US meets UK

Happy Easter!  Although these are on my “do not eat” list, that doesn’t mean that you can’t have a splurgetastic time with them.  I made these a looong while ago, as in when I first made pretzels.

I would say “we” miss Cinnabons, but once Nick found out there was cream cheese in the frosting he stopped missing them. He pretty much has a cheese phobia, so although he enjoyed Cinnabons once he can never go near them again.

I was feeling emboldened after my pretzel success and decided while I still had a dough hook and stand mixer at my disposal I should get busy with them. I hunted around for a cinnabon copy recipe and there are TONS! I found one with UK measurements and just decided to go for it. I didn’t take as many pictures this times because I forgot. If you use the same recipe I did I’d double the frosting, I can’t imagine using that tiny amount for all the rolls.

I was getting pretty worried because unlike the pretzel dough which actually did double in size this dough ball pretty much stayed the same. But I forged onward, Nick rolled out the dough and then we slathered it in butter.

Sprinkled copious amounts of brown sugar and cinnamon on the buttered side and attempted to roll it up. In retrospect I would have heavily floured the board instead of lightly floured it because it got a bit sticky.

Put them in the oven until they browned and out they came!

Because Nick has the cheese phobia I made penuche icing for his and cream cheese frosting for mine. In retrospect I should have picked a different frosting because penuche is butter, brown sugar, confectioners sugar and a tiny bit of milk. Between the rolls and the penuche icing I used the entire container of brown sugar. Lucky for me, Nick has the largest sweet tooth I’ve ever met.

In the end they aren’t exactly cinnabons, but from what my tongue remembers they’re pretty close! The main difference is that my buns didn’t rise a second time (FAIL) so they didn’t get as huge and doughy. They were still delicious though and I’d make them again in a heart beat.

it’s good enough for Mr.D.  You see, Mr.D isn’t wild about the idea of “man jewelry” but I’m slowly convincing him to wear a wedding ring.  After checking out men’s wedding rings Mr.D and I were relaxing with a glass of wine when he realized that David Beckham wears a wedding ring (so clearly it must be manly?).

Mr.D assumed Becks would have a simple, classic style wedding band so we set about googling “David Beckham wedding band” until we found a picture. This is what we found:

(source)

So…not exactly Mr.D’s idea of a simple or classic wedding band.  The search continues, I can’t buy jewelry online ( I need to touch it!) so I guess we’ll have to wait till we get back to the US.

How are you and your mister finding his ring? Does he want to wear a ring or…not so much?

I spoke to my mom yesterday and the news was not so good.  My Nana (Dad’s mother) has been pretty ill for a while, but she’s always pulled through.  Unfortunately it was getting to the point where she wasn’t going to pull through, she’d been moved to a Hospice and the outlook wasn’t so good.

So not good that my mother said even if I did fly home I might not even make back in time to see her. Nick and I always say ” _____ is just a plane ride away”, and that if things were really bad we’d be able to be where we need to be.  I couldn’t believe that I was so out of control, that there was nothing I could really do.

There are so many things I wanted to tell her.  How much she meant to me, how she inspired me, how much I loved her.  Sometimes my Nana could be tough to get along with, but honestly, it made me love her all the more.  She set standards (no matter how absurd the seemed) and she stuck to them, she said what was on her mind and she didn’t apologize for it.  I think those qualities are really rare these days and I’ll miss her dearly.

I called the hospice so they could hold the phone up and she could hear me, but the people at the hospice didn’t understand what I was asking.  The woman just kept telling me that my Nana couldn’t speak and that I should come in if I wanted to speak to her.  I gave up trying to explain that I was in England, that I couldn’t make it there and just called my mother instead.  My father called me from her bedside and I was able to tell her how much I loved her, missed her and wished I could see her to give her a hug.  I honestly didn’t think it would be the last time I spoke to her, I planned on speaking to her the next day.

She passed away only a few hours after I spoke to her. I think I was still hoping she would pull through and I was still shocked by it. Even as I write this I’m constantly changing things to past tense for her. I didn’t know she had gone into hospice and in the span of only a few hours I found out she was in hospice, dying, and that she had passed away.

