High and Low

I'm totally amused by articles in fashion and home decorating magazines that propound the virtues of high and low shopping. Here's why: most of us are, um, low-end shoppers. Spending $3000 on fabric for my couch isn't something I expect to ever do. Ever. Not once in my entire lifetime. Not even if I only spend $50 on pillows from Pottery Barn to put on it.

Now that we're getting married, I have a whole house to decorate and make into functional space. I had no idea that storage was expensive. Sigh.

Being a fairly broke (hello, wedding!) grad student (hello, tiny paycheck!), I have been scouring the sales of department stores, the aisles at discount retailers like Target and Marshall's, and every now and then, even Ebay. Only I haven't bought anything from Ebay.

But so far, I have found all my bedding. From Target, I bought the comforter that will go in the duvet I bought on sale at Pottery Barn. I also bought the matching shams, Euro shams, and shower curtain. At Marshalls, I found a lovely blue throw blanket and an oversize looped bath mat in the same shade. For the bedroom windows, which require 96" drapes and span 70" wide, I managed to find blue panels for $15 each. Hurrah! One room almost conquered. I just can't decide if it should be yellow or blue.

I bought $7 white panels for the kitchen windows, also 96" tall, so that I bought another panel in red to trim the 84" panels with to make them long enough.

So far, I haven't found anything for the dining room or living room, mostly because I don't know exactly what colors we'll have. It depends on what furniture we inherit in July. But the guest bedroom/study will have green and yellow bedding from my grandmother and the green throw pillows I presently have on my bed. Most importantly, all the artwork I have of Victorian women in beautiful dresses will be in there, too, as JR is petrified that I'll keep my pink sheets and girlie paintings in our bedroom!

Ah...there is certainly pleasure to be found in being a cheapskate by necessity. I'm quite proficient at patting myself on the back, as you see. If I could only find some really affordable rugs that match!

Update

I haven't blogged lately. Perhaps I have stealth readers, because certainly more people have complained (to JR, of course, not to me) that I haven't been writing than people who actually leave comments. Mostly, I feel like I'm writing to a void, not to an audience. So it's a bit weird to hear from JR that it matters at all that I stopped writing.

What's been going on in the two weeks since I made Guinness pot roast? Well, JR left it in his fridge and forgot to eat it. I threw it out two days ago. This is what happens to anything put in his fridge. Well, almost. He still eats, I guess!

I wrote my prospectus and defended it on Monday. The meeting went really, really well, so now I'm ABD, or finished with all but the dissertation. Hurrah!

JR and I purchased our wedding bands. Mine is platinum, and his is an impossibly affordable titanium ring. Of course, I've been creating scenarios in which the strength and durability of that metal has its downside.

We had gorgeous weather last weekend, and JR and I spent the whole time outside. We worked in his yard--soon to be our yard!--on Saturday, and we ate outside and read outside and sat in the swing outside. JR and his roommate also hosted a cook-out on Sunday night, outside of course. We had trout, venison burgers and sausage, salad with queso fresco, banana pudding, and s'mores. I think I gained about five pounds. I should also admit that I had s'mores on Friday night at another party, too. When it rains, it pours, I guess.

Oh! I almost forgot to include this! My wedding dress came in! Most exciting. Leslie and I drove over to Burlington to get it on the day the entire county lost power. We stopped for lunch in Mebane on the way, and nothing was open because none of the restaurants had power! Eventually, we found a Pizza Hut/KFC in a gas station. So much for ladies who lunch.

Now that the dress is here, I feel so much better! The store had the veil I picked out in stock, so I have that and a huge crinoline for the dress, too. The crinoline was more expensive than the veil! I did pick out one of the simplest veils the store carried, since anything with ornamentation seemed out of place against such a streamlined, simple dress. The dress is just satin without nary a bead or pearl or lace trimming. But the skirt is enormous, which is fabulous, I think!

What's going on soon? Well, shortly, our wedding announcements will start bombarding central Mississippi. On Saturday, my two North Carolina bridesmaids are hosting my first wedding shower. Three of our friends are bringing their babies with them, so it'll be an interesting mix of one-year-olds and mojitos. At least the wee ones will have wrapping paper and boxes to play with!

And next week is the best of all. JR and I are going to Mississippi! I miss home so much. My sister has been in England all semester, and our cousin just moved home from Colorado. We'll get to see them, go to a wedding, pick out tuxes for our wedding, visit with JR's family, eat Sunday lunch in my grandmother's newly remodeled dining room and kitchen, and actually see all the presents for which I've been writing thank-you notes. What exactly would you think a crystal bowl with cherubs on the bottom looks like?

So. I guess I'm back. Again.

Cooking with Guinness (for the very first time)

I finally made that roast for which I bought the Guinness that had me almost but not actually get carded at Target in my twenty-sixth year. I borrowed a bigger crockpot from JR's roommate because the one I have is really small, about two quarts, which wouldn't fit the roast, much less the other ingredients.

Using Cooking Light's recipe and, um, rapidly blowing off some of the major principles of the magazine by buying Guinness, not nasty light beer, I browned the heavily salted and peppered venison roast just as the recipe suggested. Only, of course, I think they expected more fat to render from a beef roast, but venison is soooo lean. Then, I actually followed directions, removed the roast from the skillet, and sauted two parsnips all chopped up and one onion sliced vertically.

