Pumpkin Bread

Hey hey, merry Christmas. I made some pumpkin bread this morning and it turned out really well. Very tasty and a nice Christmas morning bread! Recipe is below... Also have a picture here of Liam with a Longhorns hat on, that he got from Joyce and Jack (my second cousin?) in Texas.

Pumpkin Bread

1 3/4 cup pumpkin puree (one 15 ox can)

1 1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup butter

3 eggs

3 cups flour

2 Tbsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

2 cups walnuts or chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Combine pumpkin, sugar, eggs, and butter; mix until creamy. Mix dry ingredients and then add to wet ingredients. The batter should hold a spoon up but still be wet. If you need a little more flour that is fine. Add in your nuts or chips at the end and mix.

You can make one large loaf or 2-3 small loafs or muffins out of the batter.

muffins: 20-25 minutes

small loafs: 25-30 minutes

large loaf: 50-60 minutes

Enjoy!!

Pumkin Spice Waffles

A couple of weeks ago I found this recipe online for Spiced Pumpkin Waffles. It looked really good and I had a package of elk sausage that was left over from a trip to Schweitzer. I made them one night for dinner and fell in love. This is a great recipe and if you have the sausage they are even better.

This recipe is from the following website:

(http://www.countryliving.com/recipefinder/spiced-pumpkin-waffles-3827)

2 1/2 cup(s) all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon(s) baking powder
2 teaspoon(s) cinnamon
1 teaspoon(s) ginger
1/2 teaspoon(s) baking soda
1/2 teaspoon(s) salt
1/2 teaspoon(s) fresh-ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon(s) cloves
4 large eggs
2 cup(s) buttermilk
1 cup(s) pumpkin purée
1/2 cup(s) dark brown sugar
1/4 cup(s) (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted
1 teaspoon(s) pure vanilla extract

Pre-heat your waffle iron. Combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and cloves in a large bowl and set aside. Whisk together the eggs, buttermilk, pumpkin purée, sugar, butter, and vanilla in another large bowl until smooth. While whisking, add the flour mixture and blend until smooth.

Cook according to your waffle iron instructions. You may want to grease the iron a little more than usual.

Oh, and by the way, I hate poo!

Not the little bear mind you, but the stinky kind. The kind that little 3 year olds think is fun to smear all over your carpet and furniture.

Yes, that's right, this morning I was taking Liam to school. I had just left the house and was maybe 200 yards down the road when ViviAnne called my cell phone. She was crying and said that she went upstairs to our room and found that Asa and Darius had pulled all of the stuff out of ViviAnne's hope chest and then pooped all over it all. This was stuff that she had been saving sense she was a little girl.

I turned around and went home to help clean it all up, making Liam 15 minutes late to school and me about an hour late to work. I wonderful Monday morning.

Into December

Well, time is still flying by. It is already December now. Cougar football is over, probably for the best. It will be interesting to see how they recover for the next season and see if there is any improvement. I think that there will be, but this season was so bad that it would be hard to do worse... I guess we could be as bad as the Huskies, but I don't think that will happen, I am confident that we will get it turned around.

The basketball season is now in full pre-conference swing. The cougars are doing great, we had a tough game against number 3 Pitt. But, we are young and it was a great learning experience on how to close out an opponent the last 10 minutes of the game. Two big, big games coming up. First against number 24 Baylor tonight, and then against number 5 Gonzaga. We beat both teams last year and I am thinking we will probably loose to the Zags and grind out a win with Baylor. Both games are at home for us, so that is a big plus.

ViviAnne has a client that is in labor today, so I will probably have a long night waiting for her to get home. Hopefully the birth will go quickly. The boys are going crazy right now, they are playing some kind of game that involves a lot of screaming and running around the living room. It is hard to tell if there are any rules to the game or not. About every 45 seconds someone gets hurt and we have to intervene.

Cougs Win!

Wow, I am still in a bit of shock, even three days later. The Cougs pulled a huge win, out of nowhere, to beat the Huskies. The best part about it all is that the Huskies will no most likely have a win less season. Which is great, I have no sympathy for them. Any time you beat a rival it is a good season.

33 is better than 32

My birthday has come and gone and I am one year older. All is well, and "The Daily Show" is hilarious b.t.w. I am watching it right now, while I am writing this. Kinda makes it hard to pay attention to this ... I will continue at a later date.

Justin's Best Chicken Enchiladas

I have not put a new recipe on the blog for a while, but I have one of my best for you all this time. My best chicken enchiladas. They are hot, they are savory, and they are really, really bad for you. With that said, here is the recipe.

