Happy Anniversary To Us (I almost killed my husband)

Dave and I were married 18 years ago today.  I have no idea what happened to all the years in between.  They are a blur for sure!  They were filled up with the triumphs and mini tragedies of raising 6 kids, travels, working, friends, dreaming, crying, laughing and... eating :)  I am very fortunate to have a husband who loves to eat as much as I do and who is very brave.  He will try anything at least once.  On rare occasions he will request that I not make something again but he is always ready to try a new dish.  That's a good thing since almost every day whatever comes out of my kitchen is new.  When the kids were little and I was busy working and doing endless cycles of laundry I didn't have time to be creative.  It was spaghetti, tacos, shepherds pie, stir fry or... spaghetti.  Now once the end of the day rolls around and I brave the long commute home (the staircase from my upstairs office) I roll on into the kitchen and see what's in the fridge and go from there.  There are no kids around to say, "eeeewwwww, I'm not eating that!"  Dave certainly wouldn't say it, even if he thought it - which is pretty unlikely anyway.  His mom trained him well!       Recently I decided something "curry" would be nice.  I use curry powder quite often but I thought really curry sounded good.  I made some nice red curry sauce out of ... let's see... red curry paste, coconut water (comes in a can, not the creamy milky stuff) some freshly squeezed lime juice, and just before serving I added some fat free half and half.  (I know!  How can half and half be fat free!)  I made a nice big salad to accompany it and served the lovely grill pan seared chicken breasts atop a bed of a wild rice and red wheat berry blend.  I had sampled the curry sauce and found it to be delightful - although a little more spicy than I expected.  I was pleased with the way the dinner turned out over all.  Here's what it looked like...

As I was taking the picture I informed Dave that the sauce was a little spicier than usual and that I had not added any extra hot sauce to it - just used more curry paste than normal.    He had already done the initial fly by with his nose and gone in for the first bite of chicken.  I was a little surprised that I did not hear him make any oh yum noises so I looked over to find that he was bright red and couldn't really breathe.  :)   Let's just say he doesn't like his food quite as hot as I do.  I have never seen a man work so hard to eat a chicken breast.  :)  He finally gave up half way through.  I tore through mine and put the rest of his in the fridge for lunch the next day.  I told him I wouldn't make the sauce that hot again.  I did save a small jar of it though for my own personal use for say drizzling over steamed veggies.

Yesterday we decided a nice sirloin steak sounded good.  We are getting ready to take a road trip down to CA to visit my daughter KT and her little family so we are working on cleaning out the fridge.  We had already consumed the last of the fresh veggies and planned on using up the left over rice with the steak so I thought I'd just open a can of green beans.  A pretty simple meal.  Here's what it looked like.  

It was quite yummy!  Of course it can't be just plain old rice and beans so... yep you guessed it!  Out came the curry sauce.  It was just a drizzle... really!   :)  My dear husband is taking me to dinner tonight for our anniversary.  Not so much because he loves me though... mostly out of fear that the dreaded curry sauce might show up again and end his life - or at least his taste buds.

Ciao!

I Wanna Be A Farm Girl

When I was a 14 years old my dad moved us to Siberia.  Ok well, Bothell, WA.  At the time I thought it was Siberia because the nearest tiny little grocery store was about 8 miles away.  We had maybe three neighbors and there was nothing to do but watch the grass grow.  This really was the last straw for me.  I was a very angry girl! Up until age 13 I had been raised in a great little neighborhood in Birmingham Alabama where I had a charmed life complete with ballet lessons and three brothers to command.  One December day my dad got one of his famous wild hairs and moved the family to Washington state.  We landed first in Bellevue, WA.  A nice little town at that time.  It was a culture shock - nobody spoke Southern there and it was the coldest summer of my life!  Still I made friends and settled in.  I was just getting comfortable when the wind blew again and set us down in the most insignificant little town on the planet... Bothell.  Those of you who live in Bothell now will wonder if I'm crazy!  Now you can jump from house top to house top all the way to Seattle.  In 1974 in the summer after my 8th grade school year this was not the case!  I spent an entire summer pouting and being tormented by my brother Pat who also had nothing do do.  We had no friends and had nothing to do but watch the grass grow.  My dad began planting gardens and collecting animals.  Chickens and cows are what I remember mostly.  I hated the chickens.  They chased me! Well... maybe they didn't but I was afraid they would.  They sure crapped a lot.  I didn't mind the cows so much except for the electric fence.  Bad fence!  :(  It completely ruined Christmas one year - but that's a different story.  Anyway what we had was a little mini farm and I hated hated hated it!  What a miserable life!  Here's what I thought about chickens and eggs...

