Jesus Camp

So now that I think about it.... twenty documentaries might have been ambitious as a goal...

Jesus Camp - from 2006.  A story about born again Christian children and their evangelical summer camp.  I'll be honest, I had a hard time paying attention during it because evangelical Christianity, and fervent ones at that, are soooo not my thing, but here are two of my "favorite" quotes.

If this had been in the Old Testament, Harry Potter would have been put to death!!!

I'm not a fan of some ghost stories, they don't honor God.

#59 - subcheck!  But didn't enjoy...

Why not admit it?

I'm a big fat uncool girl.  I admit.

So my latest book, in honor of the upcoming movie... (I can't believe I've never read this before)

The Hobbit!

Hello guys.  Happy adventuring.

I remember starting this long ago and hating it for some reason.  But this time around it wasn't so bad.  In fact, I kinda liked it. 

Go dwarves & hobbit & wizard, go!

Ever read it?  (#65 subcheck) Want to see the movie??

Not a check, but..

We really tried not to go too far over the top this Thanksgiving - we didn't even make sweet potatoes to limit the number of sides!  But I didn't want to pass on having an excuse to make appetizers... so we made a stuffed mushroom bar!  A what you ask?  Well look!

We baked some mushroom caps and then set out a little DIY spread!

The suggested combos were (but we were free to be creative):

Cream cheese + jelly (meyer lemon marmalade or strawberry)

Hard boiled eggs, tomato, spinach

Apple, bacon, cheddar

Carrot, ginger, wasabi, green onion, turkey

I've heard a lot about "bars" lately: baked potato, mac'n'cheese, hot chocolate (all of which sound amazing), but this was a fun little healthy way to start our Thanksgiving party.

Which combo sounds the best?  Or weirdest??

Super fancy cake

Not quite as fancy as the crazy chocolate monster I made last year, this one is Cheesecake Factory inspired and if it takes more than one day to make - I consider that super fancy!

Here's the inspiration:

Red Velvet Cheesecake Layer Cake 

(Kind of redundant and not all that creative of a name..)

Source

Not *exactly* a fall-ish or Thanksgiving type dessert, but oh well.  I made some super yummy pecan bars to take care of that aspect.  And since Nick had to work several days in a row, I knew he'd take the leftovers to work so that ALLLLL those calories won't end up in my belly!

Here we go.  (Note: Her rose piping is gorgeous - in the instructions she says "If you're going to do that, double the frosting.  I couldn't *couldn't* double the frosting - so.many.calories. - so I thought, "Hey lady that wrote this recipe, you MUST be wrong." And got out my piping bag and ... nope.  No big flowers for me.)

Night before:  Made the crustless cheesecake and two red velvet cakes.  Except we didn't have red food coloring.  We DID have neon pink, but.  Well, the "red velvet" description isn't quite as accurate.

I'm just not a very good froster - so I'm pretty proud of my little uneven swirls.

Not quite as puffy as hers (or red, yeah, I know) - but pretty fun looking just the same!

I took a picture of the first slice we cut (which has the most crumbs) - but then got so excited about eating it that I forgot to take another!  The red (pink? brownish?) velvet layers weren't that sweet and the cheesecake layer had a little lemon flavoring in it.  The overall result was that the cakes weren't overly sweet, believe it or not - and who doesn't like cream cheese frosting? Let's be serious.

Number 14 is now COMPLETE: two cheesecake factory inspired cakes.

Does this combo sound good or weird to you??

Very successful baking

I haven't made too much progress on the cooking part of my list... until!  Thanksgiving  (especially when it's a 12 day weekend because your office is getting remodeled) seemed like a perfect time to try some things.

First up: Focaccia bread!

By definition, it's a flat oven-baked Italian bread topped with salt, olive oil, and herbs/cheese/whatever you want.  And Nick's favorite bread.  So I turned to the Food Network, found a recipe and went at it.  

Thanks to my handy dandy Kitchen Aid mixer, making the dough was a piece of cake.  It was the first use of the "dough hook" attachment.

