Christmas in Baltimore 2012, Part 2: Christmas!

I had a lovely Christmas this year, in no small part to the wonderful Mr (Dr!) N. Thank yoooouuuuu :D

Let's rejoin the story on Christmas Eve. My family don't really have any Christmas Eve traditions, apart from hanging our stockings. It often involves a takeaway and a Christmas film. N and I decided we would have a Christmas Eve buffet, with cheese and crackers, veg and dips, and some baked goods. It was very tasty and I was pretty excited to have some British cheeses on the table, including some Wensleydale with cranberries picked up in Whole Foods, and Stilton with something which we found in our supermarket downstairs. Oh my gosh I nearly forgot to tell you about N's homemade stollen which was INCREDIBLE! He even made the almond paste in the middle from scratch. So good!

We enjoyed watching Bad Santa with our meal, and then before rolling into bed we hung our brand new America stockings above the "fireplace" (I never thought that stupid old television in the corner would come in useful, turns out I was totally wrong!)

Despite our trip across the pond, I am happy to report that Santa was able to find us! Look at all the cool stuff we got in our stockings. Totally spoilt before we even started on the pressies under the tree!

Our day very much revolved around food, so excuse me for reporting everything we ate! Breakfast was a simple affair including grapefruit, croissants and cinnamon buns.

Then we got started on the pressies! Look how much for just two people!

Thank you everyone!

For me the day was fairly relaxed, but N spent most of it in the kitchen whipping up a five course feast! I tried to refrain from snacking in the morning, and was rewarded in the early afternoon with an amuse bouche of crab and avocado bruschetta which was a great combination of tastes that I can actually see becoming a lunchtime favourite around here. This was followed in not too long by our official starter of smoked salmon and beetroot with vodka creme. Another great flavour combo which also looked awesome.

Soup course was a (thicker than expected) pea and mint soup. Also very tasty and fresh.

Then in mid-afternoon came the piece de resistance, N's pork wellington, with roasties, parsnips, caramelised carrots, sprouts with chestnuts, stuffing, cranberry sauce and gravy. I LOVED this meal! I have one clever N :D

It took a few hours before we were ready for my showstopper of the day, a pavlova wreath. Made the previous day and assembled with cream, chocolate sauce and raspberries before eating (/photographing). Yummy stuff if I do say so myself, and enjoyed over the best Christmas episode of Doctor Who in a long time. Can't wait for the new series!

And that was that, a fun, filling and fantastic Christmas Day. I would tell you about our Boxing Day, but I was stupid and left my camera behind at our friends' apartment. So you can hear about that another time. And now for a few days of chillaxing before bringing on 2013! Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Christmas in Baltimore 2012, Part 1: The Build-Up

In keeping with American tradition, just after Thanksgiving, one whole month ago, I started to well and truly get into the Christmas spirit. I was pretty excited this year (although saying that, I'm excited every year!) because not only was it our first Christmas in Baltimore, N and I were having our first Christmas together!

I knew I had to get organised this year so that I could send some stuff home before the posting deadline, so as soon as N was off in New York with his friend I headed out to a mall to start shopping. I got distracted pretty quickly though! Rather than buying presents to send home I bought several things to Christmas-ify our apartment, including advent calendars and an advent candle.

And some groceries so that I could make the Christmas cake and, for the very first time, my own mincemeat!

The following weekend N was back and went to acquire us a Christmas tree, which he sawed down with his very own hands! I think this might be the very best tree I have ever had. And of course called for the first batch of mince pies. Nom nom nom!

The next couple of weeks went by very quickly. We enjoyed adventures with N's friend from The Netherlands, including celebrating Sinterklaas which involved buying each other gifts and writing silly poems! We went to N's department's Christmas party at the aquarium which was pretty cool, but would have been even more awesome if we hadn't just become members the previous week (more about that another time, we're pretty excited!). On the other end of the Christmas party spectrum my department had a pot luck lunch in the seminar room, which was much more fun, and my second (and third I guess, I made double) batches of mince pies seemed to go down very well indeed.

