Hello again!  Josie, don't worry, I won't post a marriage announcement on the blog without calling everyone first.  Hahaha I thought I said not to freak out in my explaination of the picture.  Anyway, this week was a blast.  I'm going to try to keep this post short.  Tuesday I went to Nick's to make dinner and watch the Glee and the season finale of V.  Oh, what an ending!  I can't wait for next season to come.  Next I had my usual dinner with Melanie on Wednesday night, which was a complete grilling success for once.  Even Talan seemed to like it.  My disguising the squash in turkey burgers worked until he saw us eating chips.  Of course he only wanted to eat chips after that, but he did take a few big bites of the mini burger I made him.  Then on Thursday Nick and I picked Melanie and Kevin up to go to the Carrie Underwood concert in Sacramento.  Oh. My. Gosh.  That girl can sing.  I love her!  I was singing the whole time.  It's a good thing it was so loud that I couldn't hear myself, although I think Nick could hear my nasally, off pitch singing voice loud and clear.  On Friday Bonnie came for dinner and we watch two of my favorite girly movies.  Ah, what a life.  Saturday was Christopher's senior ball and Sunday I had book club. Whew, what a busy week!  On top of that, Nick got me a small gig with his coworker and our friend Ian, to edit a newsletter and help rewrite his website.  Helping Ian with his newsletter has reminded me why I want to be a writer and editor, so I've started looking for jobs in the writing field again.  Even though it takes me a long time to write and edit, it is so much more enjoyable than what I'm doing at Celery right now.  Celery was fine and dandy when I was in the office, but I'm getting a little tired of sitting in my room all day.  We'll see how that goes. 
 

Successful grilling by myself!

Turkey Burgers with summer squash
Serves 8

4 summer squash, grated and squeezed
4 lbs ground turkey
3 tbsp garlic powder
3 tbsp onion powder
3 tbsp black pepper
2 tsp kosher salt

Directions
Shred summer squash with a cheese grater onto a tea towel.  Twirl the towel and squeeze liquid out of the squash. Mix all ingredients together.  Form into patties, separating with wax paper.  Heat grill to medium-low.  Grill patties 4-5 minutes per side or until juices run clear. 

This is a great recipe if you have have picky eaters who won't eat veggies.  Make sure not to skip the squeezing part for the squash.  The natural liquids in the squash will make your burgers fall apart.  You'll be surprised how much liquid comes out!  I know I was.  You could probably make meatballs or meatloaf this way too.  I would just add some ketchup and a couple of eggs into a meatloaf mixture. 

Carrie Underwood Concert

Nick's Lime Chicken Fajitas

Nick's Lime Chicken

6 chicken thighs
3 tbsp Chalula
2 limes, zested and juiced
salt and pepper to taste
EVOO

Directions:

Mix all ingredients together in small bowl.  Oil grill or grill pan.  Sear chicken for 4-5 minutes per side.  Serve with tortillas and sauteed vegetables of choice. 

Christopher's Senior Ball

For Christopher's senior ball Nick came over to take professional-grade pictures of them.  Sure beats our little snapshot cameras!  I took these off of Christopher's facebook page. 

Sausage Soup and then some...

Blogging twice in one week!  I haven't done this since I was bored and miserable in NY!  It must be the caffeine and Claritin D.  I've been drinking coffee to help with my allergies.  The caffeine actually helps with my sinuses until the Claritin D can kick in.  The sudafed in the Claritin D pretty much acts like caffeine for me.  So between the caffeine from the coffee and the sudafed from the Claritin D, I'm typing faster than usual and talking a million miles a minute.  My poor customers.


Every Tuesday night Nick and I get together to make dinner and watch Glee and V.  Yesterday I was feeling rather grumpy because of the weather and people not receiving messages properly at work so I couldn't decide on a soup to make for dinner. (Nick said he was craving soup.)  Of course, not being able to decide on anything made me even more grumpy.  In the end, I ended up making something up.  This always seems to happen when I can't find anything I feel like making online or in a book.  As a result I came up with Sausage Soup, clever name, I know.

