Lubia Polow

I made a Persian rice dish last night for dinner. This one is a simple one that doesn't take a lot of time, I think from start to finish it was about 40 minutes. I don't think I have it quite to where I want it yet though, so I may be adding to this recipe in the future or modifying it. The biggest problem I have is that I can't get the right amount of salt, I am typically short on salt for this recipe. Also, I think that the addition of a couple of cloves of garlic and a little saffron would do wonders. But I digress, here is the recipe as I made it last night.

1 lb beef or lamb (cut into bit sized pieces)
3 cups rice (basmati, washed)
6 oz tomato paste
2 cans green beans
1 onion (sliced or chopped)
salt + pepper to taste
potato (sliced into thin pieces)
oil

Cook washed rice for 6-10 minutes, you want the rice to still be a little firm. Make sure that you salt the water as the rice is cooking. Strain the rice and blanch with cold water, set aside.

While the rice is cooking, saute your onion in a little oil. After is turns a light brown, add your meat, salt and pepper to taste. Brown meat and add in tomato paste and green beans plus enough water to cover. It should have the consistency of a thick stew. Simmer for 10 minutes and add in salt and pepper again to taste if necessary.

In a large non-stick pot or cast iron pot, put enough oil to cover the bottom of the pot and turn stove onto med. heat. Put a layer of potato slices to cover the bottom of the pot then add a couple of scoops of rice and a little salt and oil, fold in a couple of scoops of meat/green bean mixture and repeat until it is all gone. Cover your pot and reduce heat to simmer. Let it cook for about 20 minutes. This will steam the rice the rest of the way to completion and fry the potatoes on the bottom.

Flip the pot upside down onto a serving platter and serve with pita and cucumber yogurt sauce (recipe to follow soon hopefully).

I might come back to edit this recipe in the future. This dish is really one of my favorites, and I want to get it just right. I am thinking that the addition of garlic and maybe saffron will do the trick. Plus, don't forget to salt the rice, otherwise it will be pretty bland.

Nachos a la Justin

I really love simple foods made well. I don't know what it is but I just like the basics, and when they taste phenomenal it is even better. Case in point, Nachos. This is simplicity at it finest. Corn chips with melted cheese. Easy as, well, nachos. But can they be more, can they be taken out of the mid-day snack and appetizer realm and made into a meal? I say they can, try this recipe for a tasty dinner that kids love.

Bag of corn chips (get ones that have a little bit of salt on them)
can of refried beans (black or pinto)
small can of fire roasted green peppers (the hot kind, not bell peppers)
small can of olives (sliced)
3/4 lb of ground beef or diced chicken breast
1 pkg of Lawrey's taco or fajita spices
2 tomatoes
3 avocados
1 onion
cheddar cheese (grated)
Cilantro
lime
Sour Cream
Salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, garlic powder

Put the refried beans into a microwave bowl and add a little water, stir and microwave for 45 seconds to warm them up.
In a skillet, cook your meat and add the spices when it is cooked through. Follow the directions for the spice package. Turn on your oven to 350. Dice your tomatoes and onion. In a 9 x 13 pan (I like to use stoneware), place a layer of chips and then cheese. Add about half of your beans, half your onion and all of your green peppers. Add another layer of chips and cheese. Put on your meat, olives, tomatoes, and rest of onion and top with a little more cheese. Put in the oven for 12 minutes.
Slice your avocados into a bowl and add a little bit of salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, garlic powder (to taste) and a scoop of sour cream. Dice your cilantro (about a 1/2 hand full) and put into the guacamole. Squeeze 1/4 a lime into your guacamole. Mix and mash to desired lumpiness.
Put your oven on broil for about 2 minutes (watch it so it doesn't burn). Take out your pan and squeeze 1/4 a lime over the nachos. Serve the nachos with sour cream and guacamole. Mmmm, so good and easy!

Doula Training for ViviAnne

ViviAnne spent the weekend training to become a doula. For those of you that don't know, a doula is a birthing assistant trained in a more natural approach to child bearing and pregnancy. She spoke very highly of her weekend, saying that it was both very educational and emotional. Many of the women at the training talked about their personal stories with their births. All in all it sounded like a great weekend for her and I was happy to be able to give her that by watching the kids Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

I think that she will be an excellent doula and birthing assistant. Her background in human development and her personal experiences make her open to many different styles of birth, and a great repository for information about pregnancy, birthing and child development. Plus her kind heart, giving nature and strong mind make her an excellent person to have in your birth experience.

So, what is next for her? She needs to complete her training. She needs 6 births to get certified as a doula. She has two, I think, done right now, her mother's (which she questions as countable) and her sister Shynne's. You can't count any of your own births, otherwise she would just need 1 more. She has already been approached by a friend of ours to attend her birth and she is trying to convince her other sister, Autumn, to attend her birth. If she is able to do both, than that leaves two and I think she could fined local women just by advertising in the paper and online.

