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Monday, November 3, 2008
On Comments
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Saturday Morning Breakfast: Southern Style Biscuits
Mornin' y'all!
In honor of a most important college football game taking place this afternoon (evening for us), we've gone Southern for today's Saturday Morning Breakfast. Although, considering that Will will be cheering for one side and Jackie will be cheering for the other, perhaps it would have been better to continue with our normal breakfast routine this morning... Hmmm... Nonetheless, here's the recipe.
Southern Style Biscuits
2 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 stick/8 tbsp butter, cold
3/4 cup buttermilk or cream
Preheat the oven to 232C/450F
Mix dry ingredients together
Cut butter into pieces and work into dry mixture with hands until it resembles crumbs
Add the liquid, mixing until a little loose and sticky
Pour dough out onto floured surface. Knead for 1 minute. Dough should be smooth and no longer wet.
Shape dough into a ball, and hit it with a rolling pin, turning and folding it in half every few whacks. Repeat for 2-3 minutes.
Roll out dough until its 1/4 inch thick, then fold in half.
Use a round cutter (we use a glass) to cut out biscuits from dough.
Place on a greased baking sheet close together (so they rise up, not out).
Bake for 15 minutes or until tops are golden brown.
Makes 10-12 biscuits.
Enjoy!
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Winter? WHAT?!?
That's right. We said it. The 'w' word. Before Halloween and Guy Fawkes day, winter has arrived in Cambridge. Cold air from the Arctic has brought temperatures down into the 30s at night and has had us scrambling for our winter coats. It even SLEETED this week! Ugh. Alas, such is life on this little island in the middle of the north Atlantic. As England has no real climate of its own, it is at the mercy of various climes and currents ranging from the Mediterranean to Siberia.
So while most of you are enjoying colorful foliage, dappled sunlight, and sweater weather, we are bundling up and turning on our heaters. A long winter awaits.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
A Friendly Visit
As we've said in numerous past posts and E-mails, we love it when people come to visit. No matter what we may usually do on weekends (homework, watch movies, stare out the window), we love getting the monotony broken by seeing a familiar face and spending some time catching up. This time around we had the pleasure of meeting up with Lee and her friend T.J. in London. Lee we of course know from Chi Alpha. Will remembers that Lee was in his first class at UVA: Advanced Calculus. T.J. had spent two years at Oxford recently and met Lee through their work for the Navy in South Carolina.
We started off at Trafalgar Square and then enjoyed some of the best fish and chips in London at "The Rock Sole Plaice." By enjoy, I mean that we sat outside and nearly froze to death in the high winds. There wasn't much seating inside, but, when you're visiting a moderately sketchy eatery, you like to see standing room only. In case you were wondering, yes, it was totally worth it.
What visit to London would be complete without a trip to the British Museum? We've been there innumerable times at this point, but it doesn't take much convincing to get us there and it is always worth seeing the world's treasures on display.
Not to be outdone by some of its younger peers, the British Museum is sponsoring an exhibition of modern sculpture in what can only be described as a "where's Waldo" format. Basically, there are pieces of modern art strewn across the British Museum in various exhibition halls. It is, for lack of a better word, appalling. The art is entirely out of place, context, time, and sense. For example, see the sculpture "Siren," below. As this BBC news article describes, the artist believes that Kate Moss is "an Aphrodite of our time." The Greeks were certainly into odd things, but we weren't really sure that they would have appreciated Kate Moss' "beautiful" Yoga pose amongst the Parthenon sculptures.
There also was an exhibition by Damian "A Dead Shark is not Art" Hirst that consisted of a nine foot high bookshelf full of fluorescent colored painted human skulls. Not that we would wish anything evil on anyone, but whoever at the British Museum thought this was a good idea is more of an artist, less of an archaeologist, and should be sacked.
Continuing in the traditional (or non-traditional) London mould, we proceeded to Fortnum & Mason to show Lee the most ridiculous grocery store in the world. Whilst in F&M's basement wine cellar, we got a brief education on wine from T.J. who is quite the oenophile. In case you are curious, 2000 was an excellent year for Bordeaux; hence why you may find 1997's, '98's, '99's, and '01's, but almost never a 2000. Did you know that? Also, don't be afraid to try 'Rioja;' wine from the Rioja winemaking region of Spain. It's a fast climber and sure to be world-class in the next 5-10 years.
