R&R

/ Claire / 6 Comments

Yesterday afternoon, Jamey and I sat on our porch and basked in the late Sunday rays, books in hand and bellies full of a great Easter brunch.

Our front porch.

Jamey lounged on the chaise while I sprawled out over the rocker, and we mindlessly chatted about our house and the passers-by.

“Jamey, what should we write our blog post about tomorrow?” Most of our Sunday afternoons are spent tossing around this question. We review what we’ve recently cooked, who we’ve spent our time with, and what’s amused us the past few days.

Jamey closed his book and stretched. “I don’t know. What have we done this weekend?” Continue reading →

Say it with me: bacon-wrapped scallops.

/ Claire / 9 Comments

Well. This week just flew by, didn’t it?

I’ve been busy putting wedding material together the past few days, which has been a fun and time-consuming process. Luckily, Jamey entertained you today with a fun history post. (Don’t we wish he shared more like this?)

However, my labor for love hasn’t been all we’ve been up to this week. Jamey started bootcamp (not the army-kind, but the extreme workout version), we cooked duck confit in the sous vide (which you know we will blog the next go-round when I’m camera ready), my car broke down, was towed then brought back to life, and I had a race cancelled last night due to bad weather and street floods (plus some pretty crazy hail, which I have never seen in this town).

But really, it wasn’t a bad week despite the last bits. We even built up a little backlog of recipes to share!

One of these recent experiments was bacon wrapped sous vide scallops, which we pulled together a couple weeks ago. Should I say that again slowly? Bacon. Wrapped. Scallops. Drool with me, if you will.

Scallops, bacon, arancini. Oh, my.

Continue reading →

Happenstance

/ Jamey / 3 Comments

Sometimes I read something and I’m amazed at how random the world is.

Something like this:

On Sept. 13, 1862, members of the 27th Indiana Infantry were awaiting orders on a hillside near Frederick, Md., as Robert E. Lee’s Confederate troops approached from the south. One of the men noticed a package on the ground and discovered three cigars wrapped in a piece of paper. The men were rejoicing in their good fortune when a sergeant noticed writing on the paper — it was headed “Headquarters of the Army of Northern Virginia.”

They had discovered Lee’s battle plan. The orders had been issued to Gen. D.H. Hill, but one of his staff officers had apparently dropped them; Hill received a second copy from Stonewall Jackson and had not realized that the first set had been lost.

The plans passed quickly up the line, and that afternoon Union general George C. McClellan was wiring the president, “I have all the plans of the rebels, and will catch them in their own trap.” The battle of Sept. 17, Antietam, was the bloodiest single day of the Civil War. It repelled the rebel army and permitted Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation from a position of strength.

Lee later told a friend: “I went into Maryland to give battle, and could I have kept Gen. McClellan in ignorance of my position and plans a day or two longer, I would have fought and crushed him.”

Futility Closet is one of my favorite sites on the internet. Great for a few minutes to get my mind moving again.

So the Battle of Antietam was lost because a staffer lost the plans in the street… crazy, huh?

I haven’t got a very good way of making this about Claire and I. I suppose I could go on for a little bit about how everything had to align perfectly for us to meet and be where we are now, but I tend to think that that level of navel-gazing reeks of hubris.

Mostly, I just think that’s a crazy little story and wanted to share it.