Salad Season

I found this cloned recipe but I don't know where.  I've made a few modifications, the brown rice is one, and it turned out very, very good.  It's a keeper!  Café Rio is a local restaurant.

Café Rio Dressing

1 buttermilk ranch dressing envelope made per package instructions

2 tomatillos

½ bunch of cilantro

1 clove garlic

Juice of 1 lime

1 jalapeño or substitute with a few drops of green Tabasco

Use a food processor to blend all the ingredients well. Refrigerate.

Café Rio Chicken

1 small bottle Kraft Zesty Italian Dressing

1 Tablespoon  chili powder

1 Tablespoon cumin

3 cloves garlic—minced

5 lbs chicken breast

Cook all together in a crock pot for 4 hours on low, shred meat and cook 1 additional hour.

Café Rio Rice

4 cups water

4 chicken bouillon cubes

4 cloves garlic –minced

½ bunch cilantro

1 can green chiles

¾ t salt

1 Tablespoon  butter

½   onion,  chopped

2 cups uncooked  brown rice

Blend cilantro, green chiles and onion together in food processor.  Bring water to a boil and add all ingredients, simmer covered 50 minutes or until rice is tender.

To Serve: Fill bowl with as much chopped lettuce as desired, add rice, then chicken and any or all of the following:  black beans, avocado/guacamole, salsa, sauteed corn and onions, sour cream...and Café Rio dressing.

I, of course, did not make this full recipe and still had a lot left over.  The rice and the chicken freeze well and the dressing can be used as a dip.  :-)

QOTD

Actually the quote of day from yesterday.  I was sorting through a stack and found a purse-sized notebook which was mostly filled with lists but included a notation that August 26 is National Dog Day, not to be confused with the dog days of summer which describe hot and humid days in the Mediterranean between July 3 and August 11.  In Utah, the twenty-sixth of August will just be hot.

The quote:

"Share rather than accumulate."  Bonnie Parkin

Big Jack

December 05, 2003 - June 24, 2013

We will miss you.

Summer Socks

For the last few years it has increasingly bothered me to put bare feet into shoes.  Even sandals are not as much fun as they used to be.  A lot of it has to do with how rough and snaggy my heels get no matter how much pumicing and cream slathering I do.  So while I will still go barefoot in sandals, I have caved to comfort...once again.

These are my outside choring shoes.  It's a look I'm pretty sure will not go viral.

The Finished Tree

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The guys from Seven Trees did a fabulous job and as shocking as the change is, when the winds blow they just blow though the tree with barely any branch swirling about movement.  A relief.

If you look back at the before picture, you will see there was one very dead branch.  It was the branch that had the swing on it for 10 plus years.  Here is how that piece looked when they cut it off.  It makes me feel bad and I wonder why we didn't hear any whimpering from the tree.  Maybe we weren't listening.

The Excitement Never Ends Here

How it looked this morning.

The smallest guy is the actual tree trimmer.

Lots of grinding/chipping.

The guy without the hard hat is the boss.

They started at 1 and left at almost 5.  One of the green shirted guys said they will be back tomorrow and should finish in about another hour.  The west side of the tree still needs some thinning and I am hoping that the branch the trimmer is standing on will remain but it's growing to the right from the left side of the Y and that just seems wrong.  Do you see all those windows on the four-plex that are staring at me again?  Sigh.  But there was a broken branch that was mostly in the neighbor's yard directly behind me and aside from that we had terribly scarey winds last week and I was holding my breath with each gust, waiting for a loud cracking and crashing sound.  Whew.  Spared.  We should be good for two years and then when we call them back to trim, it shouldn't cost nearly so much.  At least that's what the boss told me.

Oh, and based on the height of the fence, I estimate the tree at more than 40 feet tall.

'Tis The Season

Very easy, very good!

Pineapple Dole Whip {Clone}

recipe adapted from Disney Diner by What's Cookin' Chicago?

