Nigella Express: The FINAL Episode

 Drum roll.......the final recipe of Nigella and 2009 was Homemade Mac N Cheese.

Now one would think you can't screw up Mac N Cheese. There is macaroni. There is cheese. But in this recipe there is also eggs, nutmeg, evaporated milk, some other stuff.

I think the failure came in when I decided we needed to just use up the cheese we had vs. buying the cheddar cheese the recipe called for. Frugal Greta killed this recipe.

It still tasted ok, it just looked awful.


And so concludes our year of Nigella Express. It's no secret we weren't completely enthused with Nigella. Maybe it was the cookbook. Maybe it was our lack of willingness to try some of her weird stuff. But I would be lying if I said I wasn't happy to close this book and open our next one.

Listmania: Things I learned in 2009

I love lists. I make them all the time. At home. At work. In class. In my head. While I'm working out. Via microphone in the car. Seriously. Love them.

Enter in new blog idea for 2010: List of the Month. What better way to kick-off this brillz new blog idea than a recap list of the important things I learned in 2009.


1) The Firm is the best gym in Minneapolis.
I meagerly stepped foot into "Diva Doug's" step class in January of 09 and haven't looked back. Nate lost a bet and he had to attend, and he hasn't looked back. The staff is amazing. The workouts are kick-ass. The music is deafeningly loud. There are no frills, fluff, or gimmicks. It's just hard-core working out. And Doug is the cherry on top.

2) Great Food Fast > Nigella Express 
Sure Nigella gave us Rocky Road Bars, and Sesame Peanut Noodles, but Great Food Fast keeps giving and giving. We had more failures or mediocre dinners with Nigella, and god love her, she has some weird ass directions.

3) Costco is actually worth talking about all the time
It was a mere 9 months ago when Nate and I stepped into Costco with high doubts that we would actually save money without coupons (Gasp!), and that we would still not understand how every conversation seemed to end with Costco. Well one American Express/Costco card, and an upgrade to Executive Member later, we are full-fledged members. We eat our words. And we are fine with that. We heart Costco.

4) Travel is the Bomb.
You would think this wasn't a lesson that needed to be learned. But lets just say 2009 drove this home, especially for me. You don't have to travel far for a good time , especially if family is there. Traveling with girlfriends is always fun, from Boston to Vegas,. Travel with your hubby isn't so bad either! And a tropical vacation to escape MN in the winter is always a must.

5) The only exception to #4 is Branson, MO.
This is a destination you should take people to only if you want to punish them, or they are over the age of 75 and therefore have blurry vision and poor hearing. No offense to Andy Williams...because that guy is sick. (In a good way, although I am willing to bet he may actually be sick too).

6) You don't always keep all of your resolutions.
So I had a list of 5 resolutions for 2009. Five. you would think that was doable. But alas, I failed to come through on all 5.

- I "only" read 31 books, although if you added in my school books I would have definitely hit 36.
- I finished my first half-marathon. CHECK!
- Volunteering more...technically yes, but not necessarily the level I was thinking. Half-Check.
- Investing...bleah. Didn't happen. Anyone want to give me a crash course?
- Plant and consumer first garden: CHECK! And it was delicious, and is getting bigger next year.

7) Life is short.
This is a lesson my family has unfortunately learned all too much the last few years. So many little things consume our daily lives that really don't matter at all in the big scheme of things. While this lesson if one learned the hardest, it definitely will have the biggest impact on the future. Less worry, more fun. Live in the moment.

Well, there you have it. All important lessons from 2009. Looking forward to what can be learned in 2010...

A Very Salty Christmas

Yes. Salty.

Why salty you may ask?

1) We didn't make it home to Viroqua for the Holidays, so there were some tears shed in frustration, disappointment, yadda yadda yadda. It sucked. Luckily, I stopped at Costco on Christmas Eve after we learned of this news, and I impulse purchased this poinsettia/mum basket because 'dammit, we need some holiday flowers.' It was not pretty.

2) Nate and I opened our gifts this morning and we BOTH bought each other salt boxes. Could that BE any more random? Have we been dating/married for 12+ years. Yes.

So here they are...the ever classic Alton Brown singular sea salt glass container, and the down-home wooden 4-compartment holder great for multiple salts, herbs etc. There was very little debate. The wood holder stays.

It came complete with pink salt, sea salt flakes, black salt and red salt. Hell yeah. We are going to be getting our salt on in 2010.

I am still flabbergasted that we both bought a salt box, AND neither of us has even explicitly said that was something we wanted. Weird.

Anyway, that was our Christmas in a nutshell. That would of course be a salted nutshell.

