The Atkins Anniversary Dinner

For our anniversary, Brian's parents treated us to a fancy meal in Manhattan. We ultimately decided that the one thing we would never splurge on ourselves—and, therefore, should treat ourselves to—would be a steak dinner. We opted for something casual, but refined, and moderately priced, so we could toast with a fews drinks too.

Welcome to the Brasserie Les Halles, where American beef is cooked in a French style!

We started the evening with some French beer, why not?! Ummm . . . I'll tell you why not: Kronenbourg 1664 = La francaise Bud Light.

But dinner? Dinner was mouth watering, jaw dropping, heart stopping . . . SO GOOD! We're not kidding about the heart stopping though: it was an all-meat feast! We ordered the Planche de grillades for 2, which is an assortment of grilled meat served on a plank.

Besides the mound of French fries it came with, our dinner included: 2 lamb chops, 2 hanger steaks, 2 links of merquez, 2 sirloins, 2 strips of thick cut bacon, Provençal dressing . . . and oh yeah, can't forget the vegetables . . . 2 slices of grilled tomato!

Goodbye Slimfast diet, hello Atkins diet.

Turkey Pot Hold-the-Pie

Oliver has been such a good dog lately. He's been well-behaved, patient, and loyal, while Brian has been preparing for his doctoral exams over the last 3 weeks. And because the little guy has asked for nothing in return, we decided to surprise him with a tasty, pet-friendly recipe, courtesy of Rachel Ray Magazine. Perhaps you'll want to share it with your puppy, too!

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon flour

1 cup low-sodium chicken broth

1/4 pound deli-sliced turkey, chopped

1 cup frozen peas and carrots, thawed

2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley

1. In a small skillet, heat the butter over medium heat. Whisk in the flour for 1 minute, then whisk in the chicken broth and bring to a boil over high heat. Lower the heat and simmer until thickened, 2–3 minutes.

2. Stir in the turkey, veggies, and parsley. Cook until heated through, 2–3 minutes. Let cool to almost room temperature before serving. (Makes 4 servings)

Clearly Oliver loved it . . . even though we only had peas, no carrots. He even preferred the leftovers served cold for breakfast!

Cherry Clafouti

If you're not French already, you will be after you eat this!

*** Please take note that making and eating our recipe for Clafouti is not optional: you must make this right now!!! ***

It is best served warm, so bake it just before you serve dinner (or breakfast, yum!), and serve with a spoonful of crème fraîche.

Unsalted butter, for dish

2 large eggs

1 large egg yolk

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup crème fraîche, plus more for serving

3/4 cup whole milk

1/2 cup granulated sugar, plus more for dish

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon salt

12 ounces cherries, halved and pitted

Confectioners' sugar, for dusting

1. Preheat your oven to 375°

2. Butter a 9'' (1.25" deep) baking dish and sprinkle granulated sugar over butter.

3. Whisk together eggs, yolk, and flour. Then whisk in crème fraîche, milk, granulated sugar, vanilla, and salt.

4. Arrange cherries in prepared dish and strain batter over cherries.

5. Bake until browned around edges and set in the center, 30–35 minutes.

6. Let cool only slightly, dust with confectioners' sugar,

and serve warm with crème fraîche!

It's Getting Hot in Herre

Please tell me someone knows the Nelly (ca. 2001) single, "It's Getting Hot in Herre" . . . because I just witnessed it in my apartment. In an attempt to cool off the Yorkie—because the poor guy looked plain miserable—Brian held Oliver in front of the fan for 10 minutes . . .

To hell with that plan . . . Nelly says "take off all your clothes" . . . which didn't really do much for Oliver. In his last attempt to beat the heat, Brian thought he would try panting, and Oliver showed him how . . .

We'll be at the park . . .

"Good luck, Brian! I hope your extremely important doctoral test at the Grad Center goes well? At least you look prepared! Call if you need us, we'll be at the park."

"Well, hello there Oliver! Would you like to go to the park, while Daddy takes a 6-hour exam? Okay! Let's head for Brooklyn's Prospect Park with a very big blanket . . . "

"Well, hello there park! And hello commemorative Vanity Fair with Michael Jackson on the cover! (Rest in peace, my MJ. I love you.) And HELLO a cool piece of shade on a hot summer day . . . "

[By the way, yes, Jess knows that she has to take this exam herself in the fall. Boo hoo.]

Brian's Daughter

How's that for an attention-grabbing headline! No, Brian doesn't really have a daughter that you don't know about: this precious human pumpkin belongs to Anthony and Samantha Taylor (our dear friends living in North Carolina) and her name is Sylvia Julep. Is she not perfectly, crazy cute?!!

Back in July, we spent the day with the Taylors in Brevard, North Carolina—home of the nationally recognized Brevard Music Center. We went hiking with little Sylvia and Oliver . . .

After a long, terrific day of catching up with friends, Oliver fell asleep as Sylvia played with his whiskers. Aww . . .

Happy Anniversary!

Today marks our first wedding anniversary! Where has the year gone? New jobs, new apartment, new city, new dog . . . same love.

Brian surprised Jess with her favorite flowers earlier in the week. They also appeared on the dining room table with some seriously delicious chocolates made special by The Bald Man.

In honor of the paper anniversary, Jess surprised Brian with a new cookbook by his favorite editors: Cook's Illustrated: America's Test Kitchen. Now, this is true love, because Jess truly can't stand those pretentious test-kitchen jerks! Like she doesn't know how to cut carrots on the diagonal?! Give it a rest with the instructions!

But as usual, it was Brian's gift that was most special and imaginative. Brian bought Jess two tickets to the Frick Museum. Although, who knows if he will actually show up, given that Jess has threatened to dress like Edith Wharton for the guided tour. (There is certainly never a dull moment in this marriage.)