Sausage Soup
Serves 8-10

EVOO
1 lb mild italian sausage, crumbled
1 onion, minced
1 head garlic, sliced
3 shallots, minced
5 mushrooms, sliced
2 zucchini, halved and sliced
2 summer squash, halved and sliced
3-4 sprigs rosemary, just leaves
2 cartons chicken stock
3 c water
1/2 package orzo pasta
1/2 head small cabbage, sliced


Directions:

Heat EVOO in the bottom of your pot.  Brown sausage, using wooden spoon to crumble it up.  Once sausage is brown, add onions, garlic, and shallots.  Sautee until onions are translucent.  Add zucchini, squash, and mushrooms.  Sautee until tender.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Add rosemary leaves.  Add chicken stock and water, bring to a boil.  Let simmer for 15-20 minutes.  Add orzo and cabbage (this will cook really quickly). 
 

This soup isn't hard to make at all, it's just a lot of prep work.  Once you get everything into the pot, it's mostly just waiting for all the flavors to meld together for yummy goodness.  I've decided that the next phone I get will have a nicer camera.  I seem to be taking more food pictures on the go and this phone just doesn't really do the job well.  I doubt I will get a new phone for a while, but one can always make plans for the future. 


Tonight I am going to make turkey burgers.  Melanie's baby, Talan, has hit the phase where he doesn't like vegetables.  He used to eat them all the time when it was baby food, but now that he's into solids he won't touch a zucchini unless it's to take it off his fork.  Tonight I'm going to try to trick him by grating up squash and putting it into the turkey burgers.  He won't be able to take it out!  Of course, he might just reject the whole burger, but since he likes meat I think I'll be okay.  I saw on Sandra Lee that you can grate your squash or zucchini into a tea towel and then ring out all their natural moisture.  If you do this then it won't make your burgers fall apart.  She was actually make zucchini cakes so extracting the moisture was imperative, but I think the concept will work well with my burgers too since I got lean turkey.  I will let you know how this experiment works out.  It's fun trying to get picky eaters to eat what you want them to.  I love feeling power in my hands.  Mauhhhhh...


I also just found out today that the show Castle that my family and I are really into has real books!  The premise is that Richard Castle, the writer, shadows Kate Beckett, the detective, for his research and inspiration for murder mystery novels.  Castle and Kate have a budding romance that has yet to come to fruition as both are in denial about their obvious attraction.  Castle uses Kate as his muse for his book Heat Wave that stars Nikki Heat, who coincidentally is very much like Kate.  As it turns out the books are real!  I knew that the show was pretty legit when authors James Patterson and Steven J. Cannell showed up as Castle's close poker buddies, but this is mind blowing!  The books are out suitably with the pen name, Richard Castle, but I want to know who really wrote them since Castle is a fictional character.  Neil, my boss, and I tried to look it up but there are only rumors that it's the writer of the show who wrote the books.  I'm not sure if I want to buy Heat Wave or not yet.  I'm not really into murder mysteries, but I sure am interested.  Maybe I'll go see if the library has it.

A little more exciting news.  Tomorrow Nick, Melanie, Kevin (Melanie's husband) and I will be going to the Carrie Underwood concert!  I'm really excited.  I don't think that Carrie is really Nick's cup-of-tea, but he's doing it for me since I really like her (and he really likes me).  I'll be going to the Dave Mathews concert with him in August so it all works out.  I've been trying to listen to Dave while I cook so that I'll be familiar with a little bit of his music.  Right now I'm still not gung-hoe about him, but he's not bad.  His non-moaning songs are pretty good.  It's just when he does some weirdo moaning stuff that I don't enjoy it much...but it seems like a lot of his songs are like that.  It's probably his way of getting into the music, but I'm not a fan.  Carrie on the other hand, I'm a big fan of.  Yay!



Aren't they gorgeous?  Lately I've been looking for some nude colored heels.  I found the perfect pair by Charles David but they didn't have my size.  I was so disappointed that I completely stopped my online shoe shopping for the night, which is a big deal.  Usually I don't do the "update me when they restock" thing, but I really wanted them so I did it this time.  It paid off.  The other day I woke up with an email saying that they were in stock in my size.  By the time I went to the website, which was right away, there was only one pair left in my size so I seized the opportunity.  All I have to say is that they better fit.  I'm always weary of buying shoes online, but Zappos.com has a really good return policy.  I think I'd be crushed if they didn't fit properly.  I should be getting the shoes in the mail sometime today.  Maybe I'll wear them to the Carrie concert!

