Flying Ty’s

Tying fly’s or as Samantha calls it “flying ty’s” (and she calls me dyslexic!) has presented itself as a possible new hobby for us, or at least Samantha.  We attended our first fly tying lesson(on our anniversary, such a cool wife!), going in hand with our recent immersion into fly fishing.  It was shockingly fun; which could have been attributed to the good company, beer drinking, jokes, instructors, and/or a sense of accomplishment.  I can maybe see why old lady’s like to have knitting parties, and if they are anything like this I might enjoy that too….maybe that’s my next calling.

We tied two fly’s, a woolly bugger and a clouser which are apparently two of the best fly’s around and provide the backbone of how to tie basically any fly.  Thanks to Scott and Paul at Lowcountry Fly Shop for hosting such a fun knitting party.  Now go fly some ty’s!

Back at It

Reviving some motivation that has dwindled the last couple years, it seemed an appropriate time to try and start writing again.  (We’ll see how long it lasts!) Plus Samantha and I have been having some excellent adventures, which would be good to share and document.

Impromptu Party

Friday night we met a couple friends for tacos and corona’s at Zorro’s, our favorite local joint.  We wanted another beer, but after waiting forever, we eventually decided to have another back at our house and just asked for our check when finally asked.  Waiting again for our check to no avail, we guesstimated our bill and left cash with a $1 tip.  At the house we cracked some PBR’s and before darkness even hit we were having an impromptu neighborhood party.  PBR’s turned into Brandy, Port, and expensive wine…..the fun escalated quickly, too quickly for me as I soon lost my tacos and was put to bed.  Samantha, my party animal, kept things going late into the night.  The craziness and unexpectedness of the party made it seem like a dream.  At least until I fully woke up and was t-boned by the hangover train.  The party animal of course felt fine, which was good because I needed some serious care.  Events that direct or re-direct the course of our lives occur all the time, but are often slight and unrealized as having a significant impact.  Our crappy server re-directed me to an all-day hangover.

AMWALK

Last night prior to falling asleep, I was struck by the notion of downloading a new alarm clock app to my phone.  Lately, getting out of bed in the morning has been a problem for me.  When the alarm goes off, I nudge Samantha enough to get her up, and then I fall back to sleep, slowly waking after she turns on the lights* and starts making a racket getting ready.  (*The light is like a laser beam through my eyelids, forcing me to take cover under the comforter.  The laser damage is irreversible though and waking up is inevitable.)  I thought maybe a sweet new app would magically wake me up and I would have the motivation to do an amwalk.  The new app, AlarmDroid, has many settings and alarm sounds.  I chose a gradual wakeup to a mellow song.  The alarm was so gradual I didn’t hear a thing, but Samantha did.  She nudged me to turn it off and I awoke startled and confused.  Finally gaining my senses I figured out how to turn it off and realized the motivation to do an amwalk was there, so I bugged Samantha(to her slight dismay) enough to join me.  Was it the magic of a new alarm or the confusion of a new alarm that woke me up??  Time will tell.

Babies are Cute.

This is why you don’t swear in front of kids…

You Tube

Pea Dumplings

Last night I  made pea dumplings.  I know, I know, it probably doesn’t sound that appealing…but it was pretty good.  I like trying new things, and knowing that David will eat anything that I put in front of his face, makes it very easy for me to experiment in the kitchen.  So on with the pea dumplings.  I started out by making the dumpling dough.

To make the dough you will need:

• 4 cups flour
• 1.5 cups warm water
• 1 t salt
• 1 T sesame oil (if you don’t have this, you can use vegetable oil)
• 1 T vegetable oil

Combine the warm water, salt, and oils into a bowl.  Mix until the salt dissolves.  Stir in the flour.  You want the dough to look dry, you may need to add more water.  You do not want the dough to be sticky, it should just barely be able to clump together in a ball.  Cover with saran wrap and set aside for 15 minutes.

I then proceeded to make the pea filling:

To make this you will need:

• 2 cups of cooked peas (I just used the frozen peas that you can cook in the bag)
• 2/3 cup of cottage cheese
• 1/3 cup of shredded parmesan cheese
• 1 T sesame oil
• 1 T olive oil
• 1/2 t sea salt
• 1 T lemon juice

Combine your cooked peas, cottage cheese, sesame oil, olive oil, and sea salt in a blender (our recently broke after trying to make a huge batch of hummus, so I used our magic bullet).  Blend until smooth.  Place into a bowl and add parmesan cheese and lemon juice.