Have a great Monday!

Fish'n Derby

ViviAnne and I took Liam, Asa, Darius, Hannah and Sidney to the Fish'n Derby on June 9. It was quite the big deal. You have 30 minutes to fish or time slot was at 11:15 to 11:30. You show up, park, and then get your stuff ready. If you preregister you get a shirt, and every kid gets a fishing pole all hooked up and ready to go. Once you get your stuff you head over to the pond. It is stocked with trout from some local fishery. The pond itself is about 70 or so feet across the short way and maybe 130 feet the long way, shaped in an oval. We head over to the back side of the pond and get the kids ready. Asa is to young to fish and Darius is sitting in his car seat watching to whole thing.

OK, we start fishing. First we are given some worms, big ones. ViviAnne doesn't really know how to get the worm on good so Hannah's worm falls off on the first cast. Liam's cast goes out and over another kids line and they get tangled up for a couple of minutes. Sidney catches the first fish. A nice 12 inch trout. Into the bag it goes, no catch and release here, these fish are for eat'n.

Hannah gets the second fish with the help of one of the event staff on hand. and then Sidney and Hannah each catch another one. With about five minutes left and Liam totally discouraged, I get a nice cast out of him into the deep part of the pond. And walla! Fish on! Liam reels it in and I pick it up for him to take the hook out. But, if you have ever fished with worms before you know that the fish just inhaled the hook and worm and it is in it's gullet. As I pick up the line to grab hold of the fish, the hook rips out of the fish and gets bits of fish gore and blood all over myself and a little on Liam. He is not to happy about this sudden display of carnage and withdraws a little but he still had a good time.

We ended up cooking the fish a day latter on the BBQ. They were pretty good, but Liam didn't want to eat any of them. I think he was a little sad that his fish died like it did. But he did say that he wants to go fishing with me again, so it probably wasn't to traumatic.

First you make a roux...

I love Cajun food, it is down to earth. Rich, flavorful, soul-full! The best! My Grandfather, David Bierhorst, was from New Orleans, and my granny, Milly Bierhorst is the best cook alive today. No question. Everyone I know says so, this is not just her grandson talking. Ask Rob, he regularly breaks veganism to eat her amazing Cajun food. So, she taught me how to make some of her best recipes, and I am getting pretty good at it. This weekend I made Shrimp and Crab Etouffee. Here is the break down so you can try it at home.

3/4 cups of flour and 1/2 cups of oil for the roux

1 large onion (chopped)

8 oz can tomato sauce

3 cups water

garlic powder (to taste)

1 + 1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (red pepper)

Tabasco (to taste)

1 pound crab meat (claws and/or legs)

1 pound shrimp (de-veined and de-shelled)

You will need a cast iron skillet and a pot or a cast iron dutch oven/pot. I use a dutch oven pot so I don't have to transfer the roux from the skillet to a larger pot.

Make sure that you have all your ingredients prepared before you start your roux (you don't want to burn your roux).

First you make a roux. Combine flour and oil in a cast iron skillet over med/high heat. Stir the roux to break up clumps and to keep it from burning. This is very important, you want your roux to turn brown, like chocolate, but you don't want it to burn. What I do is reduce the heat to med-low after it starts bubbling and continue to stir. If you are using a skillet you will need to transfer to a larger pot now.

Once you have the nice rich color of chocolate you are ready to add your chopped onion, simmer the onion in the skillet for a minute or so and then add your tomato sauce. Stir once and add your 3 (plus or minus) cups of water. Stir the water in one cup at a time until you have a nice gravy like consistency. Add in your crab then add in your salt, cayenne pepper, garlic powder and Tabasco. I like it a little spicy and garlicky but add a little bit first and taste, you can always add more later, but you can't take it back out once it's in. Simmer it all for 20 minutes (or longer, this type of dish only gets better the longer the ingredients sit together)

Add in your shrimp about 10 minutes before you want to serve. I serve it over a nice long grain rice, like Basmatti rice. Here is a picture of me with pot full of Etoufee.

Eat it up any left overs the next day. My grandfather would eat it cold out of the pot for breakfast, I always liked to heat mine up in the microwave though.

Frost Free Installed

It's in, it's in! Finally, I have my frost free hose bib installed. From this point on the irrigation project gets a lot easier. This afternoon, I will finish burying it and bring all the irrigation hoses up to the hose bib. Hopefully tomorrow, I will put the irrigation manifold together and I will have a working system. Then all that is left to do is put my pop-ups in and cover my trenches. This has been a fun project, I am especially excited that it will really make ViviAnne happy. She hates to water and the irrigation system will make it easy to keep our flowers, garden and grass green.

