Eating In - polenta; mexican style

happy tuesday all!  I thought i would share a new staple recipe JD and i have taken to recently.  in an effort to expand our meal horizons and not just eat the same things again and again, we decided to try our hand at a polenta recipe found on the side of the Rice Dream box.  seriously i know that the side of a box is not the beginning of any culinary dream, but i read that recipe every time i used the Rice Dream and i am a sucker for anything Mexican or even a little south of the border.

I started out with their basic recipe but added several items of my own to spice it up a bit.

Mexi-Cheese Polenta how to:

50g diced red or green chilies (or drained jalapenos) i used the green chilies cause i LOVE>>> LOVE them.

1 cup whole kernel corn, drained

4 cups Rice Dream rice milk (original) the last time i made this i didn't have the rice dream so i used soy milk.  it was just as good.

1 cup dry polenta or coarse ground corn meal

½ cup shredded cheese

3 tablespoons butter with all the other flavors going on here i thought this was just wasted calories.

Sea Salt and pepper

1 diced red bell pepper

1 can of diced tomatoes with green chillies

In a medium saucepan, bring chilies, corn, red bell pepper, can of tomatoes. and Rice Dream to a boil. Slowly add polenta, whisking constantly until smooth, about 6 minutes. Mix in cheese and butter. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve.

I served the polenta with some refried black beans (which i added green chillies to when cooking to have an added kick), sour cream, and a little more shredded sharp cheddar.  So, so good.  The polenta is warm and comforting and smooth. this has become a new favorite at our house hold and is super easy to prepare.  enjoy.

my google reader is out of control!

PEEPS... my google reader is at over a thousand posts.

i would have to dedicate my entire weekend to catching up... i think i need to thin the herd and cut down on the number of blogs i read... it isn't leaving me any time for my own.  over a thousand... it just stresses me out!.  how many blogs do you read a day?  how many posts are too many in one day?  thoughts?

let's catch up

let's catch up, shall we...

so i thought i would take a minute to catch you all back up to our super exciting lives.  to tell you the truth, compared to our normal standards we have been pretty lazy the past week... sort of just hanging low.

saturday - wow so long ago...  we took the morning easy (insert lazy here) we talked of starting new projects but never really got around to doing them.  JD installed an organizer in one of our big kitchen drawers.  i played around with illustrator... we drank tea... i cut fabric for curtains and got them pinned.  for lunch we went into the city to meet B & S for lunch and her parents who were in town from Maine.

we ran to the fabric store in the afternoon to purchase some new fabric for another quilt... then we stopped at a metal store to look at what they had to work with for designing my picture wall.  (details to follow).  after that we just went home again... and i cut fabric, and more fabric, and more fabric - almost half of the quilt!  we watched a movie then slept.

sunday - was much the same.  i cut fabric and more fabric.  i got the front of my new quilt cut, a plastic bag dispenser, and a clothespin bag all ready to be sewn.  then i had a grooming session with all the fur babies.  each of them waited their turn in line to be brushed and pampered.

monday - i don't even remember monday so nothing momentous must have happened.

tuesday - i subbed for a co-ed softball team last night.  it was tons of fun... i haven't played in two years and i remembered how much i missed it.  JD stopped on his bike ride to watch the game and then took off for home on his bike while i loaded the pups into the car with me.  no sooner had he left than i received a call to pick him up.  some (pardon my french here) asshole threw a handful of nails and screws at him from a moving car while he was riding his bike and blew the tire.  JD is fine, other than being really pissed, but what kind of a person maliciously throws a handful of sharp objects out the window of a moving car at a biker?  that person is so very lucky that i wasn't behind them because i drive a big car and am very protective of my family, and i most certainly would have run their ass off the road.  seriously you might think i am joking... but no, i'm not. when it comes to my family i am like a mean lioness - i just don't play around with things that important.

today we went to the dentist... sounds like a crappy way to start the day but our dentist is so nice i like to think of it as a spa day for my teeth.  ahhh so here is to hoping that the rest of the week turns around!  we are camping this weekend and i am looking forward to getting away from it all.  we are headed over to the pennisula for some rainforest and coast time with the pups.  i can not wait.

