food and boots

Andrew and I went over to a friend's house to make sushi on Friday and I realized two things:

1. The Asian grocery store by my apartment is AWESOME. Great prices on veggies, a thing of tofu for .99 cents, plus a huge tank of catfish. I am doing as much grocery store shopping there as possible. I don't think they sell peanut butter, though.
2. I want to move to a bigger apartment (preferably a house/apartment where it's the entire floor of a house) and have a big table to have dinner parties.
   

I made this dal palak recipe last night, which was so good. A decent amount of spiciness for both Andrew and I; since I usually like this spicier than him, it hit a good middle ground for both of us. As I'm trying to eat less meat overall, Indian food is a good source for recipes. They have so much delicious vegetarian food.

After trying them on in November, I finally bought these boots:

Way to go, christmas money! I've realized I'm less likely to make larger purchases for myself regularly (as opposed to little things frequently that often add up to the price of one of these larger purchases) and instead use gift money/present opportunities to make a larger purchase - boots, running shoes, iPod, etc. When I graduated from college, Erich and KT said their present was either going to be an iPod or all the Scrubs dvds. I chose the iPod because I figured I'd be less likely to buy that on my own as opposed to all the Scrubs dvds (which I have been buying randomly over the past few years or so - usually whenever I see one for sale at a used store). I figure it's good to recognize that about yourself. Plus those boots are hot. I'm excited to wear them.

Ok. Time to go. Bacher out.

babies and stuff

A note to the world:

Many people I know are pregnant or have birthed. That's awesome. Babies are cool. I'm especially looking forward to my new nephew, Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All Mason Badass Bacher and have grown fond of watching videos of Hattie (one of the Lincoln Roberts-Days) do things like roll over and be bounced around to silly noises.

However, I am totally content with a gentleman and a dog. We do pretty well, the three of us.

Not that anyone asked... just that babies seem to be all around and in people these days, and they seem super excited about it, whereas I am super excited about the homemade sesame chicken I made for dinner tonight.

That is all.

Book update:
I did get a Kindle. It is awesome. In fact, it increases marital hand-holding a significant percent as now I can lie in bed, hold the Kindle with one hand and hold Andrew's hand with the other. No more rationed hand-holding! I am also at book #95 for the year and 100 looks to be very good. I may even shoot for 104 - an average of 2 books per week.

Purging update:
I'm 95% done with the original purging plan. I used the last bottle this week - buffalo sauce that I poured over chicken wings in the crockpot. I have one bar of soap left, which will probably be opened this weekend. Still working on the tea lights though... there were a lot of those.

All right. Sesame chicken time. Bacher out.

first world problems

I think Sam is in another shedding phase. He's dropping hair left and right, usually in clumps on the floor. Yay black dog hair and light brown hardwood floors!

My goal for reading this year was 75 books. I finished my 75th book on October 8, which was Donald Rumsfeld's memoir, Known and Unknown. Blech. Andrew always asks me why I read memoirs from politicians in the Bush administration (Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Cheney) if I disagree with their politics so much. It's because they've taken the time to explain their reasoning and the rational behind their decisions and actions and I want to understand why they made those choices. Plus, I've read memoirs from Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright, but there just happens to be a slew of Republican memoirs being published now.

So since I've met my 75 goal, I've upped it t0 100 books in a year. I'm currently at 89 right now so it's very doable. Here's what I've read since September 15:
68. Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand
69. Not Becoming My Mother, Ruth Reichel
70. Run Like A Girl, Mina Samuels
71. Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office, Lois Frankel
72. Freakonomics, Steven Levitt/Stephen Dubner
73. The Leftovers, Tom Perrotta
74. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Jamie Ford
75. Known and Unknown, Donald Rumsfeld
76. To Be a Runner, Martin Dugard
77. Superfreakonomics, Steven Levitt/Stephen Dubner
78. The Greatest Music Stories Never Told, Rick Beyer
79. Devil’s Knot, Mara Leveritt
80. The President and the Assassin, Scott Miller
81. In My Time, Dick Cheney
82. The Violets of March, Sarah Jio
83. Why We Buy, Paco Underhill
84. How I Killed Pluto, Mike Brown
85. Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie, Lauren Redniss
86. Secret Daughter, Shilpi Somaya Gowda
87. Killing Kate, Julie Kraemer
88. Blood, Bones & Butter, Gabrielle Hamiliton
89. The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern

My favorites are Unbroken, The Leftovers, Freakonomics/Superfreaknomics, How I Killed Pluto, Killing Kate, Blood, Bones & Butter and The Night Circus.

