What Happens When We're Away?

Often I find myself wondering what the dogs do when we are away from home. I have now discovered what our little precious animals are up to. Seamus seems to enjoy jumping up on our bed. It seems he especially enjoys mommy's side of the bed. No doubt he snuggles up against her pillow.
Deirbhile on the other hand seems to enjoy being near Stuart and thus it is no surprise that she jumps into her puppy's crib. Such naughty puppies we have, I'll have to have a talk with both of them.
Now that Mom and Dad have figured out about the dogs antics while we're away, Seamus is keeping a close watch on our comings and goings. He doesn't want to be caught again.
Seamus and Deirbhile disagree as to who is to blame for this discovery. Deirbhile is giving Seamus a good piece of her mind, she apparently believes he is to blame.
In other news, Agnus bothered to come up to Michigan. As you know she and her husband, (what's his name again?) moved down to hillbilly country in Virginia. As you can see, she's holding Stuart, who was only mildly thrilled to see her. Janna on the other hand was much more excited.
Agnus is in an extreme state of pregnancy and thus is craving various foodstuffs. One such foodstuff is turkey and so we made her our world famous brined turkey with port wine gravy. It was cooked perfectly (breast side up) and was throughly delicious. After dinner we moved into the living room to watch several episodes of Barefoot Contessa, which appears to be a favorite of Agnus'.

Restaurant Bloom

Last Friday Janna and I had dinner with my folks, my brother and his wife at Restaurant Bloom at 40 Monroe Center NW. (There is a current menu on their My Space blog) My brother was in town for an interview of one kind or another which allowed for this little get together. He lives in Cincinnati so we rarely get to visit with him.

In any event, Bloom is a relatively new restaurant with a husband and wife team operating the kitchen. I would say the style is modern, though not quite the avant garde modern of TRU, Charlie Trotter's in Chicago or French Laundry in San Francisco. Nevertheless, for Grand Rapids this is about as close as we're going to get and we will all smile and enjoy it.

Our dinner started off with an amuse bouche of salmon belly in a maple sauce. I love the concept of providing guests with an amuse bouche and I loved the salmon belly but the maple sauce was over powering and way to sweet. I am not a fan of sweet dishes not called desert and even in desert I'm not a fan of to much sweet so perhaps my aversion to the maple sauce is rooted in that. But Janna, who has a sweet tooth, also thought the sauce was to sweet. Good concept, maybe they need to try something else.

For an appetizer I ordered the tuna tartar, roasted peanut, hot sauce sorbet and parsley. The tuna was absolutely perfect and the roasted peanut and hot sauce sorbet perfectly complimented the delicate tuna. The sorbet, while different, added a nice coolness to the dish while at the same time providing a hot zing. This dish alone made the evening worthwhile. Janna started off with a baby spinach salad with crispy ham, aged cheddar and cider dressing. She will attest that the salad was very good, presented beautifully.

My main course was a roasted duck, swiss chard, rutabaga and roasted concord grape juice. The duck was perfectly cooked medium rare and the grape juice provided just the slightest hint of sweetness to this otherwise savory dish. Janna got lamb sirloin, chanterelle mushrooms, red cabbage and hazelnut. She's been raving about the lamb ever since Friday. It was perfectly cooked and perfectly seasoned. Other dishes enjoyed included salmon and ribeye, I'm told both were quite good.

Desert alone is worth going to Bloom for and I understand they have a desert lounge which we will no doubt be frequenting. I got pumpkin cake, coffee ice cream and dates. I'm here to tell you that on its own the pumpkin cake wasn't very good but put together with the ice cream and dates and the pumpkin danced in my mouth. Janna got chocolate goodness, ginger sorbet, hazelnut and sea salt. The chocolate tasted much like a dull Nutella if a bite was taken without the sea salt, with the sea salt the flavors were enhanced and it turns into a wonderful desert. My mother got the most interesting desert of the evening, peanut butter mousse, bacon, bananas and chocolate sorbet. I tried a bit of hers and the bacon went perfectly with the peanut butter mousse, it gave the flavor a certain smokey saltiness that was absolutely wonderful.

