Mole, mole mole mole. Chicken

My friend Morgan came over for dinner the other night. I made Mole Chicken. I was thinking that I would start posting recipes that I make online. I have seen a couple other people do this and it sounds like fun. So here it goes.

Mole Chicken - from memory!

2 chicken breasts (boneless is easy)
1 large onion
12 oz can of black beans
4 oz can of green chilies
mole paste
chicken broth
packet of taco of fajita seasoning (I like Lawreys)
2 avocado
2 tomatoes
cilantro
lime
rice (I use Basmati)
oil (olive is good)
cheddar cheese (optional)
sour cream (optional)

Start the rice first, I like to soak it for about an hour before hand and then boil it. Once it is mostly done (a little bit firm, but not crunchy) I drain it and wash it. Then it goes back into a non-stick pot with oil. I add a hand full of sliced cilantro, juice from half a lime and a little salt.

Put the black beans in a pot and simmer with 2 oz of the chillies.

Slice onion and then saute in oil till a little bit brown. Set aside. Slice chicken and put in frying pan or wok with oil. Add about a half a packet of the taco seasoning and cook chicken. For the mole, follow the directions on the paste. Usually you will add two or three Tbsp of mole and then three times as much water or chicken broth. Maybe one day I will come up with my own mole recipe, but not today. Once chicken is cooked, add mole sauce and reduce heat to simmer. Add onion and green chillies back to pan and a small hand full of cilantro. Simmer for 5 minutes or so, basically you need enough time to make your guacamole out of the avocado, cilantro and half a lime. Add salt and pepper to taste for the guac. I also like to put a little shredded cheddar in my guacamole.

Chop up your tomatoes.

Serve the chicken over rice with the black beans. Garnish with tomatoes, guacamole and sour cream and cheese(optional).

If I had been on the ball I would have taken a picture, but I am sure that I will make it again, because it was great. I will add a picture in then. Maybe next week.

Hurt myself again

Well, I play a lot of basketball. I usually play around 3-4 hours each week at noon on the WSU campus. It is a great time and splits my day up nicely as I can come in and work for 4 hours, play ball, and then work the rest of the day. I injured myself, sprained my ankle, yesterday. I normally don't get to up tight about getting injured, it is part of the game. If you are going to play sports than you are most likely going to hurt yourself at some point. But, that said, I am a little ticked about yesterday. To make a long story short, there are a couple of people that play completely out of control, I was at the receiving end of that yesterday and ended up getting hurt. Out of control people are really the only downside of playing.

Enough of that, I planted one of our trees yesterday. It looks nice in front of the house, it is an ornamental cherry, so it will have a lot of flowers. I also worked up our garden beds with the help of my friend Robert on Saturday. We managed to get five beds done in about 3 hours. I think that we are going to do some more though. Robert and Mike are also going to be doing some planting we us this summer. This will help us out quite a bit, sense they can take some of the burden of growing a garden off of ViviAnne and I.

Here is a pic of Vivi and Darius, both are very cute.

cheers,

justin

Hot Wedding in Seattle

This last weekend ViviAnne and I traveled to Seattle and Gig Harbor for my friends wedding. It was great. We started off by celebrating our friend Morgan's birthday. She road over with us on Wednesday night and we spent most of Thursday at the Bellevue Square Mall. After about 4 hours of dress shopping we had dinner at ViviAnne and my favorite Thai restaurant, The Chantanee Family Resturant. It was great, we were joined by many of our friends from home who where coming over for Andy and Jill's wedding. After dinner we went to a Mocha Bar on Capital Hill, Dilettante Mocha Bar. It was great, the rest of the friends meet up there and we visited and ate great deserts.

Friday brought us to Gig Harbor and to the wedding rehearsal and dinner. It was a nice time and it was great to see all of the people that I love to most. Saturday was more of the same, we had pictures. There were 16 groomsmen and 7 bride's maids, plus Andy and Jill. The wedding was nice, although I think the deacon was a little out of it. He forgot all his notes, called Andy a wife and forgot Andy's last name, but as with all such blunders, laughter was shared by all. At the wedding reception everyone got down to some great music by one of the best wedding DJ's I have heard and we even had a little bit of FireBreathing. I have attached some pictures from the weekend to this entry.

Through out the extended weekend we stayed at our friend's house in Kirkland, Erin and Borhan. It was nice seeing them again, but we didn't get to spend as much time as we wanted to with them because of all the wedding duties that I had. I was a groom's man by the way. Thanks Erin and Borhan for being wonderful hosts and throwing ViviAnne a little birthday party. We ended the weekend by driving back to Pullman on Sunday, which was Vivi's birthday. We had a small dinner and cake at her mom's and then went home to catch up on some much needed sleep.

Peace!

Weekend Warrior

We had some friends over to visit from Portland two a weeks ago: Brendon, Joline and Lowic. It was great fun. We ate good food, took walks and hung at the house. They recently put an offer down on a house in Portland, hopefully we can get them to move out to Pullman/Moscow in a couple of years.

This weekend wife, #3 son and I are going to Seattle. We are going to my friend Andy's wedding. It is going to be fun and I am looking forward to the break. We are going to eat at our favorite Thai restaurant on Thursday and then party at the wedding on Friday and Saturday. I even get to wear a tux so it will be fun to the max.

I also promised some more pictures of the house so here they are:

The Backyard

My wife and I have spent the past three weeks or so vigorously discussing our plans for our garden in the backyard. We had an excavator come out last weekend and terrace the hill in back of our house. This now gives us a great space to work with. It is about 120 feet long and 30 feet wide. We are planning on having several 4 foot by 25 foot raised garden beds and a nice little pumpkin patch off to the side. We will also put flowers on the slope between the house and the first terrace, and a set of steps climbing the slope (about 4 feet up).

I have always wanted a pumpkin patch.

In the first house we lived in, we had a couple of pumpkin plants in the backyard, but they never really did anything. It was very disappointing. This time will be different though, I am looking forward to having pumpkin curry and pumpkin pie this fall, fresh off the vine!

This is our house, the front of our house. I will post some picture of the backyard next time. We have a north facing view of Moscow Mountains and Kamiak Butte. It is great. Spring is here finally, time to garden...