Saving Mr. Captain Phillips Survivor American Hustle Osage County

Awards season season is upon us. And for the first time in a while, there are a ton of movies that Chip and I want to see. I mean a ton. I’m not sure why, but we just don’t go to the movies that often. Alright, it’s probably mostly my fault, I can get a little stingy about paying $20 for us to go see a movie. I mean, $20? Are you serious? For that reason, up until last weekend, the last movie we had seen was The Hunger Games: Catching Fire over Thanksgiving weekend. Last Saturday, we were debating which movie to go see and eventually decided to go see Saving Mr. Banks. It was wonderful. I laughed and cried at different parts of this bittersweet movie and was so impressed by the acting (and yet no Oscar nominations, hmm? Come on, Hollywood). It’s going to take us a while to get through our list, but we’ll eventually get through it (when will these hit the dollar theater? Do those still exist?). Which movies do you recommend we go see?

• The Book Thief – I know, we’re waaaay behind on movies
• Captain Phillips – Again, where were the nominations for Tom Hanks?
• American Hustle – Will most likely be what we see next
• Lone Survivor
• August: Osage County
• Frozen
• Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit – Oh, hey, Chris Pine

After hearing this year’s Oscar nominations yesterday, I think we may also need to add Blue Jasmine, 12 Years a Slave, and Her to the list. And Chip thinks Ride Along looks hilarious, so we’ll see on that one (or wait until it comes out on Netflix…).

Happy Friday, everyone!

Wrigley’s fourth birthday

Today our sweet pup Wrigley is four years old, making him officially an adult dog. Not going to lie, I’m not totally happy about that. He may be another year older, but we’ll always call him our pup no matter how old he gets. He’s our best bud, sheriff guard dog, food stealer, and belly rub beggar.

In honor of his birthday, Wrigley and I went on an extra long walk this morning. He’s currently napping on our bed while he recovers from our 2.5 miles and dreaming of the deer he barked at. What a ruff life.

During our walk at Phil Hardberger Park

Happy and tired pup after our walk

After our walk, I made some homemade dog treats for Wrigs. We had some cute new treat cookie cutters thanks to my friend and Wrigley’s Tia Priscilla.

Wrigley’s favorite ingredient: peanut butter

Are the treats ready yet?

Birthday treats

Happy birthday, pup. We sure do love you.

Christmas Desserts

I have a bit of a sweet tooth…

And by that, I mean every single tooth in my mouth, including the two upper wisdom teeth I never had removed. So needless to say, one of my favorite parts about the holiday season is getting to bake and then enthusiastically consume different desserts. Over the last few years, my mom has given me free reign on the desserts for Christmas Eve, so I look forward to working on this part of our menu. This year, I turned to Southern Living’s Christmas Cookbook (2011 edition) once more, and we decided on the following two desserts for Christmas Eve: a chocolate chunk candy cane cheesecake and a chocolate-bourbon-pecan cake. Apologies if just reading those names gave you a cavity, but if you like desserts as much as I do, you’ll want to bake these yourselves!

Chocolate Chunk Candy Cane Cheesecake: 

How could I not pick this for Christmas Eve? You just don’t get any more holiday festive than candy canes. Now, we (I) should have ready the recipe the day before and realized that with the needed 8 hours of chilling, we should  have made this cheesecake on the 23rd. But I think in the end it’s a good thing we didn’t because I’m sure my mom and I would have been tempted to devour the entire thing while the boys were out golfing. As it was, we had to control ourselves on not licking the mixing bowl clean of batter. This is a judgment free zone, folks.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups chocolate wafer cookie crumbs (about 32 cookies)
• 1/4 cup butter, melted
• 2 tbsp. sugar
• 4 (8-oz.) packages cream cheese, softened
• 1 (14-oz.) can sweetened condensed milk
• 1/3 cup whipping cream
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 tbsp. all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 3 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chunks
• 1/2 cup coarsely crushed hard peppermint candies (about 18 candies)
• 3/4 cup whipping cream
• 1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate morsels
• Garnishes: 65 soft peppermint sticks (5 small bags), broken, peppermint bark (we didn’t have any peppermint bark)

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 325. Combine first 3 ingredients; stir well. Press mixture firmly on bottom of a lightly greased 9″ spring-form pan. Bake at 325 for 14 minutes; let cool.
• Beat cream cheese at medium-high speed with an electric mixer until creamy. Gradually add sweetened condensed milk, beating just until blended. Add 1/3 cup whipping cream and next 3 ingredients, beating just until blended. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating just until yellow disappears. Stir in chocolate chunks and crushed candies.

