we covet

Now that we actually have a good apartment, I find it extremely funny that Andrew covets all the other appartments in the house. We'll be walking along the side street and he'll say, "Heeeyyy, look at the one in the back! They have a deck!" Or, "Look at the one at the front, they have Chrismas lights!" We've already talked about moving to the apartment behind us, were it to become available. It's a two bedroom. (The othe other bedroom's would be for the cat.) Mind you, I suppose Andrew's coveting of the other apartments is on par with my coveting other people's mail. For the last week (week!) Miss Sonja Little has had mail sitting on the ledge. Does she even live here!? It makes me want to open her mail. Especially on days like today when I didn't get any.

Oh, and hey, we're leaving for BC in only 8 days! Hello snow and hot tubs!

upstairs inspirations

So we moved. Into a place just upstairs of where we were before. We now have a pantry so I feel like a real wife. Other benefits of the new place include a billion more inches of closet space, exposed brick (complete with covered up fireplace), and room to walk between the bed and the dresser. Trust me it's awesome.

We spent the weekend settling in to the new place. I love it so much I was inspired to get up early Sunday morning and make banana bread even before brunch. Then, to use up a large amount of our cabbage in one fell swoop, I made a big pot of borscht. The good kind. If you're looking for the secret Kootenay Dukabor Borscht recipe, here it is below. (And PS, it IS wonderful.)

In other news, can I just say it is REALLY hard to keep secrets - even Christmas secrets - from someone who you love, usually tell secrets to and happen to live with. Gah! Good thing we're doing our little Christmas next week so I don't have to wait too long.

Borsht for Fifty (Mary Hoodicoff)
16 cups water
1/2 lb & 1 tbsp butter
6 cups tomatoes, canned
1 1/3 tsp salt
1 medium beet
1 medium carrot
7-8 potatoes
1/2 pint whipping cream
1 cup chopped onions
8 cups chopped cabbage
1 medium green pepper
1 tbsp dill, chopped fine
2 green onions, chopped fine
black pepper

Fill pot with water and put to boil. In large frying pan, put in 1/4 cup butter and 3 cups tomatoes and let simmer. Into smaller frying pan also put 1/4 cup butter and 3 cups tomatoes and let simmer. Add salt to the boiling water. Chop carrot fine and also chop 1 tbsp beet fine, add the carrots, beets and remaining of whole beet to the boiling water. Peel potatoes and cut in half and add to water saving enough potatoes to make 1 cup diced to add later. Add a little more than half of the cream to the water and continue to boil. Next, add simmered tomatoes from large fry pan to the boiling water and vegetables in pot and continue cooking til the potatoes are cooked but not too soft. In the meantime, put 1/2 cup butter into large pan, add chopped onions and fry til onions are transparent then add 4 cups shredded cabbage. Continue to saute but do not brown. Take cooked potatoes from pot, also the whole beet (beet may be discarded). Add the diced potatoes to pot of boiling water. Mash potatoes, add 1 tbsp butter and the remaining cream. Set aside. Add the remainder of the cabbage to pot and watch closely so it does not boil. Turn off head and slowly add mashed potato mixture, followed by the remainder of tomatoes and fried cabbage and onions. Add chopped green pepper and a dash of black pepper, green onions and dill sprinkled on top.

daughter of an (almost) famous dad

I love that my dad, the man I used to argue endlessly with about such things as politics and the environment (and my curfew...), is now uber involved in saving the world by nuking nuclear waste. See below, or read the full artcle, "Haste to make waste into energy: New high-tech conversion methods are popping up."

A research team in Trail, B.C., for example, designed a facility to clean up hazardous waste from a Second World War plutonium production site in Washington state.

The project is run by an international management group, AMEC Inc., which owns the global rights to a process called GeoMelt. The technology uses temperatures as high as 2,000 degrees to melt contaminated matter that, once hardened, becomes an inert, glass-like solid that can be buried or recycled.

"It is a unique application for nuclear-waste treatment," said Brett Campbell, unit manager at the plant in Hanford, Wash. "We're doing something that no one in the world is doing."

Though the technology was first designed decades ago, it has been evolving and improving since. Now it is commercially available through AMEC, which hopes to attract customers in a variety of sectors.

"It's applicable to a mixed waste stream, not just radioactive [waste]," Mr. Campbell said. For example, he said, it could be used to treat hazardous materials such as asbestos.

John Stephens is senior project manager in Trail and part of the team that designed the Washington facility, which was completed this summer. He said the $90-million (U.S.) project will run over two years, enough time to prove to the U.S. Department of Energy that the GeoMelt technology is efficient before earning a contract to help clean up the site by 2028. He has no doubt it will pass the test.

"It's amazing that there is the technology that can deal with a problem that a lot of people have been agonizing over for 50 years," Mr. Stephens said, referring to the dilemma of what to do with nuclear waste.

"Somebody unlocked Pandora's box and now we can actually put a lid on it."