16 oz sour cream
2 cans of red El Pato (The duck) Sauce (the small cans)
3-4 chicken breasts
grated Cheddar cheese
1 bottle of good beer (opened for about a half hour prior to using)
1 packet of Lawery's fajita seasoning
1 large can of re fried beans (black or pinto)
16-24tortillas

Slice chicken into slender pieces and saute in skillet (cast iron of course) until cooked. Add in packet of fajita seasoning and about half the bottle of beer. What you do with the other half is up to you... Continue to saute the chicken on low heat. Put the beans in a microwavable bowl and add in a little oil and water to thin them out. Heat in the microwave (or on the stove top in a pot) until warm. Combine sour cream and duck sauce in bowl and mix together.

In a large casserole dish pore a little of the sour cream/duck sauce mixture in the bottom of the dish. Make the enchiladas by putting a spoonful of beans and chicken onto a tortilla, add cheese and then roll up. Put enchilada into the casserole dish and repeat until you run out of ingredients. You can pour extra chicken over the enchiladas in the casserole dish. Pour the remaining sour cream/duck sauce over the enchiladas and then sprinkle Cheddar cheese to cover. Bake in oven at 350 degrees for about 15-20 minutes and serve with guacamole, chips, lettuce and tomato.

Enjoy!

Don't lean over the pan when you pour in the beer, the alcohol vaporizes almost immediately and if you breath it in it goes almost directly into your blood stream, making you drunk. Well you would probably need about three bottles to really get drunk, but you get the point. Don't be a drunk cook.

My Potting Shed Hit the Floor

I am slightly depressed, I had put up all the posts for my potting shed and then nailed them together, just to keep them all in place. I woke up in the morning and Liam pointed out the the post had all fallen down. I looked and he was right, the whole structure has collapsed. Bummer! Oh well, I was going to need to take it all apart anyways as I needed to stain the posts before putting them in concrete. It will be a good project to work on the next couple of weekends.

Not this next one though, we are going up to Schweitzer for Oktoberfest. Yeah! We are planning a big sausage dinner and fun in and around Sandpoint and Schweitzer. Should be a good weekend and I may even get to take some picture for posting.

Looking forward to the weekend!

Projects at Home

I have been on the war path for doing projects at home. Right now, I am engaged in building a little potting shed near the garden. I am using a bunch of the lodge pole pines I chopped down in early summer as posts and will frame up walls in between. It should look pretty cool once I am done. I also plan on putting in largish sized stone plates for the flooring around the shed and then seeding blue grass so it grows in between the plates. I am also going to build up a couple of stone planting boxes for flowers and maybe herbs. I am placing the shed near one of our maples and I think I am also going to plant a river birch and maybe another maple to semi surround the shed. In a couple of years (like 15) it will have shade from the east, south and west. So it will be a cool place to do some gardening. I would also like to extend a little trellis out from the roof and grow some type of ivy on it.

It is suppose to rain this weekend, so I am hoping that I can get a lot of the framing done over the next three evenings and then finish up the roofing this weekend. We shall see... I will post pictures once it is done.

Back to Work

I am back from my trip to Vegas. It was fun, but not my cup of tea. The way people throw money around was a bit to much for me. The Sharepoint Branding class I attended was great though. I could probably sit down, one on one, with our instructor for a week and still have more to learn. I have a good start now though, so I am looking forward to branding our work sharepoint site to conform more with WSU. I meet another soccer junkie at the training seminar and we have already joined a Champions Fantasy league together. We are one week late, but that is cool.

ViviAnne was happy to have me back as were the kids. They meet me at the airport in Spokane which was fun. We are planning on working in the garden and yard this weekend. We tore up most of the garden last weekend, but still have some work to do on it before winter. We both want to build some planter beds, so I am going to try to get the wood for that this weekend. We also need to weed'n'feed the yard and mow one last time. Weed eating would be nice too, but I am not sure if I will get to it.

I need coffee, off to get some:)

Into the New Semester

Fall Semester has started once again. I am busy as usual and work has me traveling to Los Vegas for a web training seminar. I will be their for about a week which should be pretty fun. I am looking forward to learning a lot about Sharepoint and front end design in Sharepoint. ViviAnne has also started teaching her classes. She is working really hard at keeping up with it all and I think it might have been a little tougher on her than she thought initially, but I think she is also enjoying it. I am proud of her. Liam started 1st grade and Asa started preschool so we now have two of three going to school. It is weird to think that Liam is gone about the same amount of time that I am gone from home during the week because of the bus schedule. He is handling it well though and really enjoys 1st grade. He says he like all the recesses.

Have a great day and week!

Fun with the Photographer

The photo shoot went well. The photographer, Peter Beck, ended up using all of us and it was a lot of fun. Liam and I got to walk along together at sunset through the wheat fields with some props. ViviAnne got to be a baker, I am kinda excited to see what she looks like in the final pictures. I also walked a bit with Asa and Darius. Darius and I were also in some shots together. Peter called me this morning and wants to use me again tomorrow night with a slightly older child, so I thought I would take Sydney. I will post the photos once the arrive, he said that it might take a month or so.

