Happy Birthday!
October 25, 2008
I love you! I am so lucky that you have chosen to spend your life with me.
I hope your day is perfect.
Zucchini Soup
October 23, 2008
I found this lovely recipe for zucchini soup in a blog I read religiously. I can remember my mom using laughing cow cheeses in a variety of recipes growing up so I jumped at the idea of having that familiar flavor in my soup for dinner!
And if you remember from my garden post a few days ago… my green zucchini is STILL producing!
I loosely followed her recipe and the results were delicious.
Kimmy’s version of Zucchini Soup
Ingredients
*All the zucchini in the house
*A lot of garlic (err on the side of too much)
*Olive Oil
*Water
*6 Laughing cow cheese triangles
The play by play:
Heat the oil in the pan and add the zucchini and garlic- shoot will it fit?? Oh well make it fit… Careful stir so everything gets coated in oil. Umm… this is taking too long! Add lid to make everything cook faster.
Find and drink beer. Put cookies in oven (yeah we had cookies for dinner too!). Peruse Facebook.
Wait! Zucchini is still on the stove! Peek under lid. Great. Things aren’t browning! Because I put on the lid it trapped moisture and now everything is simmering away instead of getting golden brown and delicious. Whatever. Drink more beer. Replace lid.
Sit around till everything is mushy in pan. Add 1/2 cup of water and all the cheese (wonder to myself if we need to add more cheese, decide against it). Pull out immersion blender. Wander off with beer in hand to find extension cord since there aren’t any outlets near my stove. Pet the kitty. Drink beer. Talk to Becky and Nathan. Oh yeah extension cord… locate cord, plug into wall, plug in immersion blender. Argue with Nathan about the superiority of an immersion blender over a stand blender. Use blender on mushy zucchini. Yumm.
Taste soup and give Becky a taste. Decide it is too pasty and add more water. Blend with immersion blender. Realize blender isn’t doing much and a spoon would be faster so I switch. Taste again. Huh… the flavor changed from adding more water! Oh well still just as tasty.
Serve with crusty bread (we had asiago bread from Albertson’s) and let everyone add salt to taste. Enjoy!
My garden…
October 22, 2008
I have mixed feelings on my garden this year. Nathan and I just put the backyard garden away for the winter and this is what we still had left to harvest.
Yeah I know… that is a lot of carrots! The green zucchini plants are still trying to prove they are stronger than the cold weather and we might get a few more dinners before we yank them. The eggplant is struggling but may produce a bit more. The beans, lettuce, summer squash, and green and lemon cucumbers are all done. And then there are the volunteer tomatoes… I hate them. I planted I don’t know how many tomato plants in the from yard only to watch them fail… miserably fail! But these stupid plants that came up on their own this year are completely out of control and delicious.
So the backyard was a success but as you can probably already gather the front yard failed. Some say I didn’t water enough others think it was the soil quality, I think the plants just hated me. A few of the tomato plants did ok but they were all cherry varieties. My dreams of freezing my own Roma tomatoes were never realized. Oh well…
I think I am making carrot soup tonight. Anyone interested?
Pizza and beer!
October 21, 2008
I love that my family of friends has regular get together times. First it was Saturday morning breakfast, then pizza and beer, and more recently we meet for Sunday night dinners. I love getting to see everyone on a regular basis!
Pizza and beer is tonight (and every Tuesday night) at Phathoms. I can’t wait!
I am Enjoying a Busy Fall
October 17, 2008
Its been a couple of weeks since I posted last. Life is steadily moving along and I am enjoying the flow of things. Work has been slowing down as I wrap up one product and get ready for the next.
Fall has definitely arrived. The weather is gray most of they time and the leaves are starting to fall on the running paths.
I am slowly achieving last years resolution to run 100 miles before 2009 and am now at around 63 miles for the year, most of which I ran within the last two months. The new Nike shoes help alot and the Nike Plus tracking device has given me a new source of motivation as I am competing for the most distance with a group of friends this month. I am excited to see both my speed and distance improving. Sometimes I feel like a child of Nike as almost all of my running gear is branded with the swoosh… I guess its OK since Nike originated from Eugene and the U of O.
My business ventures are also coming along. I hired a writer to develop content for www.theviewfromhome.com last month and am very pleased with the results. The content has been posted and I am now working on adjusting the pages so they look good and have appropriate ads and images.
My affiliate marketing application is also coming along as I just finished another piece of it. I am hoping to have it working within the next three months or so. It is exciting to watch it take shape.
Aside from all of that, I replaced my very first window in the studio last weekend and have three more to tackle soon. The process went fairly smooth. The next three will be interesting as they are on the second story and require a ladder…
I also just ordered parts for the mini and am hoping that this round of tinkering will get it to a runable condition again.
Brisingr
October 3, 2008
It is not very often that I read science fiction or fantasy. These days the books I read tend to be nonfiction guides, tutorials, and manuals. Occasionally, however, I dive into a story and let it take me away to far off lands.
I finished the book Brisingr by Christopher Paolini last night. I am not going to give away any details about the book but wanted to share how much I enjoy his writing. Paolini does an excellent job bringing his characters to life and developing each character.
I was a bit surprised at the end that there would be a fourth book as up until that time Paolini had only talked about there being three books. Three quarters of the way through the book it was pretty evident that there was quit a bit more story to be told. I look forward to the next in the series.