Bloom is a great new restaurant downtown and I highly recommend it. The only drawback is that the wait staff wasn't up to par for the quality of restaurant Bloom is. Our waiter when asked simply told me that everything on the menu is good. Well, no kidding, care to provide me with a dish that is particularly good? The woman who brought out all of our dishes felt the need to announce herself by declaring 'look what I found.' One wonders where exactly she found it. In time, I'm sure the chefs will have their wait staff better trained. The food is good enough though to shine despite the waitstaff. Out of a possible 5 stars, Bloom earns 3 stars.

Birthday Weekend

We spent the weekend celebrating Janna's 225th birthday. The celebration started on Thursday with a trip to the Grand Rapids Chop House for dinner. The Chop House is your typical Chicago steakhouse with high end dry aged steaks. Not exactly a cheap restaurantbut since we went on Janna's birthday, her dinner was free. It's a sweet little deal they've got, since her $40 steak was free dinner wasn't that much more expensive than Outback. Janna of course went all out since her entire meal was free, she's been dreaming of carpaccio (raw steak, thinly sliced) and she ate it all up.
Friday we went up to my folks beach house to enjoy a quiet weekend away from things. Stuart always enjoys going up to Ludington.
Seamus and Deirbhile were very excited to celebrate Janna's birthday up at the beach house. But they were more excited about playing with Stuart. Stuart has started crawling around so that makes the play that much more exciting for the dogs.
Stuart's favorite dog is Deirbhile. We think he loves her more than us. We're certain Deirbhile thinks more of Stuart than her parents by adoption.
Seamus grew tired of playing, there's only so much the old boy could take. But he didn't tire out for long, here he is playing with Stuart and Deirbhile again.
The sea was angry that day my friends, like an old man trying to return soup in a deli. The weather was very windy on Friday, very cold on Saturday and very rainy on Sunday. We were actually iced in Sunday morning, had I tried to drive the car I would have slid right off the driveway. A little salt did the trick but we weren't able to leave until afternoon. Once we did leave, we encountered rain and fog all the way back to Grand Rapids. Not the worst ever, but it made the drive home a little more of a production.
We watched a ton of football over the weekend, Janna's actually beginning to not only understand the game but she has come to enjoy it. The college season has been wild, we really enjoyed watching the refs almost hand West Virginia their game against Pitt, thankfully Pitt overcame the inbreds and the refs. We also enjoyed watching Oklahoma beat Mizzou, let chaos reign in the BCS. Janna especially enjoys overtime games, we enjoyed Oregon State's 2OT win over Oregon yesterday afternoon.
Stuart had so much fun at the beach house playing with the dogs, he has no idea how much more fun it will be when it gets warmer out.
And so we leave the beach house and return home. It's a great blessing for us to be able to get away for a few days. But we must return home and I must earn a living for the family. Hopefully we'll enjoy many more weekends up north and many more years with Janna.

Happy Birthday Janna!

Psalm 25

1Unto thee, O LORD, do I lift up my soul.
²O my God, I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed, let not mine enemies triumph over me.
³Yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed: let them be ashamed which transgress without cause.
4Shew me thy ways, O LORD; teach me thy paths.
⁵Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day.
⁶Remember, O LORD, thy tender mercies and thy lovingkindnesses; for they have been ever of old.
⁷Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: according to thy mercy remember thou me for thy goodness' sake, O LORD.
⁸Good and upright is the LORD: therefore will he teach sinners in the way.
⁹The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way.
¹⁰All the paths of the LORD are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies.
¹¹For thy name's sake, O LORD, pardon mine iniquity; for it is great.
¹²What man is he that feareth the LORD? him shall he teach in the way that he shall choose.
¹³His soul shall dwell at ease; and his seed shall inherit the earth.
¹⁴The secret of the LORD is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant.
¹⁵Mine eyes are ever toward the LORD; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net.
¹⁶Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me; for I am desolate and afflicted.
¹⁷The troubles of my heart are enlarged: O bring thou me out of my distresses.
¹⁸Look upon mine affliction and my pain; and forgive all my sins.
¹⁹Consider mine enemies; for they are many; and they hate me with cruel hatred.
²⁰O keep my soul, and deliver me: let me not be ashamed; for I put my trust in thee.
²¹Let integrity and uprightness preserve me; for I wait on thee.²²Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his troubles.