It is looking like I am for sure going to Vegas for work. I am kinda excited about it, but also don't really want to leave for a week in the middle of the first month of the fall semester. I will probably come back with a ton to catch up on.

Model Me?

I am going to be doing some stock photography modeling during the next week. A couple of years ago, I modeled for Peter Beck, as a farmer. It was pretty fun and he took some great shots of my family out on the wheat fields. He is back in Pullman this coming week and has asked me to model again for him. This time I think might also use ViviAnne and the boys, we shall see. Regardless, we will get $100 and most likely some good photos out of the deal.

I also might be going to Vegas for a Sharepoint training seminar. I am still trying to work out the travel nightmare that is WSU right now.

more later...

What happened to July

That was a busy month. We went to Portland and Schweitzer Mt. and spent a lot of time running around all over the place. I have pictures too, but I have misplaced my camera for the time being. I think I will do a search for it tonight though so if doesn't get more lost.

August is also promissing to be a busy month. ViviAnne is going to be working a lot on her classes for school. She is teaching two college classes this semester. She is also ramping up her Doula work. Over the past four weeks she has attended three births. That is pretty cool in my opinion. We also have Josh's cabin trip to go to. I am hopping that we will both be able to, but she has a Doula client that is due a mid August, so we shall see.

ViviAnne and I just celebrated our 8th wedding anniversery. Go us!

It's July Already

The month of June totally got away from me. Sorry for no posts lately. We are headed up to Schweitzer Mt. for the 4th of July. They have fireworks on the mountain and over the lake. I am looking forward to that. I am also looking forward to swimming in the lake with the boys. Darius is hilarious, he runs forward into the water and just flops face first. He has no idea how to swim so we have to fish him out all the time.

On the gardening front: Most of the seeds I planted prior to June didn't make it. We replanted a couple of days ago, mainly because I wanted to give the ones I had planted the benefit of the doubt, but nope they had a big FAIL stamped on them. It sucks, because most likely we wont get any return from the plants until late Aug. What did make it you ask; lettuce, spinach, zucchini, corn (but once again it is not growing very well), tomatoes, cilantro, carrots, a couple of snow peas, and broccoli. What didn't make it; green beans, basil, squash, cucumbers, and pumpkins. I was really looking forward to the squash and pumpkins too! I replanted squash, peas, and green beans. We will see how they do. Hopefully, they will take off and start giving us some veggies in a month and a half.

I don't know what to do for next year. I am tossing around the idea of creating a shelter/green house over the garden beds. This would increase the temp of the soil and keep the cold spring winds off the starts and seedlings. The down side is that it would be harder to water while the shelter is in place, I might have to set up an elaborate drip irrigation system. Could be fun though once it is all working, HA!

We are going to Portland next week to visit Joline, Brenden and Lowic. We are going to visit the zoo and go to the coast. Brenden and Joline got a place for us to stay at on the beach! Fun, fun, I am looking forward to some good seafood.

Snow in June?

Yup, snow in June. It snowed the other day, for about 6 hours in the morning. I heard on the news that this was the latest snow fall recorded in Pullman history. I am a little worried about my garden, but I think it will be OK. The temp was actually well above freezing and the snow did not sick for long.

Crazy Pullman weather!

The Hawaii Weekend

I am back from Hawaii. I am not sunburned and I loved the place. I think just about everyone does. The big island has so much to do, I feel like I could have stayed another week and still missed out on something fun.

ViviAnne arrived on Thursday night and we spent the next day around the resort and town of Kona. We had lunch at the pool and did a little swimming before we headed into town for some shopping and food. We ended up eating at Bubba Gumps Shrimp Company, which was pretty fun. There are a ton of little shops and farmers markets to buy stuff at, so we got most of our gift for people that first day ViviAnne was there.

On Saturday we headed south to the City of Refuge. This is a native village that the royal family occupied a couple of hundred years ago. It was a place of refuge for warriors and law breakers. If you could make it to the city and jump over the big volcanic rock wall that surrounded it you would be safe and the priests there would purify you and you could then go back to your village. If you didn't make it over the wall they killed you.

After the City of Refuge we took a tour to the top of Mt. Mona Kea. It is almost 14000 feet high and is the best place on the planet to view the stars. There are 13 telescopes at the top of the mountain. We had dinner and watched the sun set. Then we did a little star gazing and had a little star talk. Not as good as Mike and Josh but with the 13 inch telescopes we could see a lot more.

On Sunday we hit the beach, Hapuna beach to be exact. One of the nicest beaches in the world and it was in a word perfect. Crystal clear aqua marine water, fine grain white sand, sunny and warm. After a couple of dips in the ocean and rests on the beach we drove east across the island to Watpio Valley and Akaka Falls. Two fantastic views.

Monday we lounged around to hotel until checkout and then went back to Kona to shop a little more and have dinner at sunset on the ocean. We flew out late Monday night and got home Tuesday around 3:00PM. It was a great weekend with ViviAnne.