One of the reasons I was so excited to chose our venue is that it was literally down the street from her nursing home.  She had serious mobility issues, tired very easily and was in near constant pain so I was happy to pick the place that would mean the least amount of travel for her because I knew she’d want to be there for our wedding. I know Nick and I will find a way to honor her and her presence will be intensely missed.

If you’re my friend on facebook you already know this fact because I’ve been moaning about it for the past week. Which is why I haven’t really been posting lately, I’ve been cooped up in bed with my homemade nyquil.  Which is this:

Dear Sinus Infection,

I hope you die. Forever.

love,

Christiana

ps. I’m on the road to recovery (which means regular posting), but now Nick is getting sick…

Hardcore.  I was wandering around VisaJourney.com and checked out the flow chart they have for the fiance visa (K1). In reviewing the documents for the next step of the K1 Visa process I came to the brink of a panic attack.  The visa process is so incredibly bureaucratic and I’m just so frustrated with this entire thing.

(teh source)

While I’m in the UK I can’t work, and the 1-134 form says I need to have a statement from my “current employer” and a statement from a bank officer saying how much has been deposited in the past year and what my current balance is.  The purpose of this form (as far as I can tell) is to ensure that Mr.D and I won’t be on welfare in the US. I’m hoping that gathering my previous tax returns will show that while I’m in the US I am capable and willing to make money, but I just don’t know if that will be enough.

I feel like I’ve been caught in a catch 22.  I’m in England to be with the man I love, while I’m in England I can’t work.  It’s looking like I need a job to marry him, but I can’t have a job while I’m in England.  Am I supposed to go back to the US and get a job so his visa will be approved? I’m starting to feel like the US Government is privy to more private details than anyone else we’re close to, they’ve practically become a third party in our relationship!

I’m so upset that we’ve started this process and so much of it comes down to some immigration officer’s discretion. I knew all along that our future hangs in the balance of a stamp, but now that reality is hitting so much closer to home.  If we’re not approved we have a few options, but all of them are expensive and none of them are exactly the way we hoped things would turn out. I know there is nothing to do but gather all the data we can and hope to prove our relationship and my ability to have a job, but it really doesn’t make me feel any better about it.

I’ve been in London!  Have no fear, I’ll soon be doing a write up or two of my trip.  For today however, I’d like  to catch up with Nick, I haven’t seen him in 4 days (gasp!).  He’s making jerk chicken (fake jerk chicken for me) for dinner tonight and I made these again.  Have you made them yet? What on earth are you waiting for!??!

The next day we visited Cadbury world which, not surprisingly, was crawling with children.  I wouldn’t take my non exisistent children here, because I think they’d be bored senseless.  Much of the “world” is actually movie shorts.  The “Cadabra” ride was creepy and bizarre, the room where you learn about chocolate making was fun, but I think we mostly went for the free chocolate. “Free” chocolate received: 2 of each of the following, dariy milk, caramel, curly wurly, buttons.  You might see a few things missing…

And then to purchase MORE chocolate of course

We headed for the city center after our chocolate overload and visited The Bullring, a shopping center that didn’t really live up to the hype. But we did check out this awesome vintage shop

Which had a fantastic selectionof cowboy boots.

and a great door

Since it was St.Patrick’s day weekend, and apparently there is an “Irish Quarter” in Birmingham there were hundreds of very inebriated people. Birmingham was a ton of fun and I definitely recommend visiting, my only regret is not seeing more of the city center.  Well, that and not wearing more comfortabel shoes, but thats practiclly a daily regret for me.  Tomorrow I head to London so I won’t be back till Sunday! Enjoy your weekends!

Nick and I visited Birmingham over the weekend and started out trip the way we start all our road trips: with a McDonalds Breakfast. There is something different about the UK Egg McMuffin and I can’t put my finger on what it is exactly. The muffin and cheese seem different and Nick thinks they put butter on the US English Muffins. The UK Mcdonalds coffee is also TERRIBLE. The gave me a “white coffee”, I don’t know what I tried to drink, but it was no bueno.

At least it it was Rainforest Alliance Certified.

After an hour or so of the Wedding Show we reached our limit so we headed for Birmingham city center to visit the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. They have a fantastic collection of Pre Raphaelite paintings and I also enjoyed their Arts and Crafts section.