The weekend before Christmas we had some friends over for dinner before we headed out to the Inner Harbour for the Power Plant light show. Of course I couldn't resist using the opportunity to do some more baking, so I tried out this recipe for stollen mince pies which turned out to be incredible!

The rest of the weekend passed quickly in a blur of grocery shopping, present wrapping, preparatory cooking and Skyping with some besties. I think the most fun hour I spent though was icing the Christmas cake!

It's been described as "busy", but I rather like it! And with that I'm off to cut into said cake because I think this post is getting rather long and I'm starting to think our Christmas Day deserves a post all of it's own!

Experiencing America

Yeah OK, I know, I totally suck at the whole regular blogging thing. To be honest though, you haven't missed much, I've mostly been working , or chilling. I started writing about "Fall" over a month ago, but never finished it. So I will do an update soon.

Today though I really want to tell you all about some recent adventures: a trip to Washington DC, finally! And Thanksgiving!

Baltimore is really close to the nation's capital, so it's a little ridiculous that I haven't made it there before now. But it was certainly worth the wait. We nearly went on an insanely hot weekend at the end of June and I'm soooooo glad we didn't because we worked out that we walked nearly 13 miles, not including wandering around two museums! Not something to be done in 40C heat and 100% humidity! As it was though, the mid-November weather was perfect: bright, sunny and crisp.

Baltimore Penn station

We started the day with a walk to Baltimore's Penn station (also not included in the 13 miles I think!) and caught the train to Washington's Union station, both conveniently located for our needs :) We headed straight for the Capitol building, the seat of the US Congress (please bear in mind that most things I know about US politics come from West Wing! And also that we're only on series 5, so no spoilers please!). Anyway, it is much bigger than I realised and has a statue of George Washington on top.

Only 11 days after the US election (btw, what a relief!), and they'd already started setting up for the inauguration, two months from now!

It wasn't long before I had my first glimpse of the view down the Mall to the Washington Monument. There are loads of Smithsonian museums lining either side of the Mall. Having reached the Monument (it's much bigger than Baltimore's, but nowhere near as pretty!) we took a little detour to visit the White House! It was difficult to get a decent photo because of all the tourists, but it was pretty exciting! Much much smaller than I expected though!

Then it was back to the Mall to see all the memorials: WWII, Vietnam and Korean (at which point my camera ran out, so lots of the photos in this post were taken by N); and Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Roosevelt and Jefferson. By now our feet and legs were already starting to niggle at us, but we still decided it was a good idea to cross the Potomac (which turns out to be wide!) into Virginia to see the Pentagon! So not only did I leave Maryland for the first time since arriving in the US, I also got to visit another state! :D

Having seen all the sights, we dragged ourselves back to the Mall for lunch at the American History museum, where the highlight was seeing the original American flag, which inspired their national anthem. Both of these things were made more exciting by the fact that the flag was made in Baltimore and the song inspired by the sight of the flag flying over a local fort during a battle in which the Americans beat us pesky Brits against all the odds. I also enjoyed the American Presidents + First Lady exhibits, but overall the museum wasn't all that interesting I thought. I know America doesn't have quite as much history as Europe, but I still felt there must have been more to it!

Finally we went around the Natural History museum which I really need to go back to because by that point I really wasn't taking anything in. I can't remember the last time I was so knackered by a day out, but it was totally worth it, and I can't wait to go back again! For more pictures see my Facebook here, or ask me for a link!

You can't even see the Pentagon behind me can you? That is definitely Virginia though!

I know this is a really long post, but I also really want to mention Thanksgiving, as another great American experience. I originally intended to work, so we were really grateful to receive an invitation to a real American feast from one of my lovely colleagues. It was awesome! Turkey with all the trimmings, which included mash potato, broccoli, homemade stuffing, cranberry sauce and rolls, and sweet potato mash with marshmallows on top, which is infinitely more amazing than it sounds! And three pies: pecan, pumpkin and traditional Dutch apple (that last one by N of course). We really enjoyed it, and I enjoyed making my way through a pile of leftovers this past weekend!