Cheesecake ready for the oven, but beware, the batter is delicious

• Pour batter into baked crust. Bake at 325 for 52 to 55 minutes or until edges are set and center is almost set. Turn off oven. Immediately run a knife around edge of pan, releasing sides. With oven door slightly open, let cheesecake stand in oven 1 hour. Remove from oven; cool completely on a wire rack. Cover and chill 8 hours. Remove sides and bottom of pan; place cheesecake on a serving plate (confession: I totally didn’t see the part about cooling first in the oven for an hour, so we skipped straight to cooling on a wire rack and it turned out just fine).
• Pour 3/4 cup whipping cream into a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave at high 1 minute or until hot. Add 1 1/2 cups semisweet morsels; stir until chocolate melts and mixture is smooth. Pour ganache over chilled cheesecake, allowing ganache to spill over edges of cheesecake; smooth ganache with an offset spatula. Let stand 10 minutes before garnishing, if desired.

A Christmas Cheesecake

Chocolate-Bourbon-Pecan Cake:

Since we wouldn’t be getting enough chocolate with just the cheesecake, I thought we should give this dessert a shot (nice pun with the Bourbon, right?). I also wanted to see if I would be better at a multi-layer cake this year compared to last Christmas, and I’m happy to say, it was a much more successful process this time around. This cake is moist and not as rich as you would expect, so go ahead and serve yourself a bigger slice (we all made New Year’s resolutions to exercise more). It’s so good, even Wrigley couldn’t resist it…

Ingredients:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 1/4 tsp. baking soda
• 3/4 tsp. salt
• 1 1/2 cups boiling water
• 1 1/4 cups unsweetened cocoa
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 tbsp. vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups unsalted butter, softened
• 3 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
• 6 large eggs
• 1/2 cup bourbon
• Two-part frosting (ingredients and directions provided below)
• Garnish: pecans

Directions: 

• Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour 2 (9″) round cake pans. Whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt.
• Whisk together 1 1/2 cups boiling water and cocoa, whisking until smooth. Whisk in milk and vanilla.
• Beat butter at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy. Gradually add brown sugar, beating at medium speed 3 minutes or until light and fluffy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.
• With mixer at low speed, add dry ingredients alternately with cocoa mixture, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Pour batter into prepared pans.
• Bake at 350 for 35 to 40 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Let cool in pans on wire racks 10 minutes; remove from pans, and cool completely on wire racks (about 1 hour). Wrap and freeze cake layers 1 hour (this step enables you to split cake layers with ease).
• Using a serrated knife, slice cake layers in half horizontally to make 4 layers. Brush cut side of each layer with bourbon. Spread pecan frosting between layers. Spread top and sides of cake with chocolate frosting. For best flavor, cover and let stand at room temperature 8 to 24 hours before serving. Garnish if desired.

The two cakes sliced into four layers

Adding the pecan frosting between layers

I also added a little bit of powdered sugar to the top of the cake along with the pecans for garnishing

Two-part frosting ingredients:

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 (16-oz.) packages powdered sugar, divided
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups chopped pecans, toasted
• 2 tbsp. milk, divided
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa

Frosting directions:

• Beat butter at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy. With mixer at low speed, gradually add 2 cups powdered sugar, beating until blended. Add 1/2 cup milk and vanilla, beating until blended.
• Gradually add remaining powdered sugar beating until smooth. Remove 3 cups frosting, and place in separate bowl; stir in pecans and 1 tbsp. milk (this pecan frosting will be used as the filling). Add cocoa and remaining 1 tbsp. milk to frosting in mixing bowl, beating until blended.

