Amazing Green Beans.

I never thought I would hear my husband utter such words: "Amazing green beans." I looked up a couple of recipes for szechuan green beans and came up with a pretty successful dish. All it took (to make those green beans amazing) was garlic, a little sugar, soy sauce, ginger, cayenne and chili sauce. Voila!

We also had some bacon and tried making bubble and squeak for the first time. (It was a multi-cultural meal). Bubble and Squeak is a mixture of mashed potatoes and cabbage that you cook together in a skillet so that it gets crispy on the outside. I found it in my British cookbook and have been wanting to try it for quite some time. The bubble and squeak was definitely tasty but it gave me a bit of trouble. First of all, I wasn't really paying attention and allowed the potatoes to boil away to nothing... had to start over with the potato portion of the recipe. Then the pan got a bit too hot and we burned the cabbage. I think next time we'll get out our electric griddle and make individual cakes instead of one big one. Our second try was cooked perfectly.

                                Hmm... it would appear that my blog is turning into a food blog. Hope you don't mind. I really enjoy posting my food adventures.

Steven wanted me to include this picture to show just how tasty everything was...

we ate it all.

Kiss the cook? Oh man I look tired! I've had this sinus infection for two weeks now and I'm pretty much tired all the time. It didn't help that dinner took over 2 hours to make that night.

Yesterday we decided it was time to get out of the house, and out of Enumclaw. So where do you suppose we went ---- if you guessed Sushi Land on Lower Queen Anne you're absolutely right. We took Steven's friend Brooks with us. He's just starting his first year at SPU and needs some seasoned alum to show him the ropes around Seattle. We're more than happy to oblige. We decided to swing by Kerry Park, big surprise, since it was such a beautiful day. 

Next stop ---- and if you guessed Blue Highway or Card Kingdom you're absolutely wrong this time (can you believe that?) ---- was the Oh! Chocolate shop in the Madison Park area.

Mom bought Steven and I a Groupon for wine and truffles as a gift last Easter and we finally used it. It was really fun and relaxing and special. We sat on their couch in the sunshine and drank our wine and talked for nearly and hour. The chocolate was yummy too.

 Can you guess which glass is whose? Yeah... mine's the one on the left and I drank a good portion of Steven's as well. I must say, 2 ibuprofen (which I took right before for my headache and toothache not thinking about the fact that I would be drinking) plus a glass and a half of wine makes for a really fun afternoon. Everything is just so much funnier under those circumstances.

Have I mentioned that I love going on dates with my husband? Because I do. It's my favorite. I'm thinking I need to start making some dinner reservations. We still have some fabulous gift cards that need to be put to use. Steven is currently in his first quarter of a 48 hour shift and I believe I am off to spend the evening with my mom and sister. Scrabble and television are on the menu tonight. Happy Friday!

p.s. Can you believe October starts tomorrow???? Me either.

My First Stir Fry.

Can you believe I've never stir-fried vegetables before? It's just never really occurred to me but we had all of these veggies sitting in the fridge and it just sounded like a good idea. I looked up a bunch of different recipes today to make sure I had the right idea and then I just went for it.

I chopped up all of these vegetables -- SIX different kinds: broccoli, cabbage, zucchini, green beans, carrots and mushrooms. And I thawed some chicken and cooked it with a little bit of garlic. Then added a little bit of black pepper and cayenne. I sprinkled in some chopped peanuts at the very end.

I even made my own teriyaki sauce! This is a trick I've wanted to have under my belt for quite some time now and I finally looked up a recipe. And you know what -- it worked. It actually tasted like teriyaki sauce. I could hardly believe it. It was so quick and easy to make and all of the ingredients were things that I always have around the house anyway. I felt so accomplished making my own teriyaki sauce. It was really a big deal for me. Can you tell? Here's the recipe: http://www.food.com/recipe/restaurant-teriyaki-sauce-133751#ixzz1Z5191jnS 

It was prettier before we started serving ourselves but I forgot to take a photo after I finished cooking it.

We had it with white rice and it was delicious! Definitely something we'll be making on a regular basis. And what a great way to work those veggies in! I'm so proud of us.

Steven's friend Chase was over here for lunch and games today. We played Zombies, Pirates Cove and Smallworld. Chase and I barely beat Steven at Zombies. He almost got us in the very last turn. Chase is a lot of fun. We're going to have to have him over more often.

Fair Food. Yum.

So you know how I was really excited to go to the fair and pet the baby cows -- they weren't there! It was the last weekend of the fair and all of the cows had already gone home. I kind of felt cheated. They should lower the ticket price or give out free scones or something to help make up for it. We mostly just saw a lot of sheep.