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from Mrs. Paws

From our house to yours...a very Merry Christmas!

3rd Annual Festivus Cookie Decorating

Last night was one of our increasingly favorite new Christmas traditions: Festivus Cookie Decorating, where Nate and I host all of our favorite Jewish friends over to partake in some non-denominational holiday fun. Sure there was Christmas music playing, but Alex said as long as it was on vinyl (thank you Aunt Deloris) it was all good.

For those of you not familiar with Festivus, perhaps you should try watching Seinfeld. There are all sorts of cool things like feats of strength, airing your greivances, a pole, etc. And I think everyone in attendance last night would agree that cookie decorating at the Hanson household does require feats of strength by the end.

This year we introduced the new "light bulb" ornament cookie cutter (think old school Christmas lights). Each person had 10 cookies to decorate, which doesn't seem like a lot, but when you start feeling the pressure of having to top what you did last year it gets exhausting. We even had a request for tweezers this year...that is how crazy this crew is.

Now, for those of you who have been with Nate and I since the beginning of this blog, you may remember some past cookies.... This was the first year all the boys could attend, and let me tell you we were impressed. We had some seriously skilled 'solider boys' representing police forces across the world....Sam unfortunately lost his soldier boy to the intense craving to eat a cookie...but he totally made up for it with his mad skills of turning the light bulb into a dreidl.

The girls selected our angels as the best cookies of the night. From Debra's perfectly crafted braids and bows, to Rachel's "Victorious Secret Plus-Size Angel", and to my "Army Fighter Angel of Death" dressed in camo, our angels pretty much rocked.

And a Festivus wouldn't be complete without the senior picture pose in front of the tree.

This night is one of my favorite nights in the holiday season. Just good times, good friends, good decorating...all around good. And JUST what I needed last night.

The night ended with the mixing of the frosting, which ended up looking like pea soup this year. Sam and I went back and forth on how much one would have to pay the other one to eat the whole thing. I said $1,000 as long as I could throw up and Sam said $500, so he won.

We decided there was a high risk of all that frosting coating his stomach, lungs, etc, hardening and cutting out al oxygen thus leading to death, so we nixed that bet. Lets be real, Festivus has feats of strength, but not stupidity.

Merry Smokemas

December secret dates are my favorite because usually it involves Christmas, which is my favorite holiday, and there are always great shows, and festive things to do in the city during this time of year.

It was my date, and I got tickets to see the Cirque Holidaze show. I was quite concerned about this date for two reasons:

1) It was at Mystic Lake Casino
2) I didn't believe that a legit Cirque show would play at Mystic Lake.

But, we got there, watched the show, and sure enough it was a legit Cirque show, complete with crazy contortionists, people who can balance other people by some weird force of physics, and a crazy little kid that kept getting swung in between Santa's legs for a slightly inappropriate length of time.

But here's the deal...the Mystic Lake location definitely put a damper on this date of mine. Just walking through the casino made you feel like you had smoked a pack of cigarettes in 5 minutes. And the festive holiday spirit you may have left with was quickly killed by this conversation I overheard while waiting for Nate:

Guy (to wife): I'll wait for you right here.

Wife: No, I'll meet you at the gift shop.

(Me thinking, awww...very nice of this woman to pick up a gift for someone during this holiday season)

Guy: What the hell do you possibly need at the gift shop.

Wife: I TOLD you, I have to get my cigarettes. If I am going to gamble, I need my smokes.

Oh so merry. Oh so bright. And oh so something wrong with the statement: I NEED my smokes. How does anyone in this world still smoke? This lady is seriously lucky I wasn't drunk, because any person who knows me while I may be slightly under the influence would know I would have had no issues telling this lady how bad and disgusting smoking is.

Anyway, the point is...Mystic Lake is not the place for a romantic, festive date. But, we still had fun, and we did some non-holiday shopping afterwards which helped keep our Christmas spirits high!

Nigella Express: Episode 22

I'm not going to lie. I am SO over Nigella's cookbook, and am SO excited about our new 2010 cookbook (unveiling coming soon...).

But, we have seriously neglected our little cooking endeavor the last few months, blatantly ignoring Nigella's cookbook. I feel like it is in my kitchen staring me down everytime I wonder what to have for dinner.

So to rectify these feelings of guilt...I decided we would include Nigella in our cookie extravaganzaa. Which meants, trying out her Pistachio Fudge.

Of course, we used walnuts instead of pistachios so already it wasn't really her recipe, but all I can say is we tried. :)

The good news is it is nearly impossible to mess up fudge, and so of course this recipe proved to be delicious. We are going to eek out one last 2009 Nigella recipe before the new book begins!!