Can you see the love on my face?

Here's a look at rural Bothell back in the old days.  In the 70's I mean.  This is looking down across our pasture at the neighbors little house which you can see hidden under the tree if you look very closely.  I know the house looks tiny and the tree looks huge.  That's really the way it was.

Here's a picture of the new barn my dad built in Bothell...

Somehow I made it through high school and beauty school and moved out on my own.  My dad decided Bothell was getting too crowded and moved my mom to Whidbey Island.  It was like stepping back in time.  Their little farmhouse was so very quaint.  By this time I had been driving into North Seattle every day for work so somehow peace and quite was becoming more desirable.  On the weekends sometimes to relax and unwind I would go visit their little farm in Langley.  My dad had now added sheep, geese and pigs to his little collection.

I wasn't crazy about the geese... again... birds chasing me is not fun!  And the sheep... ehhh... whatever!  Until they began having babies!

Well... how can you not like little lambs?  In this pic you can barely see the little black lamb - but I was in love with it and was having so much fun feeding it a bottle.  And I think that's how it started.  Somehow I'd gone from HATE to LOVE!  Of course I never imagined having a little farm of my own.  And I'm sure I never would have had it not been for Dave who came along and created one from nothing on a big sandy plot in once again... the most insignificant town on the planet... Chewelah!  We have a ways to go with our little farm.  It's not finished yet but we now have our own little flock of chickens 

Mama hen with her six chicks

And cows

and barn

And gardens

I still can't believe they grow this tall!

Dave's corn garden

Lots and lots of tomatoes!

And I just gotta say... there's no place like home!  Now I love my teeny tiny little town.  Although I love going west to the big city for work and visiting my kids, if I had my choice I'd never leave Chewelah.  Well that's not true.  I love to travel - and I love my little mini farm.

Here's my own little farm house

And my beautiful grand daughters

And the whole family who miraculously all appeared at the same time in October 

Well now... that was quite a tangent!  I guess I better report the stats... this morning the fatometer read 155.3 which is more reasonable than the last week.  Still a ways to go from my summer low of I think 148.  Glucose was 119???  Yesterday it was 105.  I really did not eat anything to my knowledge that would cause the spike.  Oh well... maybe I walked in my sleep last night and gobbled up a bag of chips or something.  Oh wait... yep... Dave brought me a grilled bacon and cheese sandwich for lunch yesterday.  Sour dough bread so that's not as bad but still... I guess that's what it was!   It was seriously good!  Really!  Bread, butter, bacon, cheese!  Bad Dave!  :)

I'm very excited to be going to visit my sweet little grand-baby Charlotte next week.  She is the weeee one shown in the picture above.  Amazingly she will be turning one year old next month.  Her mommy said she was a cranky little girl this morning.  Hard for me to imagine!  Last time she was here she was very angelic.  I think mommy's crazy!  :)  I'll take lots of pics of her when I get there and will share them with you.  We'll see if she's cranky :)

Ciao!

Sick and Fat - A Pitiful Combination!

