Monday, June 30, 2008

A referral

I don't do this often, but I'm going to do it now.

My good ole friend wrote a blog a few years ago and stopped. I was very sad that she stopped because she's really very cool, has a rad Japanese husband and an adorable little nugget of a son.


However, GLORY OF GLORIES, she has started writing again. She is cool and you'll like her blog....at least I do.



Truth be told, she's WAY hipper than I'll ever be.

FYI




I love them thar hills

I'm a little worried that I might be a redneck.

Yup, you heard me right.


The girl who grew up humming classical music and practicing hours on her violin while wearing a blue taffeta dress has turned into a bluegrass lovin, rodeo attending, full blooded Colorado hick.



What, you don't believe me? Here's proof.

I'm comfortable livin here:





And doin my business here:



Proud to be married to this:


Impressed by the beauty of this:


Makin my meals on this:



Covered in really strange sunburns like this:



Love tearin it up on one of these:



Fealin most at home right here:

Friday, June 27, 2008

Top 100

I've had a lot of roommates in my time. LOTS. Some great, some OK and some I'd rather forget. Before I got married I'd lived with about 35 different people. Living with so many people really teaches a person about relationships and communication. One important lesson I learned about myself was this:



I don't like ice cream as much as the average girl.


I've probably only bought about 3 gallons of the stuff for myself in the past 10 years. My darling husband, on the other hand, LOVES ice cream...almost as much as he loves cake. This week's recipe is going to be a shout out to him. If you have an ice cream maker, this should be do-able:


Chocolate-Cinnamon Gelato with Toffee Bits, recipe from the talented Dorie Greenspan.




Da-ROOL!

Celebration

This weekend the ear doctor and I are heading up into the mountains to celebrate our first marital anniversary. I am SOOO excited to get out of town a bit and spend some time relaxing together.

We'll be staying in this cool old cabin, which is a registered historic landmark:




Cooking on a old wood burning stove,






And hiking in the the wilderness around Steamboat Springs. Our little puppy (still has no name) will also be coming with us, so it's his first camping trip. Hooray!
On a side note, I can't believe I've been married for a little over a year now! It simultaneously feels like I've lived with this man-of-my-dreams forever and like the time has just flown by. Amazing how time races by without me even noticing sometimes...

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Top 100

Well, I probably never would have picked this week's dish on my own. While I really love olives (the saltier the better), the ear doctor doesn't really like Kalamatas. And, I'll admit, they aren't usually for the feint of heart.



However, in this dish they were perfect.








The greatest part was the amazing smells while cooking. The 45 minutes of roasting the tomato/garlic/balsamic filled our little house with the most comforting and homey smell. I was transported back to my swiveling bar stool at my grandma's kitchen counter. The same place where my cousins and I shared meals while turning back and forth incessantly until the arms of the chairs had dents carved out from being rammed into the counter so many times. The childhood nostalgia worked up a very specific craving in the depths of mi corazon.





After a quick boil of some bowties (my favorite shape of pasta), and some chopping of oregano we had this awesome dinner!



Seriously, this was SOOOO easy and delicious. I pretty much owe my life force to Cagequeen for picking out this recipe, so THANKS! Anyone else care to earn a little portion of my soul by picking out a great dish?



Reminder: If you want to join the club feel free! This link has a list of all the different recipes from Bonappetit's top 100 dishes that we're going to try. Leave a comment with your suggestion for next week's dish on this post. Friday afternoons I post the recipe for the following week and I review them on Thursdays.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Glorious

In case you were wondering, my peas this year are plumping up beautifully. They are so much sweeter and fresher than any peas I've ever bought.



And they're so pretty, no?



Monday, June 23, 2008

In addition

My hands permanently smell like puppy. It doesn't matter that I wash my hands compulsively every 5 minutes, I can't get that smell off. I'm getting paranoid that I'm going to start smelling like dog and not realize it because I'll be used to it and everyone will start laughing at me and calling me "the smelly dog girl" behind my back or something. yuck.

My calves are going to be rock hard

I've never been one to seriously "work out."


I've exercised in fits and spurts over the last ten years, but nothing has really stuck. A little running here, a little elliptical there, nothing to really write home about. I've never really felt that "runners high" that seems to compel others to keep doing it. I've never seen dramatic weight loss or measurably better moods from doing it regularly. I guess you can say that I've never really caught the vision.


I especially never understood why a person would go to a football stadium and run up and down the steps for pleasure. Stairs and I have never had the type of relationship that gives me enough to want to spend my free time visiting them.


That is, until now.