The Puyallup Fair is such a crazy place. Really very overwhelming. Like Disneyland except not quite as much fun and much more confusing -- I can't get lost at Disneyland. (I'm kind of on a Disney high this week. Can't wait to plan our next Disney vacation!!).

We walked around for quite a while and stopped for chocolate milk samples and then stood in line for the fair food -- one elephant ear per couple and then we each had our own scone. So good. There's something truly fabulous about fair food. We stopped and looked at one of those deep-fry-everything stands. You wouldn't believe the things they deep fry! Oreos and kool-aid (how the heck...?) and twinkies and snickers and pickles and on and on. So so so gross but also, oddly intriguing.

Is this the same picture I put in every single post? Hmmm...

 
We stopped for a minute to watch a little show.

We missed most of it, all of the juggling and everything, but we did get to see this guy climb up that super tall pole and sway back and forth and do a hand stand. It was kind of scary and very, very impressive.

We came back to the house and the boys played Scotland Yard while Annika and I prepared a very late dinner. We had chicken and rice and green beans and salad and it was delicious! We had a lot of fun with the two of them and I'm looking forward to hanging out with Annika again tomorrow morning. I very much enjoy coffee dates.

Psych Season 5 Disc 4 arrived in the mail today!!! We had it last week and we were SUPER excited to watch the finale (season 6 starts in the next couple of weeks) but the DVD wasn't working! It had worked just fine for the first three episodes and then when we got about ten minutes into the finale it kept stopping and then it would skip 4 or 12 minutes and it was so disappointing. Unfortunately (for me anyway) Steven is playing Halo with his dad tonight so we have to wait to watch it until tomorrow. Bummer.

It feels so much later than 7:30pm! Guess I'm tired tonight. I'm just watching Lucy tonight and doing dishes and catching up on the blog and maybe posting some facebook photos. I might even work on that quilt a little bit. Or have a glass of wine. Or read a book. Or clean my room. Who knows. Mostly I'll just miss my husband. Ha! Didn't mean for that to sound quite so sappy but I just LOVE having Steven home with me! Can't wait for Psych and tea and dinner at home together tomorrow evening.

Putting the Veg to Better Use.

We've made a recent addition to the grocery list: veggies. This is kind of a big deal for us because we really don't do vegetables. We'll occasionally saute a couple of zucchinis and a basket of mushrooms and every now and then you can see traces of broccoli in our cheese-potato soup but that's about it. The trouble is, we don't like the same vegetables. Steven likes tomatoes and bell peppers and an occasional cucumber and I like broccoli, Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, carrots, asparagus and green beans. And that's pretty much it. So we think we might have to start tricking ourselves. The goal is to find new ways of cooking with vegetables so that we actually enjoy  eating them (let me know if you have any great ideas. We'd be happy to hear/try them). The idea kind of started when we were at P.F. Chang's last week and had this really great asparagus in Sichuan sauce. That particular recipe is one that I have yet to acquire but we had a really nice broccoli-cheddar-green bean-mushroom quiche the other night and we even made a salad on Monday night. You would think that salad wouldn't be that big of a deal but we never do salad because I don't like any of the extra vegetables that go in salad and I get bored eating just lettuce (plus, let's be honest, it's such a pain to wash and chop) But we tried just putting in small pieces of carrot and very small pieces of raw broccoli (something I do not normally care for) and it had a very positive result. Something we plan to repeat in the future. The fridge is full of lettuce and carrots and green beans and cabbage and broccoli and apples and grapes (and a nice wedge of brie) all just waiting for us to enjoy them. Next step: find a way to get Steven to eat Brussels sprouts, because I love them.

 

Last weekend I thought Seattle had skipped the fall and gone straight to winter. We had ten straight days of sunny weather and temperatures in the 80s to 90s and then all of the sudden it was cold and dark. Saturday was particularly cold and I was worried I would regret not wearing my long underwear as we were on our way to the Sounders game for the evening and it can get SO cold in that stadium. I survived, thanks to my sweatshirt, jacket, scarf and blanket. Uncle Barry took us to the game with him and a friend. It was so SO nice of him to take us with and we enjoyed it very much. The seats were good and we liked them even better when it started to rain -- we were under cover so we didn't have to scramble for those ponchos and rain jackets and umbrellas that we neglected to bring.

