Crawfish adventures...

Yesterday we went fishing with some friends. We loaded up their Trail Blazer and headed for Strawberry Reservoir. We were only slightly concerned about weather conditions justifying our excursion by saying that the overcast weather would help the fishing and it would be totally worth a few raindrops on us. Once we found a spot we drug all of our gear down the hill and started to make the fire... and continued to try to make a fire. The wind was blowing so fiercely that we all had to huddle around our little pile of sticks to keep the wind from blowing our little fire out before it grew big enough to handle that much wind. Needless to say we were cold for a while. Once we got the fire started I began roasting the hot dogs we had brought for lunch while Dave strung up his rod and had a round of unfruitful casting. Bradley was off to investigate every inch of the new area and see just how much trouble he could get into since mom was busy with the fire. We had a wet lunch given that as soon as I cooked the first round of hot dogs the clouds fell open and dumped right on us. I was beginning to think 5pm couldn't come soon enough. The weather calmed down a little bit later and since there was still no fish to speak of, Dave suggested that I tie a piece of hot dog on a line and see if we could catch some crawfish. I did as I was instructed thinking that it was the most ludicrous thing I had ever heard. I sat on the edge of a rock watching to see if I could see a fish or something swim by when suddenly I saw a shadow moving quickly across the rocks a little ways under the water. "Hey!" I called, "I think I see one!" Dave came running over and confirmed my suspicion. By then there were two of them and being the impatient person that I am (and not wanting to ruin a piece of hot dog if I didn't have to) ran over to get the fish net we had brought. I balanced myself on a dry rock by where the crawfish was crawling and reached out as far as I could without falling in. It wasn't quite far enough. The water was deceptively deeper than I thought so I had a decision to make. Either wait for it to get closer or step down into ankle deep, freezing water. Now this is our dinner we are talking about here. Not just some creature I wanted to poke. We had gone out to get dinner and no one else seemed to be having any luck so I made my decision. I stepped into the water as smoothly as I could and I ever so slowly glided the net over the crawfish. As I pulled the net up from the rocky bottom of the lake I couldn't believe what was in my net! One medium sized crawfish clung to the fishing net probably a little more shocked than I was. I ran him over to the cooler and dropped him in as quickly as I could so I could go scout some more. About 3 hours later we had 4 pieces of hot dog out on different lines in a few areas of the lake and I was scooping them out of the water every 15 minutes or so. As we were packing up there was a whole slew of them coming out to eat and I was able to come home with 16 in total!! We didn't catch anything else that day but with soaking wet clothes and my lucky net I was able to bring home the bacon (or in this case the crawfish). That was enough for my ego! I came home and started looking up recipes for what to do with them. Normally when you get 16 of something it's a pretty good meal. However, with crawfish you don't get that lucky. After boiling them with some spices and veggies I peeled them and barely got 2oz of meat out of them. My poor little ego shrank in embarrassment. We will be eating my spoils tonight with dinner instead of as dinner.
Not to fret though for I will be out there again very soon and this time I will bring home enough bacon (crawfish) to feed the whole family!!

Costco is domesticating me!

This past week Dave was able to get a discount on a Costco membership through DSA. We decided that even if we didn't have the money to go there for groceries all the time, it would be worth it to get the membership for the gas. Lately it's been all doom and gloom about the economy, gas, and all other things financial. I get it. People are scared, and it's better to be paranoid and prepared than ignorant and helpless. So we went to Costco last weekend and picked up some groceries since we had some extra money from our tax return. Costco also gave us a cookbook for signing up. I thumbed through it for two days, drooling over every picture. I have a soft spot for cookbooks. I get so excited just holding one in my hand. Yes, you can get a lot of the recipes online and there are tons of websites that are very helpful no matter what skill level you are cooking. I just don't get the same feeling from a website that I do when I am scouring pages in a cookbook. It feels like I am sitting in their kitchen talking with them about these recipes. Whomever "they" may be. I just love it. I could only hope to come up with enough of my own recipes that are worth publishing. I'm on my way though. With our Costco membership we have decided to expand my repertoire. Twice a month I will be experimenting with new ingredients. This time was a bag of frozen seafood. I saw it and immediately became enamored with the idea of a seafood medley alfredo. I love seafood. I ache for seafood at certain times of the year and the bag that I bought is enough to do three different dinners. Here is my first:


I used a simple alfredo recipe that only took about 20 minutes from start to finish. Added that to some spaghetti noodles I had in the pantry, and steamed some broccoli. It came out delicious! Even Bradley has been asking for more days later. I haven't decided what to do with the rest of the bag of seafood, but if it comes out good, it will be on here.

While at Costco I also picked up a few "dream" items as I call them. You know what I'm talking about. The items that aren't necessary for existence but they make your existence worth living... like strawberries. I love strawberries! I found 4lbs of strawberries at Costco and try as I might I couldn't leave the store without them. Best decision I have made in the last month or so. I have strawberries to snack on, strawberries for baking, strawberries for cereal and best of all... strawberries for pancakes with freshed whipped cream made by yours truly.


