• make the snow stop dammit. i’m pretty sure i’ve had enough for this year. my arms and back are killing from the 3 hours of shoveling that it took to dig out our cars.
• finally, after searching for about a month, we got a chance to use this brutal weather and make some kick-ass braised lamb shanks. now, i’ve never even eaten, let along try to make lamb shanks before. but these things came out sooooooooo gooooooood. just falling off the bone, incredibly tender and moist, along with the artichokes and olives, and a bit of soft polenta to sop up all the juicy goodness. a perfect cold weather meal. braising is the new grilling!
• josh paying up his gambling debt to susanne with dinner at taiwan cafe. such a stupid bet. josh bet that brad pitt was younger than 40 and susanne said older. hell, i don’t care. i just enjoyed my meal.
• patti and josh’s old skool ms. pacman machine that some guy cobbled together from an old console and a PC. of course, it doesn’t work right now, but that’s just a matter of time.
• this article (registration required) by david shaw about why americans are so fat. stop eating so much dummies.
• we watched sex, lies, and videotape this weekend on cable. disappointingly, there was no nudity in the movie. it’s funny that you really can’t get the character of sandy cohen out of your head whenver you see peter gallagher now.
• filly!
• this is a shot of my car’s thermometer on saturday morning. yes, that really says “-7″.
• the pats are heading to the super bowl again. can you say “Dynasty”?

• our now yearly visit to phoenix. it’s in the 70’s and sunny every day there right now. we came home to snow and temperatures of 4 degrees. what the eff?
• the bianco trifecta (or i guess four-fecta). let’s break these down into individual entries.
• pane bianco. we first experienced chris bianco’s lunchtime sandwich spot a year ago, and the sandwiches just blew us away. it was an early season “best of 2004″ candidate, and we’ve been talking about it ever since. this would be our first stop, immediately after being picked up from the airport. well, it did not disappoint. the tuna with lemon, black olive and arugula and the tomato, basil, mozzarella were as perfect, fresh, and flavorful as we had remembered.
• bar bianco. the house next door to pizzeria bianco, where you have a glass of wine or a beer, an artisanal cheese plate, and anticipate the meal that awaits you.
• pizzeria bianco. probably our most anticipated restaurant experience in recent memory, we’ve been waiting to visit this pizza mecca for about a year and a half. this place has been written up by many of the most regarded food writers in the country, and is widely believed to be home to the best pizza in the country, if not the world. the best pizza in the world, in phoenix? yup. this really deserves a whole column, but it lived up to it’s lofty reputation. simply put, the best pizza we’ve ever had. between the four of us, we got four pies: the Margarita (tomato, mozzarella, basil), the Rosa (red onion, parmigiano-reggiano, rosemary, and pistacchios), the Biancoverde (mozzarella, parmigiano-reggiano, ricotta, and arugula), and the Wiseguy (roasted onions, smoked mozzarella, fennel sausage). my god, these were, to use Peter Reinhart’s words “perfect, i mean perfect, pizzas”. I’m just in awe.
• to top it all off, i got the chance to sit down with the man behind it all, chris bianco, to discuss his business, his philosophies, his food, and his life. i just basically sat there for about an hour and a half and just listened to him talk. the man is a true artist, but he just happens to use tomatoes, flour, vegetables, and meat instead of paint or clay or stone. such an interesting guy. again, this deserves its own column. a sincere thanks to chris for taking the time to meet with me.
• thanks to susanne’s silver elite status, we got upgraded to first class. that, my friends, is the way to fly. oh so civilized. real silverware and dishes, warm towels and warm cookies. it’s tough to go back to coach with the rest of the masses.
• Ajo Al’s. we can’t seem to make a visit to phoenix without making a visit here.
• golf at tapatio cliffs. i played ok considering i used somebody else’s clubs, i had no 7 iron or sand wedge, used a 30 year old putter, and i played in sneakers.
• macie. i bet she misses us already.
• mini golf at fiddlesticks. and thanks to susanne’s sneakiness, we got to play 2 rounds instead of just one.
• let’s talk about the fact that i picked fresh rosemary from the mini golf course to use for dinner. this stuff seems to grow everywhere around there.
• my first In-n-Out burger. yes, you know my feelings about fast food, but this place is different. everything is fresh, you know what you’re eating, and it’s damn good. the menu is short; burgers, fries, shakes, and drinks. they know what they do well, and they stick to it. and i’ll mention that this was my first real burger in about 10 years. you just have to experience these things sometimes.
• four peaks makes some tasty beers. so does matt.

