Global update

home sweet home

Well, it's been a while since I've been around here. I've been updating plenty on Instagram, so if you want a more detailed recap of the last eight (shriek) months, head over there to rovinglemon. A few high points here:

Miss B is thriving and days away from finishing her extra-long stint in eighth grade. Her first-day assessment of her (no longer) new school has been sustained, and she's already looking forward to ninth grade - after an appropriately slothful summer vacation, of course.

DP is also flourishing; busy as always with work, juggling multiple commitments and getting another new program up and running - just the way he likes it.

My work is also pretty full-on. Last year was one of professional as well as personal transition for me: after 19 years with the same global organization I decided it was time for a change, and am now working (still from home) with a much smaller non-profit startup in the same research area. I love the challenges of working in a startup, even on the days when I feel like it's swallowed my life whole and left me no time to think about anything else.

Home is great: moving to metro DC was dictated by DP's job, but we're really enjoying it - feeling settled in the house, getting to know the area, and in a great location for work trips, family visits, and weekends away. Our plan is to give Miss B a good long stretch of staying put, and it's a huge mental relief not only to be able to think about the future with that in mind, but also to look forward to the prospect.

Food is of course what this blog always comes back to, so here are my top five recipes from my blog hiatus:

1. Shortbread This isn't about a specific recipe so much as it is a technique that I finally realized this Christmas: after multiple disappointments with making shortbread, I finally decided to try a throwaway suggestion from an Australian friend: chilling the shortbread dough before cutting and baking it. And I mean really chilling it - at least two hours, and preferably overnight. This did the trick of improving both the shape and the texture of the finished product, and I will now do this with any shortbread recipe I make from now on, whether the recipe mentions or not. (Here's a good one.)

2. Dutch baby I've written about this before, so I won't rehash the recipe; this is really just a reminder to us all of this as a delicious, easy, scalable, and impressive recipe that can be adapted to almost any situation.

3. Hand pies / turnovers / DIY toaster pastries Whatever you call these, they're delicious, and if you make them square, there's almost no dough wastage. Use this Genius Recipe for pie crust, fill with fruit, jam, ganache, Nutella, whatever. For the next batch, I'm going to cut the dough into rectangles and freeze ready for use, so that I can make these to order. Having a batch of six sitting around ready to eat is too dangerous.

4. Whole wheat sliced bread After multiple failed attempts over the years, I've finally got a recipe for whole wheat bread that I really like. The recipe is a mashup of several others, with a few tweaks of my own, plus one key step from here that makes a major difference to rising and texture.

Slow rise whole wheat bread for slicing

250 g/8 oz whole wheat flour

250 g/8 oz bread flour/strong flour

2 g/.5 tsp kosher salt

3 g active dried yeast

300 ml/1.25 cups liquid, comprising roughly equal parts Greek yogurt, milk, and water

15 ml/1 Tbsp canola or vegetable oil

15 ml/1 Tbsp maple syrup

1. Measure flours, salt, and yeast into large bowl.

2. Measure Greek yogurt, milk, and water into microwave-safe measuring jug and heat until just hot enough that you can stick your finger in and keep it there for 10 seconds. (You can also do this on the stove if you don't have a microwave.)

3. Add liquid, oil, and maple syrup to dry ingredients and stir together briefly. Let this stand for about 20 minutes to allow the flour to absorb the liquid.

4. After 20 minutes, continue mixing the dough until fully combined and consistent, then knead by hand until the dough is smooth and springy. You can continue to add flour as you knead, but it should be a little sticky rather than dry.

5. Put dough back in bowl to rise and cover with a cloth. Leave to rise until doubled in bulk; with the smaller amount of yeast used here, this should take a couple of hours. I prefer this because it gives me more schedule flexibility, and develops the flavor of the bread.

6. When the dough has had its first rise, grease and flour a loaf pan. Shape dough into a loaf (there's a good tutorial here on how to do this) and place in the pan. (The cook who provided the standing technique also says: "It's important that the surface of the loaves be stretched taut; this helps them rise and prevents an overly-dense interior.")

7. Let the dough rise a second time until it starts to rise over the edge of the pan; this should take 40-50 minutes. Heat the oven to 425F/220C.

8. Before putting bread in the oven, make a slash down the middle. Bake at 425F/220C for 15 minutes, then lower the heat to 375F/190C and bake for another 30 minutes before testing the bread for doneness.

9. The traditional way of testing bread is color (golden-brown) and sound (hollow), but these days I like to use an inserted thermometer to confirm that the bread's internal temperature is the recommended 190F/88C.

10. Remove loaf from pan and cool completely before slicing.

5. Zoodle carbonara Given the above list, you may not be surprised to read that I've also decided to make a concerted effort to be more mindful about my carb consumption. I've been doing what I call a "Keto-ish" diet for the last couple of months, and this is my go-to low-carb meal these days.

