May update

Wow, I have been on a blogging hiatus these last few weeks. Meat week has come and gone, culminating in a beast feast. Robert ate at least 3 sausages and two hamburgers. Well done vegan man, well done!

These last few weeks have been very busy at the home front. I have been planting tree, mainly maple and quaking aspen, but also a couple of blue spruce. ViviAnne decided that we should name our trees so that we can reference them and places on our property. A good idea I thought. The two blue spruces are named Bruce and Spruce. One of our maples is names Tony (Liam's imaginary friend and his favorite name apparently). We have not yet named the others, feel free to post some suggestions, you may get a tree named after you!

Our friend Erin has been complaining that there is no picture of Asa yet on this blog and that he is truly becoming the middle child. I don't want that to happen so here he is in all his glory. The Asa!

More later, gotta work:)

Meat Week (day one)

Last night some friends came over for dinner. My buddy Robert, who is a Vegan, decided that he was going to have Meat Week start yesterday. He does this every once in a while, maybe once in a year. He eats meat, which he doesn't eat normally. I thought that I should make some Ghormeh Sabzi to begin his week of excesses - It's good! I made this for the first time ever last night. I had it again for lunch today. Essentially this is a bunch of green herbs cooked with onion, meat, and dried lemons. I will break it down for you.

1 lb of meat (lamb if you are serious, beef or even chicken would also work, I used beef)

1/4 cup of oil

large onion (sliced)

can of kidney beans

3 garlic cloves (minced)

4-6 dried lemons

salt & pepper to taste

3 cups of dried Ghormeh Sabzi herbs or you could make it your self by chopping up 1.5 cups of spinach, 1/2 cup of parsley, 1/4 cup of coriander, 1/4 cup of garlic chives, 1/4 cup of fenugreek. You want to end up with about 3 cups of finely chopped green stuff. If you have kids, just buy the herb pack and simplify your life.

rice (washed and soaked for an hour or two)

oil

potato (sliced thin)

How to: Soak the herbs in water for about a half hour. Remove from water and press out extra liquid. Set aside. Cut your meat into small bit size pieces. Add oil to deep pan or wok and heat it up, add in garlic and onion and fry till golden. Add in meat and fry till it is not red anymore, basically you want to sear the sides of the meat, but you don't have to cook it all the way through. Salt and pepper it. Add your herbs that you set aside earlier and saute for a minute or so. Add in about 2 cups of broth (beef, chicken or veg - I used beef). Bring to simmer and add in the lemons. This all needs to simmer for about 30 minutes. Add in the kidney beans and simmer for another 15 minutes. You also can slice open the lemons so that they release a little bit more flavor to the dish. If you have and extra hour just keep it on the stove and let it simmer, if you have kids that are going crazy, slice the lemons to save time.

For the rice, cook to a boil and then simmer for till the rice is firm, but not crunchy. Make sure you add plenty of salt while it is cooking. Blanch with cold water to stop the rice from cooking any more and to wash off the excess salt. Put oil to cover the bottom of a non-stick pot, add your sliced potatoes to the pot and then put the rice over the top. Add a little more oil and turn up the heat. You want to steam the rice now. I like to bring the heat up till I see steam coming from the covered pot, then turn it down to simmer. After maybe 30 minutes, the potato is a golden brown and the rice is prefect.

Serve the Ghormeh Sabzi over rice. Watch out for the lemons though, they are tart! After dinner you should step outside and watch the sun set.

This dish is great the next day for lunch as all the herbs and lemons have had more time to release their flavors into the dish.

Every Kid Loves Mud

ViviAnne and I had a birthday party for our eldest son Liam last weekend. His birthday was the 29th of April, and our young man turned 5. We had a mud party. Crazy huh? It was the best little kid party I have been too in quite a while. We dug a large pit in our back yard and filled it with water and dirt. The great thing about the Palouse is that there is a lot of good dirt for making mud. All the kids just jumped right in, amazing fun. I feel like I am always telling my kids to not get muddy, we live out in the sticks so there is a lot of dirt and mud after a rain. It was nice to say, "Go play in the mud." It made me feel good to give that back to them after trying to keep them out of it for the better part of the spring.

The other big thing we did was make clean mud. If you don't know what it is, this is your chance to learn. You take bars of Ivory soap and cheese grate them. Take regular toilet paper and shred it long ways so that you have thin strips about a foot or two long. Then add water till it turns into a kind of mud/paste. This stuff is great, not only is it supper clean from all the soap, it is like mud.

If you are going to have a mud party you should serve Dirt Cake, recipe to follow:

1 20 oz Oreo Cookie pkg

1/2 cup melted butter

1 12 oz Cool Whip

1 8 oz Cream Cheese (softened)

1 cup powdered sugar

2 sm pkg vanilla inst. pudding

3 cups milk

1 tsp vanilla

Flower pot (8 inch) and garden trowel, gummy worms, plastic flowers, etc... for decoration

Dirt Cake is made in layers. Crush the oreos in a food processor, take about 10 seconds. I love food processors. I once crushed the cookies by hand, don't do this. Put a layer in the bottom of the pot, about half the crushed cookies.

Combine butter, cool whip, sugar and cream cheese. Use a kitchen aid if you have one, so fast.

Put about half over the first layer of cookies.

Mix the pudding, vanilla and milk together. The milk is about 3/4 of what is required for the pudding so it will mix up thicker and be a more firm layer than if you used the regular amount of milk suggested by the pudding box. Put about half in the pot.

Put the rest of the cream cheese/sugar/cool whip layer in and then follow with the rest of the pudding layer. Cover with the remainder of the crushed cookies, looks like a nice pot of dirt now doesn't it. Add flowers (plastic or real ones that you cut) and maybe a gummy worm or ten sticking up out of the "dirt". If you have a tiny little garden gnome, you should add that in as well. Serve with a garden trowel to complete the ambiance.

Fun, fun weekend!