It is a conference about sex after all (rated R)

Actual conversation heard in my Speaker Slide Preview room earlier today.

Guy: "What is your typical day like?"

Girl: "I usually head down to the farm and jerk off horses."

Guy: Doesn't laugh, "Cool."

Legends and Stories

I went to a luau last night. Good food, and entertaining stories about the native peoples of Hawaii. If you are in Hawaii, go to a luau. It is worth it. I have a couple of videos that I took last night, they turned out really well, I just need to size them down for web viewing. Give me a day, I will upload them tomorrow for sure.

I have no pictures of the feral cats, if you want to see a cat go to the pet store and look at one, they look the same as the feral ones here.

I will get a picture of a mongoose, just didn't get a chance to the other day when I saw it. I am also sorry about no Manta Ray pictures, my little camera can't get a good shot. I will try again tonight and see what I can see.

My sister wants me to bring her back a piece of lava rock, which they seem to have a lot of around here. I will get a piece of the fresh stuff down, it has only been out of the bowels of the earth a couple of days.

Feral Cats, Mongoose and Spiders

You don't notice them at first, in fact I didn't notice them at all initially. I first was walking by a long stretch of hedges and saw little dog houses in amongst the brush. Not dog houses though, cat houses, all over the place. They are for all the wild cats living on the island. There are tons of them around the shopping center I had dinner at last night. At one point I saw about 9 of them sitting out in the grass waiting for the last bits of light to fade to start their evening activities. You will be walking along one of these hedges and every so often they will shake and something will shoot out the other side as you pass by.

I saw a mongoose too, looks like a smallish ferret. They are pretty cute.

I was also walking around waiting for my movie to start last night and walked behind some stores to get a better view of the ocean. Back behind the stores there was a little path that ran along the building. In each large window there was a 4 foot spider web with a largish black/grey spider with bright yellow marking sitting in the middle of the web. Each time I would approach as I moved down the path, the spiders would sense my presence and rear up, like they were ready to jump at me. It was kinda freaking me out.

There are no snakes on the island. Interesting. There are however a lot of little green geckos as you can see from the pictures.

Lava rock on the Coast

I was able to get out at lunch today and take a couple of pictures of the lava rock around the coast. It is pretty cool how the rock meets the ocean. There is also a picture of some of the local birds. They are really cute will little red heads. They like to steal the treats during the afternoon break time. Smart bird, going for the cookies and all.

No rain today

The rain has finally let up and the sun is out. The temp here is perfect, 70 at night and 80 during the day. Kinda humid, but you don't notice it to much. Here are a couple of picture that I took yesterday afternoon.

In Kona, HI

He I am, in beautiful Kona, HI. It has been a little bit overcast because the volcano is fairly active right now. It is dumping lava into the sea, which creates large billows of steam and fog. The locals call this vog, for volcanic fog. Here are some picture out the airplane and off my balcony in my room.

Dinner at the Schneider's (Tom Kha Soup)

A couple of months ago, Bridget Schneider called me and asked me to cook a dinner for her father as a gift. I agreed and finally, after several reschedules we had our dinner last night. Bill and Wanda, and Bill's niece and husband, and ViviAnne and I. I made Tom Kha, Red Chicken Curry, and Evil Jungle Prince for dinner. Sounds good huh! After dinner, we took a little walk out to Bill and Wanda's cabin and chatted for a while. Great fun and I was very happy to be able to cook for them again. Thanks Bridget! Even though it was a gift to her dad, I felt like it was a gift to all of us, plus Bridget's monetary donation was given to our scholarship fund for our student in Africa. Here is the Tom Kha soup recipe.

1/2 lb chicken breast (cut into bite size pieces)
1 onion (chopped into largish bite size pieces)
2 green onions (sliced thin)
1 inch section of ginger (sliced thin)
1/2 tsp of red curry paste
3 cups coconut milk
2 cups water
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup mushroom ( chopped)
1/4 cup lime juice
cilantro to garnish

Saute mushrooms in olive oil for a couple of minutes, add in onions and red curry paste for additional minute. Add coconut milk, water, chicken, lime juice and ginger; bring to boil and reduce to simmer. Simmer for about a hour. Garnish with cilantro and be ready for no left overs.

We had a friend who demanded that her husband buy this soup for her every day while she was pregnant... they spent several thousand dollars on this soup. It is one of the best soups I have made.

Sprinklers are fun...

So the other day, Liam and Asa came up to me while I was out in our back yard getting ready to water our wind break. They asked if they could play in the sprinkler.

I said, "yes, of course that would be a fun thing for you to do."

I went off into the field and left them to sort out the sprinkler for themselves. I came back around the side of the house to discover that they put the sprinkler inside my car and turned it on!

They explained that they wanted to wash the inside of the car...

I love kids. So loving.

Hurray, hurray, It's May!