Topped with carmelized onions, Parmesan cheese, and some of my huge abundance of basil (seriously, have I told you HOW much basil & sage we have?  Need any??) - and... voila!

The soft, flavorful, tasty, nom-goodness!  

Really delicious.  And lasted about 1 day in our two person household.  Oops!

So #3 focaccia bread- CHECK!
What toppings should we try next time??

Who votes on this stuff?

Trying to work through the top 25 movies on imdb, we got One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest from Netflix.  We watched about 45 minutes of it and just. couldn't. get. through. more. BUT in the name of the list, we left it on the coffee table for weeks (ok, I just looked it up, we got it AUGUST 29th and finished it today NOVEMBER 2nd - that's absurd).  However, this lazy day, we finally finished it.

And.

Why, voters?  Why of all the movies in the world do you pick THIS one as a top twenty?? It's AT LEAST 45 minutes too long and then gets all crazy dark at the end. 

Not recommended. (But absolutely sub-CHECK!)

Ever seen it?  Got anything to change my mind?

Sploring our neighbor

We don't make it over to Napa nearly enough -- but we headed out a few weeks ago for a fun Friday night.

Dinner:  Fish Story -- down town Napa, right on the river

We were brave and got a baby tower of mostly raw stuff.  I'm just still not really an oyster fan.

Nick order the special of the day: crab. As in, here's a whole crab with lots of dark colored sauce.  Good luck not getting it all over your self and your white shirt and finishing in a reasonable amount of time, especially since your wife got a small little piece of fish for dinner.  I think he burned all the calories he consumed after tackling that bad boy.

Love this.

After dinner drinks, we headed to 1313 Main for champagne flights - we don't know much about bubbles, so this was basically educational!

Any tips on how to take apart a whole crab??

Goooo Irish!

 Nick and I headed to ND for a little intra-marriage rivalry at the ND-Stanford football game.  We knew it wasn't going to be great weather -- but not knowing that your raincoat isn't actually a raincoat BEFORE standing in the rain for four hours is a valuable piece of information.  Bummer.

Gah, spending $5 on the poncho BEFORE getting totally absolutely soaked through would have totally saved my day.  I like my new ND gear though - even the stuff I had to buy mid-football game!

It was a fun trip (and ND won, woo!), but wetcoldwetwetwet will be my lasting memory of this trip.  

See the poncho sticking out UNDER the coat?  Classy.  Well planned.

Go Irish, beat everyone else you play!

Number 55: Check!

Redo

So I kind of gave myself credit for #94 - new hairstyle, but honestly.  I haven't had a new hairstyle since the great chop of '00 in London.  If you missed that, ask me for the recap. ("Can I touch it?" says the 13 year old Japanese hair stylist student in charge of my large, thick, white girl mane.)

So, I count a little bit shorter with a few more layers as a change and well, that's probably as fancy as I'll get.  My sisters are much braver than me.

But!  I do have long hair.  And you can style that!  So Nick and I were headed to a fancy-ish dinner and I decided to fancy it up!

I've never actually taken one of the bathroom photos with my phone, so I have to say, I have a tiny bit more respect for those idiots that do it all the time (with the duck face).  But anyway...

 The back

The front

For serious, my first attempt at fancy hair that isn't "down and curled".  I'm proud!

Suggestions??

Um, yum?

We're kind of on a kick to eat weird stuff, I guess.  The latest victim (which, to be honest, it something we've meant to try for a while): uni.

Know what that is?

Pay no attention to the weird martini glass presentation or blurry photo.

 

Does this help?

Source

Or this?

Source

Sea urchin!  

Alright, it's actually sea urchin gonads, but one can pretend they didn't know that, right?

Some people love it, I thought it was ... weird.  Maybe if it was from a better place, aka not our local only so-so sushi place?  It's expensive though, so this might be my only adventure with urchin.  Alas.

 Ever had a sea urchin gonad??

