A Lifelike Sushi Dragon

Over the holidays we ended up at a sushi restaurant.  The preparation was surprisingly excellent and worth sharing. 

 

The dragon roll was particularly well done with great detail and creative touches including octopus eyes and pickled ginger fire.  

The Holidays

Our holidays started off with a tasty and fun package from Hannah.

Then Todd brought home fantastic holiday creations from Zabar's.  What you can't see in this picture is that inside the candy coating on tree is a solid ganache cone. 

We also managed to get our tree and trim it more than 48 hours before Christmas. Many thanks to Niraj who came out to help with the decorating.

As always we had a great time with my parents for the holidays.  I got to spend some time with my mom while I made a holiday gnome to keep the bat and the peppermint beastie company.  I may or may not have left tiny silicon beanies all over the house. 

After the crafty preparations we prepared a tasty dinner of unlikely holiday foods and sat down to a fun family dinner.  I have to say it is always a good time when we visit my parents.  The food is always good, but the fellowship and community that my parents foster in their house in Harlem with their own kids and all of our friends and acquaintances is really what makes events there special and makes us want to just drop by and visit.

Our eclectic meal included ravioli in bolognese sauce, mandarin duck, osso bucco, stuffed pork loin, risotto and brussels sprouts. 

To top things off we shared a traditional flaming Christmas pudding with hard sauce.  Todd has been perfecting his recipe and I have been "helping" by listening to Hercule Poirot in The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding.

Over dessert we cracked open a few early presents.

The next day we headed to Kent where we opened presents with his family.  Here Todd shows up a fun wrapping job and his new Whaler's hat.

 

Buddy and Dakota seem awfully happy amid the paper and boxes. 

  

 Buddy was not please with this remote controlled helicopter that Todd got from his dad and eyed it suspiciously.  

 

Snow in Bayonne!

 

On my way home from my Wee Peppermint Beastie workshop it became obvious that even in Manhattan the snow was going to stick so I knew when I came home I'd find lots of snow and happy dogs.  Great Pyrenees Dogs are made for snow and Buddy and Dakota are no exception.  I arrived home to find several inches of snow on the ground and more coming down every minute and two ecstatic dogs romping around in the (tiny) backyard.  By the time they deigned to rejoin us inside the house they each had at least a quarter inch of snow on their backs and didn't seem to mind.  Just wait till we take them out tomorrow!

I made a Wee Peppermint Beastie!

Today I braved the weather and went into Manhattan to participate in a Wee Peppermint Beast Workshop at Gallery Hanahou.  It was a great time.  I have to thank Rena for forwarding me an email about this which gave me just the nudge I needed to sign up.  The workshop consisted of a three-hour session where the materials and pattern to make a Wee Peppermint Beast were provided and Jenny Harada herself explained and demonstrated how to make them.  Jenny was really great and extremely patient as she explained how to make a beastie and provided lots of demonstrations for each step.  My detailed-oriented tendencies were good for producing a very satisfactory beastie, but not for doing it in the timeframe of the workshop. I was aiming to make a beastie similar to the original Wee Peppermint Beastie like the one on the right here:

But thirty minutes after the scheduled end of the workshop I had just finished the antlers so I decided to take the pompoms home and glue them on there.  I had lots of fun chatting with Rena while making my beastie and it was a really great way to spend a wintery afternoon.

The Hanahou Galary has a fantastic exhibit of plush creations and I'm excited to see what they have next and to attend another workshop there!

Flight Over CT

So, we're looking for a new house.  And we're looking to move to the Stamford, CT area.  And we have been taking trips to visit houses with a real estate agent in Fairfield County for severel months now.  After a few trips, Todd's dad made the terrific offer to fly us over Stamford to see the area from the air.  It was lots of fun.  I've never been in a small plane before, and I had a fleeting fear that something smaller than some SUVs wouldn't actually make it into the air.

Thanksgiving

Olivia:  The rich fellowship in the house, teamwork as we prepare an elaborate meal, and excellent conversation at the table make Thanksgiving with my family one of my favorite holidays.

Todd:  These are mostly pictures of the turkey, because I was very excited to make it with the Mark Bittman 45-minute turkey method.  It came extremely moist and tender, as promised.  No more dry poultry in our future.  Todd: 1, Conventional Wisdom: 0

The Big Two-Eight

Once again my family and friends did a wonderful job helping me celebrate my birthday. Highlights included a tasty Moroccan dinner, a lovely new scarf, a delicious root beer chocolate cake (home-made!), wings and beer (twice), and a gift certificate to my favorite place, a yarn store. Thanks to everyone who joined in - I had a fantastic birthday!

The Shuley Cup

Over the weekend Todd and his siblings all played in the 1st Annual Shuley Cup hockey tournament in Boston. If you know the Parkins you should know that they're into hockey. Urban legend has it that Scott was on skates before he could walk and all three of them have been known to cart around huge duffel bags of gear that reek as only hockey gear can reek. And they're so indoctrinated that they don't even notice anymore.

