The Anna Articles

We had always planned on staying in our starter home for just a few years, but once we realized we'd be staying in the Twin Cities area (originally, we thought Mike would go into academia, likely with a move out of state) we figured we'd wait 1-2 years to upgrade our house. The whole process to get into our new house moved both faster than we expected and slower than I'd have liked at times. Starting the process From our financial planning, we figured we'd have the down payment for a house at the top of our budget by July/August 2020. I'd been casually browsing Redfin regularly for fun ever since we bought our last house and one day last July a house on Como Lake caught my eye. There was an open house and, as it was just a couple miles away, we checked it out. Turned out it was a flip and definitely not for us, but it led to months of going to open houses nearly every weekend. As many as we could fit in each weekend before Mike got sick of them for a bit (he...

A few weeks ago (when the world seemed relatively normal still), we moved out of the first home we purchased and into our "upgrade home," an 1889 Victorian. Boxes are still everywhere; we've made some progress in unpacking, with lots of organizing left to do. Some of that won't fully happen until we do our remodel. While we closed back on NYE, we wanted to refinish the floors before moving in and with a vacation in February, it took a while to get in here. Now that we're working from home for the time being, we're so glad to be doing so in a larger space! Every contractor or inspector who's seen the house so far has commented on how nice it is for the age. All the major things have been well taken care of - electrical was all replaced, major renovations were done by the previous owner, even the basement feels nice for an unfinished space. Now for a little tour. The below photos are mostly taken from the listing. New House Tour Entryway Ab...

This summer when we were hosting friends from out of town I got the idea to make a fruit tart and could. not. let. it. go. In my head it had to be a rectangular tart - something about the presentation of the shape speaks to me. So I scoured the MSP area for a store with one in stock and trekked all the way to Uptown to a fancy kitchen store for one. Turns out round tart pans - and recipes for them - are much more common. With a new tart pan, tarts became my go-to for the holidays. Thanksgiving featured a couple cranberry tarts that were fantastic and Christmas had this lovely chocolate ganache tart.  I used this recipe as my base, but found this magic French buttery crust  instead of the cookie crust. The crust recipe is my absolute favorite because it really does feel like a trick in how it comes together and yet it's so tasty and easy to work with. Because the recipe is meant for a round tart, there's a bit more chocolate ganache than needed for the tart. The extra g...

With just a few weeks of vacation, it's hard to narrow down where to go for our bigger trips. I've started to keep a Google doc to reference the many destinations I have in mind. For this trip, we went with two friends who we had traveled to Dubai with last year and narrowed down the list of places with them. Our criteria was roughly 1. warm in February and 2. somewhat adventurous, not just beach but also have the option for a beach. It got down to Argentina and Vietnam, landing on Vietnam because our friends had heard great things and, while we had never been to SE Asia, they had been to Bali and loved it. At first I wanted to combine Vietnam and Cambodia as I so wanted to see Siem Reap, but quickly discovered how much more I wanted to see in Vietnam than we could possibly fit in and settled on 2 weeks fully in Vietnam. Based on the above criteria of being warm, we stayed largely in the south and central regions starting in Saigon/HCMC, then Hue, Phong Nha and ending in Phu ...

Until this year, I had never been to New York City. Iceland? Yes. Dubai? Also yes. But NYC? Nope. It just wasn't a trip that had come up yet. Then Mike talked about going to a conference in London and I'd join him for a long weekend trip. When that feel through, I got the idea of a long weekend in NYC instead in my head. I had some vacation time, it would be December and I'd always wanted to visit around Christmastime. A friend who had moved to NYC a few years reached out randomly and that sealed it - with that and a budget for the trip created we were ready to go. I mostly wanted to see musicals and eat at so many of the restaurants and bakeries I'd seen all over the Internets. Mike had the Nintendo store on his list. Day 1 - Friday Got in around 10 pm, checked into our hotel and walked to Veselka for dinner. Veselka is known for pireogis and was the place I most wanted to try when I started looking into NYC restaurants. I love pierogies and this plate of...

In what started as a quest to clear space on my bookshelf for my new  "Collected Recipes"  cookbook, I've been making my way through several 90's and early 00's Taste of Home and Quick Cooking cookbooks. Classic Midwestern in many ways, they all feature recipes submitted by home cooks and vetted by the cookbook editors. There's been some misses, and some hits. This lemon cake recipe was definitely the latter. Being a bundt cake, this recipe makes far more than I can/should reasonably eat myself and my husband's not a big lemon person. I brought half the cake into work and it was promptly devoured, eliciting numerous shout outs of how amazing it was on Slack. The  original recipe , from my 2004 Taste of Home cookbook, calls for a lemon glaze, which I omitted. I'm sure it'd be great (and prettier) with it - I just didn't particularly feel like making it. Feel free to add if you'd like a better presentation, or are just craving a bit more ...