Christmas Eve Desserts

Minestrone Soup

Chip and I first had minestrone soup while we were in Boston this past fall. We were actually grabbing one last lunch in the North End before dropping my brother off at the airport while the rest of us would be driving up to Maine. Chip had been pretty sick during this part of the trip (if you ask him, he will dramatically say he was struggling to breathe), but after some antibiotics and one amazing minestrone soup, he was a new man. Since then, he was pretty set on finding a recipe as close to that minestrone (a task that was conveniently passed on to me). This recipe from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Foolproof is the only other minestrone we have liked as much. We’ve made it a few times now and we love more each time. We made this soup last night and with this cold front we’re getting, it’ll be our dinner again tonight!

Ingredients:

• Good olive oil
• 4 ounces pancetta, 1/2-inch diced (HEB has small packages of pre-diced pancetta that works great)
• 1 1/2 cups chopped yellow onions
• 2 cups (1/2-inch) diced carrots (3 carrots)
• 2 cups (1/2-inch) diced celery (3 stalks)
• 2 1/2 cups (1/2-inch) diced peeled butternut squash (Whole Foods sells this pre-diced, but if you need to do this yourself, soften the squash up by microwaving for a couple of minutes)
• 1 1/2 tablespoons minced garlic (4 cloves)
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme leaves
• 26 ounces canned or boxed chopped tomatoes, such as Pomi
• 6 to 8 cups chicken stock, preferably homemade (I always go with store bought, the homemade stock can get pretty expensive! And 6 cups always works great for us)
• 1 bay leaf
• Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1 (15-ounce) can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed (I haven’t been able to find these at HEB, so I just use Navy beans)
• 2 cups cooked small pasta (I like using Pipe Rigate pasta)
• 8 to 10 ounces fresh baby spinach leaves
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 2 tablespoons store-bought pesto
• Freshly grated Parmesan cheese, for serving

Directions:

• Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat in a large, heavy pot or Dutch oven. Add the pancetta and cook over medium-low heat for 6 to 8 minutes, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned. Add the onions, carrots, celery, sqauash, garlic, and thyme and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 8 to 10 minutes, until the vegetables begin to soften.

Pre-diced pancetta

Adding all of the vegetables

• Add the tomatoes, 6 cups of the chicken stock, the bay leaf, 1 tablespoon salt, and 1 1/2 teaspoons pepper to the pot. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes, until the vegetables are tender.
• Discard the bay leaf. Add the beans and cooked pasta and heat through. The soup should be quite thick but if it’s too thick, add more chicken stock. Just before serving, reheat the soup, add the psinach and toss with 2 big spoons (like tossing a salad). Cook just until the leaves are wilted. Stir in the white wine and pesto. Depending on the saltiness of the chicken stock, add another teaspoon or two of salt to taste (we’ve always been fine as-is). Serve large shallow bowls of soup and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

Minestrone Soup

Minestrone Soup

Food tastes better in pretty bowls, right?

Always waiting for any scraps to fall

Christmas 2013

Six days into 2014 and I’m already behind on blogging… Hopefully I’ll get those half a dozen drafts finished up here soon.

Christmas marked our annual drive to Tucson to visit my family. Since it’s a good 13 hour drive to get there, Christmas is really the best time to go since that’s when Chip gets the most days off of work. While the drive itself was fairly easy, getting ready for the trip was a little complicated… Similar to last year, we would be doing a portion of the drive on Friday once Chip got off work and then getting into Tucson on Saturday. The plan had been that I would spend Thursday figuring out which luggage would best fit in my car’s trunk with Chip’s golf clubs and all the Christmas gifts and get started on packing. Well… due to some unforeseen elements, my car was at the mechanic all day Thursday. All is well, but it did throw off my planning a bit as I spent a chunk of Thursday out dealing with my car and didn’t get home from the mechanic until about 1:30 in the afternoon, and didn’t get my car back until later that night. So that meant all packing and loading of the car had to be done on Friday. It really wasn’t that bad, but the day went by much quicker than I had expected. I took Wrigley for his walk, packed up our suitcases, loaded up the car, quickly showered, realized I wasn’t happy with how the car was loaded, took everything out of the trunk, took out some clothes from our suitcases, and re-loaded the car in a much better way. Before I knew it, Chip was home from work and we were quickly out the door. It was about 4:00 by the time the three of us got in the car and after grabbing a late lunch from Chik-Fil-A, we were on I10… where I realized about 40 miles outside of San Antonio that I had forgotten my nice camera at our house. Oops. So I have minimal pictures of this trip. The downfalls of packing in a hurry.