a break

hey all.... hope you all had a great weekend.  i know, i know... eck monday.  but time moves on and we all go back to work.  sorry for being so out of touch but last week was too much - i needed a break from the computer.  let me explain.  on thursday my paypal was hacked and someone helped themselves to a Sony Vizio on my account.  i spotted the unauthorized purchase within 15 minutes of the receipt from paypal and had contested the claim within the next 15 minutes.  the following 15 minutes had me at my bank with a very nice girl name Sally who helped me to make a claim with the bank.  within 45 minutes i had done everything i could to stop this bogus purchase from happening now all i could do was wait.

so by thursday afternoon i was feeling vandalized by this purchase, which was no small purchase mind you - a computer.  this is the second time i have had internet fraud on my accounts and it was the reason i switched to paypal for most of my internet shopping in the first place.  so i had had enough with computers and feeling vulnerable so i withdrew... no posts, no internet shopping, instead i was changing passwords, closing accounts, and adding more restrictions to my accounts.

i know that most people out there are nice and honest.  that is the whole reason i write this blog is to share our experiences with you and hear what you have to say but sometimes i worry that i have too much of our life out there.  i certainly don't want to change my life because of some scumbag... but what should i do?  anyway enough of my ranting... hope you all are having a nice monday.  i should be back to my posting self soon.

workin on wednesdays - island shelving

remember all those misc. pieces that i was painting, sealing, or polying last wed?

well they all found a home last night.

JD first put all the steel plates in place where the columns meet the beams.  ahhh i slept so much better knowing everything was tied together.  actually it didn't bother me the other way, but boy do they look nice.  we are leaving the bundled stud columns as they are, discolored, aged and, i think, beautiful.

then it was onto the shelving.  over the weekend i attached the finished fir to the welded steel supports.  we created 5 shelves but decided to only install the 3.  we will use the other 2 else where.  we attached the fir to the steel with pan head screws that we have left unfinished.  we did the same for attaching the shelving to the wall.  i love the way they look; they have a riveted look created by screws that looks really finished but also industrial.  we then loaded the shelves with many of our storage containers and bulk items.  the center shelf holds jars with harvested lavender, oregano, and rosemary from our gardens.

on the bottom shelf we added many of the canisters we use daily for easy access as well different fruit jams i've recently made.

here you can see the shelving in relation to the island.  we will either be hunting for a piece of furniture or building a piece to go below the shelving to stash cookbooks and the bar.

the shelving as scene from below... we still have some flooring stacked against the island for my studio, office, laundry room but i don't think we will get that far until the fall.

i know i haven't yet shown you the whole kitchen, complete... but that is because it isn't.  here in seattle when the weather turns nice it is really hard to stay inside.  we only get a few months of dry weather and it's hard not to be outside enjoying it.  i think JD and i have come up with a solution for the shelving for our dishes... but a few more design studies will be needed.  it's all a process.

multimedia monday...

i thought i would begin to share a bit more on what i've been reading, listening to, watching... the whole nine yards.

1.  i finished "The Time Traveler's Wife" this weekend... ahhh...  if you haven't read this book you should.  i really enjoyed it... it took be a little while to get into it... but then it was wonderful.   i recommend this book.

thumbs up!

2.  i caught the last episode of Pushing Daisies, that ABC pushed into a Saturday @ 10 pm slot.  WTF... ?  seriously.  why is it anytime i like a show it is yanked off the air in a season or two?  i might just not have good taste in television but if i see one more reality series or damn law & order look alike i am going to scream.  put the show back on the air... growl.

if you watched the season closer it is pretty obvious that the show that ended it all wasn't meant to be the final show of the series... they had to jam all the answers to all the questions into the last 30 seconds of the show.  ABC pull your head out of your ass and put the show back on.

thumbs down...booo.

well after that little rant i think i will go grab some lunch.  it seems it has made me hungry.

fur ball friday - gentle belly food for pups

i thought i would share the gentle food recipe we have been feeding Rainier all week... we switched back to her regular food this morning so cross your fingers!

our vet gave us this recipe when Rainier was a pup and we have been using it ever since when either of the pups has a sensitive stomach.