1 carton Pineapple sherbet, softened

1 8oz container whipped topping, softened

1/4 cup frozen pineapple juice concentrate

1 teaspoon yellow food coloring {optional}

In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients until everything is thoroughly mixed into one uniform mixture.

Transfer mixture to a gallon sized freezer bag; seal and freeze overnight.

For soft serve, using your hands, massage the freezer bag to slightly warm up the pineapple whip for easy squeezing out of the bag. [Snip a corner of the bag and pipe out the pineapple whip into your serving bowl.

Or, scoop out the pineapple whip as you would ice cream and serve.

 

Another one from Bob

The majority of my junk mail is advertisements from hearing aid companies.  Lots of invitations for "free" check-ups, consultations and even dinners.  I guess it keeps the postal workers employed.

This Superior joke in yesterday's email made me laugh:

A man was bragging to his neighbor about his recent purchase.  “I just bought a new hearing aid.  It cost me two thousand dollars, but it's the newest and best!” “Really,” answered the neighbor, “what kind is it?” “Twelve thirty.

Sunday Brunch at Sundance

As you might imagine, it was superb!  Sherise's plan is to first do a little scouting and review all the selections on each table.  Then we put in our order for an omelet, got our plates and started getting serious.  I tried to taste everything that interested me, skipping over the fruit since I have been working on a huge bowl of watermelon here at home.  I especially loved the horseradish sauce with the prime rib, the marinated tomatoes, the Meyer lemon cheesecake and the chicken in mango chutney but most of all I loved the omelet and the bacon.

Our reservation was at 10 and we took our time eating and then waited for Mark, Sherise's husband, to bike his way down the mountain,.  Then we all rode up on the ski lift and Mark got off at the top to bike down again!

This was the turn around and really the only jerky part of the ride.   Mark's bike was tied to the chair behind us. 

 

 

 

 

Headed back down to the starting spot.

It was a great ride and a turkey vulture was gliding close enough for us to see the red on his face!

I was careful not to go past the point of no return with all that fabulous food to choose from.  Still, there is no need to eat until Wednesday.

Sherise calls it Brunch Belly.

JOTD

Yesterday, Susan and I sat with our friend SueAnn for a few hours at the farmer's market.  It was a fabulously beautiful day and SueAnn is a very good joke teller.  This is one of my favorites:

A man was hired to paint a church.  Thinking to make a bit more profit on the job, he added some water to the paint to make it go farther.  He was almost done with the painting when it began to thunder and lightning.  Pouring rain soon washed all the paint off the building.  A loud voice boomed from the sky: "Repaint, repaint and thin no more."

(Happy Sunday!)

The Pig

The quarterly Relief Society meeting in Gaye's ward last week included exchange tables, i.e. you bring something you don't need and possibly find something you do need.  No money changes hands and the only people who might have a little less fun than the rest of us are the ones who have to clean up the left-overs and take them to DI.

Here's what I found:

 

I am very excited!  A new bank for change!!  Today was initiation day as I sorted the change from the past week.  I have been dividing it between five collection vessels.  That's not counting the pennies or dimes which have their own containers.  So the pig gets added, making it six.  There are two banks that are nearing capacity and then we will use a kind of Franklin method, adding the change to fewer banks and fewer banks as they fill.  The goal?  The three original banks will take a long time to fill but when this pig is full it will be time to buy an iMac.

It's good to have a plan.

Had To Try It!

 

Quite good!  The only thing missing was the melted butter!  :-)

PCC

I brought three recipes up to Seattle with me to test.  The dip recipe comes from Debbie MacComber's site, is really good and one that I will make again:

Beer Dip by Jo Anne Haydon

2 (8 oz.) pkgs. cream cheese, softened
1 pkg. dry ranch dressing mix
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
8 oz. beer (any flavor, even non-alcoholic will work)

Mix all ingredients together, until well blended. Chill and serve with crackers or pretzels.  It's even better, if there is anything left, the second day.

