Fall Happenings

This past Wednesday was my birthday, and my awesome husband took me to IHOP for birthday breakfast :) On Monday he made me dinner and took me shopping!

I also share my birthday with a special girl named Andrea, so we planned a birthday weekend and I went to Maryland to see Andrea and Ben. We did fun birthday things, such as painting ceramics, I painted a pretty cool latte mug.

I got to sight-see the city of D.C., the weather was great, and on Saturday we went to the national apple festival in Arentsville, Pennsylvania. It was a beautiful drive up there through the Pennsylvania countryside with the leaves changing colors and fall was everywhere in the air. We drove through a few miles of apple orchards and I could almost imagine Johnny Appleseed running through the orchards. The festival was great, and the apple-based food delicious. I did stray from apples and ate part of a pumpkin funnlecake (pumpkin is my other fall love). There was tractor square-dancing, and it was quite impressive.

Best meal of the trip: pumpkin crunch bagel with pumpkin cream cheese and a pumpkin latte. I am going to turn orange by the time fall is over, I'm sure.

I have completed my clinicals for my last semester of school. I just have two weeks of class and tests left and then begin a 5 week internship before graduation. I found out today that I received my first choice of Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and am very excited!




Just for fun pictures:

Bowser decided to walk by the painted wall while it was still drying

He says, "what I do?"... totally innocent.

Strapping young man.

Halloween preview. We just need some spikes and a red tuft of hair.

Fast and Furious new school year

Mark and I are back into the swing of things. This school year came quickly with the full force of business and packed schedules that we did not miss over our summer break. The first month of school has flown by and we have not done anything really note-worthy to blog about.

Mark is enjoying grad school; he finds the classes interesting and challenging due to much of it being new material. I have a condensed 10 week semester followed by a 5 week internship for this my last semester. I am looking forward to this being the end of my schooling for a couple of years at the end of this semester. My 12 hour clinicals keep me busy and a little low on sleep.

I think the most interesting thing we have cooked in September has been a grilled cheese sandwich. A lot of frozen pizza and pasta has been our menu. September has not been a stellar month for Browning culinary arts.

In world news, another Browning baby was born! But I think everybody reading this already knows that... here is a shout out to Bixby! We love you!

I think our next challenge will be homemade cinnamon rolls... I will let you guys know how that goes!

Pie are square.

I decided to make Strawberry pie today. Much to my disdain, after I had rolled out my 3-2-1 crust, one that I learned how to make from the book Ratio, I could not locate either of my pie dishes. It appears as though my dishes were hidden or "borrowed" (ah-hem, Michelle) during our last move. So I went with the next best thing, a square dish.

So we had very yummy square pie. It was my first made from scratch pie (and pie crust!) and I really like how I know what ingredients exactly went into it. It is amazing that just flour, sugar, shortening, strawberries and lemon juice alone could make such a tasty thing. The filling was not runny, the berries were gooey and soft, and the crust was light and so flaky. It did take about an hour to prepare (about 40 mins worth of chilling and waiting), but I see many more completely home-made pies in my future.

(Seen in the picture below is the pie... and a hammer. We are living in a happy little mess right now.)

So that was my major accomplishment of the day. I was decided to paint the closet this morning, but got side tracked by a 3 hour shopping trip and some serious bargain hunting. School starts next week so we decided that reviewing what we forgot over the summer is a good idea. We will get right on that tomorrow, probably. 

Best kitchen tool ever: the pressure cooker

I enjoy cooking, so much that I enjoy reading cookbooks. Last night I was reading a cookbook before going to bed and realized that I should include some of my greatest culinary endeavors in this blog. It will give me another topic to talk about because our lives are not that incredibly interesting but the food I make often is (in my humble opinion, anyway).

2010 has seen some of the best dishes coming out of my kitchen yet. The top producers of the tasty things are my pressure cookers. Scared to use a pressure cooker at all because my mother told me it would blow me up, I stuck to quick cooking potatoes for mashing.

Venturing out, I tried a few pot roasts (chuck roast, potato, and carrots) and those turned out a fair notch above acceptable and have improved each time I have made them.