2 cups cooked rice
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup cottage cheese

then feed according to your pups eating amounts. i make several servings of rice and store them in the fridge for easy feeding over the course of the week. towards the end of the week i have been sprinkling in some of the regular dog food cause Rainier was tired of the cottage cheese / broth combo.

also at one point when Baker was a pup and didn't have solid poo the vet suggested adding a scoop of pumpkin to the food for some extra fiber. be careful though not to buy the pumpkin pie filling... which i did one time. let's just say Baker doesn't need extra sugar, and i was feeding it to him a spoonful at a time.

hopefully you don't need the recipie but it is great to have it in your back pocket, just in case.

today - a hard day

today was a hard day. not because of work... but because i had expectations for today that didn't' work out as planned. in fact things worked out the opposite of the way i wanted them to. i started off the day optimistic and with positive thoughts but by the time i got home from work my optimism had changed.

nothing earth shattering happened - it was just one of those days....

how can i explain it? well, it was sort of like thinking you were going to get a promotion. then letting yourself believe you were the one that was going to get the promotion. that promotion would change your life forever... and you believed that this was your day. but instead of giving you the promo they gave it to someone else and there you are left standing asking yourself what you did wrong.

that is how i feel today.

i got home from work and my eyes started to leak out of control. miss Rainier was there to let me leak on her and lick my face. JD was home soon after and although i know he was also disappointed he held my hand and made sure i was alright.

we took the dogs out for a walk to enjoy the wonderful seattle evening and JD bought me an ice cream to make me feel better - even before we had dinner. i realized on my walk home, with my wonderful husband and my 2 beautiful puppies how lucky i am to have such a wonderful family and to live in such a beautiful place. i know today didn't turn out like i would have hoped, like i wished it to be, but i realized i have my own little family here that truly loves me and puts my feelings above their own. for that i am eternity grateful. tonight when we go to sleep i am going to lay as close to JD as possible and wrap my arms around him. i hope he knows that i will always be there for him as he has been for me.

thank you babe.... i love you.

spice porn

spice storage is ... hmmm intersting.

for something that could be so cool and have so much color potential it can be a little bit daunting to figure out how to label the spices, how to display them... we have been tossing ideas around for some time now, how to deal with the spices?

we have looked at spice storage solutions all over the net and there are some great ideas like this one we found at Apartment Therapy.

but we just don't have wall space in the new kitchen so hanging and displaying options were out. lately i have been buying my spices in the bulk section which is much, much cheaper than buying the bottles. cheaper is great, but now i have a bunch of little baggies filled with spices in my drawers.

so... our spice answer... behold our new spice drawer, ahhh spice porn.

here are the little babies.. up close. we purchased the new IKEA DROPPAR series spice jars. they are nice because you can still see the colors of the spices when the jars are out and each lid has sealing band to keep your spices fresh.

we moved each spice to it's own little jar and labeled them, producing a whole drawer of labeled, organized goodness.

they look beautiful standing all alligned like colorful little spice soilders. i love orgainzation... and spice orgainzation is so so sweet.

workin on wednesdays - sanding, painting, and sealing

this weekend i attempted to wrap up some finish projects

ahhh the finish projects.... you know the ones. when you rip out two bearing walls only to not include a few structural plates because you don't have them painted. or when you remodel your entire kitchen but are living with temporary shelving for the dishes because you haven't finished up the shelving... those projects. well those projects at our house now out number the big projects. we have so many of these types of projects that i hardly know where to begin.