I had a good father's day over the weekend. I bought a hammock about 8 years ago, a nice rope one, the type that stretches a bunch and you tie it off between two trees about 6 feet off the ground but by the time you get all your weight into it, it is 6 inches off the ground. Well, ever sense I got married, I have been wanting a hammock stand to put my hammock on, that way I don't need trees. My kids got one for me for fathers day. But not just any hammock stand, but it is collapsible and portable. You can take it car camping or to the beach/river. Or just put it out on you deck and look up at the sky (which is were I have it right now). I can even blog laying down on my super cool hammock while I watch the kids make mud messes in my trenches in the front yard.

Truly, my "King of Comfort" saga lives on.

The view from up high

I have been working like mad on our landscaping. I trenched the entire yard and up by the garden and have dug out were I will put in my frost free spigot and irrigation system control center. It has been a lot of fun, sometime a little frustrating, like when it rains, but over all very fun. I am hoping to finish up this weekend. Getting this project done will be great and give me a lot more time to do other stuff. First off, I won't need to spend as much time watering the garden and yard. Just turn on a switch and let it go for a half hour or so. Secondly, I was smart and installed some spigots near the garden and out in our future lavender field. This will make it so much easier to water specific parts of the garden that I might not want to do with soaker hoses. Third, ViviAnne hates to water and will be so happy once this is done. It is always good to make the wife happy.

I got a couple of pictures from a neighbor of our property from about 800 - 1200 feet in the air. Our house is the one sandwiched between the three in the middle of the picture, in case you don't recognize it from other pictures. You can make out our garden in the back of the house, it looks like it has been watered recently. You can also see that my mother in law is at the house as well, because her white Highlander is in our driveway. I always think that our place looks so small compared to the other houses around us, but then I remember that we have three levels to their two, so i think that we are on par with our neighbors.

That's all for now, but I will be posting some more recipes soon, so stay tuned.

Summer Weekends

Summer weekends are great. We went to the river on Saturday and the pool on Sunday. Both were very fun. Liam took a picture of ViviAnne and I on our way to the river. All of the Palouse is green right now, so going on drives is great. At the river, we were joined by Mike, Robert and Morgan for a little BBQ. We cooked sausages, hot dogs, corn dogs and veggies. I was taking a gamble on the corn dogs being cooked on the grill, but they turned out great. At the pool, ViviAnne's sisters helped us out with the kids so it was a little more manageable. We stopped off at Jack in the Box for burgers on the way home.

The big project this weekend was trenching for the irrigation system that we are putting in. This is Asa, helping me stake out all of the irrigation lines. Over all, I have about 2300 feet of semi-flexible PVC tubing that I will begin laying tonight. We want to put drip irrigation in for the gardens and trees, and put in pop-up sprinklers for the lawn. I am hopping that it is all pretty straight forward, so far it seems pretty easy, just time consuming. It is actually pretty in expensive if you do it all your self. The pop-ups and piping is the most expensive part along with a back flow valve. We should be able to get it all done this week I hope, although, I might be taking a day off from work to make it all happen.

Last night as I was putting the trash out, I have to carry it about 200 feet to the end of our driveway, I saw a big great horned owl perched on our roof. It was pretty cool, I went inside to get the camera, but it took off as I was turning it on to take a picture. You will have to settle for a sunset instead.

Weight Goals

This is my year for losing all the weight I have gained over the past 12 years. After high school, I let myself go a little, but that is over now! Sense January I have lost more than 25 pounds and it is great. My goal is to get to 205, which would be 50 pounds lost total. So kudos to me for being half way there. This morning I weighed in at 228, this is the fist time I have been in the 220's for quite some time. It feels good.

How do I do it, well, mainly it is cutting back on the sweets. I don't drink corn syrup any more and try to limit my intake of sweets in general. I also an trying to eat a little slower and not have seconds. Finally, I am trying to not eat after 9:00PM. I think that this is the biggest thing for me, as I get the munchies like crazy around 10ish. The best thing about it, it that the weight loss has been steady and slow, which I have read is the best way to loose weight. My goal is to be at 225 by July (which seems reasonable) and 215 by Sept.

ViviAnne is also losing some of that baby weight. She is on the "Plan for ViviAnne". In it, she is cutting out coffee, wheat, and corn. She is trying to hit 1500 calories and have low sugar intake and exercise five times a week for at least a half hour each time. It is a good plan. I think maybe the calorie intake could be upped to 1800 as a goal instead of 1500, but I think it will work. She has never felt well after eating something with a lot of corn in it, so it is good that she is phasing that out.

I have added this picture of ViviAnne and I at Andy and Jill's wedding. I like it, we had a lot of fun that evening with everyone. Andy is coming to town this next weekend so it will be fun to hang out with him again. See you soon bro!