So, I have been a big slacker in terms of posting to my blog. Sorry about that. May is finally here and I could not be more happy. It seems most of my plants and tree around the house have made it through the winter and are doing well. My trip to Hawaii begins in just one week, so that will be very fun. ViviAnne and I are looking forward to spending some time hiking and seeing the big island. Neither one of us has ever been, so it will be quite an adventure.

I will have to post more later on. This is a busy week for me!

I have a Six Year Old!

Today is Liam's birthday. That is pretty exciting for him. He woke up this morning in our bed. He had snuck in during the night and slept at the foot of the bed. When he woke up, he wanted a fruit smoothie and toast with butter for breakfast, but he wanted it in bed. When ever it is ViviAnne's or my birthday or father's/mother's day we get breakfast in bed. It is cute that he wants to do the same thing.

We are going to the Science Center today for his birthday. They have a birthday package that includes a magician, so Liam thought that would be super fun. He likes the sciences center a lot anyways so this is a nice gift to him. We made cupcakes last night for the party. When I took Darius down to the kitchen this morning he saw them and wanted one. I didn't give him one and he got mad and through a little fit. He will just have to wait a couple hours. My parents are going to come over tonight after dinner to give him there present too. I think that they are going to give him swim lessons, a swim suit and goggles. He has been asking for goggles for the last three or four months. I guess he really wants to do some swimming under water.

The last of our Arbor Day Society trees came in the mail yesterday. I am going to try and plant them tonight. We are going to put all the spruce tree in the wind break and the rest we will put around the house and in the field. I was also thinking about getting my riding lawn mower hooked up so I could try it out on the field. The weeds and grass are still really small, but there are some left over stalks of weeds from last summer that I would like to knock down. We'll see if there is enough time this afternoon. Liam would probably love to ride around on it with me.

Birthday Party for ViviAnne

Tuesday was ViviAnne's birthday. We had a nice party for her at our house with home made sushi, chocolate icebox cake, and the movie Juno. A bunch of people came over including family and friends. The sushi rolling was fun, a couple of people had never done it before so it was nice to see them learning how to do it. So for today I will post our sushi recipe that we used last night.


Some essential tools:
sushi rolling mat
julieanne peeler
sharp knife

How to do the rice:
2 cups sushi rice
2 cups water

Wash the rice in cold water and combine rice and water in pot. Bring to boil with occasional stirring and then reduce heat to simmer and cover with lid for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand for 10 minutes.

How to do the sushi sauce:
5 Tbsp rice vinegar
5 Tbsp Murine
3 Tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt

Combine in small sauce pan and heat over medium heat until sugar and salt are dissolved. Once rice has set for 10 minutes, drizzle sauce over rice and let rice cool in fridge for a half hour.

What to put in your sushi? Any of the following
Cucumber, carrot, crab (imitation or real), green onion, avocado, raw tuna, raw salmon, pickled radish or cucumber are just a few.
The big thing here is slicing the different fillings so that they are long and narrow, shoot for a 1/16 to 1/8 of thickness and about 4-5 inches long. The best thing to use is a Julianne peeler in my opinion. This is a great activity to do with older kids to get them to help out in the dinner cooking process.

How to roll'em:
Have all your ingredients spread out in front of you. Also fill a small bowl with rice vinegar. Take a sheet of seaweed wrap and place it rough side up on the mat. The mat is bamboo and you want the bamboo running across and not up and down, when you place a sheet of seaweed on the mat, you want the lines in the seaweed to run up and down. Use your fingers to put a little bit of vinegar on the wrap, make sure you put a thin line of vinegar across the top. This will help seal the wrap when you are ready to roll it. Put about 4 Tbsp of rice on the sheet. Dip your fingers in the rice vinegar and push the rice on the wrap out to the sides so that there is a thin layer of rice covering the wrap (maybe one to two grains thick). Use your hand and make a 1/4 inch wide trough in the rice on the bottom third of the wrap. Place your choice of thinly slice veggies or meat into the trough. Now using the mat, roll the wrap up so that it looks like a large cigar. Place on a cutting board and using a sharp knife, cut the roll into approximately 8 pieces. Eat one of the ends for fun. Repeat the wrapping process until you run out of rice. You will probably get from 6-8 rolls out of 2 cups of rice.

Some popular combinations are:
Avocado-cucumber-carrot
Avocado-tuna-carrot
Avocado-crab-cucumber
Crab-green onion-carrot
Crab-pickled radish-cucumber
Tuna-cucumber-carrot
Salmon-cucumber

Have fun with it!

Spring Planting Continues

Welcome to another addition of the spring planting update. We decided to reseed our lawn, as our current lawn is spotty at best. I borrowed a harrow from my friend Brad and drove around the lawn for a couple of hours digging up the ground a little bit for the new seed. ViviAnne and I then raked all the dried up weeds from last year and spread the seed around. It is suppose to rain today and now that I have a window in my office I can see that it is indeed raining. Good! We also have a bunch of compost to spread out, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. All the kids played outside the whole time. Darius loves to be outside, here he is trying to eat lunch. After we got all the seed out, we went to the park for dinner with some friends. It was a good end to the weekend and great weather.