For dinner we visited London's Chinatown which was, for all intents and purposes, China. It might as well be called "Questionable Restaurant Hygiene"-Town. For example, T.J.'s eagle eyes spotted how one restaurant was quick to boast that they had a 3-star hygiene rating from the British rating authorities. All well and good, until you notice that this was three stars out of five. This indicated one of two things:
1. All the other restaurants in Chinatown do not even have a three star rating
-or-
2. The owners of this restaurant have no ambition to do any better than 60%
Shouldn't one strive for excellence in everything one does? Not in Chinatown. Nevertheless, we picked a very good Japanese/Thai/Chinese restaurant where we got nearly more ramen than we could eat for £7 each. Not bad, at all. Plus, the place was packed. In fact, every restaurant (well almost every restaurant) in Chinatown had a line out the door and into the street of people waiting for tables. Evidently, we've finally found the place for cheap eating in London.
To close the night off, we stopped into the Charing Cross Hotel Bar at Charing Cross Station. The super-swanky hotel has a nice, if a tad expensive, bar that was a quiet spot to keep chatting and hanging out.
All in all, we've found that no two trips into London are ever the same, but we're always glad for the time we get to spend with friends. It's always hard to say good bye, but we look forward to the next opportunity that we get to go walkabout in London.
By the way...Before Lee and T.J. arrived, we walked around the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square (top photo). The collection was really good; particularly the collection of impressionistic art. Having not been to the Musee d'Orsay we can't say how it compares, but it was certainly more interesting than say, this National Gallery(nah, Washington's alright).
Friday, October 24, 2008
Saturday Morning Breakfast: Chocolate + Orange Muffins
We've recently introduced a new tradition into our home: Saturday Morning Breakfast. While this may not seem like a novel idea to most, given our standard breakfast routine it will be special. Monday through Friday it's muesli with honey for Will and old-fashioned oatmeal with apples for Jackie. Will sits at his desk and reads while eating, and Jackie doesn't sit down at all because she is too busy trying to get herself out the door. Sundays are a little less hectic, but since we like to sleep in a bit and we attend the first morning service at our church, breakfast is pretty much the same as Monday through Friday. Besides, Sundays are special in their own right because that's when we chill. Saturdays around here, on the other hand, are often working days. So in order to slow down and start the weekend right, we have a special Saturday Morning Breakfast (SMB) together. 
Tomorrow, however, we are meeting up with a friend from UVA in London, so our SMB has to be something quick, easy, or something that can be made in advance. Enter Chocolate + Orange Muffins. Jackie discovered this recipe a couple months ago and quickly added it to her grand repertoire of baked goods. Will prefers them made with normal chocolate chips, but Jackie likes them prepared with chunks of dark chocolate (70% cocoa) which gives them a more intense flavor. Either way their are delicious. So this is our SMB for tomorrow, and it can be yours too. Here's the recipe.
Chocolate + Orange Muffins
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
zest of 1 orange*
1 cup chocolate chips OR 1 cup dark chocolate, roughly chopped*
1 cup plain yogurt*
60 grams/4 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
2 eggs*
juice of 1 orange*
Preheat oven to 180C/355F.
Lightly grease muffin tins with oil.
Place the flour, baking powder, sugar, orange zest, and chocolate in a large bowl and mix to combine.
In another smaller bowl, combine the yogurt, butter, eggs, and orange juice until well blended.
Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and mix until just combined.
Spoon the batter carefully into muffin tins.
Bake for 35-40 minutes or until the tops are golden and the knife comes out clean when tested.
Remove from the oven and cool for 5 minutes.
Serve + enjoy!
Makes 12 big muffins/16 medium. 
*Notes*
1. Ok, so the original recipe called for 1 tbsp orange zest, but we like our muffins to be extra orange-y. Hence all the zest. Feel free to play around and decide how much is good for you.
2. We only had chocolate chips on hand, so Will's version won this time.
3. You can substitute milk for the yogurt, but add it a little bit at a time so your batter isn't too liquidy.
4. We tend to use 1 egg and substitute the other egg with 1 tbsp olive oil and 1 tbsp water.
5. Again, the original recipe called for 2 tbsp orange juice, but we squeeze the whole orange. It's worked out every time so far.
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