Mischief Managed!

After the Disappointing Pastry Incident, I am happy to report that Jesse, Neil, and I went out to breakfast at Le Petit Chat bakery, and we were very, very satisfied with our chocolate croissant, sausage and scallion croissant, and ham, cheese, and caramelized onion croissant (irrespectively). SO good. Coincidentally, I'm feeling rather sluggish today, and my little nap didn't help.


And by the way... I got into the University of Kent! Into the Canterbury/Paris program! Provided my letters of recommendation from past teachers get there and say more than, "Good luck with her, maybe you'll have better luck than I did." So, yay!!! Jesse and I discussed (more than just yippee! yippee! yippee! this time) the situation, and the OFFICIAL Jesse and Kathleen Plan is that yes, we shall be attending. We are sending in our letters of acceptance of a place tomorrow! Anyone want to join us over there? Or come to our graduation ceremony in the Canterbury Cathedral? We'll be 2 hours from Paris and Brussels, and 1 hour from London! And when we're in Paris, well, then the world is our toaster!

And, if I decide not to get my Masters, it is because I will be swollen with child. So there, I finally have a future!


Here, for your perusal, are pictures from our new home in Kent.


Yes, this is our new apartment...


And here's our backyard... (we've had to let several of our groundskeepers go. It's so hard to find good help.)



And this is Dover, where we shall summer.


And this is just pretty. And now that I look at it, might be a golf course. This must be our club.

Trees I Sees

This tree lives in Kent, and I'm going to meet it. It's name is "Majesty," and it is the "mightiest tree in the British Isles." Apparently, it is at least 500 years old and has a circumference of 40 feet. There is a hole in the trunk, and it is completely hollow--this is where Jesse and I will hide all our treasure. I can't wait!

Ode to French Pastries and Sad Story

Here I sit, a hungry, broken woman. I was image-searching French pastries. Because that's what I do. And Tara (my little sister-in-law) and I decided we absolutely could not spend one more moment without holding one of these buttery, flaky, buttery, crispy, buttery creations in our hot little hands. We hopped in the car, and headed for this great little bakery nearby called Le Petit Chat. I'd been there once before, right as they opened, and the croissant I tasted there was unlike anything I've ever eated. I meant to type eaten, but eated better reflects the childish delight this thing evoked. So we get there, and it's 4:00 pm, and of course they have nothing left. So Tara says "I know this great bakery!" (Never trust a fourteen-year-old who salts her Ramen. Just saying.) So off we go to Rocket Bakery. $7 later, Tara is mindlessly gnawing on her lump of wheat dough smeared with white icing they call a danish, and I have purchased 2 dusty scones--items which instead of the warm, romantic streets of Paris for which I long, call to mind Washington state strip malls and jerky. How sad. Oh well, I have my dreams to keep me going. That and Google image search.

Next item on self-improvement agenda: learn how to produce homemade croissants en masse...

So, the night before Halloween was way more eventful than the holiday itself. I was going to force Jesse to go to the ward harvest party with me, but we ended up just having a relaxing night at home with a yummy late dinner and pumpkin carving. On Halloween, Jesse was working, Tara went to a party, and Neil went to the temple, so I was the candy hander-outer. I killed time between trick-or-treaters by making cupcakes and roasting pumpkin seeds (and cleaning the kitchen). Finally, Cousin Kelly came and rescued me from boredom.

I need a better camera to fully capture the joy that is this roast chicken. I swear, it's the best, easiest roast chicken you'll ever make, and it makes the house smell like heaven while it's cooking. I think it's the ideal company dinner: it's a make-ahead deal, it smells so good, and best of all--it's cheap! Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

1 (5 to 6 pound) roasting chicken
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 large bunch fresh thyme (or rosemary), plus 20 sprigs
1 lemon, quartered

1 head garlic, cut in half crosswise
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter, melted
1 large yellow onion, thickly sliced
4 carrots cut into 2-inch chunks
1 bulb of fennel, tops removed, and cut into wedges (I use potatoes, squash, or sweet potatoes--whatever fall vegetable I have)
Olive oil

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
Remove the chicken giblets. Rinse the chicken inside and out. Remove any excess fat and leftover pin feathers and pat the outside dry. Liberally salt and pepper the inside of the chicken. Stuff the cavity with the bunch of thyme, both halves of lemon, and all the garlic. Brush the outside of the chicken with the butter and sprinkle again with salt and pepper. Tie the legs together with kitchen string and tuck the wing tips under the body of the chicken. Place the onions, carrots, and fennel in a roasting pan. Toss with salt, pepper, 20 sprigs of thyme, and olive oil. Spread around the bottom of the roasting pan and place the chicken on top.
Roast the chicken for 1 1/2 hours, or until the juices run clear when you cut between a leg and thigh. Remove the chicken and vegetables to a platter and cover with aluminum foil for about 20 minutes. Slice the chicken onto a platter and serve it with the vegetables. (I like to present it whole at the table, then let someone else do that carving.) I use thyme and rosemary almost interchangeably in this recipe. I also add a few slivers if butter to the veggies to help them brown and enhance the potatoes.