Tomorrow is ViviAnne's birthday, we are going to eat Sushi and watch the movie Juno. She has seen it, but I have not. We will also have a bunch of people over to do all this with. So expect a sushi recipe soon! I have not gotten a present yet, but have a couple of ideas in mind. I am going to take the kids after I get home from work to buy her something. Fun, fun! If anyone wants to get her something, you can send trees from the Arbor Day Website as gifts. So send us a tree, email me for an address.

Spring Planting 08

Well, I have started my spring planting. This weekend I planted 10 Idaho Hybrid Poplars and 7 Colorado Blue Spruce Trees. They are for the most part all in my windbreak. I have 10 more spruce tree being delivered some time in the next couple of weeks. They are Norwegian Spruce and grow a bit faster than the Blue Spruce; more than 24 inches a year. The Hybrid Poplars are great for wind breaks and for harvesting as they can grow in excess of 7 feet per year. They key obviously is to keep them well watered. I have a drip system that I will be setting up once the Norwegian Spruce arrive. This will be a great start to the wind break. It will be three rows deep with both deciduous and evergreen in the wall. I also plan on putting in a row of large shrubs but that will most likely be next spring or the one after.

I put a couple of the Poplars at the west edge of our property and plan on putting in a small grove of quaking aspen down there as well. The north west corner of our land is very wet, it gets all the drainage from the surrounding hills which continues north onto our neighbors property. The nice thing is that even in July and August it was still fairly moist down in that area. So I might not need to water the tree very ofter, if at all.

Finally, we have a ten tree mix coming in from the arbor day society. This has a variety of trees including oak, maple and evergreens. These are going to spend a year in pots before we put them out in the field. I want to make sure that they have a good year to grow first as the wind and dryness of the palouse can be pretty harsh. I am thinking that most of these tree will be planted closer to the house to provide shade and landscaping.

On the vegetable front, my tomato plants have already sprouted so that is good, I will plant the veggie garden in the middle of May and early June.

Braket Busted

Oh well, the Cougs had a great run through the tourny to the Sweet 16! If only they had shot a little better in the game against NC, maybe next year. My bracket is totally busted by the way. All 5 of them I think. I heard that this was the first time that all four number 1 seeds made the final four. Should be some great games next weekend.

Liam made a "mailing may body" to send to my sister Vera. A "mailing may body" is a cut-out of Liam's body that he decorated. He then sent it to Vera and she is suppose to take it around with her and then write back or send pictures back of what she and Liam body did. She has been keeping me updated. First she took it to Fight Club with her and had a couple of pictures taken of Liam fighting with various weapons. Next she took it to band practice and had picture taken of the band and Liam in the back ground rock'n out. She went to the George Strait concert on Friday night and got to go back stage and have her picture taken with George and her and the Liam body. Pretty awesome! I will try to post some pictures up here once she sends them to me.

cheery-o

The madness begins

Tip off is set for tomorrow and I am pretty excited to watch some great basketball over the next week and a half. Like I said before WSU gets by Notre Dame in the second round, but comes up short over UNC. I think the game will be close, but UNC is like UCLA, too many great players to match up with. But who knows, maybe Low and Weaver will have the game of their lives and Baynes will make Tyler Hansbro his little bi+ch in the post. That's why they play the game...

I will be feasting on sushi tonight at Curtis's house. I think I will also bring a bag of pot stickers over as well. I love those things. Sushi sounds fantastic, and I am starving. I think I will also have a big bowl of fruit to break the fast tonight, to hold me over till the sushi is ready.

Get your Brackets ready!

Vs. Winthrop

WSU is in the NCAA tournament seeded as a number 4. This is pretty good, except that most likely we will be matching up against UNC if we make it through the first two games. The cougs are up against Winthrop first and it is looking like we will be able to beat them pretty handily. Never overlook an opponent, but I think we will have a first round win. Up next is Notre Dame. This will be a true test of our defense. ND is averaging around 80+ points per game and shoots well from the 3-point line. They also boast the Big East Player of the Year, who Cowgill and Baynes will most likely match up with in the post. Should be fun and if we win, I like our chances against UNC. But who knows, it is the big dance and anything can happen baby!

Egg Roles - Traditional

I love a good egg role, so much so that I learned how to make them a couple of years back. There are several steps but it is fun and something you can do with kids (just make sure they wash there hands).