One totally irritating thing about Dave (and when I say irritating I really mean admirable) is that when he sets a goal he always meets it.  In this particular case he has already lost his extra 6 pounds of "cruise weight".  I on the other hand am fatter.  :(  158.3 glucose 121.  Of course there are a number of reasons.  The number one reason is making roca for Valentines Day.  I have got to quit making that stuff.  The second is that I came home from the cruise to a house well stocked with snacks.  Having just been on a feeding frenzy I'm finding it hard to break the habit.  So... I decided that all the snacks had to go!  Chips, popcorn, candy, everything!  So I ate them all.  :)  That's sad and pathetic and delicious!  That's the fat part.  The sick part is... blechk!  We must have picked up a bug on the plane.  Dave is really sick and I'm about three days behind him and eating all kinds of little oranges in an effort to not be as bad as he is.  We have 1 week to become nontoxic because we are going to visit KT Bug, Ish and Baby Charlotte next week.  Yay!  Anyway... I'm supposed to be driving over to spend some time in Woodinville this week but instead I'm slumped in my desk chair in my furry PJs.  I feel a bit like poo - still I am hopeful.  This morning I soaked in the tub to warm up and watched the sky become light.  The light came sooner today.  Noticeably sooner!  What a happy thing!  Just as I was celebrating spring I noticed three snow flakes drifting by.  What?  Noooo!  They began falling faster and harder and became a certified snow shower, covering the ground.  But the temperature is warming up now.   The flakes are once again floating gently down as if to say, "wrap your throat, put on some cozy sweats and curl up with a cup of hot herbal tea.  You're going to be ok... and spring is coming soon."

Ciao!

Except For The Cold I'ts Good To Be Home

I was not terribly happy to only have lost half a pound this morning!  (insert big sign here) 157.3 but glucose was 102 so if I can keep that down the weight will follow.  It's really taken me a while to get back into the groove.  I've been so tired!  Maybe it's that it was a two day process to get home from Florida.  And it's been super cold.  Usually I don't mind the cold because it also means clear sunny weather.  After lounging around in 8o degree weather though it's just brutal to wake up to 8 degrees.  :)  Ok, enough whining.  I love the ocean and the beach. While we were waiting for our plane in Miami before heading home we decided to take a bus to South Beach and wander around.  There was a wonderful street where there was an outdoor market with lots of outdoor restaurants.  We walked down to the beach where I took off my shoes, rolled up my jeans and waded in the waves and picked up shells.

It reminded me of when I was a kid.  We used to vacation in Florida or the gulf coast in Alabama every year.  That may be why sun and sand are really my definition of vacation.  Here are a few pics from the trip.









 Here's Dave lounging on deck, fruity drink in hand, not caring that he now weighs over 200 lbs.  :)

View of Miami from the deck of the ship

 Dave, Gary and me getting ready to sail away.  We were still in our jeans.  Our suitcases had not yet been delivered.

In Costa Maya we kayaked over the barrier reef in clear kayaks.  It was fun.  I was very glad we were not the poor couple whose boat sank.  :)

Here we are before dinner one evening.  These pics were taken by the photographer on board.  I almost didn't bring them home because I am not pleased with the way I look in any of them.  Then it occurred to me that in 10 years I'll probably think they look great :)

And a more casual little portrait...















And finally, here's a pic of Dave and me along with Dave's sister Lorie (who was celebrating her 50th birthday) and her husband Gary.

Now that we are back we decided to break out our first "Panda" steak.  She's pretty tasty :)  Last night I made sirloin steak with caramelized onions, curried asparagus and Parmesan baked sweet potato fries sprinkled lightly with sea salt, pepper and fresh thyme.  Except for one lobster dinner on the boat I'd have to say I enjoyed my home cooked steak dinner as much as anything I ate on vacation.

Of course the entire steak is too much for one dinner - for me at least.  Dave had no problem polishing his off.  I saved half of my steak and Dave made some very tasty steak and eggs for breakfast.   It's nice to have him around this winter.  Not only do I not have to feed the animals but he's been doing most of the cleaning.  How bad can that be?  :)  So... yeah!  It's good to be home!

Ciao!

The Day of Reckoning!

Well!  I'm home after a fabulous and toasty 9 days of Florida and Caribbean sunning, eating and loafing in general.  It was grand!  We stopped and visited Grand Cayman, Cozumel, Costa Maya and Roatan.  We snorkeled and kayaked over the barrier reef.  We hit all the Hard Rock Cafes so I could enlarge my pin collection. I have 20 now.  We look a drive up into the mountains of Roatan (which was by far the most beautiful stop on the cruise.  Unfortunately it was also raining and so we were unable to do the zip line canopy excursion we planned on.  Bummer!  But that was the only bummer of the cruise.  Of course we ate and drank everything on the boat.  Just how much you want to know don't you?  Hmm???  :)  Well.  let me look back at my last posting to see how fat I was then...  Ok... the official weight gain was 5 pounds.  The fatometer reads 157.8.  What a pig!  Glucose this morning is 107.  I didn't weigh on board but I did bring my glucose meter and the highest my glucose ever reached was 119.  So cruising is not really on the diet plan.  I could have done much better - but that would not have been vacation in my book.  I could have done MUCH WORSE!  :)  I did get up early 4 of the mornings of vacation and went for a walk/trot for a couple of miles on the jogging track on deck.  Breakfast and lunch were pretty light usually.  Dinner is what did the damage!  Of all the pics I took pretty much none of them were food.  It was in my belly before I remembered to take a pic.  :)  I think I can get those pounds off pretty easy though.