By the way, I make the best whipped cream on Earth! Not gloating... just fact. :)

I also made some rhubarb hand pies this past week that came out pretty good. It was the first time I had ever attempted anything like this. I got the recipe from a link to Kitchen Confidant on foodgawker.com. Best website ever by the way. Mine don't look nearly as good as hers, but I was pretty proud of my first attempt.



That is what I have been up to for the past week or so. I've spent more time in the kitchen lately than I ever have before and I couldn't be happier. Bradley loves coming and helping as well. Especially when it's tasting time. :) I hope that Bradley will remember these times and will be able to look back and smile.

2011 in a word...

This year seems to be cruising by, don't you think? I mean where did February go? It's the last day!! At least I have something to show for it this year. Two weekends ago we decided to tackle a pretty gigantic problem area of our house... the basement. The laundry room in particular. It has been our "out of sight out of mind" area pretty much since we moved into the house. We had so much stuff in there that it was starting to overflow into where I actually do the laundry. So we left all reasoning behind and decided to tackle it. Nine hours and eight garbage bags later we had defeated the mess! We threw away a lot of junk and gave some of the stuff to DI. My laundry room is HUGE!!! And everything we kept is nicely organized and we have extra tubs to continue storing things in. I am so proud of us!

Dave decided that he wanted our big screen tv on the main floor and the smaller tv in the basement. I told him that if he was going to move the tvs I wanted the basement cleaned up and organized. So he went to town. He rearranged the basement so we can all do our desired projects (crafting, music, tv, reading, etc.) while still keeping an eye on Bradley. It is so open and spacious now! I took the next day organizing all of my craft stuff and let me tell you I have quite a bit. Everything has a place now and I love it!! Here are some pictures of my craft area...



I papered the little boxes on the wall next to the window so they could be pretty while they hold some handy craft supplies. It was my first craft project with my new area. It worked out wonderfully!



My wonderful husband brought home a big box to hold all of my magazines. For the record I have 101 magazines that are now all cataloged and categorized. Sooo happy!!


In other news I have a few food pics to post as well. I have been slacking on cooking new foods. But I have done a few things here and there. Most of them were eaten before I could get a picture. Having two boys in the house is like having a pack of wolves nipping at your ankles every five minutes when food is being prepared. Not to mention WRX is a food fanatic. She ran off with a piece of raw chicken the other day.
It was ridiculous. So here are a few that I have been able to catch before they were devoured...



This is a chicken caesar salad that I threw together last month. The bowl that it's in is one that Dave did for me at Color Me Mine on our 1st wedding anniversary. Sweet isn't it? The salad was amazing and surprisingly filling with the chicken.




Now I've never been one for soup. I don't like slurping my food. Now there is a cure for that... BREAD BOWLS!! Bread bowls make everything amazing. I have done sourdough bowls and french bread bowls. I've made taco soup, clam chowder and I also did the spinach dip for the super bowl in a bread bowl. If you ever get bored of just soup and crackers, I highly recommend shaking it up with a bread bowls.

So here's to next month! Maybe I can get around to experimenting so more in March!

PS. The word for 2011 is ORGANIZED, and I love it!!

Super Bowl 2011

This year for the Super Bowl Dominique and I decided to go all out for the menu. We had an almost proper 3 course meal. (That ended up as more like a 6 course meal.) We started planning said menu about four weeks in advance, and broke the shopping list up so we were both spending about the same for groceries. Our menu consisted of the following: Stuffed jalapeños wrapped in bacon, spinach dip in a homemade sourdough bread bowl, shrimp dip, and homemade onion rings for the appetizers. For the main course we had bacon wrapped chicken strips with homemade BBQ sauce, homemade sweet chili in mini sourdough bread bowls, and asian peanut slaw. Dessert was white chocolate covered pretzels and Dominique's dad was bringing cheesecake. Needless to say, we had WAY too much food for the six of us. I figured we could pace ourselves and get through the food.... Boy was I wrong. We brought home so much food! It took us three days AFTER the Super Bowl to eat it all! At least the Packers won. Though that was little comfort for the tummy ache we all had for the next week. Here are some pictures we took of the food before it was attacked by the boys.




Dominique and I have decided that since we overdid ourselves this year, we will be using a much simpler menu next year - Pizza and wings. Because no one should have to be up until 3am prepping food to then stand in the kitchen for 4.5 hours to cook it. It was pretty delicious though. Maybe I'll do this menu again in a few years.