Wrigley helping me pack

Ready to go

Wrigley enjoying a TV Christmas special in Van Horn

We had decided to drive to Van Horn that night and stay at the Hampton Inn there since they’re a pet friendly hotel and our best bud Wrigs would be with us. He did really well at the hotel and after finally relaxing and going to sleep, he only barked once, and that was when they slipped our room bill under the door. I guess he hoped we were getting the room for free, right? We got up early on Saturday and finished the rest of the drive to Tucson. Overall, between Friday and Saturday, we drove through some heavy rain, light snow, and sunshine. Definitely the most random weather we’ve ever had on the drive.

He’s a good passenger

We got into Tucson around lunch time on Saturday and joined my parents as well as Alex and his girlfriend Teresa at the house to catch up for a bit. We then got our family Christmas tree and decorated it after dinner, which was a minestrone soup I helped my mom make (this recipe is awesome, will definitely be posting later).

Christmas pup

Chip was proud of himself for helping with the lights at the top of the tree

Some of our childhood ornaments

Nice glasses, little Jessica

The decorated tree and Penny

We took it easy Sunday and relaxed around the house a bit in the morning. Alex and Teresa had flown in really late Friday night (or technically early Saturday morning by the time they got to the house), so they were still tired and slept in Sunday while Chip and I went with my parents to Le Buzz for breakfast. It was pretty cold out that morning, so instead of walking there and eating outside with the dogs like we typically like to do, we drove and snagged a table inside (which is no easy feat, let me tell you, that place is usually pretty full!). Chip and I love Le Buzz and are always trying to find something similar to it here in San Antonio.

After breakfast, we wanted to watch some football at home, but my parents’ cable wasn’t working (there was some type of outage in the area or a Comcast conspiracy). So with no football to watch, I drove Chip over to the other side of town to show him our old house, which is where I grew up until we moved in 6th grade to the house my parents are still in. It was fun driving around the old neighborhood since I hadn’t seen it in years. By the time we got back home, the cable was just about back up and running, so we were able to watch football with some family friends that came by to catch up. My grandpa also stopped by so the men had to play dominoes as they usually do.

Wrigley and his cousin Penny taking it easy

Monday morning we had breakfast at home before taking a stab at a popular holiday tradition: stockings. Now, we’ve always had stockings in our family, but they’ve just been part of our Christmas decorations. I think the only thing they’ve ever held were our Christmas lists to Santa when Alex and I were little. But this year, my mom thought it would be fun to actually “do” stockings for the first time. I have to say, I’m a fan of this tradition since it meant I got some new nail polish and super cute measuring cups from Anthropologie. We also had Teresa open up her gifts from all of us since she was flying back home to Colorado early on Tuesday morning to spend Christmas with her family.

Monday afternoon, we all went and had an early dinner at Gavi’s before driving across town for A Christmas Carol at The Great American Playhouse. To my Tucson friends, if the Gaslight Theater is too far away for you, be sure to check out this new production company in Oro Valley.

The view from Gavi’s

At the Christmas show

Tuesday was Christmas Eve, one of my favorite days of the year. The boys were up early, with Alex taking Teresa to the airport, and then all heading out for their traditional game of golf (I think Chip really likes this tradition). While the guys were gone, my mom and I took the dogs for a nice long walk and then got to cooking. I always appreciate this time in the kitchen with my mom working on the meal together. First up were the desserts. This year we decided to do a chocolate chunk candy cane cheesecake and a chocolate-bourbon-pecan cake. Recipes will be posted soon!

Getting Christmas Eve started with a walk with the dogs

With the cheesecake chilling and the chocolate cake garnished, we spent the afternoon cooking  dinner and getting ready before the guys got home. A few of the recipes were from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Foolproof book and are becoming holiday staples for my family.

