ana and abel

About a week ago it was my father's birthday. Today my mom turns 61. No matter how many hours I spend with them on skype, it still hurts to be away and not be able to give them a great big hug... 

burning man!

How about this place as a honeymoon!?

The tickets have arrived and we're going!

a clean house is a sign of a misspent life

dear blog, 

after being away from the house for almost 3 weeks, we have to "misspend" our life cleaning and getting everything organized. our house is a mess! this cross-stitched reminder hangs in our house, one of the many curiosities we got at a yard sale. so when this gets done, I'll get back to more important things, like our wedding!

yours truly, 

the Atlanta housewife 

oh, the places you'll go

Oh, the places you'll go is the theme for our wedding and these are the invitations we've been sending out for the last couple of months. I know what you are thinking: they are already married. True, but this time is the official church wedding with family and friends and we are really looking forward to it. 

It was fun and hard work putting this together since neither of us have any design experience. We got to a point where we understood why people hire real designers for this sort of thing! But we are really proud of how it turned out and everyone seems to enjoy them. Though we do have to explain how it works: because we love receiving postcards we wanted everyone to send us a postcard with their reply. So the balloon will "fly" to us here in Atlanta. Some family members simply said: you know I'm going, so let me keep the balloon! We'll probably have all the postcards on display at the reception. 

 And yes, there is a dress, but I'm only talking about that after we say YES in June!  

ooh la la, elle a fait croissants!!

I finally ventured in the complex art of homemade butter croissants. Following the Tartine recipe, it took me 3 days to finish! Patience is really the key here, along with strong muscles to hammer down the butter and roll out the dough. In the end, they tasted delicious!

DAY 1: prepare the overnight poolish and a sourdough levain, they will serve as ferment allowing a slow rise and a more complex flavor.

DAY 2: mix the dough, beat the butter into a flatten sheet and laminate the dough with the butter. Before spending the night wrapped in plastic in the fridge, the dough is folded and laminated with the an immense quantity of butter. The folding and rolling out the dough is what gives it its ultimate butter flakiness.   

DAY 3: after a slow rise in the fridge, I rolled out the dough, cut it into triangles and rolled the croissants. I made 2 batches of small and regular croissants and froze 1/3 of the dough to use next week. 

These are going to lucky fellows over at Outsystems.  

pig ears, anyone?

Where does one buy pig ears in this grand city?
Here, at the Sweet Auburn Curb Market...

... where you can buy whole pigs!

 

... and smoked ham. Yummy!

oh, the places you'll go!

you'll be on your way up

you'll be seeing great sights.

you'll join the high fliers 

who soar to high heights.

many of you already know what this is all about. but some don't. so I'll make a bit of suspense out of it! 

tie me up

I rarely use this blog to speak of products, but these slippers caught my eye mostly because we don't have any decent slippers to wear around the house and always walk around in socks or bare foot. Aside from seeming very comfortable and simple, you lace them up yourselves. This is Lasso. 

pão alentejano

This was suppose to be "pão alentejano" but since I still don't have a scale, it's just "pão". The measurements were a bit off, so instead of a dense loaf, typical of bread from this region of Portugal, it came out of the oven very soft and full of holes! A very delicious one I would say and Pedro agrees: after the first loaf came out of the oven, he ate half! 

I get most of my inspiration in Paulo's blog and from reading several books. He explains every single detail and what to expect in each stage. After many trials and errors, I now understand how the dough should behave, what a decent starter should smell like, what flours are best and, above all, the importance of patience. This bread took 7 hours from start to finish! I didn't labor around it for 7 hours, as you can imagine. It's quite easy to make, it only took about 30-40 minutes total, from mixing the flour to kneading and shaping. 

back to the darkroom

Returning to the darkroom takes time. And patience. These photos could have been great if I had developed the negative properly. It's part of a bundle of canisters loaded with Polypan F 50 film that have been stashed away in boxes for about 2 years and only now I've taken the time and patience to develop them. I'm slow, but I eventually get things done. 

They are of my father working the fields.