Traveling the world

You've all seen my FB pictures about this trip (and probably half of you were ON the trip with me) - but I figured I'd put up a few "non-published" photos.  This was a tough trip: early days, lots of hard exercise, challenging weather - but definitely once in a lifetime.  I'm glad we went and K&A - I'm glad you came with us.  Even if you're not. :)

 Sure, I'll stand in this important site that I don't understand (and won't remember) and take a picture.  Why not?

 

I hated (hate hate hated) how cute all the little guinea pigs were.  These guys were in this like guinea pig doll house - right next to the oven that they were about to go into!!

 

 

So naive on Day 1:  "Oh look, a rest! This is kind of hard!"

We had no idea...

 

 

There were so many cute stray dogs.  Why aren't rescue dogs that cute (or well behaved) in this country??  Except for you, Lucer, you're adorable.

 

 Very scared to be hiking up to that mountain pass.  I said several times "Just to the brown part, right?" and the answer was always the same "Nope, the white.  Still the white part."

Peacefully gazing at the path ahead.

Not posed at all.  

One of the totally stable, secure (wet) bridges we crossed over.

Can't see the valley at all - the ruins do look cool enveloped in fog.

Thanks Peru (New country: CHECK!) We're headed to see Moni next, but after Italy...

Where should we go next??

Red & White all over!

There are a million-and-two things to do in Sonoma - various festivals and "weekends" for different things.  Many are just not that big of a deal or not that well organized or really very expensive.  We've wanted to get more involved in our community though, so we are trying to find some good ones.  One we heard good things about was the Red & White Ball.

Perfect event to re-wear a red bridesmaid's dress!

They decorated the north side of Sonoma Square and jam packed it with red and white decorations and a dance floor.  We got to eat some really yummy BBQ (from Big Jim - this is his second appearance on the blog!) and sat with some of our (incredibly super duper old) Sonoma Greens neighbors. 

We were pretty tired because we had been out the night before too (and might possibly have enjoyed a bit too much wine) and it was the same exact band!  But we were glad to have supported Sonoma schools (the beneficiary of the fundraiser), got to see Ben & Courteney again (still haven't talked to them), and be out in Sonoma.

Number 68: half CHECK!

Have you ever been to a color themed party before?

Snip snip cut cut

I've had a subscription to Cooking Light since at least 2006, maybe longer (that was just the oldest magazine the I had in my pile).  I've moved old magazines from Boston to San Francisco to Sonoma - and collected quite a pile.  I tried various versions of organization (sorting the magazines by month and turning down corners, taking out one magazine per month and trying to use it as an inspiration) but basically I had a huge pile of old magazines in my kitchen.

So very ambitiously, I made goal #72:  Finish organizing Cooking Light magazines.

I was going to go through EVERY LAST DADGUM magazine, cut out the good parts and recycle the rest. 

Let me tell you.  This takes forever.  For. Ever.  And ever.

And looks professional and awesome.  Mhm.

And at first, my organization was just snip snip glue tape just in "chronological" order.  I thought it would be *fun* to just glance through the binder to look for food ideas.  And then I saw how much volume we were talking.  So I got to re-cut and re-tape midway through to organize by category (breakfast, type of meat, soup, etc.) which was super fun.

That's a big folder.

I'd like to thank NCIS, The Closer, L&O (all versions), The Mentalist, the Food Network, and Lucy for keeping me company these many hours.

Now, each weekend when I'm planning our meals for the week - I go to the section that we have meat for and pop out a page.  I WILL make good use of this binder, darn it!  This was seriously so much work, but I'm glad to have it organized and do feel very accomplished.  Number 72: you get a resounding CHECK!!

Any other folks with giant recipe binders?? We could trade pages!!

Moar food again

Not the most exciting posts -  I know - but we've been waiting forevvvver to check this place out.

There's a little Mexican restaurant near our house, El Molino Central, that looks like a little piece of nothing - but apparently even people from the east (read: cool) side of Sonoma come to eat here.  So one lunch, we forsook our typical Subway and headed here.

