Oklahoma City is Mighty Pretty

I've completed my first round of Oklahoma visits - got to spend some much-awaited time with the fam in OKC over Memorial Day weekend which was great! I thought it was going to be nasty weather while I was home, but true to its reputation, Oklahoma weather was completely unpredictable and it turned out to be sunny and beautiful. Here are some highlights from the trip!

First trip to Eischen's chicken in Okarche

Everything is nice and green in my parents' back yard!

Beautiful Oklahoma sunset
 

Bailey was my shadow all weekend
 

Mom and I attempted making Egyptian bread

 

 

Very yummy!

 

One of my mom's co-workers is from Egypt and she shared her recipe for traditional Egyptian bread with us. It's basically a simple frybread that's cooked flat in a skillet - it's so yummy! We had it with some cranberry pepper jam from Whole Foods and some muenster cheese. I'm going to attempt making another batch when I get back to PA, so I'll share the recipe then.

Now it's on to Tulsa to work and catch up with my co-workers!

It's Jam Time!

I think almost all of the friends and family who read our blog are in Oklahoma and I think you'd have to live under a rock to not know about the recent tornados that tore through the Shawnee area on Sunday and Moore on Monday, but I still feel like I should say that for those of you who aren't aware of the massive amount of damage these storms did - it was truly devastating. If you find it in your heart to make a donation to one of the many organizations working in the area, they desperately need any and all assistance they can get. Even if all you can send are prayers, please do. Lives were lost, and there are people hurting right now whose lives will never be the same, so anything you can do to help will be appreciated by all.

Now, on to a lighter note!

Joe and I ran across some apricots at the grocery store this week, which means it's jam-makin' time for me! My mom started making apricot pineapple jam when I was little, and a few years ago I decided to pick it up for myself. Making jam is actually pretty quick and easy, the most time consuming part is cutting up the fruit. Here's the recipe I use:

6 cups chopped apricots (buy about 2 1/2 lbs of apricots at the store)
16 oz canned crushed pineapple in syrup
4 cups sugar
1 package less sugar/no sugar needed pectin (I use sure-jell)
1/2 teaspoon butter or margarine (optional, to reduce foaming)

The original recipe actually called for a 15 1/4 ounce can of crushed pineapple in syrup which I couldn't find at my grocery store, so I rounded up and bought two 8 ounce cans of pineapple instead, which worked out fine for me.

We shop at the Giant Eagle Market District grocery store here in PA which is by far the best grocery store I've ever been to (seriously, it's awesome). They had a new kind of apricot that I'd never heard of before in addition to regular apricots - they're called "Black Velvet" apricots. Their skin is a beautiful rich reddish-purple color, and I just knew I had to try making some of this jam with these beauties.

First, chop up the apricots leaving the skin on but remove the pits. Put the chopped fruit in a high-walled stock pot for cooking.

Then add the crushed pineapple (undrained) to the apricots in the stock pot.

Finally, mix the pectin with 1/4 cup sugar in a bowl and mix it in with the fruit in the stock pot. Once everything is mixed together, turn your burner on high and stir gradually with a large metal spoon (using a metal rather than plastic spoon helps cut down on foaming, or so I've been told). You want the mixture to reach a rolling boil, meaning that the mixture still boils even while being stirred. 

NOTE - I always set aside the remaining 3 3/4 cups of sugar in a bowl so that it's ready to add to the pot once the fruit starts to boil. If you try to go directly from the sugar container to the stock pot using a measuring cup, you'll burn the jam for the short time that you aren't stirring it. 

Once the fruit mixture reaches a rolling boil, dump the remaining 3 3/4 cups sugar into the stock pot and mix it in well with the fruit. Continue stirring constantly until the mixture reaches a rolling boil again. At this point, if you're seeing a lot of foam forming at the top of the mixture, you can add 1/2 teaspoon of butter or margarine which will help reduce it. I don't usually see a lot of foaming with the reduced sugar pectin, but if you have a lot form at the top just scrape it off with your spoon into a separate bowl or onto a paper towel. 

Once the jam reaches a rolling boil again after adding the sugar, stir constantly for 1 minute and then remove the pot from the heat. Immediately scoop the jam into prepared jars and use your preferred method of sealing them - you want the jam within 1/8 inch away from the top of the jar. I don't have a fancy canning system, so I just place the jars in the kitchen sink which I fill with VERY hot water. You want at least 1 inch of water above the tops of the jars. The metal tops will eventually seal themselves, and you can tell they're ready by pushing on the center of the lid. If it pops in and pushes back out, the jar isn't ready. If it doesn't give, the jar has been sealed. I use 8 oz jam jars, and this recipe fills about 7 or 8 of these jars for me. 

Here's the finished product! The black velvet jam is on the right, and the jam made with normal apricots is on the left. This stuff is SO good - you gotta try it out!

Are we there yet?

The weatherman says the warm weather is here to stay in PA! I sure hope so :-) Everyone is planting pretty flowers and vegetable gardens up here, and I can't wait until I have a yard to start planting in too. We are SO ready for the house to be done.... be prepared to hear me say that at least another couple hundred times before the house is built - just warning ya!

