Saturday Morning

Got a run in, went to yoga, ate an awesome breakfast. Pretty sweet little Saturday. Larry had a pretty great one too.

Apparently he didn’t get the memo reminding him that he’s 60lbs and has a huge ass. Brent looks pretty proud of himself there too, huh?

Oh yeah, about that awesome breakfast. It was at 5 Spot. I had been building this place up to Brent ever since Tess and I went a week and half ago, so Brent suggested we head there this weekend. I didn’t exactly put up much resistance. I stuck with what I knew and got the Ranch Hand Eggs. I can’t adequately describe this, but it involved a folded up tortilla stuffed with two kinds of cheese and green onions. I wish I could convey how amazing that thing is because I know this picture is not doing it justice.

I tried valiantly, but only finished half. That tortilla is one dense mofo.

The rest of the day is up in the air because its raining. I’m aware that I live in Seattle and everyone thinks it rains all the time, but usually it’s just misting. Today is what Brent and I refer to as “Real Rain.” You know, as in You Need An Umbrella, Fool. So we’re kind of being babies about it and debating whether we feel like leaving the house. Hope you’re enjoying your weekend!

Don’t Let His Calm Demeanor Fool You

Larry may look calm and quiet…

But he’s actually completely crazy…

That is all.

Larry’s Day Out

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous since we arrived. A bit chilly yes, but absolutely clear and sunny. We know that this is the exception rather than the rule for Seattle winters, so we’re trying to take advantage of it. Larry is an active dog, and he’s pretty used to very long walks and running around in a backyard. I don’t want to deprive him of that, so I’ve been on the lookout for a great long walk route for the two of us.

I look out my window and I see a green park with a walking path running through it, but there are also train tracks in front of it, so I wasn’t sure how to get to it. Well, I finally found the answer. Olympic Sculpture Park which is free and open to the public is a five minute walk from our building and if you walk through the park, the path connects you to Myrtle Edwards Park, which is the park I see from my apartment. There is this gorgeous running, walking, and biking path a few minutes from my front door!

Brent and I took Larry on an hour and a half walk through both parks this afternoon, and judging by the way he’s passed out on our living room floor right now, I’d say he got enough activity in for the day. Here are the photos from our walk.

Brent and Larry walking through OSP

OSP: Bunyon's Chess, 1965 Mark di Suvero

OSP: Eagle, 1971 Alexander Calder

Heading down the path connecting OSP to Myrtle Edwards

The perfect running/walking path

A pocket beach along the Myrtle Edwards Park path

 

I feel so grateful to live in such a beautiful place

Larry, living the dream

View of our building from the park

View of downtown from the park

Port of Seattle

We ended up walking up the path past the port and back home through OSP, covering about 4 miles total. To have a gorgeous place so close is wonderful. I was having a real “I can’t believe I live here!” moment as we were walking. I can’t wait to go for some runs along the water too! I’m pretty sure this park is going to be a regular in Larry’s walk rotation. Oh, and it’s not that I love Larry more than Lucy, but she has a bad hip and can’t walk very far without majorly limping, while Larry needs a ton of exercise.

We’ve got no real plans for tonight, other than to relax and veg out. I hope you all have a happy and healthy start to the New Year! See you in 2011!

Going Green

This past weekend, I went home to Chicago for a much needed visit with my friends and family. My friends Tessa and Kathryn and I got massages, ate some Thai food and had some girl talk on Saturday, and on Sunday we had an Oscars viewing & voting party with our college friends — I actually won the Oscars contest, which is definitely unheard of. Before I could do any of that though, I had to bake a cherry pie for my grandma before I left. She’s been asking me to bring her a cherry pie since January, and last week was her 79th birthday, so I finally obliged.

I used this crust and the filling was 3.5 cups of tart frozen cherries, 1/3 cup flour, and 1.5 cups of sugar all mixed together. Baked at 350 for about one hour. My grandmother lives alone, so I left half the pie at my parents’ house. My dad was very grateful, and my grandmother was very happy!