The Sounders won 3-0, which means that we got free haircuts the next day :) I have to admit, I was really scared to get my hair cut at a Great Clips and even after the haircut was worried that I had made a big mistake but I'm enjoying it and Steven really loves it so I guess it's okay. It was an interesting experience. Very minimal -- no shampooing, they just spray your head all over with a squirt bottle (very inefficient if you ask me, and I don't even have that much hair!), then the haircut, then kind of a really quick blow-dry but most of it is still wet and absolutely no style or anything. The girl didn't even make sure that my hair was all parted in the same spot. It's so weird to walk out of a hair place with your hair all in the wrong spots and still wet. The lady who cut Steven's hair told him he didn't look good with long hair. Ha! It wasn't even that long but it does always look better after it's been trimmed up a bit. And it was just kind of really fun slash silly that Steven and I got our hair cut at the same time. That I liked.

By Tuesday the sun was back out to play so Steven and I spent a couple of hours walking along the Kirkland waterfront. I was feeling very tired (I've got this obnoxious cold that's been hanging on since last Saturday) so it was slow walking with lots of sitting on benches but still just so nice to be outside. It was really weird to see people swimming and sun-bathing so late into September but I'm certainly not complaining about our late summer. I don't think I was ready for that rainy-with-a-high-of-55 Saturday we had last weekend.

(putting together a photobook with our England pictures -- I can't wait to see it!!!)

I took a sewing class yesterday! I didn't learn too too much but I do know how to get my machine all ready for sewing and I can (kind of) sew in a straight line. I have a quilting class coming up in a couple of weeks, which should be fun. I'm trying to get ready for a small group that I'm leading this fall. We're going to be sewing blankets for the nursery at church. This is something that I've been wanting to do for a long time so I just decided that I couldn't let the fact that I've never sewn a blanket before (or really anything at all other than the garter I wore at my wedding) hold me back. So I'm just going to do it. I also spent many many hours washing, drying and folding yards and yards of fabric yesterday and this morning. A few months ago a lady was evicted from our building and she left behind a huge tub of fabric. Our landlord asked if I wanted it and I said sure why not so now I have all of this fabric!

I had no idea what I'd find in the tub and wasn't really expecting to be able to use too much of it but there's actually a ton of flannel, which is so perfect for all those blankets I'll be making! At the bottom of the bin I also found an unfinished quilt. I don't really like it but I'm planning to finish it anyway. I think it will be a great learning experience for me and it will be nice to practice on soemthing that I don't really care too too much about how it looks. The lady even had all of the squares cut out so all I have to do is assemble and attach the border and then hopefully Sue Piehler will help me figure out the rest. I figure I'll just give that to the nursery as well since it's not something that I would want to have personally. I think it's really sad that that lady was evicted and she must have put a lot of work into that quilt already but what a blessing all of this fabric and the quilt will be to our little Eastlake friends!

I suppose I should probably finish tidying up. Steven should be home soon (had to go put in a couple of over-time hours, they needed extra help at the station) and Tim and Annika will be here within the hour. We're going to the Puyallup Fair this afternoon!!! Can't wait to pet the baby cows and drink free chocolate milk samples and eat scones :)

It's Been Too Long.

September 12th already?? That means it's been 3 weeks since my last blog post... sorry about that. Time has been flying by and I guess since I posted the pictures from our wedding weekend down in Oregon on facebook already, I didn't really feel like I had much to report.

So, let's see, what has happened in the last 3 weeks... First of all, in case you didn't notice, I changed the look of the blog.

(What it used to look like)

Not an easy thing for me to do but I was really feeling the need for a change. I must say, I'm not too impressed with the options blogspot has for design type stuff. I don't really know what I want it to look like, I just feel like I can never find something that I'm in love with. I like this for now though and I think the colors are perfect as we're starting to transition into this new season. Actually, the weather has been so spectacular I can't even believe that we're pretty much mid-September already. The clouds rolled in this morning though so it's allowing me to feel cozy for a couple of hours.

We also purchased a new kettle. Woohoo! Ours had been leaking for a few months and aside from the fact that that is probably somewhat dangerous, I was just plain tired of having water all over the counter all the time. We had been wanting this pretty glass one but didn't like the price -- fortunately, we found a wedding gift we had purchased for someone last year but never actually gave to the intended couple so we returned it for store credit and used a 20% off coupon and voila! The pretty glass kettle is suddenly affordable.

Next on the list of very important things to update you on is the wedding weekend in Sutherlin. We had been looking forward to this wedding for many months and it was SO much fun to get to celebrate Jeremy and Ronnie with the entire Piehler/Glazner family on a beautiful weekend in southern Oregon. Chad and Whitney flew in for the weekend (crazy quick trip for them involving LOTS of time in cars and airplanes) and the four of us along with Benj and Beth all drove down together in Tara's mini-van :) It was a very long drive.