1. Chop up and fry 2 pieces of bacon.

2. While the bacon is frying, turn 1 medium-sized zucchini into noodles. Add these to the pan with the frying bacon.

3. In a small bowl, mix together 1 egg, 2 tablespoons grated pecorino romano, and 8-10 grinds of black pepper.

4. Pour egg mixture in pan and toss to coat everything.

5. Top with more pepper and cheese and serve immediately.

Serves 1. Can be scaled up.

cookbook collection in its new home

That's about all for now; the only other thing to share is the newest member of the household:

And to hope that you're having as peaceful and enjoyable of a weekend as she is.

Local exploring

Here's a quick recap of what I've been up to since my last post in early September:

Trying out the VRE station that's five minutes from our house for a day of commuting to meetings in DC - infinitely preferable to navigating traffic!

The VRE doesn't run on weekends, so the station does double duty as the home of our local farmers' market - great local produce and flowers.

Unpacking and renovating continue - at a slower pace now that we're nearing completion on both. Here's a shot of my very old slow cooker (a wedding present) cooking its first-ever batch of Disruptive Bolognese using a mix of farmers' market ground beef and turkey (a resounding hit!). In the background is the recently installed backsplash, the last major piece of work in the (now-complete) kitchen.

Thoroughly enjoying my first proper North American autumn in a very long time with some festive front-door decoration...

...as well as the view from our new window seat - Miss B and I agree this lamppost is like a bit of Narnia on our doorstep...

...and having this view a few steps from our front door is pretty nice too!

When we can tear ourselves away from nesting, we're enjoying having DC close by for fun as well as work - it's kind of amazing to see these iconic buildings pop up in the distance as you wander the city.

And, last but not least - a new recipe to share as I re-deploy a time-honored strategy suggested many years ago by my English friend E: "make friends with cake". In this instance a batch of cinnamon sugar scones, which I brought to share at a coffee morning recruiting parent volunteers at Miss B's new school. I met a few people, and signed myself up for a few things - another rootlet put forward into our new community.

Settling in

Purchased in Rome in June; first use this weekend 

How glad am I that it's this weekend and not last weekend? So glad, indescribably glad. But I'll try to describe anyway.

We've been in our new house since Wednesday. It's now definitely more house than construction zone, but the boxes everywhere, as well as construction tools scattered around, indicate that it's still in a state of transition. It's also situated three minutes' walk from a lake and three minutes' drive from a Target, which is a sweet spot I didn't even know I was looking for until I found it.

The three minutes to Target is proving especially handy at the moment, when we're making daily trips as we unpack and get organized and realize that we don't have enough hangers, or any sponges, or haven't found the pillows yet, or....you get the picture. On moving day I was there twice and DP went three times - an utterly unprecedented event in his experience. DP normally avoids commerce in all its forms, other than buying books at every opportunity.

His close encounter with the Target phenomenon produced a spontaneous observation Wednesday night of the who-are-you-and-what-have-you-done-with-my-real-husband variety: "Target really is great. I mean you can get absolutely anything there!"

(I suppressed all of the many, many inappropriate responses this suggested, and settled for a meaningfully neutral, "Yes, dear, I know.")

Meanwhile, Miss B started school on Tuesday. She's re-starting eighth grade because the Australian and US school years don't align, and the other option was having her miss half of eighth grade and jump into ninth grade. Everyone pertinent to the decision-making process agreed this was a terrible idea, and that the 10,000-mile move, cultural re-integration, and shift from a school with 850 girls to one with 4,000 girls and boys was quite enough challenges to be getting on with.

I think it's safe to say we were all feeling pretty nervous about this aspect of the transition, with anxiety levels ratcheting up slowly but surely over the month of August. I had chosen this school after a lot of research (and an in-person visit during a hectic week of school tours and house hunting back in April), and bought a house in the district on faith that I had made the right call. The closer we got to the First Day, the more I quietly fretted: What if I was wrong?

We were still in temporary accommodation on Tuesday, and we left the apartment shortly after 6:30 to make sure we had more than enough time to make the drive in early morning rush-hour traffic and be at school for 8:00. Miss B, normally a chatterbox, was almost entirely silent. When I reached the drop-off point at the main entrance, she looked at me and said, "Don't worry, Mum, I'll be okay. I can do it." Then she got out, squared her shoulders under her Tardis backpack, and marched into the building.

I made it to the Starbucks parking lot before I cried.

Pickup was in the same spot at 3:00. Miss B bounced into the car, and immediately said the following:

"I had a great first day! You made a good choice. You don't need to worry about me and school anymore."

And then proceeded to talk excitedly about her day, classes, teachers, new classmates, the entire way home, including a trip to the supermarket.

To say I was relieved and happy to hear this is a radical understatement. To have it confirmed by the rest of the week made every remaining hurdle shrink to inconsequential size. And now it's Sunday of the Labor Day long weekend - a milestone I've been working towards for months, when we'd be in the house, getting settled. It's nice to have it really be happening at last, and to be on this side of our 77-day transit.

I wish that everyone else could be having as peaceful a weekend as we are. I hope you are.