Those of you who know me know that I love to bake. Well I found a new recipe for an apple tart and I REALLY wanted to make it! There was one ingredient that I didn't have yet, though; brandy. Now, I will cook with cooking wines sometimes, such as marsala, white, red, etc, but brandy is a hard liquor, and I hadn't realized until now, that the stores in NY don't carry anything besides cooking wines and beer. After figuring this out I realized I was going to have to bite the bullet and do something I'd never done before; enter a liquor store.
I tried going one evening, but realized they close pretty early. Dang it. I really want this tart! So the next day I get in the car with my girls and head over to the shopping center where the local liquor store is located. I felt SO out of place! In I walk with a babe in arms and a toddler holding my hand. The two customers look up with amusement on their faces. The man at the register looks at me with question. "I need some brandy to flambé some apples for a tart", I tell him. I'm pretty sure I hear the two other customers chuckle under their breath. I'd hoped to ask the cashier/owner if they carried items like orange liqueur, but once inside the store I had one thought: get in, get brandy, get out.
The employee asks me how much I need. I tell him the recipe calls for 1/4 cup, but that I'd like to be able to make it more than once. He suggests this TINY little flask of brandy. I opt for the larger one so I don't have to return to the liquor store ever again.
He hands me the flask. Annibelle says, "I want to hold it, mommy". I laugh and tell her that I don't think that's a good idea. The employee laughs and offers the girls a dum-dum sucker from his halloween candy bowl. This distracts them perfectly. I decide to pay with cash, as I don't want this purchase on my bank statement. Then the cashier hands me my flask of brandy in a brown paper bag. I feel like a homeless drunk just holding it. I decide to put it in my purse so I won't draw attention to myself. It's surprisingly heavy, but I feel better with it out of sight.
I finally get to make this amazing apple tart, and it really is delicious! It's very mild, as the recipe doesn't call for much sugar and very little spices. I may alter that a bit... A scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side completes this scrumptious dish! The recipe is soon to come on my food blog, goodbuysgreatbites.com
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
The Chronicles of Moving
I realize I haven't written a post here in a very long time. Life has been CRAZY.
We found out that our landlord hadn't paid the mortgage since 2010, just after we'd move in, and that the house we'd been renting was now in foreclosure. Since our lease was ending, we decided to go ahead and move out. Since it had been unplanned and we'd given ourselves very little notice, finding a new house to lease was quite a challenge, as was/is moving out on time. Because of the sudden decision to move out, our landlord became quite angry with us and is threatening to keep our $6000 deposit. She tried to scare us with a few emails and such, but I've been in a similar situation before, and so I stayed up quite late for many nights researching the laws/right involved with renting in this state. As I'd guessed, the law is on OUR side. After one more annoying email from the crazy landlord, I wrote back and gave her a piece of my mind, not to mention a few legal threats of our own. Not surprisingly, she backed down. (Though I'm sure she's still planning on keeping our money, which means I"m going to have to sue her).
The house hunting was nothing short of discouraging. Many houses we looked at were shockingly gross and disgusting. The ones we liked that seemed perfect were either rented to someone else, or denied us because of poor credit. I had many sleepless nights because of this, and cried quite a few desperate tears. We have to be out by October 15th, and still had no place to move to. Finally our realtor calls us and says we have a 'call back'. The owners of 47 Widmer Road want to meet us. This is good news. This isn't my favorite house we've looked at, but we're desperate. I remind Peter that this house has no A/C, was built in the 1800's and may have a lot of issues. It has oil heating, which we know nothing about, and the basement smells moldy. Other than that I don't recall much about the house, as we've seen so many since looking at this one.
The evening arrives and we all go to meet the owners of this house. They're Chinese. They live next door. I worry that having them right there to see all that we do might be stressful. If they're anything like the previous landlord there is NO way this could work. We meet them. They're lovely. Danny Lam doesn't speak a lot of English, but he gets by alright. He's a hard worker. He built their house next door and the play set in the yard. SoYing works for IBM. She doesn't cook at all, unless there's a party, and then she makes jello. (hahahaha!) Danny speaks to his wife in Chinese and has her warn us that the wood stove gets hot and to not use it so the girls will be safe. He tells us that he will mow the lawn and, as long as he's in town, will plow the snow for us. (It just keeps getting better!) All of their concerns are for us, not their house. These are good signs! We talk and agree to rent the house and meet back in 2 days to sign the papers and pay the first months rent and deposit. (Those were two very long days!) Finally, on October 3rd, we make it legal, and for the next two years, this house is ours. =)
We immediately load up the rented Uhaul van and take a load of stuff over to our new house. We do this each evening the entire week. The house had been vacant for 2 years so there was a LOT of cleaning to do! We were out past 1am every night. The poor girls are exhausted! So are we.