1. finish the steel
2. paint the structural plates
3. refinish the hallway return grill
4. finish the newly hung doors
5. finish the new front and back doors (yet to be installed)
6. seal the cedar clothes line poles...

seriously the list could go on and on... but this weekend i took a stab at least getting a few of these projects started.

the steel you see in the picture above is going to be the structure for our floating shelves that will be placed between the hallway and our new kitchen island. JD welded these together while taking his class. we loved the rough finish of the steel so instead of painting them or blackening them we decided to just seal them as is so they wouldn't rust. to seal them we used a water based polyurethane that could be sprayed on. four coats of sealant later... they look awesome.

above is the fir wood that will be placed on the now sealed steel. there will be five shelves in total. here i had just finished sanding the wood.

here they are after 3 coats of poly on the one side... because these will be high use shelving i am going to do 4 coats per side.

here i am working on the steel plates that will secure the beams of the kitchen to the columns. currently the beams are held in place with gravity but these plates will make sure the columns and beams stick together in event of an earthquake. after painting these i decided we need a darker shade of gray - repaint needed this weekend.

while running around paint station to station we decided to tackle the old return grill that resides in the floor of our hallway. here is the beautiful return grill before the make over...

well not completely after but you get the idea. the black is flat - they paint here makes it look wet and shinny.

i think the yard will look much like this this next weekend since we didn't get all of it done... alas i will have shelving sometime this year.

tuesday update...

hey everyone... just wanted to stop in and say hi. this week has been turning out to be pretty crazy. Miss Rainier still isn't feeling well - well she was fine all weekend and then back to not doing so good yesterday. we have been feeding her a gentle diet the past few days and hopefully by this evening she will be feeling better - if not it is off to the vet tomorrow. i have my fingers crossed that everything will work out by the end of the day.

i will post our gentle doggie diet later this week.

have a great tuesday....

fur ball friday - stinky, stinky, stinky

Seriously... after reading the Nie Nie Dialogues post today and laughing i just had to write and share a recent experience... we live in Seattle (as you may know) and it has been unseasonably hot here for the past week (in the 90's). needless to say our Rottie, Rainier has been having a hard time adjusting to the heat... so we have been making sure she always has water and have been giving her ice cubes to cool her down.

the other evening it was still hot when we went to bed - the kind of hot where you sleep with no covers and the windows wide open. JD and i had been out working in the yard and could see that Rainier's tummy was upset as she ran about the yard going to the bathroom more frequently than usual from dehydration. that night JD was up 5 times with here, taking her outside when she had to go, the poor little thing (both of them). i got up at 5 am yesterday to take her out and then just stayed up with her cause she didn't feel well enough to go back to sleep.

we unfortunately had to go to work yesterday and would be leaving her in the hot house... we left as many windows open as we have... and even left the back door open to help with a breeze. i had filled the water bowl, gave her a special breakfast of cottage cheese, rice, and beef broth which helps calm upset puppy tummies, and we went to work.

i had to work late last night but when JD got home it seems that rainier had gone to the bathroom in the house 5... FIVE times..... JD called to let me know the news and then he cleaned it all up... scrubbing the entire house with pine sol and then several more times with the swiffer wet jet. HUGE props to JD for cleaning the mess - cause i just don' t do well with that kind of stuff... so on top of the dog's mess he would have a heaving wife as well!

after he finished cleaning the mess he let the 2 pups and 2 cats in for dinner. they all had been chillin on the back deck trying to cool off.

no sooner had Rainier finished her dinner only to throw up in the house. JD proceeded to clean up the mess then Ginkgo puked... he cleaned that up too and guess what? Bamboo threw up! Seriously, i'm not making this up.

needless to say when i got home he was so out of patience... god i am so glad i missed the mess... i so love him for taking care of all of that for me and the fur babies.

talk about seriously stinky evenings... thank you JD for taking care of us all!