I’m still on spring break this week, so I’ve been cooking some soups and other meals for the freezer, in preparation for my next round of classes and clinicals. Tonight’s dinner was a salmon burger (frozen from Sam’s Club) on an Aunt Millie’s 100% whole wheat bun (I know I could have made my own, but I didn’t) and some Kale with Raisins and Pine Nuts. Brent said he’d like to eat more greens, because they’re such nutritional superstars, but I truthfully don’t love them. I’m trying to dress them up a bit, and this recipe was one I’d eat again.

Do you have a favorite recipe using greens?

In non food-related news, I took Larry (who has an ear infection) to the vet today, a task I dread doing. Larry’s very nervous and fearful in strange places, and pretty much every single time we take him to the vet, he pees. Today I was holding him on my lap, and while the doctor was checking his ears, he peed all over me. Awesome. It’s times like that when I have to try really hard to remember that I love my dogs.

Already November

I can’t believe it’s already November! I’ve already decided that 2009 is going down as the fastest moving year of my life. We have less than two months left of the year — and only 3 weeks until I host Thanksgiving. Yikes.

I’ve made a few things I wanted to share with you all, including Pan Bagnat and Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting, but ummm… I just never bothered taking pictures of them before devouring them. Oops. Both were delicious and I have witnesses who will agree with me on that. Both were served to my friends when they came to visit this weekend. I don’t have a lot of pictures from the weekend, but here’s a funny one of Greg and Larry.

Sometime last week I wasn’t feeling that well and in an effort to avoid dragging myself to the grocery store I made this peanut butter noodle dish. Soba noodles, broccoli, shredded carrots and this peanut sauce, minus the cilantro.

I thought it was really delicious and so ridiculously simple. I’m definitely going to try to remember this for the next time I want a quick pantry meal.

Tonight, after a weekend involving candy, cupcakes and alcohol, I just wanted something simple and healthy for dinner. I baked some of my frozen Jamaican Veggie Patties and sauteed some broccoli with garlic. I was hoping for the best with the veggie patties. They had been frozen for nearly 6 months, but I wrapped them really well and they showed no signs of freezer burn. I put them straight into the oven frozen and baked for 50 minutes. I was pleasantly surprised at how well they came out. Still flaky and delicious.

It’s only 8:30 but I have to start getting ready for bed — a lovely 6am clinical awaits me tomorrow. I’m trying to cook more the month of November, so hopefully I’ll have more to post on the blog in the future.

Asian Noodles with Shiitakes and Cashews

I’ve mentioned my love of soba noodles on the blog before, right? I’m sure I have. They’re one of my favorite ingredients to plan a meal around and I haven’t had them in quite a while, so last week at the grocery store I made sure to pick up a few packages of them.

I’ve made quite a few soba recipes, but I think last night’s dinner was a new one, though I can’t take credit for it. I made this recipe from Shape magazine. I thought it was very light and refreshing, not to mention super simple to make.

Brent was a big fan of this meal as well. He just asked me if I was blogging (I guess it’s a rarity these days) about “that soba noodle thing.” I told him yes and he replied “oh yeah, that was blog-worthy.” So I would definitely classify this as a make again recipe.

We’ve got 2 showings of the house tomorrow, so dinner will be coming from the freezer. I think it’ll be some tortellini casserole. Not sure there will be anymore “blog-worthy” meals this week.

For your mid-week viewing pleasure, here’s a photo of Larry with the pillow we gave him. He doesn’t know if he’s allowed to lay on it, so he lays behind and sort of under it.

Doesn’t he look pitiful?

Tuscan White Bean Stew

Hey folks. Like I said, the cookery here has been pretty boring as of late. I’ve been cooking of course, but mostly repeats and slap togethers. I have tried a few new recipes though, one of which was this Tuscan White Bean Soup from the Mayo Clinic Cookbook. I love this cookbook, and the website.

Brent described the soup as, “Well the broth is delicious.” He’s not a huge bean soup fan, but this was a tasty one. I promptly froze most of it of course.

In other non-food related, canine news… look at this ridiculous photo of Larry on the couch. He just loves to be tucked in laying on the couch with us.