Making the dumplings:

You can now go back to the dough.  Get out a rolling pin, flour your work surface, place 1/3rd of the dough on it and proceed to roll out.  I have not rolled out dough very many times in my life and therefore was not very successful at getting it as thin as I would have liked, but oh well.  Practice makes perfect right?  As you can see I was experimenting with the size the dumplings should be.  I ended up going with the “coffee mug” size.

Scoop the filling onto the dough and close.  I ended up stretching the dough quite a bit in order to get the dumplings to close properly and had to take out some of the filling in the first batch attempted.

There is a delicious soy-ginger sauce that goes very well with these:

• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 T lemon juice
• 1 t sesame oil
• 1/2 t ground ginger

You then cook them in the oven at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes.  Or you can fry them in a pan with oil.

I forgot to take a picture of the end result, woops.  But I am sure you have all seen dumplings…..  A couple of them popped open while cooking, so be sure to adequately close them to avoid this.  Next time I attempt to make dumplings I am going to try a meat filling of some sort and will pan fry them.

Recipe adapted from WhiteOnRiceCouple.

Cooking Blogs

So the other day at work I came to the conclusion that I needed to start reading cooking blogs.  I googled some of the more popular blogs, and went a little crazy.  I have 11 different cooking blogs on my favorite list.  I have really been into cooking lately, I think it’s due to the clean diet.  Every night I had to prepare our meals for the next day.  It was fun preparing new types of food.  I had never made wild rice or quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) prior to this diet.  Two new food items that David and I have decided to add to our list of regulars.  Quinoa reminds me of cous-cous, but better.  You can basically substitute it for rice in any meal.  The blog that I have really started to love is http://www.joythebaker.com/blog/ .  Check it out when you get a chance.  Well today I made her recipe for “Peanut Butter Banana Bread.”  I mean why didn’t I think of that, peanut butter is delicious (one of my favorite foods), and Banana Bread is delicious….and bananas taste good with peanut butter.  Ding ding ding ding ding, why not put peanut butter in banana bread?!?!  While it was baking the smell of peanut butter and bananas took over our house.  It made our mouths water.  The peanut butter actually takes the edge off of the banana-e flavor in banana bread.

Whenever I make banana bread I remember a story of when my mom made it when I was little.  I’m not going to lie, the thought of putting bananas into bread was not appealing for me when I was little.  I must have been with my mom when she was making the banana muffins, because I knew that there was no way I was going to eat them, I mean come on, there’s bananas in it, yuck!  Well Alanna must not have been around when this was going down, because I remember walking into our dining room when she was eating one.  I asked her, “how’s the muffin?” and she replied, “it’s really good.”  I then asked her, so…do you know what kind of muffin that is? (I couldn’t believe that she was brave enough to eat it, so I had to ask if she knew what she was eating)  Alanna replied, “um…duh it’s a regular plain muffin.”  I quickly informed her that no, it was a banana bread muffin.  Of course she didn’t believe me at first…I think she may have even asked my mom what kind of muffin they were.  As soon as she realized that it was, in fact, a banana bread muffin, she pushed the muffin away with a disgusted look on her face like yuck I can’t believe I was eating that.  But we are both grown up now and love banana bread.

Here are some baking pictures of the peanut butter banana bread.  If you are interested in trying it, you can find the recipe here: http://www.joythebaker.com/blog/2011/02/peanut-butter-banana-bread/



 

Clean Diet Update

I am sure you are wondering how long we made it on the “Clean” diet, the answer is 14 days.  We were supposed to do it for 21 days, but couldn’t resist the urge to have a cold one and tacos at our favorite restaurant Zorro’s.  It was a pretty stressful week at work too, which didn’t help matters.  Well the diet is over, and we would definitely recommend it to others.  It has made us healthier eaters, for how long, who knows.  David tried to resist having coffee, but caved due to my lack of restraint.  I dove back into the coffee love the day after we decided to quite.  Currently we are planning on trying the diet again, maybe when we move.  And, no we do not know where we are going to end up next.  There are rumors that we have been short-listed on a job in Eagle and Boulder, CO.  We are really hoping they put us on the Eagle job, but are not holding our breaths.  We will be happy wherever we end up, well….as long as they don’t split us up.