I Remembered to Fertilize the Rose Bushes

Hi Kat. Happy Spring.

Yummy . . .

If anyone knows me, they know I watch FoodTV. It's the first channel I go to when I turn on the set. Yesterday, Natalie and I sat down to a show of Ham on the Street. The host of the show, George Duran, is continually challenging tradition with his "outside the box" recipes. This particular show he tried convincing his viewers that any choice of bread, cheese, and jelly would make a good tasting grilled sandwich by playing his invented game grilled cheese and jelly lotto where he had three tumbling machines full of lotto balls; one with balls listing different types of bread, one with cheeses and one with jellies. Passersby were asked to choose lotto balls from each machine, then George cooked them up a sandwich with the ingredients chosen. You can check out the FoodTV site to see the list of ingredients on the balls he had in his lotto machines. There was a rye, havarti and apricot sandwich made, a challah, brie and strawberry and a whole wheat, bleu cheese and hot pepper jelly during the show and the passersby were each thrilled with their uniquely different sandwich. So, today we tried our own version of the grilled cheese and jelly sandwich. We made swiss apricot, American strawberry, swiss strawberry and American apricot all on whole wheat. We all tried them and everyone said, "Mmmm good".

See for yourself, make one today.

No. 5

Robert Ernest Rice

John and I traveled to Minnesota last Tuesday. His grandfather, Robert Ernest Rice, died early Saturday morning after 98 years of joyous living. We went to join in celebrating his life, mourning our loss and catching up with family. We returned home Thursday afternoon.




Until we meet again, Grandpa Bob, in God's Kingdom.

This One Is For Erin

This one is for Erin. I was inspired when she told me she was remodeling her Airstream kitchen in turquoise.




Have fun in Florida Erin.

Black Bean Soup

Mary Anne from work gave me this recipe. It's easy and delicious.
Thanks Mary Anne!

Black Bean and Salsa Soup

Ingredients:
2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can vegetable broth (chicken will work too)
1 cup chunky salsa
1 cup corn (fresh, frozen or canned will work)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
maybe a little garlic
sour cream
green onion



Combine beans, broth, salsa and cumin. Blend until fairly smooth (I used a stick blender right in the pot, but a regular blender or food processor will work). Add corn, heat through. Ladle into bowls. Garnish with sour cream, chopped green onion and salsa if any is leftover.

TA-DA! I served mine with corn chips and sliced avocado. Yum!


Enjoy!

Are You Wearing Your Green Today?

No. 3

I'm obsessed.


This is the third and last designer dishcloth pattern out of the little pattern book I've been using. This pattern is knit 3 purl 1 to the end of the row, knit a row, repeat until the desired length is achieved.

Designer Dishcloth No. 2

This one is a knit 1 purl 1 pattern row after row.

My New Favorite Drink

Last summer my favorite drink was Red Bull. Last week my favorite drink was GT's Multi Green Kombucha. This week my favorite drink is Sparkling Blueberry Juice from Trader Joe's.



Mmmmm . . . blueberry juice . . .

Designer Dishcloth

I knitted a designer dishcloth this weekend. It actually has a pattern.


I purled and knitted. I even picked up a dropped stitch three rows down.

Isn't it cute?



I'm going to wash dishes now.

It Rained Today

Finally!

And Finally . . .

Happy St. Valentine Day!

Another Update

One of these weekends not too long ago I cut my hair off. Here's my new look.



Hi.

Last Weekend

Friday night Kevin went to yet another junior high school dance, the King of Hearts Dance. Natalie was going to go too, but she got a better offer and went to play board games with her friend Sarah.

Saturday morning Kevin had a solo ensemble at Music Festival Day at Burroughs High School. He played a percussion selection solo and received



an excellent rating. Very proud moment. It nearly brought tears to my eyes. Also on Saturday morning we took Natalie to community league softball tryouts. She's planning on playing on the same team as her friend Jhonnette. The afternoon was spent watching a movie called Millions about a kid who finds a very large sack of money and thinks it's a gift from God and proceeds to give it away to poor people while his brother tries to convince him instead to spend it all.