Well, first of all, we basically didn't do anything right.  We didn't get drinks like we were supposed to, we sat in a pile of yellow jackets, we didn't give our name to get our food, when it finally came is was the wrong food some how - but holy moly was it some good Mexican food!  I don't typically like tamales but gobbled this the heck up.  Unfortunately, it's gringo priced - not taqueria priced - but I can say I'm sorry it took us three years to check it out and we'll definitely be back!

Any tamale fans out there?  If so, we're going here on your next visit!

Sunday afternoon guilt trip...

Another documentary that makes me feel like a bad member of our global community.

Flow

Source

This is a really unfortunate demonstration as to how greedy people are.  The privatization of water, especially in developing nations, is ruining communities and forcing people to make terrible choices.  And bottled water is the devil.  It's no more regulated or better for you than tap water. And it ruins the communities it comes from.  And the bottles are terrible for the environment.  Don't drink it.

Unfortunately, most of the action items are global political changes.  I'm not really into protesting or politics, so it's hard for me to feel like I can do much about this.  At the end of the movie, the director put up a statement that they wanted the UN to pass the Right to Water resolution. 

"On 28 July 2010, through Resolution 64/292, the United Nations General Assembly explicitly recognized the human right to water and sanitation and acknowledged that clean drinking water and sanitation are essential to the realisation of all human rights. The Resolution calls upon States and international organisations to provide financial resources, help capacity-building and technology transfer to help countries, in particular developing countries, to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable drinking water and sanitation for all."  -- Source   

Despite opposition from the US & UK.  (Sigh.) 

But good job for getting it passed!

Why are big corporations so greedy?
Do you drink bottled water??

Moar food

Another fancy Ad Hoc meal!  (Food posts are boring so) I'll try and keep it short...

 Fennel, fennel everywhere

I don't really like black licorice and don't typically like fennel but it was really yummy in this meal.  Such a waste that you can't use all the long green parts though...

 Making our own fig balsamic jam.  Candy thermometer and all - so fancy!
And look at the cute little vinegars in the back - we did add a little fig balsamic for extra figgy-ness

 End result: Fig stuffed pork loin, caramelized fennel, and glazed sweet potatoes

And of course, dessert!  Red wine (nice use for red wine that's too old to drink, but was good to start off) balsamic cupcakes with a ricotta frosting (and port!)

Anybody know what to do with the top of fennel??

Stupid Netflix!

On my documentary watching journey, next up was Murderball.  Why yes, it did come out in 2005 - but it takes a while to get around to things sometimes, ok?

Source

Anywho, it's an entertaining story about quadriplegic guys who build crazy sturdy wheel chairs and crash into each other while passing a ball up and down a court. (The official name is wheelchair rugby - but initially it was called Murderball.  Not very marketable.)  Apparently, there are international leagues & competitions - up to the paralympic games which are held immediately after the regular Olympic games.

Most of the guys were super competitive/crazy folks who broke their necks and are now looking for an outlet for their energy/aggression.  And as usual, there was a side story about the politics (of coaching wheelchair rugby, who knew?).

Anyway, it was good - won lots of awards (...seven years ago), but my biggest memory of this movie will be... the last chapter was corrupted!  Stupid Netflix!  I could kind of see part of it, choppily, but not really.  The climax of the story line was over, but the conclusion, etc. missed it!  We only get one movie at a time, so I wasn't going to waste it requesting a new disc, but c'mon!  Lame!

One more documentary seen: CHECK!

Have you ever not been able to see the last 5 mins of a movie?  Wasn't it annoying!?

The coldest winter...

... I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco - or anywhere on the northern CA coast!

We had a free Saturday so Nick & I headed to a place we'd been meaning to visit - Point Reyes.  It's a National Seashore (is that like a National Park?  Because National Parks are a 101 item...?) not far from us distance-wise, but it took a while to get there are the small, twisting (beautiful) roads.  It has over 150 miles of hiking trails and its beaches are listed as one of the most beautiful places in the world for picnics with it's dramatic cliffs and Pacific Ocean views.  We also wanted to check out some hiking gear for our upcoming trip to Peru!