Dad will always offer a helping hand for the ham

Dinner time

Chocolate cake

Cheesecake

Dinner was delicious and we had a great time hearing the boys’ stories about their day golfing and reflecting on the year together. We decided to wait a little bit before diving into dessert, but a certain pup couldn’t wait… While Wrigley’s behavior had been decent during the trip, he was getting jealous of the food we were eating that day. So after telling him “no” to some leftovers while we cleaned the kitchen, he snuck back into the dining room where the chocolate cake was and helped himself to some dessert… We didn’t think he had eaten that much chocolate since the cake only had cocoa powder but between that and the bourbon, we decided it was better to be safe than sorry and get him to throw up. After some quick googling, my mom saw that just a little bit of hydrogen peroxide will make a dog throw up, so we quickly squirted some in his mouth and took him outside. It worked.

With that ordeal out of the way, we sat down for some dessert and ate the untouched side of the chocolate cake. Oh, Wrigs. Santa’s still watching you.

Bad pup

Slicing the non-Wrigley side of the cake

With my mom

My dad loves dessert

Nance family picture before Midnight Mass

My brother, mom, and dad

We played a few games after having dessert and soon it was time for Midnight Mass. We’ve been going to midnight mass pretty much my entire life and it has become one of my favorite traditions. I love singing carols together, hearing a message about Christmas, and having Communion to mark the beginning of the day. With my time off of work since mid-November, I feel like I was more able to reflect on the season of advent than I have in past years. I am thankful for this time of rest, for really reflecting on how huge it is that God came as a helpless baby to a broken people, and for being reminded that I am called to wait for Christ and His second coming.

Christmas morning, just about everyone slept in (something to do with going to bed at 1:30, I guess). It doesn’t matter how old I get, I will always naturally wake up early on Christmas. Once everyone else was up, it was time to start opening gifts and have breakfast. Wrigley and Penny stole the show playing with all of their new toys and Wrigs stealing wrapping paper from us all to shred all over the living room. We spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon relaxing around the house together. Both Chip and Alex had to be back at work on the 26th, so we took them to the airport in the afternoon for their flights back to San Antonio and Denver. I was bummed they both had to leave on Christmas day, but so glad for the time we did get together around everyone’s schedules.

After taking them to the airport, I was able to spend some one-on-one time with my parents, which doesn’t happen very often. We relaxed and watched TV together before snacking on leftovers throughout the evening.

My mom and I had planned on doing half of the drive back to San Antonio on the 26th, but after realizing that our Hampton Inn in Van Horn was booked, we decided to just spend the night in El Paso, and do the majority of the drive on the 27th. This meant we had more time in Tucson the morning of the 26th, so we just had to go check out some post-Christmas sales. We spent a couple of hours over at La Encantada and got some serious deals at Anthropologie (got some suuuper cute dishes that I absolutely love). We got on the road around 2:00 with Wrigley and were in El Paso by dinner time, which was a stop at Pei Wei before going to the Holiday Inn.

Ready to drive to El Paso

Unfortunately, Wrigley didn’t do as well at this hotel as he did in Van Horn… this Holiday Inn is cabana style, so all of the units have outdoor entrances. We were also on the first floor, which meant there was a lot of foot traffic outside of our door since the hotel was pretty busy. Now Wrigley has a really strong protective instinct that I’m normally very thankful for, so as people were checking in and out and walking around at all hours of the night, he was a growling and barking machine. By about 1:00 in the morning, I was telling my mom we should just put him in the bathroom (not nice to my pup, I know, but I was so tired, and also slightly worried our neighbors would complain). My mom stayed up pretty much all night trying to keep him company so I could get some sleep since I would be doing the driving. At 5:00, we gave up on trying to get any more rest and decided to just get up and get on the road ahead of schedule. We had great weather on our drive and were back in San Antonio around 3:00. We slowly unloaded the car and by the time Chip got home from work an hour later, we were pathetically lying on the couch with minimal energy, but found a way to get up for dinner at Salata. I had a great time driving to San Antonio with my mom, it was some of the most one-on-one time we’ve had in a long time. And while we were plenty tired the second day of the drive, I would totally do it again!

The only bit Wrigley slept in El Paso was right when we checked in. Oh, pup.

Still dark out while we grabbed Starbucks Friday morning

Overall, this Christmas was great. I’m so grateful for all the time I was able to spend resting and reflecting during this holiday season. I’m thankful for the time spent with family and for getting to spend everyday with Chip and Wrigley. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!