Friday night we rent a 26 foot Uhaul truck and a few guys from church help load it and unload it at the new house while I pack and take care of the girls. The next day the actual movers come. They were terrible. Lazy. Slow. Incompetent. They broke two of our couches, the vanity my father gave me, and countless other items. They held some of our items hostage on the truck in an attempt to get more money out of us, so I started moving stuff myself. One of the 3 guys sat on the truck all day and did nothing to help us move. All items were just thrown into the main level of the house. The couches weren't put together and were tipped over and one was left on end! Boxes weren't in the designated rooms. You could hardly walk through the house. I cried. Today was also Annibelle's birthday. She was now 3 and the entire day had been nothing but a nightmare. We decided to dry our eyes and celebrate anyway and took our little ones to Chuckey-Cheese. We ate pizza, ordered a cake with candles and played silly arcade games until they closed. It was nice. We decided to spend the night at the old house on the recliners that were left there. Not a great night of sleeping, but we survived.
Over a week later we are still moving out/in! We're almost done. Tonight the young men and their parents are coming over to help move the rest of the stuff to the new house. I admit I'm a little stressed out thinking of immature boys running around my houses and handling my stuff. Hopefully this evening will go smoothly.
We've been blessed to have some friends from church help us in the attempt to make some sense of all this mess. If not for them we would not be able to see past or walk around the boxes.
Yesterday was a beautiful day and I just couldn't handle being inside with all the boxes any more, so after laying Callie down for a nap, Annie and I went outside to clean up the front flower beds. There was a lot of old dead debris from the plants which I pulled out with a rake. Annibelle put on her Dora gloves and helped me put all the mess into piles. We ended up with 5 big piles of weeds and such. Now what? I didn't want to handle the messes because of the possibility of spiders! Yuck!!!! I decided to leave the piles there for Peter to help me with when he got home from work. HOWEVER.... when he returned home from work the piles were no longer there and had been cleaned up! By who, you ask? By Danny! Our landlord and neighbor. He had cleaned up my gardening mess for me after mowing the lawn. I felt like my dad was here with me, as this was always how we did things. I'd prune and make the mess, and he'd clean it up.
I feel so blessed to have such great neighbors/landlords/friends. I've missed my father more than I can express, and though he's still gone, I sort of feel like he's here helping me out right now.
We now live on 3.5 acres with plenty of trees for the cats to climb and play in. We have a big open yard and a swing set for the girls to play on. We have privacy without seclusion, just as we'd wanted. We don't have an HOA telling us what we can and can't do. WE have landlords who don't care a bit that we have cats, which is wonderful, because that means they won't care if I end up getting another pet at some point. =) And, we're paying $500 less/month on rent, no longer have a water bill (we're on a well now), we don't have to pay for lawn mowing or snow plowing, the electric bill is lower since we don't have a/c, and the heat is oil! I feel truly blessed. Someone must be looking out for me.
Now you all just have to come visit us and see for yourselves this cool, old house we live in! It has a lot of character! I didn't think I"l like living in an old house but I do. I even think it's funny that the floors are so unleveled that the bed rolls across the floor! There are closets inside of closets in this house. The girls have such fun hiding in the closets and cabinets; it's so funny to watch them play. We also have a huge front porch, which will soon be sporting a porch swing!
There's still a LOT to do before this house can be called a home, (I still haven't found our drinking glasses!), but I'm excited to live her and make this place our own.
We found out that our landlord hadn't paid the mortgage since 2010, just after we'd move in, and that the house we'd been renting was now in foreclosure. Since our lease was ending, we decided to go ahead and move out. Since it had been unplanned and we'd given ourselves very little notice, finding a new house to lease was quite a challenge, as was/is moving out on time. Because of the sudden decision to move out, our landlord became quite angry with us and is threatening to keep our $6000 deposit. She tried to scare us with a few emails and such, but I've been in a similar situation before, and so I stayed up quite late for many nights researching the laws/right involved with renting in this state. As I'd guessed, the law is on OUR side. After one more annoying email from the crazy landlord, I wrote back and gave her a piece of my mind, not to mention a few legal threats of our own. Not surprisingly, she backed down. (Though I'm sure she's still planning on keeping our money, which means I"m going to have to sue her).
The house hunting was nothing short of discouraging. Many houses we looked at were shockingly gross and disgusting. The ones we liked that seemed perfect were either rented to someone else, or denied us because of poor credit. I had many sleepless nights because of this, and cried quite a few desperate tears. We have to be out by October 15th, and still had no place to move to. Finally our realtor calls us and says we have a 'call back'. The owners of 47 Widmer Road want to meet us. This is good news. This isn't my favorite house we've looked at, but we're desperate. I remind Peter that this house has no A/C, was built in the 1800's and may have a lot of issues. It has oil heating, which we know nothing about, and the basement smells moldy. Other than that I don't recall much about the house, as we've seen so many since looking at this one.