Since I read so many books, I usually get a ton out from the library at a time.

I'd like to get a Kindle so I don't have to go to the library every week and also so I don't have to carry multiple books around with me at once, say if I'm almost to the end of a book and think I'll finish it before I get home. It would be a good Christmas present, yes?

But here's the thing: The library doesn't have nearly as many ebooks as it does actual books. I looked at books I've currently requested and it's about 40-50% available in ebooks. Otherwise, Amazon does have a lending library system, but you have to be a special member ($80/year) and you can only borrow one book a month. ONE. That's not reasonable for me. I also don't want to buy ebooks all the time, since those are $12-16 per book. So if I get a Kindle, it might be a half and half thing, where I borrow on Kindle if possible and otherwise get a hard copy. Man, my life is so hard.

Here's pictures of Sam to cheer you up from thinking about all the problems I face in life:

Sam and a lobster treat that Mom and Harry brought back from Maine.

Sam clearly also has a very difficult life as well.

Here's what I'm making for dinner tonight: Crock pot mac and cheese.

And HOLY CRAP. This is double stuffed acorn squash like a fall explosion in your mouth. I highly recommend it:


Ok. Time to go de-dog hair my apartment. I will save all the hair for a homemade pillow for Sam to lay his little doggy head on, since it was his hair in the first place.

Bacher out.

P.S. Oh yeah, Kari is in the country.

trees, gourds and sprouts. and a car.

Things going on:

We bought a new car! Huzzah!

Andrew's starting making terrible engine noises on the way back from WI a few weeks back. After checking it out, it was either 1: new engine or 2: new car. Considering the body of his car was in pretty bad shape and we were thinking about getting a new car sometime in the next year anyway... new car it is!

Car shopping is a huge pain in the ass. You spend a lot of time looking on websites to find vehicles in your price and mileage range, then go to the car lot to see that the car is in worse condition than it looked online or that it's been sold already. We were very close to buying a different car and while we were giving the dealer 36 hours to think about putting new tires on it, someone else bought the car. That was disappointing, but I really like the car we bought and it's in great condition and has less miles than the other car. So go us!

Since our evenings were consumed with car researching/test driving/buying for the past two weeks, the house pretty much went to shit. I only finished the last of the Massive Pile of dishes yesterday (it was so massive that it deserves uppercase). It didn't help that we needed to continue to eat, thus adding to the Massive Pile. We also had a Big-Ass Pile of laundry, but we did that on Sunday.

I opened up a retirement account - woo! Considering the economy is shit, I'm in a pretty aggressive fund, hoping that by the time I retire at 88, I'll have enough to pay for a mediocre old folk's farm. I'm not betting that Sam will take care of me in my old age... he seems pretty thankless.

Sam spends a lot of time sitting or trying to sit on our laps.

Ok, that's Dia. I took that to make Sam jealous.

Andrew cut down this big ass tree and we want to make a cutting board from the wood cookie:

For scale.

Although that little shit has been taking bites out of the bark. I found him chewing on a hunk of bark just this morning.

I just made a batch of acorn squash seeds using my patented "forget about them and remember in a panic" method. They are pretty damn tasty. I'm going to try gnocchi this afternoon.

I bought a pumpkin at the store and made pumpkin puree. I haven't used it for anything yet, so I'm open to suggestions of pumpkin-flavored deliciousness.

I also bought two stalks(? sprouts?) of Brussels sprouts at the farmers market while I was on the way home from a happy hour last week. Impluse purchase? No, never. Not when it comes to Brussels sprouts. We're down to one last serving of sprouts from the two stalks, so that'll be my lunch today.

Ok, there's a finale episode of Project Runway that's calling my name, so time to go cook sprouts and make gnocchi. Bacher out.

how to make perfect roasted squash seeds

My secret tip to cooking perfect squash/pumpkin seeds?

Rinse/salt the seeds. Put the oven at 200 degrees. Leave the seeds in the oven and literally forget about them. While getting a drink of water before going to bed, realize you forgot the seeds were in the oven and take them out in a panic. Enjoy!

Perfect, seriously.

the chicken and i

Step one: Get a chicken.



Step two: Cut the chicken apart.


Step three: Make stuff from the chicken for later.


Step four: Eat stuff from the chicken now.


Step five: Repeat.

state parking it

We went up north yesterday for a day trip to hike around in some woods and visit all the finery Duluth has to offer. It was pretty fun hiking around in the woods; the paths along the river are very hilly and actually look more like hiking than walking along a 10 foot wide grass path in the woods (like some of the other trails at the state park... but they're used for cross country skiing in the winter so they have different needs than the hilly trails).