1 large head of cabbage (chopped up into 2-3 inch long slender pieces)
2 carrots (use a veggie peeler to slice up into 2 inch slender pieces)
1 lb of sausage (plain sausage, don't get Italian or maple flavored)
1 large onion (chopped into 2 inch slender pieces, are you getting the trend yet)
3 inch section of ginger (chopped into 3-4 pieces)
6 cloves of garlic (chopped)
package of egg role wraps
1 egg (fork it up good)

In a big pot put in the cabbage, carrots, onion, ginger and garlic. Add water to cover about an inch or so and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Brown your sausage in a skillet till done (you could add in a little soy sauce if you like, but I don't usually) and set it in a big bowl. Strain the veggie mixture of water and blanch the mixture with cold water. If you don't it is too hot to handle for about 15 minutes. It is very important that you get as much water out of the mixture as possible. If you don't your egg roles become somewhat dangerous when placed into the hot oil. This is a good job for kids, grabbing hand fulls of the mixture and squeezing it until the water is out. Put the drained veggies into the bowl with the sausage and mix together.

Take your egg role wrap and place it in front of you so it look like a diamond. Using a brush, put a little egg on the two edges and tip of the diamond away from you. Place about 2 Tbsp of mixture onto the bottom 1/3 of the diamond, fold the bottom tip over the mixture into the middle of the diamond. Fold the left and right tips into the center and then role up to create a cucumber shaped role. Do this until you run out of wraps or mixture. When you find a piece of ginger, you are suppose to eat it, don't put it in the egg role.

Heat up some oil in a wok, use a high temp oil and I try to split it 30/70 with peanut oil for the extra flavor. But peanut oil is kinda expensive and not needed really. Place your roles into the oil and fry to golden brown. Us bamboo tongs to turn the roles. Don't use anything that could pierce the role, the latent water will start splattering hot oil everywhere. Place on paper towel when done. You can freeze them after they are cooked to and reheat in the oven or fry pan. Serve with plum sauce, satay sauce, hot & sour sauce, hosien sauce or just about any kind of sauce.

I think I might make egg roles tomorrow night, now that I am hungry for them. I will follow this up with my southwest egg roles in a couple of days. Stay tuned!

Save vs. Death

I just learned that Gary Gygax died this morning. I am sad at the loss of life, he was a great person and created a fun past time. I will game in your honor this week Gary! RIP

Cook'n Restricted Diet

I got a call last night from an old friend. She wants me to cook dinner for her parents as gift from her to them. Her father, Bill, has some diet restrictions, so I am going to have to think outside the box a little. He really likes Thai food, which is great, but can't eat sugar, wheat or rice. This leaves me with basically a meat and veggie dish. I haven't posted on of these up here yet, so I will in the next week or so.
I have a couple of idea floating around in my head. The first is a veggie stir fry that uses coconut milk and red pepper. It is a hot dish and he likes that, so it should work well. The second is a beef and mushroom stir fry, it uses oyster sauce though, which has a fair amount of sugar. I was thinking I might be able to sub out the oyster sauce and instead use fish sauce and soy sauce. I will have to take a look to make sure these will work for him... Fun, fun, I love a challenge.

The best part about it all is that I have been doing these little dinners to raise money for a scholarship at a school in Africa, Nigeria specifically. My friend has offered to donate a little money to that cause, so I am happy about that.

Sleep - Hard to come by...

I am in serious need of a good nights sleep. I don't know why, but when I get behind on sleep it is so hard to catch up with the three kids. Darius was up till around 1:00AM last night, I think that he is teething again and his mouth is hurting him. Asa just about always comes into our room in the middle of the night. Sometimes I get up to put him back in his bed and other times I don't even notice him. Liam is finally sleeping most of the night in his room but, he generally gets up around 6:30 and comes in to wake us up. The combination of all this has got me tired.

I have my morning coffee though, so at least I can pretend that I am awake!

Feb. Fun

Hey there,

This month is turning out to be pretty busy. I didn't think that it would be, but it is. We have had several birthdays (Asa's, our niece, Russ) and a couple of births for ViviAnne to attend as a Doula. All in all, this has meant that I haven't been able to post like I would have liked. But don't worry, I have a couple of pictures to tide you over until I can write a bit more latter in the week.

We got Katie and Darcy to come over and take family pictures of all of us. Oddly enough, we didn't really have a picture of both ViviAnne and I and our kids all togethers. Lots of ones with one or the other of us, but not all of us together. So we fixed that this weekend. We also took a bunch of Black and White pictures that turned out pretty good, I especially liked the ones of Darcy blowing the bubbles and the one of ViviAnne (show here)...

I convinced Katie to start entering an online photography compatition and I will post her pictures for her. I am posting it in Fark's farktography contests. Which are pretty cool and a nice venue to compeate in. I will post them under my justfisch account though. When she gets a little older, she can start posting them her self.

Hope that you enjoy some of these pictures!