(Amy prefers the cream cheese pictured above.  I try not to buy any as I am incredibly weak.)

4x

I could be stressed about this but I am not.  I was the first to sign up for the two socks at a time Magic Loop  or Two Circulars class.  I was excited to give sock making another try!  I can do it!!

Not happy with what I did that first night so I ripped it out and got a slightly heavier weight yarn and slightly bigger needles.  Watched a YouTube video on the Magic Loop cast on and decided to start one sock rather than two, just as a practice/warm-up.

After about 6 rows, I was fairly confident I knew what I was doing, ripped out the practice work and cast on two socks.  Was amazingly successful and went to bed happy about the experience.

This morning I picked up where I left off and was doing fine until I suspected I had the work upside down, kind of.  Fiddled around a bit longer but decided it would wise to just carry it to the store and seek help.  We fixed the problem.

At home again, I got back at it and then was sure there was still something wrong because I was still picking up an extra stitch on one side of each row.  Figured out how to work around that and then as I was really thinking about it I realized that I was only knitting half a row at a time.  One row on sock one with an increase and one row on sock two with an increase, turn the work and knit a plain row on the back of sock one and knit a plain row on the back of sock two.  I thought I was on row 22 and actually I had only knit 11 rows and those rows had increases on just one side.  I was going to have to find a person with stub feet with the top of their foot in a noticeable wedge shape, wider on the bottom. 

Heavy sigh.

Must try again.  Perseverance and all that.

Surprised...But Not Really

I love my Dyson Animal!  I think I have had it about five years and while they are quite pricey, it was a tax refund purchase so you know, then that makes it a prize.

There was a mind set change involved though because it is bagless and I wasn't so sure I wanted to see what was getting picked up.  As it's turned out, the clear plastic canister is no longer clear but rather frosted because of all the dirt I vacuum up that has been carried in by my roommates.

A couple of months ago I discovered another release button and I no longer have to reach inside the canister to extract the dog hair that gets compacted in there.  I know, gross.  I have periodically been washing out the canister and this weekend was truly amazed to discover yet another release button that gave me access to the filters.  The side of the yellow filter piece has pictures that show you exactly how to care for the two pieces!!  The not really surprised part of this story is that the blue foam insert was black when I pulled it out and when it was finally clean ( a lot of water) it says right on it that it should be washed every six months.  Sigh.

Cleaning all those parts has yielded one sparkly and no longer stinky vacuum cleaner!  Yay!

Bellingham

Western Washington State University is located in Bellingham which is just a hop, skip and a jump from Canada.  I was hoping to visit Tristan and see where he lives and schools but then there was the I5 bridge that broke, which is the way to get to Bellingham plus it was the Memorial Day weekend with extra people on the roads.  So, we didn't go until Tuesday and Tristan had class until 4 so it really was a last minute visit.

We wondered if this bridge was functionally obsolete!

As the passenger, I could scrutinize the bridge structure.

Our creative detour provided quite a good look at Burlington.

Many sculptures on campus and this one was very interesting.

Can you see the umbrella painted on the side of the building?

Ha!

I love the texture of these stones.

We saw another piece by this sculptor in the Olympic Sculpture Park!

Red Square, the bricks are wet from rain not the fountain.

Construction going on behind this sculpture.

Calder wannabe?

Sculpture of a different kind... there's a lot of rain here.

The most beautiful campus.  You feel like you could pitch a tent 5 feet off the walking paths.

The library.  Wow.

Classrooms!

Man Pies, where we had dinner. This is the outside front of the building.

We drove through Starbuck's for a Mocha Frappaccino Grande for the trip home (80 miles).
 Brian knit the cup cozy!

The broken bridge.  Getting dark and so I filled in some light. 
(click on the picture to make it larger)

It was far too short of a visit and fairly exhausting but I'm so glad we got to go!