The first orange leaves I've seen this fall! I was excited.

I was trying to figure out why there was blood by my temple; apparently I squashed and killed a mosquito and Andrew helped me get it out of my hair. Family grooming time!

Sam in the car on the way to the state park.

My tired puppy (from a different day).

Sam sitting on Andrew's lap. We think he had a stomachache from licking out the peanut butter jar this morning.

Fajitas from Friday night. We had a lot of peppers from the farmers market that were threatening to go bad, so fajitas seemed like a good idea.

Frittata for breakfast this morning - pretty good, but I threw in a bunch of veggies to use them up and it made it a super veggie frittata. I think next time I'll focus on less veggies but a stronger flavor combination (as opposed to everything but the kitchen sink).

The end. Bacher out.

great purge of 2011 update

So I was purging things, specifically stuff in my fridge. Here's how it's going so far:

Half empty marinade bottles - two gone!

Mustard - one gone! Andrew just tossed it. Hopefully out of the recognition that it's crazy to have 4 different types of mustard in our small fridge. Or in any fridge.

Stir fry sauce - one gone! We've been having a lot of stir fry lately and it's been delicious. A little secret: add sesame oil when you cook the vegetables. Delicious.

Salad dressing - both gone! Although we'll be buying more Caesar dressing soon since that's the kind Andrew likes. I'm fine with mixing up balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and a little pepper on the spot for my salads.

Travel shampoo and soap - three gone! First I had to finish my own shampoo, but then I moved on to the little bottles.

Ok friends, I need some motivation. I have my half marathon training plan all figured out for the Monster Dash at the end of October. I'd been running away, hitting all my workouts for about five weeks and now... no motivation to run. My knees have been feeling a little sore/creaky lately and I don't know if that's a running injury or as a result of my stand-up desk at work (it's awesome; everyone should have one), but it's adding to making me not want to run at all. I went out yesterday and my knees were fine, but I don't know. Maybe actually registering for the race will give me the boost I need to get back in the game. Maybe my training plan was a bit too ambitious, ramping up the mileage too far out from the actual race for it to be sustainable for me. Either way, I need to get my head (and feet) back in the game and fast.

Since I know you missed it the last time I posted, here are more Sam pictures:

He was sitting on the couch and the pillow fell over on him and Sam just sat there. It was cute.

He's helping me blog again. What a nosy puppy.

My mom's coming today for the weekend! Maybe she'll help motivate me.

Bacher out.

recipe booking

Ok, so I like cooking. I won't lie. I also find a lot of recipes online. I had this really bad habit of keeping a browser window open with tabs and tabs of recipes I wanted to try or keeping a post unread in my google reader until I could try it (or until it was in there too long and expired).

Recently I found this really cool website and have been using it to remind myself of all the recipes I want to make. When I find an interesting recipe, I bookmark/"pin" it and the website stores them by pictures, making it easy to browse and remember why I was interested in the first place. It's pretty cool.

Here are my two boards: Recipes to try and Recipes that rock (things I've already made and like)

Food pictures make me hungry.

Bacher out.

more food, more sam

I used up one of those marinade bottles yesterday and made Baja Chipotle chicken. But we couldn't just eat chicken, could we? What to do, what to do... So I made some spanish rice, but after looking at the box in the store, decided I could make it just as well myself and do it without MSG and other unpronounceable ingredients.

I put brown rice, garlic, diced tomatoes, red pepper and onion, paprika and chili powder into my rice steamer and let it do its magic. I also cut up extra tortillas, baked them on my pizza stone and made chips. Finally, I sauteed green and red peppers, onions and garlic to put over the chicken along with some diced avocado.


Pretty delicious, if you ask Andrew. He was very vocal about his approval for the meal.

I was cleaning up some of my photo folders and found these, which I never posted. So, without further ado, some meals from a few months ago:



Homemade mashed potato pizza based on Pizza Luce's mashed potato pizza.


Walleye, I think? From my grandparents. It's over asparagus and seasoned with salt, pepper, Parmesan cheese and lemon.


Curried chicken with ginger and yogurt along with brown rice and homemade naan.


I felt like a genius and made naan on my pizza stone. It turned out better than when I'd tried it in a pan, leaving it not greasy and with just the right amount of air bubbles. I did the same pizza stone method for making the tortilla chips yesterday. Although I made the naan before we had Sam, so yesterday was a little more difficult to make sure he stayed away from the hot oven door.

Speaking of my puppy, here he is doing one of his favorite things:

Looking out the window.

And he also video chatted with Kari today (although she doesn't like the picture):


Good bye again.