Saturday night was spent oohing and ahhing over Brent


before he went off to the High School Sweetheart Dance.


Here's one of Brent and his date Lara. Cute.

On Saturday night we watched another movie; this one was called Riding Giants. It's a documentary about big waves and the surfers who ride them.

Sunday morning we went to church. I spent the rest of the day feeding the family, shopping for food and getting ready to go to the Valentine Banquet at the church. I made chicken ceasar salad and brought it as a main dish.

The Next Thing

We recently created an office area in our living room. It was long over due. John was able to finally empty out his closet of all things computer; the printer, the scanner, the DVD burner, the power CD burner and the CD printer. It also has plenty of room for books and stuff too. Everyone is getting good use out of it.


If you look closely you 'll even see Kat using it.

Now

I'm going to update my blog RIGHT NOW . . . beginning with Saturday afternoon January 27th 2007. Here is a picture of John.

He and I dedicated the afternoon to learning the use our new pressure canner. I made yummy lentil soup and he canned it. It was fantastic. We also cleaned out the garage so we'd have room for canning overflow. We still have one quart sized can/jar of that first batch of lentil soup ready to consume for up to a year from now. There is also a video of that afternoon on YouTube featuring John, Natalie and Kevin. Check it out. Now.

Thanks Mom!

Keurig is here!

I love our new Keurig Premium Coffee System. It's a single cup brewing system that is "Simply Delicious".



It makes single cups of coffee in seconds. Hot water too!

Everyone should have one.

Seriously.

I Only Fell Twice

John and I went skiing on June Mountain over the weekend. We didn't bring the camera, but John took some video with his phone. See it HERE.





These pictures of us are from last year, but the day was pretty much the same except this year there was less snow, I was wearing a white hat instead of a pink one and John did not wear sunglasses this year.

Happy New Year!

For Brent's birthday we took a trip into Los Angeles mostly to ride the Metro. The original plan was to get on the train at North Hollywood and take it to Union Station, see Olvera Street, have lunch at Philippe's, browse Chinatown, ride the train to Pershing Square to ride Angel's Flight, then take the Metro to Universal City Walk to have dinner at Hard Rock Cafe Hollywood; oh, and see a movie. We were only stymied twice. Angel's Flight was out of commission and Hard Rock Cafe was having a private party. Only slight set backs.

We did leave from North Hollywood to take the train into Union Station, we briefly browsed Olvera Street and we did have lunch at Philippe's. We shopped Chinatown, Natalie and I bought some little souvenirs. From Chinatown we rode the train to Pershing Square to find out Angel's Flight was out of commission. We walked up the steps instead. We stopped at Starbucks for refreshments and then went on our way to see what we could see. We discovered Frank Gieri's Walt Disney Music Hall; touched the side of it. We furthered onto the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion where Kevin "directed" the fountain water up and down out of the patio while the rest of us watched. From there we walked to the next nearest Metro stop, Civic Center, and took the train to Universal City as planned.



Universal City was visited only after we stopped at Hollywood and Highland. The Hollywood everyone visits when they visit Los Angeles. There the first thing we saw was Jackie Chan's star. The next thing we saw were street performers dressed up as everything from gold shiny mimes, to Star Wars characters, to SpongeBob, Tigger and Disney's Little Mermaid. From there we walked the block or so to Gruamann's Chinese Theatre where we saw those famous hand and foot prints. The most impressive impressions we witnessed were those of Johnny Depp. I suppose because he's hot right now. The Hollywood sign was close by so we walked through and up the escalators of the new outdoor mall to get a glimpse. And that we did. What a clear day.



Universal City was our next stop. That is when we discovered the Hard Rock Cafe was closed for a private party. We had pizza instead. We were able to pick up some guitar picks for Brent as a souvenir from the Hard Rock Cafe. Even though the restaurant was closed the gift shop was still open. We then perused the many shops until it was movie time. We chose to see Night at the Museum on the IMAX screen. What a good movie. I'm a new Ben Stiller fan. It was a very fun ending to a very fun day.

Home again. Home again.



I'm a Jackie Chan fan.