August 15th, 2011

It’s the day before school starts and apparently it is also the day of full crew construction to replace our street in our subdivision.  If I was the bus driver I would wonder the logic behind this sort of schedule.

They start at 7 am sharp jack hammering (not sure that is the technical term) the street, then scoop (know that cannot be the technical term for that) it up into a dump truck.

Then there is the piles to put in the new street.  Our tax dollars hard at work (and these workers really do work hard and get the job done). 

It is quite the operation, but you can see my point about the school bus.

After dinner we headed out for our last official summer night before it all starts happening….school, PSR, girl scouts, soccer, dance, swim lessons, gymnastic lessons, homework, field trips, sharing bag, early dismissals, parent teacher conferences, holiday classroom parties….

Seriously, where did the summer go?  I feel like we just got rid of the cicadas.

And boy did we have them in our neighborhood.

 

Oh well, ready or not, here we go!  2011-2012 school year it is then.

August 14th, 2011

Tomatoes from the garden can be odd looking.

But they sure are a delicious treat. 

Trent was leaving to go out of town, so I decided to have my parents and Grandpa Coco over for dinner.  Julie was also on her own for the night and joined in. 

I made a lasagna with Bolognese and béchamel sauce. 

 

Along with the tomato salad, I made a spinach salad and bread.

Balsamic, garlic, olive oil, and herb dipping sauce for the bread.

And a cherry raspberry pie for dessert (served a la mode!).

It was a fun family dinner and I made sure to save some leftovers for Trent.

August 5th, 2011

I am having a huge fight with snapfish right now.  After 2 calls to customer service the problem is still not being fixed.  All I want to do is upload pictures, which is really the essence of snapfish.  No uploady for me, no credit card purchases for them.  The recommendations have been clearing cookies and changing my browser (and why do I want to change my browser to Mozilla just for an online photo album website?).  The last recommendation from the customer service was…..wait for it….try again tomorrow, maybe it will work.  Hmpf.  So my options are either throwing my computer out of the window (which actually would make me feel better for a second until I realize I need a new laptop and a new window….and snapfish probably wouldn’t work on the new laptop either), being snarky and obnoxious to the customer service representative number 3 (but english is their second language, so my snarkiness probably would not translate the exact way I want it to), or take their dumb advice and wait until tomorrow.  Until then, I pout and procrastinate cleaning the bathrooms with a blog.  But I’m still bitter, if you haven’t noticed.  I mean really, all I want to do is cross “upload July pictures onto snapfish” off my to do list. 

So the garden is doing good and not so good (I promise I’m not continuing with my bad mood, I’m just being honest).  This summer has been hot and dry, super dry.  I don’t tend to water the garden alot, just in really dry and hot patches.  Well the hot and dry patches would be the whole summer, so I’ve been watering at least once a week and in the middle of July, more like 2-3 times a week.  I don’t water the perennials, it’s a survival of the fittest as far as they are concerned (unless I just planted them).  But container plants, annuals, and vegetables are fair game for turns with the hose.  I’ve actually been able to harvest some stuff. 

The potatoes have done really well due to the wet and cool spring.  I still have quite a bit to harvest and have many meals made from them, as well as giving them away to friends and family.

Potatoes, onions, basil and tomatoes ready to go!

Also red peppers and more onions.  And these onions ain’t playin’.  Not only do they make my eyes water, my nose run, but also their juice is worse than lemon in any cut on my hand.  That said, they are delicious.

My biggest feat this year in the garden is our sunflowers.  They. are. massive.

We also have some “dwarf” sunflowers by our front light.  I was thinking they would be knee high or something.

They are taller than our front light.  This picture was taken from inside.  The yellow finches have been going nuts on all the sunflowers, the girls and I have so much fun watching them eat from our playroom window. 

There are four at one time in this picture.  Can you find them?

Virgin “dwarf” sunflower.

Finch attacked “dwarf” sunflower.

We have about 6 brussel sprout plants.  We are going to be eating our weight in brussel sprouts soon.

The big disappointment is the tomatoes.  I have nowhere near the amount I had last year at this time, exponentially less.  But here’s hoping for a good fall full of tomato action.

I’m still bitter about snapfish, but a little less.  Thank you.

August 2nd, 2011

This was the sandwich Trent had our second day in Duluth for lunch.  It was a pulled bison cuban sandwich.  Our good friend, Ryan, felt like this would be a mighty tasty meal.  I decided to try to recreate it for him and have him and Kevin over for dinner.  I ordered a bison shoulder roast from Whole Foods to take on the challenge.  And I’ve got to say, I felt fancy pre-ordering meat from Whole Foods.  I had a pow wow with Anna, the butcher, and she knew exactly what I wanted to do and walked me through it.  I picked up my bison the day before (and of course other things, I simply cannot walk into Whole Foods, grab something, and leave….I linger, which tends to scare the debit card).  The morning of, I prepared the bison in the slow cooker much like you would do pulled pork.  Kinda like this method, but you can adjust spices, sauces, and seasonings to your taste.  I put in some yellow mustard, chicken stock, bbq sauce, salt, pepper, garlic, ketchup, and pickle juice.  I did the yellow mustard and pickle juice since they are common condiments to a cuban sandwich.  I cooked the bison all day on low in the slow cooker.  Then I took out the meat and shredded it with two forks.  It was very tender and easy to do.