The evening arrives and we all go to meet the owners of this house. They're Chinese. They live next door. I worry that having them right there to see all that we do might be stressful. If they're anything like the previous landlord there is NO way this could work. We meet them. They're lovely. Danny Lam doesn't speak a lot of English, but he gets by alright. He's a hard worker. He built their house next door and the play set in the yard. SoYing works for IBM. She doesn't cook at all, unless there's a party, and then she makes jello. (hahahaha!) Danny speaks to his wife in Chinese and has her warn us that the wood stove gets hot and to not use it so the girls will be safe. He tells us that he will mow the lawn and, as long as he's in town, will plow the snow for us. (It just keeps getting better!) All of their concerns are for us, not their house. These are good signs! We talk and agree to rent the house and meet back in 2 days to sign the papers and pay the first months rent and deposit. (Those were two very long days!) Finally, on October 3rd, we make it legal, and for the next two years, this house is ours. =)
We immediately load up the rented Uhaul van and take a load of stuff over to our new house. We do this each evening the entire week. The house had been vacant for 2 years so there was a LOT of cleaning to do! We were out past 1am every night. The poor girls are exhausted! So are we.
Friday night we rent a 26 foot Uhaul truck and a few guys from church help load it and unload it at the new house while I pack and take care of the girls. The next day the actual movers come. They were terrible. Lazy. Slow. Incompetent. They broke two of our couches, the vanity my father gave me, and countless other items. They held some of our items hostage on the truck in an attempt to get more money out of us, so I started moving stuff myself. One of the 3 guys sat on the truck all day and did nothing to help us move. All items were just thrown into the main level of the house. The couches weren't put together and were tipped over and one was left on end! Boxes weren't in the designated rooms. You could hardly walk through the house. I cried. Today was also Annibelle's birthday. She was now 3 and the entire day had been nothing but a nightmare. We decided to dry our eyes and celebrate anyway and took our little ones to Chuckey-Cheese. We ate pizza, ordered a cake with candles and played silly arcade games until they closed. It was nice. We decided to spend the night at the old house on the recliners that were left there. Not a great night of sleeping, but we survived.
Over a week later we are still moving out/in! We're almost done. Tonight the young men and their parents are coming over to help move the rest of the stuff to the new house. I admit I'm a little stressed out thinking of immature boys running around my houses and handling my stuff. Hopefully this evening will go smoothly.
We've been blessed to have some friends from church help us in the attempt to make some sense of all this mess. If not for them we would not be able to see past or walk around the boxes.
Yesterday was a beautiful day and I just couldn't handle being inside with all the boxes any more, so after laying Callie down for a nap, Annie and I went outside to clean up the front flower beds. There was a lot of old dead debris from the plants which I pulled out with a rake. Annibelle put on her Dora gloves and helped me put all the mess into piles. We ended up with 5 big piles of weeds and such. Now what? I didn't want to handle the messes because of the possibility of spiders! Yuck!!!! I decided to leave the piles there for Peter to help me with when he got home from work. HOWEVER.... when he returned home from work the piles were no longer there and had been cleaned up! By who, you ask? By Danny! Our landlord and neighbor. He had cleaned up my gardening mess for me after mowing the lawn. I felt like my dad was here with me, as this was always how we did things. I'd prune and make the mess, and he'd clean it up.
I feel so blessed to have such great neighbors/landlords/friends. I've missed my father more than I can express, and though he's still gone, I sort of feel like he's here helping me out right now.
We now live on 3.5 acres with plenty of trees for the cats to climb and play in. We have a big open yard and a swing set for the girls to play on. We have privacy without seclusion, just as we'd wanted. We don't have an HOA telling us what we can and can't do. WE have landlords who don't care a bit that we have cats, which is wonderful, because that means they won't care if I end up getting another pet at some point. =) And, we're paying $500 less/month on rent, no longer have a water bill (we're on a well now), we don't have to pay for lawn mowing or snow plowing, the electric bill is lower since we don't have a/c, and the heat is oil! I feel truly blessed. Someone must be looking out for me.
Now you all just have to come visit us and see for yourselves this cool, old house we live in! It has a lot of character! I didn't think I"l like living in an old house but I do. I even think it's funny that the floors are so unleveled that the bed rolls across the floor! There are closets inside of closets in this house. The girls have such fun hiding in the closets and cabinets; it's so funny to watch them play. We also have a huge front porch, which will soon be sporting a porch swing!
There's still a LOT to do before this house can be called a home, (I still haven't found our drinking glasses!), but I'm excited to live her and make this place our own.