Phase two of "Project Clean Garage: Avoid Hoarding Show Nomination"

We did it! As a reminder of how far we've come I have posted all of the before and after photos. 

Before

During

After

Can you believe it?!!?!  I woke up at 7am on Saturday and worked until about 5pm.  I was so tired that I could barely hold myself up to eat dinner and then got in bed by 8pm.  Unfortunately, even though I was exhausted, I only slept for an hour and then didn't end up going to sleep until my normal time around midnight.  Then I woke up at 4am to blow my nose, was interrupted by a text from Christopher saying "shh", and then woke up at 9am to finish the garage.  By the end of the night on Sunday my allergies were hitting in full force, but the garage is clean!  

I managed to throw away a lot of stuff, but there was a lot that needed to be donated too.  That all went into the section that I cleaned a couple of weeks ago.  I've already called the veterans and they will be coming to pick up all of our donations on Friday.  Once that is all gone I can put the red suitcase full of all my Pyrex and cooking stuff into that space.  Since it's all sticking out into the walkway, we can't quite fit two cars in the garage yet, but we're pretty darn close.  I'm so pleased with all of our work. 

Christopher's early birthday dinner at Black Angus

I bought this from Overstock.com last week in hopes that it will ward of guys on the cruise...if they still approach I'll know for sure that they're scumbags.  We're still a long way away from the real thing, which is fine since Nick and I haven't been dating that long, but this gives me a little sense of security on open waters.  So family, if you see me wearing this, don't get excited.  It's for my own peace of mind. 

More Cooking

No wonder I've gained so much weight.  Everyone seems to be losing weight for our cruise except for me.  Maybe I should start eating salads and oatmeal.  Bleh.  That does not sound like a good idea at all.  I'll just pretend that I don't have an old man pouch when I wear my bathing suit.  Hahaha.  Aside from doing a lot of cooking, this past weekend we went to the Jazz Dinner Dance which is a fundraiser for the CHS band program and then to dinner in the city for Mother's Day.  Yum yum yum, good food and drinks all weekend long.

In and effort to keep this post short and sweet, I am going to put brief captions below each picture.  The length of these posts have been getting a little out of hand for how little actually goes on during my week.

I made this garlic and rosemary infused EVOO that went onto the red potatoes and zucchini pictured below.  My mom and I usually just coat the potatoes in EVOO and add garlic and rosemary to the pan.  Infusing the oil ahead of time wasn't difficult at all, but I really couldn't tell the difference of having the oil infused compared to not.  

I think I've posted this recipe in the past, but in case you want to try it I'll post it again here so that you don't have to go searching.  I added the zucchini because they looked good at the store the day that I went.  If you use zucchini make sure to cut them in large chunks.  Since mine weren't that large, some of my potatoes weren't cooked all the way through because I took the pan out before the zucchini turned to mush.  I made this to bring over to Melanie's last week.

Garlic Rosemary Potatoes
(Mommy' recipe)

5 red potatoes
1 head garlic, separated
2 tbsp fresh rosemary, minced
6 tbsp evoo

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Dice potatoes and mix with whole garlic cloves, rosemary, and evoo.  Spread on a baking sheet lined with foil.  Bake for 20 minute intervals.  After the first 20 minutes take the potatoes out and stir them, make sure the are all flat.  Bake for another 20 minutes.  Cool before serving.

Since I've decided to start grilling, I invited my friend Bonnie over for dinner.  What a mess.  I had read that beer can chicken is pretty fool proof, but I managed to mess it up.  It's a good thing that I know how to work a stove top because I clearly cannot grill.

 

Beer Can Chicken from Food Network. 

 

Our faces when seeing this was probably more priceless than this picture.  Too bad it wasn't caught on camera.