Thanksgiving 2007

Yesterday was Stuart's first Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a great American holiday, it's wonderful that as a nation we can give thanks unto God for the abundance He has provided us. As it was Thanksgiving, Stuart spent the afternoon watching the Lions choke away another football game. Some things never change eh?
After the Lions game, we hosted a little get together for friends and family. We spent the better part of the week preparing for it. Above is our world famous roasted brined turkey. It was juicy and delicious, especially with our red wine and turkey stock pan gravy.
I spent most of Wednesday smoking the above turkey. It to was brined, though in a less elaborate brine than the roasted turkey. The brine preserves the juiciness of the turkey and in the case of a smoked turkey it is essential. After its overnight soak in the brine, I smoked it with hickory and cherry wood for a good 6-7 hours.
And here we have the full spread, including our mustard glazed ham, red wine and turkey stock gravy, dressing, homemade green bean casserole (read: nothing came out of a can), herbed mashed potatoes and sauted corn.
And here we have a better view of our perfectly carved turkey. I believe it essential to take the entire breast off the bone before carving it.
For desert Janna made pumpkin mousse, which I absolutely love. Thanks to the Jurries who also brought a couple of dishes, including a desert that I never actually saw. I was told it was quite good.
Today we sort of hung around the house. We actually went to the mall today to gawk at the moronic Christmas shoppers. The world loves its precious Christmas doesn't it? After we got home Stuart and Deirbhile played for quite a while, always a good thing.
We're making good use of all that firewood we bought last month. We had a great fire going earlier this evening. The fire heats up the living room perfectly.
I would like to think I make a pretty good fire.
Deirbhile had decided that she really likes the fire. Here she is sleeping in front of it. You can't see it well but there are some really hot coals at the bottom of the fireplace. I suspect Deirbhile really likes the heat. In any event, we've had quite a week. God has greatly blessed us and our family this year. He has especially blessed us with great leftovers which will be consumed for the next six weeks.

Stuart had the opportunity to attend his first Griffins game last night. He enjoyed watching the game, yes he actually watched what was going. He seems to also enjoy staring at other people. It's a nasty habit but for a six month old we'll put up with it.
The Griffins lost to the Toronto Marlies last night. They looked terrible all night, the Marlies were clearly the better team. The Griffins didn't hustle, never made any plays until the last few minutes of the game when it was out of reach.
The Griffins are great fun and it's one of the few places we can take him to without worrying about his squawking or his protests annoying other people. It's so loud at the game, no one notices a squawking or crying baby. We can't take him to nice restaurants and we don't like to take him to evening church because these things all occur at his bedtime. At bedtime Stuart tends to make a lot of noise and in these other settings it wouldn't be fair to other customers or worshipers for us to have a noisy child there to annoy them. That said, until the third period Stuart didn't cry at all. He made plenty of noise but he didn't cry until the end. I was impressed, I probably shouldn't be though.
Earlier this week I had to go to Ann Arbor. I hate Ann Arbor, not simply because the evil empire is located there. Ann Arbor is a pain to get to, it's a pain to operate in. The only redeeming quality of the whole place is Zingerman's Deli. I got us some lovely things for an antipasto platter. Above is a terrific crusty Italian bread. I have yet to find a decent bakery here in Grand Rapids that sells crusty bread. Everyone makes soft breads, the kind you can squeeze into a ball and throw at your kid sister, as Ina Garten would say.
I got some wonderful salami's and some prosciutto di parma. I have no idea what any of the salami's were, I forgot to take good notes. One had fennel seed, another was spicy and the third was absolutely wonderful, whatever was in it. Anyway, we had a lovely antipasto dinner.
And finally, you can see Stuart was unamused at the Griffins poor play Saturday. We have 9 games left to go with our 10 game season ticket package, I'm sure Stuart will get to see a victory at some point.