 Wasn't a great day to practice with the camera & tripod

 We visited the historic lighthouse and took a walk to Chimney Rock and then headed to the Tule Elk Preserve.  Never heard of Tule (Too-lee) elks? Well, they are native to NorCal, look like deer, and it's their mating/rutting season.  Never heard of rutting?  Official name of head butting.

Yep, foggy fog fog

This is the best picture of the harem with my super fancy iPhone camera

Anywho, we spent several chilly hours walking around gazing down at the ocean - but mostly just looked at fog.  It was beautiful in a creepy way, we'll definitely have to come back in the fall when the weather is better.

Highlight of the day: we came upon a harem - one huge male Tule elk and his pack of ~30 females and a few juvenile males (small fuzzy antlers)!  It was really neat to see such a huge group together and really close to the hiking path.

This is kind of a soft check, but we HAVE been meaning to do this for a while, so I'll give myself credit for #47 a new hike & #50 new national park. 

So, what do you think -- does National Seashore = National Park?? :)

Short post

I know that everyone that reads this blog already knows this info - but I do want to mark the event.

I love the size of the post race smiles -- great work everybody!  I'm so proud of you all.  K&B, you were definitely an inspiration to me during the race.  When it was hard and I was getting tired, I knew you were behind me - working just as hard! - and it was motivation to keep going. 


Half marathon in 2012 (sub check), half marathon PR, and run the Napa2Sonoma half marathon -- TRIPLE CHECK!

I'm running another half in October - anyone want to join me??

Super meal

We've decided to try to make one meal a month at home from the awesome book Katie got us for the wedding: Ad hoc at Home.  This month we dove in head first - we made four different recipes from it! (And two other awesome things...)

Meatballs with Pappardelle

First stop, the super amazing cooking store in Napa to get meat grinder and pasta maker attachments for our KitchenAid mixer.  Now that we've made the investment, we're really motivated to use it again in the future!

Let's watch the meal progress, shall we?

So, I've already checked off item #1 "Bake bread", but I feel like this actually counts.  Can you see how awesome this bread looks?  Because it was awesome.  And so amazingly easy.  If you own a dutch oven, and like bread - this will cost like $0.75 to make this beautiful loaf.  Do it!!  Anyway, this turned into both garlic bread and the bread pudding for dessert.

I thought I took better pictures than this!  Oh well, no action shots.  It definitely took us a while to figure out the past roller, but we had a pretty good system by the end.  We made the dough the night before, rolled them super thin, and cut them into (a million) individual pasta pieces.

 

We rolled each sheet and cut it into 1" slices, then unrolled to boil.  "Rustic hand-cut pappardelle" as Chef Keller calls it.  They're not supposed to be even.  Which is good, because they weren't :)

 About 40% of our pappardelle.  And yes, each little roll is ONE PIECE of pasta. 

This took us over two hours, I'm not gonna lie.

This is a delicious blend of four different meats, stuffed with cheese and baked - and about a half cup each!  The grinding your own meat was hard and gross, but I feel good about the quality and the texture of the meat. 

Finished product!  We also made a super delicious oven roasted tomato sauce.  SOOOooo good and very simple ingredients.  Call me for the recipe :)  And what a great excuse to drink a fancy wine.  And for dessert, I was too tired to take pictures apparently, but Bananas Foster Bread pudding (made with my fresh bread) might have been the tastiest dessert ever.  Highly recommended...

So four Ad hoc recipes!  Pasta dough, Oven roasted tomato sauce, Sachet (to season the sauce), and Meatballs with Pappardelle.  It was over four hours in the kitchen, but a really great way to spend an afternoon with the hubby and a delicious meal (with plenty of leftovers!) to boot.

And for checks... #2 - make pasta & #13 - (3/15) Ad hoc recipes.

Which part of this meal sounds the tastiest??