• it was a big week for tivo. first, TivoToGo went live. it lets you transfer shows to your pc and take them with you or burn them to dvd. i also discovered javaHMO, an application that streams all sorts of stuff to your tivo server. weather, webpages, images, shoutcast radio streams, RSS feeds, etc. and to top it all off, i figured out how to upgrade a tivo, and jon is the happy recipient.
• speaking of which, jon had a pretty nice friday night. he got an upgraded tivo, sharp knives, great tacos, new boots, and a bag of cookies.
• i think saturday night is officially pizza night.
• so there i was yesterday, all ready to make some braised lamb shanks. i
  head over to the whoel foods near us. all out. maybe on friday. so i head
  over the gym, and stop by another whole foods. they have one shank. what
  they hell am i supposed to do with one shank? i’m not ready to throw the
  towel in yet. i stop by one more whole foods. all out. is there some shank
  shortage or something? so i made this recipe with chicken, which was
  fricking tasty. this is the best thing we’ve made in a while.
• short work week this week. by thursday, we’ll be in phoenix. maybe we’ll just stay there.
• snow days. remember that feeling waking up early on a snowy day and seeing that your school is closed for the day and you can go back to sleep? susanne got that last week. lucky girl. ok, i stayed home too, but i actually did work.
• ice cream flavors of the week: mint chocolate chip and mango sorbet.
• aly finished the phoenix marathon in 4:26. nice work, aly.

filly ate an entire pizza dough in about 4 seconds.

• a weekday visit to matt murphy’s.
• the growing puma posse. first i bought my boots. then gordon said he really liked them and wanted a pair for himself. so i picked up a pair for him, but they were too small. but they fit jon, so he decided to keep them. we just can’t all go out together wearing them.

Best of 2004

• best moment that i never thought i would ever see: the red sox win the world series. did i ever think i’d see it? sure. did i think it would happen like this? no way. i think after getting engaged and getting married, this is pretty much near the top of the all-time top ten list. and am i disappointed that the curse is over and that we’ve lost our identity as losers? um, no.
• best meal: babbo. this was a tough category this year, mostly because there were very few meals that just blew me away. there were a lot of good ones, but not a ton of great ones. but babbo was the one place that i wanted to go to the most, and i had built up incredible expectations for it. and it delivered. it was everything i had hoped it would be, short of mario coming over and sitting down with us and hanging out and deciding that we were his new best friends.
• best new sunday tradition: the roast chicken. and yes, i like to truss my bird.
• best movie: sideways. yes, i know every critic is picking this as their best movie too, but it really is good. highly recommended, even if you’re not a wine snob.
• best movie (documentary): super size me
• best book: american pie: my search for the perfect pizza. i’ve written enough about this already, but this book taught me how to make the perfect neapolitan pizza, and we firmly believe that we make the best pizza in boston. look out!
• best dessert: Brunoise’s vanilla pannacotta with basil coulis and passion fruit. Words can’t describe this one. go to montreal, make a reservation, and order this. twice.
• best life-altering technology (tie): our digital programmable thermostat. not only does it cut our energy bills in half, but it makes life tolerable at 6am during the winters. and tivo. nothing has transformed our tv viewing like this has. we will never watch live tv again.
• best domain name. ever. : petecarpenter.com. so i couldn’t find anything shorter. but my netspace days are behind me, and i finally own my name. and the long overdue overhaul of the website happened.
• best way to pretend i’m a professional photographer: the nikon D70.
• best way to download the season finale of the OC after accidentally knocking the plug out of the tivo: bittorrent. oh and some people use it to download movies and music. but not me!
• best hair: the great hair experiment of 2004 (to be continued in 2005)
• best addition to the backyard: our weber grill. god i love this thing.
• best tv show discovered while on duty in WA’s student center: significant others. probably the funniest show on tv.
• best tv show that i’m so glad made it to a second season: arrested development. thank god the critics latched on this one and people finally got their heads out of their collective asses and started watching this show.
• best tv show meant for teenagers but i can’t deny its awesomness: the OC.
• best way to blow a paycheck while getting really really fat: discovering the joys of cheese at formaggio. it’s hard to believe that a year ago, we knew next to nothing about cheese. now we’re total cheese snobs.
• sandwich of the year (tie): the mozzarella, tomato and basil sandwich and the tuna with lemon and olive sandwich pane bianco. this category was over in mid-january. hands down, the most incredible sandwich experience of our lives. so impressive, i had to write a letter to the chef/owner.

• a week at home with nothing to do. so we just made a whole lot of ice cream. i think we have a problem. in one week, we made the following flavors of frogurt: vanilla, peppermint stick, chocolate-chocolate chip, thin mint, pistachio, banana-toasted walnut, mint chocolate chip, raspberry chocolate chip, and blood orange sorbet.
• we watched a lot of movies last week. closer, napoleon dynamite, the last samurai, and dodgeball.
• the cambridge property search. you get to see what all the houses on our street are worth and who lives in them. although i’m still looking for where malkovitch lives. type in “fayerweather” to see some nice houses.
• a visit from steve, lisa, and hudson.
• a second consecutive new year at oleana. i can’t believe we hadn’t been there since last new year’s eve.
• the best food writing 2004
• my greatest wish is that people would learn how to shovel. i can’t stand all of those selfish, lazy dummies who just move enough snow to get their cars out, but do such a bad job that no one else can park there or around it. so i took it upon myself to shovel out half of the empty spots on the street so that there would be enough spots for everyone to park. you can thank me with praise and cookies.
• goodbye showtime, hello starz
• i’ve finally settled on new winter boots from DSW. although it took me a good week of walking around my office in them to figure out that i needed a bigger size. maybe my feet are growing!