Now we move over to the crock pot; I think the one I borrowed was five or six quarts. All the parsnip and onion went in the pot first, followed by a bay leaf, a tablespoon of what was supposed to be balsamic vinegar but for which I of course naughtily subbed in red wine vinegar. After dousing the veggies with the Guinness, I plopped the roast on top of it all, flipped the switch to Low, and left it alone for 8 hrs.

When we took it out for dinner, the roast crumbled before our eyes. By far, slow cooking is the best way to cook venison roast, because the stringy toughness is all gone. The meat is actually tender! Most of the Guinness taste, though, was on the outside of the meat, but pouring a little of the pot liquor over the meat worked nicely.

My negative comment: I've never had parsnip except in this recipe, so I couldn't decide if they are just naturally bitter or if they soaked up all the bitterness from the beer. Either way, only JR ate them. I might try potatoes instead were I to make this again. But the liquid and the roast were great!

Definitely getting married...

We got our first place setting of china! This is so exciting!


Now one of us can have dinner on the formal china and one on the everyday china. We have exactly one place setting of each.

An Easteresque Blog

JR wants me to blog about Easter. I don't really want to. I haven't wanted to blog at all lately. I don't know why.

What would I blog about if I didn't know people might read it and connect it to me? Probably about wedding planning, which I don't feel I can talk about on my personal blog because there's only so much wedding planning other people can take. Me, too, for that matter, but there's no one else to do it if I don't. I might blog about some other trivial interests, like how I'm planning to decorate our house after we get married. Or about my opinion of all these breezy baby-doll tops out there that give no definition to the upper body at all, particularly focusing on how I look like a big tent when I put one on. I might talk about Singing in the Rain, which I watched for the first time today at "work."

Am I supposed to write only if I can say something interesting? Because the vast majority of what I think about all day pertains to that which is completely dull dull dull to other people. Victorian sensation fiction, fallen women, and morality, anyone? I thought not. That wedding planning isn't anyone's favorite subject makes me angry because I'm tired of it too but can't ignore it. Whether I paint our bedroom blue or pale gold or grey matters only to me. The fact that I can't fill out a big breezy top even in a small size is probably only annoying to me.

So here's what I'll compromise and blog about: not Easter but instead The Great Easter Feast.

We were invited to celebrate Easter with a rather large group of people from the church we've been attending this semester. At 2, the feast began. We left at 7, having eaten away the last five hours. Our chef was another good North Carolina-located Mississippian, meaning that of course he prepared far more food than the assembled crowd could tackle. It was amazing! Here's the menu:

Appetizers: hummus with whole-wheat pita and caviar spread with crackers

Hors d'oeuvres: curried chicken salad, hot artichoke dip, tomato croquettes, meatballs, grilled vegetable medley, calamari

First course: grilled pork loin, pesto and cold-bean salad

Second course: blackberry sorbet topped with homemade red currant gin, to cleanse the palate

Entree course: grilled lamb, grilled potato, grilled asparagus

At this point, we broke for an Easter egg hunt!

Dessert course: homemade baklava, sour cherry tart, rhubarb pie, Peeps!

By far the biggest, most extravagant Easter meal I've ever had. We loved going and spending time chatting with our tablemates for such an extended period. The table is what community is all about!

And I got to bring home cream-colored roses all bundled up with green button mums, rather reminiscent of my sorority days and also a forecast of a bouquet to come.

All in all, a lovely Easter day.

The eye of the Target

I didn't get carded yesterday. What I did get was an affirmation of my youthly appearance. I think.

It all started on Sunday, when our friend Erik the brewmaster recommended that I use Guinness to cook a roast. At Target, I bought a six-pack of Guinness, and I plopped it up on the checkout counter with all my other purchases without even thinking about needing to prove my age in order to buy it.

As I finish unloading my cart, the checkout teller says, "You don't look like you are forty."

I straightened up. "What?"

She repeated her previous utterance, and said, "Don't worry, I won't card you. It's such a hassle, isn't it? Having to prove how old you are?"

I said I was 26. She was shocked.

"Really?" she said, "you look like you're my age!"

I asked how she was.

"19."

I'm glad that a woman who is obviously younger than forty, maybe even so young as to be younger than the legal age to buy alcohol, can waltz right out of Target in broad daylight without getting carded. SO excited that all of us 19-year-olds will be drinking hooch we bought for ourselves....

Hankering, quoth the ravenous, Nevermore

I love hushuppies and barbeque. Before we gave up eating out for Lent, we went up to Allen and Son BBQ all the time. It's cheap, tastes fantastic, and feels like a place where "real" people--not just preppy college students and professors, but people who live and work in the community--actually dine. And they have the best hushpuppies in the world. I would know. Ok, maybe not, but they are soooo good.

But Allen and Son isn't open on Sunday, the one day a week we go out. So we went to the Carolina Brewery yesterday to fulfill my craving for BBQ and hushpuppies. They have this huge menu, and I still get the same thing every time I go.

Yesterday, however, the hushpuppies were swimming in grease. I ate about half of them anyhow, and JR ate the rest. And then we both fell ill.

No doubt, our illness is the result of eating black bean soup and other comparatively light fare for the better part of the week. Food you make at home often has far less fat and grease than what you eat out, I've decided, because both of us could not handle eating so much greasy fried food. JR managed to keep his down, but I didn't.

Yesterday's unfortunate events also made me seriously reconsider that deep-fryer on our wedding registry. It has since been removed.

And frankly, I think I've gone off hushpuppies and barbeque for a long, long time.