Sabbath Lunch

Today we had a lovely Sunday lunch with dear friends of ours. As you can see, we had so many folks over that we had to move the festivities into the living room. We started with an appetizer of sun dried tomato jam, herbed goat cheese and spiced olive oil. For our main course we had a roast pork tenderloin with a port wine and fig sauce, roasted potatoes, wilted spinach salad and for desert baba au rhum.
Finally we were able to have Aaron and Bubbles (Meg to some of you) over for lunch. We've been trying to get this highly in demand couple to lunch for awhile. Three strikes and your out I say, thankfully they were only up to two.
Here we have James munching on what appears to be bread with herbed goat cheese. Loretta showed up for about 30 seconds this day, while Evie stayed the entire time. And of course, what Birn meal wouldn't be complete without our mainstay B?
Whenever the Lanning children are found at the compound so to must our beloved pastor and his wife. Here we see Ray and Linda holding George's replacement, Mr. Stuart.
Stuart likes his new friend Bubbles, he hopes she and Aaron come around often.
Dinner went well, the wine was flowing and our desert went over big. Afterward we congregated in the kitchen/dining room. This gave Ray the opportunity to pick at the leftover pork, much to the chagrin of Linda who put a quick stop to it. Do I dare mention that about 2 minutes later Linda was caught soaking up bits of baba au rhum in the rum sauce and whipped cream?
Evie is quite disturbed at her parents behavior, or is she disturbed by the table conversation?
Bubbles is slowly being indoctrinated in the ways of reformed protestants and our church in particular. We'll be praying for Bubbles on many accounts, we're certainly happy to have her as part of the church and our little group of weirdos. We hope to be invited to a wedding in the near future but I won't play the church hen and push it further. :)
And here we have B soaking it all in as is his custom. Thanks to all who came to our little lunch, it is a great blessing to be in the company of such good friends on the Sabbath. Fellowship was terrific, conversation was grand and I would like to think that lunch was acceptable. God surely is great.

Old Man Stuart's New High-Chair

It was a big day for Stuart today. Janna put together his high-chair and for the first time he got to eat his dinner sitting up.
Tonight's dinner included apples with cherries. I apparently missed the main course, which was grass clippings, I mean, some sort of green vegetable. Stuart likes eating both the green vegetable and his desert but if you try to slip in a second vegetable not only does he know but he isn't pleased. The exception though is sweet potatoes, which apparently works as a desert as far as Stuart is concerned.
This is yet another step in Stuart's slow progression towards civilization. Pretty soon he'll be weened, then he'll be crawling around, then walking and so on. All of these little steps are great blessings and big accomplishments for Stuart. Our goal is to create an independent adult who is faithful to Christ, little things such as crawling or eating dinner in a high-chair are small put ever so important in reaching that goal.
As you can see, Stuart likes his new high-chair. While he's really enjoying his apples and cherries, he's more interested in watching what I'm doing. I guess his old man taking pictures is more interesting than dinner. I should be flattered really but I know that if one of the dogs waltzed into the room I would be cast aside in favor of the furry critters. Such is life I suppose. In any event, the glory of Stuart's baby steps is God's alone. We thank the Lord for putting the stewardship of Stuart on our shoulders. It is our hope and prayer that we will be faithful to God's word and God's word alone in raising him to be an obedient believer.

A Very Birn Weekend

Friday night we took Stuart out to East Lansing for his first MSU hockey game. It was a big night for the Spartans as they raised their 2007 national championship banner to the rafters. Stuart got to visit with a lot of my old friends for the first time. Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures of the event because someone (Janna) forgot to bring the camera.
Saturday we did a little bit of gardening and Stuart got to join us. He is well pleased with all of the work we did, including the planting of well over a hundred bulbs.
Deirbile was also present for our gardening and she was very interested in what we were doing. We can only hope that she and Mr. Seamus don't try digging up our spring flowers.
But what Stuart and Deirbhile were really interested in is visiting with each other. These two have become very good friends, although we suspect that Deirbhile may think that Stuart is her puppy.
Stuart has always liked dogs, we let him visit with Seamus within minutes of arriving home for the first time last May. He especially likes Deirbhile, perhaps because she's a touch calmer than Seamus.
As you can see, Deirbhile was more than happy to lie down next to Stuart and go to sleep. Unlike Seamus who wouldn't dream of lying down when Stuart is there to be licked.
For whatever reason, Deirbhile is more than happy to like down on her back and take a nap. Here we see her doing this with Stuart.
Stuart is quite interested in seeing what his silly puppy is up to. He's always very happy to play with his dogs.
In other news, we bought a cord of firewood last week. This is apparently how much wood is in a cord, we really had no idea what a cord was when we bought it. It looks like we have enough wood to last us this winter and then some. Unfortunately, the weather hasn't cooperated and we haven't been able to build a fire yet. Hopefully we will soon.
Tell me that isn't a happy puppy.