Stay tuned for an update on American autumn soon!

Book festival squash pie

I can't wait any longer to tell you about all the exciting stuff! OK that's going to make this sound like a waaaayyy more exciting post than it is... Never mind, I shall continue anyway.

I've had a bit of a hard time recently getting hold of my social security card (ie. I applied for one, they processed it, and it never arrived in the mail), so last week I had to go back to the social security office and apply for a replacement for something I never had... And a couple of days ago it arrived! So now I can, erm, officially pay taxes... Yays?

Also last Friday, I managed to get an advance on my paycheck, so I finally have some money woo! Unfortunately, because my bank account is new, my bank put a hold on it. But I had $200 to spend at the weekend! I felt rich! This was fortunate, because last weekend was the Baltimore Book Festival, conveniently located just up the road, woo!

I managed to get seven books for $29, five of which were new, bargain!

We also popped into the "cathedral of books" that is the Peabody library. Love this place.

Last week my lovely new colleague kindly gave me some of her excess squash.

This obviously meant I had to make a pie. A very scrummy "pumpkin" (I used acorn squash) pie topped with candied pumpkin seeds.

We are very sad that this is now all gone :(

But that just means we'll have to make more pie!

Exciting plans for this weekend :D

I won't tell you what the temperatures have been like here the past couple of days, you wouldn't like it...

Meeting my models

Hello all!

Admiring the Inner Harbor in the fall sunshine

The past couple of weeks have been a steep learning curve for me, in parts fun and in parts stressful, I've come to Friday exhausted and close to tears two weeks in a row! Not necessarily in a bad way, just sometimes when I'm tired, I can't hold back the tears!

Amazing mochi ice cream!

I've spent a fair amount of time learning the ropes of human cell culture, which is pretty cool. They're fun to look at down a microscope! And I met some mice, from a distance for now. I also got to do some bits and pieces of molecular biology, such as isolating DNA preps from E. coli. Although even the most routine of things is a challenge in a new lab. And not only is it a new lab for me, but it's a new lab full stop, having just moved to UMB from the University of Kentucky. So we're all finding our way around together.

Federal Hill shopping district

There's been a bit of time for fun stuff too. I've visited the famous Lexington Market with my colleagues several times, and finally went there with N yesterday (it's about 5 minutes from our back door, not somewhere to venture alone maybe, but worth going for the fooooodddd). And N and I have been doing some more exploring in Baltimore, visiting the Inner Harbour, as always, and today discovering the Federal Hill shopping district, which has shops and restaurants on a street! Like not in a mall! So cool! And a great secondhand bookshop, which I will definitely be going back to if I ever get paid!!!

Sunday lunch at Corner Bakery Cafe

First week at work: survived!

Hi there friends!

Just a quick post to let y'all know that not only did I survive my first week of work, but I enjoyed it too! Only 4 days due to Labour Day on Monday, my boss is still on holiday until tomorrow, so no lab work as yet, but I did enjoy settling in. I did a lot of reading, getting me really excited about the research, and a lot of paperwork. I now have a university email address (please ask me for it if you would like to contact me on work-related matters), and a key, how privileged I feel! I also have a bank account to fill with money when I eventually get paid! :D But no ID as yet, because you need a social security number to get one, and you can't get one of them until you've been in the country for ten days. Nothing's ever easy...

A beautiful Friday evening in Baltimore

We have had a nice easy weekend however. Dinner at the Irish pub again on Friday. I couldn't resist having the same chicken and prawn dish again because I drool every time I see the picture from last time! Thankfully it totally lived up to expectations :D

While there we were lucky enough to witness an impromptu dance-off! Awesome!

On Saturday we took a walk over to Fells Point and took in some dragon-boat racing on the way home.

Saturday also involved pizza and Doctor Who (I think a certain Panda Lemon would approve of this Saturday evening combo, no?).

And today was chilled with Farmers Market for fresh bread, cleaning and grocery shopping, in between some serious chillaxing, and eating an amazing fish dish cooked by my amazing chef of a fiance :D

Excited for my second week!