Look at my stuff...isn't it neat?

I thought you all might enjoy a look at my photo studio, a.k.a. the dining room. I've discovered that with the light from the window, an overhead light, and floor lamps on either side of the room, this ends up being the best room for lighting. Plus the table is about at hip-level for me, so I'm not having to stand on my tippy toes all the time to get a shot. Sometimes I can even sit down in one of the chairs and balance the tripod on the arm rests. That's nice.

This is a spring pizza featuring new potatoes, ramps, and asiago cheese that I'm developing for a May article. It took me a few tries before I was happy with it, but I think I finally got a winning version today. Yum!

Thanks for all your kind words on my last post. I've been feeling a lot better and calmer since then - mostly thanks to the fact that the venue and the catering are both settled now. Those were the biggest things for us financially, and we had a few surprises in how much things ended up costing, so it's nice to just have it done and finalized. Whew!

And the invitations are coming along. Scott and I actually changed the theme and we're both having a lot more fun with it now. I don't want to reveal what we're doing yet, so I'll just say that it's making us giggle a lot and we hope it makes our guests giggle too. 

The move to Ohio is also starting to feel more real. This list of awesome things to do in Columbus actually made me start feeling excited to explore this new city and make it our home. I have a tough time with moves - we moved a lot while I was growing up and I think it's made me...kinda weird when it comes to moving to a new place. I tend to feel very...unemotional and I just have a really hard time processing the whole thing.

I'm realizing that it makes a big difference to be moving there with Scott. I'll find myself starting to close off and pull in and shut down, and then I'll realize, "Oh wait. Not alone. Scott will be there with me. We can hold hands." That's a nice realization to make.

Speaking of nice things, I thought you might all enjoy a peak at my wedding ring(s). Hee hee!

 The picture is weird and fuzzy for some reason I can't figure out, but you get the idea. They're my great-great aunt's wedding rings, passed down through my mom's side. I just got them re-sized to fit me and the jeweler gave them a cleaning while he was at it. I had no idea they were so sparkly! The jeweler laid the rings out for me when I picked them up and I just gasped!

I'm still wearing the engagement ring Scott gave me for now (we were always planning on replacing it with a "real" ring for the wedding). I'll definitely save the wedding band until my actual wedding, but I can't decide if I want to wear the engagement ring part before that? To be honest, it's a little...grand for me. And while a girl can always do with a little more sparkly grandness, it's still...quite grand.

Maybe I'll start wearing it while I type at my computer and just take it from there, eh?

"M" is for Mixer! An Apartment 3.0 Upgrade...

A KitchenAid Pro 600, in fact! Wheee!! Thanks, Internets, for making it oh-so-very easy to locate and acquire expensive pretty things! Thanks, Food Writing Career, for providing me with the suitable justification for this purchase! Thanks, Engineer, for making me hit "Purchase" and also validating my color choice!

This is a shot of its maiden voyage kneading some ciabatta. I've been longing to make ciabatta forEVER. It's such a sticky, wet dough that it's near impossible to make it without a standing mixer. I'm happy to say that it mixed and whirred and kneaded without missing a beat! (More on the ciabatta itself later)

For interested parties, I decided on the KitchenAid 600 over the 500 only after much weighty thinking and wringing of hands. 600 has a slightly larger capacity (6 qts to 5 qts) and a stronger engine. There are other small differences, but since I plan on doing a lot of bread baking with this mixer, these were the two selling points. You can check out the full breakdown on the KitchenAid website.

The price difference is about $100, no small sum for someone relatively unemployed such as myself. But in the end, I decided that down the line I'll be more grateful to have the mighter power of the Pro 600 than the extra $100.

One small problem I've noticed so far--the mechanism for lifting the bowl up to the mixer-head really jerks and clunks. It locks in place and unlocks again without any problems, but the lifting and lowering reminds me of one of those creaky portcullises (portcullisi?) from medieval castles.

I've never had this experience with any other KitchenAid, and at first I just thought it needed some time to let the lubricant work into the gears and whatnot. But after raising and lowering the lift several dozen times and talking to a few fellow KitchenAid owners, I think this is actually a problem. Maybe the lifter-belt-thingy got thrown off the track during shipping? Who knows. I poked around the internet this afternoon trying to see if anyone else had this problem, but didn't come up with much. In any case, I'm going to call KitchenAid tomorrow and see what they think.

I'm not actually all that worried about it. KitchenAid has a great reputation for both their mixers and their service, and I'm sure it will get sorted out. I'm just happy it works and that I can still play with it in the meantime.

So...yay! Mixer! Ciabatta! Bing...Level Up!