Will this time I did it. So much so that my sister squealed out, "Are you kidding!?!" when she tasted the 6-day-old Cuban pork roast leftovers. That roast was awesome. It is tied at #1 with the amazing cast-iron skillet rib-eyes that I borrowed from Alton Brown.

For those of you who might like the passed-down-through-the-generations authentic recipe for a Cuban pork roast, it is as follows. I have modified it for being pressure cooked, but it could be slow roasted at approx 45min/lb until thoroughly cooked.

For approx 3-5lb roast:
1/2 head garlic, fresh pressed
2 cups Goya Bitter Orange marinade
1/4 cup salt
olive oil
water

1) Slice the roast into large chunks, approx 1lb sections.

2) Mix the salt and Bitter Orange together in a measuring cup. Use a flavor injector to inject the Bitter Orange into the chunks of meat. Give each chuck a couple of injections.

3) Use a knife to stab holes into the chucks. With your finger, push pinches of garlic (I believe there is no such thing as too much garlic) down into the chunks. They should be about 3-4 inches apart with about a clove's worth of garlic per hole.

4) In the bottom of the pressure cooker, heat 2Tbs of oil, place chunks individually in the cooker to sear each side so juices are locked in. Set to the side while doing other chunks.

5) Place all chunks back into cooker and use remaining bitter orange plus however much water is needed to make 2 cups liquid. (For example, 1/4 cup remaining marinade plus 1 and 3/4 water.) Pour over roast.

6) Put on lid, make sure seal is set, and turn up to high. Once the metal top shaky thing starts going crazy, reduce heat to medium and cook for 45 mins.

7) Let pressure reduce, shred meat, and enjoy!

Great with white rice, salad, and Goya black beans.

Welcome to our Blog!

Howdy friends and family-

I have created this blog to keep all of you updated about the goings-on in our lives. We are unable to see all of you guys as much as we like, but hopefully we can all feel a little bit more connected with this blog.

2010 has blown by and I can hardly believe that Mark and I have been married for a little over 7 months already. As an intro post, I will start off with a recap since 01/01/10 (our wedding day).

We got married! It was a beautiful day, and I think we are able to remember most of it!

Honeymoon: 7 day cruise to Grand Cayman, Jamiaca, and Cozumel

Mark went to work for a company in Austin while I was still attending school in Bryan. We lived in Bastrop from Jan-May and commuted out each way. Despite the $600/month gas bill, we enjoyed living in Bastrop and having a state park literally across the street made spontaneous hiking an activity we enjoyed.





Mark decided that we would like to go back to school to become a Computer Engineer, so he applied and was accepted to A&M's master's program. We were excited about the move back to Bryan/College Station and calulated that buying a house would be the best option for us!
Mark was hired at Capsher in College Station, a software development company, and he has enjoyed working there this summer and will continue to part-time during the school year.


In March, Mark's sister, Emily, and her husband, Jason, had a baby! We are now the proud Uncle and Aunt of a beautiful baby girl!


Mark rode in the MS-150 with an "TAMU" team and had a lot of fun!

We bought a house in Bryan, a cute little 3 bed, 2 bath that needs some work in a few places, so we are having fun making changes to our new home! We will post great new-and-improved pictures of the house once we are done renovating.


We adopted a boxer-mix puppy that is a lot of fun :) He is the sweetest dog ever and has a very human-like personality. Bowser is the best puppy ever pretty much. He is very smart and learns new tricks and commands and discipline faster than any other dog I have known. But then I might be bias...





In July we went on a combo Volunteer Christian Builders trip/vacation and spent 3 days in New Mexico building, and then went to Grand Canyon for 2.5 days. We really enjoyed the trip, we would recommend Grand Canyon as a vacation for anyone!





Tired of blah beige, I decided that we should spice up the house and we have begun to do some light remodeling in the house. The hall bath has been upgraded, the dining, living, and master bath rooms are in progress.



So that has been 2010 so far, future posts will be much more abbreviated with just highlight pictures.

Check back with us soon!