the weekend.

As we have been marching ever closer to Thanksgiving, and holidays in general, Heather and I had talked about wanting to try making a pumpkin pie. They seem like they should be fairly low in sugar, and pretty easy to make.

we shopped around a little for recipes, and got the advice “just use the one on the back of the can of pumpkin pie filling” so that’s what we did 🙂

The only problem was it called for a cup of sugar, shattering our hopes of a low-sugar pie. Our solution was to make two pies, one by the recipe, and one using splenda.

as you can see from the picture (click on the picture for a much larger version), the texture and color of the filling was drastically different using the two sweeteners. I know they sell a version of slpenda for baking that has some brown sugar mixed in, and I think this might be a domain where it would help out, darkening the color etc.

we tried the pies the same day we baked them, after letting them cool in the fridge for a few hours. They didn’t taste the same, but neither one tasted clearly better. I saved a slice of the splenda pie to try after 24 more hours, probably should have saved some of each to really compare. My theory is that splenda starts to taste stronger over time. With nothing to compare to, the slice of pie I saved for another day still tasted pretty good, and certainly didn’t leave any of that diet-soda esque aftertaste that splenda sometimes causes. (If you were wondering, the rest of the pies went to work with Heather).

-Jordan

The Day After Veterans Day

Posted on by Jordan

I had yesterday off, and that somehow translated into not getting anything posted.

What did I do with an entire day off?

Put new tires on my escape, and attempted to make lasagna from scratch! Both tasks took much longer than I expected. The end result was that the time from 1:00pm until 7:00 pm that I had 100% free was not sufficient to complete both 😦

I think the lasagna will probably be good, but I ran out of time to actually bake it, after making the sauce and assembling it in the pan. We are going to bake it tonight, so hopefully setting in the fridge over night wont hurt it too much. Alas, no pictures… I was going to shoot a few, but I was distracted worrying about time and never remembered to grab my camera (that was laying on my desk… mere feet away)

I should also mention that getting a Tuesday off really throws off your perception of what day it is… I still cant tell if its Monday or Wednesday.

-Jordan

Engagement Pictures Taken

Posted on by Jordan

We won’t have access to any of the pictures for a while, but Heather and I had a lot of fun taking engagement pictures over the weekend.

Saturday was every bit as unpleasant as the forecast said it was going to be, so we rescheduled the session to Sunday. The change was our photographers idea, and I have to say it was a really really good move. Sunday was still cold, but without the wind and cloud-cover.

Our photographer is Cherie Phelps, I don’t think we have mentioned that before, she has a neat website here:

< http://www.cphelpsphotography.com/ >

If you look around, you will actually see a number of people from church in the featured pictures.

We started out taking pictures near the Durham Western Heritage Museum. Across the tracks, in the very run down part of the old train station. It made for some really cool backdrops, although being in the shade was really cold. While we were there we encountered another photography session, parents and a toddler.

After the train station, we headed to the old market proper. Let me just say that Cherie is a lot of fun to work with, and I think she got some great shots. We worked our way through the old market area using different areas for backdrops every time we went around a corner. It was such a pretty day, I don’t think we could have asked for a better day visually. The temperature was uncomfortably cold, but the pictures won’t show that and so far neither Heather nor I has gotten a cold :). The other downside to the day was that, being beautiful, every block had a freshly-engaged couple and photographer on it. The traffic wasn’t so bad as to keep us from doing what we wanted, but it did kind of make the whole thing seem a little silly.

Ignoring the cold and other people getting their pictures taken, it was an amazingly fun thing to do. I am sure we will have some fun pictures to show for it soon. Hopefully we can even manage to get one of them in with the invitations, but you will just have to wait and see on that.

-Jordan

One Week Later

Posted on by Jordan

Well I have been 27 for almost a week. I would like to say it hasn’t been any different, but in reality I have had more knee problems in this week than I had all last year.

I suppose that’s not completely fair, I hurt it playing frisbee the Thursday before my birthday. All the same, it hasn’t been the best week for my knee. I had to abandon my workout on the treadmill Tuesday after just a few minutes because things were bad, and getting worse. Fortunately I can still do a stationary bike without causing problems, but I find that really boring.

Beyond my knee, things have been fairly good. I am starting to get used to living in the new apartment. It still feels empty without Heather there, but she came to visit a few times over the week. I think we will manage to survive the next 3 months, but it won’t be our favorite phase of engagement looking back.

Speaking of engagement, Heather and I are suppose to get engagement pictures taken tomorrow. The weather forecast for Saturday has been getting progressively worse as it gets closer. I think right now they are calling for wind, clouds, and cold. By the time we get out to shoot anything it will probably be the winters first freak blizzard. 🙂 Could make for some awesome pictures though!