I wanted to add back some of the sauce to make the meat….well saucy.  But I didn’t want to add back the grease.  I don’t have one of those fat separator measuring cup thingys, but I’ve heard this trick works good.  Turns out, it does.

I put some of the sauce from the crockpot in a plastic ziploc, let it rest in a glass for a couple minutes.  Fat floated to the top.  So I took a pair of scissors and snipped a small (this adjective is very important in this method) corner at the bottom of the bag and the non-fat part of the sauce poured into the meat and I closed it with my fingers when I felt it was enough sauce.  Please trust me that it’s impossible to do this and take pictures at the same time.  I had to concentrate people.  Hot liquid, scissors, and possible fat juice getting on my labor intensive special ordered meat.  The stakes were too high.  I also added about a teaspoon of cumin to the meat to make it cubany tasting.

While I assembled the cuban sandwiches in the panini press, the men and kiddos nibbled on an appetizer I put together from ingredients I picked up at Whole Foods.  Sharp cheddar cheese with fig jam and garlic crostinis.  So simple and quite yummy.

I made the cuban sandwiches exactly like Bobby Flay's (bread, yellow mustard, swiss cheese, and dill pickles toasted in the panini press).  But I did the meat the slow cooker way and did not make my own pickles.  A lady has to draw the line somewhere.

Kevin had to help me with the panini press, every time I would pull down to smoosh and cook them, they would slide.  Kevin positioned them, held them in place with a knife, while I pulled down with gusto to get those guys ooey gooey.  It was very scientific.  If I would have asked Trent to help, I guarantee you he would want to incorporate a bungee cord.  He loves a solution that includes a bungee cord.  But in this case, a person holding a knife was better.

For dessert I made a flourless chocolate cake recipe that Michelle gave me.  It’s incredible.  It’s a great dessert if you have celiac disease or an allergy to gluten that doesn’t involve chick pea or tapioca flour purchasing.  This recipe is a keeper!

That is all.

July 27th, 2011

Mother Nature was not kind while we were in Minnesota.  It was stifling hot in St. Louis and absolutely no rain…for weeks.  So the weeds overtook the garden and the vegetables were not pleased.  But also while we were gone, the potatoes presented themselves ready for harvesting. 

 

See, I wasn’t kidding about the weeds.  They are trying to become the majority in the garden.  But I like to keep them at about 3-5% minority. 

Now those are some fine looking spuds!

I decided on mashed potatoes (mostly because it’s that or french fries if I want the kids to eat them).  I served it with roasted chicken and mixed green salad with roasted corn and asparagus.

The dinner bell has rung!

July 22nd, 2011

Last year Kirk and Sally treated Michelle, Jon, Caleb, Trent and I to a guide assisted trip into the Boundary Waters.  We went with Rob who is the proprietor of Ely Fishing Guide Company again.  I knew what to expect this year and was very excited for our fishing adventure.  We met Rob at the Timbertrail Lodge at 7:00 am sharp.  We then drove to a lake, put the boats in said lake, drove the boats across the lake, portage the boats through an island, drove the boats through another lake, portage the boats across an island, then presto, you’re in the boundary waters.  We had another guide, Mike, with us this year to help with the second boat.  Having another person made the portages much easier.  Once we were in the boundary waters, there was fish to be caught.

Caleb caught quite a bit of good sized walleye.  I think he caught 6 total and Rob deemed him Caleb Walleye.  Caleb actually pulled this walleye out of the water, but Rob had them put the fish back in the net for the above action shots.  Me likey.

Michelle thought she got her fishing line stuck on the bottom of the lake.  It happens.

Boy was she wrong.  She caught a 28 inch walleye.  Fish that size you should let go, it helps the fish population.

So we let her go.

The fish we ended up keeping.  This is not including the fish we let go because they were either too big or too small.  Apparently it’s a story much like that of goldilocks, we wanted the fish that were just right.

We then headed to an island to clean the fish (a job that Mike took) and have a shore lunch.

Rob cooking and Mike cleaning.  A girl could get used to this.

Caleb and Jonathan discovered this huge prehistoric looking snapping turtle.  What do you do when you find one of these things on shore?

Feed it some fish guts.

Rob’s delicious shore lunch! 

Fantastic day in the boundary waters.  Thank you for being so pretty and hosting so much wildlife.