Out and About - Root Table

a few weeks ago i got a chance to go and check out a new restaurant that opened in the Seattle neighborhood of Ballard. the restaurant, aptly named Root Table, was full of wonderfully handmade tables and chairs all carved from tree stumps.

the write ups of the restaurant boast an asian fusion experience, but the menu was strongly based on thai cuisine adaptations and less on the fusion end of things. the atmosphere was nice, a candle lit at each table, wooden menus, and paper lantern lighting. although we were the first table of the evening, we were eating before a class session, the restaurant filled up quickly.

we started with an appetizer of fried muscles... although delicious there were only 3 of them (2 of us... hmmm what do we do with that last one?)

we then moved onto the main portions...

me... double-fisted duck - duck marinated in dark beer and chinese wine, with deep-fried cabbage and jasmine rice.

the presentation was well done and although i thought the dish was tasty there was so much fat on the duck...that i got about 3 bites of duck and had a pile of fat left over on the plate when through. the sauces used for the dish were much that like a traditional pad see ew.

my friend... salmon tornado - grilled salmon over jasmine rice with a tamarind ginger sauce.

again.. nice presentation and everything was eaten and enjoyed.

we did have to wait some time for our to go order but other than that... dinner was good and the decor was tons of fun.

urban gardening - going vertical (part 1)

they told me to steal - so i did.

well we are attempting to anyway...

you see, although we have a yard it never seems like there is enough room to plant all the veggies and plants we want to plant each season.  in response to that, JD and i have been trying to find creative ways to plant our crops each year to take advantage of as much available space as possible.  last year we went vertical with our beans (duh) but this year we wanted more.

enter stage left the vertical garden:  we ordered strawberries,  and JD was taking a welding class - we thought this project was ours.  we set to designing a vertical garden that would have an inner core, so the entire thing wouldn't have to be filled with soil and the inner empty core would also allow a way to irrigate the garden.

we had grand plans - then the kitchen remodel took so long (wait, wait, IS taking so long).   there are so many thing to be done inside, that we abandoned the idea of completing the vertical garden this year and decided to give it a purpose until our plan could be complete.

this year... instead of being a super cool strawberry garden (complete with chickens and hens) the outer form of our vertical garden has become our pea trellis!  we put the trellis in the front yard (don't pay attention to the pile of dirt behind it - that is from some patio excavation last summer)

the peas love the steel and have begun to climb and hopefully by the end of the summer majority of the trellis will be covered.

climb baby climb... want to see what else we are attempting to grow vertically?  stay tuned.

i want this lamp...

actually i need two of them for either side of our bed

wouldn't they make the best reading lamps?  i seriously want these... with those edison bulbs.  they would be super cool and totally fit into the bedroom aesthetic.  i just wish these Bruno Scissor Arm Pharmacy Sconce weren't as expensive as they are... i guess 154.00 per lamp isn't bad.

maybe i can find a vintage version?  hmm... must look into.

what i've been reading

thought i would let you know what i've been reading lately and see if you had any good suggestions for what i should be picking up next.

it is vacation season and new books are always needed...

1.  Twilight

if you haven't already read these... you must be living in a closet or under a rock.  so get on board cause they are really that good.  i read the first 3 while in hawaii on my honey moon.  it was a bit strange, we traveled so far to lay in the sunshine and i was reading about forks, wa which is only a few hours from our house. i loved these books and will read them again. (oh and you better get on it, cause the second book comes out in movie form in november - so excited can't wait!)

thumbs up.

2.  The Time Travelers Wife

i've just started this one... and will have to let you know what i thought after... but only a bit in and i am already interested.

3.  The Poisonwood Bible

everyone says this book is great but... i started reading this a while ago and had a few other difficult things happening at work... and it was bringing me down.  i am going to have to give it another go here this summer while there is sun here and seattle and i'm in good spirits.

have any good books that you would like to recommend?  please let me know i am always looking for something good to read - post about it on your blog and let your link below...  i see some lazy days on the hammock in my future (well once the garden is planted anyhow).

the weekend update

wow it is monday already... i seriously can't believe it.

the yard sale was a success.  we made a little jing to put into our vacation stash and that was all that counted.  boy does that make for a tiring day though.  i started setting up at 7.30 am and dropped off the boxes of leftovers to charity at 5 pm... my legs aching.  not to mention that even though i put on sunscreen by the end of the day i had a burn.  oh well.

then we were off to a friends place...  and home in bed by 1 am...

sunday we caught up on some sleep and did some gardening - i will have pictures later in the week to share.  too bad monday wasn't always part of the weekend.  it seems that i always have enough projects to fill it up.

hope you are having a good beginning of the week.