 

The recipe said to not cook it on direct heat, so I turned off the middle burner.  Apparently that wasn't good enough.  The smaller chicken was only half burnt, but it was also only half cooked as well.  What a disaster.  After seeing my chicken, the giant portobello mushrooms I prepared to grill were cut up and put into a spaghetti sauce.  Thus, Spaghetti Sauce 4 was born.  I had to revert to my back up plan of spaghetti where I was able to patch up my burnt ego.  Originally I had prepared a shallot, roasted red bell, garlic, and onion mixture to be "stuffed" into the mushroom caps so it was all ready to go.  After seeing the chicken I added some tomatoes and the mushrooms and walaa!  Yummy spaghetti and some burnt chicken for dinner.  The chicken itself was tasty under the burnt skin so I might try it again and pay more attention to it next time.

Spaghetti sauce 4

2 shallots, diced
1/2 red onion, diced
1 head garlic, minced
roasted red bell pepper, diced
3 large tomatoes, diced
2 cans diced tomatoes
portobello mushrooms, sliced (optional)
salt and pepper to taste

Sautee garlic, onion, and shallots. Once soft add tomatoes and portobellos.  Add canned tomatoes.  Bring to a boil. 

After my burnt chicken excursion, we had a nice Jazz Dinner Dance to go to where there would be no little Chinese girls grilling.  We had a lot of fun listening to the jazz bands play and hanging out with friends.

The kid who was taking our picture for us had the shakiest hands.  Starting from the left top: Mr. and Mrs. Ryan, my mom and Dad, Mr. and Mrs. Minnich, Nick.  Left bottom: Frank, Jennelle, Me.  If you will recall, Mrs. Minnich and Mrs. Ryan were the ones who set Nick and myself up at Frank and Jenelle's wedding.

It seems that Nick and I are starting a Tuesday night ritual of cooking and then watching Glee and V.  This week we made Venetian Pizza Rolls inspired by Giada de Laurentiis.  I say inspired because we didn't actually use much of the stuff that she suggested putting in the roll, but used her idea and instructions.  Since prosciutto is kind of expensive and difficult to find in my grocery store, we used regular ham that you'd find in the refrigerator section.  We also put in one zucchini and three or four very thinly sliced mushrooms.  We piled it with cheese like she suggested and added some dried thyme and oregano.  It was delicious and quite inexpensive.

Venetian Rolled Pizza

For this week's dinner with Melanie, I was going to make Spaghetti and Meatball Calzones from Sandra Lee.  The only problem is that it calls for left over spaghetti.  Being the pig that I am, I ate all our left over spaghetti.  So it gave me the opportunity to try to recreate Spaghetti Sauce 4 without mushrooms since Melanie doesn't like them and they kind of kicked up my mushroom allergy.  As I was preparing the sauce and then the pasta I decided that the pasta itself was too pretty to go into a calzone.  So I added some mozzarella cheese and took it over as a cheesy pasta dish. 

I added some zucchini for good measure.

Yesterday I decided to take another stab at this grilling thing.  Since I prepare most of my meals during work, it took me practically 5 hours to make the whole dinner when it would normally only take me an hour.  Multitasking is just not a good idea.  I made Chicken Tikka Masala and Chole from Allrecipes.  Both are very, very Americanized, but they're doable for someone like me.  I've been making this version of Tikka Masala for years now and it always makes me happy.   With Nick guiding me through not torching my chicken, I was able to have a successful grilling experience. 

The chicken was pretty good, but it's the sauce that does it.  MmmMMmmm....  I piled the chicken over some rice and then the Chole on top of the chicken.  It sure was delicious and definitely worth all that preparation.

While I was home learning to grill, Christopher was off at his Eagle Board of  Review.  He's finally an Eagle Scout!  Congrats little brother!

Mr. Ryan, my dad, Christopher,  and Mr. Sutherland (Christopher's Eagle adviser)

All I have to say is thank goodness it's all over.  I'm so glad that I don't have to hear anymore about getting binders turned in and meetings set.  

My last cooking excursion for the week was today's baking of the S'mores Crumb Bar.  It was soooo easy that I'm happy and Linda is happy.  There were really only four steps.

Step 1 and 1.5:  Mix crumbs, sugar, and butter.  

Put mixture at the bottom of a pan.

Step 2: Sprinkle chocolate chips

Step 3: Sprinkle mini marshmallows

Step 4: Sprinkle remaining crumb mixture on top and bake.

Well this blog isn't really that short, but it doesn't seem like I wrote as much.  Thank goodness.  Until next week....