This freakin puppy of ours LOVES going up stairs. Not just walking up stairs...RUNNING up them. Not only that, but he is FREAKED out to go down them.




SO,

I am now the girl who runs up 3 flights of stairs only to turn around and carry 15 lbs back down them.


Because I'll do anything to keep this puppy tired enough to avoid chewing up my one true love....my new couch.

Friday, June 20, 2008

Top 100

Alright, cagequeen, you asked for it. This pasta looks so summery and light. I can't wait to try it!






Pasta with Kalamata Olives and Roasted Cherry Tomato Sauce



Reminder: If you want to join the club feel free! This link has a list of all the different recipes we're going to try. Friday afternoons I post the recipe for the following week and I review them on Thursdays.

Meet our little nugget

Sorry for the no post yesterday, but I was pretty busy with the CUTEST LITTLE GUY IN THE WORLD!


Can you really blame me?



We can't think of a really great name...any suggestions?

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

My cousin is hilarious

Just go see what he wrote today about being a pale, pale, pale, pale red head.



Keep in mind that I am even paler and more prone to burning than he is.

I almost choked on my cookie from laughing so hard. He should really put a warning before writing that stuff. Jeez, my family is cool.

Top 100

This week's cooking experiment was incredibly successful. If I knew someone who never cooked because they were nervous about it, this is the recipe I would suggest they try. Not hard at all, and the result is so stunning that even my mediocre photography skills are pretty amazing. It turned out that well.

The first step was to mix up a bunch of herbs to rub on the outside of the bird. Here's the thing though, I don't really believe in mincing thyme. The leaves are already so tiny that, really, what's the point. I'm sure most of you know the trick to getting the thyme leaves off the stick part, but just in case you don't here's a little photo montage of how I do it.

First, you rip a single stick off the bunch.




Then, you gently hold the tip end of the sprig and pull your fingers down opposite the direction of growth. They come off like a dream.





The next thing in the herb mix was garlic. I also don't really like mincing garlic, it's sticky and little and hard to do evenly. Lucky for me, the ear doctor was watching Alton Brown the other day. Alton, from Good Eats, said that making a garlic paste by banging your knife down on top of a clove of garlic will work just as well as mincing it up. Cool, the ear doctor gets to pummel something.



Last, but not least comes the lemon peel. If you don't have a microplane, stop messing around and go get one. I love my little guy.




Next, I tied the legs together and placed it on the rack in my roasting pan. Now, the recipe wasn't super clear about how to roast a chicken, so if someone had never done this before it might be a little confusing. Make sure to put your bird on your rack like this:




1 hour and 20 minutes later we pulled our guy out and he looked so beautiful I almost wept. This is where you stick your instant read thermometer to check done-ness. This picture was taken before the thermometer stopped at 180, don't worry, we didn't eat undercooked chicken.





Oh, isn't he lovely!




We put our bird on the cutting board and tented with foil to let him rest. You let meat rest so that all the juices get redistributed evenly. Always do this with thick meat. However, you should also make sure you do this on a cutting board with a juice collecting trough because, man oh man, this bird was juicy when it came out. Ours dripped all over the counter and down onto the floor. GROSS.




Next step, make the pan sauce. I've never actually make the sauce in the roasting pan before but that is a GREAT idea because you end up deglazing the pan, making it really easy to clean later.



My sauce came out really thin, but I was afraid to cook it more (and at this point my house smelled so good I was about to pass out from anticipation). Sorry I didn't strain out the brown bits....I think they taste really good.




I whipped up a little bean, bacon and mushroom topping for some roast asparagus and we were ready to eat!
















Reminder: If you want to join the club feel free! This link has a list of all the different recipes from Bonappetit's top 100 dishes that we're going to try. Leave a comment with your suggestion for next week's dish on this post. Friday afternoons I post the recipe for the following week and I review them on Wednesdays.

Hope you caught it

I was so afraid that Bravo wouldn't do a second season of one of my favorite TV shows. A month ago I was fast forwarding through the commercials in the middle of Top Chef and I caught a glimpse of one of my favorite people.


Not Tim Gunn,


Not Padma Lakshmi,



but



ZOILA!




I love Flipping Out on Bravo so much I can't even stand it. I think the people are hilarious, the drama is epic and the design is pretty amazing. I am so excited to see Jeff Lewis's antics that I can hardly even stand it.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Yummm

Today the ear doctor packed me a lunch.




Don't you think lunch tastes so much better when someone else makes it? Plus, he threw in a package of Emperadors my favorite Mexican cookies!

Review

This book, right here:




It's interesting!




Go get it.






See that green pillow? I made it. Cool, huh!