Todd has played hockey on and off the entire time that I've known him and I know that a good game of hockey, especially one he's actually played in, makes him very happy. Recently it's been harder for him to find opportunities to play, so when Melissa, who is the only one of the siblings to have played continuously from childhood to today, mentioned that her team might be short of players for a tournament in Atlantic City, Todd jumped at the chance to fill in. And that sort of rekindled a recent interest playing more, nicely coinciding with the 1st Annual Shuley Cup, organized by Melissa and her hockey cohorts. We ended up having to ask to deduct a vacation day off of next year to make it and it was totally worth it. I didn't even play and I wouldn't have missed it for anything.
It turned out to be a super exciting tournament. Todd and Melissa were on one team and Scott was on a different team, but they ended up being the two teams that made it to the finals. All of the games with the siblings were particularly exciting for me and all three of them played well. Todd and Scott both scored goals for their teams and they managed not to flatten each other or permanently damage anyone else.

Shuley did an excellent job or organizing the tournament, complete with tee shirts and a variety of awards. Todd's "Denny Mark Award" for 'clutch performance player' is now a stable of the dining room table. I will try to find a more appropriate place for it, but for now I can't deprive Todd of saying "Hi, Denny!" all the time and making his head bobble.

Halloween in Windsor

Todd's uncle's family threw their second annual Halloween party.  Last time it was a smashing success and this year it was too!  Todd's family are some of my favorite people so that made it especially fun.

The invite said to bring an hors d'ouvres or dessert so of course we opted for dessert.  We'd been dying to try to make Nigella Lawson's Guinness cake ever since Jess made a fantastic double decker Guinness cake during one of our trips to DC.  In the interest of time and portability we did cupcakes and they came out fantastic.  Todd's grandma very nicely invited us to stay overnight at her house and let us use her kitchen to make the cupcakes.

This is just a tiny, tiny sample of the fabulous decorations. I can't believe how much effort they put into it.  They decorate so that every time you look around you notice another more subtle addition.  I was really impressed.

What rock star-themed party would be complete without lots and lots of Guitar Hero and Rock Band?  I am happy to say that I think I only failed one song.  And we got to play the Beatles edition, which was interesting.  Sadly they had a wide variety of their songs, but not Rocky Raccoon (my favorite).

A lot of effort went into this appropriately themed costume make by Whitney's multi-talented friend who also performs Fire Poi.  He gave a performance at night in the dark and it was pretty awesome.

True to form the Guinness cake recipe made delicious moist cupcakes despite some dodgy timing on the baking.

The next morning Buddy took Dakota on a little tour of the grave yard before we loaded up the car with 200 pounds of kibble that Whitney did us an awesome favor to bring from NH.  Between loading up the kibble and pulling out of the driveway Todd's uncle did us another favor and buffed out the scratches on the back of the car.  It was amazing to watch and everyone - guys and girls - was transfixed while he did it.  I can't wait to see if they throw another party next year.  I think we'll have to be more creative with our costumes because the bar is pretty high.

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Bats!

Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!

How I wonder what you're at!

Up above the world you fly,

Like a teatray in the sky.

Twinkle, twinkle little bat!

How I wonder what you're at!

- Mad Hatter during the mad tea-party, in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

For Halloween last year I make pumpkins and the year before I made pumpkin baskets.  This year I moved away from the pumpkins and decided to make some adorable bats.  This was another fun pattern from Mochimochi Land.  The knitting part was pretty fast and easy, but then I had to sew the pieces together and that took forever.  After the first one I modified the pattern to pick up the stitches for the wings and ears and that made things a lot easier.  I was worried that the wings were too curly, but blocking fixed that right up.  All together I made three, but I didn't manage to get a short of them all together on the knitting needle.  Maybe I'll make some more next year...

Transport 2: Katie

NEPR doesn't usually transport Pyrs from outside our own region.  This is for several reasons, including the fact that there are lots of needy dogs and prospective families right here in the NorthEast.  However we do make some exceptions and work with reputable organizations in other areas, especially since rescue organizations of all kinds are full to bursting as the economic situation leads to a record number of surrenders.

Katie, a lovable Pyr from Delaware is one of these exceptions.  A very nice person from Delaware took Katie in when her owners could no longer care for her and contacted us to place her.  The person who took her in brought her up to us very late on Thursday night.  When they got to Bayonne, we took a little trip to the park and then she laid right down on the front doormat with Buddy.

They next day I was working from home so I was able to take Katie and Dakota and Buddy for a nice long walk in the morning and then keep an eye on them as they got to know each other.

On Saturday we took all three dogs over to a very muddy dog park and let them have fun.

Mmmmm!  Muddy water tastes the best!

This dog park even has a muddy puddle alternative - a doggie water fountain.

What hole?

Let me help you with your hole!

Uh oh.  I bet you're not supposed to be doing that.  I'm going to get out of here before you get caught.

Digging that hole was hard work!

After the park we went on another adventure.  We went to look for the 9/11 memorial in Bayonne.  When Judy sent me the email I thought it might be some sort of spoof, but I looked it up and it does exist!  So we took our exhausted Pyrs over to see the monument.

This plaque shows that on a clear day you can see the Statue of Liberty in the distance and further on, ground zero in Manhattan, and shows where the towers stood.

This looks even more uncomfortable than before.

Katie waited until we got home before she passed out.

On Sunday Todd took them on a nice long walk while I packed the car and then we headed up to meet Katie's foster family.