Domestic Bliss

Yesterday was one of those strangely perfect days. To some people our day would sound like a lot of work, but to me it was calming and comforting.

We spent the morning cleaning our bedroom, doing laundry, and organizing for fall. I really like a clean house, but don't do such a great job upkeeping said clean house. So when we do take the time to clean it, I always feel a lot better.

Also, I was a cooking machine. I wasn't planning on making three meals and a dessert, but for some reason I did. And I liked it. For breakfast I made French toast, for lunch I made Caribbean chicken fingers and Parmesan green beans (which was one of the Let's Dish meals I blogged about here), and for dinner I made NY strip steaks with Caprice salad (with the leftover mozzarella from the farmer's market) and sugar snap peas. Good thing Alson is a trooper, because all that cooking meant lots of clean up (his chore). I know he loved all the home cooked meals so he wasn't complaining.

I also baked an apple pie yesterday. It was, surprisingly, not that difficult to make. It required just a few ingredients:

The only laborious part (since I used pre-made pie crust) was peeling and cutting the apples. I made it a little easier by using an apple corer/slicer. Despite the work, seeing this appley cinnamony sugary mixture...made it all worthwhile:

The smell when the pie came out of the oven was out of this world:

The finished product:


Doesn't it look delicious? Totally worth the effort!

To offset all the eating, we went for a 2 mile run while the pie was baking. It felt great. I wasn't about to die at the end of the run, so it was definitely a success. Alson was having some pretty serious shin splints so today we decided to invest in some good running shoes. We went to Fleet Feet in Adams Morgan, and after fittings for both of us we were in business. I chose Brooks sneakers, which I had not heard of until Melanie and Heidi mentioned them on their blogs. They were the best fit for me feet (apparently I need arch support) and definitely felt better than the 4 year old pair I was wearing. I wore them home and around the city today, but I can't wait to really break them in tomorrow! We also found out that Alson's sister got engaged this weekend! I guess that means a trip to California (or maybe Hawaii?!) for her wedding. Yay!