I am currently frustrated because I'm having trouble emailing my pics from my phone to my computer.  I don't know why and it's making me super grumpy!  Fine!  No pictures for you today.  I did post some to facebook though.  Vacation is hard work!  I think I need a post vacation vacation.  I'm going to bed!  It's very obvious I'm not a travel writer :)

Ciao!

A New Woman!

We'll get back to that.  First... I got home just last night from my regularly scheduled trip to Woodinville.  I always have a blast when I'm there.  I get visit my children, granddaughter and friends.  I get to go shopping!  And I get to hang out with the cool people I work with.  We are constantly emailing about something or another but it's just not the same as being able to flop down in their office chair, invited or not :)

For some reason I was unable to connect to the internet at my sister in law's house.  I was never quite there at the same time as Cory, the resident computer guru was so I never got to ask him why and my limited knowledge of anything related to the computer just didn't cut it.  All that to say... no time to blog.  This morning upon weighing in I was delighted to see 152.8 on the fatometer and 95 for a glucose reading!  Yay!  And I have no idea how that is possible since I took the kids out to Mexican for Bobby's 20th birthday on Wednesday night.  Bobby is 20!  I can hardly believe my baby is 20.  No more teens!  Now just as they are all moving out of the teen decade and are all in their 20's, some (cough cough... Adam) will soon enter into the 30 decade!  How old do you think that makes me feel???  Ok... reel it back in.  On Thursday I met my friend Dee for lunch at the Maltby Cafe.  Home of the largest cinnamon rolls I have ever seen.  I did not have one!  The only good choice I made at each of those fine establishments was to split a meal.  Darn good thing too cause just look at the home made chips from Maltby Cafe...

This is the most horrible picture imaginable - but I deserve to have it posted for eating those!  What was I thinking???  I was thinking... MAN these are AWESOME!  :)  Very fortunately at the end of that day I got a haircut so I no longer look quite so horrible!

I guess perhaps the slight loss of weight is due to making "over all" better choices than - well the poster child for how to have a heart attack shown above.  On Monday night before I left home I grilled some tuna steaks and make some quinoa with caramelized veggies.  It's the first time I made or ate quinoa.  I've seen it quite a few times lately on my food shows.  Once on Ellie Krieger and one recently from Giada De Laurentis.  I may even have seen Rachel Ray cook some up.  I was intrigued!  It looked like something that I might like since I love all grains and pastas.  It is actually a seed.  Here... check it out on Wikipedia....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinoa  It's all the rage now.  And I liked it!  It's a little like couscous ( I just had a seriously senior moment!  I could not think of the name couscous so I had to Google "tiny pasta" to find it.  Wow!!!)  Anyway!...  all that to say, the left over tuna and quinoa were used the next day to make a killer tuna salad!  I had enough to pack in my lunch box and had it on the road for a snack and for lunch the next day.   Here the tuna salad was served along side some whole wheat spaghetti noodles tossed with freshly made (by me) pesto and sprinkled with ... yeah you guessed it... bacon :)  Better half a slice crumbled than three slices woofed in two bites right?  RIGHT????  :)















Definitely a better choice than... the chips!  Another positive choice is this delightful breakfast I had this morning of plain low fat yogurt with home canned peaches (very little sugar added) and sprinkled with a few soy nuts and pumpkin kernels. I sweeten it up with a little sugar free coconut syrup.