-Jordan

Chicken, Noodles, and Biscuits

Posted on by Jordan

Oddly enough the fifth of November wasn’t really cold enough to create quite the mood that makes chicken and noodle soup ideal. Heather and I made some last night anyway.

as with every time I have attempted chicken noodle, I completely failed when it came to liquid management. Last time, I used 2 pints of chicken stock and it was too much liquid. This time I only used one pint of stock, and then took an idea from the Betty Crocker cook book, and added two cups of milk with some flour mixed in near the end of cooking. The problem was the noodles took up way too much liquid so it started to dry out and stick as soon as I added them.

I think the first thing I need to do is start measuring everything I put in, using some chicken, some random vegetables, a bag of whatever brand of noodles I grabbed this time isn’t helping any.

because the soup got too dry at the end, the celery never really got cooked, and even the noodles needed longer, but it was turning into a solid instead of soup so I had to stop cooking.

While I was doing that, Heather was working on biscuits:

(picture taken after we took a few off the pan)

She had much more success with the biscuits than I had with the soup, although they both were quite good. I think the only note there is that we could roll the dough out thicker and I think still be fine.

to recap, next time I try this I need to:

  • Measure, and write down how much of everything I used
  • Add the noodles last, after all the vegetables are cooked, or nearly cooked
  • Use the milk and flour to thicken approach again, that was working well before the noodles sucked out all the water
  • Leave myself more time, trying to rush meant we were eating crunchy celery

Now I Just have to remember to check for these posts before I try making something a second time 🙂

-Jordan

Election Day Follow-Up

Posted on by Jordan

Just a quick post to express my confusion about traffic on the nights when there is an election.

Every year there has been an election in November (presidential or otherwise) when I have lived in Omaha, traffic has been drastically worse driving home after work. I really don’t understand it, don’t these people have to drive home after work anyway? And if there are extra drivers, because they wouldn’t normally be out at 5, why couldn’t they vote during the day? It just seems really odd.

-Jordan

Election Day 08

Posted on by Jordan

I was headed to work, and a little ahead of schedule today. My route to work takes me right past my polling place, and I could see that there weren’t many cars in the parking lot, so I figured maybe voting before work would be the way to go. I discovered a number of things:

  • My polling place doesn’t open until 8:00am
  • there were only nine people ahead of me in line
  • the entire spectrum of ages were represented, but the majority were definitely retired
  • we had the option of voting in booths, but a big table with chairs around it was also an option
  • our ballots were the fill-in-the-bubble type, like an ACT test

I am fairly proud of myself, I resisted the temptation to randomly pick an option for all the sections I didn’t know anything about. Last time I voted, the ballot felt way too much like a test and I couldn’t bring myself to leave a single thing blank.

-Jordan

One Year Ago Today

Posted on by Jordan

November third, two thousand and seven… The day I met Heather.

We knew each other existed before that day, but hadn’t managed to actually meet. I can tell you Heather was captivating, beautiful, and so pleasant to talk to that day. I don’t really remember what was said, but I remember the first time I saw her.

It seems like such a long time ago… I never would have expected that we would be so happy together, or that we could do so many things in just a year.

I can’t wait to see what the next year brings!

-Jordan

Moving Complete!

Posted on by Jordan

I should amend what I said Friday about not having that much stuff. It turns out I don’t have that much furniture. I actually have a lot more stuff than I realized. By about 1:00 in the afternoon on Saturday, virtually the entire floor of “our” (formerly Heather’s, sort of mine now) apartment was covered with boxes, bags or piles. It really reminds me why I hate moving in the first place.

I discovered that Goodwill serves a useful purpose. The “helping a worthy cause” factor helps outweigh the delima when you need to get rid of something you clearly don’t need, but somehow feel you might need someday. I still found it distressingly hard to cut down on the amount of stuff I own.

It also turns out that it can be somewhat stressful to have your spouse-to-be really wanting to donate something that you are having a hard time parting with… Heather and I managed to negotiate through some minefields throughout moving and then the process of merging my belongings into the apartment. I wonder if you eventually start seeing stuff as “ours”… I suppose it depends on the object in question.

all in all it was a really good move, and surprisingly Heather and I managed to have almost everything packed away into sane places to store things by the end of the day Saturday.

I should give a special thanks to my roommate Brandon, and my sister-in-law-to-be Kelsey for helping out with the move! It was a lot of stuff to carry, and a lot of stairs to cover. As luck would have it the moving date came just two days after the ONLY time this year my knee has been sore after playing Frisbee. Having a few extra people helping reduced the number of stairs I had to climb, making things much less painful for me.

hopefully Heather and I won’t be moving down from the apartment for quite a while.

-Jordan