Along with tickets to the Frick Collection, Brian bought two tickets to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. We're hoping this tour will serve as a stark reminder that we don't have it so bad after all, here in the "slums" of Brooklyn . . . let's just hope Jess doesn't dress the part for this museum.

Lastly, Brian also bought two tickets to the new movie, Julie & Julia, which we saw this afternoon. (Highly recommended!)

To top off the anniversary celebration, Jess attempted to make Tiramisu from scratch. We served this decadent Italian cake at our rehearsal dinner and have decided to make it a tradition for anniversaries to come! It wasn't so bad for a first attempt. The mascarpone curdled a bit and we didn't have any rum on hand . . . but hey, Kahlua does the job just fine!

So here's to us! May our future together be like tiramisu: made up of layers upon layers of the best things in life.

When Two Students Marry

As our first wedding anniversary quickly approaches (August 16), so too does the first anniversary of our life in our 500 sq ft apartment. Allow us to elaborate on the demise of organization that follows when two students—working toward the same degree no less!—marry one another.

When Brian moved to New York two years ago, he left a great deal of his Cincinnati paperwork with Jess in Ohio. Jess subsequently piled much of this paperwork in boxes and put it in storage, along with multiple boxes of her own graduate and undergraduate paperwork. Meanwhile, both Brian and Jess continued to accrue more and more paperwork as they finished their graduate studies. When it came time for Jess to move to New York, the boxes of Brian's paperwork came out of storage and were combined with boxes of Jess's paperwork, only to be combined again with new boxes of Brian's paperwork already in New York.

Needless to say, the organizational predicament we find ourselves in is as messy as it is confusing. After a wedding and a move across country, neither of us felt like sorting through all the paperwork, so we literally threw it all into newer, "fancier" (=Ikea) boxes, which have been sitting in our living room, untouched for nearly 12 months.

The situation would no doubt have been easier to handle if it was simply a matter of sorting and tidying every box. Unfortunately, the most daunting problem we faced was weeding out the countless duplicates of paperwork stemming from 9 years of taking virtually all the same classes! If only we'd married our first year of grad school, then we'd only have 2 Harold Powers articles instead of 4, only 1 photocopy of chps. 1-9 of Christopher Hasty's Meter as Rhythm instead of 2, and only 54 David Lewin articles instead of 108...wait...how many Lewin articles are there?!

For nearly six hours we sorted, and tossed, and labeled, and alphabetized, and chronologitized, until eight boxes became only three! With a little help from Ikea, we put up new shelving, and voilà, we now toast to one year of marriage and only one copy of all things music theory!

Before . . .


And after . . .

Oj! Det var bra!

Every time we head to Ikea, the four-hour shopping extravagance leaves us feeling hungrig and törstig. [Translation: hungry and thirsty]

So inevitably we head to the food court for some Swedish meatballs. It's a tasty date for two for under $10. After all, nothing beats standing in a 40-minute checkout line to buy a single $5 lamp shade than standing in a 40–minute checkout line to buy a single $5 lamp shade with indigestion.

"Oj! Det var bra!" [Translation: "Oh! That's good!]

If I Could Be Anywhere

If Melon could be anywhere, it would be right smack-dab in the middle of this picture again:


This picture was taken at Ault Park in Cincinnati last May, as Brian and Jess were headed across country on their way to Iowa. (From left: Ann, Emily, Jess, Breighan, Erin)

If I could go back to that moment again, I would hug Breighan tighter and remind her that she can do anything, and that Cincinnati will never be the same without her. I would hand Ann another beer and tell her that her smile lights up my life and has forever changed me. I would beg Emily to sit with me for one more drink at Arlin's, as we watch Kevin feed the jukebox all night. And I would ask Erin if she wants to rent a car again, but this time keep driving to wherever we please, for as long as we please . . .

Marathoner

Brian and Jess have been, shall we say, "working on their fitness" since the beginning of the summer. It was cheap and convenient to join the gyms in both Jefferson and Greenville, but now that we're back in NYC, it's going to be a little harder to find a way to keep active. Until school starts, when we can try out our respective university gyms, we've decided to run at the track down the street from us. Today we decided to take Oliver.

The little guy actually ran 2 miles without putting up a fight! But now he looks like this . . .

Just In Time

Here comes the heat in NYC! The city is quickly approaching its first 90° summer day, and our dear Jimbo and Lindy bought us an early wedding anniversary gift: a portable air conditioner!

Here's how it all went down . . .

Step 1. Drive your car (yes, we now have a CAR in the city!) across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Step 2. Look for parking.

Step 3. Actually get incredibly lucky on a Friday afternoon and find $2.00/hr street parking 1 block from Bed, Bath and Beyond!

Step 4. Purchase the 95-lb unit and figure out a way to hoist it into a shopping cart.

Step 5. Beg the store clerk to let you take the shopping cart out of the store and across the street.

Step 6. Try not to look homeless as you wheel your shopping cart along a crowded city block.

Step 7. Embarrass yourself as you fail to fit the 95-lb unit into the trunk on your tiny '96 Honda Civic.

Step 8. Ungracefully, but successfully, jam the damn thing into the back seat of your '96 Honda Civic (thank God for 4-doors!).

Step 9. Realize that you forgot to Google-map your way home from Tribeca, cross your fingers that the Brooklyn Bridge has traffic in both directions, and zip back home to your tiny Brooklyn abode.

Step 10. Carry/push/drag/pull the 95-lb unit up to the fifth floor.

Step 11. Install (if you're the husband), or sip iced tea while reading your magazine (if you're the wife).

Step 12. ENJOY the cool air!