Blogging for a year

I have been blogging for a year now. That is pretty cool, I wasn't sure that I would make it this long, but I did. I have a new niece now too. Autumn and Russ had a little baby girl about two weeks ago and she is very cute. I don't know if they have blogged about her yet on their blogspot site, but here is the link in case you want to find out! http://www.rustyautty.blogspot.com/

We ended up being snowed in last week at our house. They closed our road Tuesday afternoon and didn't plow it until Thursday night. WSU even closed down for two days, they hadn't closed the university in decades. The Cougs blew it last week too. Lost two games at home and now have two more. Hopefully we can get back on track and start winning again. I would like to see us in a number two or three seed for the NCAA Tournament and I would like to see us win the Pac-10 tourney. The tourney win would be tough though.

We haven't been up to ski at all lately, which is quite a bummer. Liam is really wanting to go again, I think we might try to take the trip up in the next week or two. Asa's birthday is today and he is having a Strawberry Shortcake party. I think that it is hilarious that he likes Strawberry Shortcake (the cartoon character) so much. He is cute, we are getting him a couple of videos and a soccer ball for his birthday. Vivi's mom is coming over tonight with the twins and Autumn and Russ and baby. We are going to have another party on Thursday with my parents and granny because they couldn't make it tonight.

TTFN

Cashew Chicken

This was one of the first Thai dishes that I made and it is still one of my favorites. Most people that come over for dinner request that I make this dish. It is easy, one of the easiest recipes I have.

Two-three chicken breasts (about a pound total)
5 green onions (cut into one inch portions)
1/2 cup of cashews (unsalted)
5 garlic cloves
3-5 red chili peppers
3 Tbsp Oyster Sauce
Canola Oil

Heat your wok nice and hot with the oil, add in minced garlic and red chili peppers (don't cut up the chilies it will be way to hot, keep them whole). Once the garlic is lightly browned add in your chicken. I like to have the chicken sliced thinly about 2 - 3 inches long or so. This enables the chicken to cook quickly and absorb a lot of the flavor. Stir fry the chicken for about two minutes or so until mostly done. Add in your Oyster sauce, cashews and green onion. Stir fry for an additional two - three minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. Serve over rice with lime wedges and cilantro.

Thai Yellow Chicken Curry

One of the first curries I made was a red chicken curry. I have sense made many different types. Here is a yellow chicken curry that I made last night for some friends. It is derived from my first red curry, but a little more sweet than spicy.

1/2 lb of chicken (cut into cubes)
1 potato (cut into small cubes)
1 onion (sliced into largish pieces)
1 cup of coconut milk
2 Tbsp of fish sauce
1 tsp of yellow curry paste
2-5 red chili peppers (seeded and chopped fine)
2 kaffer lime leaves
2 Tbsp of oil
1-2 tsp of brown sugar

In a pot, put your oil, chili peppers and curry paste and simmer for about a minute. Add in your onion and then your coconut milk. I usually also add about a 1/3 of a cup of water to the coconut milk. The potatoes soak up quite a bit of water. Add in your chicken and potato in to the pot and let it get to a simmer. Once it is simmering, I add in my fish sauce, lime leaves, and brown sugar. Let is stew for about a half hour and then if you want to get fancy, add in some sweet basil leaves about a minute before you serve it. Serve over rice or rice noodles.

happy eating!

New Years Trip at the Cabin (part 1)

We have had a New Years trip to my parents cabin every year since it was built. This was the third trip. Vivi and I invite a bunch of friends to come up and hang out over New Years. People bring games and snow stuff and go skiing and hiking in the area around the cabin. This year we created a little sledding run on the side of the house and made a couple of snow forts. Enjoy the pictures!

Here we have most of the gang playing games at the dining table and coffee table in the great room of the cabin. We had a total of 28 people up there this year and it was great fun! It is amazing that we can fit so many people together in one space but it works out well.

There were 8 kids this year and we made the sledding run on the side of the house for them to play in. We would take them out every evening after diner and sled with them until they got tired. It usually took and hour or two of sledding, but then they would fall right asleep and we would be able to enjoy the rest of the evening with out needing to tend to them. We also had a snow fort on one side of the drive way and Mike and Heather made a snow den to sleep in on the other side. They ended up sleeping out in their little den every night. I didn't get a picture of it, but it was a nice little set up.

Christmas with the family

Here is a collection of pictures from Christmas Time up at my sister-in-law's house.
We spent Christmas Eve at ViviAnne's Grandma's house. We had lamb for dinner and the kids played in the indoor pool at their place. I almost got the van stuck in the snow, but was able to power through. Go mini-van! There was a ton of snow and we were able to take out the ATV and snowmobile and ride around with the kids on Christmas Day. Our brother-in-law, Kevin, got a prime rib for dinner, which was very good.

First Post of 08

Well, it has been a while and I have done a lot in December, just didn't get to writing it all down. No worries though. I will be doing a extensive recap of my last month, including a couple of new recipes: a chili and my mother in laws green jello salad. Plus I will delve into the great extended weekend and new years that we had up at the cabin with all of our friends. It was fantastic! Tons of snow and fun was had by all.