This week has been pretty crazy. I thought that last week would have been the week that I pull my hair out. What with Dave's birthday on Monday and then Bradley's birthday AND the Iron Dickson Cooking Competition on Saturday. The amount of to dos was never-ending! Monday we had plenty of getting out and checking items off the "out of house" checklist. It was long and painful but we got through it. Frankly the rest of the week is a blur of monotony. Saturday came bright and early with Bradley opening his door and saying, "Hello? It's my birthday!" We let him eat cereal and watch a movie that he picked out for his birthday. I love that he is still young enough that it is a treat to pick out a movie and cereal. It makes my job a little easier. I was running around so much trying to get the house clean and organized for the competition that I didn't get to sit down and watch it with him. Before long (definitely before I was ready) it was 3:30pm and it was time to put the cleaning supplies down and move away from the kitchen. I ran upstairs and got myself presentable. Everyone filed in around 4pm and we all hung out for a bit and got cozy. The competition kicked off around 4:10 with an opening ceremony including "pre-fight doughnuts" for everyone. Then another 2 1/2 hours of blur. Here is my dish:



I made apple cornbread and southern fried apples. The secret ingredient was apples, if you couldn't tell. All of the dishes were amazing and my house smelled incredible through the next day. Lisa is compiling all of the videos that Dave took during the competition and putting the together in a video. Hopefully it went well enough that we can continue to do this on a fairly regular basis and maybe we will have our own mini tv series!

In the apple spirit, Shayla brought "Apples to Apples". It's a vocabulary card game. It was sooo much fun! I thought we were all going to kill over from laughter! It was the best!

On a side note, I made the birthday cake for all of the January birthdays. We have made carrot cake the traditional January birthday cake since Bradley turned two. We learned the hard, carb-overloaded way not to have a birthday cake for each birthday in January. Dave and Bradley are five days apart and I have tell you.... You CANNOT eat a whole birthday cake in time to eat another one five days later! We have tried it a few different ways. A cookie cake for one and a regular cake for the other, a pie for one and cake for the other, etc. We decided that it was in our best interest to just make one for the two birthdays and we just have it on Bradley's birthday. This year I decided to play with my recipe a little. We bought a coconut for Bradley to try so I used some of the coconut milk in the cake batter and I baked coconut flakes into the bottom of the cake. Of course when I had to take it out to ice it the coconut flakes were on top but I think it was still pretty good. I made my own cream cheese icing and was pretty proud of it.

Everything went pretty smoothly that day and I was very impressed with everyone's dishes. Plus my cake was THE BOMB! I was a bit nervous about it but I will definitely make that one again!! Bradley had a wonderful birthday! Thanks to everyone who made it happen!!

Where's the fluff setting on this thing?

We have a fairly good schedule for our morning routine at the moment. I say at the moment because we have a problem keeping schedules. We have tried and tried over the past 5 years to make and keep to an orderly schedule. Something always seems to come up. We have an early morning or a really late night and can't seem to pull ourselves out of bed at the right time. I say "we" but it's usually me. I'm sure most of you know that once you slip or stray from your routine just once -even if you have a REALLY good excuse- you suddenly realize how good your bed feels and covers are just right and well just this once you want to stay in bed for another 10 minutes.... Well, there goes your routine. Yep, did you see that ghost-like figure fly out your window just now? That was your sanity. He didn't want to hang around for all the mayhem that is about to ensue from that 10 minute deviation. Now you are 10 minutes behind schedule (20 minutes if you are like me and took your sweet time pulling yourself out of bed and getting dressed) and you race around like a crazy person all day trying to get that 10-20 minutes back. Good Luck!

That is exactly how my day started on Tuesday. We have had a pretty good schedule since about half way through December. So it lasted almost a month. That's a pretty good record for us during the winter season! As I was saying.... Tuesday started out 20 minutes behind schedule but hey no big deal, right?! I got my list of to do's and headed downstairs. MAKE BREAKFAST...check! OPEN BLINDS...check! UNLOAD DISHWASHER.......



It took about another 20 minutes to coax her OUT of the dishwasher. Needless to say, my day never got back on track and one day I hope to find the time-space continuum that fixes this routine problem.

The Saturday Concoction

Today's adventure began when I loaded my dishwasher and thought to myself, "Hmm I don't have enough dishes to start a load yet, what can I do about this conundrum?" Within about 30 minutes and with the help of some facebook friends, I had a rough idea of what I was going to do with my day.
I successfully baked my first pie (peach) about a week ago and I'm still getting over the ego boost from it. Thus, mini apple pies were born.



Dave is going to a LAN party tonight at a friend's house so I thought they would make fun little treats for them to eat with their pizza. It didn't come out quite how I envisioned them, but I don't think they are bad for a first try. As I become more familiar with pie dough I will start being more creative. Plus, all I had to make the mini versions was a cupcake tin. Next time I make these I would like to have a tart tin. We shall see. I think they taste pretty good, which IS the main point of food, right? I should have brushed the tops with butter or egg yolks but they work just fine like this.

This is the first time I have ever "posed" food for it's photograph. So, don't laugh... yeah, okay you can laugh. I don't have much space or lighting so I did the best I could. My neighbor has a studio in his basement, but he is not here at the moment so I used what I had. I thought the block of wood was a nice touch. What do you think?