Now that I'm back home I can pack in earnest for our cruise which is coming up next Saturday!  Yay!!!!  And that brings me to the tiny story I intended to tell in the first place.  Sorry.  I know what a hardship it is to follow my thought processes.  Can you imagine actually being me?  :)  It's a wild ride for sure!  In preparation for the cruise I made an appointment for a little pampering and grooming.  I was accompanied by my best friend and partner in crime, Brenda for moral support.  Actually she just wanted a facial she wasn't really thinking about me :)  We have been clients of our local (formerly local for me) nail salon, T D Nails in Mill Creek for years!  Since I moved to Chewelah I don't get back very often.  I am always scolded when I come in for being gone so long.   They are super busy usually and when I asked for the "waxing" portion of the visit to be done first so I could relax later after being tortured they agreed but... sometimes things don't work out just right so I had a pedicure first, then was escorted into the dreaded "waxing room".  My sweet friend Brenda who is actually just a little bit wicked was in the next room receiving her facial.  I know she did not achieve the deepest state of relaxation because she was waiting with joy in her heart to hear me screeeeeam!  She was disappointed though.  I took it like a soldier.  Well... a female soldier anyway.  Next was my French manicure.  They were practicing a new process with something they call shellac and so it took much longer than normal.  They said it was because they always have to start all over on me :)  Finally after three hours I was finished and they were satisfied with the work they had done.  They told me, "Thank you for coming, you look like a NEW WOMAN!  Don't wait so long before coming back!  I felt like a new woman. After all I had a fabulous mani/pedi and ... perfectly arched brows.  It wasn't until I got back to Lorie's house and looked at my reflection in the mirror that I realized how absurd it was to spend that much money to be LIED  to!!!  :)  Oh well... Who doesn't love to hear... "you look fabulous"!  Even if you really never quite believe it.

Ciao baby!

It's a Melty Kind of Day

Close your eyes and imagine it's a balmy 34 degrees outside.  The sky and ground are becoming one, enveloped by a white fog slowly swirling.  The trees are barely visible.  Obscured by layers of mist, clearing now and then to reveal snow falling from the branches in tiny puff explosions, that never reach the ground.  Drip, drip, drip.  I'm almost hypnotized by the icicles that are ever melting and yet never seem to get smaller.  Turkeys are scratching through the slush and deer paw the ground and are happy to find winter grass to munch on.  :)  No... I'm not on some psychedelic drug... it's way too white for that.  It's just my world today.  And I'm melting away just a little bit too.  This morning the fatometer read 153.8.  Progress at least, glucose 100, sweeeet!  DWL hmmm what it the date today... 7.

Last night I made something quite tasty that is pretty rare for a beef cattle girl like me.  I made a vegetarian dinner.  It was awesome.  I began with a recipe that I found on the allrecipes.com web site.  I love that website but I'm frequently amazed to find some of the most lard butt recipes imaginable!  A serving of soup with 900 something calories???  Still... You can trim pretty much anything and still have it be scrumptious.  Someone needs to put a leash around my neck and yank me back periodically!  What I was going to talk about was the Spicy Thai Tofu dish that I made.  I should have taken a picture of it but we gobbled it up before I remembered the camera.  Anyway... as usual I was missing a couple of ingredients so that always gives me permission to just figure something else out.  I stir fried firm tofu cubes in a little olive oil and sprinkled some Thai coating sauce mix that I found at Cash and Carry a while back.  I added a little Tamari (rich soy sauce) in and removed it from the pan when it was nice and brown.  Then I stir fried an onion, some broccoli and... something else :) Oh!  a glob of peanut butter and stirred it until it melted away.  At the end of the stir fry time I threw in some shredded Napa cabbage, a little more Tamari, a drizzle of champagne vinegar and a little water to sauce it up just a bit.  I  added the tofu back in and sprinkled the whole thing with sesame seeds.  There you have it.   Highly experimental and not half bad.

Well, all that was from this morning.  I never got a chance to finish and post.  Gotta make the big bucks you know :)  Now it's the weekend.  My favorite days of the week!  While I was finishing up in my office just now Dave was getting creative in the kitchen and whipped up a cheesy tuna melt (yep Amberlyn you guessed it... Velveeta!) grilled on sour dough bread and served with half of a left over sweet potatoe.  What's not good grilled?  I ate every bite! 

Have a great weekend everyone!

Ciao!