Author: Carrie Spritzer

Carrie Melon


Today I found this photo (taken by Paul) of our delicious wedding feast (thank you Lee and Gavin!) and it made me smile. We have a bunch of photos of this watermelon from the David side, but this is the only one of the Carrie side. May the warm colors and delicious food make you smile. Here in Colorado it is gray and cool and foggy. We could use a pick-me-up.

Fine food & ginger cookies

Last night our friend Stefan treated us to Riesling and muskatzinen cookies (at right) from Germany and took us out to dinner as a late post-wedding celebration. We went to Bacarro, one of our favorite happy hour spots, and enjoyed fine seafood (us) and fowl (Stefan). We then headed over to the Walnut Brewery, where we met up with Sally, one of Stefan’s former roommates. We had such a great time–and stayed up several hours past our bedtime. It was lovely.

p.s. The ginger cookies were delicious! We ate the entire batch today… Yum! Thanks, Stefan!

I love chill time on the weekend with friends.

Back to the kitchen

I am always looking for new vegetarian dishes. I love knowing a dozen variations of roasted tomatoes (which are now lost on my husband who has developed a tomato sensitivity) and trying a bunch of soft pretzel recipes until I find the best one. I like experimenting with different herbs and different heirloom varieties. Unfortunately, I haven’t done much of the above since graduate school.

Between long hours at work and our evening workout routines, I haven’t spent much (any?) time in the kitchen over the last two years… up until we came back from our honeymoon two weeks ago. These past two weeks, partially inspired by the coming of fall and our switch to morning runs, I’ve cooked and cooked and completely loved it.

Now I help out with dinner, I help out with dishes, I help out with planning our meals for the week. We are heading towards a more equal division of labor in the house. While David has never complained about my lack of help around the house, I think he is really enjoying us doing these things together and also having more time during the evening for his research and schoolwork and reading for pleasure (the new Robert Jordan book came out on Tuesday).

I am excited about finally making the time to explore the two shelves worth of cookbooks in our study, remnants of my graduate school cooking experiences and gifts from friends and family. I am ashamed to admit that I haven’t really had much of a chance to explore them… until now.

I am so excited.

Quick updates

* It snowed for the first time up at work. Not just a couple of inches, more like a foot plus. Miraculously, Boulder only got several days straight of rain, despite snow covering the foothills. Isn’t the affect of altitude on weather fascinating?

* I’ve finished a bunch of books in the last two weeks. More on those as soon as I have the time to write-up reviews and post links to amazon.com.

* David was asked to peer review a prospective journal paper. Very exciting & prestigious.

* I am still deeply buried in projects at work and they are keeping me engaged, challenged, and busy. I am trying not to get too stressed, though I definitely no longer feel even a small fraction of how relaxed I was right after our honeymoon. Oh well. The holidays will be here soon. (Does that mean more or less stress?! I don’t know. At the very least it means less work and more play.)

* The fifth season of Alias has begun. We are officially addicted again. Sharon and Mike have kindly reinitiated our Alias routine at their house. It’s nice to see them again on a regular basis!

p.s. The photo at the right is of iced tea in my blue plastic cup at work… part of my every day routine.

Also, I’ve added more photos from our honeymoon to Flickr — Please check them out!