Southern Hospitality

So far one of the best things about living in suburbia, besides the big house that allows us to deal with Landon's evil and glacially descending molars without fear of the people in our building kicking us out in the middle of the night, is the friendly neighbors. We had heard this neighborhood was full of young families, block parties, and bunko nights, and we're pleased to report that all the talk is true.

As you know we closed on the house in April but didn't move in until early June. I asked friends to drop by to check on it and water the yard every week or so, and one day while they were trying to resuscitate our fried grass, our neighbor "John" (not his real name, not that it would probably matter given that his real name is about as generic as John) came over, introduced himself, and offered to do the watering for them. John watered our yard for 6 weeks until we finally met him, his lovely wife "Sarah", and their two sons. Since then we have relied on John to move our trash cans out for collection on the Fridays we're gone (why must our trash day be Friday? When you go out of town, Friday is often included in the travel plans, and when you only get one trash day a week and you are only allotted one trash can, you really cannot miss a day!), and then when we got back from the lake house around 11 Saturday night we noticed that our lawn was freshly cut and trimmed! John knew I had the Bar Exam last week and when he saw JP leave town and our lawn looking a little ragged, he cut ours along with his - in the 100+ degree heat, I might add.

I decided the lawn mowing deserved more than just effusive thanks, and given our limited budget we couldn't get them a gift card to a local restaurant or anything like that, so I rolled up my sleeves, put on an apron, and baked. From scratch. They have no idea how special I must think they are. The culinary delight I whipped up isn't the fanciest of treats, but it is incredibly tasty and a little different from the ordinary breakfast bread. It is my mom's recipe and she used to make it for our teachers for teacher appreciation day (since we also grew up on a budget). Everyone loves it and should you find yourself with a neighbor deserving of glazed goodness, or you just want something tasty to eat for breakfast that is as delicious as a donut but feels much healthier (though, looking at the ingredients, it's probably not), I have included the recipe below.

And to top off their wonderfulness, Sarah kept talking about how much she missed having her babies crawl all over the house (her youngest is 7, maybe your memories improve over time...) and offered several times to babysit. My firm is hosting an end of summer dinner tomorrow night and almost all our usual sitters are invited (fellow summer associates from last year), my sister is out of town, and our other friends are sick or at the Olympics, so JP was going to stay behind. This would normally not be a big deal and he'd look forward to a night of Economist reading and no lawyer-talk, but this restaurant is our absolute favorite in Austin. It's where we celebrated all our birthdays in college, where we got engaged, where I met his parents for the first time (though that last memory is less than pleasant and only reinforces how delicious this place is because we continue to love it so much), anyway, he really wanted to go. When she told me again she would love to watch him, I offered up our Wednesday dilemma and she enthusiastically agreed to be at our front door at 6. I'm going to have to bake more bread.

POPPY SEED BREAD WITH ORANGE GLAZE

Bread Ingredients
3 c flour
1 ½ tsp salt
1 ½ tsp baking powder
1 ½ cups milk
1 ½ tsp almond flavoring
1 ½ tsp butter flavoring
1 ½ cups sugar
2 T. poppy seeds
1 ½ tsp vanilla
3 eggs
1 1/8 c oil

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Mix all ingredients for bread together and pour in to 2 or 3 loaf pans, greased and floured. Bake for 45-60 min.
3. Make Orange Glaze (recipe below) during last few minutes while bread cooks.
3. Remove pans from oven and liberally poke holes in warm bread. Pour glaze over the top while it is still in the pan.
4. Let sit at least 15 minutes and remove.

Orange Glaze
¾ c. sugar
¼ c. orange juice
½ tsp. butter flavoring
½ tsp. almond flavoring
½ tsp. vanilla flavoring

Mix orange juice and sugar over low heat in small pan until sugar dissolves, then add flavorings.