This woman (Jane Morris) is modeled in so many of the paintings, but this is the only one of her as a redhead.

Nick and I both enjoyed the books in the Arts and Crafts section.

We found Millie and a Monkey in the museum as well. She’s a naughty brat, who would easily be f’ing with a fireplace. We love and miss her though, which is why we take pictures like this.

A HUGE painting by Botticelli.

Creepy ginger haired boys in dresses.

A painting by someone I don’t remember who used the wrong glazes or pigments. Rendering his subjects ghosts people.

I <3 Degas Bronzes

As with many free places there are often odd, eccentric people wandering around. We met Herman in the Buddha gallery and he started going on and on (and on) about Masonic architecture, symbols and la la stuff. 8 Lions, Hermes, H, 8, teardrops, seeds, same as above as below, men, man, Her-man. It was… interesting.

There are NO sushi restaurants near us in Lancaster. It almost breaks my heart, between sushi nights in Miami and my general love of Sushi Sono it’s one of the things I really miss about being in the UK. So on our way to the museum we spotted Woktastic. I should have known, from the revolving sushi conveyor belt that it wouldn’t be in the same realm as Miami or Maryland.

Then I accidentally ate CHICKEN, what the hell was chicken doing in sushi. Bastards.

Despite the chicken in the sushi we had a great first day in Birmingham. Huzzah! Stay tuned for our trip to Cadbury World and more of Birmingham!

If you’ve ever been to England I’m sure you’ve done at least a few of these things:

• Walked into a dark bathroom and struggled to find the light switch
• Tried to operate a piece of electrical equipment only to discover your specific outlet had been turned off
• Cursed a giant hardcore grounded plug (maybe even painfully stepped on one)

You see, all the light switches for bathrooms are on the outside of the bathroom, and no outlets are within the actual bathroom. It’s prohibited by law!

You can turn off each individual outlet, the environmentalist in me loves this! The sleepy, confused or hungry me does not appreciate the extra time it takes for me to figure this out. Oddly enough Red means “Go” as in “go forth with the power usage. Or it could mean danger, but I like my version better.

The plugs are GINORMOUS, trying to carry around your laptop charger sucks. Not to mention the fact that you really don’t want to step on one.

At dinner with our friends the other week I was pleased (and a bit frightened) to discover the reason for these bizarre electrical issues. Most outlets in the US are 110 volts because our energy loses it’s strength the farther it has to travel and in the US it travels a lot. In the UK they’re 240! Hence the huge grounded plugs (and the avoidance of electricity + water) to avoid electrocution. So the next time you get frustrated from locking yourself into a dark bathroom, just remember that England is trying hard not to kill you.

So, re-inventing Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is probably out of my range. Nick and I both miss big, doughy soft pretzels – the kind you can get at the mall or on the street. Mmmmm, street food. I’ve never attempted of bread project before so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was inspired by Jenna of That Wife to go for it. I found a recipe by Alton Brown and got down to business.

This post is a bit photo heavy so click the link to enjoy!

I was nervous about the water being to hot and killing the poor little yeast – I think I did this right because it still got frothy. This is pre-froth though, it was just fun to look at.

Then I set the whole thing in motion with the stand mixer and it has re-affirmed everything I had hoped. A stand mixer is amazingly handy – I wouldn’t have attempted pretzels without it. A word of advice? If you have any rings on, take them off. I realized halfway through and dough all up in my ring.

Well mixed dough ball then goes into oiled mixer bowl for 50-55 minutes to double in size. Doubled dough:

Then you have to roll it out into 24 inch long “snakes”, I used the largest cutting board I could find and oil. But I still have no idea what 24 inches looks like.

Then you plop your little pretzel babies into the boiling water/baking soda. You can see the boiled one on the right.

Only one didn’t exactly survive and had to reformed…

The only problem I had? After baking the pretzels I had a hard time removing the pretzels from the trays, I don’t know if greaseproof paper is different from parchment paper. Or if I didn’t oil them enough, or if I should have let them cool longer. In any case – there was carnage.

Forget the carnage though – look at the end result! I ate one almost immediately and it was a-m-a-z-i-n-g. I highly suggest you try this recipe!