So lame, I know.

Also, I’ve been kind of a spaz the past few days. Brent and I have been planning to move when I graduate, but we’ve recently decided to go ahead and list our house for sale now in preparation. Yikes! We have a few realtors coming to the house tomorrow to check out our home and get some opinions on list price and improvements. It feels kind of weird to be judged on our home and I’m a bit nervous. In the mean time I’ve been cleaning like crazy. And school starts on Monday. it’s going to be a busy few days.

Birthday Breakfast

Hey guys. I’m 24 today! That’s still “early twenties,” right? Brent and I are headed to Denver today! We’re staying with his brother Jon, and while we’re there we have lots of fun stuff planned, so expect an exciting recap.

To get my day started right, Brent and I headed out for a run this morning, followed by me doing some hip-opening flow yoga. Afterward I made myself a delicious birthday breakfast of french toast! I used some cinnamon honey whole wheat bread I made. It was this recipe with a swirl of cinnamon in it. For the syrup, I cooked blueberries and water with a bit of agave until the berries burst and the mix was a pourable consistency. Loved it!

All together with coffee. Have I mentioned agave is now the only coffee sweetener I’ll use? I love it. And I just ran out! Better restock. Does the picture look clearer to you? I got a new camera for my birthday and I’ve been playing around with it. Of course the first photo I took with it was of Larry and Lucy.

The flash on this thing is so bright! I definitely need to learn all the settings and play around some more. That’s all for now. We’ve got to finish getting ready to leave!

Eggplant Parmesan Pizza

We spent a lot of Saturday out of the house running errands at the mall, and a very exciting trip to the dog park! We used to take Lucy to the dog park in Redondo Beach all the time because we didn’t have a back yard, but Larry has never been to one. I was a bit nervous to see how the trip would play out since it was all new to Larry and Lucy, well… Lucy can be picky about the dogs she likes so it can be kind of a crap shoot.

Luckily both of them really had a lot of fun and they even met a new friend — Charlie the Beagle.

I think this might be the only photo in existence of Lucy actually running. It’s a pretty rare occurence.

The car ride back is always much calmer. I love when they’re pooped out.

After our busy day running around, I wasn’t feeling like making something for dinner, but I knew I had food to use up so I went with pizza. Pizza seemed like a good way to use those adorable eggplants, so I decided to make Eggplant Parmesan Pizza. I made some marinara sauce with a can of tomatoes and layered that on top of the dough. I topped the sauce with thin slices of grilled eggplant.

Then sprinkled with mozzarella, Parmesan and chopped basil. I really loved it!

Doesn’t that look tasty? And doesn’t Brent look cool in his new sunglasses? He’s never worn sunglasses before!

Hope you all had a great weekend! Now I’m off to relax and enjoy the rest of my Sunday evening before Monday morning rolls around.

Herby

My goal for yesterday was to use up some of the herb collection growing in my fridge from the CSA. First up, I made the rosemary and onion foccacia from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. The only difference I did with mine was that I used my half whole wheat version, which uses 2 cups whole wheat flour and 4 cups AP flour. I also used the fresh rosemary rather than dried.

I probably cooked my onions a bit too much but this came out really well. I loved it. I ate some as an afternoon snack yesterday and then I sliced it in half horizontally this morning and made an egg sandwich with it. Yum!

I also found a perfect recipe for dinner to use up all that green stuff in the fridge: Fresh Herb Risotto! I love the recipes for health from NYT. I think it’s fun they focus on a different food every week. In this risotto I used the rest of last week’s arugula, oregano, rosemary, basil and chives. Told you I was overrun with herbs!

This was very tasty, and light for a risotto – no butter and only a small amount of cheese. On the side, I threw in some roasted green beans. Brent is such a guy. He was like, “Umm. This whole meal is carbs. I need protein for my muscles.” Lame.

Now for a face only a mother could love:

He’s such a ham! His older sister is much more calm, cool and collected:

So I still have a ton of herbs left. I’m thinking of just throwing them all into a multi-herb pesto and freezing it, but let me know if you have a better idea! I’m very open to suggestions.