A few years back, Grandpa accidentally picked up some jalapeño pepper plants at his local nursery along with his regular variety pepper plants. He and grandma were letting them grow in the garden, but they didn’t know what to do with them since they don’t eat any spicy food of any kind. Luckily I was visiting at the time, and I eagerly volunteered to take them off their hands. Each summer since then, Grandpa has planted a jalapeño plant for me. This is one of the sweetest things anyone has ever done for me. Usually me make a big batch of poppers, and that’s just what I did this year.

Our wedding ceremony was based around the idea of celebrating the different “flavors” of life, and savoring them together. So for each anniversary I make a special meal incorporating each of the four flavors we emphasized: sweet, sour, bitter, and spicy. Usually we take a Mexican tilt toward these flavors, and the jalapeño poppers have often taken the “spicy” category. This year, I made chicken tacos with lime (sour) and cilantro (bitter), poppers (spicy), with honey fried dough balls (sweet) for dessert.

We had to celebrate our anniverary (5th!) late this year, because Chris was in Cambridge for a seminar.

Katy(posted on Sep 17, 2006 at 7:26 pm)

Matt and Tracy sent these pictures around over email. Little Rian is getting so big already. What a little cutie. It’s nice to see a picture of the whole family too; they look so sweet.

Katy(posted on Sep 29, 2006 at 8:17 pm)

Ruby and I went to IKEA by ourselves today, and we were eating a waffel with jam (a popular snack here). Ruby was giving the jam tub one last lick, when she discovered that it fit on her chin.

Katy(posted on Sep 17, 2006 at 8:07 pm)

Chris came home from his seminar in Cambridge with this Opera hat. C likes it a lot, and even wore it to nap this day.

Katy(posted on Sep 17, 2006 at 8:08 pm)

We went on a field trip with C’s school out to the forest. We took one of the metro lines all the way to the end (or very nearly the end) and there were hiking trails straight from the train platform. The hike was only about 10 or 15 minutes, and then we set ourselves up in a clearing that was filled with blueberry bushes. Everyone had little things for sitting on and we sat down and had our lunches. The teachers brought rope and tarps and made little tents for the children to play in. Everyone spent the next two hours picking blueberries and eating them. It was a rainy day, and a little cold, but it was a very nice outing.

It was nice for me to meet some of the other parents, also, and to practice speaking Norwegian. It’s really important to set the language early in a new relationship — my mom calls it a “language bond” — because it’s difficult to switch once you get used to using a certain language with someone. My Norwegian is pretty bad, but everyone was very kind and patient with me :).

Katy(posted on Sep 18, 2006 at 11:50 am)

These are some lovely pictures that Johannes took during our last beer brewing adventure.

Katy(posted on Oct 24, 2006 at 10:22 am)

After many weeks of beer equipment hunting and gathering, we finally had it all, and were ready to go ahead. Chris thought long and hard about the recipe and the process. We made another stout (like the first time). We think we’ll call is Solo Stout, since this was the first time we did it on our own.

We invited Johannes over to help, and Chris M. stopped by to supervise for a while (he’s our resident expert). Lauren and Karl Anders also hung out for a while to see the beer-making action.

Katy(posted on Sep 19, 2006 at 7:23 pm)

After the beer was all brewed, cooled, and yeasted, we put it in the big bucket. We wanted the bucket pretty full, since the beer gets transderred to the carboy (that’s a big glass jug) after a few days, and the carboy is slightly larger than the bucket. Well, we didn’t really account for how active the yeast was going to become, and how much foaming would happen. The top of the bucket bowed up, so we set some weights on it to keep it down. Then the airlock (it’s that glass crack-pipe-looking thing) filled with foam and it began burbling out. I think we lost a liter and a half!

Katy(posted on Sep 29, 2006 at 7:59 pm)

As the weather has gotten colder and more blustery, we thought it would be good to get a head-start on collecting fire wood and kindling from the park. There was lots of fallen branches and such, and we easily filled the wagon.

Katy(posted on Sep 29, 2006 at 8:02 pm)

This is sort of a long movie of Ruby, doing Ruby-stuff. She has her hand inside a little bag, like a mitten, and is holding a stick. She says “stick” a lot. Just a little slice of Ruby.

Katy(posted on Oct 1, 2006 at 7:10 pm)