This, of course, is an Ina Garten recipe. You can watch her make this dish herself here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/videos/perfect-roast-chicken/24509.html

Watch for her great chicken impression on this video. I like to think we're friends, Ina and I. She seems to feel about food the way I do: it should be prepared with love, skill, and butter, and should always be shared with friends. And I think her relationship with her husband is so sweet!

In other news, I finished my application to the University of York last night. I'm still voting for Kent, but if it's free, we might as well throw our net wide. I was looking at apartments in Paris last night (like ya do) and I realized that we have a serious problem! Anything we'll be able to afford won't have a kitchen! I can't live in Paris and not be able to cook! Yeeps! We'll see about that...

I start week 7 of my couch to 5k program today: run 25 minutes, or 2.5 miles, without stopping. I already did this on Saturday, and it was pretty tough. Hopefully it'll be easier this time. It's so fun being able to observe how fast our bodies adapt to this sort of thing. I've never stuck with running consistently enough to notice before.

I can't believe there are only 3 weeks until our cruise! And Disneyland! Yippeeee!

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

Yesterday I went over to Cousin Kelly's house to play. She showed me how to make these beautiful decorative eggs by blowing them out and covering them in Japanese paper. I wish I had pictures, but I don't...

While I was there, we chatted about Jesse's acceptance to grad school and my ambivalence about applying. She was kind enough to be my sound board, and I made a decision. Yesterday I took the plunge. My application to Kent and my work sample are in, my transcripts are on their way, and my requests for letters of recommendation have been sent. If I do get in, then I'll have big decisions to make. But for right now, why limit myself, right?

Here was my reasoning (mostly for my own mind-purging purposes)

• I want to.
• We were worried that it would be a financial investment with no pay off, but if times get hard in the future, I would be much more qualified to help Jesse in that area with a Master's.
• Until we know more about our fertility situation, I don't want to limit my options.
• I think it would be difficult to work over there, as the program is divided into 3 4-month periods in England, then France, then England again.
• I want to see if I'd get in.

I hope everyone out there had a good week and will have an even better weekend. Anyone got any exciting plans for Halloween? I will be the official candy-hander-outer, which is just fine with me. Hopefully we'll get some pumpkin carving done today. I always miss my dad when I'm not around him at Halloween, as he is the best pumpkin carver in the known universe. As my sister and I got older, we helped with the carving, but mostly it was just fun to watch the strange grimaces Dad would create. Happy Halloween everybody!

My Infertile Girdle.

Today, oh today. I had my second day at work today. It went fine. Love my manager--very warm, yet direct person. Nice company. It's looking good, and I'm excited to go shopping tomorrow for boots and sweaters.

So this lady comes in, tries on some things, then comes out of the dressing room. My manager asks if everything worked, and the lady says yes, except for "this sweater, which shows my tummy rolls." OK, fair enough. She goes on: "You know, after you've had kids, no matter how hard you work, there is always that little roll that just won't go away. You can tell when someone's had kids--it changes your whole shape." Then she looks at me, and speaks to my manager: "She's obviously never had kids. So lucky." OK, I realize I should take that as a compliment. And I did. But when you're an Infertile Freddy like me, you just log these things in your brain. It's like, you don't have a baby to show for the years of work and dreaming and failure, so instead, you collect these little comments and pin them on like badges. (Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges.) And they don't go away. I wasn't really offended. I knew she didn't mean to be offensive. And neither did the friend who suggested that Heavenly Father knew I didn't "want it enough" or proclaimed that I didn't have enough faith. Or the regular who came into the restaurant I used to work at who saved up the money for in-vitro to have a second child, then decided to buy a boat instead. I think that's why they stick. Because they come from friends. Or in the grocery store. Or at work. They're unexpected and sometimes come when you least expect them to. Or worse, when you're looking for comfort and you open up, and then you're reminded that although the unthinking friend meant well, you really are alone in this. But anyway, like I said, I wasn't really offended. Oh, and I got some really great advice! I told her we'd been trying for a while (what can I say, I still want to be a part of this grouchy mommy club) and she told me that her husband is a physician, and to put cinnamon in everything I eat. (I didn't say what I was thinking: what is he, a podiatrist? ...Cinnamon??? Yeah, that'll open those fallopian tubes right up.)

I just got home from Young Women's, where I taught the girls how to make turnovers. OK, so I watched them have flour fights and never really got the chance to show them much, but I think they had fun. I really love my calling, even if I need to learn how to be a little more authoritative.

Time for bed and sleeeeeep.

Not Much to Report

As I'm using this blog as sort of a self-motivational tool, it's become sort of a daily habit. Well, today I don't have too much to report. Still happy--ecstatic--about Jesse's school news. I had my first day at work today, and I think it went pretty well. There were the usual I-don't-know-what-I'm-doing moments, but no disasters. After seeing how much cute stuff is in the store right now, I think it's going to be hard not to spend my paycheck there... Well, that's what employee discounts are for, right?

Right now, I'm trying to get up the gumption to go running. Actually, I'm really a fan of this "couch to 5K" program. There honestly hasn't been a day when I just plain didn't want to do my 30 minute walk/jog. So off I go.