We ventured out to Beaver today to check on the progress - it looks like they finished the plumbing in the basement and got the brick for the front of the house in.

Basement progress

Plumbing for powder room is in!

"Old Columbia" brick for the front of the house

I got my Etsy store business/thank you cards in the mail today too! I feel very official now... guess I better start selling some stuff soon! Time to hone my photography skills so I can take some good product pictures and open the store for business :-)

Etsy Updates

I've been spending most of my time lately working on stuff to sell in my new Etsy store. I still haven't figured out all of the tax and shipping info, but I'm getting there slowly but surely. I have a feeling the shop is going to be a random assortment of various goods, so I've had a heck of a time with the whole "branding" thing since most of the examples are for shops that actually have a centralized theme. Leave it to me to swim against the current :-)

Here's a sneak preview of what I've been working on!

OU headband

OSU headband

OSU headband

Thunder headband

Thunder headband

Thunder headband

 

Thunder earrings

Now if I can just get all of the details worked out, maybe I can finally open the shop!

We have a basement! (sort of)

Joe and I went out to the new house yesterday to check out the progress, and it looks like they were able to dig past the rock and get the entire basement dug out and the concrete walls in place. Hooray!

They're building our next door neighbor's house at the same time - it started just before ours. The last time we were at the property their house looked about like ours does now, and at this visit they had walls up so we're hoping that means we'll have walls in the next couple of weeks! All the lumber lying around their house looked like it was the roof pieces waiting to go up.

Yippee! We can't wait to have a house and yard for the dogs. I also can't wait to have a garden... everything is in full bloom here, and I want to plant flowers SO BAD!! My favorite flowers are lilacs - my grandma has a lilac bush in her back yard and I used to love going out in the spring to cut some of the flowers. They smell so heavenly! So as it turns out, everyone and their dog has HUGE beautiful lilac bushes up here, and I'm so dang jealous. So, the last few times we've gone past the empty lot across the street from our apartment complex I've noticed a gigantic old lilac bush in full bloom, with no one to enjoy it. I just couldn't let it go unnoticed, so Joe and I snuck over there and cut a few blooms down to bring in the apartment. Next spring I'm going to have one of my own - it's a must!!

The Pittsburgh Zoo and other adventures

Last Saturday the weather here was GORGEOUS so Joe and I decided to go to the zoo (along with every other Pittsburgh resident and their children). We had a great time, despite having to pay $12.00 for a tiny bottle of sunscreen for Joe since we forgot his at home and he could get a sunburn in the shade on a cloudy winter's day :-) Here are some of our favorites from the zoo:

The polar bears were putting on quite a show for us at the window! It was very entertaining. Then I dropped Joe off to pick up his company car (which had just had its oil changed) and on the way to the apartment, someone decided it would be a good idea to rear-end me in my BRAND NEW CAR!!!

This was not a fantastic end to my Saturday :-(

Luckily, neither of us was hurt and he did have insurance, so I'm going to get an assessment on Thursday. 

I've also been working on coming up with stuff to sell in my upcoming Etsy store. Here are some Thunder necklaces I've been working on. I also made some Thunder earrings which I'm still tweaking... pictures to come.

And we didn't make it out to the house to check on its progress yet - we plan on making a trip out there next weekend. Hope no one else had any collisions this last weekend!

This and That

We've been busy bees lately!

We had our pre-construction meeting with Ryan Homes on Monday to go over our plans for the house and to meet our project manager. They had already started digging our basement (yay for being ahead of schedule!) and we just got word that they will be putting the basement walls up this coming Monday. Woohoo! We are so ready to be in that house and out of the tiny apartment. They also started building the house right next door to us just a few days before they started on ours, so it looks like our houses will be going up at the same time. Joe is very pleased because he was concerned that construction noise would keep him from being able to sleep in on the weekends (he's mentioned that to our sales rep at least 15 times so I'm sure she's excited too) :-)

I have finally decided to give in and open an Etsy shop... I've thought about it for a few years and never did because the taxes and licensing around starting an online business are really complicated (at least they seem that way to me!) but Joe has offered to help, so I've been working on getting a page set up and figuring out what I plan to sell. It'll probably be a while before I actually open the shop because we still have to register the business, fill out tax forms, make items, list them, get a shipping account, and various other things before being ready. Entrepreneurship is difficult when you go by the book, and I'm not even having to deal with employing anyone else, purchasing a building, or even setting up my own website! It's no wonder people outsource everything now. Here's to hoping the shop isn't a big flop after it's all said and done!

We've also been trying to plan a trip to Oklahoma some time this month, but we've had a heck of a time finding a few days when our families will all be in town and when it's convenient for work. We finally decided that I'll go to OK at the end of May and Joe will stay in Pittsburgh since he doesn't have a desk in the Tulsa tower anymore (and I don't think the people up here would let him work remote for a few days, he's always being called away for something up here!) but we're going to try to plan another trip some time soon when we can both go. I can't wait to be back in OK for a few days, I've missed everyone so much!

I was also up for a cell phone refresh at work, so I just got an iPhone 5 yesterday - I love it! The camera on my iPhone 4 was all scratched up and basically unusable so I'm very excited that I have one that works now. And I have 4G - finally coming up in the world!