(Steven was Jeremy's best man -- he's wearing Mike's shirt in this photo because he was the only one who didn't fit into the green/blue color scheme. That color thing wasn't planned but it was funny how it worked out.)

The wedding was at a beautiful venue called Romantic River Gardens. This place was really really lovely (even if it was like 5 million degrees outside). It was fun to see the entire wedding party together for the first time and then to have a nice relaxing evening at the rehearsal dinner. 

Jeremy's parents prepared an awesome taco feast and we ate and swam and enjoyed the hot tub and just had a great time in general. 

We stayed in this super cute little cabin way up on a hill. It was so nice to have our own place so we didn't feel like we were in anyone's way or anything like that.

The wedding was beautiful. A bit hot at times (can't imagine what it was like in that wedding dress) but full of love and laughter. I'm pretty much obsessed with both of these families and had a great time just taking it all in.

The happy couple :) Ronnie was such a beautiful bride.

A little photo shoot...

Doesn't Steven look hot in a button up shirt and tie? Wow. Two blog posts in a row with Steven in nice clothes. LOVE IT!

Prom photo with Tim and Annika -- absolutely cannot wait for their wedding next year!!

Another fabulous Lentz/Mayer photo.

Huh, well, this one's just... special. We had a lot of fun getting to know Benj and Beth that weekend.

Love love LOVE Sam Piehler! I think we'll keep him.

After all of the wedding fun we headed back to the cabin for a game night. It was so nice to be out of our soggy wedding clothes (it was a sweaty day) and relaxing with some of our favorite board games, two huge bottles of wine and our fun new friends.

Sunday morning we were back in the van heading north. We stopped in Eugene for breakfast with Jeremy and Ronnie, made a quick Starbucks run and then we drove for a very long time. Everyone was glad to be out of the car when we finally reached home. Steven and I were exhausted and of course, he had to go to work the next day. Ugh. We had a great weekend though and are so looking forward to seeing Chad and Whit again when we visit them in Boston in just 5 and a half short weeks!

Not much has happened since them. Well, we've been busy, as always, but really not much worth telling about. We did get a new game. It's called Quarriors and it's a dice game. It's pretty fun, or at least it was when we first got it and I could win. Steven's got it too well figured out now.  

 

Lena and I had a coffee date a couple of weeks ago. Well, it was really more of a cupcake date with chai tea. No coffee at all. That's what we do these days. We get together once a month and share the cupcake(s) of the month at Cupcake Royale and then go for a walk. This time we walked around the Bellevue park. The weather was beautiful and the huckleberry cupcake was delish!

Steven and I signed up for our free month trial of Netflix. The goal is to see all of season 5 of Psych before we cancel our subscription at the end of the month. So far so good. We watched disc one last week and disc two should be arriving tomorrow. Season 5 is REALLY funny so far but I'm not loving Juliet's character right now. She's no fun at all. We'll see how this develops. Season 6 starts in October and we want to be up to speed by that point.

We celebrated Tara's 17th birthday this past weekend. She's so old! How did that even happen? She's stoked that she can go to R-rated movies now. How silly. I've never really been in to R-rated films.

Here's a random little story --- when we were driving home from my mom's last night this car pulled over for us to get in front of it and then it got right behind us and started flashing it's lights like crazy. It was really obnoxious. Steven was intentionally going just the speed-limit or slightly under so they would hopefully just pass us, which they didn't. Then they just left their brights on and drove right behind us from Maple Valley all of the way to Enumclaw. It was making me a baby bit anxious but I wasn't too too bothered by it but then Steven got into a left turn lane and put his turn signal on (at a spot where we never turn, I don't even know where it goes) and the car behind us did the same so Steven pulled back out in the lane to go straight (the way to get home) and the car behind us did that too -- at this point I get really anxious. Steven called 911 and two squad cars pulled up behind the other car as we drove into town. It was all just really bizarre. I guess they gave the guy a ticket for following too closely but seriously, what the heck was his problem?? I didn't like it. Steven and I came home and took showers and watched an episode of Psych to chill out before going to bed.

Other than that exciting tale, things are pretty much the same as usual around here. Today I'm going to be updating resumes and maybe writing a couple of cover letters. Do a bit of laundry. Make a Costco run. Possibly print some photos and start our honeymoon scrapbook. Read my library book. Tidy up my bedroom. And finish watching Snow White.

Things I don't like: the little poky plant things my mom's cat leaves all over her house and when my neighbor sits on his front step and smokes (all my windows are open at this time of year)

Things I do like: cool September mornings and a cup of tea

Off to drink that cup of tea.

much love,

Steph